Cook 30

Root Vegetable & Cos Salad

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Jeremy Dixon

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Series Code: CKT

Program Code: CKT000047A


00:21 Welcome to Cook 30. I'm Jeremy Dixon from the Revived Cafes
00:25 in Auckland, New Zealand and also author of Revived Cafe
00:29 Cookbooks and today I'm going to share with you a delicious
00:32 Cafe style meal that you can cook at home.
00:36 Cook 30 food is all about using whole foods. We're gonna use
00:39 plant based protein. Lots of fruit and vegetables,
00:43 whole grains and wrap them together with exciting herbs
00:47 and spices and international flavors. And the best part is
00:51 you don't have to spend hours slaving away in the kitchen
00:55 I'm going to show you how simple it is in the next 30 minutes
00:58 how to make a great meal for your family.
01:02 On the menu today we have an aromatic Cambodian Tofu Curry
01:07 served over a cinnamon and cardamom rice
01:10 And we're going to drizzle over a curry coconut yogurt dressing
01:14 We also have a root vegetable and Cos salad
01:17 and to finish off a warming lemon ginger and honey soother
01:24 Making meals in a hurry does not happen by accident
01:26 It needs to be well planned. It may look easy from where you sit
01:29 but a lot of planning goes into making something like this.
01:32 So you've got a wooden chopping block, a nice sharp knife
01:35 clear bench, everything is cleaned. Ingredients we're
01:38 going to need. We have the oven on at 350F which is about 180C
01:43 We have boiled water in the jug
01:45 Pot's on the stove. Great attitude and ready to go!
01:49 So, first job with any kind of meal is thinking ahead
01:53 what's going to take the longest time to cook
01:55 And in this case it's going to be the rice. So you want to get
01:57 that on straight away. Now I'm going to put a very special rice
02:01 today and we're not going to do the normal rice and water
02:04 thing. We're going to add a few ingredients first.
02:06 So I've got a nice onion here. I'm going to chop this up
02:10 relatively roughly
02:14 Got a few marks on the onion I'll take those skins off
02:19 and dice like that about half centimeter, quarter of an inch
02:27 whatever you want cause you want to have a little bit of
02:29 texture left at the end of the meal within the rice.
02:31 So we'll put that in there, put a little bit of oil in
02:36 We're not deep frying, just a little bit
02:39 Now stir that around
02:44 And that's all we want to get started.
02:47 So give that a few minutes in there and while that's going
02:50 I'm going to do the root vegetable. We've got some
02:52 lovely orange kumara or sweet potato depending from what
02:56 country you come from. In New Zealand where I come from
02:58 we call it kumar, it's all the same thing.
03:03 And we've got some carrots. You could add other root vegetables
03:06 as well. Beetroot would actually go really nice but beetroot
03:08 takes a while to cook so I've left it out of this particular
03:11 salad. So I've just got an oven tray, a baking tray
03:14 with some baking paper or parchment paper
03:16 and that'll help with clean up.
03:17 So I'm just going to chop these carrots up
03:21 into bite sized things. These are going to reduce in size
03:27 as they cook so you want to have them a little bigger
03:30 to begin with. The sweet potato we're just going to quarter it
03:35 and chop it into little cubes. You'll notice I'm leaving the
03:38 skin on. This goes nice and soft and I'm not a big fan of peeling
03:43 vegetables. If they look good they're fine. Give the onions a
03:47 little bit of a stir.
03:52 Turn it down a bit.
03:55 And we'll do the other sweet potato.
03:57 So this is kind of a multi tasking meal like most of the
04:00 Cook 30 Episodes. And this is pretty much how I cook at home.
04:07 So I don't have all day to sit around cooking so I just pretty
04:10 much jump in the kitchen and make it happen.
04:12 I'm going to spray some oil here, some olive oil.
04:15 This is just a food way of getting an even coating of oil
04:18 without putting too much on.
04:23 And straight into the oven. This will probably take around
04:27 20 minutes before they become nice and soft.
04:32 Now the rice, just give it another stir.
04:37 So I've got some very exciting spices I'm going to add to the
04:40 rice which is going to make it really, really special.
04:43 We've got some cinnamon sticks some cardamom pods
04:46 and some star anise. And these 3 spices add wonderful, wonderful
04:51 aromatic flavors. So I'm going to put in 2 cinnamon sticks
04:56 Six, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 cardamom pods
05:04 and 2 star anise. And the reason I'm counting is because we want
05:08 to take them out at the end. We want to make sure we get all
05:10 of them. It's not the end of the world if people get them
05:12 in the rice, but it just makes it easier.
05:15 I'm just going to take this off the heat for a second because
05:17 it's gonna sizzle up when we put the water in.
05:21 So I'm going to put some rice in and I've got some nice
05:26 Basmati rice, brown rice of course. And the recipe for rice
05:30 which works pretty much every time is 2 cups of water
05:36 to 1 cup of rice. So I'm going to put in 1 cup of rice
05:43 and 2 cups of water out of the jug
05:45 and by having hot water or boiling water it just kind of
05:48 saves time in having to bring it up to temperature, so
05:51 it's a time saving maneuver
05:59 and that, I'll put the heat back on.
06:04 The whole spices and the onion will slowly go through the rice
06:09 so when it's cooked it will be just lovely and fragrant.
06:14 Already I can smell the cardamom I can smell the star anise
06:19 It just smells beautiful. So one of the rice rules, lid on
06:23 we want the moisture to stay in the rice, not evaporate
06:26 and we want to not stir it because little steam beans will
06:29 appear that will cook the rice evenly.
06:31 So it's bubbling now and I'm going to turn it down to low
06:34 and let that simmer which is just cook, so its just bubbling
06:38 for round about 25 minutes.
06:41 Okay we've made good progress. Let's start the curry.
06:45 And this is the curry, when I was in Cambodia I went to this
06:48 restaurant and had this beautiful curry so I talked to
06:50 the chef and found out what sort of spices he was using, so
06:53 I've kind of tried to replicate it. It's probably not authentic
06:56 Cambodian curry, it has kind of my take on it
06:58 but it's very, very flavorful and very popular at my Cafe
07:02 So I can feel that warming up there. So first ingredient
07:05 another onion. And we're going to want the onion this time
07:09 to kind of mush and become part of the curry.
07:12 So we're going to dice it as small as we can. Not obsessively
07:16 but small dice compared with the large dice that we did for rice.
07:22 So this is my, whoops, usually quick way of cutting onions
07:27 Lining vegetables up, thinking ahead can save time chopping
07:32 Make sure you get a good, sharp knife. Makes all the difference
07:35 when you're cooking. A little touch of oil
07:41 Just a little bit, one or two teaspoons is all you'll need
07:47 Love the sound of the hiss when you put onions in the pot
07:50 you know you're making progress in the kitchen.
07:55 I'm going to throw in some bell pepper.
07:59 Or capsicum. Again this is not going to become a kinda feature
08:03 ingredient but we want it to cook down and melt into this
08:07 lovely, kind of small of bits of capsicum that will melt in with
08:13 the onions and other ingredients So you won't probably notice it
08:16 has capsicum in it but capsicum is really sweet and lovely when
08:20 it's cooked well, so. But if you did want capsicum to appear as
08:25 a feature ingredient, we chop it large and probably put it
08:28 near the end. So you can kind of use the same vegetable for
08:32 different purposes in your meals
08:36 Chop this through. It doesn't have to be exact, doesn't have
08:39 to be tiny, tiny but just on the smaller side
08:45 relatively chopped through.
08:55 We're also going to add cilantro or coriander stems
09:00 This is one of my favorite herbs So I'm going to use the top half
09:03 of this and I keep my herbs in the fridge in wet paper towels
09:06 and it keeps them nice and fresh. And the top half we're
09:09 going to use for other things. And the stalk end we're gonna
09:13 use in the curry.. Often you'll be throwing this end away
09:16 I'll trim off the ends which are slightly, not too bad, but are
09:21 a bit dry. Normally you throw this bit but these little stems
09:27 have an amazing flavor and will cook up beautifully in the curry
09:31 So kinda slice it really, really fine. Getting some leaves in
09:35 there is fine, it's not problem at all.
09:42 And put it in there. So as you can see we're working hard
09:47 at the beginning of the dish to put the flavor in.
09:49 If you kind of cook a dish and get to the end and think
09:51 this tastes really bland and boring, it's usually difficult
09:55 to add a good dash of flavor so you really need to plan out
09:58 and do the work ahead of time.
10:00 Ok we've got some chili, I couldn't find a good chili so
10:03 I've got some chili paste which I'm going to put in, so I'm
10:06 gonna put about a tablespoon of it in.
10:10 Good that's finished. Now I'm going to add some lemon grass
10:16 If you've got fresh lemon grass that's great but if you don't
10:18 you can add some lovely lemon grass paste so I put about
10:22 two tablespoons in here. Might be a bit more but that's ok
10:28 Of course ginger is a great ingredient for the beginning
10:32 of any kinda dish like this. Snap the end off, here we go
10:37 Two tablespoons there.
10:42 Oh that rice. I can smell that cardamom coming through already
10:46 it's just absolutely delicious
10:47 I'll just turn the rice down a little bit so it's just bubbling
10:50 we don't want to burn the bottom.
10:55 And fennel seed. Now fennel seed is a lovely, it's a little seed
10:58 like this. When you try it, it's just got this lovely
11:06 burst of kind of aniseed kinda flavor. It's really nice.
11:09 So we're going to put in round about a tablespoon there
11:14 And this will just give it a burst of flavor there. So as
11:16 you can see this aromatic Cambodian curry is going to be
11:19 very flavorsome just by adding these simple
11:21 and mostly inexpensive ingredients.
11:26 Lovely, we're getting underway we want the onions to caramelize
11:34 So everything is nicely cooking away so now's a good opportunity
11:37 to make a little dressing. And this dressing is really lovely
11:40 We're going to make it with coconut yogurt or cultured
11:43 cultured coconut milk which is another name for yogurt.
11:46 So we're going to pour it into a little bowl like that
11:50 Any kind of dairy free yogurt you want to get is great
11:54 I'm going to add 3 teaspoons of curry powder
12:02 Lift the lid off it's going to be better.
12:06 Here we go.
12:09 Umm just going to add some garlic
12:11 So we're going to add a clove of garlic
12:16 Probably half a clove, just enough to give it a hint
12:21 And I'm going to add the juice of probably half a lime.
12:23 You don't want too much, probably round about
12:27 a tablespoon max
12:31 Just a touch of salt
12:35 And I've got some sweet chili sauce, you can add any kind of
12:37 chili if you want as well
12:40 about a tablespoon
12:43 and to go with it the cilantro we had before. So if you used
12:47 the stalk end for the base of the curry I'll use the nice
12:52 tips as a garnish for the curry
12:54 But the guys in the middle we're gonna just chop up really finely
12:58 so you kinda have a mix of stalks and leaves
13:01 and mix this through the dressing as well
13:03 So I'll put this back between the wet paper towel because
13:06 it dries out really quickly and we're going to sprinkle this
13:11 Get a spoon and just stir it
13:18 And this is nice to just drizzle over the curry and just adds a
13:22 nice kind of extra burst of flavor. So as you can see, lots
13:25 of spices happening in this meal and your taste buds
13:28 are just going to be very excited with all this stuff
13:31 And you may not have these spices in your cupboard now
13:34 but it's a kind of one off purchase so buy them and
13:37 then you can kind of use them for many, many dishes.
13:41 So there's the lovely dressing all done.
13:46 And things are smelling amazing over here.
13:48 And the curry's going well and the rice, the cardamom
13:51 I just wish you could be here to smell it.
13:56 If you've just joined us on Cook 30, we're making an
13:59 aromatic Cambodian tofu curry, smothered over a cinnamon
14:04 cardamom rice and over the top we have a lovely curried coconut
14:09 yogurt dressing. We're also making a root vegetable and
14:12 Cos salad. And a lemon ginger and honey soother.
14:17 Okay time to go back to the curry. And these are nicely
14:22 kind of soft and mushy now. So I'm going to turn the heat up
14:24 a bit and start adding other ingredients.
14:27 So we'll add more spices to it. And we've got some ground cloves
14:31 So we're going to add round about half tablespoon of cloves
14:34 And the reason I don't add these spices earlier is they can
14:38 cause the onions to stick. So you kind of want to kind of
14:41 add these for a very short period. And we got some turmeric
14:45 which adds thickness, little bit of flavor and most importantly
14:48 color. Round about half tablespoon of each of those
14:53 I'm going to stir them up in the pan just to activate
14:55 the spices. Ah this just smells amazing, this is probably the
15:00 of all the Cook 30 programs I'm doing the most spices I've used
15:03 and these just add huge amounts of fragrance and flavor to food
15:07 so make sure you stock your pantry with them
15:09 So I've got just a couple of seconds on there, just to
15:12 activate them in terms of their smell and I'm going to use some
15:17 crushed tomatoes and crushed tomatoes is my favorite because
15:20 they're kind of already been pre blended. You can buy tomatoes
15:24 that are kind of tomato chunks with water. If you do you may
15:28 want to blend them up with a stick blender.
15:30 As you can see, it's a nice consistent tomatoey mix.
15:35 So stir that around and also we're going to add some honey
15:39 for a sweetener about a tablespoon.
15:43 Wherever you have tomatoes which are quite acidic
15:45 kind of generally you usually want to add a sweetener to it.
15:49 A bit of salt, about half a teaspoon
15:54 And that is a lovely, flavorful base.
15:57 Whoops, lucky I've got a shirt the same color as the curry.
16:01 You won't even notice!
16:04 And now we're going to need some beans. I'm just going to
16:07 add some nice long green beans I'm just going to line them up
16:10 on the chopping board and fry these in as well
16:14 Just chop the ends off like that then take them around
16:18 Give them just another end bits in there
16:21 Give them another little adjust and just as they are, I just
16:25 kind of nice and long, a bit of green always helps most dishes
16:31 And that'll take a few minutes to warm up in there you kinda
16:34 don't have them too raw but that'll be fine with that heat
16:38 Also going to add some tofu which is a protein for the dish
16:42 Tofu has a reputation of being bland and boring
16:44 but not in these kind of dishes.
16:46 This will soak up all those beautiful spices and
16:51 they're really nice way to have this dish.
16:56 So I'm just going to chop this up reasonably chunky
16:59 So could be that big chunks
17:05 They're probably one centimeter or half inch
17:08 and we're going to put that in there. Once this is in you kinda
17:10 want to be really careful because it's gonna break up
17:12 even though it's extra firm tofu it's quite fragile.
17:17 I'm just going to stir it around gently
17:21 And the final act is we have some coconut milk here
17:27 so open this and probably want round about half a can of
17:31 coconut milk and it provides a lovely creaminess
17:37 See a few lumps in there but I'll stir through
17:43 All the colors start coming out when you have a creamy base
17:49 Once you've added the cream or this kind of creaminess to it
17:51 You could also use like a cashew cream or a nut cream as well
17:56 you want to be really careful that you don't bubble it
17:59 because that really disturbs the creaminess, so
18:00 from here on we want to make sure it's on low heat.
18:03 so I'm going to turn it right down
18:05 to very low and if you see it bubbling
18:08 make sure you just turn in down
18:11 you might see just a couple of bubbles but you don't have it
18:13 raging away or it changes the consistency of it.
18:16 And this is a really flavorsome curry. So we garnish that before
18:20 serving with a bit of coriander or cilantro.
18:22 Okay, just a quick bench wipe
18:28 Now, what's next on the it's a salad
18:32 It's salad time. Lovely Cos leaves. This is my favorite
18:36 lettuce, Romaine or Cos lettuce It's just such a lovely crisp
18:41 kind of texture to it. And we use it in a lot in our salads
18:44 in the Cafes. I'm going to present this salad on a
18:47 plate like that. I'm going to cut off any ends that aren't
18:52 looking great and just do some reasonably small strips
18:57 like that, you can hear it crunching through the salad
19:00 just a lovely, beautiful lettuce I encourage you to use it
19:03 wherever you can. Mix it up We've kind of got dark green
19:06 bits and light green bits
19:09 We'll add another slice
19:15 That's a nice bed. I'm going to add some color, half of a red
19:21 pepper or capsicum, whoops!
19:25 That fell in the rubbish so we'll use this half then
19:28 That would be the right thing to do
19:35 I'm just going to cut this into strips.
19:37 Just really long, this salad as with any salad you want to be
19:41 looking for nice different textures and shapes and lots of
19:46 different colors.
19:50 Like that and this is the dish we're going to serve it in
19:53 so we're saving dishes. We're going to add some corn
19:57 just a can or corn. So I'm gonna drain the water out of that
20:07 Make sure you get it all out Don't want too much corn water
20:10 in the salad. Just going to sprinkle some of that on
20:15 So I'll probably need about half a can I think
20:17 it's going to be adequate
20:19 An Avocado is another universal salad ingredient.
20:24 Look at that, a nice green one
20:26 It's always a risk when you use avocados
20:29 just twist out the stone
20:33 and take off the shell
20:40 I once cut myself. I used to hold the avocado in my hand
20:44 and try to cut the stone our and once the knife ricocheted
20:48 off the stone and cut me through my finger which wasn't pleasant
20:52 So just cube this up, like that
20:56 here on the edge and then into cubes, very roughly of course
21:04 Sprinkle that over
21:12 like that. Have some olives
21:17 My favorite olives are Kalamata olives
21:21 They're just lovely. I'll drain the water out of it
21:24 and I usually get my olives pitted
21:27 that means you won't find any bits of stone in them
21:30 I'll just throw some of these over
21:37 Black or dark brown is a lovely color to have in a salad
21:41 So we're just building it up layer by layer
21:43 ingredient by ingredient
21:45 And I think these sweet potato and carrots are done
21:51 Look at that they're lovely and soft now. Give them a bit of a
21:57 push down as you can see they're lovely and soft
21:59 The carrots are probably a bit harder but that's ok
22:04 they take a little bit longer to cook
22:07 Put these over
22:14 Roast veggies lettuce kinda combination is a really nice
22:17 salad to make. So you can use any roast veggies or lettuce
22:21 it's a great combo
22:26 And to make this extra special we've got this lovely dressing
22:30 I'm going to make it out of orange juice
22:37 orange juice and Tahini
22:40 It's a lovely dressing. Just juice one orange
22:48 If you don't have any oranges around you could use
22:50 some nice store bought orange juice but there's nothing
22:54 like using the real thing.
22:57 You want round about 4 tablespoons. I'm going to add
23:00 round about most of this but not all of it
23:02 It's a bit of a trick getting the combination between the
23:05 Tahini and the orange juice into a nice consistency
23:09 You may need to adjust.
23:12 So just start stirring
23:17 At first it looks kind of flaky
23:19 but before long it will kind of combine together
23:22 and make a lovely dressing.
23:27 This is a kind of a nice way to do a creamy dressing
23:29 without using lots of oil or dairy
23:34 Come on, let's go
23:36 It's getting there...
23:40 Look at that, it smoothing up
23:43 a few more stirs, so be patient with your dressings.
23:50 Here we go, look at that. We're gonna add some maple syrup
23:53 for a bit of sweetener you could add honey if you want, as well
23:57 So about a tablespoon of that
23:59 Just a touch of salt
24:08 and it kind of darkens a little bit
24:10 I'm going to drizzle over to finish it.
24:15 Drizzle over and the salad is finished and ready for the table
24:26 So this soother is really nice on a cold winter's night
24:30 So first we're going to chop up some ginger
24:33 just cut some slices like that
24:37 so it's ginger, honey and lemon
24:40 I don't want to cut my finger
24:44 Just cut them up like that probably halve them
24:46 and distribute them across the glasses
24:52 and then we're going to add in some lemon
24:55 Just squeeze it through my fingers
25:00 One lemon should do all these
25:05 And then you've got the honey
25:07 Pour this, about a teaspoon or so into each glass
25:14 This is great when you have a cold or not feeling well
25:18 Full of great stuff. And we got some water we boiled it
25:20 probably a while ago so it's just nice and hot
25:23 Not boiling. I'm going to fill these up and this is a lovely
25:27 gingery, lemony, honey drink
25:31 very simple to make. So probably give it 5 or 10 minutes
25:35 just or the flavors to come up,
25:36 and the ginger flavor to come as well
25:37 and it will be a lovely addition to this meal
25:42 Let's check the rice
25:43 Yes, look at that. Looking really nice
25:47 smells amazing, add a little bit of salt
25:50 and prepare on a dish and it'll go really well with the meal
25:53 and I'll put cilantro on the curry
25:55 and I think that is everything, ready


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Revised 2016-10-20