- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin, and all of the thousand of recipe that I've made over the years require one common ingredient that never change.

The right technique.

30 years ago, I wrote a book about cooking technique, and 10 years ago, I made this TV series, and the information is just as relevant as always.

I hope you find this lesson helpful in your kitchen.

Happy cooking.

You know, to cook well, to cook tasty food is probably the most important, but an attractive presentation brings your food to a higher level of sophistication.

I want to show you some of the classic techniques for making decoration.

We start with vegetable flowers.

I have a pate here which is a liver pate, and you cover it very tight this way so it doesn't pick up any taste.

It's hardened now, and we're going to decorate it.

You could serve it like this, but it bring it to another level of sophistication if you decorate it.

You see what I have here?

This is the green of leek.

Dropped in boiling water, five, 10 second, it gets soft, you take it out.

This is pieces of carrot cut with a vegetable peeler, cooked, tomato, olives.

So, I have all kind of different color here.

And with that, we want to create maybe a little bunch of flowers.

So, I can start cutting little strip like this.

You can, if you want, start decorating the outside to make, like, a frame, if you want.

Add another one here.

This is fun to do this, and it takes a little bit of time, but it's nice and rewarding.

So, there, maybe we'll put a little flowers at the end of this done out of a carrot, maybe.

And you know, Mother Nature is so amazing that you can basically do anything you want and you never go wrong with the beauty of it.

Well, let's say a little piece of carrot, maybe another one there.

You can, of course, in those type of thing, spend hours, you know, doing this, which we used to do, actually, decoration in old French cooking.

Now, let's say I do a little bunch of flowers in the center.

I have already the basic.

Looks pretty good, I need to put a few flower there, and maybe cutting a little piece of leek that I did here to do leaves like this.

Those are little... Little lozenges, if you want, of leek.

And you see, when I blanche that leek or scallion that you use, be sure to use the center of it which is of a lighter green than you use the outside leaves, which is on a darker green, so it give you... It give you a different effect, you know.

Now, you can spend a lot of time, as I say.

Let's say I have some black here, the black may look good.

You can, of course, use truffle.

You know, truffle is a very expensive type of subterranean mushroom.

Now, here, just little pieces maybe of black like this, without any particular... This way here, maybe another piece here, there.

And what you want to do maybe with the point of your knife or your finger, as I do, you want to push it a little bit into the pate, not to embed it entirely into it, but when we put, because we want to glaze that with an aspic.

I want the aspic to... I want the aspic not to wash it away, you know?

Okay, so I have the basic of my pate here, and I think it's pretty attractive.

So, what we want to do is to glaze it with an aspic.

I have an aspic here, and an aspic is actually just a plain chicken stock.

And the chicken stock is clarified, that it goes through a process with egg white to make it very clear.

It's highly flavored with tarragon, different type of herb, and there is some plant gelatin in it.

That you melt it and you put it on ice until it become very syrupy, ready to set.

Then you pour it on top of it, you cannot pour it ahead, so it takes a couple of minutes to do that.

You can see how syrupy it is now, and don't stir it too fast because you make air bubble in it, and you don't want to have air bubble on top.

And when it's really syrupy... See, sometime, it get set too fast on you, so what do you do?

You have to melt it and start again.

Basically, that sets syrupy.

Clean it up, and now we're gonna glaze the top of that aspic.

You see, it doesn't even liquefy well because it is taken.

That's it.

You can see now that aspic is taken into... Okay, so, it does take pretty fast.

But then, of course, there in a second, it's going to be hard enough we can lift it off, and you have a beautiful mirror glaze.

(jazzy piano music) If you want to serve butter in the dining room, there is way really to make it look very attractive and beautifully.

So, I wanna show you a couple of those.

I have very cold butter here, and I use only unsalted butter, and you can use those old kind of twister here to make shell out of butter.

This is used in restaurant, and what you have to do, of course, is to have your butter even colder than what I have here, literally curl up around that thing.

So, this, in turn, those shell of butter, you put them into ice cold water and you can keep them like that until you're ready to use it.

One decoration that I like to do is a butter rose, and I use a simple knife that, you scraping the knife to create a strip, if you want, that you can wrap around the point of the knife and place here, you need another trip inside.

That butter is getting a bit too soft on top, so I'm going toward the center of the butter more.

Now, here, it's a bit colder, so it's better.

So, now what you wanna do to this, and the wrinkle part, which is inside, you fold it.

This is the base of your rose, if you want.

So, you place it here.

Then you do another strip again for the center, and that second strip that you have on the point of your knife again, now you do it very tight.

You see this way, you grab it and you place it right in the center.

Now, that piece of butter now, I put it into ice cold water, very soft now but, of course, in ice cold water, you put it in there and it will get very hard in there.

So, when it's hard in there, you can present it different way.

For example, here, what I wanna show you, you can roll the edge, for example, of this one, which is pretty color, you can roll the edge into paprika like if it was a flower.

Now, if you present, you know, if you do oyster or whatever and you want to present little pieces of butter, that's really a beautiful way of doing it.

Now, if you serve butter at the table, I always put a container like that, and notice the way my container is very tightly covered with plastic wrap because butter will pick up taste in the refrigerator, so what you do here, through the plastic wrap, you make a hole to secure in the center.

But I can take one of those flowers again, with or without the paprika, actually, doesn't really matter that much here, and I place it right in the center of it as the centerpiece to present my butter.

Another way which is simply done if you want to present it this way is to use simply a fork like this and do a little design with your fork.

As you can see, very simple.

If you happen to have a bit of green, I have some mint here, then you could have a couple of leaves of mint that you put right in there on each side, maybe even slightly smaller than that, or maybe you embed them a little bit inside like this.

So, you can do that type of very simple presentation and they do enhance the table if you want to present your butter this way.

(jazzy piano music) Mushroom are terrific in soup, in fish, in meat, in any way you cook them.

But they are mushroom to do.

And as you can see, there is no veil apparent, like you will have here.

This often is considered an inferior mushroom, when in fact, it's riper and probably has more taste than this.

But in term of decoration, you want something very firm.

Now, to flute a mushroom, there is different way.

One of them is to use your thumb as a pivot, to use the mushroom in this manner.

And as you can see, the top of the knife, go toward the center, creating a spiral.

This is what we call fluting a mushroom.

The fluting of a mushroom does require a certain amount of practice.

And then you pick it up, you add that type of a spiral, and you can usually put a little bit of lemon juice on top of this to prevent discoloration.

You eat it like this.

Now, as you can see here, if I take another one, this one looks good, I use my thumb this way.

I start flat, and I finish standing up, doing that type of movement and going back.

I can do forward.

Now, very often, you can see to do that type of movement.

Now, very often, people, instead of doing it with the thumb of the pivot, hold the knife this way and use that part of the pivot, which is a classic way also, which does it this way.

And as you can see here, again, from this side to that side is going to be the same.

Very often, to finish the fish... To finish the mushroom, you want to press in the center this way to create a star, especially if you mess up the center, so you do that to hide it up, to hide it a little bit.

That's one way.

Now, I'll show you another way doing mushroom, which is actually much easier and just as effective is to do a fish with a mushroom.

So, what you do, you cut the center of the fish to create a platform.

Then you draw a fish.

This way, the head of the fish, the scale, and then with the point of your knife, you cut outside.

I mean, I have done other animal like that, a little chicken or whatever.

You cut the outside to create a relief, so that that fish now will stand out.

Then you trim the outside and cut the top part of it.

Now, I have just a little slice.

You see, I can use the rest of the mushroom, if I chop mushroom, and have that little fish that I can put if I serve a fill of salt or whatever.

One even more striking way of doing it is to do three fish, and you start from the center, and you do three equally straight line this way.

It's actually easier here, because you don't even have to freehand.

Then you do another three line.

One, two, three, and now it look like if I have done, like, a propeller.

Now, under each of those body, you draw a tail.

Here.

Another one... Here.

Another one... Here.

I have now... I mark the head of the fish here and there, and there.

I have three fish kind of intermingling together.

And now, again, with the point of my knife, you'll go around to remove the pieces in between the design itself, which now will stand in relief.

Course, when you have a big party for two, 300 people, if you do this, you go to the nuthouse, but you can do decoration maybe a bit simpler than that.

Now, if I can continue even in those parts outside the design, I could draw a triangle within a smaller triangle inside.

And that next step, if you want to set the fish into more of a design, you have to take your time a little more than I do, and you can continue doing that around.

And finally, again, the same thing, you trim it all around to cut it to only use that decorative part here that you put on top of a special fish or whatever you want to garnish it with.

(jazzy piano music) And now what I want to show you is olives.

You know, what to do with olive.

To start with, you know, to crack olive, it's relatively easy.

To pit the olive, you can use an olive peeler like that which is, of course, very good 'cause it go right through and push the pit out.

If you don't have one, very often, all you do is to crack the olive, you know, you crack the olive, and then you can remove the pit.

It depend on... The green olive is a bit harder to do than the black one.

Here is a Kalamata olive.

You crush it a little bit, and the pit will come out very easily.

The black olive too.

So, you have many recipe where the pit has to be removed, and that's two way of doing it.

Now, in term of decoration, I have those large olive here, and I want to do a little rabbit for you.

Now, you see, this is the behind of the rabbit, of course.

So, you cut a slice of the top of the olive and you cut a triangle out of it.

That be the ear of the rabbit.

Now, as I say, this part with the holy, the behind that, the front which is pointed.

So, you cut across here and you open it and slide that in.

You have a little rabbit I put here.

So, it's fun to do.

The kid love to do that, and it's a great decoration for salads.

When you use fruit, the most frequent technique you have to learn is how to peel it properly.

And this is what I want to show you.

I am going to start with an apple here.

And now, that apple, the first thing that you do, use your thumb as a pivot to remove the core there.

Now, you see that thumb is going to go around as a pivot like this.

If you don't put your thumb here, the knife can go right through.

I'm holding the knife right at the point.

So, the cut goes there, and you see I'm turning it round way.

Now, I have a nice round piece of apple here, which very often, I put lemon juice on top of it and can keep that for decoration.

Same thing on the other side.

Now, at that point, when I peel it, notice that I'm using the point of the knife and notice that I'm moving my thumb.

To really control moving slowly with the knife, I am actually using my right hand to peel this apple, but my left hand is almost working as much, that it's pushing the apple into the knife itself.

Now, you can cut this in half, and now you've cleaned up both ends.

So, again, the same technique, putting your thumb in the middle here to remove that part here and to remove that part here.

Now, this make you go fast in the kitchen when you peel with apple, when you slice those apple now, whether you do a tart or something else, you usually keep the nicest part of the center, you know, and you chop this coarsely, you put that in the bottom of your tart on the dough, and then you take those apple and spread it out like a deck of card to arrange them on top of it.

And that's how you do your tart.

Now, when you do a pear, for example, because of the shape of the pear, you do it slightly differently.

You can also use a melon baller to do what I did with the point of the knife.

And if you use a vegetable peeler, now the fruit is round there.

For the movement, have to follow the shape of the fruit.

This is round, I go round.

I come to that point here, it's not round anymore, it's pointed.

Then I change the movement and I go in that direction.

And again, here, you would want to do the same thing, cut it in half and taking the core, if you want, with the melon baller.

Now, what I want to show you, it's a bit more of a decoration, is how to make a swan with an apple.

I cut the bottom of that apple here.

You cut the bottom, and with that, you carve out a head, if you want, and a neck of a swan.

So, you know, freehand, can cut this into it, usually, you would use a large... A large apple, I think my head is maybe a little big here, but basically, you can see it here.

If I turn it this way, I'm turning that piece here, that piece there, and this is the head and the neck.

What I have to do now is to put a little hole to create the eye.

This is it.

Now, on each side of it, you're going to do a wing here, a wing here, and the tail in the middle.

And this is the way it's done.

You make a hole, you make a little wedge this way, place it there, cut a wedge from this one, a second wedge, a third one.

And even if you break it, you know, they'll glue back together.

It doesn't really matter.

This is what I did here.

Then you place it back right there.

When you put it back, that will fit together.

Usually, you do four.

Four for a wing on one side and four on the other side.

You know, and then in the center, you do wedge in the same way.

Again, one wedge, a second wedge, usually, three or four wedge.

And those wedge are spread out also.

You spread out those wedge here.

Here.

And I was telling for you here, you put this one, this one is the second one which is broken, but it will fit together here.

This one there, this one there, and so forth.

And basically, at the end, you put a hole there to put your neck.

And I have one which has been done here in red that I can put together, because you can do that ahead and use it whenever you're ready.

So, I have the head here.

You can bring it to your friend and you spread it out when you're ready to use it.

This way.

Same thing on the other side.

For wedge, I have three wedge for the tail.

It's a question of mechanic, really.

Question of technique.

And finally, the head that you put.

So, this is one way of doing it.

(jazzy piano music) And now, let me show you how to make a melon swan.

This is done usually, and used as a receptacle for... A receptacle to be used in a fruit salad, for example.

So, what you want to do here is to create a head, and it's a bit of a free-form type of thing.

It's almost like doing a question mark here.

I will show it to you in one second.

Here you will understand exactly what I'm doing.

I'm doing the head here, cutting around, a neck, and going around on this side.

So, if you could see here that I have cut a question mark to do the neck, a head, and then we cut around to create the receptacle on each side, and the whole piece should come out.

You know, maybe I should remove that piece first.

The center here.

And here.

Basically, you have your shape here.

Now, we want to take the seed out of it, and you can use, of course, a larger melon than that.

But the honeydew is pretty good for that.

What you wanna do at that point, as part of your salad, you may want to do a bunch of, using a melon baller, a bunch of melon ball that is going to be added to your melon salad.

And when the melon is cleaned out, what you can continue, doing a little bit of decoration.

For example, I can cut a little wedge here, if you want to create the mouth of the swan, and maybe even the eye, and put a little hole here, even put a peppercorn there or something.

And now, when it's course ready, you can fill it up, and conventionally, we fill that up with a fruit salad.

Can do a nice fruit salad on top of it, and it give you a different sophistication in the presentation of this, you know, into your dining room.

You can put a sherbet with that also, would be very nice.

Maybe a few raspberry on top of it, and around.

And you have a beautiful presentation.

(jazzy piano music) There are obviously many more technique you can learn to make yourself a better cook.

But I hope I have encouraged you to pick up a few more skill in the kitchen.

Thank you for joining me, and happy cooking.