- [Jacques] Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin, and all of the thousands of recipes 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.

Many people have problems slicing bread, and I wanna show you how to do it properly.

Put the right knife, which is very nice, with your finger being higher, and its serrated edge, and of course, by moving in that type of rocking motion, you slice your bread.

Classic way.

Yes, as a professional chef, I use a regular knife like this, and it goes, as you can see, just as well.

Now what do I do when I do this?

I go down and forward.

People often take the knife and apply pressure right there on the knife, and each of the slice have to be reinflated individually because you crush it.

If you use only the center of the knife, you're going to crush it.

So you start here and you finish there and apply pressure.

This is the way you use a knife to slice bread.

This, of course, you can do very nice crouton with it.

You oil them a little bit and you put them into crouton.

But talking about crouton, I wanna show you how to do toast Melba or Melba toast.

This was developed by Escoffier, the great French chef from the soprano from Australia, Nelly Melba.

And she liked her toast very, very thin.

So we decided to do toast Melba for her, cutting the bread, very, very thin, but if you cut the bread too thin, actually, it burned.

So he did a regular slice of bread, as I have here and after it comes out of the toaster, you trim it so the side is a bit gooey.

Then you can slide your knife in between to do a very thin slice of bread, which is a toast Melba.

And of course, the other side, you put it back a few seconds in the oven to be able to dry the other side also.

So this is fun at home to do a real toast Melba, instead of buying it, that tastes great.

There are different type of crouton.

The small classic cube crouton, you know, that I cut here, which you saute or put in the oven to serve in your salad.

Then the round one, which is basically a receptacle, you use that implement to carry it and it's usually at the bottom of a tornado or something else.

You carry it out of a slice of bread very easily like that, different type of size of course that you can do, and you can brush it with butter and oil and cook it too.

And finally, the one which are this way and are really like the bottom of a pan, you can use them this way.

We call that lion tooth.

And they are done with pieces of bread like this.

You cut your pieces of bread across and out of that two triangle, you cut one this way.

And now from that part here, you want to cut a piece here, here, here, and go around.

Now again, carry it this way, this, this, this, this.

Now this is used in type of stew and so forth and a way of doing your crouton, which are not too taxing in terms of calorie because if you fry this in a skillet with butter and oil, it absorb an enormous amount of fat.

But if you use a roasting pan like this, you can put a tiny bit of oil.

I use maybe one two teaspoon of oil, spread it into the bottom of a pan.

And what you do, you take those and press it a little bit in there, and turn it the other way as well as this, the same way too.

And that's enough for a whole trim, maybe two teaspoon.

You put that into a 400 degree oven and have a beautifully made crouton, this way.

Those are done the same way.

You can put them in a bowl with a little bit of oil, toss it, then put them into your oven and you will have a nice crouton with a minimal amount of fat.

Very often, those are served with a stew.

So if you have a stew, what you do, you dip the end of the crouton into the sauce.

In that case, I don't have a sauce.

You can put a little bit of olive oil, and that wet the end of it, then you put it into parsley, so it give you a nice decorating edge and you put that around your stew when you have like a beef burger Andi.

So it's a nice, neat way of doing it.

(soothing music) Now I wanna show you how to do asparagus, and I have a whole bunch of asparagus here to show you.

Now the most common mistake I would say in asparagus, those have already been prepared.

The most common mistake is for people to go to the market and buy the smallest possible asparagus.

There are type of asparagus which are small.

But basically, if you have grown asparagus as I have, they come out of the ground small or they come out of the ground big and then they go up.

It's not a small asparagus, it's not going to get fatter and go.

What you look at is the point of the asparagus.

Now look at those small asparagus.

I won't choose those.

Look at this one.

Even though it's fatter, look at the end of this.

It's like a flowers, which is wilted already.

The petal are opening and falling apart.

This is not what I wanna buy, and it's kind of soft.

I wanna buy a thick asparagus like this one with the head, with the tight flowers like the bottom of a flower.

This is a fresh asparagus, very firm and very tight.

This is the right asparagus to do.

So those are no good.

Now that asparagus, see those asparagus that I have here, are tender basically from here to about here.

Then they start getting very tough, very fibrous here, the bottom part of this stem.

Now you could say, well I cut it off right here, and it's fine, but you lose this.

I peel the end of it.

Now I peel it with a vegetable peeler.

And the best way to do it, this way, first, don't all your vegetable pillar this way with your hand underneath because you're higher than the asparagus.

Put it on the table and grab it this way.

You have to slide it basically this way.

I do it against my finger.

There is no danger of cutting yourself this way.

Don't lift up the asparagus, you apply pressure, it's going to crack.

Leave it on the table, press it this way, and make it rotate, you know?

So basically what you are doing here, you're feeling the whole lower part of the asparagus is like flowers with a petal.

Now you break it here at that limit and, you know, it goes pretty fast.

What you do, usually, you just peel up all of your asparagus, this way, and go to the other one.

And when you finish your whole bunch, if you have a bunch, you serve five, six asparagus per person.

And when you finish at the end, you break all of them.

Now when we do asparagus in a professional kitchen, very often, we tighten them in bundle.

They are easier to handle after.

So let's say this would be a very hefty portion, but I would take it this way.

Arrange them, you already arrange the tip, not the back to put the tip back down and let it go so that it's at the same height, right here.

Hold it tight.

Now you take your kitchen twine and the first thing that you do, you tighten it around your finger.

Then around here a couple of times, you have to do it quite tight, I do it.

And then you cross over and do it a couple of time on this side too, then starting with this, and finish it up.

This is tightly done and is not going to come apart.

Now when I finish doing it this way, I prepare all my bunch of asparaguses in a restaurant or at home, ready to be served.

And then I will trim it so that they hold the same size.

And now let me show you how to handle artichoke.

So the first most common way of doing artichokes is to boil them in water, to serve them with a vinegarette.

So you cut the stem off.

Now the second step that you do, you want to cut the tip of it.

There is a lot of needle here, and you keep all of this, the end of the needle, that there is nothing edible right there.

The third thing that you do, then you take your scissor if you want to be a bit fancy, and the pointed part of your scissor here, you go around to cut the end of each leaf.

You may say "Oh my god, it's a lot of work."

Not really.

I mean, it takes you maybe 15 seconds, 20 seconds to do an artichoke.

You have a part of four five, you know, a couple of minutes spanning during your artichokes.

They are ready after to be placed in boiling water, and to be cooked this way, you'll take the choke at the end of it, not now.

If you wanna be a bit fancier than that, even, when I do it ahead, what I do, I put a piece, classic way of lemon, a slice of lemon right there so it doesn't discolor, you know, and we cook it this way.

So you place it this way, you make a cross above it, place it back and attach it here.

And this is the way you prepare your artichokes head, ready to be boiled.

It will take 40, 45 minute to cook them.

Now when you wanna do the artichokes bottom, it is not that easy.

A lot of people cut into the heart of that artichoke.

So if you have never done it, I think the best way to do it is to do it this way.

The first thing that you do, you break your artichokes like that to go all around.

Now you notice what I do here.

I do the same way that I would do when I eat an artichoke.

You see, I'm breaking it and pushing it down.

Now you can see that all of the leaves that I have here, the part which is eatable is gone.

Like if I scrap it with my teeth.

So this is very important to do it right.

That is break it and pull it down, break it, pull it down, break it, pull it down.

Because if you don't break it and if you pull it, look what happened.

I have a big hole here and that piece here, which normally, you know, should belong here, this is the edible part, should belong right here.

So you have to be careful to break it this way and do that all around, you know?

Now you have basically clear up all of the eatable part.

So what you do, you cut the ann of it where you have all of the thistle and so forth, and you cut about just above the heart right here.

Now the center of those will be probably a bit tough and usually the center here, there is nothing to eat, but those center leaf are eatable so you can keep them to cook them with it.

And we have the stem here, that I put the stem in there.

If I put this and that, and now, this I have basically everything edible in that artichoke.

I can continue with the vegetable peeler.

You see?

Continue with the vegetable peeler because you wanna remove, still that is tough, until you have a light green color, you know?

The light green color that you want.

This is the part of an artichoke's bottom.

And then you can trim the edge off with a knife.

Now this conventionally also, you want to put a piece of lemon, rub it with lemon, like that, so it doesn't discolor and put that into your acidulated water before you cook it.

Of course, in a professional kitchen we don't peel those things around because it would take too long.

So we do it with a knife in a faster way.

Now it takes a little bit of practice to do that.

I know the heart is here, so I will hold my knife this way and cut just at the limit of the artichoke bottom and cut it into like a cone all around here.

Now you see what I have done here.

I've cut all the way.

All the edible part is right here where you have nothing edible here.

When I get to that point, which of course is done in seconds, I cut again the end of it, that part here, doing what I did before, getting rid of that maybe, but keeping that part there and the rest of it.

Now you do it with a knife.

This is what we call tourne de artichoke, turn turn the artichoke.

Now there is an angle here, my knife is straight against the angle and the other hand is turning the artichokes into the angle.

The knife has to be sharp.

By the time I finish that first level, I am straight again.

So I incline my knife from here this way slightly to do another angle.

Around, then another angle.

And you continue cutting like that with your knife flatter and flatter and flatter until you have finished your artichoke bottom, this way.

This is the right way to do it.

Again, doing it this way, at that point, you can put it again in the water.

Now very often, what we do also, we keep the stem with it and it look good.

So you know you wanna peel your stem this way, though they're all artichoke bottom.

And as I say, I go to the market and sometimes buy six artichokes.

Not as beautiful as this of course, but this artichoke for like 30, 50, 80 cents.

For the reason that it's all yellow and they put it in the corner, people don't know what to do with it.

Well, you do artichoke bottom.

Again, in the fast way that I did here, cutting the top of it, removing this.

So as you can see, your technique become very, very important in terms of speed in the kitchen because if you were to work in a restaurant, and if I do a case of artichoke in 20 minutes, and if you take one hour as well, I hope you're going to improve.

But if you take two, two and a half hours, it come to a point where each artichoke costs me $3 just in labor.

So I couldn't use it, even if it's done well.

Now at home, it's different.

You have a bit more time.

But if you know how to do it properly, it takes some of the grudgery out of it.

Now even this one can be cut, roll like this and use this way.

You see it lends itself to this.

If you cut it this way, you would want now to remove the choke at that point.

The choke is that thistle that you have inside, you know?

And at that point, artichokes done this way can be sauteed with a chicken, with potato and all that.

They are done in many, many different way.

Again, put them in acidulated water.

Now look at my artichokes here that have been cooked, like the other one that have been cooked.

So now I can remove this, and this stay very nice and white, of course.

And now I want to remove the choke also.

So I spread this apart a little bit so I can slide my finger inside and I pull it out to get the whole center of the artichokes, if you can get it.

Okay, so now you have all of those leaves, those tiny leaves, you have nothing to eat.

Other package, you pick it out, leave it there, and now you want to empty the center of your artichokes.

You may see here, all of the choke there, you know, and that choke there has to be removed.

So again, even using your finger or a little spoon like this, you remove all of that tough choke that you have in the center that you can't really eat.

Here it is.

And now that it's nice and clean, you can see the bottom is totally clean now.

This is the way to serve it.

You can serve it on a napkin, but basically you serve it this way, you bring it back together a little bit, you place back this upside down with a nice little sprig of parsley, if you want, in the center of it.

And this is the classic way of serving an artichoke with a vinegarette or with melted butter.

(soothing music) Tomato with a great summer of vegetable and very versatile.

But very often, people who do tomato like to peel it.

And I wanna show you how to peel.

There is different way of peeling tomato.

First thing we do usually is to take the stem, putting your thumb here at a pivot.

You want to remove that center that again, can be kept for stock.

An easy way, the tomato is firm like this one is very firm, is to use a vegetable peeler and start it at the cut there and just go around.

You see what I do with my thumb here.

I'm actually sewing it a little bit, you know?

Remember that at that point also, I would keep the skin of that tomato to put into stock.

Now if I have one tomato to do, it's an easy way to do it with a good vegetable peeler.

And those are very good, those vegetable peeler you find at the supermarket, very inexpensive.

Sometimes, however, you have to buy four or five before you find a good one.

But anyway, this is peeled now.

Another way of doing it is to impale your tomato directly on a long fork, like that, and put it on top of a flame like that to burning around char.

In addition to that, it give it another taste, you know, a bit of a charred taste.

An interesting taste that many people like.

When you have a lot of tomato actually to do, what is done in professional kitchen, we drop it in boiling water as I have here.

How long in the boiling water?

It depend on the ripeness of the tomato.

It is very ripe.

Five, 10 second.

If it's not quite ripe, a little bit longer, but basically never more than like 40, 50 second or whatever.

Which actually here, that tomato is relatively ripe.

It should be practically ready.

And as you can see, this one, the skin is lifting up, as you can see it here.

So those two tomato will be about ready together.

So you want to do that around, especially if you like the charred taste.

Actually some people roll the tomato like that and chop them with the skin because they like that taste.

So I put this one here, and the one from the boiling water here.

And as you can see now, many people take the one from the boiling water and put it into ice cold water.

I tend to avoid it.

If I avoid washing it, sometimes it's a bit hot.

So I'll use a towel.

But if you can avoid putting it into water, then it doesn't wash it out and I think the taste is better.

But as you can see, the skin comes out very, very easily.

Now what you wanna do with that very often is to remove the seed.

So to remove the seed, you cut it across that is parallel to the stem here to expose all of the center of the tomato, all those seed here.

And all you do again is to press it and remove the juice and the seed.

You now have pure tomato flesh, if you want.

Again, remember that all of that again, go and get reserve for stock.

What do we do with that in the kitchen?

Very often, we now do a fresh tomato sauce, which is done in seconds by cutting this into little dice, like this, sorting that with a little bit maybe of onion, olive oil, dash of garlic, and you have fresh tomato.

Other thing that we do with this, you can take a piece, like a quarter, for example, of that tomato.

That tomato is still a bit tough, but especially when they are softer during the summer.

And you can take a towel, or if you don't wanna take a towel, a piece of a plastic crop like this and putting it around and actually forming it into a tiny bowl, that is, you are creating your own cherry tomato here.

Any size you want at the advantage of it, you know, which is what I have here.

And now when you have created like that, of course when you're going to serve that to your guest, they're going to say, "This is the best cherry tomato I ever had."

This one is quite tough, so it's harder than to do those that I did before.

They're going to say, "This is the best cherry tomato I ever had."

Of course, because there is no seed, there is no juice, there is no skin in it, it's pure tomato flesh and it's quite good.

So that goes with it.

Now when you want to do those tiny cherry tomato, if you want, quote, what you do, you brush them with a little bit of melted butter or a dash of oil, warm them up a dash of pepper, warm them up in the oven for a couple of minutes and serve them at a garnish of a chicken or the garnish of a fish or whatever.

Now very often, I like to do tomato salad, just like this with the skin on, with the skin removed, rather, but with the seed.

So I would put that, arrange them into a nice platter, like this.

In fact, you know, you can put them flat.

I like to have them fairly flat, not too thick together because I want the oil and the dressing to be touching all of the slice of tomato.

So I have this here.

And another way that I haven't even shown you how to peel tomato, which I use when I do that, is to do it directly with a knife.

Now with a knife, I have a tomato here, I will use a nice red one here.

I will use that tomato to do a rose with the skin of the knife, so with the skin of the tomato, rather.

So I cut a base for the tomato root, then I start cutting around now.

Now notice that my knife is moving in a jigsaw fashion, and I'm holding the angle of the knife and I'm moving in a jigsaw fashion to get the type of texture that I want, right here.

And I do that base plus one strip.

Then I do a second strip here.

Woop, I broke that one.

Don't do it into one strip, as many people do.

Do it into two strip, like that.

It's easier and it's any way of peeling your tomato, have to go to the end, anyway.

So here is the second strip of my tomato.

I will remove, again, the stem and slice my tomato to use in my salad and put the decoration that is the rose of my tomato on top.

And I think it's kind of a work well together because that skin do belong here.

The first thing that I do, I arrange my tomato there.

And now to do your tomato roast, take the first part with the base and curl it on top of it.

It will hold on that first part of the tomato, this wave, and if you have to press it a little bit in paste.

Then take the second one and curl it into a very tight scroll, if you want.

This is why, as I was saying before, it's easier to do it with two strip of tomato than one.

Then you can place that in the center and you have a beautiful tomato rose.

While are you doing this, you can finish your tomato with maybe a little bit of red onion.

Goes very well with it.

I love the red onion.

Then freshly cracked pepper that I have here, I love cracked pepper with tomato.

Pure salt, dash of salt.

Then plant the oil and vinegar on top.

Olive oil or another type of oil, walnut oil sometime is used in certain part of France, a little bit of vinegar, lemon juice.

This is a red wine vinegar.

Finally, we have some basil here.

Basil goes very well with it.

We can use the leaves of basil right in the center and serve them with it.

And that will set off maybe your tomato rolls that you want to put right in the center of it, right there.

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 skills in the kitchen.

Thank you for joining me, and happy cooking.