- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

I love to take advantage of summertime, especially because I live in Connecticut, where there are long New England winters.

And for me the best thing to do is grill outdoors.

Today's menu take us from garden to grill, and we begin with a spinach, ham and Parmesan souffle that has a beautiful, crunchy and brown crust, a grilled salmon, just enough to be nice and moist, and (indistinct) asparagus in just five minutes.

Grilled Portabello mushroom have a smoky flavor.

I call this dessert strawberry in the sun, but you can make them indoor just as well.

A splendid meal you can enjoy outdoor in the summertime.

We do it every year at my house, and you too can do it on "Today's Gourmet."

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) I love to cook outside during the summer, to grill, to do, and that's what we are going to do.

Today in our menu, a grilled salmon.

We're going to cook strawberry in the sun, but to start with we're going to start with a very sophisticated dish, a souffle.

And the souffle is always something a bit special to do.

And the souffle we're going to do today is a souffle of spinach with ham in it, and with, of course, a lot of the spinach and with cheese.

So I start with a little bit of butter.

I have about a tablespoon of butter here, and a dash of the oil to cut down on our butter.

And with this we're going to do what we call a roux, that is a mixture, which is a thickening agent.

And the thickening agent, the roux, is done a great deal, or used to be done a great deal in French cooking.

It is still done, but in the so-called new world cuisine it's been done less in the last few years.

In any case, it's still done like in the Cajun country, in New Orleans and so forth.

It's a mixture of flour and butter in approximately, or oil, they do in approximately equal proportion.

You want to cook that a little bit.

And, of course, if you were in Cajun country, then you would have dark mahogany type of roux, which cook for a long, long time.

Cook 25, 30, 40 minutes, and are dark, dark mahogany color.

So there the roux is hot, the milk should be cold.

And there, again, to cut, I am putting a skin milk here.

And that has to come to a boil now.

We put a dash of salt in there, a little bit of pepper, and we just have to wait for it to come to a boil, stirring occasionally.

And during that time we are going to prepare the mold for the souffle.

Now conventionally we do the souffle in a, in a souffle mold, but here I'm doing that in a gratin dish, and I'm buttering slightly the bottom of that gratin dish with a brush.

You can do it with your finger also.

And, what we have here is fresh breadcrumb, and Parmesan cheese.

I put a little bit of the Parmesan cheese here to mix it together.

We're going to use that in the bottom of the mold.

And you see your best way of doing it is to put the whole thing in it.

Let me check my bechamel here.

You know, it will start going on the outside, so you have to be sure to really bring your whisk with the palm of your hand, go around.

(indistinct) is going to start, it's starting thickening now, but it'll really thicken as it comes to a boil.

So what you do here, you slosh this around, you can bring back the thing you started with, and you go all around to put back the excess in there.

This is when you realize that in some part of it, like here, I didn't have any butter.

I did that on purpose to show you.

So I put a little bit of butter here because you want it to be coated all over.

So this is the mold for the souffle.

Actually it can stay right on top, it's going to go in the oven on this, it can stay there.

Now, the bechamel, as you see is thick and boiling now, but I'm gonna put spinach in it.

And I have spinach right here.

Those are nice spinach chunks, so I take the end of it, and if I do a spinach soup or a spinach pure, then I use the root, but not today.

You know, we used to take those spinach and cook them in water just to blanch them a little bit before adding them to a dish.

And this is basically what I did all my life, until a couple of years ago.

I was cooking with my daughter, and she was doing cream spinach, and she came and put the spinach right into the bechamel.

I say, "You cannot do that."

She said, "Why?"

I said "Because we always cook the spinach before."

She said, "Why?"

I said "I don't really know, but this is what we do."

So then I'm stealing the recipe from her.

I'm putting that directly into my bechamel.

I know like this I have no loss of nutrient, or anything like this.

I have quite a lot of spinach here, probably maybe a bit more than I need.

Clean up my table.

And, now with this, we want to put the eggs.

I have in there five eggs, as you can see in there.

We're going to beat the eggs directly into the copper bowl.

The best way to separate eggs is just to break your eggs in the bowl you're going to beat them, and take the eggs and take them out this way.

We need three egg yolks for our recipe, and we have two extra, one here.

We are always trying to cut down a little bit.

That is I'm using five egg whites and three egg yolk, here we are, for a large souffle.

So here it is.

And, now I'm putting the three egg yolk, which goes into my recipe here.

Can take it out directly here, it's going to continue cooking a little bit, as you can see.

And in there I'm putting the ham, which goes in there.

I have a beautiful color, as we can see here.

All I need now is to beat my egg white.

So, I use large balloon whisk here, and we start... It goes much faster by hand than with a machine.

I have a little piece of spinach in there, oop.

And first you start very fast to break the eggs and make them liquid.

Then we start slowly.

Notice that I'm moving the wrist, and I'm moving my wrist like that lightly to lift up the mixture.

And very often, of course, you may get tired.

If you move the whole arm, it's more tiring.

And this is a balloon whisk.

Change hand when you're tired.

The balloon whisk meaning that there is a lot of little thread, and they are very flexible.

For me, this is the difference between a whip and a whisk.

The whisk, very often is stiffer, harder.

And the whip, in my opinion, have more thread, and is more flexible to beat like this.

You see the advantage of having a large one, take the whole mixture in one stroke instead of going from one corner to the other.

This is basically ready.

I feel like a minute.

Yeah, I can see it.

As soon as it hold a good peak it's about ready.

And that's holding a peak.

You see, when it's fairly flexible, elastic like this.

At that time we tighten the egg whites.

We're going around like this and around to make them tight.

We take a mixture, some of it, like a third of it, I'm mixing it in there.

You wanna go very fast so the eggs don't have a time to deflate.

And with the whisk, I'm mixing with the whisk, some of the egg white in there.

The rest of it we're going to fold it in.

So, again, this is always catching on the thread at the end.

So, don't worry about it.

Lick your finger.

Then, I'm putting this in there to mix the whole thing there.

And, now I start folding, and you see a nice folding movement.

I'm bringing it around, lifting it up.

The movement from the right hand is the same all the time, and the left hand move the bowl around.

Okay, this is nice.

Now, this is the time when it goes into my... This is a six cup mold.

One egg white, usually one cup.

And now we are going to decorate it a little bit.

That is, we want to make it smooth on top this way.

Then you can do a bit of a design using the side like that of your spatula to create a pattern on top.

As you can see, you can clean up the outside with your thumb to make a clean edge there.

And if you want to be a bit fancier, use a piece of cheddar cheese like this.

I have two little strip like that, I'm cutting lozenges out of it, and I put those lozenges in the center here.

Nice effect, you see?

I could use some little strip that I could arrange crisscross around, or put here, there, all around.

Look how pretty it is.

Because this is going to mark in the cooking.

And you're going to be able to create that design.

Very impressive, without much effort.

That's about it, you know.

You wanna put maybe a little bit of the Parmesan cheese we have left, or you know what, all of that Parmesan cheese was supposed to go in the souffle, I forgot it.

That happen very often.

It's okay, it's very good without the Parmesan cheese, and it's even less calorie, so that's fine.

A bit less flavor.

I'm gonna put that 350 degree oven for about 30-35 minute here.

The middle of the oven.

I have one which is just about ready.

Here is always a certain amount of suspense in the making of a souffle.

And here it is.

I have the big souffle right there.

And, you know, the souffle doesn't wait for you, you wait for the souffle.

(gentle music) Now we're going to get to use the grill, which is nice and hot.

I just look at it, the way it should be.

I have a slab of salmon here.

You see the whole filet that I took and cleaned, no bone in it, but I left the skin on.

The skin of course has to be scaled, I took the scale out of it.

And then we're going to cut steak out of this.

That's what I call steak of salmon.

Sometimes people call steak, when it's cut right, through the two filet, one or the other, but, I mean, I like it this way.

And those steak are going to be about six ounces, five to six ounces.

So what I want to do here, put them dry, those beautiful fresh salmon.

A little bit of salt on top of it, and brush it with a bit of oil.

We want to cook it on the grill skin side down.

So the grill has to be really nice and clean to do that.

So here is what we're going to do.

Just take it there.

And I'm going to put two to cook, 'cause I need space because I want to cook some beautiful mushroom now.

I have large so-called Portabello mushroom, those large ones with the gill, totally apparent.

Those are type of mushroom which are really ripe.

I also have some special mushrooms that someone gave me here, those are moral, very expensive.

So what we are going to do on those Portabello mushroom, whole one there the same way, we can brush them with a little bit of oil, and put them to cook, a little dash of salt.

I'll put a couple, maybe three.

One big mushroom like that per person is more than enough.

And those are really available basically all over now.

They used to be kind of rare, but now they are, as I say, kind of available all over.

So here we put them right there.

My grill is really hot.

We wanna cook them on each side.

So, while this is cooking, I can even check my salmon, it seem to go pretty fast here.

(flame sizzling) Yeah, it goes a bit fast, so I'm going to move it to the side here, and maybe turn it on the other side, 'cause I see that my skin, the skin of the salmon, is already quite brown, and that is what I want, so I put it right here.

The skin sticks.

And those things happen when they stick.

I can take that salmon now and put it in the oven, and finish it slowly in the oven, or I could put it on the side of the grill, outside with like a cover.

Or if I have a grill on my cover, I put it down on it, and finish cooking it this way.

What I have here, which go without dish too, is water.

I just have a bit of water, I'm going to put something in it, and that's asparagus.

I have asparagus here, and I wanna show you quality of asparagus.

Look at those two asparagus here.

This one at a very tight head, like the bud of a flower, tight together and quite firm.

This is a good asparagus.

The size of asparagus has nothing to do with it.

Look at those, those are, it's like a flower where the petals are starting opening already, that's an older asparagus, and it's already a bit flexible.

This is a much better quality than this.

People think that a tiny, tiny asparagus is the best quality, size has nothing to do with it.

It come out of the ground small or big, you want it tight like the bud of a flower.

We use a vegetable peeler here to peel the lower part of the stem here.

As you can see, that part, so we can break the end, meaning that the whole thing is eatable.

This is just our standard of this.

If you peel the part of it which is getting fibrous at the end here.

Notice that I leave the asparagus on the table, I roll it this way, and I keep my vegetable peel flat.

This is a nice vegetable peeler, but any vegetable peeler will do providing they work.

So we cut that on a bias, on the side like this, and we're going to do a stew with that of asparagus.

So right into the water here we put our asparagus with a lid.

And, as I said, we are going to do that in a butter sauce, which is quite different because we used to do that much more with a type of hollandaise and so forth.

So what we cook here, we cook it for a few minutes, until it start getting tender.

Then we put a little bit of butter in the water, and let's see now our Portabello mushroom.

Yeah they are hot and cooking here.

That's it, they're about cooked.

They are dark and very meaty.

So, let's see, my asparagus are on a boil.

You should have maybe two, three tablespoons of water at the end, when you finish cooking.

If you feel that you need a bit more water, what I do here, I'm going to take a bit more to put in there.

That's it, just to cook it because the water is going to be mixed with the butter and create a sauce.

So we use about two tablespoon of butter that I have here.

This of course is unsalted, sweet unsalted butter.

See the asparagus will stay green and nice, even though they are covered.

To that extent here, I don't think I put any salt in it.

No.

And I can put a little bit of salt now.

You want to keep your asparagus a little crunchy.

You don't want them too crunchy.

I like them a bit al dente, but that, again, is a question of taste.

I think that I am going to remove my Portabello mushroom, which are cooked enough.

I see that they are cooked because they are rendering water, the water is coming out of it.

My grill is really hot, I'm going to stop it, check my salmon.

I see that the salmon is tender, and I see that it flakes.

If you can see that it flake, I may open this one just to show you, but you see the center of it is going to be still slightly raw, but it is flaking.

So this is the way I like it because I like it just slightly rare inside.

But that's a question of taste.

Some people like it very well done, some like it more rare.

For me, I'm going to remove it and keep it here.

I don't wanna cook it more than that.

This one is a bit messed up, so maybe I look at the other side.

Hey, that side looks good.

Then I will present it on this side.

That side looks better.

Just present it on the side which looks the best.

There's no rule for that.

I have a large daikon here, which is a radish.

And that radish, we're going to use a Julien of the radish, which is kind of a bit spicy, to put on top of the salmon.

So I can use, I could actually use the vegetable peeler to cut strip of it like this, and make a little bit of, again, a Julien out of this.

That is presenting that this way together, and cutting it into long strip.

Here we are here.

That will give it really a nice crunch to it.

So what we'll do now is to finish our plate.

I want to present.

First I will put the mushroom in there.

I would not really mix my mushroom with the salmon on the same plate because you see the tend to bleed and get dark here.

You can put a little bit of olive oil if you want splurge on top.

I put some, I brush it on top, but be good, nice color around.

And I could put maybe little pieces of basil on top will go well with that type of thing.

And just break the basil like this.

Don't worry too much.

You want it to have a kind of country outdoor look.

And now our salmon.

I want to finish my asparagus here.

You see there is almost no water left.

I break the pieces of butter here, and then you can see at that point if the butter get incorporated here it'll mix with the water, and that together will create what we call (speaking in foreign language), a foaming butter.

That is an emulsion.

Of course, there are about three or four times the amount of water than butter, so it make a very light, creamy sauce.

And this is the way you want to serve it.

Just out of the pan this way it's ready.

I have salt in it.

We put it right in there.

Again, you know, if I serve it with it many times, don't worry about the center of the plate, you can put your asparagus right there.

After they are there, you can use the bowl of your spoon to spread it out to the outside.

That also will go well with the salmon.

I will present my salmon one piece this way, maybe the other piece the other way.

A few thyme leaves on top.

We have thyme flowers, thyme leaves which will go well with it, spring.

And this is the main course for today.

I forget my daikon here, which will go on top of it too.

(gentle music) And for our dessert I'm going to make for you the greatest strawberry jam in the world.

It's cooked in the sun.

What you do, you have fresh, you have to have nice, beautiful, you can't do it with a second hand or damaged berry.

You do a syrup as I have here.

And that syrup is water and sugar.

And that is going to cook to about the boil stage.

We put the berry inside like you would do a jam, but you don't want to stir it.

You want to stir it this way, that is, but not with a spoon to break it.

Then you cover it like that, and you would cook it for a couple of minutes, until everything is nice and smooth.

But what we do next, a bit longer than what I'm doing here, you will see because the berry get all soft and very limp, but still whole, without being broken.

So what we do, we put all of the berry into a roasting pan, see the sugar, the syrup is starting getting pink, but within 4-5 minutes it will be deep red.

We spread that into a roasting pan, and by then you'll have a lot of liquid with the berry.

And you put a screen on top of it so the bug don't get into it, and you put that in the sun.

It takes a couple of days in the sun for the berry to absorb, to absorb the liquid again and become very thick.

And if you cannot do it in the sun, sometime in Connecticut we have a lot of rain, you can do it in the oven.

I put those in the oven, and, as you can see, look at the thickness of the syrup which come down to it.

And that, of course, you can put that in jar, as I have here, to give that to your friend.

Make the best strawberry jam in the world.

And this is what we can have for our de dessert today.

You know, this is very rich, so you don't serve, you serve 3-4 berries per person like this in my syrup.

I'm making a mess here.

Maybe three berries should be about enough, because, as I said, it's quite rich.

But you see the syrup is nice and clear around.

And the reason for that is that we didn't crush the berry into anything.

Three or four are fine.

With that, I would put maybe a couple of of cookie, especially the cookie which are kind of earthy type of cookie.

And maybe, maybe a little flowers.

Eatable flowers for decoration.

And you have an absolutely stunning dessert here.

My menu today really exemplified the bounty of summer, especially my strawberry, my concentrated strawberry jam, which are already a winner.

Have the jam for breakfast or as a dessert.

And, of course, we start with the souffle.

The souffle has a lot of spinach in it, a little bit of cheese.

You can even eliminate the ham if you want to cut down on your calorie.

But it should be light, and it's already an impressive start to any dinner, a souffle.

Then the salmon, nice piece of salmon, grilled.

A little bit of daikon on top.

Don't worry if the skin stick like mine, put it on the other side.

Beautiful asparagus around, nice and crunchy.

And those large black Portabello mushrooms, even though they are black, they are very meaty and good.

We have a salad with that, and finally my delicious berry.

And, with that, we are going to drink today (speaking in foreign language), which is from the (speaking in foreign language) of France with a special grape called the melon (speaking in foreign language), m-e-l-o-n, like a melon, of burgundy.

And it's a very Sprite, a little bit (indistinct) and clean wine.

Terrific in the summer, serve it chilled.

I'm sure you will enjoy that with your friend.

I love to cook for you.

Happy cooking.