- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

You know when your father's a chef you learn from an early age that cooking and eating can be a great adventure.

- Your mother and I always encouraged you to taste everything even if you didn't want to eat it.

- Well it worked.

You definitely raised an adventurous eater.

- Then today's menu is perfect for you.

We start with a salted cod fish with potatoes and aurlees, a roast of pork is braised with exotic seasonings.

- [Claudine] Spicy celery cooked with chicken stalk and hot salsa make an unusual and tasty side dish.

- [Jacques] And to finish, a quick and easy plum cobbler.

- Wow, that's a lot of flavors in one menu.

- Right, you don't have to eat it all but at least taste everything.

- No problem.

Join us for a taste of the unexpected.

It's "The Adventurous Cook" next on "Jacques Pepin's Kitchen."

- Encore with Claudine.

Today our menu's an adventure.

The adventurous cook, we're doing what to start?

- Well, we're making a salt cod Pharaoh which I think is already pretty exciting and we're starting with a pork.

- Yes, a pork dish.

I'll have a large, beautiful piece of meat here.

We are gonna put some salt on top of it and pepper, and start to brown it.

- What... - Now, this is part of the back leg.

- [Claudine] That's what I wanted to know.

- It's what is called a top knuckle and unless you have that piece of meat, that piece of the back leg is going to be very moist but there is like a piece of top round, all the bottom round from the back leg is going to be dry.

So, there is different names throughout the country, this is the piece next to the shank and it's called a top knuckle, just above the knee.

Otherwise you can have a piece of shoulder, it's going to be moist, but the shoulder has more fat.

This is very lean.

So, we start browning it.

And we want to brown that for 8, 10 minutes.

And while it's browning we are going to move on the first course.

- Cod.

- The first course is Cod.

- Pharaoh.

- What is that?

- [Claudine] That's Pharaoh.

- This is Pharaoh.

This is our dog Pharaoh.

It is our dog... - It's really my mom's dog.

- Yes, he came from Portugal.

We find him on the beach in Portugal.

Him and his sister, tiny baby dog, so we brought him back to the U.S.

And it's about what, over 10 years ago, right?

- [Claudine] Yeah, Pharaoh's great.

- And so we name him after the town in Portugal that we find it which is Pharaoh, where of course they do a lot of salted codfish.

Specialty of Portugal.

And here I'm going to start with a little bit of olive oil and there, good I get it in.

We wanna saute this.

- [Claudine] Anything else we should put in there?

- Yes, this.

- This?

- That, now here, you wanna cut this?

- [Claudine] Okay.

- You wanna take the center of this, you know the hole, and then separate the rib.

Take the rib out, bang the seed out, and cut it into little dice.

Um, I'll have enough with half of that onion here.

It's very large.

Here, here.

Okay, here.

Good, and with that you know what?

We need some sliced garlic also.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- So, here we have onion, you know what?

- [Claudine] What?

- You slice the garlic, I'm gonna turn my roasted pork here.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Doing very well.

Doing well.

A little lower.

Good.

Oh, you're slicing with your special machine.

- Well, I know this is a dish that has to be done fast so I gotta go fast, so I'm trying to go fast.

I can go faster this way.

- You're doing very good.

- [Claudine] Except for when I get to the end part.

Then I get... (knife chopping) - Okay, there we go.

- Is that enough?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- All that goes in there and now up.

Wanna try this?

- Okay.

- This should go well because it's round at the end so you move, come back on itself, and don't put any on the floor.

Yeah, that's it.

Go ahead, more.

That's it.

Good.

- Okay, that's good.

- I'm proud of you.

Really proud.

Now look at this.

- This is big.

- He's a real big one, you know?

This is salted, you find that in store, you know?

- It's very stinky.

- Well, it's stinky, it's salted, you know.

We're gonna cut a piece of that.

This could stay around a year, you know?

- Really?

- The best one, I think some of the best one are from Portugal.

From Portugal and of course also from Norway.

I mean look at the thickness of this.

- [Claudine] Wow.

- This is like a very heavy one.

That's the whole cod which is in half and salted and put back out.

So, this of course has to be de-salted.

You can buy, the best quality though, a big one like this.

Otherwise you can buy them.

You may have seen them in store.

Usually from Canada or different parts and they are good too but not as good usually because they are small fishes, you know?

- [Claudine] Oh yeah.

- This has to go in water.

I don't have enough water here because it really has to soak in water and you change the water every three, four hours for like 24 hours.

- Do you leave the skin on or do you take the skin off or does it just... - Well, sometimes the skin is on, sometimes the skin is off.

It depends.

You can remove the skin after and after it's been soaked it's this way.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Otherwise you have to de-salt it a lot and then we cover it with cold water, bring it to a boil, and boil it for about 10 minutes and that's what we have here.

So to that extent there is nothing else, just the water and this and what we wanna do is to flake it at that point.

And you want to separate into flakes, you know?

And watch out in your hand if you have any bone here.

Pick up the bone, you know, you can feel it.

So, what we do, we continue with that in there.

I'm gonna put a little bit of Maderra in there.

About a quarter of a cup.

Put that on low heat, cover it, and we let, cook that about 10 minutes.

Okay, now gently, okay?

- Okay.

- Good, now let's see where my roast is.

- Oh, it smells good.

- The roast is nice all around, you know?

A very lean piece of meat and now we wanna do a special sauce to put inside and you wanna do that?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- Soy sauce.

- A bit of soy, that's right, that's plenty.

You wanna put ginger in it and the ginger you can get it, you can scrape it with a knife this way.

You can scrape it with a spoon, some people do it with a spoon, you know?

Which cuts on the side like this and in fact, you can do nothing at all, and just put it in there skin and all.

If you look at it and if it's clean under, there is some damaged parts.

You know here I have a bit of a damage but I may take it out but otherwise it really doesn't matter when you're going to elucify the whole thing, you know?

Now we need garlic in there.

- Garlic, I have ketchup.

- Okay.

- And I have, what do I have?

- A dash of... - Oh, Sherry Vinegar.

- Sherry Vinegar, yes.

That's it.

Oh my god too much, it's ruined, throw it out.

- Ha ha, no way.

And some five spice powder.

- Five spice powder, here you want this?

- No.

- The five spice powder you know, you find in different type of market.

Your hands are going to smell now.

- But they're gonna smell good.

- Yeah, they're gonna... - That enough?

- Let's see, go ahead put it in there.

A little more.

Okay, that's fine, so you're gonna elucify this.

You wanna put... - [Claudine] Oh, it smells good.

- Put water in there?

- I did put water in it already.

- Maybe a dash more water.

That's it.

Yeah, there is Anise in there, Badian which is the star Anise, and these different types of things and we use that a lot.

Good.

That's fine Claudine.

That's fine.

So, this is a very spicy type of mixture.

- Oh, it smells really good.

- Did you taste it?

- No, I smelled it.

- Now we're gonna put that on the pork.

- [Claudine] Oh, that's a great smell.

- Good.

And that will render a lot of juice too.

You can do that on the side.

We wanna cover this, that there.

I have another one here which has been cooking and has been reducing, and actually resting in the sauce.

After a while because this has to cook for about an hour now and after it's cooked for a good hour, yeah a good hour, because you brown it 10, 15 minutes, cook it an hour, and then it should rest a little bit before you slice it.

- Sounds good.

- And with this, what are we serving?

- Celery.

- Celery.

Let me see the celery we have.

- Tada.

- Tada, thank you.

- Welcome.

- Boy they are nice leaves, maybe you can use that as a garnish Claudine.

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- Put that on the side like that.

This is strong, those leaves of celery, yeah?

Here I get another one for you.

- Thank you.

- But, basically when you wanna cook celery and you don't, we don't cook celery very often, one thing people forget is that you should peel it like this, you see?

- Can you peel it kind of like... - Like what?

No, no, no.

You do that but it's different.

You're talking about like the way your grandmother does the, cut the blade which is Swiss shard but it's different.

In addition to that probably you won't use the end of it.

- Oh okay.

- But you use this and cut it into pieces like this.

You know celery's a nice vegetable.

People don't think of doing it on a vegetable.

And basically just wanted to show you the celery because when it's cooked there and what we have in there is the celery as we did and very simply we put some hot salsa.

Put a little bit of hot salsa, you buy it at the market, a bit of... - [Claudine] Garlic.

- Yes garlic, sliced garlic like this.

And a little bit of olive oil and that's about it, you know?

And a bit of chicken stock.

That's set in there.

But we do it a nice different vegetable and the red thing you have there is the salsa.

- [Claudine] That's a nice idea.

- [Jacques] We'll use that for the roasted pork I think.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Okay, so here are your vegetable.

Now, let me slice this for you.

- Okay.

- Do you wanna get me a platter?

- [Claudine] I have a platter.

- [Jacques] You do?

- Yes.

- Excuse me, I'll take this.

Use that for the pork.

- That looks really great.

It looks very moist, very tender.

- Yeah, if you have the right piece, or as I said then do the shoulder, the shoulder is really widely available.

Problem with the shoulder of course, it has much more fat than that piece would have.

So I put that on top, where are you putting this?

Here or where?

- Where?

I don't know, where am I putting that?

I was gonna put it at the end.

- [Jacques] Oh, okay.

- Like you do that traditionally in France, there's always like this big green at the end.

I guess it's not gonna... - Take it back.

- I'm taking it back.

'Cause I want it there.

- I think I like it at the end.

- Yeah.

- It's much, much better.

- I knew you would.

- Yes.

And this is our exotic roast of pork.

- [Claudine] With our spicy celery with garlic.

- Well, let's see if our fish is cooked now.

- All right.

- And it should be.

It's nice and moist.

- [Claudine] I'll get you a plate for that.

- And you know what you do Claudine, first explain to you there.

- Oh, we have to do potatoes on it.

- Yeah, we do potato.

See, we cook potato, use potato as another base and remember when you cook potato like this?

- [Claudine] You scrape.

- [Jacques] This is the way you scrape your baby.

You don't try to peel your potato this way.

Use your thumb and you scrape your potato.

- Or you can leave them with the skin on.

- That's true.

That's true.

For this one it'd be perfectly fine.

Um, this of course is cooked like 30, about 30 minutes to be tender.

You cut them into large slice like that because you want it to be like a cushion, you know?

You can prepare your potato ahead like this.

We are finished that up with olive.

I have Kalamata olives here.

With or without the pit.

They'll have the pit in it, you know to remove the pit, you crush it and the pit comes out.

- Yep.

Tada.

- Good.

- Perfect.

- By the time you finish mixing this, like five minutes before you have to serve, what you do is put your potato on top like this, just to warm your potato and then you cover it up and you wait five minutes, you're ready to serve.

Now we're ready to serve.

Potato are not warm but that give you the idea.

So, this become if you want, like a cushion.

You know, for each of the portion, you put underneath, that potato, that one, and that one, three slice of potato is more than enough.

You serve that on top and you wanna serve a little bit of, maybe a sprig of parsley on top?

- Sure, hang on.

Or some chopped or do you want a sprig?

- Yeah that's fine, or even nothing because it's green anyway.

What are you doing?

- [Claudine] Doing like cool restaurant things.

- [Jacques] Dirtying the plate all over.

- No, it looks nice.

Get out of here, it looks nice.

I don't make a mess.

- Okay, serve it before it gets cold.

- Okay, here you go.

- [Jacques] And this is our salted codfish Pharaoh.

- [Claudine] Let's go make desert.

- Let's go make desert now.

Very simple desert.

You're going to do a kind of crumbling thing with the plum.

See, you cut the plum, you see the side of the plum here?

You follow that line and you are just along the pit.

Usually.

See, along the pit here.

- [Claudine] Uh huh.

- [Jacques] You can take your thumb and remove the pit.

- [Claudine] Well, I'm gonna make the topping.

- [Jacques] Like this.

- Which has flour.

- Flour.

- And oatmeal.

- [Jacques] Flour, oatmeal.

- Sugar.

- Uh huh.

- I don't know if it has this much sugar in it.

Do you think it has this much?

- Close to, yes.

Yeah for the whole thing, yeah.

- [Claudine] Oh yeah, I guess so.

- [Jacques] About a third of a cup.

- Yeah.

And some pecans.

- Pecan.

- Butter, thank you.

- [Jacques] The butter.

- [Claudine] And some cinnamon.

- Cinnamon.

- And that's it.

- And cinnamon, that's it.

- That's it.

- Not too... Yeah, go ahead again.

Stop it.

Yes.

You need a dash of oil in there.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- Ready?

- That's it, you don't want it into powder, you know?

So there, okay we arrange that on top.

Help me to cut some of those here.

The apricot like this, you know, those are the dry apricots and you can put them on top of it, or around, or you want to arrange that maybe a little better than that.

All those going to be covered, you won't see it but... - Right.

- [Jacques] But it makes you feel good to know that it's arranged properly even if you don't see it.

Okay.

- [Claudine] I started but you know... - [Jacques] Push down those like this.

Should fill up your, your dish right?

- [Claudine] Mm hmm, I have one more.

- [Jacques] Boy this is just right calculated.

- [Claudine] Yes.

- When it's too many, have a piece, your other piece.

- Perfect.

- Now, we have everything in there?

Yeah, I think so.

Pour it on top.

- [Claudine] I don't know if this is crumbling.

- Yeah, it's fine.

That goes into a hot oven.

You put it, why do you put it on a cookie sheet?

- So in case it gets messy.

It's also easier for me to take it in... - To get it in and out.

You want me to help you open the door?

- Nope, I got it.

- All right.

- [Claudine] You can grab this one.

- Okay.

We're gonna serve that with a little bit of sour cream.

You can use yogurt or you can use nothing at all.

You can serve it by itself.

- [Claudine] Or I can grab this one.

- Yes.

Here it is.

- There you go.

- Okay.

- Here's a plate.

- You want a portion of this?

- Yes, I wanna see what it looks like on the inside now.

- [Jacques] On the inside.

Good, you see it's cooked... - [Claudine] It's nice and brown.

- It's kind of a little bit falling apart which is really what you want here.

- Yeah.

- A little bit of sour cream on top and you should eat at luke warm.

Luke warm is much better of course, it should not be cold.

And this is the plum cobbler.

(upbeat music) You know in France and even at home there is no great meal without finishing with cheese and here we are.

- [Claudine] I know, this is beautiful.

- We start with, this is a Coulommier, you know?

Colommier is like Brie and this is fresh milk cheese curdle and you have a flour, they call a flour happening on top of it.

This one here is a Pont L'eveque and the Livarot there.

The same process except it's washed all the time with salted water, get a much, much stronger taste, you know?

- [Claudine] I think I saw that in France.

- You've seen that, yeah.

Then you have, this is still not cooked, it's not processed, you know?

- Okay, so these are raw milk?

- Yeah, those again are the same type of family cheese also.

It's pressed and aged.

That's (speaking in a foreign language).

Those are another type of family of cheese.

We have one, two, three family of cheese here.

Then you have Bleu.

Bleu, there must be 30 different type of Bleu.

This one is actually from New Hampshire and then you go to cheddar, the real cheddar and this is going to be a cheese which has been pressed and aged, six month up to two years.

This is an old jack and again hard cheese which is hard.

- Wow.

- And which is gonna be aged also.

And then you French cheese.

All of those here, one, two, three, four are goat.

- Those are for me.

- The fresh goat cheese which is soft, this is semi soft goat cheese, this is one with ashes, you know, around edge with ashes and ashes in the middle.

- Oh, I've never seen that.

- And those are, I know, all of those... - [Claudine] Those are my favorite.

- This is the hard cheese, you know?

And all of that you can work out your cheese per family.

You can have only that type of family cheese, you can go by family, you can go by country.

The (inaudible) is really to pick up a minimum of three cheese, usually a soft cheese, a semi soft cheese, and a harder cheese, and maybe a goat in addition to create a family of cheese, you know?

If I do my family of cheese, I'm gonna pick of the Levion because I like very strong cheese like this and then I'm gonna put the oblichon right here.

You pick up the other two.

Two goats.

- Two goats?

- It has to be two goats.

You said.

- Yeah fine, okay, it has to be two goats.

So here we'll have a nice assortment of cheese and then you can have that with fruit if you want.

You can have that with nuts, that goes very well with it, and of course a very good bread.

- And of course... - Cracker, I like bread better.

- Of course a very good bottle of red wine.

- That's very good too.

- Uh huh.

- Well, we like to be adventurous in the kitchen but you should be adventurous in the dining room too.

And we are.

Wherever we travel we always eat the food that people prepare in different countries.

I always enjoy it too.

So, where are we at?

- Well, we have the cod Pharaoh which I think is great and it's really light and summery and this exotic roast of pork which is really just fun.

And it is adventurous I guess because it's got all the different spices in it.

- Different spice.

Makes it different.

- Yeah, it's really great but also the flavors go together which is really good.

- And the celery, I mean, you know we don't cook celery often and often with a bit of salsa you have in your kitchen and give it some picancy, you know it's nice.

And we have a beautiful tray of cheese, you know I'll drink that whole bottle of red wine with it.

And then we have the desert, the plum.

The plum with all the wonderful topping that you did on top.

- Yes.

- Right.

- And the wine.

- And the wine.

Have an Albarino here from Galizia in Spain.

The Albarino the type of grape there and it's very citrusy and all that and I'm going to have it first before the red and the red Claudine.

- I have Shiraz from the Hunter River Valley, an Australian wine.

And Shiraz is... - Something like Siraz here, call it Siraz, Shiraz in Australia, yes.

A very deep wine too and your mother and I had a great time in fact, when we were in Australia there.

So remember be adventurous in the kitchen.

You never know where it will lead but the surprise may be worth it.

I always have quite surprise with you and I love cooking with you.

- Me too.

- Until next time, happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.

(upbeat music)