- I love prosciutto to thinly sliced with fruit in full summer.

Wrap it around big fig, mascarpone cheese, cracked pepper on top.

A little bit of lime juice here and there.

This is as good as you ever get in Italy.

I'm Jacques Pepin and this is, "Fast Food My Way."

Happy cooking.

I'm doing a gratin of pasta and I'm using penne today.

The type of gratin that my mother used to do when I was a kid.

The penne need another couple of minutes to cook.

She used to mix ham in it or if we had a roast, like a roast of pork, even a roast of beef, she would cut it into small piece and add it to it.

That was really our main course.

With that, we're going to do a white sauce, a little bechamel like, which I'm going to start now.

Need a couple of tablespoon of butter in there and about half of the amount of flour.

So only one tablespoon of flour.

You wanna do a really, really light bechamel, very liquid because the pasta will still absorb it.

And with this, we have ham that I have here that I can put in there, diced ham.

I mean now I say that replace my roast, we're going to put some corn in it.

And again, you could use different type of vegetable, but corn is one of my favorite.

If it's around, I use it, you know?

Here it is.

And then of course, even in that gratin of pasta, I've used leftover salad even, you know?

That get, or spinach or stuff like this.

Peas, peas are great in there.

If you have nice peas like this, that would be good.

But as I say, again, other type of vegetable would be great too.

You have a beautiful color already.

Then zucchini, and the zucchini you can cut them into about half inch pieces, would be about fine.

Now again, in that type of gratin, the proportion are not absolutely essential.

You can have more pasta, a bit less vegetable or the reverse.

For me, I have at least as much vegetable as pasta, maybe even more vegetable.

That would be plenty here.

I have my butter, it's about melted here.

So I need one tablespoon of flour that I put here.

That's your base.

Mix it together, whisk is the best for that.

And of course right away the milk, I have two cup of milk here.

So that will be a really light, very light bechamel.

And that has to come back to a boil.

Put a dash of salt in it, cracked pepper.

And all you have to do is to wait for it to come back to a boil.

I'm gonna check on the pasta again.

And you don't have to use penne.

You know you can use another type of pasta here.

That's about fine.

For that type of dishes, you don't really want to do a penne too al dente or any type of pasta, because at that point it'll absorb all of the liquid that you have in there and the thing form into a block.

So that pasta should be cooked.

Not mushy, but I mean cooked.

Not really the way you do it when you saute it, you know al dente.

So I'm gonna drain it here.

Okay, and that can join our vegetable.

Here we are, and I am going now to grate a little bit of cheese to put in there.

And I like Swiss cheese and Parmesan cheese.

And the Swiss cheese, Emmental or Gruyère, this happened to be Gruyère.

The Emmental is the one with the hole, the Gruyère, the one without the hole.

But you know, you can also use a Jarlsberg or another type of a Swiss cheese if you want to, this is a bit richer.

So here we go, I have about half a cup maybe that would be plenty for that.

That I'm going to put directly with my vegetable here.

I am gonna put cracked paper in there.

I can see the white sauce is boiling.

Just pick it up on time, one boil is enough.

And you can see at that point that the texture of it is like oily.

This is exactly the way you do a bechamel, whether you do it thick or thin.

In that case, one tablespoon to two cup of liquid give me about one and a half teaspoon per cup of liquid.

When you do a thick bechamel as the base of a souffle, you can go to three tablespoon, which is nine teaspoon for the same mixture but very thick to do a souffle or other thing.

A bit of cream in there, for richness.

Okay, now I put my cheese here, the bechamel goes right in there, can mix it here and it goes into the gratin dish.

I think it's gonna be nice.

And we fill up the gratin dish, this is about six cup.

You need 6, 8 cup here for this.

You can always do an extra little gratin for yourself on the side.

Bit more of the juice.

You want it pretty wet, that's it.

Parmesan cheese there.

And that's ready to go under the broiler.

Now, if you do that ahead and you can do that ahead, then it cool off, then you put it into a hot oven, like 425 degree and it's gotta stay there 25, 30 minute that it's time for the thing to get hot inside and brown on top.

If you just finish it as I did, the whole thing is hot.

It can go directly under the broiler for three, four minutes.

(mellow music) This is bubbly out of the oven, so you wouldn't wanna serve it right away.

Let it rest a little bit.

While this rests, I'm going to do a nice salad in a very special way.

I do some hot salsa here.

But you can buy your salsa at the market.

You can buy your salsa in can too.

There is some several ones.

Choose the one that you like the hotness of.

And this is the base of the dressing.

So into this I'm putting some balsamic vinegar.

You could actually put the regular vinegar, it's fine.

A bit of pepper, and salt, and olive oil.

And that dressing, you know, I have served this also with like a grilled fish for example.

Or even do a salad with, a chicken salad goes well with it.

So any of these could be done with that dressing.

I'm gonna put a bit of cilantro in there.

Okay, and the salad that I choose today is the treviso.

You have the radicchio, which is round, radicchio means red, basically in Italian.

But in Europe we call radicchio the Treviso, which is a town in Italy or Verona, Verona is another town.

So one is round, the other one is long like this.

But either one will do.

And I have some beautiful romaine lettuce here that will make a mixture of both.

You wanna cut that into a couple of inches.

This, of course, this one has been cleaned, so I'm gonna put that in there.

And you know, the mixture in your salad also is up to what you find at the market.

Always follow the best that you can find at the market, that's what I do.

So here you want to toss this.

You know, usually you would want to toss that not too long ahead, although that salad is a little tough and can withstand being there for a little while.

And that basically, you know, put that in a nice, beautiful bowl here and it'd be a great salad.

Quite, actually quite spicy because of the salsa.

And now the first course of the meal, I'm going to do some little crab cake.

I was at my friend Marty Travers this spring.

She live in Connecticut next to us.

And I go to her house I say, "I'm gonna cook."

She said, "I have nothing to cook."

I said, "Let me look in the refrigerator."

In the refrigerator, find some crab meat like this, as you see.

So I set out that recipe for her and here it is.

This is really nice large (indistinct), very good quality here, and quite tasty.

So a little bit of scallion I'm going to put in there.

You can put chives also if you want or scallion.

Again when it's the summer I go into the garden and pick up a handful of herb, you know?

Garlic, so you wanna crush your garlic, you wanna bring it to the end of your board here.

So a puree of garlic here.

We may have a little too much garlic, but I like garlic, Tabasco and mayonnaise.

We put in there like two, three table spoon of mayonnaise.

Okay, and then with this, a dash of salt and some bread crumb.

So I'm going to do some bread crumb here with your regular sliced bread.

Cut it into inch dice, doesn't really matter that much.

And with a little machine like this, it's a cinch to do this.

Let's see.

(motor grinds) here I have, and you see with a couple of slice of bread, I have a lot of breadcrumb.

Again, I insist in telling people that to use fresh bread crumb is very different than the dry one.

It's not that you cannot use the dry one, it's only that the dry one, a slice of bread in the food processor like that will give me a cup of fresh bread crumb.

If that cup of bread crumb, I do crouton with it, put it in the food processor.

I have about three tables full of bread crumb.

Big, big difference.

It's not that you cannot use it, you have to be aware that the dry bread crumb is much more concentrated.

There is much more bread in there.

So I will put a little bit of of cilantro in there.

Here we are, and we're going to do the patty with this.

Now the patty, I'm going to bread the patty and to bread them, I'm going to use the breadcrumb also to bread them but with something else in it.

And I'm putting some sliced almond.

You can get sliced almond, or slivered almond, or whole almond for that matter.

You know you get it, actually the can one are very fresh because being vacuum packed, they don't get rancid.

Okay, this is going to be for, to put the crab meat in it.

So here we are.

Now we're ready to use it.

You can of course do that ahead, you know?

I mean, you can do it the night before.

Prepare your crab meat and saute them at the last moment.

See, I like that recipe because there is a lot of crab.

I am going to put a bit of olive oil in there.

You could put some butter if you want, but this is fine.

And let's see now, 1, 2, 3, 4 about that size.

So gently, I pack them gently.

Turn them upside down.

I don't want them to be too tight either, you know?

I like it kind of airy.

So, this is not quite hard enough but I have that one to do.

The second one, third and fourth one, maybe another piece here.

There's so many restaurants where you get crab meat.

Some are much better than others, and often it has to do of course with the quality of the crab meat.

But also the fact that it's not too worked out together into a paste that you have large piece of crab meat.

I used to do crab meat cake when I was with Howard Johnson that's many, many years ago.

Actually, that's where I get introduced to crab meat cake.

It was during my American apprenticeship.

Okay, so this would be, of course, the main course.

You can serve two of those per person.

But certainly one of those as the first course is going to be more than enough.

Okay good.

And you know there is different type of sauce that you do with it.

Again, I would do sauce with mustard for example, mixed with mayonnaise, with different type of herb.

Or then what I'm going to do here with some ketchup, I have organic ketchup here.

Some wasabi, I'm going to put in it a bit of lime juice and some chive.

Okay, my mayonnaise is fine here.

We find organic ketchup now in the market, which is great.

I can even put a little bit of Tabasco in there, actually along with this.

So your wasabi, you can't get it in past like this or you can get it in can.

Actually, the one in can tend to stay longer if you have to keep it in your cupboard.

This one, usually after it start you have to keep it in your refrigerator.

Bit of lime juice.

Whoop, that's it, some chives.

I think that I'm going to be ready to turn those things over.

You have to be very gentle with them.

And I'll go underneath.

You need a wider thing than what I have here.

And it's going a bit too fast here.

Now this one is broken so I'll take it for myself.

Basically, I would rather have it like that than too tight.

Okay, we do a nice mixture here of the sauce.

You could actually use a whisk to do that, would make your life easier.

That's good, a bit of chives in there for look and for taste.

And I can serve this in a bowl next to it with about that consistency.

If however I want to put it around then I want to dilute it a little bit, and you want to dilute it with a bit of water.

To do more of a sauce and less of a mayonnaise like... A nice platter like this.

And maybe I'll put that directly here.

Actually, I can put it all the way because that's going to fill up.

Can always have some extra one to serve too.

And now they're ready to go.

Now I have a flex flexible thin one.

That's what you want to be able to go underneath, especially with those that I say, they're quite delicate.

I turned it on the other side.

The other side is nicer, that's what I'm going to use here.

Three, and the fourth one here is kind of a mess.

I'm gonna turn it the other side and it'd be perfectly fine here.

So here we are, that piece is for the chef.

Maybe a piece of extra chive on top.

And that's it, we're ready to eat.

Have the crab meat, my big salad here.

And now it's time to serve the pasta.

We have a lot of pasta for four here.

That's it.

And with our menu today, I think a nice crisp chardonnay.

This one from Napa Valley is going to be perfect.

So I'm going to be enjoying a glass of it before I move on to the dessert, I'm going to make macaroon for you.

Macaroon is a very home dessert like thing and I like to make big macaroon.

And it's very easy to do as I'll show you here.

I use canned almond paste.

You can use marzipan also.

The marzipan is a bit sweeter and a bit creamier in taste, but this is eight ounce of almond paste.

And into that you put about three quarter of a cup of sugar.

Mix it a little bit.

(motor roaring) We're going to put egg white in it.

Now, for this you need a very large extra egg white.

I have two here because one sometime is not enough depending on the size of your egg white.

So let me put one first and see what happen.

(motor roaring) A little more.

That's it, just enough for the mixture to come together.

Okay, that's all there is to it.

Remove your knife.

And I have enough mixture here to do about a dozen large macaroon.

Start by dividing them this way.

You may have to change the shape, or that is the size if you don't have enough.

Then you can turn them a little bit so they are smooth.

You can even wet your hand for that, you know?

This one is bigger over there.

Okay, that's it.

You want to make them a little flatter and you can use a wet paper towel like this.

It doesn't stick to it just to get them more of a flat shape, you know?

And that's about all there is to it.

You put that into the oven about 375 degree, about 15, 20 minute.

And you have beautiful macaroon, which I have right here.

And the macaroon, the way they are served conventionally it is with jam in the middle.

Sometime you can serve them with ice cream too.

I like them the old style with apricot jam in the center.

So what you do, you spread a little bit of your apricot jam here.

This is the way we used to buy it in baking shop or rather patisserie in France, you know?

And you glue them together this way and that's a large macaroon, it's enough for a dessert.

You can serve it like this or you can put a little bit of cocoa powder on top of it.

I used to see them in the window like this, all black.

And some other on the other side would be all white being spread with the white sugar.

It could be one or the other.

Usually you wouldn't do both with the same one, but that's fine.

So the large macaroon like that, even cut in half it's quite large.

I am sharing my recipe with you so that you can share it with your friend and your family.

Happy cooking.

(mellow music) Hmm.