- 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 these lessons helpful in your kitchen.

Happy cooking.

You know when you serve shellfish, like oyster, clam and so forth, even lobster, you know that it's fresh because it has to be live.

The clam is live for the way it open and you smell and you know it.

Likewise, with the lobster.

When you buy fish, it's slightly different.

You really have to look at it to be sure that it's fresh.

I mean, the biggest thing is your nose, without any question.

Then, there is a certain look.

freshness that you see, which is different in certain fish, plumpness of the flesh and so forth.

This is a sole, and we have over 50 different type of sole in the United States, from even imported from the Dover sole, which is very, very firm.

Maybe one of the only sole that you can put on the grill and turn it with a fork like a steak, because it's really to grey sole, lemon sole, petrale sole, dab, fluke and so forth.

Basically, what you want to do there, there is the black side, the white side, you want to remove the flesh.

Another thing important with the sole, all of the flat fish, this does the best stock.

The flat fish will do the best stock better than the bone from the salmon for example.

So, what I want to do here, I know that there is a bone in the center.

The first thing I want to follow that bone in the center, right here.

Now, on the side here, I know that there is meat.

There is a layer of fin like that.

And there is another layer of fin up to here inside.

I can feel it with my hand, there is a depression.

So, the meat only starts here, you see?

The same thing on the other side, so, I will then cut it there.

The same thing on the other side, I follow it with my finger, I know where it is, and I will cut it there.

Now I will remove two filets from this side, two filets from the other side.

I need to have a type of filet like that.

We often call that a filet sole because it's a flexible knife that you press this way, you see, to remove that filet.

Now, this is the back filet.

The back filet is always better than the belly filet.

It's thicker, wider.

It's already, already slightly thicker on the black side also than on the white side for some reason.

Turn it around.

And again, now I remove the other filet in the same way.

This is where you have the belly here.

Here we are.

The belly here and you have all the guts.

And here, I have the gill.

So, there I would turn that on the other side.

Do the same thing here.

You can see maybe the limitation of the flesh better on the white side.

Again, here.

There.

Very often you will buy your filet where they remove the whole center in one block.

That is, those two pieces are attached together.

It's fine, but you have to realize that there is a little line of bone in between, so I rather do it this way, which is in the French-style, but it really doesn't matter that much.

As you can see, even the belly filet here is slightly smaller on the white side than it is on the dark side.

So again, I follow there and I remove it.

So you can see in a sole like that, the amount of meat is kind of minimal of what you get, and I still have the skin to take out.

So as you can see there, this is a transparent bone now we have removed from each side those four filets.

If I do a stock with it, I would want to remove all of the bloody element and all of the gill because that will be bitter.

But otherwise, I will remove that, wash it, break this, and I'll do a great, great soup with that, or other type of thing.

Now what I want to do, is to remove the skin.

You put that flat, wrap it at the end of it.

Now you hold the skin this way and you want to scrape it out.

Now, it's hard to scrape, scrape it out in one stroke, so you move your knife a little bit in a jigsaw fashion, as I'm doing here.

And I'm removing that skin, but you can see and maybe the bloody part which is at the end there.

So, as you can see, now it's totally clean.

Now we do different thing of it.

One of those is just to fold it in half and cook it this way.

Another one very well known, it's called to do a the paupiette.

The paupiette is to roll it into a roll, and usually this is the thin part at the end.

So you start by rolling this part there, this way, and you cook it this way.

This is a paupiette.

Now, you see I did a paupiette here.

Let's say I do that paupiette with the other one here, again, rolling the thick part and the thin part at the end.

If I were to cook that paupiette, that paupiette would unroll.

I rolled it wrong.

This is rolled right.

The difference is this.

This is the inside of the fish.

This is very meaty.

There is no nerve.

Here on the outside, there is already sinew and nerve.

So what you do, you roll that inside.

First, it's more attractive this way because the white fleshy part is the other side.

And as it cooks, it will tighten.

If you roll it the other way, it'll have a tendency to open.

Here is a way of serving a whole sole in a classic way, we call amandine, with almond.

And that part here, which you brown first, if the part where the white skin is still on.

Of course, you scale it.

In the dining room, it's conventional to separate that with fork and knife.

And the way you separate it, you will separate your four filets in the same way, following the bone.

As you can see.

Now, on a filet of sole, if I were to use a Dover sole, then those filets will hold together probably even better than that.

But this here, you know you make it slide, it'll slide out, as you can see.

Sometimes we even do it directly in the pan in the kitchen before bringing it to the dining room.

You do your filet like that.

Now the second bone, you slide your underneath.

Now I have removed my bone.

You can do that at the table or here.

If I were to do it before I bring it, then what I do, very simply, I put that back.

And sometimes the maitre d' will bring this directly to the dining room.

It's all ready, and then the maitre d' will simply serve it on the plate this way.

If the maitre d' is a little more gifted, you give him the whole sole, he does the boning out directly on the plate of the customer.

Salmon is probably the most used fish in the restaurant and at home today.

It is fresh, available year-round.

You have raised salmon.

Salmon from Canada, from Chile, or from Norway, which is a type of Atlantic salmon, which is now raised and very reliable.

Price is good, the yield is terrific, and of course it's extremely versatile.

You can do a lot with salmon.

Now, I have here a very large salmon, as you can see.

This is about 15 pound.

And when we discuss fish, we discuss freshness.

Mostly it's your nose, but your eye also.

I mean, look at the color of that salmon.

Beautiful pink, fresh with a little bit of the blood left in it too.

Now, if you happen to have the eye, and if you can look at the gill, as I'm looking at the gill here, I have bright red, deep red color of the gill.

That very strong indication of freshness.

As well as the plumpness of the fish itself, the brightness of the eye, all of that will indicate freshness.

But I say more than anything else, it's really your nose, which tell you whether it's fresh or not.

Now, very often the salmon is used removing the skin, but sometime when you poach it whole, or certain type of steak, you want to leave the skin on.

If you want to leave the skin on, you have to scale it.

And that scale here, as you see, you have those scale which if you do it in your kitchen will go all over the place unless you have a real deep sink.

What I use for that is a piece of clam shell.

You know, any type of a smooth edge like that will work, as well as a spoon, as well even a pairing knife like this, you know the back of it usually.

But I do however very often that if I have a big plastic bag then I'm going to take the plastic bag, put my salmon inside the bag, unless I have a big, as I say, a big sink, and then do it inside the bag so that it can jump all over the place and won't give me any problem.

Because otherwise, believe me, this is really messy.

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

Now that your salmon is clean, I mean, I took the scale at least on one side.

What you want to do is to remove the filet or cut it into steak, different way of using it.

I like to use a long knife, flat, a little bit flexible, which works well with it, and there is different way of doing it.

Some people start at the back following the bone.

Some cut right through the rib cage and follow the bone here.

And I tend to go on this side and take the whole filet out of it.

Make sure that your knife is nicely sharpened.

I have a knife sharpening here, which will do it.

What I do sometime, you know, I use a plate to do that.

You see on a plate, the plate, the back of the plate where it didn't touch, it didn't touch the glaze and this is open, this will be very abrasive and you can really sharpen a knife on the back of a plate.

Remember, that on the Rockwell scale, the Rockwell scale is the scale on which you measure the hardness of metal.

Ceramic is much harder than steel.

Unfortunately, it's brittle, it breaks, but it's very hard.

So, that will abrase your knife.

Another way of sharpening knife.

So what I do here, I cut to go under the gill, twist my knife around, put it flat.

I leave it flat directly on the central bone and remove the whole filet.

I mean, that happened to be a very large salmon.

What I have done here, my knife was flat enough, so I remove some of the ribcage.

This is the bone, the ribcage.

Some of it is remaining here.

One way or the other, I will remove it after.

If if I had done the boning what is done sometime starting here, I would be closer to the bone here because the point is that the central bone is roundish.

So putting my knife flat on top of roundish, I lose a little bit of meat here.

But it doesn't matter, because when I do this, I finish, I always take a spoon and I clean my salmon.

And remove all the extra flesh.

And if you do a tartare, for example, or if you do a mousse, or if you do anything, then you can add that to it, so you don't lose anything.

In fact, very often, I go to the fishmonger and ask for bone to do a stock.

Before I do the stock, I scrape the salmon like that and get like a tartare for four people for free.

So, you can do that too.

Now, at that point you want to finish cleaning it up.

And there is that rib cage here that I finish.

I use my knife not even with my hand underneath because I use the knife practically flat like this to go underneath and slide it under the rib cage like this, you see, to remove the least possible amount of meat, but you want it totally clean, eh?

The part of it that I'm doing the belly here, is very fatty.

Now, the salmon is a very fatty fish.

Very high in Omega-3, which is an oil good for cholesterol, the fish oil.

So, it vastly recommended now to use salmon.

You know, salmon, tuna, sardine, anchovy, all of those are very high fatty fish.

Now, another thing that you have in addition to the rib cage that you have here on top of the rib cage, there is a line of bone, which I can feel with my finger right there.

It come from the neck, unto the opening here.

So, you have about 32 bone.

You need a little plier to remove them.

Go straight.

And it's very important to remove that, otherwise it makes it very difficult to cut your steak.

And even when I buy a smoked salmon, you know, I buy the smoked salmon, the first thing that I do, I put it flat like this, and I remove the bone.

Makes it easier to slice, otherwise you cut thin slice and those slice are torn because of the bone in them.

So, that's about it.

Now they're getting smaller and smaller, and I think this is the last one.

So, I can run my finger on top, I know that there is no more.

So, you have all of those tiny bone here, which goes straight down into the flesh.

Now, the thing that we do is to remove the skin.

Now, that knife will come from here.

And what I want to do is to scrape out the whole thing.

Of course I cannot do it in one stroke, so I move the knife in a jigsaw fashion, and I alternate with the skin doing the opposite.

The knife is not vertical or perpendicular.

You do it this way.

It has to be 45 degree angle approximately.

And from that 45 degree angle, you do that type of sawing motion to go and cut, remove the skin.

As I say, if you want to remove the skin.

So, the skin at that point, I have also done crackling with the skin after I take the the scale out of it.

Now, look at that salmon now.

It basically totally clean except from that black fleshy, that black flesh.

Now, that black flesh, when it cooked turned dark.

This is actually fatty tissue and those fatty tissue are just under the skin to protect the fish during swimming.

It tend to be stronger in taste, so we remove it.

Although some people don't like to remove it, particularly Japanese will like that type of, and I don't mind it one way or the other.

In any case, you will also be told that because those are the fatty tissue, even more fatty tissue, you have a great deal of the Omega-3 in there.

But on the other hand, I should say that by definition all of the pollutant in the sea will congregate in fatty tissue, so we tend to tell people to remove fatty tissue because of this.

Again, a little bit from the belly here.

And basically, now I have a totally solid piece of salmon.

And that salmon, as I say, which what about 14 pound, will give me two filets, about seven pound, about three and a half pound each.

That is seven pound of meat for 14 pounds salmon right out of the water, so it's a very good yield.

What do I do with it?

Different type of thing.

Now, usually we cut it into steak like this, and what we call filet steak.

You know, those will be about five, six ounce filets.

Those are beautiful.

And you can continue of course carrying it this way.

In a restaurant, you will arrange all of your filets.

Sometime you use the belly, which is thinner, cut it right there to do more of a tartare and cut the rest.

There is different way of serving that.

Now, when you go to the market, what you buy very often also is a steak.

So, here is a steak of salmon.

And this is a piece of the filet here of the other filet with the skin on.

This is about the same weight than that.

Now, when you do a steak like this, usually you will have to go through here and cut, you know, on each side to remove that central bone here if you want.

And still even when you do this you will still have some of the bone that I removed, those tiny bone on the side, which are going to be left inside here on your filet steak.

You can also cook it with the bone on it, but conventionally it is done this way.

An easier way, and better way in my opinion to do it, is to take a piece of filet of about the same size, cut it with the skin this way.

Now cut it through the skin, you know.

Not quite completely to the end.

Then you turn it upside down to do basically exactly the same.

As you can see I have a filet here of salmon and I know in this one there is no bone at all, so it's a nice way of doing it.

(upbeat music) You know, one type of fish served very often now is what is called gravlax, sometime carpaccio.

Two different thing.

Gravlax is from European origin, it's actually from northern country that the gravlax came from, Scandinavia and so forth.

And usually it was a piece of salmon, other type of fish sometime, cured with a lot of sugar, a little bit of salt, and then serve with a sweet mustard mayonnaise and a great deal of dill.

Now we do different type of gravlax.

And sometime you can take that whole piece of salmon here and do a whole gravlax with it.

That is, you put salt, a bit of sugar on top of it.

You wrap it, you cure it about six to eight hours.

Take it out, put herbs on top of it, and the whole thing is now a gravlax.

And you serve it as a gravlax, slice raw this way.

What I'm going to show you now it's what I call an as stand gravlax.

That is, I'm going to cut the gravlax, I mean the salmon, a thin, as I would do for a smoked salmon.

And I will cure it directly on the plate.

So what you do, very simply, you take your plate.

Let's say, if you have a dinner for six, you arrange six plates on the table.

A little bit of salt.

I use kosher type salt here, which I think is relatively important because the segment of the salt itself is larger and it tend to cure better.

Remember, when you cure, you draw out the moisture.

By drawing out the moisture you deprived the bacteria of a necessary living condition.

So there, let's say I have one slice of salmon.

Remember that salt and paper underneath.

Put that on top.

The other piece here.

And I would've here just a little bit of, again, salt and pepper on top.

And how long do you think it has to cure there?

15, 20 minute is going to be cured, just the time for the salt to melt.

What you can do on top of it, you put a piece of plastic wrap.

Take another plate, put it right on top.

Do another gravlax.

You do your six gravlax this way.

And when you're ready to serve it, you put a bit of chopped onion, parsley, whatever you want on top of it.

Now, another way of serving it is what we call a carpaccio.

And the carpaccio refer to an Italian painter of the Chiaroscuro period of the 15th century who used to paint in red and white.

So someone doing a regular steak tartare, decided to do a piece of filet of beef, which was red with a strip of mayonnaise, and that was named after Carpaccio.

But now everything that we pound very thin and do we call a carpaccio.

So here, let's say that same portion, I cut halfway through to butterfly it, open it again, and now I have a slice of salmon, which is very thin, which is about two and a half ounces here, let's say.

So, let's say with this I do a carpaccio, I can pound it.

Two piece of plastic wrap you can put it in between and use a little bit the back of a pan or something and you pound that gently to a very, very thin layer now.

Now, you can keep that in your refrigerator like this.

It's perfectly fine.

And when you're ready to serve it, you season it.

That will be seasoned and cured very, very fast because it's extremely thin as you can see here.

Let me take my plate.

I will arrange, you know, some of those very, very thin slice of cucumber underneath this way.

Kind of a geometrical pattern, which make it nice.

Now I have to put my seasoning.

Remember, that this hasn't been seasoned.

So, I remove one of the two paper, if I can find it.

Here it is.

Put a little bit of salt and black paper on top of it.

And just directly, bring it on top of your cucumber.

Place it there.

Again, a little bit of a salt on top of it, and pepper.

Now I can put all kind of garnish in it.

Let's say that I put a little bit of red onion.

Red onion is a beautiful color and I cut it very thin.

You can use shallot, you can use anything you want, but I would put that here, attractively this way.

Now, you go for taste.

This is what's important.

That goes well with it.

If it happened to look good too, so much the better.

But this is less important.

Now I add a bit of capers.

Capers goes well with it.

I could, if I wanted to even take the peel, a peel of lemon like this, and cut it into a very, very fine Julienne.

If I put lemon juice, I can put it, but only when I'm ready to serve it.

If you put your lemon juice before, it's going to solidify the protein in the salmon.

It'll be like a ceviche, where the fish is cooked by the citric acid in the, so you don't want to do that.

And maybe even a little bit of chives on top.

That's more than enough thing that I would put.

But as you can see, you could have a little piece of radish, for example.

You have a radish.

You take your radish, you put it in tiny little dice.

Your cucumber could be cut in tiny little dice, a red pepper.

And a little bit of olive oil on top to finish it up if you want a bit of richness.

You can serve that with a black bread with butter and you have a terrific first course.

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.