- A fast easy dessert that the kids love to eat and love to make is graham cracker, a nice scoop of ricotta on top, some dry fruit like apricot and raisins, and then you can put some honey on top of it all around.

The kids will love it.

(bright music) Hi, I am Jacques Pepin, this is "Fast Food My Way."

Happy cooking.

Today I am going to do a lamb stew with beans and a very easy way of doing it.

The first thing that I'm doing here, I'm cleaning up a leek to put it in there.

And as you can see, it's not a question of taking a leek and often those cost like a dollar a piece, you know, and cutting the whole thing there.

No, you cut them so to keep a little bit of the green there.

And then you open it in half or in two or three pieces and you can see that this is where you will have all of the dirt right there in between the leaves and so forth.

So you wash it now under running water.

(water trickling) So here, open it like this to be sure that you go between your leaves.

That's it.

Okay, so the light green, you know, is the part that you want.

And this, frankly, I don't throw it out, I throw that part out.

But this, usually, I freeze it, I wash it, freeze it, and when I do stock, I use that in the stock.

So I clean up my table if there is any dirt and I'm probably going to use about, oh, about a cup, cup and a half of the leek here.

So that should be enough.

That stew is going to be done in the pressure cooker, which I have right here and it's very easy to do it.

I'm using lamb, I mean, shoulder lamb.

You can see here there is that bone which is the shoulder blade.

Those are really nice and tender and those come directly like that from the supermarket.

You can remove a little bit of the fat if you want.

Remember that, in the lamb, in the mutton or in the lamb, the strong taste is always in the fat.

Now I put that directly in the pressure cooker.

Beans, just wash those beans here, half a pound of beans, white beans, great northern beans, pea beans, navy beans, all of those white beans, any of those is going to work perfectly fine.

I'm gonna put the leek in there.

Okay.

Three cup or four cup of water, I have close to, yeah, three cup of water is enough.

Two cup of tomato, this is regular diced canned tomato.

I'm putting about a teaspoon and a half of salt.

See, you have to put all your stuff in it because by the time you start cooking, you cannot open it and start all over again.

Herbes de Provence or Italian seasoning or fresh thyme, bay leaf that you have out of your garden.

Onion and garlic, that's basically it for the pressure cooker to start.

Now the stew like this, the beans certainly are going to take from an hour to an hour and a half, sometimes two hours to cook in the pressure cooker, in 30 minutes, I'll have a perfect stew.

My sister-in-law in France, I remember very well when my brother lived in Paris, she used to work in Paris also.

And at night, she would finish work, she'd take the train at the Gare de Saint-Nazaire, you know, in Paris, and get home.

And I'm going to put a little bit of Worcestershire sauce in it.

Worcestershire sauce, that's a hard word to say for me.

In any case, she would come out of the train, she would pick up her bread, she would pick up everything, a little roast of veal, anything like that, get home.

Before even she'd take her coat off, she put her pressure cooker with a roast of veal, start browning it, closing it, go to take her clothes off, prepare the aperitif or take a shower, and that was it.

She was ready within 30 minutes.

Now what happened is that, here, the pressure cooker, the pressure inside has to go up to there is those little line here, those red line that you have, you have one line, two line, three line.

It should come to the third line because of the pressure and it will take about 10, 12 minutes to do that.

At that point, you start timing about 30 minutes and it's fine.

And the way it works is that, you use those particularly when you're at high elevation.

You know when you work at sea level, usually, the pressure is such, like 212 degree Fahrenheit or 100 degrees Centigrade, the pressure cracks the water and it starts boiling.

As you go higher, I think it's every 500 feet, you lose one degree, I think it is, something like that.

So like in Aspen, Colorado, 8,200 feet, it's like 16 degree less to boil, instead of boiling at two 12, the water boils at like 195.

At some point, you cook certain things where the cellulose in it is so strong that it doesn't cook and it boil hours and hours and hours, I've boiled black beans, for example, in Aspen and never get them really cooked.

So at that point, you use the pressure cooker there because it does the opposite.

It applies pressure on top of the liquid.

By the time it start boiling in there, it's over 300 degree in terms of pressure.

So it breaks down the cellulose and the texture in meat and cook very, very fast, that's the principle of the pressure cooker, you know.

So we'll lower it by the time it get to the red mark.

And now I'm going to do lobster, a lobster salad with a special bonus.

What I have here, I have lobster which are cooked, I cover them with water, like four cups of water, bring them to a strong boil with the water just from the tap, you know, bring them to a boil, simmer it gently, five minutes, take it off the heat and leave them 30 minute in that water to continue cooking.

This is approximately two pound lobster.

And now you can break the tail, I already cleaned one here, bring the two claw, take the center out.

And here I have the juice that I have from the other lobster plus the juice that it cooked in.

So all of that stuff, I'm going to put in.

This is the tomalley here that I have, this will going to go inside.

The body of the lobster has a lot of taste.

And this, I'm going to cut into pieces, like I have it here, to make a special soup, to make a bisque of lobster with that.

The tail, you crack the tail this way and then start breaking out to remove this.

Then you continue breaking it, the second joint, maybe.

And then after it should slide out, you know.

Here it is, so you have a nice, this is winter lobster, very hot when they are very fleshy inside this.

And now we're gonna break this.

So you break them at the joint here, break them at the joint here, you see you have two claws, the crusher and the pincher.

You wanna take this and break it gently here and pull out.

See that piece of cartilage pull out inside, this is part of this.

What I have here, you use the bottom of a pan or something to crack it, put your towel on top of it so you don't mess up the table too much.

(lobster cracking) And then your tail should come out, with this, so you have the whole claw of the lobster without that little piece inside, which is that piece which is right in the center here that you have to remove.

And now I have those that I crush.

That piece here, that nut which I have here, that particular articulation here.

This is the best part of the lobster (lobster claw banging) according to the great lobster aficionado.

And Julia told me also that it was the best part of the lobster, so Julia told me, I believe her.

Here it is.

And there is a little piece still in there that you can break or cut with a knife.

Usually this, you open it with a knife.

Always watch out because you can always kind of puncture your finger a little bit.

But this is the joy of eating lobster in the summer, you know, cutting your finger with it.

Okay, and that's it, we have all of our meat out of the lobster, except the meat that you will have in the tiny legs around the body.

If I go eating lobster with my wife, she's going to take everything there is in those leg and we're gonna stay at the table for three hours.

I mean, she's going to roll this, you know, if you roll this, you can see the meat will eventually, you know, start coming out here.

I'm not that patient, you know, so I'll do a soup with it and we are going to do a lobster bisque which is really, really good.

So I have lobster.

The part of the body that's really where you have a lot of taste are going to be in there.

And I wanna brown that at high temperature, cook it for about eight, 10 minute to really get crystallization of the shell on top, and it give a lot of taste.

And when it's nice and brown, then I will continue putting all of my vegetable in it.

So for the timing, I leave it like this.

(pan lid clanging) I had two lobster here, about two pound lobster, four pound of lobster, I should have a good pound of meat, pound and a quarter.

When the lobster is really good, it gives you one to four.

That is a pound lobster, give you four ounces of meat.

And you know this is important because certain type of fish, like, for example, a sole, the English sole, you know, the Dover sole, one pound sole gives you about three ounces of meat, totally clean.

A salmon for example is about 50%, 10 pound salmon gives you five pound of meat.

When you go to calamari or a scallop, then you get much more even.

So here, that's what I do here is just to cut those into pieces, and they are not overcooked, they are great, meat is splendid here.

Oh, when you open it like that, you can see this one, get the black, the black line, this is the intestinal tract, you know, black like that, and of course you should remove that, this is strong.

(pan sizzling) Okay, nothing funny on my plate so I can put back my lobster here and now do the sauce for it.

We're going to do a kind of cream sauce.

Keep cleaning as you come along and maybe I'll check my lobster out here.

Yeah, it's browning nicely, that's what I want.

(pan sizzling) I wanna keep browning it so I keep it uncovered.

And here is the sauce, a very simple but very delicious sauce.

I'm trying to duplicate creme fraiche we have in France, you know, the cream that we get off the milk in France and which is very high, usually, in butterfat but it's really good.

So I use regular heavy cream here which is about 35% butterfat.

Whip it a little bit, not much, you know, maybe 15 seconds.

That almost double it in, (whisk clinking) you know, in proportion, and now it's nice and creamy.

I'm going to use a bit of soured cream to it, which is about 15% butterfat, much less, but will thicken it.

And the taste, somehow, the taste of the two creams together, probably because of the sourness in this, you see it will thicken, and it'll be, in my opinion, quite close to the cream that we have in France.

So with that I'm going to put pepper, lemon, I will strain that through and that's it.

And my lobster.

Okay.

That lobster is now ready to be served.

Hmm.

(pan sizzling continues) I can't wait.

I have to taste it.

It was a good thing I tasted it because I need salt in there.

Always taste.

Salt, a dash more pepper, and I'm going to put a little bit of tarragon in there.

I think my lobster is jumping all over the place here.

(pan sizzling continues) You can see the crystallization in the bottom of the pan and the smell, when the shell starts browning like that, a very specific smell and that's what I want.

Let it a few more seconds.

Tarragon.

In spring, I have a lot of tarragon in my garden, you know if you have the right place for it, the tarragon loves the place where you put it, it comes back every year bigger and bigger.

My plant is probably, I don't know, 20 years old or so now, even in Connecticut.

(pressure cooking hissing) Now I think I can hear my pressure cooker here.

You can hear it sizzling, if there is extra pressure, see that and this one to the third thing, so this is fine, at that point, I can time it for 20, 30 minutes.

Leave it right there.

Okay, tarragon.

(knife chopping) See the way the pressure cooker hisses, you know, it hisses when the pressure is too much so there is a way of relieving it, that's why those are quite safe to use.

As soon as I lower the heat a lot, it releases, then the noise goes, and then you time it.

Okay.

Now this is time.

I love this also with Boston lettuce and I have some beautiful Boston lettuce here, some leaves that I cleaned up.

Wanna put them there.

My lobster here.

I mean, you want to give a good portion, but it's expensive stuff, huh?

Don't wanna go too far and that's gonna be great with a dry white wine.

I wanna continue with this.

As you can see now, there is no more moisture and it's really browning.

(pan sizzling continues) So what I wanna do is to put the vegetable in it.

I have thyme, bay leaf, celery, you know, garlic, a little bit of cayenne, you know.

See the hot peppers, not too much of it.

A bit of tomato paste.

(pan sizzling continues) And the stock of the lobster.

You can saute that a few minutes if you want.

It's fine.

(pan scraping) I think that I'm going to put my stock right away.

A little bit of white wine.

First, I have to taste it just in case something happened, you never know, I don't wanna ruin my dish.

I think that's fine, it won't ruin anything.

(pan whooshing) At least a tablespoon, a good tablespoon, maybe a little more.

And what I should have put here with my tomato paste, which I forgot, it's a little bit of flour on top to give me a little bit of thickening agent in the bisque at the end, you know, about a tablespoon and a half or so.

Okay.

And that, all the stock from the lobster in there.

So remember that basically, this is old, stuff that you retrieved, that very often people throw out.

We're gonna cook that for 15, 20 minutes.

Strain it, finish it with a little bit of cream and cognac, and that's one of the most elegant soup or bisque, lobster bisque that we do in French cooking.

Come to a boil, about 15 minutes of cooking.

(oven banging) With my lamb, it's really liquid in the center, I'm going to do a little bit of couscous, I have a cup of water here, a dash of salt, a dash of pepper.

I'm putting a little bit of olive oil on top, and a cup and a quarter of that eastern couscous goes with it.

All you do is to stir it, (bowl clinking) and that's it.

Remember the water should be boiling hot, then cover it tight and let it by itself.

Within five minutes or so, this thing will have seized and it'll be perfect couscous this way.

Now the lamb has been cooking, and to depressurize it, read the instruction on your manual because they're different, sometimes you have a button here to, this one, you push there, see the pressure is coming in that direction.

Very often, I push something on top like this so that I don't put the steam all over the place so I cannot burn myself almost this way.

And that's some time, you know, you do it until you hear no more noise.

It'll take a minute, minute and a half, two minute.

Oh this one.

(pressure cooker hissing) That's it.

So now I am, whoop, lamb is beautiful, ready?

We'll have served that with our couscous, we can see that this in a few minutes, this gets finished.

You wanna so-called egrener, we say in France, egrener, that is to go it with a fork like that to separate the grain.

(fork scraping) Couscous is beautiful, there is a lot of liquid like that, it'll absorb it.

Now you can serve it on the side, also.

I have more than enough here, you can see that a cup and a quarter of couscous will give me a lot of couscous.

Put it around to do like a crown.

Or maybe I'll put that in more here.

Okay.

And then, my stew, I mean, those leg.

(pan scraping) Boy, that smells good.

Get a little more of the juice and the beans on top.

On a cold winter, after skiing, you know, I know what Gloria and I want to eat.

This is it.

(gentle music) You bring that here.

All right.

And then, I wanna do a fast salad with this, you know, it's very simple.

I take an eggplant like that and cut them in thin slice, you know about core of an inch, and you put them on a cookie sheet with a little bit of oil.

Put the oil on the cookie sheet, rub it, press your eggplant in it, turn it upside down, salt it, of course, and then on a bed of water cress, we're going to arrange this.

I always do that salad because Gloria loves that eggplant salad, she loves eggplant but particularly done this way.

And it's really a refreshing summer salad.

You can cut your eggplant slightly bigger, slightly smaller, you know, that'll be great.

Okay, and then, the dressing, I put some garlic, kind of oriental dressing here.

A little dash of sugar, a dash of pepper.

I put soy sauce here, soy sauce, a little bit of the dark sesame oil, that gives you a very specific taste, and it's strong, you don't put too much.

Dash of Tabasco, and a dash of like peanut or canola oil, an oil which is not too strong, you know?

You wanna mix this preferably with a spoon.

(spoon clinking) And you put that all over the place, I have a bed of watercress underneath and you can have all the type of lettuce if you don't have watercress, of course.

Here we are.

And then we go back to our bisque here.

The bisque has been strained, reduced, it's reduced to about four cups, it's a very rich, beautiful soup.

Finish that up with heavy cream, this is the classic way.

In a classic restaurant, you'll pay a little fortune for a bisque like this.

Always a dash of cognac at the end, not much, but a few drops.

And we're ready to serve our bisque here.

You don't serve too much of it 'cause it's quite rich.

Maybe a little dash of chives on top of it.

And that's it.

Your finished for a beautiful menu.

(soft music) And that's it.

This is a beautiful menu, especially with the lamb.

I need one of those rich, you know, Merlot type wine, which is going to be great with it.

Whether you cook fast or whether you spend the whole weekend cooking, put a lot of love in your cooking, the food will taste much better.

Happy cooking.

(bright music)