- Today we're going to do
a very interesting meal. A kind of chic, townhouse meal. Type of thing you do in the city. Artichokes, you know, it's kind of always a bit fancy for me, very fancy food. It's high in potassium, in fiber, very, very low in calorie. We're going to do that
with a sauce ravigote, we call, which is a very zesty
type of interesting sauce that you can use with fish
or with other thing, really. And with that, we are going to do calf's liver. Calf's liver saute with a caper sauce. So, the first thing that
I wanted to show you, the artichoke. When you get artichokes like this, I would go to the market and probably pay a
little less for this one. As you can see, the end of the leaves are
already yellowish a little bit, but it doesn't matter,
we're going to trim it. In fact, I buy it even yellower than that if I know I'm going to
do artichokes bottom, removing all of those leaves. And then you end up paying
it half of the price and you're going to do the bottom anyway, or the heart. What you do here, cut approximately a third of the top. You have to have a very
sharp knife on this, because it's very tough. And now, on the outside, you start at the bottom. You trim each of the leaves
at least halfway down, because you don't want
to puncture your finger with the pricker at the end of the leave when you're eating the artichoke. So, this is a nice way to do it. And artichokes are relatively expensive, and now they pick them up
when the season is right, and also look for bargain because, how they say, when they start getting
a bit darker like that, they tend to lower the price. And this is the time, usually, I go and buy artichokes. So now, this is about clean. See all around? I want to use the stem also. So I just cut the end of
the stem and trim it around. Remember that it's very fibrous,
the outside of the stem, but you trim it this way, then the rest is really eatable. So we can have, this one is slightly
bigger than the other one, but we have our four
artichokes and that of course, we can prepare that ahead. So what we want to do now,
is to put those to cook. I have boiling water,
a dash of salt in it, you drop them, and this will tend to
go up to the surface, you know, so what you do put, I have a sieve or something heavy enough to push them down with
a bit of weight in it, so that it hold that
under the water, you know? If this is not enough weight, I could put like, my plate on it or anything, just to push that into the water. You really don't want
to cover the whole thing because they will tend to
turn yellow if it's covered. They have to cook so many
minute until they are tender. You pull out a leaf to find
out whether they are tender, about 40 minutes for that size, then you put them under cold water, to cool them off and
keep them green enough. And that's what I have here. When they are finished done in this way, you want to press all the water out of it, as much as you can as I have done before. What I've done with this
one is to take the center, do the leaf, which cover the heart, remove it and after take the choke out of it. This is one way of serving it. For example, here, if I press those things out so that I can put my finger in the middle, I will take the whole center and try to pull out that whole leaves. See that whole bunch of
small leaf from the center, which I have here. And now, can use that for garbage, here, the center of it. I don't know whether the camera can go right in the center of that thing, but you want to remove the choke, you know which is those pricking,
prickly type of a thing. And this is the classic way of serving. Now it's totally clean inside. And what I wanna do with this one now, what you would want to do, is to cut the stem, to serve it with the stem. This goes into the center, and that right here, and you fill the center with the sauce, the stem, you can cut it
into a couple of piece, it's standard enough, and serve it on the outside. You know, that would be one classic way of serving your artichoke. We're going to do it a
slightly different here. What I want to do, this one I've shown you, it's simply to cut this in actually four pieces, with a beautiful center, you know? Such an interesting looking, and with this, is actually, to remove
the choke right there. You see that choke is right there. Remove it here and
arrange that on the plate. I could have the stem
going on the outside, that is, you know, going this way. Oh, what is it going to be better, this way or maybe this way? I'll cross the center. See, it's an interesting shape so you can do thing with it. And you know what I could have done also, I could have done just as I did here before I cut it up, and I could have removed the center, which would've been even a
bit smarter than what I did. So that, I could use that center after
like I have this one here and put the sauce into it, you know, in the center right here. Well, we didn't do it so we leave it at that. That's fine. And now, what I want to
do is the ravigote sauce, a very simple type of sauce that we do in France often for poach fish. So what I have here is red onion, a little bit of (knife chopping) red onion like, coarsely chopped. This is now very, very finely, mostly coarsely chopped, you know? Now I have here, beautiful red onion. If you think your onion is a bit strong, you know, when the onion are strong, the time of the year you wash them. You wash them, then you drain them. And that take a lot of
the hotness out of it. Maybe I put a little bit,
I have some capers here, that's what I want to put the capers. Then I have a mixture of
different type of herb, here. I think I have a bit of, hmm, tarragon. Yes, I can smell it. And a dash of vinegar, about twice at least
the amount of the oil, and I don't want to emulsify that. I want it to be separated. Then a dash of salt, and freshly ground pepper. You wanna put that in there, mix it gently. That's my ravigote sauce, and you will want to
serve that a little bit in the center of the heart here, you know? Would be very nice, and maybe drizzle a little
bit on the plate for color and for extra sauce, that you will need as you're eating it. But this one, of course, you can serve it on the side or put your sauce in there
in the center, you know? Which would be very nice, and maybe a couple of little
pieces of parsley there. Now, while we serve the first course, now let's move to our main course. And the main course, we're going to start with Swiss chard. And I have that red, beautiful,
red Swiss chard here, that I'm going to saute for you. What I want to do first is to
saute a little bit of shallot, hot pepper, and a bit of ginger. So. (knife knocking) I put the shallot directly in there, and I want to put, maybe a little bit of olive oil in this. My pan should be hot now. That's it. (pan scraping) I wanna saute my, well, maybe even a little more shallot. (knife knocking) Here we are. (pan scraping) And, the ginger. You can take a piece of ginger, you can crush it, you know, like you crush garlic? And then chop it finely. Put it with the shallots and a little bit of jalapeno pepper. I think I'm going to take the outside, without taking the rib and the seed, which may be a little
bit too strong for that. And I want to cut that
relatively fine, you know? The stronger it is, the
finer I want to cut it. Here we are. And now I have basically
all of my seasoning in it. I wanna show you those Swiss chard. You may remove the end of it, if they are a bit damaged, and the rest cut it coarsely,
into two-inches pieces. I have washed it already. It's clean, so we can put it to
cook directly in there. You see, what I do first, what you can see here, I put a little layer of this. So why don't you put only a small layer, then toss it so that the garlic, which was underneath is now on top, so it doesn't burn underneath. I put a little more here. I don't have to put the whole recipe but enough to show you. A dash of salt in there, then I want to cover it. There is enough moisture in it, it's going to continue
cooking in the moisture. So what we wanna do now, which is the main course, is the liver. And I have here, as you can see, a beautiful calf's liver. A lot of people don't like liver. I love it. In Europe, it cost a fortune. And especially, and it's available mostly, they keep it for the hospital. It's a very, very good, especially the calf's liver,
of that beautiful pink color. I have removed some of the nerve and wanted to show you that
there is a skin on top, that you want to remove, you see? And if you pull out that skin, it makes it so much more tender. I don't have to remove all of it. Then, you cut it into nice slice this way. You want to serve about, of course, when you go to the market, you're going to buy all of this done. You will buy directly from the butcher. For me, I wanted to show you how to do it. A little bit of butter and oil here. I'm gonna put salt and
paper on top of this, and saute that directly. Those are about 3/8 of an inch thin and they wanna cook about a minute and a half on each side. So you want to go pretty fast, you know? And while this is cooking, I'm gonna show you how
to do the sauce with it. And for that, what we have, we have scallion here. Again, we have red onion, which I'm going to do a
little bit of the red onion, to chop it. Let me see. That's getting wilted, now. That's what I want. I want it to get really wilty. That should cook about four, five minutes. My liver is going quite fast, here. I wanna lower my heat a little bit. (pan sizzling) That's it. And the scallion, the scallion will give me color, and I want a bit of acidity in that. So, the liver is rich, the acidity is going to go very well and that's why I have lemon juice. With the lemon juice, of course, I want to put tarragon and capers. So here I have couple of nice color. Let me see, now. This one you see, is cooked enough. I would want to put it here
to let it rest for a second. This one I may cook it
another minute or so. During that time, I can cut this in half
to create the sauce. Fresh tarragon, she's beautifully aromatic, and the capers. (pan scraping) My Swiss chard are getting there, so now let me put the
other piece of liver there, and I will add directly the scallion. The scallion and onion to the dripping. You see, I want to melt those
dripping juice, you know? To give me taste, which I have here. During that time the meat is resting and that's what you want to do. It's very important for the meat to rest. So. It's practically ready. I will deglaze with a little bit of water, add a bit of lemon juice, not too much. You don't want it too acidic. The capers. And finally, I'll put (pan clunking) the tarragon directly like this, and I think we are ready to serve. Now, it is a fast dish and I will serve that on that
stunningly beautiful plate. Now first, maybe serving that Swiss shard and look at the beautiful color of the Swiss chard, here, that I have. I'll place it in the center of the plate. And from the center of the plate, I can always spread it out. Use one or two implement
to give you the center, the space for the center. And now, in the center of it, I will put my liver, slice of liver about five ounces, five to six ounces. And finally, the sauce on top, the capers, onion, I have a lot of liquid, smell acidic. And, for an extra zest, maybe a little bit of, a little piece of tarragon on top, and this is our main
course for today's menu. (bright piano music) (metal whisking) Oeufs a la neige, you know? This is the classic French dessert. I have three, three egg white here, very firm. A quarter of a cup of sugar. I finish putting that in there, and by hand, like this, this will whip very, very fast. About a minute and a quarter or so, to a beautiful egg this way. So, three egg white. And if they are beaten properly, you should have at least
one cup of egg white, fair, beaten egg white. So what we do here, we putting it into four. Portion for four, you know? We're doing the recipe for four. So you do four large egg white and my water is approximately 170 degree. 170 degree. You don't really want it to boil, otherwise, they're going
to expand too much. And I have four large one this way. This of course, is a good dessert because it's only egg yolk, egg white, rather, and sugar. The classic way, of course, we used to poach those into the milk, and with the milk, use the egg yolk to do a
very rich creme anglaise, which we're not going to do today. I'm going to lower this, because that should now cook slowly. As I said, no more than like, about 100, 170 degree, yes, right here. So, with this, I have some caramel cooking, water and sugar here, which I want to bring to a caramel. And it's slightly crystallizing. Now, you can see that the top
form those type of crystal. Most of the time if I were
using it for something else to do rose with sugar, I would have problem, but for caramel, it doesn't matter. The sauce that I'm going to do
with that is made with peach. You can have fresh or frozen peach here, and a bit of sugar, a dash of vanilla, a little bit of Cointreau, which is an orange kind
of liquor, if you want. And, a cup of yogurt, no-fat yogurt. So remember here what
I'm going to do, finally, you see that emulsifying this (motor whirring) it's going to be very nice, because it's going to be about the color of a creme anglaise, you know? The creme anglaise, remember, is made with egg yolk, sugar, milk, cream, and you talk about that
beautiful golden color, you know. So I'm kind of fooling you here to do a toast without any calorie, which actually, is going
to be the same color, not exactly the same taste, but quite good than we would normally do. So here, now, this is boiling, and I wanna do that lower and they have been cooking maybe a minute. I have my caramel, which is getting there. What I would like to do
is to turn those over. So you know, you slide underneath, you have to be, whoop, very careful. I think they cook better
in water, actually, than they do in milk. And this has to cook, as I say, a couple of minute on each side. You don't want them to expand too much. Okay. Here we are now, and you can see my caramel here, it is not really totally in caramel, but caramel indicate a color. And look at the color of that mixture. It's pale, pale yellow, you know? And that already would be
considered a light caramel. And that light caramel, I can shake it now. You don't shake it before. When you shake sugar and water together, it make it crystallized. But crystallization happen when the whole thing form into mass, and it happen around 300 degree. By the time it come to the
temperature of caramel, which is 317, even if it crystallized, the whole crystal will
melt and turn into caramel. So, when you do caramel, you don't really care whether it crystallize at the beginning, because you know that eventually, the whole thing will melt into caramel. Now, it is dark enough I think, for me. I'm going to stop it now and cool it off. What I wanna show you is
how to make angel hair. And what happened here, this is for the time being, way too hot. So what I want to do is to mix, put my caramel into water
like this to cool it off. There another trick also, that my friend Jean Claude, who is my dearest friend, pastry chef in New York told me, you take a little bit
of bee wax like this, eatable wax, of course, bee wax that you mix into your caramel, and so that the strand, you can do those strand ahead, and they don't stick together. Okay, what you want here, is a certain viscosity, you know, a certain thickness which
I have approximately here. As you can see, I'm cooling it off on ice
to get the proper technique. And this is about right, this way. So now, you can start
doing your angel hair. And what you can do, you can do that with two fork like this, lifting up the mixture, and letting it go down, and spreading it out, right on top of a piece of wood here or something else with a
little bit of oil on top. And you have to go this way. Now, that's one way of doing it. Another way of doing it, and you have cut a little whisk, here. And this is a little whisk, see, I cut the end of
it to have those thread. Just put it into it, turning straight and go this way. It goes a little better again, straight up and this way. And again, you can continue
and can really do quite a lot out of the little bit
of sugar and caramel. Again, as I said before, you have to be absolutely sure to put, not only towel, but newspaper and all of that on the floor because you're gonna mess
up your whole kitchen. I only did it once in my house, otherwise I go do it outside. My wife would kill me. So, here is what we do here. You have to move this around, and you have that beautiful mixture, angel hair, those long hair like this, that you can use as a
decoration for your dessert. And now I can see that my eggs are ready. So what I have to do is to take this out. You know, you would want to, of course, let those rest, actually, you know? I can put them directly on the sauce. I would want to dry them out a little bit. They will deflate slightly. And the one which I have taken out here, I will cut it to show you
that it's cooked inside. Here it is, your angel's hair, and this, you see, you may think a couple of
minutes is not cooked enough but if I were to take this, and I put it on my hand
like this and cut it, you know, you can see the
center of the egg there, which is very elastic and you can see that it's totally cooked. I put it back together, next to it here. The classic way of putting
the oeufs a la neige now, is to put the caramel
directly on top of it here, which I'm going to do. You know, you put some caramel like this. You know, it's thicker
than what I did before and it would be good now, you see, to do the angel hair, better than what I had before. The consistency's right now. And, on top of it, you have those that I wanted to show you which have been done
four or five days ago. And because of the wax that I put in it, you see? They are separable and so forth. You see the one that I did today? We'll put them right on top
of it for the final touch of the beautiful oeufs a la neige. You know, you don't really have to put bee wax in your caramel
for a regular caramel, unless you want to do a caramel that you're going to keep, especially if you do angel hair. And if you want to keep it, then, that will separate the strand, otherwise the whole
thing form into a block. We have a very elegant meal tonight, starting, of course, with the classic artichokes
with the ravigote. Remember, you can use that
sauce for a lot of other things, but it's fun to eat artichokes. And the kid love it. Then, a bit unusual, we doing the liver. And be sure that to buy calf's liver, not beef liver, you know? With the Swiss chard around, and of course, the beautiful oeufs a la neige
with our low-calorie sauce. And with that, we have a beautiful pinot noir from the Russian River Valley, here in California. And I'm sure you're going to enjoy doing that meal for your friend, as I enjoy doing it for you. (gentle music) Happy cooking. (air whooshing) (gentle twinkly music)
