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Special

Jacques Pépin Makes Ice Cream French Toast

Premiere: 7/20/2022 | 00:03:33 |

Jacques Pépin adapted this recipe from his time as a breakfast cook at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris. Jacques uses melted vanilla ice cream and bananas here, but any flavor ice cream or fruit would work well.

About the Episode

Serves 1

“At some point back in the 1950s, I was the breakfast cook at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris. We made a lot of French toast, and to go faster, I would melt the very eggy ice cream from the pastry kitchen, to make it. Here, I’m using vanilla ice cream, but you can use any flavor for this fast and simple version. I love bananas with this, but berries and most fruit work well.” —Jacques Pepin

Ingredients

1 to 1½ cups vanilla ice cream, melted
1 slice firm white bread
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
½ banana, sliced, for serving
2 tablespoons maple syrup, for serving

Method

Pour the melted ice cream onto a serving plate and dip the bread in it, turning it on both sides. Let the bread rest for a couple of minutes so that it absorbs as much of the ice cream as possible.

In a small skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the bread and cook until golden, about 2 minutes. Turn the bread and cook again on the other side, another 2 minutes. Return the toast to the same plate; garnish with slices of banana and drizzle with maple syrup. Serve immediately.

QUOTE

"I feel that if Jacques Pépin shows you how to make an omelet, the matter is pretty much settled. That’s God talking. "

— Anthony Bourdain

TRANSCRIPT

TRANSCRIPT

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

And this is 'American Masters At Home.'

In the early fifties, almost all of the fifties, I work at the Plaza in Paris, a very big hotel too.

At some point I was the breakfast cook.

And in the morning we did a lot of French toast.

To go faster, I used to use ice cream that is vanilla ice cream and of course French vanilla ice cream is done with that lot of eggs and dip the bread in it and saute it.

That's what I want to show you here.

If you have a bit of a leftover ice cream as I have here, put it on that plate.

I have a bowl of ice cream here and of course let it melt and maybe even put it in the microwave oven for like 10, 15 seconds.

So now it's melted.

Of course, I have a big slice of bread here.

I want to put it in there.

And of course I want to let it soak a couple of minutes so that it really absorb all of that, all of that ice cream.

I mean basically all of it.

And in fact, what I do I put it on there.

I'm gonna cook it.

I'm gonna keep that plate.

And even if there is a bit of ice cream leftover, I serve it on that plate anyway.

So here I need a good tablespoon of butter.

So you can see basically it will absorb basically all of it.

I'm gonna put it in there, lower the heat.

I wanna cook that at low temperature, a couple of minutes on each side.

I made my French toast here with the vanilla ice cream but of course the beauty of it, you can do it with strawberry ice cream, chocolate ice cream.

It would be a bit different for a French toast.

Well, it should be about a couple of minutes here.

It's very soft the bread because it really soaked a lot of the ice cream, you know.

Cook it on this side again a couple of minutes, then a bit of a maple syrup on top.

And I have an old banana in my refrigerator, so I'll use it.

I keep the banana in the refrigerator.

They keep much longer and they end up being all black but they're still nice and creamy inside and firm.

So it's one way of keeping them longer.

It's about ready now.

Maybe half of that banana would be good.

Okay.

(knife smacking) So this is a different way of doing French toast, quite good.

And as you see there is still a little bit of ice cream on top which is fine.

You know, this too.

One piece for the chef.

A little bit of maple syrup.

And here it is.

My French toast, the easy way.

Enjoy and happy cooking.

(upbeat music)