- And I'm Claudine Pépin.

- There is nothing like a hearty family dinner to take the chill off a cold winter day.

- Yep, I love those cold, sunny days with new snow for skiing.

What would you like to make on a day like that?

- How about a cream of turnip and sweet potato soup?

- [Claudine] And a comforting stew of chicken and saffron rice, like Mom makes.

- With a spicy cauliflower salmi on the side.

And for dessert, pineapple in an apricot sauce that's refreshing and easy to make.

Simple food prepared with love, warms you up, and makes you happy, even on the coldest winter days.

- That's the real secret of a heartwarming winter meal, next on Jacque Pépin's Kitchen.

- Encore With Claudine.

Well, today we're going to do real comfort food, heartwarming winter meal.

What are you doing in your corner there?

- I am making a root vegetable soup, because that's the best way to do heartwarming meals.

Start with soup.

- You're right.

But first, we're going to do a chicken with rice.

Why don't you come and give me a hand on this?

- [Claudine] Okay.

- You know the chicken and rice?

- Arroz con pollo.

- Arroz con pollo.

So, first I want to show you what you do, you know, is to take the end off this.

- [Claudine] Hello.

- You keep that for stock.

- Okay.

- And using your towel, you know, we remove the skin on this, which, of course, more than 50, 60% of the calorie are going to be in the skin.

- But it tastes good.

- No, but not in this.

No, because it get gummy, you know, when you have a stew like that.

Put a little bit of oil in there.

Yeah, put that on.

Yeah, that's plenty.

And then we can start browning the pieces of meat right there.

(oil sizzling) Yeah, I have six pieces of meat, you wanna try that one?

- Okay.

- I'll cut it for you.

Here, you have your towel.

- A towel.

- [Jacques] Watch your finger here.

- [Claudine] Yeah.

Why am I using a towel, why not just use my hand?

- It's much easier.

When you try to do it by hand, it slide.

Good.

You know, you could keep the skin if you want to, and do crackling with it.

Be perfectly fine.

- Do you take the fat off here too?

- There is some extra fat we could remove.

You see, you cut it in the center of the joint here, and we can remove any extra fat here.

Okay, go ahead.

Put that in there.

And you want to put a little bit of salt and pepper on each side, I mean on the top.

Go ahead with those two.

And this, well, you can keep it for stock, but lot of the skin is naturally usable, you know.

So, you have all your stuff there.

Now I'm going to wash my hand.

- Me too.

- All right.

When you do chicken, probably a good idea to wash your hand because of salmonella, of course.

Cleaning the kitchen is very important.

- Definitely.

- All right.

- All right.

- So that chicken has to brown for about 8-10 minutes now, so.

- Can we finish my soup?

- We can work on your soup.

- Okay, good.

- I leave that here there.

The chicken is fine.

And now, let me see what you have here.

Ooh, it's nice.

Sweet potato, the red one.

- And regular potatoes and turnips.

- Turnips.

- Purple turnips.

- Yeah, I can see all of that stuff here.

- Yep, and this is extra.

- I want to leave that covered.

What is that for?

- This is for you to do a julienne of leek, because I wanna know how to do the julienne, and I just kind of wanted to make it with all the different colors, springier and happier.

- Good, when you do the julienne of leek, you use mostly that part of the leek, you know.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Which we're going to have to wash, but this you can keep for stock, you know?

- Yeah.

- Then you can keep that together.

And then we'll cut it in half again, and in half this way.

As you can see here, Claudine, this has been organized by Mother Nature very nicely, you know.

- [Claudine] Wow.

- So, all you do, you fold this in half this way, and we cut it into that thin strip that we call a julienne.

You can split the leek open and wash it under water, but for the julienne, it's better to do it this way.

Bring it here.

And when you wash it in water, it's important to lift it out of the water, not to pour it into a colander, otherwise you put all the dirt back into it.

We have, what do we have, boiling water here?

- Uh-uh, and I'm gonna put some salt and some pepper, and a little bit of butter, actually.

- You are?

- Yeah.

- I think the butter, we'll put it at the end, it's gonna be nicer.

- Oh, okay.

- In the soup at the end.

A dash of salt if you want.

- Yeah.

- That's fine.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- This has to cook seven, eight minute, you know, I think.

Well, I'm gonna look at my chicken here.

- [Claudine] Oh, it's getting nice and brown.

- [Jacques] Yeah, that's what you want.

- It gets brown, I guess it doesn't need the skin.

- Doesn't need the skin.

The skin is okay when you brown the chicken, and you eat it just brown or grilled.

But after that we put liquid, the skin become like rubber.

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- It's no good.

So, what else are we doing now?

- Okay, so we're gonna puree the soup with the hand blender.

- Okay.

- Can you get the top?

- Yep.

- Okay.

(blender whirring) - That's your best toy, huh?

- That's my favorite.

(blender whirring smoothly) - You see the way it turn like that?

Okay, that's good.

You can remove this.

- Okay.

- You want to finish seasoning it?

- Yeah, we're gonna put some cream in it.

- Put a little bit of cream in it.

- And some salt and pepper, right?

- And you know, if you don't want to put the cream, you can omit the cream or just put even a bit of milk.

Well here, we put what, three, four tablespoon of cream?

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- And that should be fine.

- I would prefer not to omit the cream, I really like the cream.

- All right, it's nice and beautiful.

You want to taste it?

- Yeah, it changes the color.

I like that.

I didn't put any salt in it, but there's salt in the chicken stock, so.

- I think that's enough.

Yeah?

- That's really good.

- Now, look at the leek, they are cooking, but those are tough still.

Another four, five minutes.

- Okay.

- So, let's work on our chicken here.

I'm going to have onion in it.

(chicken sizzling) (knife thudding) And you have a lot of onion here, like, close to a pot of onion.

- [Claudine] I love onions.

- So you know what we want to do first is to remove this.

- Take the chicken.

- I want to saute the onions in the fat, so can you do that?

- Yep.

- Put that on that, okay.

The onion, I'm going to have four clove of garlic here.

I'll crush it.

Whoop, I got you.

- Yeah, why do we have to take the chicken out?

- The chicken out because we need this pot.

Put the onion in the gray pan now.

To saute that properly, you know, it's easier to do it this way.

(onions sizzling) Always pick up the easiest way of doing it.

- I like the easiest way.

- I'm giving you the garlic.

Just chop coarsely this way.

That's fine.

You can stir it.

- [Claudine] And we don't add any more oil than what we had, right?

- We don't add anything here, any more oil.

No, this is fine.

So, it's relatively minimum.

So, into this we want a cup, I bought a cup of tomato.

I have it here.

Just cut the tomato coarsely.

- Is it okay to cheat and use canned tomato?

- Well yes, if you don't have fresh tomato, the canned tomato is perfectly fine, especially in winter, you know?

- Yeah.

- So, we have that here.

I have here what is called alcaparrado, and sometime you get it in jar, you know, you get it in jar, and it's a mixture of red pepper, olives, capers.

You know, you get it in jar in the Mexican or South America or Spanish market, you know.

But if you don't have it, it's fine.

You can do your own.

So I'm adding this.

We adding everything to it there.

You can put the alcaparrado, chicken, stir it.

- [Claudine] Alcaparrado.

- Yes, a couple of bay leaf.

We have some... - Jalapeno.

- Jalapeno pepper.

Taste it all the time.

- You taste it.

- Yeah, it's pretty, pretty strong.

Sometime you have the same one and it have basically no taste.

And then we going to put saffron in there.

I wanna show you though, this is the real Castille, the real saffron, the best is from Spain.

It's extremely expensive.

That's what we use here, use a little bit of that.

It give you that beautiful yellow color.

But the taste, you know, that you want.

- And it's worth it, it's worth the expense.

- The other one that I have, this is the Mexican saffron, very inexpensive.

It give you the color but really not the taste of saffron.

And this is achiote or annatto, used that in Puerto Rico, remember?

- Yep, achiote.

- To do yellow rice.

And this is the grain, also, of a type of bud in the tree.

And it just give you the yellow color, but not that much taste.

Well, we wanna put couple of those, just for color.

All right, so, I'll give you the rice.

We have a cup and a half, but you see that rice here?

- It looks like a little pasta.

- Yeah, well this is the round rice, you know the arborio rice.

- So, is that like short grain?

- You can have it from Italy or from California, actually, this is fine.

Okay, you mix that in.

- [Claudine] Is that the same thing as short grain rice or is that a different?

- It is a short grain rice, but it is not what is called short grain rice.

- Okay.

- That's fine, Claudine, that's fine.

Let's put the water in there.

I'm gonna put salt.

So, we have two and a half cup of water here.

Salt, pepper, mix it, that's it.

And then put back your chicken in it.

- Okay.

- You can put the whole thing in back.

- That's what I was going to do.

- Right, and rearrange it with this a little bit, so that I can push it into the rice.

You wanna bring it to a good boil, you want to cover it.

Lower the heat to low.

And then after that, cook that for about 20, 30 minutes.

So, let's cover it.

Looks good.

- Looks great, smells better.

- Now let's check our leek here.

- Okay, sounds good.

- That looks pretty good.

You see the leek at that point.

And you know what, the soup is actually a bit thick, so we can put all of that in there.

- Yeah, 'cause it's still got all the good taste in it.

- Yes, and even a little more water there is fine, to rinse your pot.

Here we are.

You can chop the heat, and make this, that's nice.

- [Claudine] Oh, that looks so nice.

- Isn't that nice?

So, why don't we serve one portion of this?

- Okay.

- Okay.

I'll let you serve it.

- Okay.

- That's nice with the leek, eh?

- Yeah, it looks really beautiful.

I didn't make any drips on the plate.

- Maybe a little piece of parsley on top.

- That looks lovely.

- That's it.

You know what, in there, if you wanted to have it a bit richer, you could put a little bit of butter at the end.

(gentle instrumental music) Okay, let's check our chicken now.

Now it's boiling, as you can see, nicely.

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

We're going to do a cauliflower salmi, you know, a salmi, that type of ragout.

You know the cauliflowers from the cabbage family is very good for you, as broccolis, cabbage, cauliflowers.

I wanna saute a little bit of this.

- Okay.

- A little bit of this, a little bit of garlic maybe.

- [Claudine] I wanna wooden spoon.

- [Jacques] You gonna do the sauce here?

- Yeah, I'll do the sauce.

- Okay.

So, I'll take care of the cauliflowers.

Here I have a cauliflowers, which is steamed.

You can see it, Claudine.

And it's tender, you know, I can see right there, very tender and that's what I want.

So I'm going to chop it coarsely for you, and give it to you, okay?

- That sounds good.

- Great.

- I put it right on my bowl here.

- I've scallions, I've got shallots, I've got olive oil.

Should I put anything else in here right now?

- No, you saute that for a second, and you know you have a bit of ketchup, and some Tabasco that we want to put in there.

You know what, the cauliflower, when it's done, just steam like this.

The whole cauliflower steam is very good.

Very often, we do it like that home and I serve it on the table with a little bit of olive oil on top, that's it.

- [Claudine] Can we put some garlic in here too?

- You could put a bit of garlic, but then the garlic, you should put it before the ketchup then, because it has to saute a little bit.

- [Claudine] Oh, okay.

- Okay.

I'll do one clove of garlic for you, because you want it.

Just a little bit to have just a hint of garlic in there.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Take the skin out of it.

Crush it.

(knife chopping) Okay, you have a little bit of garlic.

- That's just awesome, so thank you so much.

- [Jacques] All right.

- Now I'm gonna put the rest of my ketchup in.

- Yep, here it is.

- [Claudine] This is gonna make the cauliflower look so beautiful.

- A kind of ragout.

A little bit of this.

We're going to saute it.

And you know what, I have a bit of the water that I cook from the cauliflowers.

We could have a little bit of water in there.

Table spoon or too.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- That's it.

This should cook two or three minutes.

Doesn't really take long.

Let me saute, you see.

- I knew you were gonna do that.

- No, but to mix it well.

- I know, I was trying.

- Do you want to taste it there?

I think it probably will need some salt here.

Yeah, it does.

- Okay.

- Add a bit of salt.

Stir it, and that's it.

We can let it cook a couple of minutes.

And now, let's do our dessert.

- Sounds good, I love dessert.

- Okay, great.

Look at that beautiful pineapple, Claudine.

- [Claudine] Wow.

- You know, it's not a complicated dessert, but it looks nice.

So, the first thing you see, we remove the- See what I did here?

I just kept pruning the top part of it.

- Oh, okay.

- So, choose a nice one.

Very good.

Okay, so we take that much out of it, and I start cleaning it.

So, you know, I want to clean up that part here on top.

You know what is good here?

I'm using a little bit of a se ratted edge knife, you know.

- Ah.

- [Jacques] And it goes well with it.

You don't wanna go too deep, because you take so much out of the flesh.

On the other hand, you know, if you don't go deeper, I'm not going to do too deep here.

You then you have to remove the eye after because- - [Claudine] Oh.

- There we are.

And I have to cut the bottom so that it stand up properly, you know?

Now, you see those here, if you look at it carefully, they are in a line like this.

See they're all in the same line here?

- Yeah.

- So you go from the bottom here, you remove a little wedge.

- [Claudine] Oh.

- And finally, you know, I'll get, basically, to the top.

- Oh, that is very cool.

- So, I have a line here so I know the line next to it.

I continue, you know, it takes a little bit of time, but it's okay.

Now if you want, during that time, you could do the sauce.

We're going to do a sauce for that.

A sauce, actually, with- - I was getting a bit mesmerized.

That's really neat.

Apricot preserves, lime juice and some Kirschwasser.

- [Jacques] Cherry, that's a trick, cherry brandy.

- [Claudine] There you go.

- Though, I guess... - I'm trying to think of other things I can do that to, but I don't know what.

- Well, all we have to do now, is to do it and then you finish your sauce.

You know what you have to do in there is to put a little bit of mint, also.

- Okay.

Okay, so having learned the julienne technique from the leek, does it apply to the mint?

Do I take it, stack it?

- [Jacques] Same thing.

You stack it and you do it around.

- [Claudine] I fold it, okay.

- I've basically finished my pineapple here.

Okay.

How is your sauce coming, okay?

- Good, I'm julienne-ing.

- Good.

All right, so I have this here.

Now we're gonna cut our pineapple when you finish the sauce.

So, here is what I'm going to do for it.

- Now that it's so beautiful.

- Can I use that knife?

- Yeah.

You're gonna cut it?

- Yes, I'm going to cut actually the bottom part of it.

I'm going to cut individual slice, and we have to take the core out of it.

- Is that good or do you want it more liquid?

- It should be a little more liquid than that.

Here, here, put more lime juice.

- [Claudine] There we go.

- And we're going to arrange this on top here.

- Oh, that's good, that's so good.

- Now, you have the corer?

- [Claudine] Yep.

- All right.

That's good.

Let me put this, it's a bit tougher?

- No, I just, my corer got all filled up.

- Okay, you put the last one over there.

- I love the way that it looks, it's so beautiful.

- And what I want you to do is to put some strawberry on top of the hat there.

- Okay.

- Should I bring this here?

- No, I, well, sure.

- Yeah, let's bring it here, it's gonna be easier for you.

And you can put your strawberry, and maybe facing up this way, what do you think?

You can also put some in the neck just for your decoration.

- It's gonna hold, that's what I'm worried about.

- Yeah.

- Here.

- All right.

We put some there.

And people help themself, you know?

We put like four on top.

Some of the sauce right here.

Put it directly on top here.

- I like that, it's just, it's very light, it's very elegant.

- [Jacques] One strawberry right there.

- There and there, that used them all up this way it's easier.

- Isn't that beautiful, Titi?

- That is awesome.

- Yeah, it's very simple and beautiful.

Okay, good.

(gentle instrumental music) Can we check your chicken now?

- Absolutely.

- Okay, let's check the chicken.

Your cauliflowers I know is cooked.

And the chicken, you know what you have to do.

We'll go right there and you test it.

I would say that this will take another five, 10 minutes, you know?

So, what we're going to do, I'll turn it this way in the sau- You know what you don't want to do, which I should have said before, don't stir with this your rice.

You don't want to touch the rice.

Just turn the chicken a little bit.

- Okay.

- Cover it.

And now we wait another 10 minute.

Well, let's check the chicken again.

It should be about ready now.

Yeah, that's it, you see?

- Oh, good.

- You stab there like this, you go right through it.

The rice is cooked.

You want to taste it?

- Looks awesome.

Yeah, I definitely want to taste it.

- Here you are.

- I have my own spoon so I can take more.

- You've a yellow.

- It's good.

- The saffron, you know?

- Mhm.

- Okay, so let's serve it.

This is the type of thing you want to do for a big, you know, a big family.

So, you do a whole platter there.

- Or a small family and lots of friends.

- Yes.

Okay, sometime, you know, you just pour it directly in a natural way like this.

Look at the rice, it's just about- - Oh, it looks so good.

- See that rice doesn't take that much liquid, you know?

- Oh, so it's different than regular?

- Yes, the flat rice like that usually is two to one.

- Yeah.

- This is a little less.

- [Claudine] Oh.

- Okay.

The cauliflowers.

You know what, sometime a little bit of Tabasco on top.

- Oh, always a little bit of Tabasco on top.

- You want to put a little bit of parsley?

- Sure, lemme get a plate for the cauliflower.

- Okay, put a bit of parsley right there.

And let's chop a little bit of parsley for your cauliflowers.

(knife chopping) Okay.

- I'm gonna use the same spoon.

- Here we are, I can put it directly into there.

Beautiful.

- Here's a bowl.

- And that stew of cauliflower here.

I can use that spoon.

- Ah, that looks so good.

- This, you really don't have to eat with the rice and chicken.

You know, it's great as a first course, or an appetizer, accompaniment.

And this is the main course.

- [Claudine] For our heartwarming winter meal.

- So here it is, our comfort food.

Heartwarming great dish.

I mean that soup of, you know, turnips and the sweet potato is delightful with the julienne of leek.

And of course, the chicken and rice, arroz con pollo.

And we have of course salmi of cauliflowers, salmi means a mixture, a ragout, you know, and this is good.

It doesn't have to go with this.

It's great at the first course.

- Mm, yeah.

- How about the dessert you made?

- Well, you made it.

I watched very happily.

The pineapple with the eyes cut out so it makes the swirly.

I love this, I'm gonna try this.

- Looks great.

- Yeah, and the sauce is gonna be wonderful with them two.

The mint is gonna be really a nice addition.

- Yeah, that dessert could go with a very elegant meal also if done well.

- [Claudine] Definitely, yeah.

- So, what are we drinking with this?

- Well, I'm gonna have the red wine.

- Oh, you want?

So you getting a- - Yeah, because- - A Vosne-Romanée, which is a pinot noir from Upper Burgundy.

But I think with this, I'm going to prefer a viognier.

And the viognier is a new grape from upper Côtes-du-Rhne, Condrieur so far.

And this is viognier from the Santa Maria Valley.

It's very smoky, quite nice.

And I think we're going to enjoy it.

So, Claudine, was great cooking with you.

- It was great cooking with you.

- Until next time, happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

(upbeat instrumental music)