- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

I grew up around the town of Lyon in the lower part of Burgundy, and whenever I get homesick, I cook some dishes in the style of Lyon, but I do them with a modern, healthy approach.

White beans toast with bits of ham and an unusual broccoli, a classic salted steak in red wine sauce served with parsley potato.

And for the dessert, a warm gratin of fresh apricot and almond.

It's dinner in the style of a bistro in Lyon, coming up on "Today's Gourmet."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) You know in Lyon where I come from in France, we have a lot of bistro-type of cooking, small cafe, you know, very casual food, very earthy.

And of course, that food used to be very caloric.

I mean it still is in some cafe, but I mean in the modern way of cooking, we cut down a great deal on calorie.

I'm doing beans today.

We're going to start the menu with beans, and there is a famous dish in the south of France called the cassoulet, which is a stew of beans, white beans.

It's done with the poultry, usually goose or duck with a roast of pork and a roast of lamb, all that, and sausage, all that cooked together and it's delicious but quite caloric.

Our version today is not a cassoulet, of course, but the beans cooked with grain in it.

Garlic is quite flavorful and munch leaner, of course.

We are cooking white beans, and the white beans I have two type here.

This is the great northern beans, which are a bit kidney shape, and those are small round beans sometime called pea beans sometime they called Boston beans, sometimes they'll call navy beans.

Basically, all of those white bin will work fine.

Just be careful when you pick them out.

As you can see here I have some stone here, I have some damaged beans, and you wanna clean them up a little bit.

And after you clean them up, you wash them.

Most recipe is going to tell you to soak the beans overnight.

I don't advise to soaking the beans overnight.

In fact, if you leave it overnight, you will notice the water in the morning is full of air bubble on top, which indicate that the bean are fermenting, and to a certain extent, there is already a case of light food poisoning, if you want.

I mean, in the context already of of gastro problem, you know, so we don't soak them.

Or if you soak them maybe an hour, but wash them and that's more than enough.

What we're going to do with it, we're going to put half a pound of beans here and I have a four cup of water with it.

Cold water, you always start them in cold water.

If you start them in boiling water, you have more problem.

then we're going to put a bit of onion with that.

And diced onion, sliced onion, doesn't really matter to that extent because it's going to cook a long time and the onion are going to kind of disappeared in it.

So we have some onion, I think that's plenty.

A bit of ham.

And as you can see here, very lean ham that I put in there.

Fresh thyme, thyme is beautiful.

A couple of fresh sprig of thyme.

Of course if you don't have it, you can put a little bit of dry thyme, it's perfectly fine.

We put a dash of salt on top of this, cover it, put them to cook.

You bring them to a boil, you lower the heat a great deal and very gently you let them simmer for, it's going to take from an hour and a quarter to two hours depending on the dryness of the beans.

But no more than that.

Often I had them cooked even in one hour.

So now what we are going to do with those beans, I have some here which are practically cooked.

And I can see them here.

As you can see, they fill up and most of the water evaporate, we are going to do some grain with it.

And what I have here, I have some garlic here, I have some hot pepper flake and I have those green here.

Those are Chinese broccoli, bitter broccoli.

What we do very often, actually, we use broccoli di rape, we call in Lyon, it's in the Lyon, not only in Lyon but in New York also on the East Coast.

And those are bitter broccoli with an Italian name di rape, D-I R-A-P-E.

And this actually is part of the mustard family.

It have those little yellow flowers like this.

It's a long stem and it's kind of bitter and very good.

We saute it but, you know, if you don't have it, I'm putting here the one which is really the Chinese one.

It's perfectly fine.

In addition to the Chinese one, you could use mustard grain, all kind of grain.

You could use Swiss chard or anything like this.

So we cut them in pieces, the stem, cut the stem in pieces like this, leave the leaves whole, you know it's fine, cut the stem and you can leave those flowers also.

A lot of green.

This is a vegetable by itself, by the way.

You don't even have to serve it with the beans.

You could serve it by itself.

I have some chopped garlic here that I'm going to put in that very hot oil.

I don't want to, and a bit of the hot pepper flake, you don't want to burn your garlic here.

So just enough to fry it a little bit.

Then I start my beans.

Remember that those are still wet from being washed and that give you enough moisture, you know?

Now I'm going to lower the heat a little bit.

Maybe I put a dash of salt in this.

You don't need pepper, of course, because we put those paper flake.

I'm going to cover it so that the moisture comes out of the grain and it start boiling and getting tenderized by the cooking.

And during that time I'm going to show you the type of de dessert that we are going to do today.

Very simple de dessert of apricot.

I love apricot.

Again, around Lyon in the valley of the Rhone from Lyon up to the Riviera there is a great deal of fruit planting, a great deal of terrific vegetable.

And I remember when I was a kid with my brother, we used to go there in summer to work in a farm and pick up apricot, big juicy apricot that we used to have.

And it's a recipe that my mother used to do with it.

So basically the apricot are nice and ripe, you know, this is what you want.

You cut around, twist it a little bit to get that pit out.

Actually we used to break this and eat the almond inside, you know, which with a little bit bitter.

Sometime we mix it in dishes.

So what I want to do here is to arrange those apricot in my gratin dish this way, fill up about the whole center here and then on top of it we put a little bit of sugar and a little bit of apricot jam.

You could have another type of jam, you know with this.

All around.

Dot it.

A very simple dish around Lyon where I come from, we do a lot of gratin and then I put a little bit of sweet cream, light cream.

Actually what I have here is four tablespoon of cream for four people.

I don't even need all of it that I put of light cream.

A bit of slice almond on top looks good and that's going to go into the oven for about 30 minute.

In the hot oven.

You don't have to worry about it, you should not serve it boiling hot really.

But it's good to have it at room temperature, not ice cold.

And I can see now that my broccoli have softened enough and you can finish cooking them or serve them still a little bit al dente mixed with the beans, you know, like this.

So what I will do is to add them to the beans.

Stir it so you have again, beautiful color but I said I have done that with pea beans or black eyed peas, you know, and must start green from the south.

The same type of item and it's terrific.

You would want to serve that Again, room temperature, you know?

But I'm going to plate it you to show you how beautiful those are.

This way makes a very earthy, you know, type of dish, mixture of grain, mixture of beans.

Remember that the beans are caloric, it's true to a certain extent but on the other end a lot of fiber, especially soluble fiber in grain which are very good for you, especially for cholesterol and so forth.

So this is a good, natural way of eating.

You can decorate that if you want with the (pot clattering).

I have some fresh thyme here on top.

Looks beautiful in the middle.

Those are wild thyme with the flowers.

And here maybe even on top of it, put a little bit of olive oil again flavor or on the individual plate when you serve it.

And here you have a beautiful dish from the bistro of Lyon.

You know, when I think of French cooking, you may think that steak and potato are strictly American.

In France, steak and potato is really the quintessential type of dish that the French people have in bistro.

And with all that talk about cholesterol and saturated fat and all that, you may think that beef is out, beef is not out, it's a question of knowing what to buy.

Look at those different cut of meat here.

That cut of meat is extremely lean.

There is some fat on top.

This happened to be a piece of the top round that is the larger muscle of the leg and this is an extremely lean piece just about the best to do a roast beef if you.

and slice it very thin on the slicing machine.

Of course you would remove the top layer part of that, the top layer part you know of the meat, that's where you have the fat.

Remember that in muscular of meat the fat is on top, the back fat, that's where it come from.

You can remove it.

In some part however, look at those short ribs.

The fat is on top but it's also in between.

You know you have different layer of fat too.

If you really want to cut in saturated fat, this is a hot piece to handle, basically difficult to do because it's in layer, multilayer of meat and it's basically impossible to remove that fat.

Like this one you just take the top of.

Remember, that you have also your choice meat and your prime meat and granted that the prime meat has more fat inside the meat, but it's especially on top that it has more.

So the inside of the meat does make a difference but not that much.

For the steak we are doing today, we are getting the best piece of meat.

This is a New York strip, the whole side of beef, untrimmed as we have it here and I want to cut it in half to show you that piece of meat here.

As you can see, beautiful, there is a little bit of marbling.

This is a piece of choice, but look at the amount of fat on the outside and usually, you know we used to have a steak upon steak and we used to have steak with a lot of fat and cut and saute again and sometime with other type of sauces and so forth.

And now as I say, we can have beef, we just have to trim it the right way.

Now look at this here, I mean I remove basically all of the outside, you know if I have that piece of meat put back together now, look at the amount of fat that I'm taking out, probably half of the weight of the meat.

But it's fine.

This is what you should be doing.

Trimming the fat the right way.

Of course, we are in our modern way, more modern way of cooking.

We are having much smaller portion than we used to have.

You can pound that a little bit.

That steak will be about six ounces and it is more than enough, six ounces of meat within the context of a nice menu.

Remember, you don't have to have 15 ounces of meat.

You know a little piece like that if it's done well is all you need and it's quite satisfying.

But I always trim my meat and this doesn't really apply strictly to to beef of course I do the same thing with lamb.

Veal has less fat in it.

So this is what you have to look for in the saturated fat.

Trim your meat.

And now of course what goes well with meat, with beef, particularly with steak, potato?

So let's go back to the stove and cook some potato.

I have here some diced potato which we are going to use and those diced potato, we keep them in water.

Why do you keep them in water?

To prevent discoloration.

I mean you can do your potato ahead, you can cut them this way if you keep them in water, fine, they're outside of the water.

They are going to discolor.

In addition to this, out of the water, it'll also remove the starch you know that you have when you cut them and they kind of saute more nicely when you remove that starch.

So what you do, of course before you saute them you have to be careful to dry them out with paper towel because of course they're going to splatter a lot in the oil.

Now what we have here, we are using a little bit of this happen to be canola oil.

It's called canola oil when it come from from Canada, it's called puritan oil usually in this country.

It is a grape seed oil.

Remember the broccoli that I did before?

It's a mustard family and this is the same thing.

Those grape seed from a green mustard, tiny seed, which give you that type of oil.

This is a monounsaturated oil, which is quite nice also, and that's what we use to saute mostly like that type of oil.

It an oil which can withstand high temperature.

So you choose an oil which can withstand high temperature so it doesn't burn.

An oil basically doesn't have any taste for this because one, we use olive, olive oil that we use a great deal, which is also a monounsaturated oil.

It can withstand temperature but it has a very taste of its own that sometime you want and sometime you don't.

So here I have my potato and of course this is the way you started.

It'll take 10 to 14 minutes.

So I have other potato being started right here.

I'm coming back this way.

Now in that skillet I am going to saute the steak and of course I have my two steak here.

Freshly ground pepper on top on each side.

Remember that this is what I want, freshly ground pepper.

If I have my choice, I even take cherry pepper, which is the best in my opinion.

I use the black peppercorn because the shell on the outside give a specific taste to the dish, you know?

A bit of salt on each side.

And we are ready to sorting our stack, a little dash of olive oil we're going to do in there, just enough so that they don't stick and we saute our steak and depending of course on the sickness of your steak, you want them cook them two to three minute on each side.

It depend as I say, on the thickness of the steak.

During that time we are going to do the garnish for the steak.

We are going to do a sauce with the steak.

See this is called a steak Marchand du vin in France.

Marchand du vin of course means steak merchant and it always refer to a red wine sauce.

In Burgundy, of course they do it with Burgundy, in Beau Joie where I am from, we do it with Beau Joie and in Bordeaux they do it with that.

And when I'm in the Napa Valley, I do it of course with wine from the Napa Valley or wherever I am, whatever wine there is I use.

But it's always a red wine sauce.

Now in it we have a whole bunch of different things here.

We have some shallot here, I have some hot mustard, I mean French type mustard, Dijon mustard, I have of course mushroom, then some garlic.

What we are going to do, and finally I'm going to chop a little bit of that beautiful chive at the end to decorate the top.

So we'll start with mushroom, let's do a Julian of mushroom.

You slice it, stagger it together, then slice it again.

And of course, you know in those type of thing, as I say, you can use more mushroom, less wild mushroom are terrific now.

I remember many years ago in the market it was impossible even to find fresh mushroom.

And now in a regular super market, very often I can find six, seven, up to eight different type of mushroom, you know.

So that's absolutely amazing the way the market has changed in the last 10 years or so.

Now those shallots are actually a type of onion, reddish as you see with a definite taste and I like the taste of it.

If you don't have it, put a little bit of scallion or put a little bit of onion and you of those be be perfectly fine for our recipe today.

Then I have a clove of garlic here.

I can crush that garlic, chop it a little bit.

I can keep it here right on the knife.

I have this, I have my red wine and now I think I'm going to turn those steak which are nicely brown on one side, about two minutes.

Continuing saute the potato.

I want them to brown nicely on both side.

You know, this is the advantage now of modern cooking also to be able to use non-stick pan and with a non-stick pan, of course you use a very minimal amount of fat and it's terrific.

It doesn't stick.

Very often before we use so much more fat.

One of the reason was to avoid the stuff from sticking as much as for the taste, you know?

So now at least this is progress.

I have a little bit of Lyon pairing sauce here.

Some deep fatted, very clean chicken stock, all that going to go into our sauce.

I can put this on the side actually and do the garnish for the potato.

You know the potato garnish is parsley and garlic.

The parsley and garlic we call in French (speaking French) means parsley and (speaking French) means garlic.

So (speaking French) add together, refer to that mixture of chopped parsley and garlic together, which as I tell you is basically a common denominator or basically the signature if you want, of home cooking.

You know?

Regardless, especially in Provence in the south of France, you know again crushing the garlic, crushing the garlic will release some of the essential oil and make it much more pungent, much more taste.

So I crush my garlic, gather it together and shop it with a good sturdy, French knife here.

Okay, my (speaking French) ready now.

The (speaking French) you can put it on steak, you put it on fish, you put it on zucchini, you put it on tomato, you put it on potato as we do today, on anything, I think my steak are about tender enough now or that is cooked enough.

Of course that is a question of taste.

By touching the stack like this, I can more or less say that those take are about medium rare.

It's a question of the way they spring back to your touch.

They are beautifully brown.

And now in those dripping here, which is important, we're going to put the shallots, the garlic, and the mushroom and saute it a little bit.

That really smell good.

Now it start melting a little bit and you see the juice that I have in the bottom of those pan that I say we call crystallized juice.

So they are glazed.

So the process of deglazing is to put liquid in it, which release those juice and give you the taste and the color in the sauce.

Of course, if you don't have a good piece of equipment, then the juice are burn black and the liquid is bitter and that's why you need good equipment.

Here I put red wine in it.

Remember, that there is a certain amount of calorie of course in wine, but a great deal of the calorie, most of it is really in the alcohol.

And when you cook it like this, the alcohol disappeared in the form of vapor as it boiled and with it most of the calorie except from some residual sugar.

So we reduce that sauce a little bit.

A little bit of the Lyon pairing sauce for taste.

Taste it if you like it.

A little bit of chicken stock in our sauce here.

We finish it with some mustard, you know, but after you put the mustard you really don't wanna boil it too much because the sauce will tend to break down after with the mustard.

Now I don't really want to cook that much longer, I want to thicken it a bit more and to thicken it what we do, usually I use here a little bit of a mixture of potato starch, which is very light and a dash of water.

You pour that in there and as soon as it touches the hot liquid it thicken on contact.

Can put that here.

I think it's good.

Maybe a bit of pepper in there.

Looks good.

And the chive that I'm going to put on top, while I have some chive, which are cut here, I may as well use those.

Maybe a dash more of Lyon pairing sauce and chicken stock, getting a bit thick and basically my steak is finished now, so I want to finish the potato.

Look how brown and beautiful they are.

We put our (speaking French) in it.

We don't want to cook the (speaking French) really, just toss it and give it taste as we have.

And beautiful color too.

And that steak, we are basically ready to arrange that on our plate.

What I'm going to do here is use that beautiful steak this way, a bit of the sauce on top and around my steak.

So you can see also that as soon as you start doing a little bit of a sauce or something which extend your dish, then you cut down on the portion, you have a smaller portion, you know that stand up.

I'll take a little bit of potato put around.

Actually you know, I could have put the potato all around like a border.

If I had done that at the beginning, it's easier at the beginning to put your potato in the middle of it and spread them out to the outside.

But I could do it maybe now without messing my plate so much.

Put the steak a bit more in the middle.

On top of that I want to put a few of my fresh chive.

And voila.

Our steak Marchand du vin, in the style of the bistro of Lyon.

Now the best part of the day, the meal, you know, after all that work.

So let's take the steak to the table.

I want to get my apricot in the oven here.

Of course, you probably would not serve that gratin of apricot boiling hot out of the oven.

We are going to serve it hot today, but you would like to have it basically at room temperature.

I have a beautiful steak as you can see here, and I think this is a great menu.

The menu of Lyon, of course, and we start with our beans.

Remember that our bin are high in fiber.

We have that grain in it, that very earthy type of dish.

Then we have the apricot, a hundred calorie portion quite low with the cream.

If you take the cream out it even less.

Now the steak should even the best part of it.

Then I cut the steak here and I wanna show you the inside of the steak.

Nice and pink.

This is the way I like it, medium rare.

Well some people like it a bit more rare.

I'm sure you're going to do it the way you like it and I'm sure you're going to enjoy it.

I enjoy doing it for you today.

(Jacques speaking French)