- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

Papa, you do realize that Mother's Day is coming?

- I do, Titine, and I think we better plan a little brunch for you-know-who.

- [Claudine] Okay, well, let's make her favorite egg dish, gratin of eggs with the sauteed mushrooms, hard-cooked eggs, and that creamy onion sauce on top.

- [Jacques] No, no, no, her favorite eggs is poached eggs served on a bed of crouton with fresh peas and hollandaise sauce.

- [Claudine] Actually, mollet eggs with stewed asparagus might really be her number one pick.

- [Jacques] Well, what about molded eggs with truffle and carrot or herb and radishes, or deep-fried eggs with eggplant, pepper, and garlic?

- [Claudine] Or we could just make omelets.

I've always wanted to learn different omelet techniques.

- Okay, we'll just have to make them all.

- Join us for a Mother's Day brunch, next on "Jacques Pepin Celebrates!"

- Okay.

- All right.

- Let's start with the basic.

- Well, let's get going.

We got lots of eggs.

- Yes.

- Let's do it.

- Now you see what I do here?

- Mm-hmm.

- Can do that yourself.

Press.

You know the rounder of part of the egg, there is an air chamber here.

- On this side or- - We make a hole in it.

Yeah, white eggs because I'm four white eggs and four of the other one.

- All right, do you want me to?

- Yeah, go ahead.

See?

It goes through it.

(shell cracking) That will release the pressure.

You're gonna see that when I move that out of the way here.

Put those eggs in there just, and we're going to do hard-cooked eggs and oeuf mollet.

You know what mollet is?

- Mollet is soft.

- Yeah.

And you can see when those go into the water- - [Claudine] Oh, the little bubbles come out.

- Yeah, you see that?

- So that's the air?

- That the air coming out of it.

So like that, the shell is not going to crack.

So this should boil very, very gently.

Okay?

- Okay.

- Five minutes for the first one, which is the oeuf mollet, 10 minute for the hard-cooked egg.

Next I have boiling water here.

We're going to do poached eggs in there.

So I'm going to lower it because, again, the poach egg should not poach in boiling water.

Now we put a little bit of vinegar.

This is just citric acid so that the egg white doesn't go all over the place.

- Okay.

- You know?

So you can break an egg, (egg thudding) then you can close to the water to open it into the water like this.

Or then you can break an egg in there, and you gotta go, good, lower.

That's it.

Pour, pour, pour.

Now you see those eggs?

Okay, I have three here.

How long does it cook?

About four, five minutes.

Do you see the way it is now- - Yeah.

- in the bottom?

So you see with the back of this, I do this.

You see the eggs move?

- Mm-hmm.

- I'm trying to make that eggs move so that it doesn't stick to the bottom, okay?

Like that.

Now eggs are cooking there.

Two styles of eggs- - Eggs are cooking here.

- are cooking there.

Now what do we do here?

The hollandaise sauce.

So you start the hollandaise with a bit of water like this.

I have to- - So just three egg yolks?

- Yeah, you can also start it with a little bit of lemon juice, question of taste.

(knife clattering) Now a few drop.

Now the first part of the hollandaise here is to do what we call the sabayon, the sabayon, S-A-B-A-Y-O-N, (whisk clanking) And in the sabayon, when it's done, we're going to add the butter to it.

But you see, if that goes too fast, I'll remove it a little bit.

You'll see, by the time it's cooked, it should be thick, and I should see the layer, in between my whisk, the layer of the sabayon being done.

So while I'm beating that, you know, a couple of minutes, why don't you work the oeufs cocotte?

- Oeufs cocotte.

- Because you call that a cocotte, and then if you wanna mold it when it comes out, when it's cooked, it's an oeuf moule, you know, molded.

- I just have little molds.

This one already has some chives in it.

- Okay.

(whisk clanking) (egg thudding) (whisk continues clanking) Well, I want to see here, you know.

You can see when I beat that, can you see the bottom of the pan between my whisk?

- Mm-hmm.

- See the viscosity that it has?

- Mm-hmm.

- [Jacques] It's not scrambled, so it's just about right.

- No, the only thing you have in there is eggs and- - And a bit of water.

- a little bit of water.

- Okay, here, put your eggs in there.

We cook that in water, a little bit of water here, not too much because you don't want to go into the mixture.

Oh, you broke an egg.

- Thanks.

- I saw that.

I saw that.

You better not unmold that one.

Five minutes, Claudia.

- Five minutes, oeuf mollet.

- Oeuf mollet, so remove one of the two.

- I'll pick a color.

- Pick a color.

- I'll go with white.

- [Jacques] Okay.

- So these go here.

- Yes.

- And what I'm gonna do, just to make it a little bit easier, is just do- (eggs rattling) - Yeah, they're broken now.

- this and put some ice water on top so that I stop the cooking process, and that's it.

- Here, no more, more, more.

(water sloshing) They have to be into the water.

Okay, now this oeufs cocotte you can cook that in the oven if you have more time.

Or we can cook it on top of the stove, and we'll bring it to a boil here, and we'll do it right here.

- Okay.

- We can do it both ways in the oven or there.

Let me check on those eggs.

You lift up one of those eggs and touch it, and I can see it's about fine now.

Okay, touch the yolk here to see how tender it is.

- Oh, yeah.

- So, okay, first ice-cold water because it wash off the vinegar, and it cool off the egg, so it stop cooking right away.

When you're ready to reuse it, you put them back into hot water.

Okay, now there on the conventional hollandaise, you do that with the clarified butter.

Now show what the clarified butter here, leave that up.

You see the separation here- - Yeah.

- in the bottom?

There is a milky residue, and the clarified butter on top, that is the breakdown.

So we can start with that.

Put a little bit in there.

- So the only thing I have to do to clarify butter is to melt butter and let it sit?

- Yep.

- Okay.

(whisk clanking) - Salt, very little salt in there.

It doesn't take much salt, and a little dash of the cayenne over there.

That's it.

(whisk clanking) Now the hollandaise sauce is ready.

We can serve it.

First, you can trim your eggs, and you can see here you have long, hanging thing of eggs.

- Right.

- You can trim it right on your hand like this to get it nice and round, and you serve it.

Put a crouton there, and if you put a piece of ham, then that the egg benedictine, you know?

My hollandaise sauce.

(spoon clanking) Yeah, this is my hollandaise sauce, and of course, we garnish that with fresh peas all around, you know?

You don't have to put truffle.

It's very expensive, but if you want, nice slice of truffle on top.

(Claudine laughs) And here we are, you know, the poached eggs.

- [Claudine] With truffles.

(timer ringing) (hand knocking) - We hear something.

- Okay, here we go.

- Okay.

- Now I'm gonna put these all in here?

Or do you wanna take the water out and crack 'em, or how do you wanna do it?

- No, that's fine, just to show you, and in fact, let me show you one like this.

When you have an eggs which is raw, uncooked, give me a raw eggs over there.

When it's cooked, it gets solid.

If you spin the raw egg, it doesn't really spin because it's liquid inside.

The more it's cooked, the more it spin.

When it's totally cooked, it will stand up.

♪ Dun, da, da, da - Yeah, that's fun, right?

Okay, let's work a little bit on the gratin there.

- 'Kay.

- So this is the hard-cooked eggs like I have here.

You know, if I were to peel those, that's why Claudine shake it in the pan because it crack, and it help in the shelling here.

Okay, so this is still hot in the center, but you can see this is great to cut eggs, and you can see that eggs is totally cold.

It's going to have a beautiful, you know, just- - No green.

- great color, no green around the yolk, you know, and that's what you want.

No green around yolk because the green around the yolk- - They're moving around.

- Lower that, Claudine.

(water burbling) The green around the yolk is the sulfur in the eggs.

And the sulfur in the eggs come from the fact that when you put the eggs in hot water, the sulfur get away from the heat.

So it goes throughout the yolk, and there is a reaction with the egg yolk.

It give you that green tinge and that strong smell of sulfur.

To avoid it, as soon as it cook, you shake the eggs, put ice water on it, and it has to stay in the ice water until it's cold in the center.

And at that point, when it's cold in the center, the egg feel the cold, and cross the egg white, and dissipate in the water.

So we have a gratin of eggs here.

You know what we have underneath here?

- We have mushrooms.

- Here we have mushrooms.

- Mushrooms, and it looks like some scallions and- - Okay, I'm gonna stop this.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- You can see that they are beautiful on top.

We'll leave them like that a minute.

Maybe we'll continue on this, you know, a dash of salt, pepper on this.

- Yeah.

- And what I have here, I have some onion, (scoop clanking) just saute, and the slice onion, just saute.

With a white sauce, we call that a soubise sauce.

That is a white sauce, a bechamel type, with the onion.

So conventionally, we put a little bit of flour right on top of the onion.

That will give me the thickening agent.

I'll stir that in, in the onion, (spoon clanking) and then we'll add the milk.

(spoon thudding) - Here's milk.

- Okay, milk.

- Here's cream.

- And yeah, we need a cup of milk, about, and about a quarter of a cup of cream.

We're going to do that mixture, bring it to a nice boil, (spoon clanking) and I need a little whisk to put in there, okay?

You wanna whisk it with a whisk, okay?

And when you do this, you know, be sure not only to do that, but loop with the palm of your hand- - Okay.

- to go into the corner.

That's where it sticks, you know?

We wanna bring that to a boil.

- So I'm just gonna keep whisking.

- Okay, let me check on this.

You see?

Now this is nice.

You see the way it shake like this, and it's soft?

Okay, you know what?

We can serve it now.

(dish clanking) Okay, very often the egg cocotte is served right in the cocotte here.

Now if you want to unmold it, this is barely cooked, so I don't even know whether it's going to unmold.

But basically, if the egg white is set, which is what we want, you do this.

You put your crouton right on top of it, you know, to unmold it.

Why won't it come out?

- Ooh.

- And as you can see here, that egg is barely- - Barely cooked.

- barely cooked.

And it's very nice.

Now we serve that with a pure of carrot, which is just carrot and water.

That's it.

- That's it?

- And a little piece of butter at the end, you know?

Okay, Claudine, now here is my sauce here, and we could actually serve it as such, or we could emulsify it to get it really smooth.

(blender whirring) - [Claudine] Is that good, nice and frothy?

- [Jacques] I think that's it.

- And we have some cheese to go on this, just grated.

- [Jacques] Yeah, this is Swiss cheese.

- [Claudine] Is that enough, or more?

- [Jacques] No, we're gonna put some on top now.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- This makes a great, a whole meal, you know?

All right, and then we'll put that under the broiler.

- [Claudine] Broiler's nice and hot.

So how long is this gonna take?

- Not long, three, four minute we'll wait because the point is that everything is hot.

The eggs are cooked, the sauce is hot, so it's not going to take very long.

We have the egg dish, you know, a nice gratin like this.

That's very good.

(spoon clanking) Your mother is going to like that one.

- [Claudine] What's next?

- Remember the egg mollet that we did?

- Yes.

- So, like, the hard-cooked eggs only cook, like, four, five minutes, still soft.

We're gonna serve them with asparagus now.

- Oh, great.

- And a little bit of water in there, not much.

You know?

We cook it with, here I am, and I have asparagus cut here.

I have white asparagus, green asparagus.

Classically, you know, I would put the white asparagus first because it take longer than the other one to cook.

- Oh, really?

- Yeah.

- Why?

They're thicker?

- Yeah, they are thicker, much thicker stem and all that.

So we're gonna put them here.

They should cook three, four minutes, and we'll finish them with butter.

And we'll use that as a sauce to put on top of our eggs.

- Ooh.

- As you can see here, the head of those are always very tight.

- Yeah, - They grow under the water, under the ground, rather.

They get white.

- All the way up to here?

- Yes, practically up to here.

- Oh, okay.

- And those here, you see asparagus.

You see those?

You see this one?

- Mm-hmm.

- See this one is like a flowers with the petal which are falling apart?

- Yeah.

- That's old.

- Okay, because it's not tight.

- You know, and it's softer.

You want it like the bud of a flower.

And it doesn't matter the size of it.

A tiny asparagus or small asparagus is not a young asparagus.

It's just a small asparagus.

It comes out of the ground, small or fat, and it goes up.

When it's young, however, it's very tight like this.

That's what you want.

Now those, we peel them, you know, and when you peel them, you use a vegetable- - Vegetable peeler.

- peeler this way.

(peeler rasping) You've done that, right?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- I always do that.

- [Jacques] See up to that point here, and then you break it.

- Although I admit what I end up doing is- - This way?

- cutting it first and then just peeling all the way down.

- Fine, same thing.

Okay, now let's see this.

You see it's boiling nicely now.

- Mm-hmm.

- Another minute of cooking, what we are going to do is to put the butter in it.

And that will create an emulsion with the water.

Here we get some eggs.

Remember those oeufs mollet?

- Yes.

- Very soft here.

So here they are, you know, and then they are all cracked.

Let's run the water a little bit.

That's it.

Because you know it's much easier to try to peel it 'cause those are more delicate, so then the water goes.

- Right inside.

- It goes between that membrane and the shell.

- [Claudine] It just helps you peel it much easier.

- It helps you peel it.

Otherwise, I tell you, it's not easy to peel.

But this is what you have to do.

And now once you have it this way, you keep that in water.

- In the cold- - In the cold water.

- 'Kay.

- See, I can, look if I break this one.

- Mm.

- You see?

that's an oeuf mollet.

When you're ready, put them back into boiling water.

- And it doesn't overcook it?

It just warms it up?

- Before it cooks it, it has to get it warm.

After it's warm, it starts cooking more.

- (laughs) Okay.

- So you leave it only long enough so it's warm.

You see the emulsion I created here, type of sauce, butter sauce?

- Mm-hmm.

- It's ready.

(knife thudding) Maybe we put that on top, you know?

- That would be very nice.

- So you wanna do a crouton?

You see those crouton the way they are cut?

The point is that this will set the eggs here so it doesn't slide all over the plate.

(spoon clanking) Here, a garish here of my egg, you can arrange a little bit of that butter sauce, you know, around.

Mm, this, you can put that on top, yes.

That's it, any way you want.

That's good.

Okay, and that's it.

- Okay.

- The mollet eggs with fine asparagus, I wanna show you now, and you, how to make a good classic omelet.

- Omelette aux fines herbes.

- Omelette aux fines herbes, so give me- - Okay.

- eggs.

I need three eggs.

- Three eggs.

- This is the classic French omelet, and the classic French omelet is made by moving the eggs a lot, very fast to have the smallest, smallest possible curd.

Because as you cut the egg with large curd, it's tougher, and this egg is, like, almost scrambled, like, very creamy and soft in the center, tiny curd, not brown, you know, to have that type of texture.

Can you give me the herb?

- Yeah, this is fines herbes, which is- - Fines herbes.

- Chives.

- Chives.

- Tarragon.

- Tarragon.

- Parsley.

- [Jacques] Uh-huh.

- And chervil.

- And chervil.

(spoon clanking) So the idea here, (fork clanking) put it this way.

Now with the ball of this in that hand, I'm going to move this, both hands, so it really go back and forth, tiny curd.

Then I bring it back around, stir it.

(pan rasping) Now look what happened here.

I get it very soft in the center.

And I bring everything on this side.

- Oh.

- So I just have to move one lip to the other.

- Uh-huh.

- I bring this around.

Now I bring that lip.

- It's not even brown or anything.

- No.

- It's just perfect.

- You see my pan was a bit too warm.

- [Claudine] Why?

- Well, I can see the texture of the eggs.

And then now to bring that lip back on top, you hit it here.

You see?

If you hit it here, it make it go up, and then you fold it back on top of it.

I bang this to the edge.

(pan clinking) To really bring it to the edge, I put my plate against it to unmold it, you know?

And then you know, even with your fork, you can arrange it.

It should be nice, long, very creamy in the center.

Okay, so now we can do a country omelet.

You know, the country omelet is done potato, some bacon saute- - Oh, I did eggs for you.

- herbs, scallion.

You have eggs?

Okay.

- I have eggs already beaten.

We can put a little bit of parsley or scallion in it.

So this is a bit like a western omelet type.

A western omelet type because we keep it flat.

- [Claudine] So this has no flip or anything?

- Well, you can flip it on the other side.

Sometime I do, but basically, see, you cook it this way, and you see this is about ready here.

Okay, you take that to the broiler this way.

You put it under the broiler a minute, or then you flip it and continue.

- Okay.

- You wanna put it in the broiler?

- Yep.

- Okay, good.

(fork clanking) And now we're going to do another type of eggs here, an egg which is rarely done but which is kind of classic, the deep fried eggs.

I have oil here.

You do it like a poached egg but you do in oil rather than doing it in water.

So it's unusual, and it's kind of very earthy.

So we do it usually with some type of, have a garnish of pepper here.

- Mm.

- I peel the pepper because you see when you peel your pepper here, like, in the middle right here, I have a pleat here.

- Yeah.

- I cannot go with this because there is a recess.

So you cut outside of that pleat.

You know, I have more than enough here.

- Okay.

- And in the center where you have that pleat, you cut it.

So now you can- - [Claudine] Oh, now it's easier to peel because you're actually- - You can get at it.

- on the surface.

- [Jacques] Yeah, okay.

- Okay.

- You wanna slice garlic or do it with a vegetable peel like this or slice it.

- [Claudine] I'll just slice it.

- And I'll slice this one.

(knife thudding) Okay, so we're gonna saute that.

(peppers sizzling) - Do you want the garlic in there as well?

- Yeah, yeah, the garlic in there, a little dash of salt.

We have some cilantro here.

Garlic, that's gonna saute one minute or so.

Not cilantro, later on.

- Okay.

- And check on that omelet in the oven.

It's probably already now under the broiler anyway.

(door clattering) See?

That's nice.

- All right.

- You can also flip it if you want.

- Yeah.

- It could be browner than that, but that's all right.

- Do you want me to put it back?

- No, that's fine.

- Okay.

- So this is about ready, and I have a piece of- - Eggplant.

- eggplant, which we've already cooked in the oven.

So I just warm it up there, and I'll shut that here.

Now when you put this in there, you can only do one egg at the time because it goes all over the place and you have to hold it with this.

So I'll break it again flat.

We'll break my eggs in there- - Whoa.

- and then hold it with this.

(oil burbling) See the eggs will come to the surface, all the egg white.

I want to hold that egg white together.

Now it's all together.

- Wow.

- You see?

If I don't hold it together, it goes all over the place.

- Okay.

- So now it settled.

So just fry around a little bit.

- And my guess is that it really doesn't actually absorb that much oil overall.

- No.

Well, we don't know.

- We'll find out.

- We'll find out.

No, but not really.

And that's basically it, you know.

- Well, here's some paper towel just to give it a little bit of a drain.

- Yes, okay.

- [Claudine] 'Kay.

- And then you give me a plate.

- Mm-hmm.

- So this is an unusual eggs.

I don't even know whether you ever had that eggs, Claudine.

- No.

- You never did?

- I definitely have not.

- Here, let's put that in there now, that in the middle, (fork clanking) and that are the cushion for the eggs, you know.

(fork clanking) You take it nicely this way and then the cilantro on top.

I mean it's kind of very earthy, egg ranchero or something like this, you know, and you see the center of that eggs, we to cut it, is going to be just, again, like a poached egg, you see?

Here you see?

- Yeah.

So definitely there's not a lot of oil that's absorbed in that.

- Yeah, so this is the deep-fried eggs with pepper and eggplant.

Ooh, this looks beautiful, Titine.

- Oh, thanks, Pa.

- What are you doing there?

- I'm just making this lovely tray for Mom so you can bring her breakfast in bed.

- [Jacques] You did a great job, and that's beautiful.

- Oh, thank you.

Yeah, a little rosemary and some thyme.

You know, it just kind of dresses everything up.

- Adds a bit class, right?

- Yes.

- What are we drinking with that?

- Well, we have some wine to go with all of the eggs.

I chose the (indistinct), which is pinot noir, which is really light, kind of bright, high acid.

It'll go beautiful with the eggs, especially the richer ones and then a vintage champagne.

- Champagne is always good with eggs, and brunch, and- - Yeah, but what's fun is this is a vintage one.

It's very, very crisp and light.

- And here?

- But I opened this.

- [Jacques] I think it's open, yes, - I opened the sauvignon blanc because I really think, after all the work that we've done, we deserve a glass of wine.

- We always deserve a glass of wine, you know, - So this is a nice little California sauvignon blanc.

- So a drink to your great lesson, and let's see what we did there.

- Okay.

- Okay, so do you remember the country omelet?

- Mm-hmm.

- Yeah?

This is our- - Really beautiful.

- fried eggs.

- That's the deep-fried egg.

- Deep-fried egg, and this is the mollet egg.

Again, you know, it's cooked like a poached egg with five minutes in the water, this one of cocotte.

A cocotte is this, but then when it's unmolded with here a pure of carrot.

Then we get into our omelet, the poached eggs.

- With truffles.

- And you learned how to make a hollandaise sauce.

- Yes.

- Right?

And finally, a beautiful gratin of eggs.

- [Claudine] Ah.

- Can never go wrong with eggs.

And I'm sure your family, whatever you do, because you have to choose one or two of those, they are going to love it.

(gentle music) I love cooking with you.

(glasses clinking) - Thank you very much for teaching me.

- Happy cooking, - Happy cooking.