- Hi, I'm Jacques Pépin.

You know, I love to cook and I don't mind spending a lot of time in the kitchen, but occasionally, my dog tries to get me to hurry so we can play.

Here is my idea for an elegant, healthy dinner that's not too time-consuming.

Sauteed salmon filet on a bed of spinach, chicken legs that are stewed in a rich combination of shallot, mushroom, and sweet potatoes, and a quick and tasty dessert of baked banana rolled in a lemon sauce with rum.

It's the kind of meal that will leave you plenty of time.

for the important things, like playing.

Join me, on "Today's Gourmet."

(gentle rhythmic music) (gentle rhythmic music continues) (gentle music) You know, everyone is always in a hurry, fast, fast, and I like to do a fast menu, but when you do a fast menu and you want to choreograph a menu, you have to start with the right thing.

In our menu today with salmon, chicken, banana, I'm going to start with the chicken, and this is a stew of chicken, you know?

Even though it's a stew, it's going to go quite fast.

I like to do it with the leg of the chicken, and as you can see, very often, the leg of those chicken have the backbone here, a piece, which is a piece of the carcass, so I like to remove this.

You cut it here, press it open, cut at the joint here, and pull it out, that removes that piece of carcass.

I'm going to do that on the other one also, plus, I remove the drumstick here.

Those pieces of bone, of course, goes into stock, and that's, I keep them in the freezer or someplace like this, you know, for later use, sometime in the refrigerator, I make soup with it or stock.

Again, I remove this one, I have four legs 'cause I feel that the leg is always moister than the breast.

When I use the breast and I do a stew, I tend to put it at the end, if I put it at the beginning, it gets too stringy.

And important part, especially in our type of cooking where we want to lower the calorie and so forth, is to remove the skin, that's in the skin, really, that you have most of the fat, and you want to remove it, and trim a bit of the fat, the extra fat on top.

In addition to that in a stew, you know, if you leave the skin, then the skin tends to get gummy and rubbery, it's not like when you fry it, so it's better to remove it, and if you want to help yourself, get a towel to help the pushing of the, I mean, the pulling of the skin on top.

Now, we are going to use a little bit of olive oil here in my skillet, a dash of it, and I am going to put a bit of salt and pepper on top of my chicken, there, and directly start frying on each side.

Remember, that this should fry (chicken sizzling) about five minutes on each side, a bit of pepper on it, freshly ground pepper, (pepper grinding) (chicken sizzling) and the chicken will work, as I say, five minutes on one side and about five minutes on the other side in the first browning.

During that time, I'm going to start the dessert, which is the banana.

And all you have to do, cut the end of the banana, and cut with your knife, just to open the banana this way.

This is the way we're going to put it in the oven, and what happens is that when you cook it this way, the banana kind of blow up, the skin gets jet black, and it make your banana very delicious and moist inside, you know?

It is one way of baking banana, and, of course, here, we're going to do a sauce with it, but you can have them just unwraped like that with lemon juice, it's very good.

So we put them in a 400-degree oven for about 15 minutes.

I look at my chicken, it's doing well here.

We wanna gonna brown it, remember.

on each side, and during that time, we are going to do the syrup for the banana, the sauce that is, which is a type of syrup flavors, and it's quite nice and simple.

What I have here, I have a lemon, lemon juice, lemon rind, I can show you how to do the lemon rind, you use that type of grater, you see this side is a real grater, it's like if a nail has been put through the metal, so it's open on each side, meaning that you can grate in all directions.

If you do it with that side here, it makes little a strip, it's a bit different.

Now I grate it, (lemon grinding) ah, you see on each side, what we are trying to do here, is to remove only the top part of the lemon, you know?

And the top part of the lemon is where you have the essential oil, all of the taste.

You don't want to have too much of that white part underneath the piece, because this tends to be bitter.

Just bang this on the table this way, and to remove this, in the back this way, that removes most of it.

Now we put that in there, (chicken sizzling) we can put the juice, and you can strain it through your finger directly.

You can see here, I have all the seeds your finger is really your best piece of equipment in the kitchen, believe me.

Oh, I have a seed here, a bit of sugar, a bit of water, I have my syrup, and some good orange marmalade, that's what we are doing in there, that make a nice, so that we are going to flavor with rum after.

I'm putting this to cook, and, of course, this will cook about three minutes, not really very long.

And while it is cooking, we're going to finish the garnish of the chicken, and what I have here for the chicken, I have wine, of course, I have mushroom, onion, shallot, and so forth.

I'd never wash the mushroom, until I'm ready to use them.

If you even wipe the mushroom with a towel like this, you take the protective coating off it, and it starts getting yellowish and brownish, but it doesn't mean that you don't wash your mushroom, as you can see here, when you are ready to use it, that's it, you wash your mushroom.

Now, I have some sweet potato here, though they are fairly large, sometimes, I like to get a small one, about this size, you can cut them into pieces, sometime, depending on the time of the year, if I feel that the skin is nice also, okay, I don't have too many black spots on it, I leave the skin on, you know?

But here we are removing the skin, to show you, you can use the yam, which is orange color, like which are very nice, as well as the sweet potato, cut them into a smaller piece, maybe.

I have a shallot here, you should have a couple of shallot per person, my mushroom, which is very nice here.

Then, let's see, those are getting nicely brown on each side here.

Remember, I have the four leg here.

Well, I already have two legs of chicken browning here, (chicken sizzling) to go a bit faster, so I'm going to put another two.

I have my recipe here, and now as you can see, it is important here to have the type of crystallization in the bottom of the pan here, you can see, nice, brown crystallization, and this will give me the taste and the color in the sauce, and that's very nice.

So my chicken is brown enough, I put first maybe, a bit of chopped onion here, that I can put around.

You know, you can change that, you want onion, you want scallion, I put white wine, you want red wine, everything is fine.

All of my vegetable around, a couple of piece of each, the white wine, I have about half a cup of white wine here, and then dash of salt, again, on top of it, a bit of pepper, (pepper grinding) and that's it, I have a beautiful stew here, I cover it, and this now has to cook for about 20 minutes.

I'm going to stop the syrup, the syrup is going to be cooked tender enough now, and what I wanna show you, is how to make a dish pretty.

Even though when we are pressed by time, there is always a little bit of time to, you know, make your food look a bit nicer, you know?

And I have beautiful tomato here.

Now, when you peel tomato, you can do what I'm going to do here, that tomato has been dropped in boiling water, this is really the best way, if you have a lot of tomato, you drop it in boiling water, and as you can see, the skin just slides off.

That tomato is ripe, so it doesn't take more than like 10 seconds in boiling water.

If that tomato is not ripe enough, it'll take 20 or 30 seconds.

Now I cut it across here, to expose the seed as you can see, and press the seed out.

Now, I keep the seed and the skin here because I keep that for stock, again in my freezer.

But notice what I have here now, I have tomato flesh.

Now that tomato flesh, I can cut it, you know, in pieces like this, in little dice of fresh tomato flesh, and this is what we are going to use later on in the salmon recipe.

Another thing that you can do with it, look at those beautiful cherry tomato here.

What I can do, a cherry tomato in winter with a piece of tomato flesh.

Put it in your towel, this way, wrap it around, and squeeze it to create your own tomato bowl, you know, your own cherry tomato, any size you want, of course.

This makes a delicious, beautiful cherry tomato, because it doesn't have any skin, it doesn't have any juice in it, it doesn't have any seeds, so it's very good, and your customer or your guests are going to love it.

However, I'll show you another thing.

When you have a tomato like that, you can take the skin with a knife, as I'm doing, and if you take the skin with a knife, look, I'm going to use the skin to make a flower to put on top of a salad.

So, I move my knife in a jigsaw fashion, first, I have a base here, as you see the top of the tomato, and this, then I do a second strip, this way, always better to do a second strip, it works much better, that side here.

Now again, my tomato is clean here, I could cut it this way, again, to expose the seed and press out the seed.

But there, on that first one, I wrap this together to make my base, so that's it.

And the second one, the second strip, you can roll it very tight into a scroll here, as you can see, now I place it right in the center of it, and look, I have a beautiful rose tomato, the tomato that I peel, you can cut it into wedge, put it around your salad, as I have done here, and put your rose right in the center of it, and right there, it's dressed and is beautiful.

(gentle rhythmic music) Now I have my bandana out of the oven.

As you can see, they are black, cooked, and what we wanna do, is to finish them with the syrup.

So I have my syrup here.

Remember, this is a mixture of marmalade, lemon juice, and so forth.

Your banana are quite high in potassium, it's good for you.

We're going to unwrap them, just like this into this.

This is not your Banana Foster, you know, with ice cream, and butternuts, butternut sauce, and so forth, this is actually quite lean, you know?

This one, quite flavorful.

So we wrap them, roll them in that syrup, you know?

A little bit, or you can take a spoon, and put the syrup on top, because remember, that I have enough lemon juice to prevent discoloration after, and that's what you want there, as well as the taste.

In addition to this, I have flavored that with the rum, a dark rum.

Now, if you choose not to use alcohol, then you don't have to, or you can on the other hand, use a little bit of cognac, or rum, that I do here, it's a dark rum, and that's what I like.

Then maybe a little bit of decoration on top.

I have the skin, you know, of orange here, which makes a nice decoration, maybe a few spraying of mint on top for color.

And I have a very simple, nice, delicate dessert here, which I'm going to put on this side.

And now, what I'm going to do is to work on the salmon.

I have a beautiful salmon right here, and this is usually Norwegian salmon, this is what's available all year round now, though, they are raised salmon, so they are very good year-round.

I mean, it doesn't change, they come from Norway and now actually, they come from Canada, there is a sign.

You can see, however, how beautifully pink that salmon is inside.

There is no smell to it, and this is what a fresh fish is.

Your nose is better than anything else.

The eye, you know, which is bulgy, the tightness of the flesh, will indicate freshness, but as I say, more than anything else, your nose.

You can buy that, of course, all ready, for me, I'm going to show you how to do a fillet out of this, and I cut that underneath here, and put my knife flat, right on the center, on that large center bone, and cut right down with this, oop, another piece here.

And this is a big fillet of salmon, as you can see here.

Now, often when you do this, you may think that you're going to lose some of the flesh here.

What I do very often, when I finish boning, I scrape with a spoon, you see, and any type of extra flesh, you can use it, put it back onto your salmon.

Remember, that salmon is a fatty fish, it's very good.

For you, the fatty fish are supposedly very good for cholesterol, you know, so we are talking about fish such as salmon, like sardine, fish like blue fish, and so forth.

And as I say, fortunately, available year-round, basically, all over the country now, so that's great.

What I'm removing now, is the whole rib cage of the salmon here.

See that rib cage here, is, of course, not edible, but again, remember, I will keep that for stock.

Remember, that you can go to your fishmonger and have him done that for you if you don't want to do it.

Another thing that you have to remove, if I run my finger here, there is a line of bone all along the side here, and I want to remove those bones, they go straight down.

Now, just with a little tweezer like this, as you can see, I pull the bone, I see the end of it, that's it, you know, it's a bit tedious, but you have about 15, 20 bone, more than that, actually, I think it's 28 bone, one day I counted it, but I forgot now, in any case, the bones go from the head here, until about here, at the opening, you see, it's finished around here.

You can feel them with your finger, if you can find them, like this.

I think I need glasses, I don't see those bones very well, that's about here.

I have a couple of more here that I can see, and that all little bunch of bone that I say, will make your life difficult when you slice it, if you don't remove it.

Now, we have to remove the skin, you know?

And to remove the skin, I cut down with a large knife at the end, it's a little bit hard, it's sliding.

And I to have a good grip here, when I have the good grip, remember that my knife, I don't keep it flat like that, I don't keep it straight, it's about a 45-degree angle, the idea is to scrape up the whole flesh from the skin, as I'm doing here.

Now it's difficult to do it in one scoop, so I move my knife in a jigsaw fashion, and the skin in the other direction.

This is a very good technique, it's a classic technique that you use to fillet, and to take the skin of fish, or sometime other things.

Now that skin is the very fatty and all that, there isn't much you can do with this, so I discard it.

The other side of the salmon, there is a bit of that black flesh here that you can remove.

You will be told, of course, that the fish oil are often in that fatty tissue, and it is good for you.

Yes, it is true, on the other end, very often, pollutants also go into that part of the fish, so it's a no-win situation.

In any case, my salmon is now completely clean.

Again, you could go directly to the fishmonger for this.

We're going to cut it into a steak, about four.

I would say that those steaks are about four ounces, yes, this way, I have a nice steak, as you can see, and put that on this side.

You see, I cut that about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 out of this.

This is a salmon, which was about six pounds, I would say.

And a salmon is a very good fish, let's say, a 10-pound salmon, if it's 10 pound with the gut, with everything in it, will give you five pound of flesh, half of it, which is very nice, you know?

So what we do, just to put a little bit of olive oil in there, I have one tablespoon of olive oil, for like four portions, and we macerate our fish in it, that, of course, today, I wanna cook the fish right away, but if I had time, I can cover that with plastic wrap, put it in the refrigerator, and leave it even overnight, it's perfectly fine, macerating in the oil, because remember, I have no salt, I have no seasoning on top.

Now I wanna cook one portion, I don't need any oil or anything, and again, remember, I used only olive oil here, which is a monounsaturated oil, a little bit of salt on top.

I'm going to cook one portion to show you, there is enough oil on top for the cooking process.

And there, are the garnish.

This will take a couple of minutes on each side.

I'm going to do a little bit of spinach, and I have beautiful spinach here, and the garnish of the salmon, which is a bit of chopped onion, and some tomato.

I can even shop the onion, here, to show you the technique, finely chopped onion.

I won't need all of that, of course, because I'm cooking one portion, and you can see here the rib of your spinach.

I can cut the end of it just like this, and pick up extra leaves inside, because this is standard, I can even use that for soup actually, you know?

So, I'll put some of the spinach in there to saute, it's going to saute quite fast, huh?

You can season it with a bit of, nutmeg sometimes is very good with spinach.

In that case here, I'm just going to put a bit of salt and pepper on top.

I think I'll put paper on my salmon also.

And I'm going to present that on a beautiful plate here.

I love the color, you know, of the salmon this way.

And this is cooked on this side, now I turn it on the other side, see the beautiful pan, it's a fish pan, you see it out of the shape, and in addition, it's a non-stick, so it's terrific to use.

Now you see those spinach will get wilted, you know, very fast, and that's basically what you want.

Now, cooking the spinach this way, you don't steam it, you don't boil it, you don't do anything, so you retain all the nutrients in the spinach.

Spinach is very high in oxalic acid, and it's good fiber, and this, of course, in that case particularly, I warm the color and the taste, you know?

So, I have my spinach about right here.

I will arrange it later, again, a dash of olive oil more for my onion, saute the onion in there.

I think I'll stop the salmon, because I want it slightly rare in the center, you know?

I like it slightly undercooked inside, so, of course, it's a question of taste, some people like it more cooked, but remember, I took all the sinew, I took all of the bone, I took all of the fat, all of the skin, so I put it in there, a bit of my tomato, and the garnish.

Now, I will spread out the leaf of the spinach, remember, I wanna do like a bed of spinach.

And as you can see, I put quite a handful of spinach in my skillet.

But by the time it cooked down, it really disappeared a lot, but it's still beautiful in the bottom, like this.

You know, the tomato, I don't want to cook the tomato, I just want them to be warm, and have a nice taste on top.

So we have the red of those tomato, oops, up a little bit all over, like this.

I'm going to put my salmon right in the middle of it.

Beautiful color, and, you know, in my garden, I have beautiful herbs outside, and I take some in the kitchen too.

As you can see, I have beautiful, this is quite unusual, this actually is a basil cinnamon.

And I think I'm going to put a piece of it, which is absolutely beautiful.

to put on top, to really finish the dish, and that's it, beautiful, and good to eat.

The chicken is ready now, it looks beautiful.

It is boiling nicely, it's nice and brown.

I'm going to put a little bit of parsley on top.

I could chop the parsley or put actually the leaves of parsley, this is a flat parsley, directly on it.

And this is it.

Now, let's go see the whole menu together, what it looks like.

Yeah, and what I have here, I have, of course, I think a very colorful menu, very good.

And I say, we start with the salmon, high in the good oil there, we have, of course, the spinach with it, we have the tomato, it's very lightly, we haven't used one teaspoon of butter in that menu, I mean, just a little bit of olive oil.

We have a beautiful frequency of chicken here, with, again, the sweet potato, the mushroom, the garlic, the shallot, and to saute it, it's very terrific, very earthy, and then, of course, our simple banana dessert with the syrup, which goes very well, I think, with the menu to balance it, and, of course, our salad, we already have a salad for finish.

I love salad, anyway, good fiber, and different color, and I hope you enjoy your menu today, happy cooking!