Jacques Pépin Makes Sautéed Cod with Mushrooms

(lighthearted music) - Hi, I'm Jacques Pépin.

And this is "American Masters at Home."

(lighthearted music) I have a beautiful piece of cod fish here, about one inch thick.

It's about 12 ounces, meaning six ounces per person.

It's great, and I'm gonna show you how to sauté it.

I have a tablespoon of olive oil.

And the classic way, a little bit of pepper on each side.

Of course, that technique can be applied to any other type of fish.

And then salt.

What I want to do here, I dip it in milk, or in that case, half and half, and in flour.

The flour here happens to be Wondra flour.

Could be any flour you want.

And start the cooking.

Again, here, there.

Wondra flour.

Classic way of cooking it.

Depending on the thickness of that, that will cook at least a couple of minutes on each side on those.

That's pretty thick.

For me, the garnish has a lot to do with whatever I have in my refrigerator at a given moment.

I have a beautiful scallion here.

Couple of radishes.

Have a nice mushroom here Some black olives.

So I'm gonna do a garnish with that.

So maybe with the mushroom.

I will cut it into yeah, thin pieces, like this.

(knife softly chopping) (pan sizzling) As you can see, that mushroom is quite large and will probably give me... (knife softly chopping) (pan sizzling) Give me like, at least half a cup of... Half a cup of mushrooms.

Then, I have radish.

(knife softly chopping) (pan sizzling) Going to do a julienne out of this.

As we say.

They're very crunchy.

(pan sizzling) (knife softly chopping) (pan sizzling) I think my fish is ready to be turned over.

(pan sizzling) I may reduce the heat a little bit here, 'cause as you know, it's pretty thick, so it needs to cook in the center.

I don't like it completely cooked inside.

Slightly rare inside.

Depends on your... (knife softly chopping) (pan sizzling) You know, the type of thing that we do sometimes in restaurants, you would sauté a fish like this for a couple of minutes.

Three, four minutes on each side, and keep it warm in the oven for a little while.

And from that point of view, you do your garnish separate when you're ready to send it to the table.

And I think I will do maybe a quarter of a cup of black olives here.

Oh, I may cut them also into a couple of pieces.

This.

(knife softly chopping) (pan sizzling) See, the other side here is beautifully browned as well.

But I can see the center is quite uncooked yet.

So I may lower the heat and cover it, and make it go slow.

(pan sizzling) Still a bit rare in the center, but cooked enough for me.

Two beautiful pieces of fish.

I'm going to add a dash of olive oil.

Here, you see, I don't have anything else.

A good tablespoon, a good tablespoon of butter.

My scallions and mushrooms.

(pan sizzling) Dash of salt.

Dash of pepper.

And cook about 30, 40 seconds.

The mushrooms are still nice and crunchy, good.

Now, I can put the rest of the garnish.

And this is it.

A bit of the garnish on top.

And a lot of the garnish on the outside.

I like vegetable garnish.

A bit of chives on top.

And here it is, my cod sautéed with leftover stuff from the refrigerator.

Happy cooking.

(lighthearted music)