- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

Happy anniversary, Papa.

Where are you taking Mom for dinner?

- [Jacques] I'm taking her right into the dining room.

- [Claudine] Papa!

- And then afterward I'm washing all of the dishes by myself.

- Well, actually that is pretty romantic.

- We are starting with a nice hearty black bean soup, in honor of your mom's Cuban roots.

And then a filet of sole poached with shallots and vermouth.

- [Claudine] With cucumber-filled cream puff cases.

She loves that dish.

- [Jacques] And for the dessert, a chocolate espresso souffle with a rhum creme anglaise sauce.

- Well, what can I do to help?

- Well, you could start by setting up the table for three, if you'd like to join us?

- I thought you'd never ask.

- Join us for a special anniversary dinner- - Next, on "Jacques Pepin Celebrates!"

- Good.

- Yeah.

- Today, we're doing a special menu for Gloria.

♪ Happy anniversary, happy anniversary ♪ - For me too, then.

- I hope so.

- Yes.

So we're starting with a soup, which is called a black bean soup Augier.

Augier is Gloria's maiden name and her father being from Cuba, we worked out that recipe.

So when you use beans like that, the first thing you do, you put them on a thing and kind of work them through to pick up the bad one.

And then after that, what you would want to do first, of course, is wash them in the water and start cooking them.

Or then you can soak them a little bit like this.

Now, if you soak them overnight, which is not really necessary, sometimes they start fermenting even.

So that's why I rather soak them one, two hours.

The longer you soak them, however, the less amount of liquid you're going to use in the cooking time.

So you have to watch out how long you soak them.

You see the discoloration in the water already?

- Mm-hmm.

- So we put that directly to cook.

Claudine, you can put the potato, onion, tomato, thyme in it.

And I'm putting chicken stock.

- Potatoes.

- That's it.

- [Claudine] But don't you always start beans in cold water?

- Well, this is pretty cold.

And then they've been soaking.

- You said- - Yes, yes.

Otherwise, it's true.

It's true, you're catching me again.

- No.

- Okay.

- You had told me that, 'cause I started them in boiling water once and they never cooked.

- They never cooked.

The salt, thyme.

And what we're going to do here, Gloria loves cilantro.

We're gonna keep the top part of it to serve with the soup and the bottom part of it, we'll put them in the soup.

Yeah, this is the stem.

So that comes to a boil, and you wanna boil it gently for a couple of hours, which is what I have here.

Now, you could serve it as such.

What I like to do, however, is to take a little bit of it and emulsify it so it gives a beautiful velvet texture to the soup.

Why don't you emulsify this a little bit?

Not too much, huh?

- No.

- And in there now we want to put some garlic.

(blender whirring) Vinegar, Tabasco.

That should be about fine.

I wanna chop the garlic for you there.

- Okay, so I'm putting some oil in here?

- You wanna put a good olive oil at the end like this.

Your garlic, Tabasco.

- [Claudine] Yes, please.

- A bit of vinegar.

You do that at the end.

That comes back to a boil, barely, you know, because of the garlic.

Maybe a bit thick, can add a dash of water.

So we can stop it, actually, that type of soup is probably better if it's been cooked a few hours, you know?

It kind of develops taste.

On the garnish, however, we put some chopped onion.

(knife chopping) The sharper your knife, of course, the less your tendency to cry.

It is the compound of sulfuric acid, which tends to sting your eyes.

And then we want to cut some banana.

- [Claudine] Sure.

- This- - I look like a giant with these tiny bananas.

- The best way of cutting that, you cut it across like this, then you turn it around.

You do that for a tomato, for an egg salad, you know?

And then it's cut both ways here.

You see?

It's nice and fluffy here.

But then at the end, what I want to do here.

Well, when you do that, you know, you have a big cornbread or something like that and that's all you eat.

With a salad, you know?

So a little bit of your garnish on top.

- [Claudine] I think the bananas will just sink.

- No, put them on top.

And then I like to add a little extra zip at the end, you know, a dash of vinegar and the olive oil on top.

And this is really delicious.

Here we are- - That is just beautiful.

- Our black bean soup Augier.

Okay.

So there I have about a third of a cup of water here.

There is nothing in it.

And the same amount of flour.

I'm putting a dash of salt, one egg, a little piece of butter.

I'm doing a dash of pate a choux here, cream puff dough.

And this is going to be used to do little shells, little shells to put cucumber to serve with the sole.

So when this comes to a boil, you know, which is about now.

- In the meantime, do you want me to start cutting this up?

- Yeah, you can cut it where the segments are, that's good.

You wanna drop this in one shot in there and stir it with a sturdy spoon like this.

And it will form.

- Whoa, I missed it.

- Yeah.

- I looked away for just a second.

- And it forms, you know, it forms into like modeling clay, you see?

- Mm.

- That's right.

- It looks like mashed potatoes.

- Yeah, a little bit.

But this is actually what we call the panade, you know?

So I wanna put that in a little bowl.

Yeah, I have an egg to put in there.

If you put your eggs in this, this is too hot, it's going to cook your eggs.

So if you cook, if you set up the protein in the egg or the egg white, which is what you need, then of course your pate a choux is not going to work.

So this has cooled off a little bit.

Put my eggs finally in there.

Okay.

And now it's getting, there, it's tightening.

Yeah, that's it.

Okay.

So here we are.

This is ice cold.

You can take a little bit of this.

You don't really need more than, like, a tablespoon like this, not even a tablespoon.

The best way is really to use your finger.

'Cause it's cold, it's going to stick.

And then we'll put that into the oven.

- Okay.

- We put that in the oven directly.

Thank you.

So that's going to be a little shell that we're going to serve as a garnish with the fish.

So next I'm going to clean up the fish.

We're going to take the skin and the filet out.

You go in the center here.

Yeah, go in the center here, up to the head.

But I put my knife flat on the central bone.

Okay, but there will be four filets.

Now I'm going to remove the skin here.

And you see, again, use my knife flat, use that in a kind of jigsaw fashion.

Remove that very thick, heavy skin.

Four filets.

- All right.

- Good.

We're gonna cook that in a pan.

You wanna take a tablespoon of butter and butter up the bottom of that pan, please.

- Okay.

- I'll give you a bit of shallots here.

(knife chopping) Okay, shallots, you want to give me the- - [Claudine] The perfectly diced peppers.

- The perfectly diced pepper there on top.

You have a bit of thyme for me?

Fresh thyme would be great on this.

- [Claudine] Fresh.

- [Jacques] Bit of salt, dash of pepper.

- [Claudine] Is that enough or do you want more?

'Cause thyme is relatively strong.

- [Jacques] That's strong, that's fine.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- And this, of course, you can do that until you're ready to use it.

I wanna put a piece of paper to cook it on top.

- Are you gonna do it on paper (speaks French)?

- And I'm putting there about three-quarter of a cup of white vermouth, you know, a dry vermouth.

And just a piece to cover the top here.

You can remove that, thank you very much.

- Yep.

- I fold that in four.

And I go in the center here.

And I need a piece like this.

Because what it does, you know, this, first you don't have a cover which is going to fit that type of shape.

- Okay.

(laughs) Let's pretend we used a different pan.

- Okay, now, look, I butter half of it.

I'll go back to your question.

Fold it in half.

Both sides are now buttered, you know?

- All right.

- When you're in a restaurant, you must keep that piece of paper the whole evening.

You poach the fish, you cover that, then you use it again, you know?

- [Claudine] Oh.

- It fits any type of configuration.

Next time I have a big fish, it's bigger or a big tray, or a whole striped bass.

I cut a piece of fish, which- - A piece of paper.

- A piece of paper, rather.

And this boils and go against the paper and falls back on it like a hot house.

So it's to a strong boil now, as you can see.

All right, so it's ready to go into the oven.

All right.

Claudine, so now the garnish of the fish are those little football cucumbers.

So let's do a couple of those.

- Okay, here you go.

- You have a cucumber there.

What we do there is just cut it, let's see, that size in about fours.

And then we have to do what we call "tournee," to turn them in a football shape.

First, you remove, and doing a little bit of that shape, you remove the seeds.

Now you cut the least amount on the other side, you know, with the point of your knife.

That's plenty.

- Good.

- So.

What we want to do with that is to blanch them.

- Mm.

- So you put that into boiling water.

You know what I wanna blanch, I wanna blanch some parsley also.

- Okay.

- So give me a couple of large leaves of parsley.

We're going to put it just to blanch it, you know, in boiling water so it gets soft.

You know, I'll put them in there so it keeps them green, then we can dry them out, put them as a garnish on top of the fish.

- Oh, that'll be very nice.

- So this has to come back to a boil.

And it has to boil for two, three minutes at the most.

Then we drain it out and then we're going to saute it with a bit of butter, salt, pepper on top of it.

The things are still hot here.

- Ooh.

- You know, we did it fast.

There are little holes, but, you know, it's nice- - Sorry.

- As a little shell.

Okay, you see the paper really closed it in, you know, for the steam.

- [Claudine] Does it sort of suck down?

- No, but it makes it very moist.

Now we have to do a sauce, right?

Okay, my sole is cooked now.

- Okay.

- Yeah, that's fine.

So it goes here.

And then two, three, four minutes more if you feel that the red peppers are not quite cooked.

- Okay.

- And then I keep it warm with that paper.

(Claudine laughing) - I'm taking the paper away.

- Okay.

You know what I need?

Is a little bit of tarragon, also.

- I will get you some tarragon.

- Can you get me some tarragon?

This, of course, you could say I can put that in the food processor.

You can, but the problem is that you have the skin, you know, like the skin of tomato or the skin here of a red pepper at that point.

So I have the natural juice here.

- You want some butter in there?

- We're going to put butter in there and maybe you're so good with the little machine there, you can emulsify that for me.

- I will.

(blender whirring) With these things, you just start off slow because if not, it'll splatter.

- Yes.

Also, you know, you can incline it also, so that your liquid- - Yeah.

You know what, I'd incline it this way.

- [Jacques] Yeah.

I learned from you.

(blender whirring) - [Claudine] Is that good?

- Yep.

And then I'll- - I love this thing.

- Arrange my garnish here.

About five, six per person, you know?

- This is very pretty, very elegant.

- Yes, it's quite elegant.

Now, this, which I kept warm with this on top.

So you want to arrange one of those on top.

You know, a blanched leaf there, which would be nice.

Maybe I have a couple of extra cucumbers here and this is it.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Delicious.

This is the sole mistral, poached with the little barquettes in choux pastry with cucumber inside.

And dessert today, is going to be a chocolate espresso souffle.

With an Armagnac creme anglaise.

So when you do souffle, time is of the essence, timing.

So, Claudine first is going to do... What are you doing here, explain?

- I'm putting coffee, espresso.

- I have a cup of milk here.

Yeah, a quarter of a cup, go ahead, of good coffee in there.

We're just going to do a very concentrated extract with that.

So you just stir in this.

- And I'm gonna cover it.

I guess you could just cover it and turn it off and just leave it alone, right?

- That's basically it, yes.

- All right.

- Yeah.

Because it was basically boiling.

So while this is steeping- - Steeping.

- We are going to do the creme anglaise and I have a cup of milk and a cup of cream in there.

And usually, this is hot, but when it's cold, I put a little bit of cornstarch directly into this when it's cold and you bring it to a boil.

- Mm.

- But when it's hot, you cannot add cold starch like this, undiluted starch to something hot otherwise- - [Claudine] 'Cause it's gonna make dumplings.

- It's going to form little dumplings, exactly.

So you want to dilute it and then I'll add it to you, you stir it.

Okay.

And this has to come to a boil.

That's going to give me a little bit of thickening in the creme anglaise so that I use less egg yolk in it.

We are going to have six egg yolk, six egg white rather, for the souffle.

People tend to lose egg whites leaving too much in the shell.

So by separating it this way, it's easier.

You go back and forth, you know, until it's totally clean.

You do that one.

- Yep.

- You're doing good.

You haven't broken anything yet.

- Shh.

- So here it is here.

I put a little bit of vanilla in there.

My sugar, or maybe I put half of the sugar here and the other half here.

So I have the greatest amount of the mixture here.

So that's because I have a large amount of mixture and a small amount of egg yolk.

By putting this when it's boiling, which is 212 degrees, at least at sea level, by putting this in there, it will bring the mixture to 180 degrees and it'll be cooked.

That comes to a strong boil.

And I see it thicken a little bit because of the corn starch.

- Oh, there it goes.

- And I put that directly in there.

(whisk clinking) - [Claudine] That's one you can't walk away from.

- [Jacques] No.

Okay, so you see, it makes it very easy to do a creme anglaise like this.

- [Claudine] Mm.

- In case there is little pieces left, we want to do this.

I can see that the thickening has taken place.

See, there may still be tiny pieces of eggs left here.

And stir it directly on ice.

As you can see the mixture thickens the spoon.

If I draw a line here.

- [Claudine] It coats.

- It doesn't get together.

That's coating the spoon.

And I have six egg whites here.

You know, sometimes when I'm not sure of my egg white, I feel that it's professional always do that, I put an extra egg white.

So let's see now before.

We have to be totally ready.

I have the chocolate here.

And do you think that thing is steeped now?

- I would think so, I hope so.

- So we put that in there and we can- - You wanna strain it, right?

- Directly into a double mesh strainer here.

(spoon tapping) That should be just fine.

The molds are ready?

- The molds are ready.

- I have two molds here, a quart each, which should fill up with about that amount of mixture.

You calculate 18, 20 minutes in your oven.

Creme anglaise should be cold, you have to calculate so that it's ready when the guests are ready to eat.

Okay, let's see that.

See, I have a little bit of deposit in the bottom, so.

Use about a third of a cup.

Go around like this, that's it.

- [Claudine] Mm-hmm.

- [Jacques] That's it, it's gonna get smooth.

- Yep.

- Go ahead, keep going.

- All righty.

- Now I put your yolk and that's going to thicken with the yolk.

So the egg yolk will thicken, you see?

- Yep.

- Okay.

So I beat my egg whites.

I start by beating it fast.

(whisk clinking) Because I want to break the whites so that they get liquid instead of just going around like a wet mop around there.

And then I start slowly.

You see, I lift up with one hand.

(whisk clinking) That's fine, Claudine.

That's beautiful.

- That's good?

- Beautiful and smooth.

(whisk clinking) Uh-uh!

The recipe's not going to work.

(whisk clinking) - [Claudine] Beautiful and smooth and caffeinated.

(whisk clinking) - [Jacques] You see, my egg white is almost ready.

(whisk clinking) And the eggs are cold, I like the eggs cold because I get a better texture in the egg white.

- [Claudine] Oh, really?

- See, that type of texture, thick like this?

Okay, put my sugar in there.

(whisk clinking) - Just dump?

- Go ahead, yeah.

(whisk clinking) I tighten the yolk, I tighten the egg white like this.

And I have that type of texture, which is pretty nice, you see?

- Mm.

- Holds a peak.

I put a little bit of that first to dilute my... (whisk clinking) You mix that with the whisk.

(whisk clinking) - [Claudine] Why?

- Well, the idea there is to go as fast as you can with the egg yolk, with the white, so that you don't break the white.

Often when you have a base which is thick like this, if you start with the spatula to fold it very gently, well, the point is that the mixture is so thick that it doesn't get into it.

So by putting some of the white, you lighten the whole mixture.

So this is a souffle without flour this one.

Or the base, usually, often the base of the souffle is pastry cream.

Now, let's see.

And then you can do that souffle a little bit ahead, you know?

I mean, not months ahead, but- (Claudine laughing) But you have to put it ready into your mold, ready to go into the oven.

- [Claudine] And you would leave it like this for maybe an hour or so before?

- Yeah, you could.

So that's ready now.

You can put it into the oven, yes?

- Okay.

- Okay, the creme anglaise is still a bit warm, but it's fine, so I can put a bit of Armagnac or cognac in it.

So this is basically the way you would want to serve your- - [Claudine] Could have taken that maybe off the little plate.

- And this is the Armagnac creme anglaise for the souffle.

Well, the souffles are ready now.

They crack on top a little bit.

And that's because of over-beating the egg white.

Does happen.

So a little bit of a decoration on top.

Here I am!

- Oh, wow!

- [Jacques] The souffle.

- Isn't that gorgeous?

- So.

- Wow!

- [Jacques] And I want it to be slightly, yeah, wet like this.

- Oh, look how beautiful that is.

- In the center.

It should be wet like this.

Here we are.

I'll give you a little bit of the Armagnac there.

- Mm.

- You know what she's gonna say?

She's gonna say "more, more."

- "More, more, more."

And we're ready to eat.

So, Claudine- - Not bad.

- Tell us a little bit about your soup?

- [Claudine] Well, my soup is a beautiful black bean soup Augier, named after you.

- Augier, to you, for your anniversary.

- [Claudine] Then we'll have the fish.

- Uh-huh.

- With the beautiful sole and the cucumbers.

- Yes, and it's a neat way to do those little shells, you know?

- Yeah.

- And, of course- - Souffle.

- Your souffle - It's beautiful.

- So what are we drinking with that?

- So happy anniversary, 34 years, look out.

Well, you know, with the first course I wanted to do a sherry.

- Sherry?

- A dry sherry because- - Oh, with that soup.

- With the soup, I really think it balances out the taste.

Sherry is great with black bean soup as well as asparagus.

- What is that, an Oloroso?

- Yes, it is.

And it's just a beautiful medium dry sherry.

Very nice stuff.

But for the fish and also with the dessert, I thought we would go with a white Burgundy.

- The white burgundy.

- Really, really pretty.

- With the chocolate.

People already have problems having chocolate.

- Ah, so they just eat it and enjoy it.

I think it'll be very nice.

Or you can go back to the- - Go back to the sherry.

- You can go back to the sherry, yeah.

- Well, thank you for helping me cook my anniversary dinner.

- Thank you very much for letting me stay for your anniversary dinner.

- Well, happy anniversary.

(glasses clinking) - Happy anniversary.

- Happy anniversary.

- And happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.