- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

Growing up in New England, fall was always my favorite season.

- Seem like you used to say the same thing about winter, spring, and summer.

- Well, I'm an enthusiastic person.

And besides, New England in the fall is the most beautiful place in the world.

- You're right.

And today, we're going to do a special seasonal celebration.

We'll start with a creamy broccoli soup.

- [Claudine] Monkfish American simmered with vegetables is one of my favorites, served with a lemon-scented wild rice.

- And roasted caramelized pears flavored with Madeira are a classic full dessert.

It's time for the best season of the year.

- Join us for a fall colors feast, next on Jacques Pepin's kitchen.

- "Encore with Claudine."

(bright gentle music continues) - Today, we're cooking a fall colors feast, and we're starting with a broccoli cream soup with tapioca.

- With tapioca.

And you know what we're going to do, first is to put that here and cook the stem of that to do a julienne like this.

- Ooh.

- So you know, you can cut this into pieces to add to our soup, and I'm going to do a julienne with this.

And of course.

- [Claudine] And we peel, right?

- [Jacques] Before I do the julienne, you want to peel this, you know.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- You know, you take it sometime and you see the way that come out in long strip.

- And that's good 'cause it makes it all tender.

- Yeah, otherwise it's really tough.

Here, I give you that piece for you for your soup.

This, I can discard.

And this, I'm going to do a julienne with this.

So you want to cut this.

Here, here, here.

You know what a julienne is?

Thin cut into long thin strip like this.

- Ah.

- It was name for a woman in the 18th century called Julienne Darblay.

Now, we only say julienne, you know, but.

- Wow.

- So this will be the garnish for the soup.

And that, we put that in chicken stock for about 1 1/2, two minutes just to blanche it.

You can cut that any old way.

- I can only cut one way.

So I hope it's the right way 'cause there's only one way for me to cut.

- This is perfect, Titine.

- Good.

You want a half or a whole?

- The whole onion.

- Okay.

- I think six ounces.

We need all of this.

And during that time, while Claudine is taking her time with the onion, I'm gonna talk to you about tapioca.

I have two tapioca here.

The cassava root, it's a powder that they form back into little grain.

And years ago, I mean the tapioca that I used to have as a child was very tiny, tiny fragment.

And now, they have those pearl here and larger pearl here.

And you cook that in a lot of water.

It takes about four or five cup of water to cook this about at least 20, 25, 30 minute, depending on the size.

- Wow.

- And here it is when they are cooked.

You drain it out, you wash it in cold water, and you put it in cold water because it tend to stick.

But you see, like little pearl like this.

- Oh, wow.

- Little eggs.

Isn't that nice?

- It's beautiful.

- Okay.

'Cause julienne is now cooked enough.

This is our garnish.

And again, you know, you could do your soup by putting all of that, making a puree out of it.

But I think it's nice to do a garnish with the stem.

And you know what?

If you have a few piece of stem left in there, don't really make any difference anyway.

- Yeah 'cause it's all gonna get emulsified, so.

- Exactly.

- Smart.

- Okay.

Do you wanna put that in there, Titine?

- My onions too?

- Yeah, everything goes in there now, and that's all there is.

Good.

I'm putting this.

Dash of salt.

That's all there is in it, and it's very lean.

Okay, that's fine.

- Okay.

- Uncover it.

- Great.

- Good.

This has to come to a boil now.

And it has to boil, I would say a good 10 minutes.

- Okay.

- So during that time, let's do the dessert.

- Sounds good.

- And you see what we have here, we already have two pear, which are peeled.

So I would like you to peel one.

- Okay.

- You can have a vegetable, you want a vegetable peeler too?

- I have my own.

- You want that one?

- I don't know.

Do I?

- This is a Bartlett.

This is a D'Anjou.

You're being a smart aleck.

- Is there a trick in this one?

- No, it's not.

First, see, I put the side so it's flat.

- Okay.

- Then you start with a vegetable peeler.

- Of course, that means I can cut straight.

We'll see.

- Now, you see I turn it, I turn it round like this 'cause I follow the shape of the fruit.

The shape of the fruit is round, so I go round.

By the time I get to the neck, it's not round anymore, it goes this way.

So in addition to that, now, you want to take a melon baller or a measuring spoon, you know, one of those metal one, going to be fine.

Just to go and take the seed out of this.

Okay.

You don't have to go to the end completely.

You don't take the stem but at least that amount.

I'll let you do this after.

And during the time, here, I have a little bit of butter in there.

We are going to put some lemon juice here.

Here is some lemon juice.

A little more lemon juice in the butter.

What we want to do is to roll the pear in the lemon juice and a bit of butter.

Stand them up and sprinkle them with sugar.

Here we are, Claudine.

- That looks nice.

- And that's all there is.

We're going to roast them in the oven and they take quite a while.

I mean, like 45 minute or more in the oven.

- Okay, give me.

- Do you wanna put that in the oven for me?

- Yep.

- Thank you very much.

And it should create, I'm going to rinse my finger here.

It should create a bit of a juice.

And in the juice that we have from the oven, what we can do in there is to put a little bit of Madeira.

And I have some Madeira here.

- Okay, this one is pretty cool.

- Beautiful.

Do you have a plate for it?

- Yeah.

- That's nice.

You can see that those pear are cooked when you go like this and they are very soft in it.

People may say, "Well, I want them to hold more of a shape."

I cook them a little less and it's fine.

I would rather cook them more of them really cooked.

- [Claudine] I agree.

- Here we are, the fourth one here.

A little bit of Madeira in there.

This is a Mansle Madeira, which is pretty sweet.

You stir it.

That's very good.

During that time, I taste the Madeira.

- If you tilt this, then I can.

- Nice.

Here.

You don't need that hand, here.

You can leave the thing on the table.

Okay.

Look at that beautiful sauce there that we have in there.

- It is.

It's very caramelized.

I know you're gonna want, and I'm, yeah.

- We can make a little hole here and put this in there like this now.

- [Claudine] That looks nicer than what I was gonna do.

- [Jacques] You were going to do something great, I'm sure.

- [Claudine] Uh-huh.

- Here we are.

And those are.

- There.

- Our roasted caramelized pear.

(Cheerful music) Nice.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Let's work on the fish.

- Fish is good.

- Okay.

- Hmm.

- Maybe you move that out of the way for a second.

- Okay.

- And during that time, you can help me chop this.

Okay, I have leak here.

We're gonna saute the leak.

I have a bit of- - I'm just gonna start cutting, okay?

- Yep.

- Okay.

- You wanna chop it coarsely.

Normally, it should be not too, try with this one.

Chop because you want this.

No, not bigger than this, you know, - [Claudine] Don't tell me to try it, then you do it.

I could have done the carrot.

- Here you are.

I the give you the best knife here.

Celery, carrot, onion, leak, all of that is going to be saute first a little bit.

So a lot of vegetables.

And we're doing a monkfish here.

And the monkfish we call monkfish a l'Armoricaine style, which a very classic style in France, with tomato, a little bit of cognac or armagnac, a little bit of wine, tomato, tomato paste, herbs de Provence, a lot of vegetable.

And the sauce actually could stay in pieces like that or be emulsified.

I think we're going to emulsify a little bit.

Okay, that's smaller that that.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Okay, that's enough.

And we want to saute that for three or four minutes at least, maybe even five minutes before we put the rest of the ingredient.

We have three cloves of garlic.

I'll use one tomato here.

Okay, put like a good tablespoon.

Don't put it in the bottom because it's gonna stick.

- Okay.

- I'll put the tomato first here.

That's plenty tomato.

Here we are.

That's to go in it a little later.

Let's prepare all our stuff.

We can put a, yeah, a good tablespoon of tomato paste in it and put a little bit of herbs de Provence on top, a bit of cayenne.

I'll give you some garlic.

- Okay, yum.

I like tomato paste.

- I do too.

Here is the garlic.

- Look at that.

And Herbs de Provence.

- Right.

Here we are.

- Cayenne.

- Yeah, cayenne, be careful.

Cayenne is really.

- Like that?

- Yeah, that's fine.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- And a little bit of fennel seed.

- Nice.

- And actually, this is tarragon.

We're gonna put tarragon too.

- [Claudine] Mm.

- Tarragon goes well with it.

So that's a lot of different things.

- [Claudine] Sounds good.

- That's ready to go in there within a minute or so.

So you can bring back the fish.

- Okay.

- Okay.

I think I'm gonna put that in there.

Is that okay with you?

- That's good.

- Good.

- [Claudine] Gives us more room.

- Good.

And with this, we're gonna put a little bit of armagnac.

You can even flambe your armagnac if you want.

When you do do that- - But only if you want.

- Don't put your nose on top of it when you do this.

- Just to see if it's burning or not.

- White wine.

We have a sauvignon blanc here.

We want to have a dry type of wine.

A little bit of chicken stock or water, or fish stock for that matter.

- Oh, wow.

- This is the base now that we're gonna cook the fish on.

That should cook a couple of minute, dash of salt.

No pepper because I have the cayenne.

And maybe I cover that a minute.

- Okay.

Now, what about the fish?

- Look at that, this is monkfish.

You know, you first have that thick skin.

- Okay.

- A monkfish like this, I bet you, would be that big.

- Wow.

- The head, see, this is the whole basically monkfish.

The head will be bigger than the tail.

It's enormous, you know.

- Wow.

- Yes.

We call that baudroie in France or lotte.

So you wanna remove that.

When I was there, when I first came to this country, you know, and before you were born, we used to get that from the fishermen.

They used to give it to you.

That was really.

- The monkfish?

- Yeah, what they call trash fish, you know.

- Oh, wow.

- They didn't use it.

- Now, it cost a fortune.

- There you go.

- So here, you see that black skin is a bit strong, that black flesh rather on top of it.

So I'm removing this.

So you know what you can do?

- Hmm?

- That you try to remove a little bit of this one here.

This is practically clean.

Just maybe a little bit of this.

And we cut it into large piece.

Okay.

When you want to do this, you know, use your knife flat, almost flat like that.

And go.

- Why use this knife instead?

- You know, flat like this on top of it.

Check that in a bit.

I'm gonna cut that into large pieces like this.

One, two, three.

There is no bone in the center of this, you know?

Okay.

- That looks much better.

- That look much better.

I think this has cooked enough.

It could cooked a couple of minutes more.

But you see, I have the whole base there.

- [Claudine] Do you want me to put the fish in?

- It's nice, and I think you can put the fish in here, Titine.

All right.

I put salt in there, right?

- Yes, I think so.

- Always taste.

Yeah, I did.

- Okay.

- Okay, good.

Now, you have a wet towel here?

- Yes, I do.

Here you go.

- Throw my hand.

And now, I think what we should do, you know, with this, we're going to serve a rice, but not a conventional rice.

We're going to serve a wild rice.

- Mm.

- And, you like wild rice, yeah?

- I love wild rice.

- And here is the way it look.

We call it a rice, but it's a wild grass.

And especially the wild one that the Indian used to pick up, meaning it is very expensive.

Now, they grow quite a lot of it.

In any case, this here, you make it bloom so called or blossom.

3/4 of a cup of rice like that, I put in four cup of boiling water.

And those four cup of boiling water give you this.

- Wow.

- And I drain it.

See, I have a little bit left but almost no water.

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- And that, you see the way it's split open?

- [Claudine] Hmm.

- [Jacques] It split open because it blooms.

- That's what bloom means.

- At that point, you are ready to use it.

Actually, I don't even have to cook it that long, but this one still need some cooking.

So what we are going to do to saute a little bit of onion.

Here, with a dash of olive oil there.

- I'm zesting.

- You are zesting?

Oh, very good.

Use your thumb, that's a good technique.

- I am.

- I need more onion.

Maybe that much.

And I want the onion to saute to brown a little bit with?

- Pine nuts.

- Pignoli nuts, pine nuts.

- [Claudine] Pine nuts.

- Okay, this- - Is that enough zest?

- Yes, that has a lot of taste, you know.

- I like the taste.

- And remember, totally different than the juice.

The juice first is citric acid.

And if you use the juice, let's say if you do a custard and use the juice, citric acid is going to break down your sauce or do all kind of crazy thing for you.

But here, the skin itself, you know, in the skin in the zest, you have all the taste but no acid.

This is jalapeno pepper, you know.

- Hmm.

- And you know, I touch it like this and, wow, this one is hot.

- That one is.

'Cause sometimes they're not.

- I'm putting a piece like that.

That's enough.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Sometimes you have one and it doesn't really have any taste at all.

So you put more.

It's always a good idea to taste it.

And that I cut very fine.

- Don't look at me while you're cutting.

- Of course.

Now, this and this.

All that goes in there.

Now, look at that.

It's nice in there.

- [Claudine] Oh, wow.

- Okay.

All of that mixture there.

- That's beautiful.

- Do you wanna give me the rice?

- Sure.

Okay.

- You can put it in there.

Okay.

Here, you stir it.

Put a little bit of salt in it, and I'll give you some chicken stock and a little bit of water.

(pan sizzling) And at that point, that will still absorb that amount of liquid, it will take 20 to 30 minutes to cook.

- How's that?

- Bring it to a boil.

That's it.

Let's cover it.

And now, let's see our soup.

- Okay, soup's gotta be ready now.

- The soup's gotta be ready now, ooh.

This is nice and tender.

Yeah, you see it's nice and... So you wanna do it here?

- [Claudine] Perfect.

(immersion blender whirring) That's probably good.

- A little more.

(immersion blender whirring) Give you a little bit of cream.

(immersion blender whirring) Good.

Two, three tablespoon of cream, you know, if you want.

- Is that enough?

- Let's taste it, yes.

Oh, let's add salt.

Give you a clean spoon to taste it.

Is it good?

- Hmm, that's really good.

- And we can put our garnish in it and our tapioca.

- Oh yeah, I forgot about the tapioca.

- Yes, well, tapioca, you know, it's going to be beautiful.

It's like little pearl, you know.

- [Claudine] Oh, that is awesome.

- I have more than enough here.

Let's see what it look like in there.

- Okay, ready?

- Yeah.

Can you see the tapioca?

- Yeah.

It looks like clear, they look clear.

- [Jacques] Yeah, they're transparent, yeah.

- [Claudine] Oh, that looks really nice.

- Okay.

Here we are.

This is our broccoli cream with tapioca.

(cheerful music) So now.

- We do the fish.

- You know what, we may need that again.

Won't you rinse this out?

- Okay.

- And let's see the fish here.

That rice is not cooked, but I have another one here, which is cooked.

Put this way.

See the rice here?

- Yeah.

- The way this one absorbed.

- you could have brought it over.

- See?

It blossomed even more.

- Wow, it gets almost curly.

- Yeah, it does.

Okay.

- Okay.

- So let's remove the fish now it's cooked.

So you want this thing.

- [Claudine] Okay, here's the plate just for the fish, right?

- Okay.

I remove the pieces of fish.

I think you should give me something to put the liquid in to emulsify.

- Oh, okay.

- Here we are.

Yeah, the fish is quite firm, you know, and it has been boiling at least seven, eight minutes here.

Those peas.

- Hmm.

- Here we are.

- Okay, you're gonna have to put the peas in the rice too.

- Okay.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

Thank you very much.

- 'Cause that's why they'll just get a chance to warm up.

- I think that's maybe a bit small.

You a bigger one?

- Yep.

- Yes.

This sauce is very nice this way too.

And I think we'll put a little piece of butter in it.

- How about this one?

I hope that's big enough.

- Yeah, it's big enough.

- [Claudine] Oh, it smells so good.

- Okay.

- Give me my machine.

- You want to emulsify it?

- Yes.

- I'll give you a little piece of butter.

(immersion blender whirring) And I'll arrange it on that tray.

(immersion blender whirring) I want you to taste it.

(immersion blender whirring) - How's that?

That's good, right?

- Yeah, that's beautiful.

Here we are, Claudine.

Here.

- Thank you.

- Hmm, add a bit of salt.

Stir it.

I can taste the tarragon in it, but I have a little more to put on top.

- Oh, that's wonderful.

- Okay, let's serve that.

Like this.

With a bit of tarragon on top.

- Okay.

Just on top?

- Well, I was going to chop it, but.

- Okay, you can chop it.

I'll deal with the rice.

- You'll deal with the rice?

- I'll deal with the rice.

- Okay.

- You chop it and put it on there.

- Yes, ma'am.

Tarragon on top of the lotte a l'Americaine.

Look at that, beautiful.

- Just wanna make sure that you can see the peas because they're so pretty.

- [Jacques] Okay.

- [Claudine] There we go.

- Good.

- Good.

- So this is our wild rice with pignoli nuts and peas.

(bright music) This is your monkfish American.

This is our fall colors feast, and I'm ready to eat.

What are we going to eat today, Titine?

- Well, we have this great cream of broccoli soup- - [Jacques] Looks great.

- [Claudine] With this julienned broccoli and the tapioca pearls.

- The little pearl there, it's beautiful, is it?

- Looks so beautiful.

- [Jacques] Yeah.

- [Claudine] And the monkfish a l'Armoricaine is just wonderful.

- Yes, we have the wild rice here, which is not rice but it is wild rice.

And finally.

- [Claudine] We have the pears.

- [Jacques] The roasted pear, yes.

- Yeah.

- With a little bit of Madeira at the end.

- It's very elegant.

- It helps, yes.

And with that, we're going to drink.

I have a beautiful chardonnay from South Africa here.

- Oh cool.

- This is really nice.

And I'm going to have that.

You could have that with your soup and the fish.

It would work well.

But the wine that you choose there would work well too.

- I have a Syrah from the Santa Maria Valley.

- Yes, and Syrah, those Cotes du Rhone type of wine, which are fairly, in a bit that a good taste of plum and berry or whatever.

- So it's nice for a fall foliage kind of thing.

- Yes.

So we call this our fall color feast, but this food would be good anytime of the year.

It's always good to cook with your family, and it's always good to cook with you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- And happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

(upbeat bright music)