Jacques Pépin - Jacques Pépin Quick & Simple

Text copyright 1990, 2020 by Jacques Ppin

Illustrations copyright by Jacques Ppin

Photographs copyright 2020 by Jacques Ppin

An earlier edition of this book was published in 1990 under the title THE SHORT-CUT COOK.

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ppin, Jacques, author. | Hopkins, Tom, photographer.

Title: Jacques Ppin quick + simple : simply wonderful meals with surprisingly little effort / Jacques Ppin ; photographs by Tom Hopkins.

Other titles: Quick and simple : simply wonderful meals with surprisingly little effort

Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. | Includes index. | Summary: 250 of master chef Jacques Ppins classic and timeless recipes for unexpectedly polished and satisfying meals with minimal prep and cleanup-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020016359 (print) | LCCN 2020016360 (ebook) | ISBN 9780358352556 (hardback) | ISBN 9780358352563 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Quick and easy cooking.

Classification: LCC TX833.5 .P465 2020 (print) | LCC TX833.5 (ebook) | DDC 641.5/12--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016359

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016360

Book and cover design by Toni Tajima

Cover photography by Tom Hopkins Studio

v1.0920

To Claudine.

May these recipes make your life easier and your love for cooking even greater.

This book was not a solitary endeavor, and I have many people to thank for it: My wife, Gloria, the best in the world. My daughter, Claudine, and son-in-law, Rollie. And, among my many friends, Tom, Christine, Jared, Charlie, Priscilla, Reza, and Paula, who dutifully and happily consume my creations.

This book is intended to make your life easier. In it I share streamlined cooking techniques, teach you how to make use of good-quality convenience foods, suggest supplies for a well-stocked freezer and pantry, and specify the most useful cooking equipment and utensils. The cuisine that emerges in the two hundredplus recipes here is one born of the necessity to accommodate todays fast-paced lifestyles, a cuisine that is rewarding without being demanding. The book celebrates simple, satisfying fare that can be prepared easily and cooked quickly at the end of a busy day.

Many styles of cooking are represented on these pages, with dishes created to satisfy a variety of needs and fit a host of occasions. Just as its not right or wrong to eat in the kitchen rather than the dining room, simple food is not better than elaborate food: The food and the setting should be compatible with the occasion, and if something tastes good, it doesnt matter whether it is authentic or prepared correctlywhat works, works.

With very little time to cook today, people often eat in fast-food restaurants or buy expensive and often inferior precooked food. My way of cookingbased on years of professional experiencemakes use of fresh foods from farmers markets and the supermarket, preferably organic, to which I apply a personal touch to make them my own.

All supermarkets today offer precut meats and poultry, grated cheeses, presliced mushrooms, and washed spinach. Although these convenience foods are a bit more expensive, the savings in time and effort are worth the additional costand the quality of your cooking is not diminished because someone else has done some of the preparation for you. Store-bought mayonnaise and already-peeled squash are just a few examples of useful basic products that can be given your personal signature with a little ingenuity.

Small restaurantspressed for time and short of skilled handsoften proceed along similar lines. They buy small quantities of peeled and diced fresh vegetables, cleaned salad greens, trimmed lamb racks, and filleted fish. Although these products are more expensive than when bought in bulk, the savings in time and labor offset the higher cost and often provide the only possible course of action.

The term homemade has taken on a righteous tone: In todays terminology, it means better, more virtuous, truer to naturein short, the proper way to do things. But homemade food is good only when it is superior in taste to its store-bought counterpart. In reality, many homemade breads, cakes, croissants, jams, and condiments are inferior to similar items available at the local supermarket.

In France it is quite common for even great home cooks to buy certain prepared foodsthose renowned for their exceptional qualityat the market. Items like breads, pts, dumplings, basic doughs, jams, and relishes are rarely made at home. To quote Montaigne, the sixteenth-century French writer, The bees go from flower to flower to gather the pollen, but with it they create their own honey. I am proposing the same course of action here: Select superior items at the market and use them in ways that make them your own.

Selectively mixing fresh with canned, bottled, or frozen foods can result in great dishes. For example, quickly saut fresh scallops and toss them in a delicious sauce made of commercial mayonnaise that youve flavored with lemon juice, scallions, Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco sauce (see ). Your delighted guests will not know or care that such dishes werent made exclusively with fresh food.

Cooking is not the only part of food preparation that can be simplified. Food shopping is a time-consuming activity that benefits from thoughtful advance planning. Even the use and cleaning of cooking utensils can be streamlined. And having a well-stocked larder (see section) means you are able to create meals on short notice. An impromptu visit from friends can often be the occasion for a cuisine of opportunity, with dishes prepared from what is at hand.

Understanding the basic mechanics of cooking is also helpful. If you decide to cook a stew, for example, know that although it would take a couple of hours to cook it conventionally on top of the stove, a pressure cooker can reduce the cooking time by half. If you double or triple the recipe, you can freeze the leftovers for use later on or refrigerate them to make a soup or a puree for a meal later that week.

Techniques are important too. Peel vegetables directly into a sink equipped with a garbage disposal, or place an oversize garbage can (mine is on wheels) in a convenient position and let the peelings drop directly into it. If neither of these options is feasible, spread newspapers on your work surface to catch the peelings and so simplify the cleanup.

Whenever possible, line baking pans with nonstick aluminum foil to eliminate time-consuming cleaning afterward. Fill a dirty pot or roasting pan with water as soon as you have finished using it to loosen solidified bits of food and make washing up easier. Roll dough out between sheets of plastic wrap to keep the work surface and rolling pin clean. Cook in gratin dishes attractive enough to go directly from the oven to the table. And freeze food in dishes that can go right from the freezer to the oven to the table. When sauting meatwhether it be pork chops or veal scaloppinisaut a vegetable to serve with it in the unwashed skillet once youve cooked the meal; a cleanup step is eliminated, and the juices from the meat will enhance the flavor of the vegetable.