50 Best Mediterranean-Inspired Recipes | Food Wishes

The BEST of Chef John. Here are 50 Mediterranean-inspired recipes from savory to sweet.

00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:05 How to Make Falafel
00:06:12 Greek Lemon Chicken & Potatoes
00:12:22 Shakshuka Recipe
00:20:19 Pita Bread – Easy At Home Recipe
00:26:51 Affogato – Italian Iced Coffee Dessert
00:30:57 Focaccia di Recco
00:37:09 Turkish Eggs (Cibir)
00:33:15 Baklava Recipe – How to Make Baklava from Scratch
00:53:07 Chicken Marbella
01:02:32 2-Ingredient Lentil Flatbread (Vegan & Gluten-Free)
01:09:43 Turkish Stuffed Eggplant
01:18:10 Kofta Kebabs – Grilled Meatball on a Stick
01:27:42 How to Make Mascarpone (Italian-Style Cream Cheese)
01:34:04 Italian Sausage Spaghetti
01:43:38 Italian Braised Beef and Potatoes
01:53:25 Greek Style Beef Stew
02:05:16 Lebanese Mountain Bread – How to Make Lebanese-Style Flatbread
02:13:19 Torrone (Italian Nut & Nougat Confection)
02:22:08 American Gyros – How to Make a Gyro Sandwich at Home
02:29:56 Turkish Chicken Kebabs – Easy Grilled Chicken Kebab Recipe
02:37:23 Butterscotch Budino – Italian Pudding
02:45:23 Bob’s Kabobs – Grilled Lamb Kebabs
02:53:09 Flaming Greek Cheese – Saganaki
02:59:03 Baked Feta Phyllo with Honey
03:07:42 Pasta alla Trapanese – Sicilian Tomato Pesto Sauce Recipe
03:15:25 Grilled Greek Chicken Breasts with Whipped Feta
03:25:37 Garlic Spaghetti
03:28:42 Greek Tomato Feta Fritters
03:37:51 Italian White Bean & Sausage Stew
03:45:02 My Big Fat Greek Baked Beans
03:51:34 Almond Biscotti – How to Make Biscotti – Crunchy Italian Dipping Cookies
04:00:37 Skordalia – Greek Garlic Potato Dip
04:07:49 Italian Flourless Chocolate Torte “Torta Caprese”
04:18:04 Avgolemeno Soup Recipe – How to Make Greek Lemon Chicken Rice Soup
04:25:02 Green No-Bean Hummus – How to Make Great (Keto) Hummus Without Beans
04:34:23 Greek Feta & Spinach Potato Casserole
04:42:33 Tiramoussa Semifreddo – Frozen Italian Coffee Dessert
04:51:30 Frozen Zabaglione – Frozen Italian Custard
04:56:58 Harissa Recipe – Tunisian Hot Chili Sauce
05:02:14 Stracciatella Soup – Italian Egg Drop Soup Recipe
05:07:01 Italian Rice Croquettes – Arancini – Rice Balls Recipe
05:12:27 Pumpkin Zeppole (Simple Italian Doughnut)
05:17:26 Simple Italian Omelette
05:20:17 Farinata – Baked Garbanzo Flour Pancake – Rustic Italian Chickpea Flatbread
05:24:51 Spinach & Leek Torta di Riso — Savory Italian Rice and Vegetable Pie
05:29:39 Italian Wedding Soup
05:34:21 Green Hummus Recipe
05:37:45 Gremolata – Italian Parsley Garlic Lemon Sauce
05:39:28 Italian Pork and Beans and Greens Recipe
05:43:57 Giambotta (Italian Vegetable and Sausage Stew)

50 Best Mediterranean-Inspired Recipes | Food Wishes

Hello this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with Falafel that’s right Falafel is one of those rare foods like french fries and pizza that pretty much everybody loves in fact when I meet someone that doesn’t like Falafel I have to admit I’m a little suspicious I mean what’s not to

Like about this crispy deep fried chickpea Fritter and while I don’t think there’s much danger in this video putting in your friendly local neighborhood flaff stand out of business this really did come out quite well and I think you’re going to be surprised how easy it is so let’s go ahead and get

Started with the star of the show garbanzo beans also known as chickpeas or as my family called them growing up Chi-Chi beans and for the amount I’m making I’m going to use one generous cup of dried garbanzo beans and check them out they have a very cool appearance

They look like little shriveled up let’s say brains and what we need to do is Soak these before we use them so Pro tip if you want to make this today make sure you do this step yesterday all right because what we need to do is cover

These in cold water and let them soak at least overnight personally I think 24 hours is better but overnight should be fine so like I said we’ll cover those with a few inches of cold water and we’ll put that in a place where there’s a pretty good chance it won’t get

Knocked over and as long as you’ve covered those with enough water the next day they should look something like this and then what we’ll do at this point is drain those very very well before we transfer that into our food processor and add the rest of the ingredients all

Right a blender will work sort of okay and yes you can make this by hand by crushing or chopping but that’s going to take significantly longer so try to find a food processor I guarantee one of your married friends has one just borrow it for a day tell me you’re going to make

It worth your while with falafel but anyway we’re going to go ahead and dump in our now very well drained beans to which I’m going to add some diced onion and by the way even though this is going to get processed I think it mixes more

Evenly if you start by cutting the onion nice and small first so I’m going to add in about half an onion along with a whole bunch of mint garlic we’re also going to need a whole bunch of freshly chopped Italian parsley some people also like to use cilantro here or a

Combination we’re also going to need some salt as well as some freshly ground black pepper we’re also going to throw in a spoon of ground or cumin as I believe it’s supposed to be pronounced as well as a little bit of ground coriander and then we’re going to

Shock the World by putting in a little pinch of cayenne as well as a small Touch of baking soda no not powder baking soda and a spoon of flour just a little not too much okay one of the big decisions with a falafel mix is do you

Want it more bready or more beanie and I prefer beanie so personally I don’t want to put too much flour here and then last but not least we’re going to squeeze in a little bit of lemon juice and that’s pretty much it and do you need to give

It a mix like this before you process it probably not I’m not sure why I did that but it’s too late now but anyway once all your ingredients are together we’re simply going to process this pulsing on and off to start of course and what we

Want to end up with here is something that’s pretty finely ground but not a puree all right we don’t want to liquefy this or turn it into a really fine paste and with something like this it’s always a great idea about halfway through to take a little break take off the lid

Take a spatula kind of scrape everything down off the sides give it a little mix in case there are any large Rogue chunks refusing to get mixed in so I did that and recommend you do the same thing and we’ll continue to Blitz that until like

I said we have a very finely ground mixture and instead of trying to think of a very clever way to describe it let me just show you this is what I think you want all right very finely ground but not pasty so we don’t want to go too

Far but it does have to be ground fine enough to hold the shape because we’re going to form these into balls Andor other shape soon so that’s looking good and at this point we can transfer that to a bowl and kind of press it and pack

It down and then what we want to do is cover this and let it sit for an hour or two before we start forming our Falafel and yes I have done these without letting it rest and it does work but by sticking it in the fridge for an hour or

Two those flavors really are going to meld together and it’s going to be a little easier to work with which is never a bad thing so I did pop mine in the fridge for a couple hours after which we’re ready to shape and I’m just going to make some small balls I’m going

To use one of these little sorbet Scoops which not only gives me the shape I want but it also ensures these are about the same size each and by the way one tip if you moisten your fingers these are a lot easier to work with in fact there’s an

Old saying in the Falafel industry damp hands make smooth balls and it really is true all right so we’re going to form our Falafel into the shape of our choice and at that point they’re ready to fry so we’re going to cook these in 350° oil

For roughly 5 minutes and of course that time is going to vary with your size and shape but for the ones I did here 5 minutes was just about perfect and I’m just playing with them here you don’t have to do this I was just bored so I

Gave a stir but like I said we’re going to cook those for about 5 minutes at which point they should look like like this beautifully Brown and crispy on the outside oh yeah those look done so we’ll transfer those on to a rack to cool for

A minutes and we’ll take a bite so you can see that gorgeous inside look at that beautiful color and right here you can get a real good look at that texture inside it shouldn’t be too wet it shouldn’t be too dry it should have the

Texture of Falafel and as you saw in our last video I served these with some teini sauce as a dip which is just a very simple and very beautiful way to serve them and I hear you out there those look amazing but Chef John I don’t

Have a deep fryer there’s no way I could do these well I got some great news you don’t need a deep fryer instead of making balls just flatten them out into patties and pan fry them for a couple minutes per side it works beautifully and they really do come out just as

Gorgeous and as you’re about to hear just as crispy and not only does that technique work but if you’re going to toss yours into a pita to make the traditional falafel sandwich that shape actually works better so I threw a couple in AA which I generously swipe with hummus

With some diced tomato cucumber and onion and of course finished it with a drizzle of tahini and that my friends for a sandwich that was not invented in America is incredible just one of the all-time great fast foods of the world and I know that’s a concept that’s hard

For a lot of people to grasp healthy delicious and beautiful fast food but anyway that’s it I’m going to go finish the rest of that off and I really hope this demo inspired you to give these a try and what if it doesn’t I’m not going to lie I’ll feel

Awful you know some of these puns just right themselves but seriously I really do hope you give these a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy Greek lemon chicken and potatoes that’s right I’ve never catered

Anyone’s Big Fat Greek Wedding but if I did i’ probably serve this not only is it easy to make and Incredibly delicious chicken and potatoes are pretty cheap So Not only would everybody love it it would be pretty profitable but happily I do not cater instead I do whatever this

Is but anyway let’s go ahead and get started and in the words of the Greek philosopher Plato the beginning is the most important part of the work and that is certainly true with this recipe so what we want to do first is put our chicken pieces in a mixing bowl and what

I have here is one whole chicken cut into sections and as amazing as this came out ideally you’re going to use all dark me for this and I’ll go over that on the blog post but thigh and leg sections work even better in this recipe

But alas I had a whole chicken so that’s what I used did I just say Al but anyway no matter which chicken parts you’re using what we need to do is season the generously so we’ll start with a whole bunch of kosher salt followed by some freshly ground black pepper and then

We’ll do some dry herb we’ll do a little bit of Rosemary and a whole bunch of dry oregano and because someone will ask of course you could use fresh herbs in this but this is one of those recipes where the dry herb just works better we’re

Also going to want to do a little bit of cayenne as well as a fair amount of minced garlic and then we’ll finish off it’s basically a marinade with some freshly squeezed lemon juice and I repeat freshly squeezed as well as an equally large amount of olive oil

Preferably Greek and that is pretty much it so at this point if we were just roasting chicken we’d mix this up and proceed but we’re not we’re doing chicken and potatoes so at this point we’re going to introduce some peeled and quartered rusted potatoes Yukon Gold are

Also nice in this but personally I’d stay away from the waxy potatoes like the red ones those don’t seem to work quite as well and once those are in we want to give everything a thorough mixing but not with a spatula please use your hand for this actually use both

Both hands for this but because I’m always trying to keep my camera free of deadly chicken juices I went with a spatula and it was as annoying as it was timec consuming but eventually I got it mixed and once it is mixed you can let this sit in the fridge for a couple

Hours if you want which seems to be a popular option or if you want you could cook this right away which is what I’m doing and it still comes out incredibly good so let’s go ahead and transfer this into a lightly oiled large roasting pan and I generally like to place the

Chicken in first skin side up and I’ll make sure those pieces are nicely distributed before filling in the blanks with our potatoes and by the way do not discard any of the marinade we’re going to spoon that over in a minute but before we do an incredibly important

Step we’re going to drizzle in about a half a cup of chicken broth or water which is going to prevent the lemon and garlic from burning onto the bottom of the pan it’s already right if that stuff caramelizes onto the top of the chicken but if all that stuff blackens to the

Bottom of the pan when we serve this with the pan drippings later it’s not going to have that beautiful fresh lemon herb flavor we really want so we’ll pour in a little bit of broth at which point we’ll spoon the rest of the marinade over the chicken pieces and not just the

Chicken pieces is you want to spoon a little bit over the potatoes too and once that’s been done this is ready for the oven so let’s go ahead and transfer this into the center of a 425 degree oven for about 45 minutes or so or till the chicken is cooked through and what

We want to do after about 20 minutes is pull it out and give these pieces of chicken and potato a little toss in the sauce and please note we’re just tossing we’re not flipping okay we still want to end up with the skin side still up and

By the way you can do this three or four times during the cooking process if you want I just did it once but feel free to do this another couple times if you want and once that’s been accomplished we’ll go ahead and pop that back in and continue until the chicken is

Beautifully browned and cooked through which is what I’m looking at right here and we could at this point serve this as is it would be magnificent but we want to make this even more incredible hey come on we’re trying to make the pantheon so what we’ll do is we’ll

Transfer our chicken to our serving platter and keep that warm for a minute because what we want to do is switch our oven onto broil or up to the highest heat setting you have and we’ll give those potatoes one more toss in that goodness and then we’ll toss those back

In the oven or under the broiler for a couple minutes to finish the crustification and not only is that going to put those potatoes over the top texturally it’s also helped to continue caramelizing all that deliciousness in the bottom of the pan which of course we’re going to utilize so at this point

We can add our now perfect potatoes to our chicken pieces and then all we’re going to do to finish this off is add a splash of water or chicken broth to the roasting pan to sort of dissolve and loosen up all that goodness which we will then strain and spoon over our

Chicken and potato is and by the way if you want you can put your flame on like medium here just to keep everything nice and how well you’re doing this and of course you could taste for seasoning at this point you might need a little more

Salt but I predict it’s going to be perfect and once that’s set like I said we’re going to strain it and Spoon it over our platter and then we’ll finish off with just a little bit of freshly chopped oregano if you have some and my version of Greek lemon chicken and

Potatoes is done and I’ll admit it right now the chicken is really just an excuse so I can enjoy these potatoes with that brown crusty surface outside and then that soft creamy delicious inside which just soaked in all that flavor from the chicken and the herbs and the lemon and

The garlic and while the potatoes are my favorite the chicken is equally delicious in fact I’m going to take a bite from what would be the driest most overcooked part that little piece of white meat from the breast still attached to the wing and even that piece was moist tender and Incredibly tasty

But anyway let’s plate this up properly that was just a little tease although since this is Greek food I believe it’s referred to as a Socrates but anyway like I said let’s plate this up for the official taste and while I usually enjoy AZ is with just a

Little bit of those pan drippings Over the Top If you’re in the mood some kind of cold yogurt sauce is also very nice served with this all right I had a little bit of taziki sauce from some leftover takeout so I spooned a little bit of that over but just a little bit

Of Greek yogurt with some garlic in it would also be nice so that’s totally optional and up to you you are the Plato of your plate bro so that’s for you to decide but no matter how you serve it I think you’ll find this to be one of the

Most delicious roast chicken and potato recipes you you’ve ever tasted so simple so satisfying and so delicious that usually when people learn how to make this they don’t just make it once they make it like once a week for the rest of their lives it’s that good so I really

Do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy Shak Shuka that’s right we’re doing breakfast for dinner although technically this was originally a dinner that became a breakfast so I guess we’re really doing dinner for

Breakfast for dinner but regardless of when you serve this North African dish it’s always comforting and delicious and never not fun to say in fact sometimes when I’m not even making this I’ll just yell for no apparent reason Shak Shuka and now that you know about this

I’m assuming you’ll probably do the same but anyway let’s go ahead and get started and what we’ll do is we’ll place a heavy Skillet over medium high heat and drizzle in a little bit of olive oil and as usual by a little bit I mean a

Lot and then to that we’re going to add two ingredients some diced onions which is very traditional as well as some mushrooms which are definitely not traditional and we do also want to add some salt at this point and while the mushrooms are not a classic addition I

Really think they’re amazing in this and for me just make the dish more Savory and what we want to do here is cook these onions and mushrooms like I said over medium high heat for I’m going to guess and say about 10 minutes or so until they give up any and all excess

Liquid and start to turn golden and as they start to take on a little a little bit of color that flavor is going to get meteor and in my opinion way more delicious so like I said we’re going to take our time and we’re going to cook

Them until they look something like this so those are looking pretty good right there and at this point we can introduce another key ingredient our peppers and we’re going to use three kinds even though it only looks like two I have some diced sweet red bell pepper as well

As a red Jimmy Nardo pepper which is also mild and then as you can probably see one sliced jalapeno and we will stir that in and we’ll cook that for about 5 minutes until those Peppers start to soften up a little bit and then once that’s happened before we add Our tomato

Product what we want to do is add our spices and cook those for a couple minutes in this mixture so at this point I’m going to add a spoon of cumin as well as some paprika and by the way any kind of ground Chili Pepper would work

Here we’re also going to do a little touch of turmeric which by all reports is super good for you and you should try to eat a lot of we’re also going to add some cayenne of course you knew that was coming and then last but not least a little bit

Of freshly ground black pepper and we’ll stir in those spices and we’ll let those cook for a minute or two in this mixture to as I like to say wake up the flavors which really has to do with the flavor of those spices sort of infusing into

The oil as opposed to adding them after the tomatoes go in when everything’s kind of wet and does it really make that big of a difference who knows but why take any chances so like I said we’ll cook those spices for a minute or two at which point we can finally add our

Crushed tomatoes and of course unless you’re using fresh tomatoes you’re going to want to use those San Marzano tomatoes and sure I guess you could use a lower quality if you wanted that’s up to you but remember you’re in charge of making sure your shakshuka is Off the Hookah so suit

Yourself but I’m going to go with the San marzanos and then because I do want to simmer this mixture for about 15 or 20 minutes I’m going to go ahead and stir in a nice splash of water so things don’t thicken up and reduce too quickly and I would say about medium Heat’s

Probably the best but you can adjust that up or down a little bit depending on what your seen in the pan but I do want to let this simmer about like that stirring occasionally for like I said about 15 or 20 minutes to really give those veggies time to soften up and

Sweeten up and just generally give all those flavors time to meld together okay so I let mine simmer stirring occasionally and approximately 15 to 20 minutes later it looked like this and by the way even though we added some salt at the beginning you definitely want to

Taste this for seasoning before we add our eggs on top so make sure you check this especially for salts and then once we’ve determined this mixture is cooked long enough what we’ll do is we’ll prepare the surface for our eggs and what I mean by that is we’re

Going to take a spoon and make sort of a depression in that sauce one for each egg we’re going to place down which in my case is going to be five so I’m going to make five little Wells into which we’re going to carefully place our eggs

And to do that successfully here is a huge and very important tip do not crack the egg directly into your sauce crack it into a ramkin first because you’re going to be able to see it before goes in here okay so very important crack it into aramin first that way there’s no

Possible way the Yol can break whoops looks like that one broke anyway so let me rephrase that by using aramin you can lessen your chances of a broken Yol but it still could happen and yeah I probably should have stopped the camera and fish that one out and had

Them all come out perfectly but I didn’t and no it has nothing to do with ethics or keeping it real it has much more to do with laziness plus as you’ll it’s really not that big of a problem so I really wasn’t that upset allegedly and

Then once our eggs are down we will give each one a little bit of seasoning with some salt and freshly ground black pepper and then all we need to complete this dish is to keep simmering this on about medium heat I’d say until our eggs are cooked to our liking which can be

For someone like me very very soft to others who like it cooked all the way through like a hard-boiled egg and while some people like to pop this in the oven to finish the eggs I prefer to just do it right on top of the stove with a

Cover except I don’t have a cover that fits this pan so in that case I just use a sheet pan Which totally works fine and this is not going to happen super quick but you definitely don’t want to go anywhere you got to pay attention so we’ll keep that covered and then every

Once in a while we’ll give our sh Shuka a little looka and right here was kind of getting close and one thing to keep in mind here if you want your egg soft like I always do you’re definitely going to want to air on the side of taking

This off a little too early because that mixture is super hot and by the time you plate this up and find some toasted bread that egg is going to continue to cook so I gave it a few more minutes and then right here even though it was still

Underdone I could tell I was only a couple minutes away so I proceeded on to the final touches which really you could do it anytime but I tend to do it at the end here so I’m going to finish this by crumbling over some feta cheese to be

Honest I usually prefer go cheese but this time I did go with feta cheese which is very wonderful and then besides the cheese I’m also going to give it a little drizzle of extra virgin olive oil it’s going to add just a little bit more rich and flavor and also freak out my

Guess cuz it looks like raw egg yolk and then last but not least a little bit of fresh herb I’m going to go with Italian parsley although I believe cilantro is probably more traditional and that’s it as soon as you think your eggs are perfect your Shak Shuka is done so let’s

Go ahead and serve this up while it’s still nice and hot so I usually recommend putting some sauce down in the bowl first and then topping it with an egg and then possibly more sauce then of course we’ll finish that with the m Ator slice of toast I mean

Otherwise what are you going to sop up all that goodness with you got to have some toast and then my final touch was a few more drops of olive oil and yes that was mostly for the pictures and once I’d taken a few of those it was time to dig

Right in and you’ll notice that even though those eggs were pretty soft when we pulled it off the stove because that mixture underneath is so hot by the time you serve this up it should be perfect and as I mentioned I do like my yolk a little runny so this was just perfect

For me other people like to cook this all the way through which is fine who am I to judge your eggs but this is exactly how I like mine and that is just extraordinarily delicious that beautifully aromatic spicy sauce just an amazing thing to poach those eggs in and

While admittedly not maybe the most beautiful thing to watch someone eat this is just so delicious so hearty so satisfying so comforting it’s just no surprise at all it became such a popular dish in that part of the world just a fantastic thing to eat whether it’s for

Breakfast lunch or dinner in fact there’s an old Tunisian saying that basically roughly translates to anytime is Shak Shuka time and I could not agree more so I really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as

Always enjoy PE bread that’s right by popular demand this is the P bread that you saw in the taziki video and unlike lots of other baked products which are quite frankly better from a bakery I mean remember the time you tried to make croissants ouch but this on the other

Hand is so far superior homemade than the stuff you get at the grocery store it’s not even close and in addition to being delicious to eat it’s also extremely easy to make so we’re going to start by putting one package of yeast in the bowl of our stand mixer to that I’m

Going to add one cup of very warm but not too hot water and then one cup of flour and we’re going to give that a good mix and I’m going to let that sit there for about 15 or 20 minutes so basically we’re doing kind of a very

Quick sponge here but mostly we’re just making sure that our yeast is active and 15 minutes later if you see it bubbling like this you know you’re good to go it’ll start getting a little foamy kind of like the head of a beer although that’s not a very good analogy but you

Know what I just like comparing things to beer but anyway when you see those little bubbles that means your yeast is active and you’re ready for the next step so at that point we’re going to go ahead and dump in some olive oil and some salt by the way this dough is

Actually very similar to our pizza dough recipe so go ahead and mix in the olive oil and the salt and then we’re going to add the rest of the flour but not quite all of it all right this is is going to take about two more cups of flour but I

Don’t like to add it all at once a Supple moist sticky dough is very important here so I’ll add like 3/4 of the rest of the flow of course we’re going to use the dough hook attachment all right I’ll give it a mix and then

I’ll take a look and as you can see here definitely too sticky still sticking to the sides of the bowl needs more flour so at that point I’ll add a little at a time until I have the perfect consistency and what that is is just enough flour to make it pull away from

The sides and form a very very Supple very soft slightly sticky dough and when it gets to that point you want to let that knead for at least 5 or 6 minutes and again you can always add flour much harder to add liquid so that’s why I

Don’t like to dump in all the flour okay so after five or 6 minutes of kneading mine look like this by the way my hands are lightly dusted with flow and that feels amazing you can tell when you’ve done a dough write it just feels incredibly Supple and sexy at that point

I’m going to add a few drops of olive oil to the Bowl all right I’m going to boil the surface of the dough and what we’re going to do is we’re going to cover this with foil and let it double in size that should take around 2 hours

Although no guarantees might be a little less might be a little longer but you’re going to check all right so that’s what mine looked like doubled in size we’re going to remove that from the bowl onto a flowered work surface go ahead and sprinkle some more flour on top and then

We’re going to press it down with our hands and this is for two reasons number one we want to knock all the air out of it and number two we want it into some kind of flat shape that we can cut eight pretty equal size pieces so that’s what

I did here and once you’ve cut your dough into eight pieces You’re simply going to form these small round loaves now don’t stress out too much about this you could just roll these into a ball if you want but the official method is to kind of pull the dough from the top down

And tuck it up underneath the bottom so I’m just turning the dough I’m kind of stretching the top with my thumbs tucking it up underneath and I’m just going around and around and what you’ll get is a nice round shape with a very smooth top and that is it all right once

Your eight little rounds are formed you’re going to cover that with some plastic wrap and let it sit there for about 30 minutes and 30 minutes later it’s going to look like that yes they will rise a little bit and you can see my plastic sticking a little bit you

Should probably oil that first I forgot to tell you and at that point we are ready to roll our P breads so I’m going to take one piece of dough again I’m using a flowed surface I’m going to Pat it flat a little more flower on top not

Too much just enough so it doesn’t stick and then we’re going to roll that out to approximately a qu inch thick and by the way I’m just going to roll out one to get started here and as they’re cooking I’ll roll out other ones so those are resting while I’m actually grilling the

First ones so that’s just about perfect right there and then the last step before we grill these I want you to let that sit there for 5 minutes and you’ll notice I’m covering the other dough with a towel so it doesn’t dry out all right so once your rolled out pea bread has

Rested for 5 minutes we’re going to head over to the stove where I have a preheated cast iron skillet on medium high heat it’s been lightly brushed with olive oil and we’re going to place in our P bread and we’re basically just going to grill it for 2 to 3 minutes per

Side and that’s really all there is to it so I’m going to go a couple minutes on that side I’m going to give it a flip cook it a couple more minutes on that side and then I’m going to flip it back over to the original side and you’re

Going to see something that hopefully you see in your pan that would be the Puffin all right both sides are going to kind of separate in the center and it’s going to fill with hot air and it’s going to puff up so I’m just giving this

Another 30 seconds or so on each side mostly just to show you the puffing so that’s completely normal and desirable and after it’s cooked for about 3 minutes per side and hopefully you got a little bit of inflation we’re just going to pile those up on a plate as we cook

Them and that’s pretty much it now what you just saw would be fairly typical of what you’re going to see in your pan although once in a while you’re going to get this that’s right the full balloon some of them will just separate perfectly in the center and you’ll have

One big air pocket so that’s kind of like your best case scenario and and I should also add that you don’t have to flip back and forth as many times as I am I’m just doing this to show off my extreme puffiness and by the way don’t

Get discouraged if you don’t get the full puff you’ll see when these are done the insides are going to look great anyway so whether you get partial puff or full inflation you’re going to be fine and these are going to be delicious so bottom line if you grill both sides

For about 3 minutes and it gets kind of blistered and golden brown like that you’re good that’s all you need to do and once you’ve cooked your pasas and they’re cool enough to handle you are done and you’re about to exper erience one of the great bread products in the

History of the world and you can see here as I tear into one how those layers have separated in the center and you get that signature pocket and by the way this was the original hot pocket so it all started with this and of course the great thing about Pockets they’re fun to

Fill and for me it was toiki on this day but I’m sure you’ll have no trouble whatsoever thinking of things to stuff your petas with oh and by the way if there’s a couple listening in the audience by the names of Mary and Paul you guys should quit your jobs by food

Truck sell sandwiches made on this bread and call it pea Paul and Mary’s that is a million-dollar idea right there so to Paul and Mary I say you’re welcome and to the rest of you I say I really hope you give this delicious homemade flatbread a try so head over to

Foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy afato that’s right I believe that’s how it’s pronounced although if it was up to me I would pronounce it afo which I think sounds a little sportier but anyway what it is is a simple yet stunningly delicious Italian

Coffee dessert but really this is two videos in one I’m also going to show you how to cold brew iced coffee that’s right a recipe and a technique for the same low price of free so here we go we’re going to start with some freshly ground espresso coffee beans just like

You’re going to make coffee except we’re not going to brew this with hot boiling water we’re going to do it in cold water all right so I’m going to take a measuring cup and first of all that’s metric let me turn this around so we have some logically units a measure a

System based on tens how does that even work what if something comes out to 11 crazy anyway we’re going to dump the coffee grounds into the container and we’re going to pour over fresh cold water we’re going to give that a thorough mixing with a whisk and that is

Done incredibly simple and because we’re not using hot water you get a very low acid naturally sweet and delicious iced coffee so we’re going to mix that up with a whisk we’re going to wrap it in plastic and we’re going to put it in a

Dark place for 12 hours by the way I don’t know if has to be a dark place it just sounds right and if you want during the 12-hour cold Brewing period if you want to give it a mix every once in a while go for it but I’ve done it without

Mixing it and it still works 12 hours later we’re going to go ahead and unwrap that give it one last stir and then we’re simply going to strain it now there’s lots of methods for this you could throw this in one of those french press coffee makers you could put this

Through a coffee filter of course but here’s a nice easy trick that works great I’m just going to take a funnel and I’m going to line it with a damp high quality paper towel now this does not work with those see-through really cheap discount Brands I’m using the

Brand that has the guy in the mustache on it I don’t know if he’s a florist or a lumberjack or something but anyway you got to use something high quality otherwise it’ll just tear and it’s just barely damp line the funnel and then pour in the coffee and yes the liquid

Will drain through just let it drip and drip and drip all right you’re going to see all the grinds left at the bottom of your container you can just leave those there but pour all the liquid in and when it gets down to the end it kind of

Gets clogged up a little bit don’t worry just gather up the sides and the rest will drip out you could even give it a little squeeze just be careful though if it breaks open you got to strain it again and once all that coffee is strained out you have what’s basically a

Cold brewed ice coffee concentrate and then to make iced coffee very simple it’s one part this coffee concentrate with one part regular water over ice of course and because everything’s nice and cold there’s no melting ice cubes I’m going to put a little splash of milk in my

And like I said earlier because we’re using a cold brood process you get a very low acid very mellow naturally sweet iced coffee there’s really nothing like it in fact to quote my wife Michelle that’s the best iced coffee I’ve ever had end quote okay so it’s

Really delicious but that’s not why we made it I made it to make AO gateau so in a cappuccino cup I’m going to put a couple scoops of vanilla bean ice cream you could also use vanilla gelato which I think would be even more culturally correct and then we’re simply going to

Pour over our ice coffee concentrate do not thin it out with water we want to use it straight all right traditionally this dish is made with hot espresso Port over but I really like this method better the ice cream doesn’t melt as fast I also love the way this coffee

Concentrate kind of Freezes Over the Top of the ice cream it looks awesome I’m going to finish that with shaved dark chocolate and that is a thing of beauty and like so many Italian desserts just really simple super refreshing machine it tastes Rich yet it’s not really

Filling just a really beautiful way to end any meal and as you eat it and stir it it gets thicker and thicker and creamier it’s just such a great hot weather treat so anyway there you go afato just a really super simple summer dessert and also an incredibly easy and

Delicious way to make iced coffee so I hope you give that a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy fuka dco that’s right I checko myself before I dco myself and I’m so glad I did because

This came out amazing especially since this is the first time I’ve ever attempted this delicious and super fun to make leguan flatbread this is actually a personal food wish of mine which might sound a little selfish but after you see what we do here I think

You’re going to forgive me so let’s get started Step One is a very very primitive dough so in my mixing bowl I’m going to add some all-purpose flour a little bit of salt a little bit of olive oil and some cold water and I’m going to go ahead and use the dough hook

Attachment on our stand mixer and we’re going to need that until it’s very soft and elastic but not sticky all right so don’t be afraid to start out a little too sticky and add a little more flower as you go to get this perfect texture and yes you can absolutely do this by

Hand I was just feeling a little lazy but anyway like I said we’re looking for a very soft elastic but not too sticky dough so you’re going to want something that looks and feels just about like that and by the way I feel sorry for people that don’t cook for lots of

Reasons but that they don’t ever get to feel something like this is one of the big ones I mean seriously everybody needs to feel that at least once in their life and ideally hundreds if not thousands of times okay but anyway once our dough ball is formed we’re going to

Wrap that in plastic wrap and we’re just going to let it sit on the countertop at room temperature for 1 hour it has to rest it has to relax and I’m assuming that flow has to hydrate a little bit for this dough to really work well all

Right so our dough is resting which is going to give us time to prep our half half sheet pan that’s right that is officially called a quarter sheet pan pan very easy to find at any restaurant supply store or online and it really is one of the secrets to this recipe you

Can do this in other pans and I’ll explain that on the blog post but this is the perfect pan and to prep that we’re going to very very lightly grease it with some olive oil and then a very light sprinkling of cornmeal all right so our Pan’s prepped at this point our

Dough has rested 1 hour we’re going to unwrap it I’m going to give it a little dusting of flour and I’m going to divide it in half all right so this recipe is going to make two ficat D reos and then I’ll cut that half in half and we’re

Going to take one of those quarters and we’ll Pat that out a little bit flatten it out a little bit as usual we’re only using enough flow to work with and we are going to do most of the work with our hands but what we want to do to

Start this is take a rolling pin and just kind of start it into the shape of a rectangle certainly it does not have to be anything exact but something like that I guess that’s more of an oval than a rectangle but you get the idea and once that’s happened we’re going to pick

That up with some very well flowered hands and we’re going to start stretching it and note to self next time you do ficat dco wear a long sleeve shirt but anyway just pick it up and kind of stretch it over the back of your hands and if you keep going around like

That the weight of the dough will kind of stretch itself and as long as you’ve trimmed those fingernails you should be okay and what we want to do is stretch it out stretch it out until it’s large enough to fit over that edge of the pan

And as soon as you think you got it big enough kind of stretch it over like that and then simply work it and stretch it over the entire pan and what we’re looking for is a very very thin almost membrane of dough and if you get a

Little hole just patch it up and keep stretching you can do this and like I said at the beginning this is the first time I tried this so I’m assuming with practice this gets a lot easier and once our bottom layer of dough is done we’re

Going to go ahead and we’re going to place in our cheese now traditionally straino cheese is used but around these parts what we get is called cenza and it’s very very similar very very delicious and I’m going to put six nice dollops in there which is about half the

Amount of cheese that the restaurant that inspired me to do this uses they use about twice as much but I think because this was my first attempt I wanted to go a little less with the cheese but I promise I will use more next time and then once we’ve placed in

Our cheese we’re going to do the exact same procedure with the top layer of dough we’re going to roll it out to a rectangle we’re going to stretch it over our hands until it’s big enough to stretch over the top we’ll stretch it over the first two corners and once you

Got one end stretched over just go around and stretch out the rest so keep stretching keep pulling keep sealing and you’ll notice once it’s sealed you have air trapped in there that’s exactly what you want you want that top piece of dough stretched thin like a membrane

Just like the bottom you know what that kind of reminds me of something I saw on a German website one time anyway once that’s stretched over and you’ve gone around and sealed the two pieces of dough together simply take your rolling pin and go along the edge cutting off

The excess dough and then just take your thumb and kind of roll down the edges like this and those two layers should be sealed and to make sure you can always do a little folding over a little pressing with the finger tips but be careful you do not want a thick crust of

Dough this is not pizza dough so it really needs to be ultra thin to work so you do not want a bunch of excess dough watted up around the edges but that looks good right there and then for by far my favorite part of the operation

The old pinch pull and tear so take your fingers like this and we’re just going to tear two or three small holes I don’t know why I found this so enjoyable but I did and at this point it’s not going to be a bad idea to preheat your oven to

500 this is going to get cooked in a very very hot oven so preheat your oven and then the last couple steps here while we’re waiting for oven to get hot we’re going to drizzle over a little more olive oil and we’re also going to give it a little sprinkling of coarse

Sea salt and that is ready for the oven we’re going to go ahead and pop that in the center of a 500 Dee oven for about six or seven minutes or until it looks like this the Top’s going to be brown and crusty and don’t be surprised if it

Puffs up in the oven it will and even though I was risking serious Burns I couldn’t help myself I had to do this for a few seconds totally worth it and yes a tiny bit of cheese did leak out but that’s fine that happens in the

Restaurant I stole this from I just used my spatula to push that melted cheese under the crust so nobody knew it’ll be our secret so we’re going to transfer that onto a plater platter we’ll go ahead and cut that in quarters and then you’re certainly free to enjoy as is but

For me it’s best with a nice handful of arugula that you toss in a little bit of olive oil and I’ll put a little bit of Greens on there and I’ll kind of Fold It Up New York City Style and you have a beautiful contrast between the two

Layers the top is kind of crispy and blistered and caramelized and then the layer underneath kind of gets soaked with that melty cheese and it’s just a beautiful beautiful combination anyway good job Italians in particular Lans like I said this was my own personal food wish that I granted to myself yes

That is legal and I really think you’re going to like this as much if not more than I did so I do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy Turkish eggs

That’s right I am never surprised when I come across a new way to use a certain ingredient unless that ingredient is eggs in which case I’m totally shocked since at my age I figured I’ve seen and done it all and without seeing this there is no way I would have thought to

Pair yogurt poached eggs and a a spicy red pepper butter I mean it just seems so bizarre and it is but it’s also extremely delicious and maybe my new favorite breakfast so with that let’s go ahead and get started with our yogurt component and for this we’re going to

Need some room temperature Greek yogurt or Turkish yogurt if you can get it but you can’t and then to this we’re going to add one finely grated garlic clove which I’m going to do on this microplane and what we’re going for here is 100% grated garlic with 0% GR

Fingernail so when you get down near the end please be very careful in one little heads up here when you do garlic this way the flavor is going to be very very sharp and strong so a little bit goes a long way and then besides the garlic we

Will also add some salt as well as some freshly ground black pepper and of course a little Shake of cayenne never hurts and then we will finish up with a fairly generous amount of chopped dill and that’s it we’ll simply take a spoon and give this a thorough mixing

And other than giving this a quick taste for seasoning the yogurt base for our eggs is done oh and in case you missed it earlier we really do want this yogurt to be room temp in fact some people even warm it up before they put the eggs on

But for me as long as it’s not cold it works fine so once that’s set we will definitely not refrigerate it we will just leave that out at room temp and we can move on to the other major component of this dish which is our red pepper

Infused butter and for that what we’ll do is melt half a stick of butter over medium heat and then wait for it to start to sing which in the business is what we call this sound all right can you hear that that’s what’s known as singing

Butter and then what we’ll do as soon as our butter does reach that stage is toss in a pinch of ground cumin along with a little bit of smoked paprika and then a whole bunch of Aleppo chili flakes or some other kind of red chili flak but I

Love the Aleppo because not only does it taste good but there’s no seeds and what we’ll do is quickly swirl that in the pan Andor give it a stir with a spoon at which point we will immediately turn off the heat and believe it or not

That’s it we will just leave that on the back of the stove and as it sits those beautiful red chili flakes will continue to infuse that butter with their flavor and color of course and at this point as long as you can manage to cook a couple

Eggs we are pretty much ready to eat although I did do one extra bonus component here which was making a little bit of a parsley and jalapeno oil and for that all we need to do is grind some chopped parsley along with a diced jalapeno and a pinch of salt in this

Mortar and then once we have that smashed down into a coarse paste we will drizzle in some olive oil and then we’ll stir and smash and grind that for a minute to produce hopefully a beautifully colored very aromatic and herbaceous pepper oil which I thought would be a nice contrast with our dried

Chili butter not to mention would add a little bit of extra visual interest so like I said this is optional but I thought it was a nice touch and that’s it once all our components are ready and our eggs are cooking or in my case

Poaching we can go ahead and set up our plate which means spreading some of our yogurt mixture down like this making sure we form a few ridges and valleys and then if you made it we’ll go ahead and drizzle over a little bit of our parsley jalapeno

Oil and by the way if you just handed me some bread at this point and said that’s your breakfast I would still be pretty happy but hang on this gets much much better oh and speaking of bread before we place down the eggs of our choice we

Want to be sure we’ve toasted a few nice thick slices to eat this with and yes some type of Peter bread probably would have been more authentic here but anyway you decide I mean you are after all the Wilbur of your chur and of course the Mr

Ed of witch bread and that’s it we’ll go ahead and top our yogurt with a couple steaming hot poached eggs or fried eggs or over easy just not scrambled please and that’s it we’ll go ahead and finish this off with a couple tablespoons of our still warm Aleppo pepper

Butter oh and I should mention I was so distracted by how beautiful and unusual this looks that I forgot to finish with a little bit of sea salt over the top although depending on how youve seasoned your yogurt you might not need it but it’s probably not a bad idea and that’s

It once buttered this exotic and Visually stunning dish is ready to enjoy so we’ll tear a piece of our toast in half and bust those eggs right in the yolks and of course toasted bread dipped in egg yolks is never not amazing but when you add in the fact that we’re

Doing this on top of a garlic and herb yogurt spread that’s been drenched in this spicy Aleppo pepper butter it is an entirely new and pretty thrilling experience I mean not only do we have contrasting flavors but just when the heat from that chili seems like it’s getting a little too much it’s

Cooled down by that creamy and herbaceous yogurt so while this maybe does seem a little bit bizarre it absolutely works and I loved everything about it oh if that looks like a lot of butter to you just relax your average American eggs benedict with the holidays

On the top contains about 4 to 6 tablespoons of butter so this is like a diet plating comparison just make sure you’ve toasted enough bread and yes of course this is a very high calorie breakfast but this is not something you’re supposed to serve and then have a

Cheeseburger for lunch right this is something you eat at like 6:00 in the morning and then you go plow a couple fields and maybe wrestle a mountain goat and chop some firewood and then you come home and have a nice light supper but anyway that’s it might take on Turkish

Eggs or as my Turkish friends possibly call it chilier like I said earlier it’s always very exciting when we discover something new we can do with eggs which is why I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links in the description below to get the

Ingredient amounts complete written recipe and more info as usual and as always enjoy baklava that’s right at long last I’m going to show you how I build my baklava and his funny as it sounds this recipe always reminds me of lasagna because much like that most people use the same

Handful of ingredients but as far as the ratios go as well as the exact way they’re layered can really vary greatly depending on who’s making it so this is just how I do it and if you have what you think is a much better way feel free

To keep that to yourself because I like how this comes out so with that let’s go ahead and get started and we’ll begin with our nuts and I like to use two kinds some walnuts and pistachio and while you can use one or the other and

Many people do I really do like the combination here and then the only other thing we’re going to add is a spoon of cinnamon at which point we’re going to process these by pulsing on and off until they’re sort of but not too finely ground and thanks to the power of video

I’m going to show you exactly what I mean by that so this right here is my preferred texture and once those are done exactly how we want we’ll go ahead and set those aside and we can move on to assembly assuming that is that we’ve made some felo dough or at least bought

Some at the store and let it thaw and by the way I did make this the night before and left it in the fridge and it seems to have held up beautifully those sheets separated easily and they were still nice and supple and fairly stretchable and one big tip here whether

You’re using homemade or not is to always keep these covered as you’re working with them otherwise they can get dried out and much tougher to work with and for that I’ll like to use a barely barely barely damp towel okay it’s not so much damp than it is not dry and then

Other than melting a stick of unsalted butter we are pretty much ready to start assembly so we’ll go ahead and take that butter and brush it generously into the bottom of whatever pan we’re using and once that’s been buttered we’ll go ahead and start building our Bottom by

Layering up five or six sheets of felo and if you happen to see little tears or uneven edges or small holes do not worry okay we’re not machines we are human and things are going to happen but the good news is when this is done no one will

Ever know ever so please stack these layers with no fear and generally the rule of thumb is we’re going to butter every two sheets of filo although as you’ll see later I don’t always follow that and as you may notice I’m not brushing I’m dripping do not try to

Brush the butter on the felo it is so thin it’s going to stick to it and you’re going to have a big mess so what we’ll do is drip over about a tablespoon at a time and as this thing cooks that butter is going to distribute evenly

Between the layers even though we just dripped it and didn’t brush it so we’ll go ahead and build up our bottom as shown and I think the minimum number of sheets at the bottom here should be at least five or six and yes you can certainly do more but my favorite part

Of The Baklava is the nut mixture not necessarily the pastry even though that’s awesome also I do try to get away with the least amount of felo I can where it still comes out crispy and amazing but anyway once our Bottom’s been layered we will go ahead and transfer in exactly oneir

Of our nut mixture because we’re going to be doing three layers of that separated by just a couple sheets of felo and while some people like to have a third thick layer of felo in the center like we do at the bottom and top I prefer to place in just two sheets of

Felo both buttered by the way in between my nut mixture layers and for me those are there just to add a little bit of structure and they’re not really going to be noticeable in the final product okay sort of like when we add a pinch of cayenne you don’t really notice its

Presence but you may notice its absence so we’ll do a third of our nuts with a couple buttered sheets of filo and then another third of our nuts followed by another couple sheets of buttered filo and by the way no it’s not your imagination I did speed up the

Footage here to save a little bit of time on these repetitive steps otherwise I would have had to fill up all the dead air with bad puns and vague references and nobody wants at but anyway if everything’s gone according to plan we should be left with 1/3 of our nuts

Which we can go ahead and dump over the top and then to finish this off we’ll simply go ahead and repeat what we did on the bottom we will layer up five or six sheets of felo with butter bean applied to at least every two sheets and

As I finish this off I do apologize for the fast motion which I really do not like to use I find it annoying and offputting but I thought it was the lesser of two evils since I didn’t want to edit out any of the actual layering

Steps so thank you for putting up with that oh and I probably should mention I’m using a round pan here but literally any pan that’s deep enough will work okay you may have to adjust your amounts and the amount of felo you make and the size and shape of it but the technique

Is not going to change so you go ahead and make this in anything you want I mean you are after all the Franks and atra of your baklava and if I can make it here in a round pan you can make it anywhere in a different shaped pan but

Anyway we’ll go ahead and F finish off felo the top with like I said at least five or six layers I believe I did six and ideally once you’ve placed on that last piece of filo you should have just enough butter left to generously coat the

Top and I realized I said earlier to drip not brush but once this gets built up towards the end when it gets kind of sturdy you can actually do a little bit of brushing without causing much damage so we’ll go ahead and apply the last of

Our butter at which point we need to cut this into portions before it goes in the oven but not yet okay we’re not going to be able to effectively cut this until it’s cold and that butter hardens up and stiffens our sheets of felo so what

We’ll do is cover this and pop it in the fridge for about an hour at which point we’re going to cut this into the beautiful traditional diamond pattern and to do that we’ll make three or four Cuts in One Direction and then turn the pan and make

Three or four Cuts diagonally across the other way and if you have a steady hand which I don’t and you know what you’re doing which I don’t you will get perfectly shaped absolutely even pieces in other words the opposite of what I get which is every single piece

Of different size so if you want to sketch a pattern on top to make these more even go ahead but I can’t even pretend to be concerned with that because as you’ll see once this is cooked it looks amazing no matter how you cut it but either way this has to be

Cut before it goes in the oven otherwise it’s virtually impossible to cut without wrecking the top so once cold we’ll go ahead and cut that into pieces at which point it’s finally ready for the oven so let’s go ahead and transfer that into the center of a 350 degree oven for

About an hour or until beautifully Brown and what we’ll do while that’s cooking is complete our last component the sugar and honey serup and for that we’re going to need a little bit of sugar as well as three whole cloves I’m also going to toss in a spoon of Honey which wasn’t

Runny it was kind of crystallized but that’s fine for this and then last but not least we will pour in some nice cold fresh water and we’ll go ahead and place that over medium high heat and we can go ahead and stir that together and then all we need to do here

Is patiently wait for this to come to a boil which is going to take a couple minutes but don’t walk away because as soon as that starts to boil what we’ll do is give it a stir and turn off the heat because we’re done that’s it very

Simple and you’ll see as this stuff settles down it should be relatively clear and then what we’ll do with the heat off is add the last two ingredients one very familiar a little touch of pure vanilla extract and then one that’s not familiar orange blossom water oh yeah so exotic

Which is going to add this gorgeous citrusy floral element which doesn’t sound great but it is and that’s it once those two things are stirred in it is ready to Ladle over our hopefully now baked baklava and there it is like I said we’re going to bake that for about an hour at

350 until it’s beautifully browned and just to help you VIs visualize the bottom is going to be one shade darker than the top so I use that as my guide and I try to get that just one shade past golden brown knowing that the bottom will be beautifully browned okay

Because we do not under any circumstances want a Soggy Bottom so that is looking just about perfect and what we’ll do is let that sit for just 5 minutes before ladling over our syrup and by the way if you have a guest over maybe it’s date night make sure they

Watch you do this step because there’s no way to do this and not look cool and sexy it’s impossible and to those people thinking man that’s a lot of sugar syrup it is but it’s about 25% less than most recipes call for so I’m sort of doing a

Little bit of a diet version here but anyway we’ll go ahead and apply that to our still hot baklava and then by far the hardest step we have to let this cool down to room temp before we eat it all right it’s not good hot nor is it

Good cold because the butter hardens this in my opinion should be eaten exactly at room temp and while you’re waiting you can just stare at it and pick out your piece I think I’m going to go bottom right although not for the final plum in pictures for that I use

One of my few perfect diamond shaped ones and to finish I like to grade over a little bit of pistachio because I’m kind of fancy and I think it looks good and that’s it once cooled down a room temp and possibly pistachio dusted our baklava is ready to

Enjoy and I hate to think you’ve never had this before but if you haven’t man are you in for a m altering treat right we got that crunchy buttery f on the bottom and then our Rich fragrant sticky nut layer all top with more buttery

Crispy felo and I was just about to say as far as sweets go this is one of the greatest bites of food in the world but forget just sweets this is just one of the greatest bites of food in the world and Al you’ll excuse me I need to finish

This and also that oddly shape one I picked out earlier so whether you use the felo from the store or you significantly raise your foodie street cred by making your own at home I really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all

The ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always injoy chicken Marb that’s right I’m going to show you my version of the silver paletes Famous Chicken Marb which was named that because they couldn’t call it chicken with olives and prunes since nobody’s ordering that but despite that possibly

Weird sounding combination of ingredients this is without a doubt one of the top five most delicious chicken recipes ever maybe top three so with that let’s go ahead and get started by prepping our chicken and for this I like to use 12 of the largest bone in skin on

Chicken thighs I can find and whenever we work with these I think we should find the thigh bone which runs this way and once we identify that we’ll flip it over and make two cuts perpendicular to the Bone right through the skin like this about an inch and a half apart and

That will allow our marinade to get in a little deeper and a little quicker and and I also think it makes for a little more interesting appearance so we’ll go ahead and do that to all 12 oh and I should mention the original recipe is done by cutting up whole chickens pretty

Much like we would do if we were making fried chicken but for me the thighs are the most userfriendly choice and we don’t have to worry about the white meat drying out while we’re waiting for the dark meat to cook through but anyway once our chicken’s prepped we can move

On to this very simple but incredibly delicious marinade which starts with a whole bunch of crushed garlic plus an equally generous amount of dried oregano followed by some freshly ground black pepper and then of course some kosher salt with the rule of thumb being one teaspoon per pound of meat and then

We’ll also do a few shakes of cayenne even though that’s not in the original recipe right they probably just forgot it and then we will also add a little bit of Caper brine which is the liquid the Capers are packed in and you will see the actual capers in a minute but

For now we’ll just add the juice and that’s it we’ll finish up with some red wine vinegar as well as some nice olive oil and then we’ll grab a whisk and give this a quick mix before we head over to whatever container we’re going to marinate our chicken in which in a

Perfect world is something large enough to fit all the thighs in one single layer and then besides the chicken and the marinade we will also need some haved green olives some chopped up prunes which I’ll talk about in a second and some Capers and what we’ll do is

Take half of each of those things and we’ll scatter those over the bottom of the this container and yes you’ll definitely want to buy the pad dolls for this and then regarding the prunes which I like to chop up pretty small I’m not sure how many people realize those are

Actually dried plums but some genius a long time ago decided not to call them dried plums since I guess that sounded too delicious and they named them prunes instead which does not sound as good but anyway we’ll toss half of those three things in the bottom and then we will

Place in our chicken skinside down and once those have been placed in we’ll give our marinade a quick stir and then apply a nice generous Spoonful to the top of each thigh and I will admit this step may or may not be necessary right we probably could just dump over all the

Marinade and it would probably come out very close but this just feels right so I do it okay it’s part of the ritual of cooking that you always hear me talking about and then we we do is go ahead and flip these over and then once we have

All those thighs turned with the skin side up we can take the rest of our olives and prunes sorry I mean dried plums and capers and we can scatter the rest over the top and then eventually we will Top everything with the rest of the marinade and by the way if you don’t

Have a container like this where everything fits perfectly you can just use a roasting pan or one of those large foil pans you use for your turkeys or even if you want a large bowl or a plastic bag okay as long as the meat’s surrounded by all this goodness we’re

Going to be fine but if you do have something like this this I think it’s an advantage since we know everything’s going to be evenly and properly marinated but anyway like I said once all that’s been apply to the top we’ll go ahead and spoon over the rest of the

Marinade oh and I forgot to mention there’s supposed to be a few bay leaves tossed in here which I decided not to add because I forgot to write it down when I transposed the recipe so I will add a note to the written recipe if you

Want to add those and then before we cover this if you have it I like to place a piece of parchment paper over the top and give that a nice firm pressing down but this is optional and you don’t have to do it but I like to

Again it just looks and feels right and then what we’ll want to do is cover this and then pop that in the fridge to marinate for 24 hours okay just over night is fine but if you can go the full 24 hours I think it’s even better and

That’s it the next day we will pull it out and unwrap it and we will place that skin Side Up in a nice large roasting pan and then once that Pan’s been thighed we’ll go ahead and take any of the remaining olives Capers and dried plums and we will scatter those evenly over

The top along with any of the excess marinade and as we get to the end of that task we will want to sort of clear off the top of the thigh and you’ll see why in a second as we transfer on the last ingredients but first we need to

Add the second to last ingredient which would be pouring over one cup of white wine or if you don’t do wine you could do some chicken broth with a splash of vinegar in it so so if you want to do that instead feel free I mean you are

After all the player of your chicken Marb but the wine is highly recommended if you can use it and then to finish this up believe it or not we’re going to sprinkle the tops with some brown sugar I know you didn’t see that coming nobody does and then the original recipe we

Would sprinkle all of it on top now but I’m just going to use about half the amount at this point and then we will add the rest after we based but first things first so once our chicken’s been Brown sugared as shown it is ready to

Transfer into the center of a 350° oven for about an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and a half total but after about 40 to 45 minutes we should probably pull it out and give it a basting just to kind of moisten the tops and take a look at

Everything plus it’s a proven scientific fact that basting is therapeutic oh yeah if you have a lot of stress you should try this and then what we’ll do after a little bit of basting is finished the sugaring and in case you’re keeping scored home I’m definitely using less

Brown sugar than the original recipe since I think there’s plenty of sweetness coming from those dried plums but anyway once that’s been accomplished we will pop it back in the oven until it’s cooked to our liking which for me is the meat being fork tender but not

Falling off the bone and for an optional step once we think our chicken’s almost cooked we can crank the heat up to like 425 for the last 15 minutes or so just just to get some extra Browning on the top and once we’re done if everything goes according to plan our chicken

Should look like this and then you don’t have to but I’m going to give these one more based so the tops are nice and shiny for the pictures and then for a final Final Touch This is traditionally sprinkled with chopped parsley and that’s it our chicken Marb

Or as many of you will insist on calling it chicken Marbella is ready to enjoy and we really should let this cool down a little bit before trying to eat eat it but I was starving and could not wait so even though it was too hot and I knew it

Was going to be hard to cut in the pan I went in for a taste anyway and that my friends as I mentioned in the intro is one of the most delicious chicken dishes of all time and many claim the most delicious chicken dish of all time so I

Took a couple quick bites before plating some up properly and by properly for me I mean on some mashed potatoes although this really is fantastic on so many things including rice and pasta and we will definitely want to spoon over plenty of those olives and dried plums along with copious amounts of the

Cooking liquids which we could thicken up if we wanted to bother but we don’t just spoon it over like this and start eating and what makes this so incredibly enjoyable to eat is that it has everything okay it has the perfect balance of sweetness and tanginess and brininess and

Saltiness and all that is perfectly balanced by the acidity from the wine in the the vinegar which really cuts through the richness and that sweetness from the fruit so to summarize I loved everything about this and you might be thinking if this is so incredible and one of the greatest chicken dishes of

All time why have I never heard of it well I think it’s because this originated in New York City in the late ’70s at the silver pallet and while it was a viral sensation there it was much harder for a dish like this to gain popularity in other parts of the country

Mostly because this was before the internet and you actually had to talk to other people or read about it in a magazine or newspaper so news about a dish like this really didn’t travel that fast but anyway now we do have the internet and people like me showing you how to make

It so now there is no excuse for you not to know about and make and enjoy this dish on a regular basis and I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual

And is always enjoy lentil flatbread that’s right when I first heard about this or I should say overheard about this since I was actually eavesdropping on some vegans and how did I know they were vegans oh you can tell but anyway they were talking about this flatbread you could

Make using nothing but lentils and water and it kind of sounded too good to be true so I did a search and then a test and I’m happy to report they are real and spectacular so with that let’s go ahead and get started with basically the one and only ingredient and that would

Be a cup of red lentils which I probably would have called orange lentils and the reason we want to use this variety is because the Hull’s been removed and they’re split in half which is why these are the fastest cooking of all the lentils and why they work so well in

This recipe and what we’ll do to prep these is add them to a blender or a food processor if you want and then we will add some nice cold fresh water and we will let these soak for at least 3 hours and yes I believe you can go longer but

I hear about 3 hours is the minimum so we’ll go ahead and let those sit and after the soaking period they will have swollen up or is it swelled up anyway they’re going to be all swolled up and probably look something like this and that’s it once that’s been accomplished

We’ll go ahead and blend these on high speed until we formed a very smooth relatively thin batter and believe it or not and at first I didn’t that’s it we will simply pour that into a bowl and then if we want and you definitely do we will season this with some salts because

As I’ve said many times a bland legume is a bad legume so I am definitely going to stir in some salt at this point and that’s it once Blended and probably seasoned we can if we want use this right away but I do think it’s better if

We wrap it up and pop it in the fridge overnight okay I can’t tell you exactly what happens but but the taste and texture seem to be a little better but fair warning if you do make them the next day the mixture is going to kind of

Separate so before we use it we’ll need to take a whisk and give it a good mix and you’ll also probably notice it will have thickened up just a touch and that’s it as soon as that’s mixed up we can head to the stove and cook these up

Which I did in a non-stick pan set over medium high heat and while that’s getting hot we’re going to carefully rub the surface with an olive oiled paper towel just to lubricate that a little bit and then once we think that pan is hot but before it starts to smoke we

Will pour in about 1/3 cup of our batter and then we’ll use the back of a ladle or a big spoon to sort of spread that from the center out to create a nice even Circle about five or 6 inches across and then what we’ll do for the

Next 2 minutes or so is absolutely nothing but what I would do at this point since the pan is nice and hot is we’ll lower our heat to medium and we will just stay there unless we feel like we need to raise it again again and when

We see bubbles breaking through the top that usually indicates the bottoms cook long enough but before we try to flip it over we want to take the edge of our spatula and kind of slide it underneath to make sure that surface has been seared and it’s going to be okay to flip

Since the only way to screw these up is to try to turn them too early but once we think we’re good we’ll go ahead and flip that over oh and you see how I tried to shake the pan to center it I probably shouldn’t have done that and we certainly don’t want to

Stick our spatula under there to center it yet because until this batter Cooks a little bit it is very sticky and soft and you will totally tear your flab bread so I just left it alone for about a minute at which point it was pretty easy to move but anyway we’ll give that

Second s about 2 minutes total and believe it or not that’s it it really is truly an absolutely simple procedure so let me go ahead and transfer this onto a plate so we can take a look at what we got and what we got is a pretty attractive relatively thin flat red or

At least that’s what I’m calling it okay if it was a little thinner we could go with crepe or I guess you could call these lentil tortillas but anyway no matter what you call them they’re very soft and flexible but surprisingly strong and if we want we can roll them

Up or if you’re not into that you could just fold it up into triangles which would look pretty nice sit next to a Bola Curry and as far as the texture goes I found these to be surprisingly bread-like okay yes a soft spongy bread but it still has a pleasant starchiness

And it does have a little bit of elasticity and then as far as the flavor goes it is extremely extremely neutral which is a euphemism we use in the business to describe things that are not very flavorful but that is not a bad thing at all since the reason we would

Make a stack of these would be to eat them with things that are very very flavorful but anyway having said that the flavor is very pleasant and sure if you want to add something besides the salt like some ground chili some curry powder some turmeric fenugreek do you

Have any fener Greek but anyway the point is you can flavor these any way you want and besides how easy these are they are super inexpensive okay out a one cup of red lentils if you make them this size you’re probably going to be able to make about 8 to 10 which is

Producing a lot of food from a relatively small amount of raw material and as you cook these which again I’m going to probably do on medium most of the way but as you cook these and pile them up just like when we’re doing actual flatbread or tortillas I like to

Keep a towel over the plate to help hold in some of that heat which I think helps the texture and probably keeps them from drying out and just imagine taking one of these freshly made flatbreads and using it to roll up a beautiful spicy curry chicken salad oh yeah that would

Be good in fact forget about imagining it let me show you exactly what that looks like for real and of course this this is just one of like thousands of things you could do with these since these are going to work about the same as anything you would serve with Crepes

Or wraps or tortillas or any of your grain based flat Reds so we can add versatile to the very long checklist of reasons to make this oh and I should mention by adjusting the amount of water you soak your lentils in you can make these flat RADS a little thicker okay the less

Water you use the thicker the batter will be but for me the ratio I decided was ideal was two cups CS of water for every one cup of lentils but as always feel free to experiment I mean you are after all the Chrissy tan of eating like

A vegan but don’t just make these because they’re vegan or gluten-free or grainfree or low carb or high protein or super affordable or super simple and fast to make you should make them because they’re a very delicious thing to eat okay I was actually surprised just how much I enjoyed these and

Whether you’re a vegan or not I really do think you’re going to love these which is why I really do hope you give them a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy Turkish stuffed

Eggplant that’s right I’m going to show you how to make carne AR although in the spirit of full disclosure I only found out this dish existed like an hour before I started filming and I didn’t really use a recipe and and only did about 15 minutes of research but despite

All that these came out amazingly well oh and by the way in case you’re wondering the name actually translates to split bellies which as you can see or at least will see is a very accurate name so with that let’s go ahead and get started by prepping our eggplants and

For this you’re going to need four equally sized hopefully male eggplants and know eggplants really don’t have genders but when you’re buying these what you want to look for is eggplant that have small round indentations versus larger longer slot-like indentations which tend to have more seeds so when you’re choosing these

Remember you want dots not slots and to prep these what we’ll do is pull off the leaves and then what we’ll do next is take our peeler and make exactly four peels equally spaced apart and this is not just for appearance’s sake okay these equally spaced peels are one of

The keys to the whole operation and that’s because the peel on the bottom is going to help these sit flat and the peel on the top is eventually where we’re going to split our bellies and we’ll do once that’s been accomplished all four is go ahead and transfer those into this baking dish

Into which I’ve brushed in a little bit of olive oil and then what we’re going to do is pop these into the center of a 400° oven for about 45 minutes to an hour or until they just start to soften okay we don’t want them too firm but we

Also don’t want them totally collapsing so when they’re done they should look a little something like this and they should feel sort of soft in spongy but they should not be collapsing when we press them all right we’re not trying to make Baba G here and and because I

Probably should have done it when they went in the oven I decided to brush these with a little bit of olive oil to kind of shine up the outside and then what we’re going to do is let these sit until they’re cool enough to handle at which point we will

Honor the name and split the bellies and what we can do while those are cooling is go ahead and make our filling which I’m going to start by sautéing a large onion in some olive oil in this skillet set over medium high heat and as usual We’ll add a nice big pinch of

Salt and usually we’ll saut these onions until they just start to turn turn translucent but here my instincts told me to go a little bit further until these onions not only softened and started to turn translucent but also until they started to take on a little

Bit of golden brown color all right for whatever reason I just thought these should have a little more of a sweeter profile so that’s what I did I cooked those stirring over medium high heat until they looked a little something like this at which point I’m going to

Add a pound of ground lamb and you know the drill once we add our meat we’re going to sort of break it up with our spatula into nice small pie pieces and we’ll continue doing that till it’s as fine as we want and it eventually starts

To Brown up and even though I’m using lamb here I believe beef is also a popular choice and as far as the technique goes I really think you could do this with any ground meat except ironically turkey I just don’t think it has enough fat for something like this

But anyway no matter what we’re using we’ll go ahead and brown up our meat at which point we’ll add most of the rest of the ingredients including some crushed or finely minced garlic some freshly ground black pepper a little touch of ground cumin or cumin

I also wanted to sneak in a little touch of cinnamon which I think is always amazing with lamb anyway we will continue on with a touch of cayenne as well as a pinch of dyed Rosemary and speaking of herb I believe traditionally we’re supposed to use some freshly

Chopped parsley in this but that didn’t happen and then we will finish this up with a squeeze of tomato paste which I think you should always buy in tube form since we typically just need a little bit at a time and then last but not least a generous application of salt

Okay rule a thumb about a teaspoon per pound of meat and then of course we will adjust from there and we’ll go ahead and stir all that together and cook that for about 2 minutes to sort of wake up our spices at which point we can add and

Stir in our last major ingredients and that would be a whole bunch of Dy sweet Andor Hot Chili Peppers and I used a combination of Anaheim pablano and Fresno okay so I went with an array of mild medium and hot but whatever you’re into is going to work including some

Just regular old basic bell peppers and all we’re going to do here is cook this for a few more minutes until those Peppers just barely get tender okay keep in mind this mixture is going to cook once we stuff it into the eggplant and it bakes so we probably don’t want our

Peppers disintegrating at this point so I just cook mine for about 3 or 4 minutes at which point we’re simply going to turn off the heat and let this cool down for about 10 minutes or so before adding the final optional ingredients a handful of finely grated

Sheep’s milk cheese okay I forget the exact name of the one I used since Michelle bought it but it was very similar to peino and once that’s been stirred in our filling is basically done although if you’re a real Pro of course you’re going to taste this and adjust for

Seasoning and then assuming our eggplants are now cool enough to handle we can go ahead and split these bellies by cutting directly through the middle of that part we peeled on the top but don’t go all the way through to the bottom right maybe just like 3/4 of the

Way and then using two spoons we can kind of pull that apart which is going to give us plenty of space to stuff in our filling and by the way if it’s cool enough this is probably easier if you use your fingers unless of course you’re

Trying to use a camera and a tripod then the spoons are probably easier and by the way one of my four eggplant was female and did have more seeds so there you go and I did scoop some of them out since they contend to be a little bit

Bitter but anyway we’re going to split and spread open the bellies of our eggplant at which point we can spoon in our filling and I actually considered sprinkling some salt on the inside before filling these but I thought my lab mixture had enough although in hindsight it didn’t and I could have

Used a touch more so something to keep in mind but anyway we’re going to go ahead and fill these as evenly as possible and as we do we kind of want to press it in and pack it down but be careful don’t do it too hard otherwise

These could burst open and then once stuffed I decided to decorate the top with some extra pepper strips which is something I noticed a few people doing during my exhaustive few minutes of research but of course this step is optional so you decide I mean you are

After all the Nelly Fado of your split bellies bravado but I did have some extra peppers and I do think it makes it look nicer if not more aerodynamic I wonder how you say racing stripes in Turkish but anyway we’ll decorate those as we so choose and then I finish the

Tops of a little drizzle of olive oil because it felt right and then one last thing before we bake these I’m going to pour in about a cup of chicken broth so everything stays nice and moist and we’ll have a little something something the spoon over later and that’s it these

Are now ready to pop back into our 400° oven for about 45 minutes or so or until our eggplant is very soft and tender okay it’s really going to depend on the size so be sure to give it the old POC POA with a knife to check and that

Should pierce the flesh with virtually no resistance and if it doesn’t put them back in but mine were perfectly tender so I went ahead and served up and spooned down some of those drippin and that my friend for a first attempt did not look too bad and I’m happy to report

The Taste and texture were also really good all right I’ll probably tweak a few things in next time I make them like for example salting the inside a little but my eggplant was beautifully tender and creamy and the filling very flavorful although I’ve since learned since filming I was supposed to serve this

With Bryce and a yogurt sauce so I will definitely be trying it that way next time and probably whip up a batch of our zat ziki sauce but anyway all in all I thought this was very successful and not just this specific recipe but the technique in general right as I was

Enjoying this I thought up a couple dozen variations I love to try again none of which involve turkey but anyway that’s it my attempt at making carne aric it’s always a lot of fun trying a new recipe for a lot of reasons first and foremost is that there’s really no

Pressure it has to come out great and it really is always more enjoyable to cook without fear okay we should all do that more often so I’m going to go ahead and do a little more research and maybe pick up a few tips in the comment section but

In the meantime I really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy Kaa kebabs that’s right I am very excited to be sharing what is one of my favorite

All-time things to grill and this is perfect for those times when you want to take a break from grilling burgers but you also kind of want a grilled Burger since basically what this is is a Mediterranean style meatball an a stick and I know Shish gets more love but Kaa

Might just be the best Kebab so with that let’s go ahead and get started with a piece of toast no you probably didn’t see that coming but we’re going to start with one piece of whole grain bread that we’ve toasted to a beautiful golden brown and what we’ll do is take a knife

And cut this into nice thin strips at which point we’ll cut those strips across into a nice small Dice and while not all Kaa kebabs actually have a filler in them or use a different filler like a grain there is just something about a piece of toasted whole wheat

Bread that works so well with this beef lamb combination of meat we’re going to use and yes having said all that if you have to use a piece of white bread go ahead but really the wheat does work way better so we’ll go ahead and dice it up

Nice and small and then we will push that together in the middle of our cutting board and then we’ll top that with some diced onions as well as a whole bunch of freshly chopped Italian parsley and then last but not least a very generous amount of minced garlic at

Which point we will take our knife and start chopping this mixture and we will keep chopping for about 2 minutes or until the mixture becomes fairly fine and kind of looks like toule and of course this would be faster if you used a food processor but I don’t think it

Tastes as good because in a food processor all these ingredients get crushed and torn versus cleanly sliced with the blade of a knife like this so you decide but this only takes a couple minutes so I would do it this way and if you’ve never seen or had to Boule well

First of all you really should try it but if you haven’t seen it before it looks like this and that’s it once we get it to this stage we’re going to stop and it’s now ready to add to our meat mixture but before we do let’s go ahead

And meet our Meats as well as season them up and my favorite blend for these kebabs is two parts beef to one part lamb but you can certainly do it with all one or the other or any ratio you want and as far as seasoning goes we’re definitely going to want some kosher

Salt as well as its good friend freshly ground black pepper and we’ll also toss in a little bit of all spice some paprika a little bit of cardamom a little touch of nutmeg and then we’ll finish up with some good oldfashioned cayenne pepper and it’s probably obvious

But I’ll tell you anyway you can go ahead and spice this any which way you want I mean you are after all the slippery Pat of how to season your scared meat but after trying about a 100 different combinations this is my favorite and then what we’ll do is go

Ahead and add our toast and onion mixture as well as a couple tablespoons of nice cold fresh water which is very important to keep this mixture moist so don’t forget that and once we have all that together we’ll get in there with our hand and we will mix and mash this

Smoosh and smash this until it is very very well combined and for once we don’t have to worry too much about over mixing okay usually when we’re making meatballs or meatloaf we usually want to be careful not to over mix because the texture will become too firm but here

That’s exactly what we’re going for but don’t worry it’s still going to be very tender and very moist thanks to that toasted onion and parsley mixture as well as that water we added but having said that once it is mixed and everything’s been equally distributed you can stop otherwise you’re just

Wasting time and we have other things to do like covering this in plastic and popping it in the fridge until it’s well chilled before we form our kebabs and I would say like an hour would be the minimum time but you can totally leave this overnight and I think the flavors

Develop even further but either way once our meat is well chilled we’ll go ahead and pull it out and we will take exactly 1/4 of the mixture and we will roll that into a ball using of course wet hands since as you well know damp hands make

Smooth balls and once we do have a portion rolled into a smooth ball we will pierce that right in the middle with a bamboo skew and then we will simply squeeze that meat into a uniform log about 6 in long or so and about 2 in wide getting it as uniform as possible

So that it grills evenly and yes of course if you’re using wooden skewers you’re going to soak those in water for about an hour at least so they don’t start on fire on the grill in fact the real skewers used for these are made of metal and they’re much flatter and wider

Which makes them a lot better to hold the meat on but this type of skew is fine and we’re actually going to use our tongs to turn these so for we being completely honest the skew in this recipe is more of a decoration but if we

Want to call it a kebab and we do we got to stab it with something okay otherwise we have to call it a meat log and do you want to eat something called a Kaa Kebab or a Kaa meat log yeah that’s what I thought and that’s it

Once those are formed we’ll go ahead and wrap those up and keep them in the fridge until we’re ready to grill which I am so I’m going to go ahead and transfer those down on my very highend $18 Grill oh yes this Grill cost $18

Which is not so much a brag it’s more like a cry for help but anyway it works fine and as usual I’ll be cooking these over some very hot charcoal that we’ve let burn until it’s nice and ashy okay if your coals are still on fire don’t

Put them down and if you do the meat’s going to taste like gasoline and then people always blame the lighter fluid but it’s not the lighter fluid you can’t cook food on orange Flames or at least you’re not supposed to so please wait for the fire to go out and for your

Coals to be very very hot in kabobs the size are generally going to take about 12 to 15 minutes total so what I usually try to do is give each side about 3 minutes time 4 would be 12 minutes and then kind of go from there and I know

That instruction is kind of geometrically incorrect since round thing things don’t have sides they just have side but if we visualize these things having four sides we’ll give each one of those about 3 minutes we should get us pretty close and by the way this

Is not something we want to try to cook medium rare okay we really do want that heat to get all the way through so those onions get cooked and those particles of bread can absorb the fat being released by the beef and lamb so I’m shooting for

Something like a medium well which is not only going to allow for that stuff I just described to happen but it’s also going to give us enough time so the outside gets beautifully round and crusty and as usual when we’re gring over charcoal you’re going to get some

Spots that are hotter or cooler than others so if you need to rotate and change positions go ahead that is just you grillin and I guess we could go by temperature and pull these off at about 145 or so but I just like to give them

The old POC PO with my finger and when they spring back and start to get fairly firm to the touch I figure they’re just about perfect which are exactly how mine we’re feeling here so I went ahead and pulled those off and headed back inside where I like to place them over a

Beautiful fresh salad of tomatoes cucumbers and onions just very simply dressed with some salt and olive oil and we are definitely going to want some kind of flatbread or pea alongside and know I didn’t make that but I really should have since it was not as good as

It looked okay in a perfect world you’ve made a batch of our Lebanese Mountain bread which would be absolutely spectacular with these and then I’m also going to serve these with a nice lemony tahini dressing and I’ll serve most of it when I play played up but I do want

To do a little bit of a racing stripe along the middle you know for the pictures and we’ll finish up with a little bit of parsley and that’s it our CA kebabs are ready to enjoy which since these are nice and hot I’m going to start doing right on this platter and

While the insides of these are not going to win any beauty contests the texture of these are so perfect and they are so incredibly flavorful that nobody will care and quite often when I cook something like this I’ll go with a yogurt based sauce which definitely would work with these but I’ve tried

Both and I just prefer the tahini with this for whatever reason okay I’m not sure if it’s the Sesame flavor or just the extra richness it adds but as long as you make your tahini sauce with plenty of lemon I think it’s going to be a perfect pairing and when we were

Mixing these it might have looked like we had a lot of filler you know that toast and onion mixture compared to the amount of meat but I think you’re going to be shocked at just how meaty these stay and if I didn’t tell you you might not even know these weren’t 100% meat

And not the we did it mainly for that reason but because we are adding that stuff this technique is definitely going to save you a few dollars at the market so we got that going for us which is nice but anyway that’s enough eating off the platter like a Savage let me go

Ahead and plate one of these up on what looked like it was going to be really good flatbread but to hedge my bets I added plenty of tahini since for something like this it can never be too Saucy and I went ahead and wrapped it up

And bid in and it really was absolutely fantastic except for the bread which could not have been more disappointing it didn’t taste terrible it just had a weird texture and kind of fell apart as I was trying to eat this so I had to resort to eating this with a

Fork or at the very least a fork and finger combo so the moral of the story is if you’re going to make some world class kebabs like this find yourself a decent flatbread or Pea or better yet find our recipe for p bread and make up

A fresh batch or as I already mentioned our Lebanese Mountain bread would have been perfect for this but anyway I showed you how to make it I’m sure you’ll figure out how to eat it but no matter how you decide to serve yours I really do hope you give this a try soon

So please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always en homemade mascar Pon that’s right I’m going to show you how to make Italian style cream cheese which is very similar to regular cream cheese except pretty much better in

Every way okay it’s not quite as Tangy but it is richer in more decadence and whether you’re going to use it in classic desserts like cheesecake or teramis Su or just as a simple spread for bread this recipe could not be easier and only requires two ingredients

So with that let’s go ahead and get started with the first one and that would be a couple cups of heavy cream that we will transfer into a heavy bottom saucepan and then we’ll set our heat to medium and this kind of cream is called different things in different

Places but what we’re looking for is something that’s about 40% % butter fat and while we’re definitely going to use something that’s pasteurized it’s recommended to avoid creams that are ultra pasteurized which according to people that know things may not work out texturally as well but anyway what we’ll

Do is heat our cream up on medium until it’s somewhere between 185 and 190° fahit which if you’re not going to do this with a thermometer is right as it starts to simmer right we’re talking just barely barely and as it comes up to

Temp it’s not a bad idea to give it the occasional stir and then what we’ll do once our cream is about 190 or like I said it just starts to think about simmering we will reduce our heat to medium low and then stir in one tablespoon of lemon juice which is

Believe it or not the only other ingredient you need to make this and then to complete the procedure all we have to do is cook this stirring for 3 minutes while trying to maintain that temperature between 185 and 190 and during that time you’re going to see the

Mixture thicken up a little bit all right it’s not going to get really thick but it will definitely change noticeably and that’s it after 3 minutes we’ll turn off the Heats and we’ll give it one final whisking and if everything’s gone according to plan this is what your

Mixture should look like on a spoon all right this is the old proverbial should coat the back of a spoon stage and if you drag your fingertip across like this it should hold some nice sharp edges so that is looking good and at this point

What we need to do is let this sit and cool for 30 minutes all right so the heat’s off you’re going to set your timer and while we’re waiting for that to cool down we can go ahead and set a strainer over a bowl in which we’re

Going to place a clean folded up kitchen towel and yes some people do like to use cheesecloth but I find Sometimes some of the cream will leak through that and we lose some of the product so I much prefer the folded up kitchen towel method and that’s it 30 minutes later

We’ll go ahead and carefully remove that from the stove and we will very carefully start ladling that into our towel and because my towel was folded in quarters I’m actually going to have four layers of fabric which means any of the way that leaks out of this mixture is

Probably going to be absorbed into the cloth and not necessarily make it to the bottom of the bowl but we definitely want to have something underneath just in case and then once all that’s been transferred in we need to let this cool down to room top before we transfer it

Into the fridge which after already sitting for 30 minutes should be pretty close and to prevent the top from drying out or forming a skin what we’ll do while this cools is lay a piece of plastic wrap over the top and we will ever so gently press that down on the

Surface and like I said we’ll let that cool down to room temp at which point we will very carefully and very thoughtfully transfer that into our fridge where we will leave it overnight to give it time for all the magic to happen and then the next morning we will

Pull it out and we will pull off that plastic and we will grab a knife and we will dig into the richest most luxurious most beautiful cream cheese you’ve ever had and by the way there’s basically two different kinds of homemade mascar pone there’s the very soft creamy one and

Then there’s the one I showed you how to make which is the beautifully thick and dense version which appearance-wise can look kind of grainy but texture-wise is not okay when you actually taste this on your tongue and in your mouth it should feel as smooth as butter so mine

Definitely passed the texture test and as good as it was off my finger I went ahead and spread a little on some toast and because this is not seasoned at all I went ahead and sprinkle down a little salt and that my friends really is tremendous or if you like regular cream

Cheese you are going to absolutely love this and you can now make it pretty much anytime you want and not only have what is maybe a superior product but definitely less expensive than buying actual mascar Pony oh and if you wanted to add some flavorings into this feel

Free right some people like to add a little touch of sugar or a few drops of vanilla so as usual those kind of tweaks will be up to you I mean you are after all the Chuck Manon of your homemade mascar Pony and speaking of toting your

Own horn this really what as truly magnificent as is and personally I prefer to add any kind of flavorings after the fact depending on how we’re going to use it so by keeping it neutral we have a lot of different ways we can go oh and check this out as I mentioned

Most of that liquid got absorbed by the towel and there was only a couple teaspoons of water at the bottom which might have actually been from condensation but anyway that’s why you do want to have a bowl underneath and then once made and determined to be awesome we can go ahead and transfer

That into some kind of crack or other appropriate storage container and besides using it as a spread it is also now ready to use in so many great recipes like ravioli or cheesecake or of course the world famous terisu and if you can’t decide whether to eat it with something sweet like

Fruit or something Savory like pasta you could do both and just enjoy with some beautiful garden tomatoes with a little sprinkling of salt and enjoy something that’s sweet and savory and if you’re thinking to yourself usually when he make something like this he does another video following that uses it as an ingredient

Well you would actually be correct since I’m currently working on a little something called terisu toast oh yeah you heard me terisu toast it’s just like avocado toast but with terisu and once perfected I will be more than happy to share that with you all but in the meantime no matter what you

Decide to use this for I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjo Italian sausage spaghetti that’s right there are basically three ways you can do Italian

Sausage with spaghetti and that would be to cook the sausage and just serve it alongside or on the top or we can remove the sausage from the casing and brown up the crumbles and use that as the base for our sauce and while those two methods are very popular in this video

I’m going to show you the much much rare third version which I think is vastly Superior in every way and I’ll be spending the rest of the video trying to convince you of that and to get started what we’re going to need is four nice large Links of Italian sausage and if

You want to use spicy go ahead but I’m using what’s called sweet Italian sausage which is almost always flavored with garlic and fennel among other things and we want to make sure we’re using one that has enough fat and one easy way to tell is you can see all the

Little pieces of fat through the casing that is the kind of sausage we want to be using here and what we’ll do is head to the stove where we have whatever pot we’re going to use to cook our sauce in over medium heat in which we have a

Little bit of olive oil and once that’s hot we’ll go ahead and transfer in our sausage and the game plan here is to cook these for about 5 minutes per side or until they’re beautifully browned and just barely cook through and I generally don’t like to cover meat I’m Browning

But here because we’re using this nice big pot and we do want this to just barely cook through I think it’s fine to place a lid on which is going to help us retain some of that heat but regardless we’ll go ahead and give that first s

About 5 minutes at which point we’ll flip them over and as you can see those have taken on some beautiful color which does a lot more than just make these look nice okay it’s a proven scientific fact that browned meat tastes better than non-brown meat and yes I did say to

Use medium heat all right I don’t want this oil smoking so we’re going to cook these a little more gently than usual but at the same time we do want a nice Browning on there so if you want to raise your heat up a little bit go ahead

And then once those have been turned turned over will give the second side 5 minutes at which point we’ll turn off the heat and remove those to a plate where we will let them sit until they cool completely or at least to room temperature before we try to cut them up

And yes if you’re doing this step ahead you can pop those in the fridge until you’re ready and then while those are cooling we’ll head back to the stove and turn our heat on to medium high and then we will pour in about 1/4 cup of white

Wine and as that comes up to a simmer we will take a spoon or spatula and we’ll make sure we’re scraping up any of those delicious caramelized bits on the bottom of the pan Which in the business we call the glazing and if you don’t want to or

Can’t you can just use a splash of water instead of the wine but please note that little touch of alcohol really does improve the flavor of the sauce but either way once that’s been deglazed we’ll go ahead and let it simmer for about a minute or so or until it reduces

By about half give or take and then once that’s happened we can go ahead and transfer in four cups of prepared pasta sauce all right whether it’s homemade or from a jar this technique is going to work out this same but very important in addition to the sauce we are also going

To add about 1/3 the volume of plain cold fresh water that I’m going to use to rinse out the jar and why that water is so important is that we’re going to let this sauce simmer for a long time and that’s going to help prevent it from

Reducing down too far so we’ll go ahead and stir that in and then as soon as this comes back to the simmer we’ll reduce our heat to low and we’ll just let that sit there cooking gently until we are ready to add our sausage but before we can add our sausage sausage we

Have to cut our sausage was just to remind you we are not going to do until this is fully cooled but once it is we can go ahead and cut each of these into four pieces and if that little bit of Tide casing at the end bothers you you

Can go ahead and slice that off right that really doesn’t bother me I mean come on it’s just a piece of knotted intestine but it could be offputting to some of your more sensitive guests so maybe not a bad idea to trim it off and that’s it once we have our sausage cut

Up we’ll go ahead and transfer it into our simmering sauce along with any and all accumul juices and not just from the plate but from The Cutting Board as well which by the way in case you were wondering is why I use that light plastic cutting board instead of the big thick wooden

One I usually use so we will scrape all that goodness in as well and how much more flavor is that really going to add well I can’t tell you exactly but I do know it’s more than none so that’s why we do it and then what we’ll do is give

The sister and we will raise our heat to somewhere between low and medium low or whatever setting gives you a very gentle but steady simmer all right something that hopefully looks similar to this and then what we’ll do is cook this stirring occasionally for believe it or not one

And 1 half hours and what’s going to happen during that relatively long simmering time is that our sauce is going to get infused with all that amazing sausy goodness okay all those amazing flavors of garlic and herb and fennel are basically going to get leeched out of the meats but don’t worry

There’s still going to be plenty of flavor left and above and beyond taste this long simmering time is also going to do amazing things for the texture of the sausage as we will discuss later and then besides giving it the occasional stir at approximately the 1 hour mark you’re

Probably going to have a decent amount of that pork sausage fat floating on the top which you may or may not want to skim off okay on one hand we don’t want our final product too greasy but on the other hand fat equals flavor especially fat from inside an Italian sausage so I

Think we do need to leave some which is why generally I skim off about half of it but anyway you decide I mean you are after all the dayti of your Italian sausage spaghetti and speaking of closers once that’s been skimmed and stirred all we need to do to finish this

Is let it simmer for another half hour or so at which point if everything’s gone according to plan it should look something like this okay pretty much all that water we added in is boiled out and we should be left with a nice thick gorgeous sauce and of course if it

Reduced too far and got too thick just toss another splash of water in all right that is just you cooking and of course if you want to give it a taste and check for seasoning go ahead but fair warning if you do you’re going to be shocked at exactly how flavorful that

Sauce is I mean it really is incredible how it gets transformed and that’s it once our sauce is done we can just move that to a back burner and keep it warm while we boil up a pound of spaghetti or as the youngest members of our audience

Would call it petti and in case you’re keeping score at home I’m using a thick spaghetti right the good old number 12 but obviously use any kind of pasta you want just as long as you promise to cook it in very well salted water all right

That way your pasta is going to be nicely seasoned and we won’t have to be tossing salt in later but anyway we’ll go ahead and cook that and personally I like to do it 1 minute Less in the package directions because I always finish my pasta by letting it sit in the

Hot sauce for a minute or two so about 1 minute before it’s supposed to be done we’ll go ahead and pull that off the heat and drain it and then transfer it directly into our pot of hot sauce and we will give that a mix until everything’s thoroughly combined and

Then once that’s been mixed what we’ll do is pop on the lid and we’ll just let it sit there for 1 minute so the pasta has a chance to absorb some of that amazing sauce right to me there are a few sadder sights than seeing a bowl of

Plain boiled pasta with the sauce just unceremoniously ladled over the top I mean come on that’s how Americans do it we want to do it like Italians or at the very least Italian Americans so we’ll go ahead and toss everything together and let it sit covered for about a minute at

Which point our pasta should be perfectly cooked and we are now ready to serve and generally one pound of pasta will make four perfect L sized portions which mathematically works out very well with the sausage since we use four of those which means everybody gets four pieces which we’ll go ahead and place

Over the top although right here I decide to give myself five pieces just in case somebody else wanted three and that’s it I like to finish up with a little bit of freshly grated Parmesan oh yeah the real stuff parmesano regano and then because I’m contractually obligated to take some

Pictures I did a little sprinkling of Italian parcel is a final touch and that’s it our Italian sausage spaghetti is ready to enjoy so let me go ahead and grab a fork and spoon and dig in and I’ll start with a piece of that too good to be true sausage which despite

Simmering for an hour and a half is still loaded with flavor but above and beyond that and the fact that the sausage also did such a great job of flavoring our sauce what makes this method truly special is what happens texturally to that sausage which believe

It or not I would compare to a perfectly cooked meatball okay the sausage is firm but not tough okay it’s actually very tender and succulent and to me so much more luxurious than sausage that was just cooked and served alongside okay just a completely different experience so I just absolutely love

This technique plus we don’t have to worry about adding a bunch of stuff to the sauce to make it taste good since our sausage is doing most of the heavy lifting here and while you can get a similar flavor in the sauce if you do

Take it out of the casing and crumble it up and brown it and simmer it in your sauce like that you don’t get the pleasure of biting into a nice chunk of sausage which again sounds kind of funny but texturally it really is remarkably close to a meatball and not just any

Meatball a really really good meatball in fact those chunks of sausage are so good now I’m feeling a little bit guilty about taking that fifth piece and I should probably put that back but anyway that’s it my favorite way to do Italian sausage spaghetti is I mentioned

Earlier this is way less popular than the other two methods but without a doubt the most delicious which is why I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always

Enjoy Italian brace beef and potatoes that’s right I’m going to show you how to make one of my favorite dishes of all time and while I do like vegetables and would serve some alongside this what I love and crave the most is meat and potatoes and this my

Friends is about as meat and potatoes as it gets and we will meet the potatoes in a few minutes but what we’ll do first is season up some nice thick slices of beef shank and we’re going with that because it’s one of the toughest Cuts with the most connective tissue not to mention

Includes a nice marrow bone in the middle and it’s these type of cuts that really do braze the V since as these cook all that connective tissue breaks down which is what produces all that amazing Rich sticky goodness and we’ll do after seasoning both sides with some salt freshly ground black pepper and

Cayenne is head over to the stove to sear this in a nice heavy bottom Dutch oven or something similar set over high heat in which we’ve drizzled a few tablespoons of olive oil and what we’ll do is sear that for about 3 or 4 minutes per side and there’s lots of these

Rustic Italian inspired bra dishes where we do not brown the meat first but getting some nice caramelization on the surface first before we add our brazing liquids does help us achieve a little more flavor FL and the next person that complains about a dish like this having

Too much flavor will be the first so to me this step is definitely worth the extra couple minutes oh when speaking of connective tissue sometimes when you see your beef shank like this those membranes and connective tissue will contract and the meat will kind of curl

Up like this and if that happens all we have to do is take some scissors or a knife and just cut through the edge in a few spots and by the way that’s not going to affect the brazing but it’s a proven scientific fact the flat things

Sear better than curled up things and sometimes I’ll actually make a few Cuts before I sear but anyway if yours curl don’t be afraid to give them a snip so they unfurl and then once we do have those nicely browned we’ll go ahead and remove those to a plate and we’ll reduce our

Heat to medium and toss in our chopped onions and celery along with a nice big pinch of salt well actually I tossed in that same seasoning mix I use for the beef but anyway we’ll toss in some salt and maybe a little bit of pepper

And we will cook that stirring for a few minutes or until those onions go from bright white to sort of translucent and once our veggies do soften up a little bit and have taken on some nice golden brown color we can stop and toss in some tomato paste as well as a generous

Amount of minced garlic followed by some dried rosemary as well as some dried musroom although oregano is going to work out pretty much exactly the same and what we’ll do is give that a stir and cook that for a couple more minutes to sort of toast

That tomato paste and by the way yes you can use fresh herbs in this although if you are going to use fresh Rosemary and margarum Andor oregano you always have to use like three or four times the amount of the dry to get the same effect although it’s really not the same effect

Since dried herbs have a different flavor than fresh but in any event if we’re going to call this Italian braz beef and potatoes we are definitely going to need some kind of herb component in this and then once we’ve cooked that for a few minutes we can go

Ahead toss in a little bit of wine and we’ll stir that in and cook it for a couple minutes or until the wine just about disappears and I prefer white because it’s a little more mellow but red wine would also work so you decide I mean you

Are after all the Gino of which V know but I really do think this needs a splash to something and speaking of splashes once that wine is pretty much disappeared we can go ahead and toss in some chicken broth plus one bay leaf at which point we’ll give this a stir and

Turn our heat up to high so we can bring this back to a simmer at which point we can transfer our beef back in and yes you can use beef broth if you want but I generally go with the easier to find more neutral flavored chicken broth since we are

Going to get a ton of beef flavor from those Shanks which reminds me if times are tough you could just add some water and this will still be very very delicious but either way one simmering like I said will transfer our beef back in along with of course any accumulated

Juices from the plate I mean you can’t throw those away that would be insane and then before we cover this and pop it in the oven I’m going to take a spoon and base the tops a little bit which is completely and absolutely unnecessary but for me it’s part of the ritual part

Of the ceremony part of the meditation so if you don’t want to base don’t base but I’m a baster from way back so I based and that’s it will’ll go ahead and turn off the heat and pop on the lid and then transfer this into the

Center of a 325° oven for 2 hours or till our meat is almost very close to but not quite fork tender which is probably going to look a little something like this and if we poke it with a fork the fork will slide in without a ton of effort but the meat

Is not yet super soft and easy to pull off the bone which is perfect because we still need to add our potatoes and then put this back in the oven to cook some more and for me the best choice here are some peeled and quartered Yukon Gold

Potatoes which are roughly about 2 in in size and before we add those in I like to douse them with olive oil as well as sprinkle in some of our seasoning mix or at the very least a nice big pinch of salt plus since we’re going to have it

Sitting right there I like to skim some of that super flavorful beef fat off the top and add a couple tablespoons of that in as well at which point we’ll give this a toss until evenly coated and once that’s been accomplished we can add those potatoes to the top and if you’re

Wondering if this would come out any differently if you just toss those potatoes right into the pot and mix them with those cooking liquids well to be honest I’m not sure but for me this just seems right plus since we’re not using a ton of liquid part of the potato is

Going to be sitting above the meat and I just feel a little bit better if those get baptized before they get braced which is a perfect segue to The Next Step since once those have been transferred in I’m going to go ahead and rinse out the bowl we tossed them in

With a a half a cup of water and transfer that in as well since I want to make sure we have enough of those amazing brazing liquids to serve with the beef and potatoes once it’s done and that’s it we’ll go ahead and pop the lid

Back on and place that back in our 325° oven for about another hour or so or until our meat and potatoes are very soft tender and succulent and know we’re not going by smell or appearance both of which are amazing we’re going to go ahead and test this with a knife or Fork

Which should slide in with zero effort and then in real life just go ahead and serve this up right I have to take some pictures so I went ahead and basted the top and moved a few potatoes around and tried to make everything look extra enticing and then once I was finally

Finished fussing I finished off with a little sprinkling of chili flakes as well as a nice scattering of freshly chopped Italian parsley and that’s it my Italian bra beef and potatoes was ready to enjoy which I’m going to do in a nice big bowl with plenty of those amazing brazing

Liquids spooned over and I finished up with a little more Italian parsley and yes as you can see we definitely want to serve this alongside some sliced bread as well as one optional ingredient some freshly squeezed lemon which I will get to in a minute but for now I’m going to

Take a fork and a spoon and I’m going to start with a nice chunk of those potatoes which if I’m being honest is my favorite part well actually let’s call it a tie with the beef but they really truly are extraordinary and to double check that my memory is working properly I went

Ahead and took a bite of the beef next and verified yes that’s equally incredible oh and as fantastic as the beef and potato are my other favorite part of this is some nice crusty Italian bread used to soak up those juices I mean I would have no problem just eating

A bowl of that and while it’s definitely optional since this is a sort of rich and unctuous dish I think a little squeeze of fresh lemon is a nice touch and helps cut through some of that richness and sure we could accomplish the same thing with a little sprinkling of

Vinegar and what I love so much about a dish like this is that on one hand it’s so simple and rustic and comforting yet at the same time very rich and decadent and complex in flavor and whenever I eat this I’m thinking this is exactly what I

Want to eat oh and I almost forgot about the fourth component tied for the best thing in this with with the beef potatoes and the bread dipped in the juice and that would be that little bit of maror we can dig out from the inside

Of the bone and eat on a piece of bread which is never not an incredibly special treat but anyway that’s it what I’m calling Italian Braes beef and potatoes all right I’m not saying there’s actually a recipe over in Italy exactly like this but this was inspired by the

Very rustic very simple Italian food I grew up with plus it’s been my experience that if you call things Italian you get more views oh and one last thing before we go if you can’t find beef shank for this it will work beautifully with some beef

Chuck roast but no matter what you use if you love meat and potatoes as much as I love meat and potatoes I am very certain you are going to love this which is why I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links

Below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy Greek style beef stew that’s right I am very excited to be sharing my version of stf which very well could be the best beef stew you’ve never had and apparently this dish was

Brought to Venice by the Ottomans where it made its way to Cypress and then Greece and it’s been my experience that any recipe that has that many stops on its journey is almost always an incredible thing to eat and this is no exception and to get started the first

Thing we’ll need is a big old hunk of beef what I have have here is a beef chuck roast which I think is the perfect cut and what we’ll do first is try to cut some 2-in pieces which is very easy since this is about 2 in thick so if we

Cut over about 2 in to make a strip and then turn that and cut across every 2 in or so if my calculations are correct we should have something pretty close to 2in Cubes but having said that as long as your pieces are about the same size

It really doesn’t matter if they’re a little bigger or a little smaller than mine since the most important thing is that they cook evenly and if you have a bunch of big pieces and a bunch of little pieces that won’t happen and we don’t really need to trim any fat off

This although if you have a couple solid pieces that were on the ends you can go ahead and trim those off and then what we’ll do once that’s cut up is transfer it into a bowl and we will season it very generously with freshly ground black pepper and what looks like too

Much kosher salt but it’s not all right A good rule of thumb is about a teaspoon of kosher salt per pound of meat as far as the initial seasoning goes so that’s my starting point and once that’s a SL we’ll go ahead and toss that thoroughly

And then once we have that meat evenly coated we can go ahead and transfer that into the fridge until we’re ready to use it whether that’s in 10 minutes or a couple hours or even the next day and then once our beef set we can move on to

Prep some shallots which sort of look like smaller Skinny red onions and traditionally these are kept whole which is why we got to pay attention to this rud end since that holds everything together we don’t want to cut that but we will cut off the top and then make

Two more Cuts about 1/4 inch down down so we have something to grab on to as we attempt to peel off the skin which I’m not going to lie is very challenging since at first you think you can peel off just the skin but after a couple seconds you realize that’s near

Impossible so you give up and you just pull off that first layer of Shallot all the way down to the root and of course you save that in the freezer for the next time you make chicken stock since shallots are incredibly delicious and the reason we’re using them here but

Anyway we’ll go ahead and peel as many of those as we can stand and again using them whole is traditional but if you want to avoid all this trauma and just chop them up go ahead it will still taste really good oh and if after peeling you realize one of your shallots

Was actually two smaller shallots you can just pull those apart it’ll be fine right despite our best efforts some of these are going to fall apart anyway and that’s it once our shallots are set we can head to the stove where I have a very heavy duty pan set over high heat

Into which I poured a couple tablespoons of Greek olive oil and once that oil is very hot we’ll go ahead and brown our beef in two batches since we want to get a really nice Dark Crust on this which means we don’t want to crowd the pan so

Yes two batches is going to take a little bit longer but the results are going to be much better and by the time we finish our second batch we are going to have an amazing fond which is all those caramelized meat juices on the bottom of the pan formed on the bottom

Of the pan and I hate to give times here right maybe we sear this for about four to five minutes per side but we really want to go by eye and it doesn’t matter how long it takes we want to get a nice dark deep deep Brown sear and then what

We’ll do once both batches of our beef have been browned is we’ll turn off the heat and we’ll add another tablespoon or so of olive oil and we will toss our whole shallots in at which point after the pan is cooled for a couple minutes

We can put the heat back on to medium and we’ll will do is tosso shels around this hot pan until they get a little bit of color on the outsides and of all the steps in this recipe this one is probably the most optional since our pan

Is flat and our shets are not flat at all so there’s not a lot of surface cont but any kind of extra Browning is definitely going to be a little bit of extra flavor so personally I think it’s worth a couple extra minutes of time but

If you’re not into it don’t worry about it I mean you are after all the Disco stew of your beef stews to dos and this stew is going to simmer for a long time so those shells are going to get cooked whether you brown them or not and then

After those have been browned on medium we will add another Splash olive oil to the pan and then still on medium we will sauté some diced onions and some finely minced garlic with a big pinch of salt for just about a minute right we don’t want to Brown that garlic but we just

Want to give it a quick stir fry although it might look like a Browns a little bit because the bottom of that pan is so dark but don’t worry if you only do it for a minute it’s not going to Brown and then after that gets a

Quick Sizzle we’ll go ahead and add Our tomato paste and we will stir that in and we will toast that to the bottom for about 2 minutes which seems like a minor step but it really does add a lot of flavor whereas the celebrity chefs call it Umami which is is that intense

Savoriness you get from some foods toasted tomato paste being one of them and then once we have improved the taste of Our tomato paste we’ll go ahead and deglaze the bottom with some red wine vinegar plus some white wine and I think most people that make this use red wine

But I really do prefer the white since it’s not as tanic and I just prefer to the Bolder more intense Reds but anyway we’ll go ahead and stir that in making sure to scrape all that goodness off the bottom as we do and at this point we can

Raise our heat toed High since we want to reduce these liquids by about half and while we’re waiting for that to happen we can go ahead and toss in some white sugar which is very important to balance the acidity we will also toss in a little bit of cinnamon which

Traditionally is a cinnamon stick but the ground works fine as well as a little bit of all spice plus a small pinch of ground clove or just a touch too much of that can overpower a dish and then we’ll finish up our seasonings with some dried oregano plus a couple B

Leaves and then last but not least a couple sprigs of Rosemary and we’ll stir that in and like I said we’re waiting for this to reduce by about half and start to thicken up and a few minutes later this is what mine looked like and once it does we can go ahead and

Transfer our brown meat back in along with our whole shallots at which point I’m going to very carefully toss this all together which is not easy because this pan is full and that’s exactly why I switched to a more flexible more curvaceous stirring tool oh and I should

Mention if you don’t want to deal with the shallots or you can’t find them a lot of modern versions of this recipe just use frozen pearl onions which will look nice and kind of do the job but nothing and I repeat nothing tastes like a shallot so that is definitely my

Choice but you do what you got to do and then once that’s set we can add our last ingredients which would be a couple cups of beef broth or chicken broth or if times are tough even some nice cold fresh water would work and we’ll go

Ahead and stir that in and wait for this to come back to to a simmer and then once this comes back to a bubble we can reduce our heat to somewhere between low and medium low or whatever setting maintains a nice gentle simmer and we will cover this and cook it covered for

1 hour right my general rule of thumb for this kind of stuff is 1 hour covered and then one hour uncovered or until it’s exactly how we want it and while our stew slowly simmers to Perfection there’s a few things we’re going to want

To do which are the same things we do to every stew oh yeah it’s true and those things include giving it the occasional stir moving pieces from the outside to the inside and pieces from the inside to the outside and sometimes I’ll even flip a few pieces over all right it depends

On my mood and then besides the occasional agitation we will also monitor our liquid level and if the stew starts getting too thick and dry before the meats tender we will of course add another splash of broth or water all right that is just us cooking so we’ll

Keep an eye on that and then if you wanted anytime during this uncovered step up you want to skim a little bit of fat off the top feel free or a lot of people do and a lot of people don’t but in general I usually do skim off a

Little bit but anyway to recap we are stirring occasionally we are monitoring our liquid level and we are possibly skimming fat which brings us to by far the most important thing we do which is to make sure this is fork tender before we serve it and for me the perfect dness

For a stew is when a fork will slide easily into the meat but the meat has not started to fall apart yet on a zone and right here mine was very close but I decided to give it another 10 or 15 minutes and as I’ve said for years every

St recipe online should be five stars since all the people that post bad reviews always say the same things the meat was not tender Andor the stew was not flavorful which is so confusing and infuriating because why did they stop simmering it okay if your meat’s not

Tender yet let it simmer until it is don’t stop eat it un tender and then write a bad review that makes no sense and then as far as the flavor goes that just requires you tasting it and adjusting with some more salt if it needs it which it quite often does so

Besides making sure your meat is fork tender we will definitely give it a taste also and adjust if need be and that’s it once it’s feeling and tasting exactly how we want we could go ahead and serve this up or we could if we want time permitting turn off the heat and

Let this cool like I’m going to do and then refrigerate this overnight since for various reasons a stew is always better the next day that is just a fact right the color deepens the flavors deepen the meat seems to be even a little more succulent

And tender so that is exactly what I did and I went ahead and served that up next to a couple slices of Greek bread well actually I don’t have access to Greek bread and I didn’t have time to bake some but some French or Italian bread

Will do nicely and besides being one of the most delicious stews of all time if there’s a beef stew that has a better color than this I would love to see it since this is absolutely gorgeous and then once we have that spooned up you

Can serve this as is and it will be magnificent but I’m going to go ahead and top mine with some crumbled feta plus just because I have them and they look nice a few sliced pickled red onions and then for a final touch a little bit of freshly chopped herb is

Nice whether it’s parsley or dill or Mint or any combination and that’s it our Greek style beef stew is ready to enjoy and I can’t even begin to explain how much I love this stuff but I will try and besides being just an extra beef Bey super Savory perfectly constructed

Beef stew we have a beautiful balance between the tanginess of the vinegar and the wine and then the sweetness from the shallots and that little touch of sugar with everything being elevated by those aromatic warming spices in the background oh and by the way as we

Touched on earlier if you need a knife to cut the meat it did not cook long enough but I do serve this with a knife so that we can easily cut those shallots into bite-sized pieces right sometimes if you try to do that with a fork the

Center of the shell it will shoot out across the room which while very comical can also be a little bit messy so the knife is a safer bet and man are those shells delicious I mean almost as good as the beef and this is probably my

Favorite way to eat it just with some bread on the side to dip in that amazing sauce but since I teased this recipe in our last video which was Greek spinach rice let me go ahead and finish this video up with a shot of this served on

That which as you might imagine was a fantastic pering so I’m sorry if I’m sounding greedy but I really want you to make both but no matter what you serve this honor next to it truly is one of the world’s great stews which is why I really do hope you

Give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and is always enjy Lebanese Mountain bread that’s right as promised I’m going to show you my take on what has become my favorite

Flatbread and possibly at least for the time being maybe my favorite bread oh and by the way if you happen to live on a mountain in Lebanon and at some point during this video you think to yourself hey that’s not how we do it well I just

Wanted to quickly mention this is how they do it on the other Mountain so with that let’s go ahead and get started with this very simple and sort of pizza like dough and we’ll Begin by dumping a portion of our bread flour into a bowl followed by a teaspoon of dry active

Yeast or is it active dry yeast I I forget but same stuff and then we’ll also toss in a little touch of sugar followed by some warm but not too hot water okay I usually shoot for about 105° which should basically feel like warm bath water although that probably

Doesn’t help much since I don’t think people take baths anymore I mean who’s got that kind of time especially considering all the hours we spend on social media but anyway what we’ll do at this point is give that a mix to complete what some people in the

Business would call a sponge so what we’ll do is mix that smooth and then we’ll go ahead and cover it and let it sit for about a half hour or to an hour or until it gets nice and bubbly and hopefully it looks a little something

Like this so that is looking good and we clearly have a very enthusiastic yeese Colony growing and then once that’s been accomplished we’ll go ahead and add the rest of the ingredients which will include a spoon of olive oil as well as a little bit of salt and then last but

Not least we’ll dump in the rest of our flour and even though I’m using bread flour here I’m pretty sure this will work with all purpose and then what we’ll do once all that’s together is grab a wooden spoon and we’ll give this a mix and we will keep mixing until it

All pulls together to form a relatively sticky dough ball although don’t confuse sticky with wet okay towards the end of the step that dough ball should pull away from the bowl fairly cleanly and the texture should be somewhat similar to this so if yours does seem super wet

And it’s still sort of smearing against the bowl you can add a little more flour but this is looking pretty good so at this point I’ll go ahead and transfer that to a well flowered surface to give it a little bit of a kneading and as usual we’re using the bare minimum of

Flour just enough to keep it from sticking to our fingers or the work surface and what we’ll do is work that dough for just about 2 minutes until we formed and stop me if you’ve heard this one before a very soft very Supple slightly elastic dough and really all

That means is if we press on it it sort of Springs back so that is looking very nice if I do say so myself and once that’s set what we’ll do is transfer that into a bowl that we’ve drizzled in a few drops of olive oil and we’ll kind

Of roll that dough around to coat it lightly and that is pretty much it for our dough production all we have left to do is cover this and leave it in some warm spot for about an hour to an hour and a half or until it doubles in size okay so

The time is going to depend on how warm the spot is but this is what mine looked like about an hour and 15 minutes later and at this point what we’ll do is transfer that to our work surface and give it another quick KNE to basically

Knock out all the air and then once we have our dough successfully degassed we have a couple options we could use this right away if we had to but do not recommend it what I suggest is transferring this into some kind of zip top bag and place it in the fridge

Overnight before we use it and I know I probably should have told you before we started that you’re not going to be able to eat this till tomorrow but trust me you’re going to get a better product right not only are the flavors going to develop and it’s going to be tastier but

The texture is going to be better and the all important stretching step is going to be easier so I did in fact leave mine overnight at which point it looks something like this so it might grow a little bit in the fridge but it’s basic basically sort of going to look

The same but regardless whether you use yours right away or leave it overnight like I did the next steps are going to be the same we’re going to pinch off a portion of dough for me something slightly smaller than a golf ball and we’ll go ahead and sort of rub and press

That on the work surface to squeeze out all the air at which point we’ll begin a two-step formation process and the first step would be to roll this out to about an eighth of an inch thick and again using just enough flour to keep it from sticking right the one thing that most

Bad breads have in common too much flour so please be careful but having said that the dough is going to be sticky so you are going to need some and like I said we’re going to roll that out to about an eighth of an inch thick which

Sounds kind of thin but not even close to how thin this needs to be which is why when it gets to this point we’re going to stop and we’ll give that a little stretch with our hands and then believe it or not we will lay that over

The top of the bottom of a lightly flowered mixing bowl and it’s over this Dome surface where we’re going to stretch this incredibly thin as in pretty much see-through so it might take you a few seconds to get it started but once you do just keep going around

Pulling it down until basically you’ve stretched it this thin as humanly possible without it tearing and by the way how this is done back in the old country is the dough is actually stretched over a round pillow which is then used to flop it on top of the grill

They used to cook this but since you probably don’t have a Lebanese Mountain Brad dough pillow in Minds it the cleaners we’ll go ahead and use this upside down Bowl which works quite nicely as you can see and I should mention if this looks a little too

Tricky or like too much fun and you just prefer to roll yours it will still work it just won’t come out as thin or as good but anyway you decide you are after all the Sherlock Homes of stretching dough on domes but anyway what we’ll do

Once our dough is stretched as thin as possible is very carefully with flowered fingers transfer that into a very hot preheated dry cast iron skillet all right so we’re definitely going high heat here and because of that and because this dough is so thin this is

Only going to take about 45 seconds to a minute per side and as that first side Cooks you’re going to see lots of little bubbles forming which is exactly what we want to see and after about a minute we’ll go ahead and flip that over oh and

If you’re wondering why I’m pushing down on it with the spatula I’m not sure you probably don’t have to sometimes I just like to do things but anyway we’ll give that side about a minute and that’s it if your pan was hot enough you should see some beautiful brown marks on those

Blisters and then very important what we’ll do as these finish is pile them up on top of each other and then we’ll keep those covered with either a towel or another plate and what’s going to happen because of the residual heat those are going to kind of gently steam which is

Really the official final step of the cooking process right these would still be pretty good if you didn’t do that but if you do they’re going to retain more moisture and be even more Supple so I think that’s one of the keys but anyway that’s it my relatively simple method

For simulating Lebanese Mountain bread and if you’ve never had this before you’re in for a huge treat all right I guess it’s sort of like P bread bought thinner tastier stretchier just better on every level and as far as I’m concerned just a vastly superior allpurpose fly bread which reminds me

Don’t feel like you have to make some exotic Middle Eastern food to eat with this I mean it’s amazing with things as basic and simple as a BLT oh and one quick bonus tip here you definitely want to season your tomatoes with a little bit of salt and pepper

Since that really does make a huge difference but anyway let me go ahead and roll this up and right here I was trying to do the class schwarma roll where we kind of fold in the bottom so everything doesn’t run out as we eat it but I overstuffed it so it didn’t work

But I wasn’t upset mostly because I remembered I was just about to eat a BLT on lemones Mountain bread which really was fantastic and I am not a big wrap guy I never order a wrap because they’re usually served on some kind of insipid flow tortilla well this my friends is

Roughly a thousand times better than that dry tasteless tortilla but anyway just an amazing flatbread delicious and fun to make the only slight downside to discovering this stuff is that now I’m significantly less impressed with our P bread recipe sorry Peter bread but we’ll always have hummus anyway kidding aside

I do find this stuff Superior to that on almost every level and I really do hope you give it a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy tone that’s right there there’s nothing

Wrong with eating a little candy once in a while especially when it’s this delicious and beautiful not to mention based on a recipe that predates the Roman Empire but above and beyond the great taste great looks and historical significance this recipe is also perfect for those of you that really love

Stirring since we are going to do a lot of that like for about an hour and a half but it’s going to be totally worth it plus time flies when you’re having fun and to me and hopefully you this is fun so let’s go ahead and get started by

Making sure we have the following things ready before we even start this recipe the most important of which would be our roasted nuts and luckily my oven’s broken so I had an excuse to buy some beautiful roasted peeled Spanish almonds as well as some roasted pistachio which

I definitely have one too many of and then besides the nuts we’re also going to want to separate two eggs because about a half hour from now we’re going to need some beaten egg whites and that’s going to be a lot easier to do if they’re at room temp okay and then

Besides that we’ll also grade a little bit of lemon zest and that’s pretty much it for the stuff you have to do ahead of time as far as ingredients that is another thing we’re definitely going to need to do before we start is get our

Pan prepped so what I have here is a plastic line baking dish plus a couple pieces of what’s called wafer paper which is optional but does make this so much nicer so I have two pieces one that’s going to go in the bottom and then one that will be pressed on top and

Usually it’s made out of rice and sometimes actually sold as rice paper which can be a little confusing because this is definitely not the same stuff you make spring rolls with but anyway we’ll talk about that stuff on the blog for now once we have all that stuff

Together we can actually start the recipe so let’s go ahead and add some honey to a heavy bottom pot and I prefer something on the lighter side I’m using What’s called the light Amber honey so that’s my recommendation but I’m pretty sure any honey will work and then to

That we will add a little bit of sugar before grabbing a heavyduty spatula and heading to the stove where we are going to place this over low heat and we will start stirring and we will continue to stir and stir and stir cooking over low heat for 30 minutes and during that time

Our mixture is going to turn from something that’s kind of golden and grainy to something paler but much smoother and while technically we are going to tell you to stir this continuously I don’t necessarily mean that literally you can stop stirring every once in a while and take a few

Seconds break nothing tragic will ensue but we really do want to keep it moving pretty much the whole time and after 30 minutes of cooking on low your mixture should look something like this and at this point we’re going to stop and add our egg whites which by the way we need

To beat to soft peaks first so if you are making this with a friend one you can stir while the other one does the eggs or if you’re making this alone no big deal because our egg whites are at room temp it’s only going to take a

Couple minutes to whip and our honey mixture should be fine if you’re afraid I guess you could turn the heat off until you’re done but like I said it shouldn’t be a problem so what we’ll do is we’ll throw a big pinch of salt into our room temp egg whites and take a

Whisk and like I said we want to whip those to soft peaks don’t overwhip them we want to get to what I like to call the Shaving Cream stage okay so something that looks just about like that and then what we’ll do with our heat still on low is we will whisk those

Egg whites into our honey mixture one whiskful at a time so we will add a little bit and we will whisk that in until it disappears and then continue on in three or four more additions until all those egg whites have been Incorporated and as you’ll notice this

Is really going to lighten up the mixture and by the way I should mention the method we’re using here is the very slow very ancient technique okay the modern method for this is to make a very hot sugar ser and then simply incorporate that into your finished

Mering but while way way faster I much prefer this method as you will hopefully read about on the blog so I just wanted to mention that in case you read comments to the effect of hey why aren’t you using the method it only takes 15 minutes I have my reasons so we will

Continue with the Whisk until all our egg whites are Incorporated at which point we want to switch back to our spatula or in my case he proof spoonula and then all we need to do is continue cooking stirring pretty much constantly for another 40 minutes or until done and

One thing I want you to keep an eye on to help determine when that is you see how when I lift the spatula up up and that mixture kind of forms ribbons that disappear into the surface almost immediately we’re going to keep an eye on that because as this mixture Cooks a

Couple things are going to happen it’s going to turn a brighter and brighter white and you’ll notice those ribbons will go from disappearing almost immediately to this stage where they kind of sit on top of the surface for a couple seconds and then as you’ll see near the end they’ll eventually stay on

The surface for like four or 5 seconds so that’s generally how I can tell we’re getting very close but there is another great test where you just drip a little bit of the mixture in some cold water and as soon as it cools you can kind of

Feel How firm your mixture is going to be when it’s done and what I’m going for is something to feels sort of like a firm clay so this was close it was just a little too soft so I kept cooking in a stiring for about like I said 40 minutes

Or so until my mixture looked like this okay check out the ribbons you see how they’re holding their shape and they’re staying visible up on that surface for like four or 5 Seconds that for me tells me I’m done and once we’ve determined it’s cooked long enough we will stop and

Add the rest of the ingredients so I’m going to add a little touch of vanilla as well as our lemon zest and by the way if you want you can also add some dried fruit into this you are the boss of making this terone your own so we’ll

Stir that in followed by our roasted nuts and one pro tip here this is much easier if your nuts are warm okay if we dump in room temp or God forbid cold nuts into this this mixture is going to get really hard really fast and it’s

Going to be very difficult to get into your pan so I like to reserve the nuts in a warm oven which makes a mix in here much easier and as soon as all that’s Incorporated we’re going to quickly transfer this into our prepared dish and

Spread it out and press it down the best we can and it’s probably not a bad idea to switch to a new clean spatula at this point which I believe I should have sprayed with oil first but I forgot that’s okay nothing that can’t be washed

Andor licked off so we will press in and spread out that mixture as evenly as possible and then we’ll top that with our second piece of wafer paper which by the way has a dull side and a shiny side and I think we want the shiny

Side up and then we’ll go ahead and we’ll give that a little pressing which I always think I need to put a little plastic down first to protect it from my sweaty hands so we’ll give that a little press and while we do want to press

Firmly be careful the paper will rip I kind of tore mine a little right there but that’s okay when we cut it no one’s going to know and if you want the hands probably sufficient but just to be safe I do like to give it a little extra press with this meat pounder

And then once our mixture has been transferred in and properly pressed we’ll simply leave it out for an hour or two until it cools completely at which point it will be nice and firm and ready to cut so I let mine sit for a couple hours before removing it from the pan

Which thanks to my plastic wrap came out quite easy except the plastic had fused the my tonei around the edges and I realized it was going to take about 20 minutes to peel that off so I got frustrated and decided to just cut it off so I took a serrated knife and using

A nice long sign motion sliced through revealing what has to be one of the most gorgeous sites in all the food Kingdom look at that so beautiful so I went ahead and I trimmed that up and was able to finally remove the plastic and at that point you can go

Ahead and cut this to any shape you want I’ll be going with the traditional square and by the way you’re going to see all kinds of tricks online about the best way to cut this everybody in their uncles got their own little trick but

For me just a long thin ser knife is the best and while you really don’t have to have wafer paper to make terone as you can see it really does allow us to make beautiful Clean Cuts so we’ll go ahead and cut that into perfectly uniform

Squares and I did say perfect so if you have to trim a little bit off the end that’s fine and then we can go ahead and just discard that piece into our mouth and that’s it your ton is ready to enjoy and not only does it look like one of

The best things you’ve ever seen The Taste and texture are incredible I mean it’s basically kind of firm and dry to the touch and yet at the same time it’s kind of soft flexible and chewy this seems impossible but it’s not I mean check it out even out of focus you can

Tell how good that’s going to be and as you can see I think we have the absolute perfect nut to nougat ratio so anyway that’s it how to make your own terone this would obviously be great to serve for Valentine’s Day or better yet instead of making it for why don’t you

Make this with that certain somebody I mean I don’t know about you but I can’t think of a better way to spend an hour and a half with your Valentine that will be as pleasurable and as satisfying as this okay so I really do hope you give

This a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy Heroes that’s right I’m going to attempt to make what some people call mystery meat slightly less mysterious and while we will be taking some of the excitement

Away that comes from wondering exactly what you’re eating I think we’re more than going to make up for that with something that’s more wholesome and I think every bit is delicious and basically the two ways you can do this is with whole chunks of meat or ground

Meat which is what we’ll be using today since that’s my favorite plus I think this method is a lot easier to pull off in the home kitchen so with that let’s go ahead and get started with our ground meat which yes looks like a giant brain

But it’s really just a pound of ground beef here on the left and I’m using the 8020 lean to Fat ratio and then over here on the right we have a pound of ground lamb and while the lean fat percentage was listed I’m guessing it’s about the same and then besides our

Ground beef and lamb blend we’re also going to add a whole bunch of diced onions as well as a generous amount of crushed garlic and then we’ll go ahead and Herb this up with some freshly chopped Rosemary as well as some non-fresh dried oregano and by the way even if you have

Fresh I do prefer the dry oregano here as I think the flavor Works a little better and then as far as seasonings go we’re definitely going to need a whole bunch of salt as well as some freshly ground black pepper I’m also going to toss in some ground cumin as well as

Some paprika and then we’ll also do a very small pinch of cinnamon not too much be careful but I think a pinch provides a little bit of sweetness in the background and then we’ll finish the seasonings with a few shakes of cayenne pepper which brings me to the last and

Maybe most controversial ingredient I like to sprinkle in a tablespoon or two of fine dyed breadcrumb and if you can try to get most of it in the bowl and then once we have all that in there what we’ll do is give this a mix until it’s

Thoroughly combined and for me the best tool for this operation is your bare hand or hands and the reason I mentioned the breadcrumbs might be a little controversial is because they would be considered filler and added for the purpose of stretching the meat thereby maximizing profits and are possibly unlicensed unregulated mystery meat

Street cart but that’s exactly why I added them since that’s the exact texture I’m going for but of course if you do want to go pure meat you could leave them out I mean you guys are after all the heroes of your garos or if you’re into the alternative

Pronunciation you could also be the Curtis blow of what many people call a gyro which could actually be the right way to say it since there’s no such thing as a geoscope but either way like I said we will mix that very thoroughly with our hand and then once that’s set what we’ll

Do is transfer that into this baking dish which I rub very lightly with oil and I’m also going to lay in this piece of parchment paper and we will get a little oil on that and then turn it over and press it in and that’s going to make

It a lot easier to lift out of the dish once it’s cooled and we’ll go ahead and transfer in that meat and press it down and by the way if you’re concerned that we’re overworking the meat because we just mixed it so thoroughly with our hand and now we’re working it again as

We press it into this dish do not worry that’s not a concern here okay we’re basically making a bad meatloaf on purpose and I don’t mean bad tasting I just mean something that’s not tender all right for the texture of the final product to be exactly what I want once

This is cooked we want it nice and firm and not soft and crumbly so we’ll go ahead and transfer our meat in at which point it’s ready to roast so let’s go ahead and transfer that into the center of a 350° oven for about 40 to 45

Minutes or until it’s nicely browned and looks a little something like this and if you’re not into going by time and appearances what we want to shoot for is an internal temp somewhere between 160 and 165 and then all we need to do at this point is let it cool down to room

Temp it which point we’ll remove it from the dish onto a plate so we can wrap it up and pop in the fridge and while it cools if you want I guess you could slice a little piece off the side and give it a try and while it should taste

Perfectly delicious just like this keep in mind this is going to get even better when we Brown it up in the pan which reminds me a lot of the Geo recipes that use ground meat totally skip that step okay they think you’re done at this point when it comes out of

The oven they say to just slice it and make your sandwiches but that is not how I goo so while I did enjoy this bite it mostly just made me excited for what’s going to happen later so like I said we’re going to let that cool down at

Which point we’ll transfer it onto a plate and thanks to our genius parchment paper trick earlier we are going to be able to easily lift this out so we’ll grab either side and live straight up well that was unfortunate so that didn’t work but as you’ve heard me say

Before we never let the food win so we’ll go to plan B and transfer this with a spatula and I know the paper’s still on the bottom I’ll remove it later I’m too upset now and then what we’ll do is cover that in plastic and transfer it into the fridge until thoroughly chilled

So yes this is something you can make well ahead of time and then just keep it in the fridge until you’re ready to make sandwiches which after a couple hours I was and then what we’ll do once that is fully chilled is pull it out unwrap it

And proceed to slice it up in any shape or size we want and generally my strategy for this is to make two cuts lengthwise and then we’ll just turn those and cut across into I don’t know about an e/ inch thick slices all right we don’t want them too

Thick or too thin but somewhere in between and that’s it once our giros meat is cut up we can move into final production and for me that means Browning these up in a pan over medium high heat and a little bit of olive oil for maybe 2 minutes per side or until nicely

Caramelized and for me this is one of the whole keys to the operation because while it does taste okay just after baking once it’s chilled and browned up like this I feel like it gets even more flavorful and I think the texture improves and by the way this also

Simulates the traditional giros method where the meat is rotating over the fire and as that surface Cooks the meat is shaved off and used to make a wrap or sandwich or whatever you’re doing so I really do like this method if your Sand’s rotisserie which most of us are

And then once the Browning of our meat is complete we will proceed to final assembly which is going to start with this homemade Lebanese Mountain bread which I will be showing you since I finally perfected it I know it looks like a peita but it’s not it’s far

Superior and what we’ll do is spread that generously with tziki sauce although I think it’s pronounced ziki who knows but I do know we have a video for that and then I also like to do a little bit of shredded Roma as well as some quarter cherry tomatoes which are

Currently the best and sweetest Tomatoes available and then we’ll go ahead and place down our meat which is just so beautiful and fragrant and then I’m going to finish up with a little bit of pickled red onion which I will tell you how to make on the blog post and then

Last but not least a little sprinkling of Aleppo pepper and that’s it that’s how I like to build my gearos and then I should mention there’s a very traditional way to roll these up but my flatbread was a little too M plus I don’t know how to do it so I’m just

Going to fold mine over and get it up to my mouth like this and that my friends was incredibly delicious and shockingly close to what you may experience from one of the mythical Magical Mystery meet Street carts that are generally found in the most dangerous neighborhoods in America’s most dangerous cities and yet

Despite that people will line up because that’s just how delicious these are and by the way if you love lamb and want to go 100% ground lamb I’ve done it that way before and it’s very good but for me half being and half Lam makes it just a

Little bit more mild and for my taste at least a little closer to what you get when you order these out but anyway that’s it my take on a Giro sandwich be sure to stay tuned for the upcoming Lebanese Mountain bread video which is currently my favorite kind of flatbread

Well actually forget flatbread it’s probably currently my favorite bread so stay tuned for the upcoming Lebanese Mountain bread video but regardless of what you serve this honor in I really do hope you give it a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredients amounts and wor INF f as

Usual and as always enjoy Turkish Chicken Kebabs that’s right I said chicken kebab not chicken kebab when I think Kebab I think chunks of overcooked meat separated by pieces of undercooked vegetable and so I’m not really into those but this Kebab on the other hand

Is all meat all the time and I think far superior and as you can see from this total spoiler of a picture we’re still going to be getting our veggies so don’t worry and like almost all my favorite grilling recipes this is features Big flavors with a very small amount of

Effort so let’s go ahead and get started with the marinade so for that we are going to need some Turkish style yogurt which you probably can’t find but what you can find in every Supermarket is Greek yogurt so we’ll use that and then to that we’ll add some olive oil along

With some freshly squeezed lemon juice and do I need to keep telling you that is anyone not using fresh lemons I mean unless you work at some kind of weather station in Antartica you really don’t have an excuse and then we want to do a little touch of tomato product I believe

In the original be a call for tomato paste but because I’m an American I reserve the right to use ketchup which really does work beautifully we’re also going to want a large amount of minc garlic as well as a generous amount of kosher salt and of course its good

Friend freshly ground black pepper we’re also going to spice this up with some chili flakes and I’m using Aleppo chili flakes cuz it is from the Middle East so it seems appropriate but any hot chili flake will work and then we’ll finish off our seasonings with a little bit of

Paprika as well as some ground cumin and and then last but not least everybody’s favorite secret ingredient cinnamon and then let’s take a whisk and give this a mix and this will be the perfect time to admit I’m not really sure how Turkish this recipe is I don’t really do a lot

Of research or any research but I am basing this on a Turkish lamb marinade that I’ve used for years plus we’ve never called anything Turkish before so that’s what I went with but anyway like I said we’ll mix that up and once that’s set we’ll simply set that aside and move

On to the chicken and I’m going to be using boneless skinless chicken thighs for this why anyone would want to do this with chicken breastes Beyond me but having said that you are the Kos of your Kebab so use whatever you want but I am going

With the thighs and you can if you want certainly use these chicken thighs whole but I generally like to cut them in half I think it works out a little better so as you can see I’m going to split these pieces in two and then once our thighs

Have been cut up we can go ahead and toss that in the marinade but not all at once all right I’m sure you’ve heard me say this before but chicken thighs are famous for all their nooks and crannies so if we just just dump it all in at

Once and try to mix it up there may be some Nooks Andor crannies that don’t get enough marinade so I do take an extra minute and make sure each piece is getting thoroughly coated and once we are confident that’s happened we will wrap that up and we’ll let that marinate

In the fridge from anywhere between 2 and 8 hours so ideally I like to do this the morning of the day we’re going to grill but yes you can leave it overnight but when it comes to yogur based marinades I’m always a little scared to let them go too long so I am

Recommending 2 to eight hours after which we can pull it out and begin the impelling process and I’m going to use some metal skewers for this and not just one we’re going to use two metal skewers per kebab and that’s going to give us increased stability and a little better

Maneuverability on the grill and of course because we are using two skars we’ve basically doubled the chances you will accidentally give your hand the old Poca POA so be careful as you’re doing this and please note how we’re putting these on here okay we’re doing them the

Flat way kind of side to side so that we can fit a lot more meat onto one Kebab which is going to give us this nice thick gorgeous log of chicken as opposed to just a few chunks and I really didn’t do any trimming to these chicken thighs

But if you do see a little piece of anything weird go ahead and pull it off and the other nice thing about stacking these kind of side to side like this is not only are we going to get a larger mass of meat to grill which means more

Caramelization on the outside and a more tender juicy inside but we’ve also created tons of cracks and crevices which are going to help absorb all that beautiful Smoky flavor from the grill and once those are set we’ll just clean up our plate a little bit and of course

Our hands and any surface that touch raw chicken and if you want you can just wrap this up and leave it in the fridge until your grill is ready but mine was ready so I’m going to head out back and toss these on a charcoal grill and one

Huge tip here yogurt based marinades are incredible but they love to stick so do not even think of turning this over for at least 3 or 4 minutes all right we need some serious crustification first otherwise you may tear your chicken so I let mine go for like I said

At least 3 or 4 minutes until I could kind of feel it was releasing from The Grill at which point we’ll flip that over and even though it may stick a little bit here and there that’s not too bad and then the same drill for the

Other side basically Let It Go for 3 or 4 minutes before you try to turn it and then after that all bets are off you can continue to cook that flip it around as you see fit until it reaches your desired level of dness and to be safe

I’m going to suggest you the thermometer and one nice thing because we did line up that chicken side by side we have a little more room for error than your traditional chicken kebab which are usually just smaller chunks of chicken which really can overcook quickly so if

You do happen to leave these on a couple extra minutes you should still be pretty good and by the way you know when the tiny scraps that are attached to the grill taste awesome that this is going to be good but anyway like I said we

Will cook that to our desired level of dness at which point we’ll head back inside and transfer these on to our platter and I like to transfer it right onto some lavage I mean why have those amazing juices dripping on the platter when they could be soaking into

Something we can eat and then of course as they say man cannot live by chicken and bread alone so we’re going to go ahead and Surround this with some very delicious and appropriate garnishes which as you can see includes cherry tomatoes cucumbers some parsley and onions as well as some fresh lemon and

That Turkish chicken kebab platter is done you know I’m no food stylist I prove that almost every video but this really is something to takes very little effort to make look gorgeous and at this point there’s nothing left to do except to desure these and eat and man is it

Succulent forget the amazing flavor from all those spices there’s something about a yogurt-based marinade that just makes the best grilled meat it just comes out so moist and tender just absolutely gorgeous and if you want you can eat this in big chunks dinner plate style

But what I like to do is kind of chop it up a little bit and use it in what I call a Turkish taco and what that is is a piece of lavache I’ve warmed on the grill and I’ll swipe that with a little bit of hummus before topping it with

Some chicken and then we’ll go ahead and garnish with some cucumber and some tomato and some onion and parsley of course and then I think the best way to finish this is with a spoon of cold yogurt sauce our taziki sauce would be perfect here although apparently I’m

Supposed to pronounce it zat ziki but that feels awkward but what doesn’t feel awkward is to finish this with an extra pinch of chili flakes and we’ll roll that up and that my friends is something you definitely want to eat just such an incredibly delicious bite of food

And by the way I’ve been experimenting with some new voice activated lavage check this out I say open huh oh you know what I’m using the wrong Line open ssme there we go that’s better but anyway all kiding aside this really did come out fantastic and for a technique

That’s so simple it really does produce beautiful delicious grilled chicken so I really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always pleas enjoy butterscotch budino that’s right I’m going to show you my take on this amazing Italian

Custard pudding and by the way if you were thinking budino was like an adorable Italian word for some adorable thing it’s not apparently it comes from a medieval word for sausage so we might just have to make up our own story for what that word means which when it comes

To recipes is totally fine but anyway let’s go ahead and get started with this very simple recipe and what we’ll do first is add one very firmly packed half cup of brown sugar to the saucepan and if it comes out too quickly you did not pack it firm enough we will

Also go ahead and add some salt which because I’m using one that has a large flaky grain looks like a lot more than it really is and then last but not least we will add a splash of water and we’ll set our heat to medium high and for some

Reason I gave this a stir with the Whisk which really isn’t necessary and all I really accomplished here was getting that sugar on the sides of the pan which is why as this came out to temperature I swirled it around a few times to wash that stuff down but anyway what we’re

Going to do is bring this up to a boil on medium high heat and what we’ll do is cook this for about 7 to 10 minutes or until the mixture darkens and smells like caramelized sugar and when we’ll start really paying attention is when our bubbles start to increase in size

Which means our water is boiling out of the mixture and the temperature of that sugar is rising and what we’re looking for here besides bigger and bigger bubbles is that the color of the mixture will darken so those are our visual Clues but as that happens this will also

Start to smell like caramelized sugar which is exactly the point I was at right here which I believe took me about 8 or 9 minutes and once that happens we will immediately turn off the heat and we’ll go ahead and carefully toss in a chunk of butter and start stirring with

A whisk while we grab and carefully pour in our heavy cream and the reason we’re going a little bit slow here is because when you pour liquid into a caramelized sugar it can really bubble and foam up pretty quickly so you got to be careful

And because my cream is right out of the fridge the sugar is almost immediately going to seize up which basically means harden up and it’s going to stick to the pan and mostly to the Whisk but that’s okay don’t worry because we’re going to turn our heat back on to medium low and

As our cream Heats back up that Sugar will dissolve and our whisk will become clean yes and of course you can heat the cream up first and significantly lessen that effect but why add an extra step when we don’t have to so you’ll see just keep stirring and everything will work

Out just fine and by the way let me apologize for the pants which I splattered with some butter and flour making an unrelated recipe and I didn’t realize they were in the frame but In fairness while I did get them dirty I also made them more delicious but anyway

We’re going to stir that on medium low until our sugar dissolves at which point we’re going to go ahead and add a little bit of milk which I guess we could have added with the cream but for whatever reason I like to add it here and that’s it we’ll stir

That in and simply let this sit on medium low while we mix up our egg and corn starch thickener so into a mixing bowl we will add one whole egg plus two egg yolks followed by our corn starch and then what we’ll do is take a whisk and mix

This until it’s very very smooth which is going to take you a minute or two a cornstarch does not like to get mixed into things quickly I mean it’s kind of a jerk about it but if you keep whisking and whisking and whisking eventually all those lumps will break up and dissolve

And eventually it will look like this and then once that happens we’re going to do something that we call in the business tempering the mixture which simply means whisking in about a cup of our hot cream mixture from the stove and when you do yours try not to drip and

What this does is not only dilute the amount of eggs but it also raises the temperature which allows us after tempering to transfer the contents of the bowl back into the saucepan without us having to worry about those eggs curdling and then once we have everything together we will raise our

Heat to medium high and we will cook whisking constantly for about 2 minutes or so or until our mixture thickens up and if everything goes according to plan after a couple minutes your mixture should look a little something like this very beautifully thick and luxurious with no big chunks of scrambled egg and

At this point we can pull it off the stove and then pass that through a fine mesh strainer just in case although if I’m being honest this is probably totally unnecessary since the next time I find any major chunks in that strainer will be the first but anyway better safe

Than sorry and by passing it through we do guarantee our mixture will be perfectly smooth and then once that’s been accomplished we go ahead and add our last ingredient which is the liquor and of course since we’re making a butterscotch budino we’ll go ahead and add one tablespoon of rum and I should

Mention dark rum would be more traditional but I’m using white since that’s all I have and the sad thing is I could have bought a bottle and expensed it but anyway both work so use what you want I mean you are after all the Cris Constantino of your butterscotch budino

Now that’s a chef that knows about medieval sausage but anyway we will whisk in our rum and then carefully and neatly transfer this into whatever serving glasses we’re going to use and because this is such a rich dessert I’m going to use these Rock glasses but just

Fill them up halfway which I think is a perfect portion and we’ll also hopefully give them a more dramatic presentation and then because I’m going to top these with a little bit of optional caramel sauce later I decideed to take a spoon and give them a little

Stir to smooth out the top which sort of worked but I also ended up smearing it up on the sides of the glass so maybe don’t stir so hard if you want a cleaner line and that’s it once we have those portioned we will give them the whole

Tapa tapa followed by the old wppa wppa and we’ll go ahead and pop those in the fridge for a few hours or until very thoroughly chilled before we try to serve these and then once these are eyes cold and it firmed up we could if we

Want to serve them as is or with some whipped cream but what I’m going to recommend is topping these with a spoon of caramel sauce and you know what because you made these from scratch we’re going to let you use the caramel carel sauce in the squeeze bottle from

The store if you want but homemade caramel sauce is very easy and we have a video for that so if you want to make a little bit of homemade like I did you really should and I will add a link for how to do that and then what I did after

Topping with that is I kind of TI the glass around so that caramel would maybe cover up my imperfect edges which sort of worked but then I remembered this is an Italian dessert and it’s not supposed to look perfect or right that’s much more their French friends to the Norse

Thing but anyway we’ll garnish those with a little bit of caramel sauce and then we’ll Place those back into the fridge until we’re ready to serve which I’m going to do right now and because salted caramel is one of my favorite things ever a garnished at top of a

Pinch of extra- large flaky sea salts and that’s it our butterscotch budino is ready to enjoy so let me go ahead and grab a spoon and dig in to what is truly one of the world’s great desserts and above and beyond that rich decadent butterscotch flavor the texture here is

Unbelievable I mean to say it’s smooth and luxurious does not even come close to doing it justice which reminds me if you want to adjust and make it a little firmer that just means adding a little more corn starch or if you wanted it a little softer and

Creamier you could just add a little less corn starch but for me this was absolutely perfect just pure luxury on a spoon and while this is very rich and satisfying it really is not overly heavy and since it’s nice and cold borderline refreshing which because these are made

Ahead of time makes them an absolutely perfect summertime dessert oh and by the way you remember earlier when I said we should probably come up with another story for what the word budino means well as I was eating this I came up with mine right according to me budino is the

Italian word for one of those beautiful puffy clouds at Sunset that takes on the golden hue of the falling Sun that’s what the name budino comes from so feel free to use that one if you want or come up with something different on your own

But either way I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy Bobs kebabs that’s right there once was a man named Bob who showed me

How to make this Kebab he wasn’t the chef the chef’s name was Jeff but still he did a great job and while I’m not able to tell you too much about Bob due to some very strict non-disclosure agreements I am very excited and very happy to be able to share this recipe

And now that grilling Season’s Upon Us this is definitely something you’re going to want to work into the rotation so with that let’s go ahead and get started by mixing up our spice blend which is going to start with some ground cumin a little bit of coriander some

Aleppo chili flakes a generous amount of kosher salt as well as of course a little Shake of cayenne and then last but not least Bob’s secret ingredients a very small pinch of cinnamon okay if you can taste the cinnamon you put too much but just a little tiny hint in the

Background really works well here and then what we’re going to do after we give this a mix is use our spoon to push off about 1/3 of the mixture to the the side and the reason for that is we’re going to use 2/3 to season the meat and

Then the other third will get sprinkled on the outside before our kebabs get grilled okay so once we have that separated we’ll go ahead and take a pound of ground meat in my case lamb you can also use beef or a combination of both which is very nice and like I said

We’ll go ahead and transfer over 2/3 of our spice mix along with 2 tablespoons of very cold fresh water and that’s it once we drizzle that in we’ll take one clean hand and we will mix and mash this until it’s th combined and this is one of the few

Times when we’re mixing ground meat where we don’t really have to worry about overworking it too much since traditionally once cooked the meat supposed to have a little bit of a springy texture okay not tough but slightly springy and that’s partly the reason we added some water to this which

Of course is also going to add a little bit of extra juiciness and that’s it once that’s very thoroughly mixed we’ll go ahead and cover that in plastic and we’ll pop that in the fridge for about an hour or so or until it’s nicely chilled okay okay cold meat is always

Easier to handle in shape plus it will give those spices some time to work their magic oh and while that’s happening let’s not forget to soak our wooden skewers in some water so they don’t burn up on the grill and then what we’ll do once those have soaked for

About an hour and our meat mixture is nice and cold we will go ahead and pull that out and then take 1/8 of the mixture and we will roll that 2 oz portion into a nice ball after wetting our fingers with some of that water we

Use to soak the skars because as you know damp hands make smooth balls and then once we have that into a nice smooth ball we’ll kind of shape it into an oval and then skure it making sure we go right through the center and then what we’ll do once we have that squeezed

Out to about 3 in or so we will also want to kind of taper both ends down to a point which is not only going to help this stay attached to the skar it’s also going to make it look super cool and enticing okay as you may have heard me

Say before it is a proven scientific fact that people love pointy food and that’s it exactly how Bob formed his kebabs and while most people think of chunks of meonis skar when they Kebab here I’m going to show you the other style of Kebab sometimes referred to as

Kaa or kefta or Kua that features ground meat and while both versions are great this is the style that Bob and I prefer but anyway I went ahead and formed the rest to make a total at which point I do like to wrap them and chill them again

Although if you wanted you could cook these right away but personally I like these very cold before I cook them plus it’s always easier to have things prepped ahead of time and while those were chillaxing in the fridge I went ahead and mixed up a quick yogurt SI SAU

Which was simply some plain Greek yogurt some very finely crushed garlic a little bit of freshly chopped parsley as well as some freshly squeezed lemon juice and then enough fresh cold water to thin this out to the exact consistency we want and once all that’s in there we’ll

Go ahead and give it a mix and yes this would have been way faster and easier with a whisk but the spoon was already dirty from scooping in the yogurt and I remember Bob used to always say the already dirty utensil is always better than the more effective clean utensil so

It took me an extra minute or so but eventually I got that all stirred together nice and smooth and no I didn’t add any salt because our meat’s going to be very well seasoned so we should be okay and we can refrigerate that until needed and then you remember that third

Of the seasonings we saved if we can find it we’re going to go ahead and add a spoon of sumac to this and if you can’t find it don’t stress but if you can add it in as it does add a very interesting sort of sour Tangy Citrus

Like flavor and then what we’ll do once that’s mixed is pull our Bob’s Bobs out of the fridge and we’re going to season those all over with the rest of our spice mixture and while you’re doing this if you want to do a little bit of fine tuning with the shaping feel

Free oh and I should mention a lot of the kebab recipes will actually have you add the sumac to the meat mixture but Bob was a big believer of only putting it on the outside but anyway suit yourself I mean you are after all the Rober duals of these impaled meatballs

But if I’m making something called Bob’s kebabs I am going to Kebab like Bob and he thought it was better with this just on the outside and that’s it once these are set we can go ahead and cook them up which I’m going to do by grilling them over some

Beautiful Japanese style charcoal and while of course any kind of Grill would work these narrow Habachi style grills are perfect for skewed meat but in any event I’m going to grill these for about 10 to 12 minutes total turn in these about every 3 minutes or so so that

Hopefully the entire surface faces the Heat and as far as done this goes you could use a thermometer and cook these to about 135 internal temp but for me when they go from feeling kind of mushy to feeling kind of firm and springy they’re usually done and like I said

These took me about 12 minutes all together and that’s it once I felt those were done both physically and mentally I removed those to a plate and headed back inside where I serve those up on a beautiful platter of tomatoes cucumbers and red onions that I dress very lightly

With some salt and some olive oil and after arranging those as shown I went ahead and Scattered over some more freshly chopped parsley and yes brushing off some parsley does count as food styling I also dust over some more sumac since that is going to be really good with those vegetables

Underneath and of course we’re also going to want some grilled P Bread nearby and then I went ahead and finish this up by spooning a little bit of that yogurt sauce over the top which I thought would look nice for the pictures especially garnished with one last sprinkling a

Sumac and that’s it this beautiful batch of Bob’s kebabs is done and ready to enjoy and for this first one I’m just going to enjoy it as is right off the skew and that my friends was just incredible okay I think Bob would have been very proud just an incredibly

Flavorful bite of meat perfectly seasoned inside and out and there’s just something about lamb spice this way that when you combine it with the smokiness from the grill just elevates this to a whole other level and please stop looking at that partially on my thumb and while very delicious plain

What you really want to do is Nestle this into some nice warm Pita along with some of those nice cool crisp fresh veggies and of course lots of our garlicky lemony yogurt sauce and if there’s a better thing to eat especially in the middle of grilling season I just

Can’t think of it right now and as I mentioned earlier while I prefer this done with lamb it’s also really good done with beef or a combination of half and half which by the way Bob was a big fan of he used to say why choose when

You can have both but anyway that’s it how to Kebab like Bob I only wish he was around to see this and not in the witness protection program where I’m not able to get him a message but anyway hopefully somehow he stumbles across this and if he did I think he’d say the

Same thing I’m going to say now which is I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy flaming Greek cheese that’s right this Saga Nagi video

Is dedicated to everyone who’s ever said there’s nothing better than fried cheese since it turns out there is and that would be fried cheese we set on fire before we serve it and while we’re officially posting this as a super exciting sexy date night Andor Valentine’s Day first course idea when

You consider this Greek classic only takes about 5 minutes to make it’s also suitable for any old week night you feel like something a little different so with that let’s go ahead and get started with the star of the show our Greek cheese and while there are various

Options this casari is my favorite and yes it might be pronounced ciri but I was confusing my phone so I say casari and besides loving the taste this brand eyb comes in a very saganaki friendly siiz portion so hopefully you’ll be able to find something similar but if not

You’re just going to have to slice your own piece somewhere between a/4 and a/ inch thick and don’t worry I’m going to give you more info about the cheese on the blog and I’ll list a few different Alternatives but anyway what we’ll do to prep this after unwrapping it is to

Brush each side lightly with water which I’m going to do with a brush here but if you’re not doing a video feel free to just wet this under the faucet for a second and then what we’ll do once it’s been moistened in water is go ahead and

Dredge both sides in flour making sure that surface is completely covered and other than maybe brushing off a little bit of the excess before we put it in the pan our cheese is officially prepped and we can move on to introduce you to the rest of the ingredients and while not technically an

Ingredient next to the cheese the most important thing to pull this off would be some kind of well seasoned cast iron skillet right there is a way you can do this in a non-stick pan and then trans transer on to plates and flamb Bay it but for the full effect I think using

One of these is the way to go and then besides that we’ll also need a little bit of olive oil to fry our cheese as well as a couple tablespoons of Highly flammable liquor which in my case is going to be some Brandy but really any

Other kind of high proof booze will work then once our cheese has been fried and flambay we will finish up with some lemon as well as some freshly chopped parsley and believe it or not that’s it and then what we’ll do when we’re ready to serve is place our Skillet on medium

High high heat and get it very very hot is in starting to smoke and then what we’ll do as soon as we determine our pan is hot enough is pour in about a tablespoon of olive oil and then carefully very carefully place in our flour cheese and if you’re smart you

Should probably use tongs and what we’re going to do is cook this first side for about 2 minutes or until it forms a beautiful golden brown crust and the cheese begins to ooze out and then what we’ll do once that happens and our cheese looks a little something like

This is quickly and without hesitation flip it over because if you do hesitate like I did here and move the spatula you will like I just did totally screw up that beautiful crusty surface but don’t worry since this stuff is still hot and flexible it is pretty easy to fix and

Reposition like I’m doing here in fact I even got a little bit cocky and used some of this extra crispy stuff from the side to transplant onto a spot that didn’t have any crustiness so does summarize no matter how bad your flip and that was one of my worst ever is

It’s not going to matter and the final product is still going to look amazing but anyway we’re going to flip that over and we’ll just give that second side about 30 seconds or until I think about a quarter to a third of the cheese is

Melted oh and a quick tip don’t try to clean any cheese off the side of the pan with your bare fingers it is super hot and painful but anyway what we’ll do after that second side is cooked about 30 seconds is quickly remove that from

The heat at which point it’s time to dim the lights and pour over our Brandy and then as soon as we ignite that with the lighter everybody has to yell Opa as it burst into flames are you ready don’t leave me hanging here we go 3 2 1

Opa and that’s it everybody stands around watching it burn and of course taking pictures they can Instagram later and then what we’ll do to finish this off is extinguish the last of the Flames with a squeeze of fresh lemon as well as top it off with a little bit of freshly

Chopped Italian parsley or fresh oregano if you want although that’s a little strong for me so I do recommend the parsley but up to you you are after all the Apollo of what advice to follow but anyway once that’s been lemoned and parsleyed it is ready to serve up on some bread toasted

Or otherwise and for me a perfectly executed saganaki is one where 25% of the cheese is crispy and caramelized 25% is gooey and melted 25% is unmelted and the last 25% is we’re not sure and as you can see that’s exactly what we have right here just an amazing combination

Of textures it’s kind of like a fondu meets mozzarella sticks and if you never had this Greek cheese it kind of reminds me of a provolone with sort of a feta flavor profile and speaking of flavor don’t forget to dip your bread and what basically a dressing formed by the olive

Oil melted cheese lemon juice and Brandy which is just incredibly tasty and you might be thinking with all that liquid there’s no way that cheese stayed crispy and crusty well it did check it out so I just absolutely love everything about this dish the texture The Taste

And of course the Pyro Technics and by the way if you’re afraid to serve this because you’re afraid of burning down your kitchen or possibly injuring one of your guests who then sues you those aren’t bad things to think about since they are real possibilities but for me

Totally worth the risk since there’s just no way this could come out tasting any better okay fine maybe one way but anyway that’s it how I like to sagaki whether you’re going to serve this trying to spark up a little romance with an old flame on date night or

You’re just looking for something fast and fun for a chilly week night I really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy baked fet ailo with honey that’s right my favorite flavor

Combination of all time is sweet and salty and while there are thousands of different ways to combine those two elements there are none more delicious or beautiful or perfect than then baked feta with honey oh and since we’re using readymade felo dough this is also very

Fast and easy and to get started the first thing we’ll need is some high quality feta which typically come in these 7 o blocks that are about an inch thick which unfortunately for this preparation is going to be too thick so what we’ll need to do is split this in

Half so we can get two portions but the problem is if we try to cut through the whole thing it’s going to be tricky to get an accurate cut and the feta could break so to make this easier let’s go ahead and cut it in half and then we’ll

Tip this smaller piece on its side and we will carefully cut right down through the Middle with our knife in this way we have less cheese to go through as we slice this into the proper thickness and that’s it once cut if we place both of those pieces together as you’ll see when

We wrap this we’re going to have the perfect size and shape for the amount of filo we’re going to use and by the way I’m using a Greek feta which is made with sheep and goat milk which in my opinion produces the best feta but any feta that’s moist enough to cut through

And doesn’t crumble will work for this and if you’re worried that second one I just cut is not going to work because it’s so uneven don’t worry it’ll be fine okay I’m just going to turn this side to make it match a little better and really once our cheese is wrapped that

Variation in thickness will not matter at all and that’s it once we’ve cut the cheese we will move on to mixing up our egg butter olive oil mixture which believe it or not we will make by adding some melted butter and some olive oil to an egg and then whisking it

Until we have a nice Emulsion and this is what we’ll use to brush on our filo before we wrap our feta and speaking of felo dough once we’re ready to assemble we will place two sheets down on our counter and by the way ignore those cracks and terrible appearance for the

Moment I’m going to talk about that very shortly but what we’ll do once we have two sheets down is start brushing this carefully with our egg mixture and we don’t need to or even want to go for total coverage okay I’d say about 75% of the surface is ideal and now that we’ve

Covered that let’s talk cracks okay if you use store bought felo there’s almost always going to be some cracks especially if you try to unroll it while it’s still partially frozen which I always do but as you’re about to see those are really not going to cause a

Problem and once our filo is brushed we will place our feta down leaving enough dough at the bottom so that we can fold that up over the cheese and it covers completely and then we’ll go ahead and brush that part and once that’s been accomplished we will fold over both

Sides towards the center right nice and neatly up to the edges of our cheese oh and as I do this please note the positioning of those cracks which are sort of near the middle a little bit towards the top just keep that in mind for a moment while I give this one more

Brushing with our egg mixture and the reason I want you paying attention to where those cracks are is because once this is brushed to finish it we’re simply going to roll it up into a nice tight package hopefully ending up with our seams on the bottom and because

Those cracks were in the spots they were as I finished the fold those ended up being on top which again as you’ll see is not going to be a problem but let me go ahead and fold up this second one and show you a little bit of a workaround

Okay so I started with two sheets again and I brushed it exactly the same way except please note I turned those felo sheets around so the cracks were near near the bottom closer to where I’m going to be placing the cheese and by starting with any crack dough in that

Area by the time this gets folded and rolled up those cracks are going to be folded inside and if everything goes according to plan we should end up with a perfectly smooth surface and yes it would have been nice if both of the ones I made had a

Perfectly smooth surface but it took me making that first one and seeing where those cracks started and where they ended up to be able to improve the method and end up with the best appearance possible right in the business we refer to this as the learning process but

Visible cracks are not once these are done we’ll transfer them onto a Sil Pat lime baking sheet and there’s the nice one followed by what we’ll call the worst case scenario one and then before these go in a nice hot oven we will brush those tops with our egg mixture

Followed by if we want an optional application of sesame seeds and I’m going to do both white sesame seeds and a few black sesame seeds which I just think makes these look so much more interesting and who Among Us does not enjoy food that looks interesting oh and

While I sprinkle those let me sneak in a Shameless plug for a video we posted recently called Blackmagic Sesame crisps which is one of the most delicious and addictive cracker-like snacks you will ever eat so if you haven’t seen it and you have black sesame seeds please check

It out and that’s it once those have been seated or not they are ready to transfer into the center of a 425° oven for about 20 minutes or until they’re beautifully browned and look like this and you might be thinking you may US listen to all that crack talk for

Nothing since both of those look fine well you know what you’re probably right and as long as these are nice and crisp and brown including the bottoms then we did a fine job although that second one we did on the right does look better and

Now I’m going to let it go and we will transfer these onto a cutting board and I will prove I’m over the crack here isue by cutting and serving the less perfect one first and for that I’m going to use a mesaluna which is perfect for

Cutting things in half I mean the word half is right in the name and hopefully you can see here what I think is the perfect ratio between that gorgeous hot creamy feta in that crispy flaky felo dough so to me that is looking just about perfect but hold on it gets better

So let’s go ahead and plate these up and move on to the real money shots which is of course this being slowly drizzled with lots of Greek honey or of course the honey of your choice I mean you are after all the Bad Bunny of which honey

Right typically I would use a local honey but because IID used Greek feta and had recently bought some Greek honey online after watching a show about blue zones which are areas where people live to like 110 I decided to go with that but no matter what you use use plenty

And once that was generously drizzled I went ahead and grabbed it for work and we will take a bite of what I think is sweet and salty Perfection and of course there is so much more going on with a good feta than just saltiness okay it’s

Also Savory and creamy and a little bit funky and all those things along with the saltiness or why this is an absolute perfect pairing with the honey and I should have mentioned it earlier but what makes this baked fet ailo different from most versions is that they

Generally just use butter or olive oil or a combination to brush the filo with whereas here we also use some egg which adds some moisture and richness and makes this a little more pastry like than your typical bake filo recipe right those often look nice and they’re very

Crispy but as soon as you put the fork in it basically explodes into like a thousand different dry flaky pieces so I do prefer the texture of this approach plus since we’re using a little less butter and oil this version is in fact a little lower in calories although of all

The reasons to make this that is by far the worst one and the other thing I love about this is how versatile it is as far as when you can serve it right we can make a batch of these and then cut them up in pieces and they make a fantastic

Appetizer for any party or you can serve this with hot coffee or tea for breakfast and when you eat something like this in the morning you are setting yourself up for a very successful day Try It You’ll see and then finally you could put a big salad next to one of

These and have it for for lunch or dinner or Bowl but no matter how or when you enjoy this it is profoundly delicious and fast and easy to make which is why I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a

Printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy pasta ala trapan that’s right I’m going to show you how to make an amazing pasta featuring sic’s amazing tomato pesto and I am very excited to be sharing my version with you and I love the green

Geneves style pesto but when super sweet cherry tomatoes are in season I really believe this pesto is the best pesto so with that let’s go ahead and get started with one optional step and that would be blanching some almonds which is simply done by bringing a couple cups of water

To a boil and then we’ll pull that off the heat and we’ll dump in our almonds and what we’ll do is give that a stir and let it sit for about 3 or four minutes at which point the skins on the almonds will come off very very easily

Okay they will pretty much slip right off and we do this because the skins of almonds are really tough and they can actually irritate the throats of some people so yes you can make this pesto without doing that but this only takes a few extra minutes and I think it’s much

Much nicer so once those soak long enough we’ll simply drain them and as soon as they’re cool enough to handle we’ll go ahead and peel off the Skins although you might notice some steam coming off these since I was too impatient to wait but either way we’ll

Prep about a half cup and then besides the almonds we are also going to need some garlic and salt as well as some peino Romano cheese although some people do use parmesan or a combination and then even though this is a tomato base pesto we’re still going to need some

Basil as well as a little bit of fresh mint which for this dish is the secret ingredient that everybody knows and then we can’t make pesta without some good olive oil plus the star of the show a pound of the best sweetest cherry tomatoes you can find which I got at the

Farmers market but it was slightly under a pound so I tossed in a few sungold and a couple small Roma tomatoes from the garden and then before we toss everything into a blender I’m going to add my sliced garlic and my salt to this mortar and I’m going to smash it into a

Very fine paste okay classically the entire pesta would be made in one of these although a much bigger one but you probably don’t have one and that’s a lot of work and I think all the other ingredients are fine in a blender the only one that doesn’t come out the same

Would be the garlic so if you can smash it up like this before you start and then once that’s set we can toss our almonds in the blender followed by the cheese and by the way this is not random I want you to go in this order since I

Want the cheese in the nuts to kind of grind up first before the wetter stuff starts mixing in and then we’ll toss in our mint and our basil and yes those are small leaves and that’s because I grew it on our deck and I got to pick it nice

And young and tender and sweet and that’s it will transfering our mashed garlic and salt followed by our olive oil and then last but not least our cherry tomatoes and then we’ll pop on the lid and we’ll start blending this and of course we’re going to begin by pulsing on and off

And the almonds and cheese at the bottom will blend first and as we keep puling everything will eventually be incorporated and then once it comes together we can blend it on high speed until it’s the exact texture we want which for me is pretty smooth but some

People do prefer to leave it coarse which is probably closer to the texture you get if you use the mortar and pestle but anyway to me this is perfect right here and of course like any sauce hot or cold we definitely want to give it a Tastee

And maybe add a little more salt if we need it but other than that believe it or not this sauce is done okay pesto ala trapan is a raw sauce so we don’t need to cook it before we add it to our pasta speaking of which it’s time to cook some

And as usual we’re using some well salted boiling water and classically we’d use a pasta called bate which this isn’t exactly but it’s very similar in shape all right this was actually sold as butini fucili but the good news is pretty much any similarly shaped pasta

Will work or any kind of pasta I guess but any way you decide I mean you are after all the max ailon of cooking like a sicilian but I do think we want to use something that’s going to trap that delicious pesto sauce and this is a

Perfect shape for that and what we’ll do is go ahead and boil that until it’s done to our liking but keep in mind we are not going to cook this in the sauce like we do with a lot of pasta recipes so please make sure it’s cooked enough

Because it’s not going to get any more tender in the sauce and then what I’ll do once I decide the pasta is cooked is use a strainer or a spider as we call it in the business since it looks like a spider web but anyway we’ll use that to

Transfer it into a bowl and it’s totally fine if a little bit of that water comes along with it since some of that starchy cooking liquid is actually part of the sauce in fact once you’re done save that water because we’re going to add some

More of that in plus if we need more later we want it to be available and then to finish this what we’ll do is transfer in about a third of a cup of that pasta water and then as much of that pesto sauce as we want along with a

Nice big pinch of salt and then we’ll take a couple spoons and we will toss this until it’s thoroughly and evenly coated oh and I should mention I only cooked 8 ounces of pasta and the amount of pesta we made is enough for a pound with probably a little bit leftover to

Enjoy on some bread but anyway I just wanted to mention I’m using slightly less than half of the sauce and that’s it once that’s been mixed together I usually toss in a little more grated peino and we’ll give that one last toss before we serve up and as I spoon this

Into the bowl please note how beautifully creamy and decadent this looks okay it almost looks like we added some cream and besides the luxurious texture I think the color is absolutely stunning and that’s it we’ll finish the top with a little more grated cheese whoops I lost a shred don’t worry

I will eat that between shots and then I also like to sprinkle over a little bit of chopped almond and then last but not least a small and adorable sprig of basil and that’s it my pasta La trapan is ready to enjoy and that my friends is just an absolutely tremendous dish of

Pasta okay first and foremost we have those beautiful sweet cherry tomatoes which I think if we’re going to make a raw tomato sauce are probably the best choice right they’re not just sweet and savory but they have that little bit of acidity to them which really brightens

Everything else up and then what the almonds do here is the same thing that pine nuts do in a regular pesto right they add that nutty earthy richness which marries perfectly with the cheese and the herbs so while this appears to be totally different there really are a lot of similarities with traditional

Geneves style of pesto which I love but in the middle of summer when cherry tomatoes are at their Peak I think if you’re in the mood for pesto this is the way to go and while I’ve been to Italy I’ve never been to Sicily so I’m really

Not sure how exactly close my version is and hopefully one of these days I’ll find out but in the meantime I absolutely love everything about this which is why I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a

Printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy grilled Greek chicken breast with whipped feta that’s right I’m going to show you my favorite marinade and technique for grilling boneless skinless chicken breasts which can be a challenge since they’re often so dry and Bland but

Not with this method plus I’m going to show you how to make my new favorite thing to eat which is whipped feta so yes you’re actually getting two video recipes this time for the same low low price of free so with that let’s go ahead and get started by prepping our

Chicken and what I have here are four rather large boneless skinless brass and we do want to use relatively large ones here I would say a minimum of 7 to 8 ounces each and what we’ll do to prep these is simply cut them in half lengthwise pretty much exactly in half

Although generally one side is a little bit fatter than the other so I think it’s okay to cheat over and make that side a little bit smaller and there’s a few really good reasons to do this right by cutting these in half we have more surface area for the marinade to get

Into as well as later we’ll have more surface area on the grill to Brown and caramelize which I believe is the same thing and if someone just wants half a breast when we serve later they are not forced to awkwardly go around the table asking people who wants to split a

Breast so for all those reasons and more I think this is a great idea and that’s it once those are set we’ll pop them in the fridge and we’ll move on to the marinade which we’ll begin with some red wine vinegar or the vinegar of your choice followed by some kosher salts as

Well as some freshly ground black pepper and yes you knew it was coming we’ll also do a little bit of cayenne and then we can’t call a Greek chicken without some herbs so we’re going to do some dried thyme some dried oregano and rosemary and of course you can use fresh

If you want but generally dry herbs work better in a marinade than fresh ones and the same thing goes for our garlic addition all right I’m going to use some dried garlic powder here but don’t worry we are going to have some fresh garlic in our whip fata and

That’s it will give this a quick mix before we transfer in our chicken at which point we’ll toss that around until thoroughly and evenly coated and I was about to say that’s going to be it for the marinade but it’s not we are also going to add some olive oil to this but

I have a theory that it’s better to toss the chicken with the vinegar and the other ingredients first since that’ll give it a chance to start absorbing before these pieces get coated with the oil which if you added the oil first may actually insulate the meat and not allow

The same penetration and no I can’t prove this Theory and my evidence is purely anecdotal but it just feels right and that’s good enough for me and then what we’ll do once that has been tossed in the oil is go ahead and arrange those in one nice neat layer and then we’ll

Cover this in plastic and we will let it marinate in the fridge for a minimum of 1 hour to a maximum of overnights with the sweet spot for me being 2 to 3 hours and while we’re waiting we can move on to our whip feta which is basically

Going to be equal parts of Greek yogurt plus ideally a Greek feta or something else with a similarly appropriate texture which is as soft and creamy as possible okay we need soft and smooshy not firm and dry and crumbly and what we’ll do is add that to our bowl of

Yogurt and For Heaven’s Sake buy a whole piece and crumble it in yourself right that pre- crumbled stuff is going to be much drier and not as good good and seriously if you don’t have 10 seconds to crumble the cheese in you probably shouldn’t be cooking so unless that’s

All you can find get some good stuff I know that was tough love but love nonetheless and then the only other things we’re going to put in here would be a little bit of finely crushed garlic plus about a tablespoon of freshly chopped mint and then last but not least

The zest from one lemon and if you’re wondering shouldn’t we put the juice in to won’t that make it better well no we shouldn’t and no it won’t won’t okay we already have the tanginess from the yogurt and if we add the lemon juice it

Will be too acidic and we will kill the flavor of the feta we will kill it dead so zest only please and that’s it this is now ready to whip which I’m going to do with this electric handm mixer although if you’re not into modern conveniences you can whip this up by

Hand with a whisk I mean you are after all the marus OD of whether to go old school or mod but as long as you whip this until it’s nice and light and fluffy it really doesn’t matter and that’s it other than giving this a taste

Or three it is ready to use and we can simply pop that in the fridge until our chicken’s grilled but before I show you that let me make a suggestion since we’re going to have a grill full of hot coals before we do our chicken why not

Fire roast some onions and peppers to serve with it so that’s exactly what I did and when I quar those red onions I made sure to cut through the root so theyd stay together and do not worry about the black on the outer layers all right we’ll peel that first layer off

And we’ll be left with just that sweet Smoky tender onion underneath and then for the peppers I just like to roast them whole and then once those cool we can peel off the skin and slice them up but whether you grill anything else or not we’re going to want to prep a very

Very hot Grill all right the hotter the better and we’ll go ahead and place down our marinated chicken and my basic game plan with these is to cook them for about four minutes per side at which point I just like to start turning and tossing them until I’m happy with how

They look and they are just cooked through and again we want a really really hot fire all right white hot is a thing and red hot is a thing but there’s no such thing as black hot so make sure your coals have turned mostly white and

You can only hold your hand over them for a few seconds before you have to pull it away and of course as usual whenever we grill over coals we’re going to have some spots that are hotter than others so don’t be afraid to rearrange and reposition

And no you do not need a nice fancy expensive Grill to get good results all right this one cost $18 and I don’t want to give the name of the store but it rhymes with Mal wart but it still did an amazing job of cooking this chicken so

If you don’t have a grill the next time you’re out buying a 24 pack of socks maybe pick one of these bad boys up but anyway like I said I went ahead and grilled that for about four minutes per side at which point I just started toss

An Anna turning move an Ana mixing until I thought they were perfectly done which for me is when they stop feeling mushy and they spring back to the touch or of course you can play it safe and use a thermometer and cook those at whatever temperature you’re okay with which for

Me would be about 150 and that’s it we’ll head back inside where we will let our chicken rest for just a couple minutes while we prep our serving platter with our whip feta which I’m going to spread out to make a beautiful base and yes in case you’re wondering this platter quote unquote

It’s actually a leftover piece of tile from our kitchen so yes Michelle and I are literally going to be eating off the floor and if you like this idea but you don’t have leftover tile just go to a tile store and check out the remnants and the samples and you actually could

Find some very cool stuff but anyway we’ll go ahead and spread out our whip feta and then we will top and/ or surround that with our grilled vegetables and once that was said I went ahead and placed over my chicken which because I have eight beautifully Brown pieces instead of just four beautifully

Brown pieces according to my calculations looks Twice As Nice and of course please drizzle over those accumulated juices and if you don’t I’m going to hear about it and then remembering I’m trying to pass this off as Greek I want ahead and drizzled this very generously with olive oil and then

Speaking of olive I also decide to garnish with some beautiful green Greek olives which I get from Italy and after arranging those a little too precisely I went ahead and finish fin up with some freshly chopped herbs in the form of Italian parsley and mint and that’s it my grilled Greek

Chicken breast with whip feta was ready to enjoy and that my friends for boneless skinless chicken breast which is just about the least exciting thing I can think to eat was absolutely spectacular right that very very simple oil and vinegar marinade just works so perfectly here and anything and I mean

That literally would taste amazing aming with this whip feta which has a perfect balance of tanginess and saltiness and savoriness with that little bit of hint of garlic and mint and lemon in the background are just an absolutely perfect pairing especially with a piece of that roasted Smoky pepper and

Eventually that fire roasted onion and above and beyond the amazing flavor what I like so much about this specific marinade even if you happen to overcook your chicken a little bit it is actually going to stay moist and tender unless of course you really overcook it in which

Case it will be dry okay it’s not a magic marinade like that one in Harry Potter or at least I assume there was one in Harry Potter or I’ve never read the books or seen the movies but anyway the point is you do not have to grill

These perfectly all right just get them close that’s all we ever ask and no we’re not going to have our guest eat off the platter okay people can go ahead and scoop up a piece of chicken along with plenty of that whip feta and if you’re you’re thinking that sounds great

But aren’t we going to leave some of that stuff on the platter well yes a little bit but that’s very easy to clean up using some nice peeter bread you warmed on the grill oh yes when you’re done that’s going to clean it up real

Good and no you don’t have to do the platter presentation you can if you want do the exact same thing on a smaller scale on a plate which I think also looks vantastic but either way I really do believe this is the best way to cook boneless skinless chicken breasts and

And if you’re like me that whip feta is going to be your new favorite thing to eat so for all those reasons and more I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a principal written

Recipe and much more info as usual and is today I’m going to show you spaghetti Alia oia which is the most popular pasta dish in Italy by far and all spaghetti alola means is spaghetti with garlic and oil so we’re going to start by slicing thin six cloves of garlic now we’re not

Mincing we’re not chopping we want to slice it just like that very specific cut for this dish and there’s my prepped garlic I’m also going to chop about 1/4 cup of fresh Italian parsley and then the other ingredients a really good olive oil and a really good regano

Parmesan the real stuff we’re going to add our olive oil and our garlic to a cold sauté pan turn the heat to medium and we’re going to slowly toast that garlic now the beauty of this dish is while the Garlic’s toasting we’re going to cook the pasta the sauce and the

Pasta take about the same amount of time so make sure you’re doing these two things right next to each other so our pasta is boiling our garlic is in the pan as soon as it starts to Bubble turn the heat down to medium low and then we’re just going to watch this slowly

Toast okay don’t walk away it’s only going to take about 5 minutes the garlic should just be barely bubbling like that and we want to slowly slowly toast that to a beautiful golden brown so basically what we’re trying to do is Infuse as much of that toasted garlic flavor into

The olive oil without getting it too dark or bitter see that that’s just about where you want to be okay as soon as that gets to that stage we’re going to quickly turn off the heat and add a half a ladle about a half a cup of our

Boiling pasta water and even though we turned off the heat you need that water in there to stop the Browning process cuz that’s perfect right there right now our pasta is cooked and we’re going to drain our spaghetti we’re not going to rinse our spaghetti do not rinse your

Spaghetti never rinse your spaghetti please do not rinse your spaghetti all right we’re going to dump that into our pasta bowl we’re going to add some black pepper red pepper flakes and salt to taste at that point we’re going to pour over that unbelievable garlic oil if you

Could smell this you’d be like man that smells good or something to that effect and there you can see all our slices of garlic so while there’s a ton of garlic in this is actually pretty mild because of how we slowly toasted that in the oil

Okay so don’t be afraid all right we’re going to dump over about 2/3 of the cheese of course all the amounts will be on food wishes as always we’re going to dump over our telling parsley and then we’re going to toss and serve so after it’s all mixed up really well I’m going

To bring it to the table topped with the rest of the cheese and that’s it classic or at least what I think is classic spaghetti alola spaghetti with garlic and oil ironically had I shot this video before I got the cold that caused the laryngitis I wouldn’t have the

Laryngitis because as you know garlic is like a superfood that prevents almost everything so not only does this taste fantastic it’s just really really good for you Body Mind and Spirit so I hope you give this a try once again I apologize for the voice but like I said

The show must go on all the ingredients are on the site so go check it out and as always enjoy Greek tomato feta fritters that’s right I’m going to show you my take on theato cetes which is exactly how you’re supposed to pronounce it well actually

I’m not really sure I mean I did watch some videos to learn how to say it right and I heard five different people say it six different ways but anyway these are incredibly delicious not to mention versatile and inexpensive and I think just an absolutely perfect summertime

Appetizer and to get started the first thing we’ll do is prep some beautiful Vine ripen tomatoes well at least some of these are okay it’s still kind of early in the season but but I did grow these sungold tomatoes and a couple small Romas and then I hedge my bets

With a few from the store and if you’re using cherry tomatoes we can go ahead and cut those in quarters if they’re small and then for larger Tomatoes Romas are otherwise I just like to cut them in half and then un like quinch thick slices and once those are haved and

Sliced we can go ahead and turn them and cut them across like this and then I really hope you have a bench scraper because once these are cut I’m going to go ahead and transfer them into this measuring cup and I want to try to get

His as much juice off The Cutting Board as I can but anyway the point is we’re going to dice up a couple cups of the sweetest best Vine rip and tomatoes we can find and then to that we will add some sliced green onion or whatever kind

Of onion you’re into and no it doesn’t have to just be one kind and then for our last vegetable addition we’ll go ahead and grade in about half a medium zucchini oh and be careful when you get down to the end all right don’t be a

Hero trying to get every last Speck of that zucchini because nobody and I mean no no body wants a piece of your knuckle in their Fritter and that’s it once we have our veggies prepped we need to add a generous amount of kosher salt as well

As a little bit of sugar some freshly ground black pepper and a few shakes of cayen just to stay in shape and then we’ll also at this point add some dried oregano okay we are going to add lots of fresh herbs to this but we’ll toss that

Dry oregano in now so it starts to hydrate and that’s it we’ll give that a proper spooning and then once that is mixed what we’ll do is just let that sit for 15 minutes which is going to give that salt and sugar time to draw out those delicious liquids from the vegetables

Which not only improves the flavor but it’s also going to create moisture which is going to combine with the flour to make the batter and after sitting for 15 minutes we’ll go ahead and give that a stir and you can see here at the bottom how much liquid has been drawn out so

That’s looking good which means we can go ahead and toss in our freshly chopped herbs and I’m going to do some Italian parsley some mint and some basil and if you wanted you could also add some dill which a lot of people do like so use

What you want I mean you are after all the John Ritter of this Greek Fritter and you don’t have to enjoy the same herb threesome I did and then next up we’ll go ahead and add about 3 ounces of feta cheese preferably Greek feta since

That just makes a lot of sense here but any kind of feta would work as long as it’s tasty and dry enough to crumble like this right some fetas are really soft and sticky and those are going to be a lot harder to work with and that’s

It once this has been cheesed we’ll go ahead and take a spoon and give it a quick mix before we add our final two ingredients which could actually just be one ingredient if you wanted since once this is mixed we’ll go ahead and dump in some all-purpose flour plus some baking

Powder and of course if you have self-rising flour which already has baking powder in it you could just add that and be done but either way once that’s in we’ll take a spoon to give this a Final Mix and hopefully this batter ends up with a perfect consistency but if it doesn’t

We’ll simply adjust okay if it seems too dry and thick we’ll give it a little water and of course if it seems too wet and loose We’ll add some flour but for once the stars were aligned and this actually came out to the exact thickness I was going for which is something still

Relatively loose but it will still sit up and hold its shape on a spoon and that’s it we could have we want to cook this right away but I do think it comes out better if we wrap it up and pop it in the fridge for about a half hour and

Yes you can go longer even overnight if you want to but whether you let your batter rest or not we go ahead and Fry this up in 350° oil which could be in a deep fryer but if you don’t have one we can just shallow fry it in about an inch

Of oil that we will get up to temperature over medium high heat and it can be hard when we shallow fry to get an accurate temperature which is why one of these laser thermometers is so useful and your cat will love it to and once

That oil is up to 350 we’ll go ahead and carefully transfer a nice heaping tablespoon of our batter and we can use a second spoon to help push it off and because we are shallow frying if one seems to be sticking up a little high we can give that a little

Press oh and I should mention if you did leave this batter in the fridge longer than a half hour like a few hours or overnight those vegetables will release more water and you might have to tighten it up with a little more flour so something to pay attention to and that’s

It we’ll go ahead and Fry these for a couple minutes per side or until beautifully browned and hopefully cook through and once those are placed in I like to reduce the heat to medium so that oil doesn’t get too hot but of course that’s something you can monitor with your

Laser or just regular probe thermometer but I do like to back the heat down a little bit once these are frying and after 2 minutes we’ll go ahead and flip those over and let me give you a great tip here don’t burn yourself which is

Why I like to have a fork in my other hand in case I need to help help soften the landing and that’s it once those are flipped over we’ll give that other side about 2 minutes at which point I do what you’re supposed to never do flip them back

Over I know you’re not supposed to I just admitted that but just like the twice cooked french fry I always feel by flipping it back over maybe that surface gets a little more crispy I don’t know and I can’t prove it but I did give those one more flip for about 30 seconds

And by the way I do not buy they’re going to absorb a whole bunch of oil if you do this all right these things have a ton of moisture in them and moisture and oil do not get along okay they repel each other so if these were a lot

Starchier maybe but with a batter this wet I really don’t think it’s going to be a big problem but anyway that extra flip is optional and once those it cooked at least a couple minutes on each side I went ahead and fished them out and please take a good look at the color

Now because once I get him on that white towel on that white plate and I move those to my countertop thanks to the auto brightness on my camera the edges are going to look kind of burnt which they really weren’t not that much and you’re probably thinking who cares what

They look like what do they sound like well they sound nice and crispy oh yeah Fork don’t lie so those sounded right and I moved on to the tasting which you could do as is but they’re also really good with some freshly squeezed lemon or as you’ll see

In a few minutes any kind of yogurt sauce but anyway I squee squeeze down a little bit of lemon and went in for a bite and that my friends was just tremendous in appearances notwithstanding they had the perfect texture which is crispy on the outside but still soft and moist on the inside

But not soft and moist from undercooked batter that would not be good and you would taste that pasty raw flour but they stay soft and moist on the inside thanks to our feta andt tomatoes and zucchini oh and while these really are good warm I think I like them even

Better at room temp so I want ah snacked on a couple of those and then I cooked up a few more and plated those up properly and by properly I mean served with a nice yogurt sauce which was nothing more than yogurt lemon juice and some raw

Garlic oh and of course a shake a Cayenne oh and it might be useful to know for future reference that this is pretty much the exact same recipe for any kind of vegetable Fritter all right as long as it’s something that’s going to be edible with just a couple minutes

Of frying it will absolutely work inside these so if it’s something like a Green Bean or like broccoli or something that’s going to be too hard that won’t cook in that short a time just simply blanch them first until they’re just about tender and then dice them up and

Proceed as shown so you really can get kind of creative here as well as obviously switching out the seasonings and the spices and of course the cheese although it really is hard to beat feta and right here I’ll give you one more close-up look at that inside texture

Which again is quite moist and the combo of that sweet juicy tomato along with that salty funky Tangy feta is just absolute fried Fritter Perfection Fritter Perfection Fritter Perfection which is really hard to say and I thought theato caths was hard but anyway I’m not paid to pronounce things right

I’m paid to teach you to cook things like this which I might have just done which is why I’ll finish up by saying I really do hope you give these a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and

Is always in Italian white bean and sausage stew that’s right every once in a while there comes along a soup that is so comforting so substantial and so satisfying that it becomes known as a stew and while it is true the rules and regulations for whether to name

Something a stew or a soup are pretty casual and vague the point is this soup as the old commercial goes eats like a meal so with that let’s go ahead and get started and what we’ll want to do the night before we’re going to make this is Soak

Some dry calini beans overnight in a whole bunch of cold fresh water and this is what mine look like the next morning and of course we could make this with a couple cans of beans but this takes almost no effort and not only do these

Come out better but they are way way way less expensive to use which is nice when you’re saving up to buy $15 face masks but anyway once our beans are set we can move on to erasing the casing on some Italian sausage and to do that all we

Have to to do is make one cut down the center and then we’ll simply peel that casing off so I did that to all four and if you need someone to tell you you can use any sausage you want I just did but a nice sweet Italian sausage containing

Lots of garlic and fennel is a great choice and then what we’ll do is go ahead and transfer those into a dry Soup pot that we’ve set over medium high heat and we’ll go ahead and brown that sausage up while at the same time breaking it up into some nice small

Pieces and of course exactly how small is going to be up to you but something that fits comfortably on a spoon would be a pretty good approach and by using a dry pan here some of those meat juices are going to stick to and start caramelizing on the bottom creating what

We call in the business a fond f o n d and that’s going to add some beautiful color to our stew and also an extra level of flavor but anyway once our sausage has been broken up and we’ve started to form a decent fond on the

Bottom we’ll go ahead and toss in some diced onion and we’ll cook that stirring for about 5 minutes or until the onions start to soften and turn translucent and even though we haven’t added any oil yet just enough fat should have rendered out of that sausage to coat and cook these

Onions beautifully oh and if you want you can add some garlic here but my sausage was pretty garlicky so I didn’t but anyway like I said we’ll cook those onions for about 5 minutes and as we do that caramelize found at the bottom of the pan is going to get nicer and nicer

And then what we’ll do to release all that goodness is once we think our onions have gone long enough is we’ll go ahead and splash in some white wine which is going to deglaze all that caramelization off off the bottom and if you don’t have wine around you can just

Dilute some wine vinegar with a little water and use that or if times are really tough you can just use a splash of water so we’ll go ahead and stir in that wine and we can also at this time toss in some freshly ground black pepper

A nice big pinch of red chili flakes and one bay leaf which is pretty much mandatory for any bean dish and at this point we will also add somewhere between 6 and 8 cups of water and the reason I say 6 to8 is because that’s going to

Depend on how thick want this and yes of course we can always adjust later and add more and in case you’re keeping score at home I added about 7 and 1/2 but anyway we’ll stir that in and then do two things we’ll go ahead and add our soaked beans which of course we’ve

Drained and we will also crank our heat up to high because we want to bring this up to a boil and as this starts to Bubble you’re going to notice a foam come to the top which a lot of people insist you skim off and sometimes I do

But I usually don’t since I’m pretty sure those are just proteins foam up but one thing we do have to do once it starts boiling is reduce our heat down to medium low at which point we’ll simply simmer this for about an hour or so or until our beans are tender and

Then what I like to do at about the 30 minute Mark is go ahead and add our salt and there’s different schools of thought when it comes to salting beans while they cook okay some people say don’t do it until the end because they believe it makes the beans tough whereas other

People add it right at the beginning and don’t believe it makes a difference and think those other people are crazy and then there’s people like me who split the difference and add the salt about halfway through which I’ve always found works out nicely and that’s it once my beans were salted I continued

Cooking on for another 30 minutes or so or until my beans were perfectly tender and how I knew for sure is I gave them a taste all right there’s no guessing in the kitchen so make sure you give them a try and if they are tender what I like

To do at this point is take a potato masher and smash about 20 to 25% of the beans which is going to give our stew just a little bit of a creamier texture okay so that’s optional but I do recommend it but regardless of whether

You do that or not once our beans are tender we will add the last major ingredient three or four nice big handfuls of some chopped greens which in my case was some dino kale but Swiss chard would also work beautifully or something like mustard greens or even

Some stingy Nettles if you can find them and what we’ll do is Stir those in and raise our heat to medium and then simply cook this until our greens are tender which for me was about 15 minutes or so and of course that’s going to depend on

Exactly which green you used or right if you went with something tender like spinach that’s only going to take a couple minutes so you will have to figure that out I mean you are all the Mr Green jeans of your sausage beans and greens but you’ll know because you’ll be

Tasting and checking along the way and at some point you’ll say to yourself you know what these greens are tender and then once they are we only have one thing left to do and that is make sure we taste this and see if it has enough

Salt which it almost never does and and if it needs more of course we will adjust and that’s it once we’re happy with how it’s looking tasting and feeling we’ll go ahead and find an appropriately sized and shape bowl and we will serve that up piping hot oh and

One major thing that’s missing in the shot a big old hunk of crusty Italian bread or right preferably that you baked yourself that really does complete this whole experience and then to finish this I like to drizzle over some extra virgin olive oil which is optional but also

Mandatory and I would say the same thing about a little gray parmesano regano or in my case peino and then last but not least a few more chili flakes just to stay in shape and that’s it our Italian white bean and sausage soup which is so good we’re

Calling a stew is done so let me go ahead and grab a spoon and stir in that cheese and then dig in and that my friends is just one of the greatest and most delicious ways to eat beans ever invented okay this is the kind of food

That warms you from the inside out and while it’s very rich and satisfying and borderl decadent and certainly not low calorie it is also incredibly nutritious and I think safe to say very good for you both physically and mentally whoop sorry hold on I got to clean this drip I

Have this thing about drips on the rim of a bowl which I can’t explain but it’s pretty serious but anyway to summarize just a magnificent bowl of food my only complaint was something I mentioned earlier okay while my right hand was extremely happy spooning this stuff into

My face my left hand was like why am I not holding a piece of bread who do do I talk to about this but whether you’re dunking bread in this or not I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the

Ingredient amounts a principal written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy My Big Fat Greek baked beans that’s right if people asked me who makes the best baked beans I might have said someone in Boston or maybe some barbecue joint in Texas but ever

Since I discovered this very hearty incredibly delicious giant bean casserole my answer now is grease and by the way the big and fat in this recipe’s name just doesn’t refer to the size of the beans okay the flavors in this dish are also very gigantic so with that

Let’s go ahead and get started by adding one pound of higante beans to this bowl or Gigante beans and as anyone that follows San Francisco baseball knows that means Giants and in the spirit of full disclosure I’m not actually using true higante beans I’m using something called

A Corona Bean which is very close inside and we’ll give some more info about that in the blog post but bottom line we’re going to use the largest dry bean we can find and what we’ll do is cover those with water and let them soak overnight

Which I was doing very late in the evening which explains the terrible lighting and by the way make sure you use plenty of water otherwise this is what’s going to happen Okay the next morning mine looked like this and I had half my beans still in water and half

Out which might cause uneven cooking so use plenty but anyway what we’ll do once our beans are soaked is go ahead ahead and drain those and we’ll add them to this pot with a whole bunch of cold fresh water along with nothing else except two bay leaves and we will bring

That up to a boil over high heat at which point we will give it a stir reduce our heat to medium and we’ll simmer this until these beans are just tender but not soft which is going to take I’ll guess between 45 and 60 minutes okay it really depends on the

Bean in the size and then here’s the deal if we cook these all the way the dish will still work perfectly well except once baked the beans might start to fall apart a little bit but on the other hand if we undercook the beans and they’re not tender enough because of all

The stuff we’re going to cook these with they will take a really really long time to get soft when we bake them if they actually even get soft and that’s another point we’re going to review in the post since I attempted a little bit of an experiment to cook these a little

Less than I usually do which was almost a problem but anyway the point is we’re going to simmer these until they’re just tender but not too soft at which point we will drain those very well add them to our casserole dish and begin adding all the rest of the ingredients

Starting with some diced red onion followed by a whole bunch of sliced or minced garlic and then we’re going to need some tomato and I’ll be going with tomato sauce and tomato paste and by the way some recipes call for fresh chopped tomatoes so use those if you want I mean

You are after all the Play-Doh of your tomato and you know My Philosophy use whatever you think will work best and then after the Tomato we’ll go ahead and add some honey which ideally would be Greek Pine honey which we might not be able to get and if

You can’t just use clover honey which is what I’m using here and then after the honey we’re going to add a whole bunch of freshly chopped dill and by the way if you ever have the winter blues or any other kind of Blues buy yourself a bunch

Of fresh dill and just stick your face in it and smell it and its fresh bright green smell will actually make you feel better all right nobody knows why but it totally works but anyway let’s continue on with some olive oil as well as some kosher salt some freshly

Ground black pepper and a generous Touch of cayenne pepper and then we will finish this off with a little bit of red wine vinegar and last but not least a little bit of water which doesn’t look like water it looks like chicken stock and that’s because I rinsed out the measuring cup I

Had my tomatoes in so it’s not to waste and that’s it we’ll take a spoon and give this a very thorough mixing which should take you a few minutes because we have a lot of different ingred ingredients with different shapes and sizes and viscosities so get in there and get in

There deep and keep stirring until you think everything’s very well distributed and then what we’ll do is transfer this outto a line baking sheet because there’s definitely going to be a little bit of splattering plus possible bubble overs and that’s it it’s now ready to transfer into the center of a

350° oven for about an hour or so or until bubbling beautifully caramelized and of course until our beans are nice and soft and if everything goes according to plan it should look a little something like this but as gorgeous as that is we cannot tell just by looking so make sure

You test your beans for softness and if they have cooked enough what we’re going to want to do is Stir all this together okay because a lot of that olive oil is going to be floating on top we want to mix that back in along with of course all that caramelized

Goodness so we’ll go ahead and stir all that together and I’ll go ahead and steal one more little taste on my way to grab some feta cheese since I’m going to crumble a generous amount of that on the top to garnish and of course because this is a

Greek recipe we are required to drizzle over a little more olive oil and then we’ll go ahead and finish up with a little more of our fresh and fragrant dill and that’s it I don’t care where you’re from that my friends is a beautiful dish of beans and even though

This was way too hot to actually appreciate I went in for a taste anyway but despite being too hot it was still amazing and the funny thing is even though this is from half a world away there are so many similarities to the kind of baked beans we would serve with

Barbecue here in America all right we have a lot of the same similar sweet and sour and savory and aromatic flavors happening plus when you factor in that beautifully Briny subtly funky feta it really does amplify all that other goodness and this really would be magnificent with any kind of roasted

Meats but I didn’t have any of that stuff so I just put some in a bowl and topped it with a whole chunk of feta is a meat substitute and again we’ll finish with a little olive oil andil and I’ve never claimed I could survive on a vegetarian diet but if I

Had to this would definitely be in the regular rotation oh by the way the shortcut to this recipe is just drain some Cann beans and do all the same thing and just bake it till it looks good so something to keep in mind if you’re short on time but anyway that’s

It what I’m calling My Big Fat Greek baked beans ever since that movie came out people have been using that expression in the recipe name whether it made sense or not I mean come on you can’t call something My Big Fat Greek cow salad but at least this time thanks

To our B big beans the name fits but anyway no matter what you call it it is easy it is beautiful and it is extremely delicious which is why I really do hope you give it a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient

Amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy almond biscotti that’s right as you may have heard winter is coming and while we don’t have to worry about white walkers we do have to deal with something just as scary and even more ravenous and that would be our friends and

Relatives showing up at our holiday Gatherings so with entertaining season right around the corner this would be a perfect cookie recipe to master so with that let’s go ahead and get started and first up we’ll put together our dry ingredients which will be some white allpurpose flour and to that we’ll add

Some baking powder not to be confused with baking soda we want baking powder here and then we’ll also of course need a little touch of salt and that is going to be it and then we’ll go ahead and grab our whiskey can give this a mix for

About a minute or so to make sure everything’s nicely combined and then once that’s been accomplished we can go ahead and set that aside and move on to the wet ingredients and that’s going to begin with some unsalted butter that ideally is at room temp and to that we’ll add a

Little touch of white sugar as well as my one and only secret ingredient some olive oil and then what we’ll want to do is grab a spoon or a spatula and cream that sugar into the butter and oil and as usual my butter wasn’t quite room temp it was a little

Cooler than that and therefore stiffer so this did take me an extra minute or two to get started but once that softens up it should come together nicely and we’ll simply continue smooshing and smearing until as we say in the business we’ve creamed the sugar and the butter

Together and you’ll know when you’ve gone far enough because it will lighten up in color and get nice and creamy and look something like this and once that’s set we’ll go ahead and stop and add the first of two eggs and once that’s been added we’ll continue with the spoon sort of mixing

That in and yes this is a little easier if you beat the egg first but not so much that I actually want to do it and speaking of easier almost every recipe calls for using an electric mixer for this but I have a theory that all Italian cookies come out better if you

Make them by hand and like almost all my theories I can’t prove it but I still believe it so we’ll go ahead and mix that first egg in with a spoon at which point we’re going to stop and switch to a whisk and then we’ll add the second

Egg along with whatever flavorings we’re going to use and for me that’s going to be a little bit of vanilla extract the pure and the real as well as a spoon of alond extract and then we’ll go ahead and take our whisk and mix all that together until beautifully combined and

By the way some people like to add lemon or orange zest at this point but personally I don’t but if you want to feel free you are after all the jatti of your biscotti and is the boss of this operation you can add whatever you want but anyway regardless of what we add

We’ll go ahead and mix that smooth with our whisk at which point we’ll stop and toss in our dry ingredients and we’ll switch back to the wooden spoon and we will stir this together until just combined okay just until the flour disappears and by the way if you’re one

Of these people that lives in constant fear of over mixing dos you can totally relax here there really is no way to screw this up so we will simply mix this until we can’t see any more flour which point we’re going to stop and toss in

Our almonds which I like to do in two forms I’m going to add some whole roasted almonds as well as an equal amount of roughly chopped almonds and to me I think that provides the best combination of texture and appearance but you certainly could use all one or the

Other at this point we’ll give it one last mix with our spoon until we think those almonds are mixed in nice and evenly oh and one more thing I should mention I’m doing a fairly classic version here but if you want to do this with other kinds of nuts or maybe some

Dried fruit this technique is pretty much going to work just the same but anyway we’ll go ahead and mix in whatever we’re using and that is going to be it for this very simple dough which if you had to you could form into loaves but it’s really hard to work with

Because it’s so sticky so what I like to do is clean up the bowl and then cover this in plastic and then pop it in the fridge for about 30 minutes or so or until it firms up and that really is going to make it way way easier to work

With so that’s exactly what I did and then once it’s chilled will go ahead and remove the plastic and then divide the dough in half and then to shape it I’m going to go ahead and transfer it onto some plastic wrap okay some people like to shape it

On a flowered board but I think this is a little easier and less messy plus maybe I don’t want any more flour in my dough so I’m going to go ahead and shape that in the plastic as shown until I have something that’s about 3 or 4

Inches wide and maybe an inch and a half or so high and by the way just like the fillings the exact shape is also something you can change up if you want or if you want to make this a little more narrow and a little taller that’s

Totally fine right since we’re going to slice and toast the cookies anyway as long as it’s not too flat really any shape’s going to work and then once we are happy with how it’s shaped we will use the plastic to transfer that onto a line baking sheet oh and fair warning this stuff

Will spread out as it bakes so make sure you got 3 or 4 inches space in between and then once these are panned up if we want we can flower our hands and do the final shaping which I’m pretty sure is totally unnecessary but as you long time viewers

Know I do like to touch the food as much as possible so I did give those a little final shaping whether they needed it or not and then what we’ll do once those are set is go ahead and transfer those into the center of a 350° oven for about

30 minutes or so or until our loaves are lightly golden and look a little something like this and if you want to check by poking and with a toothpick to see if it comes out clean go ahead but I could tell just by looking and feeling that might have gone long

Enough and at this point what we need to do before we try to cut these is let them cool for about 15 minutes so that these Lowes firm up a little bit otherwise we’re not going to be able to get nice clean cuts through our nuts and nobody nobody wants a biscot that

Doesn’t have clean nut cuts that is very important so like I said we’ll go ahead and let those cool on the pan for about 15 minutes at which point using a serrated knife we’ll cut these at a slight angle into whatever size we want okay somewhere between a half and an

Inch is probably standard but again like so many things in this operation that’s going to be up to you so I went ahead and sliced that up as I mentioned did a little bit of an angle to give it that classic biscotti look by the way is it biscotti or

Biscotti I’m sure someone will let me know in the comments section and as promised we got beautiful beautiful clean cuts and once cut we’ll go ahead and transfer those back onto our sheet pan for the final baking and sure if you want you could toss those end pieces on

But I didn’t because I didn’t want to crowd the pan plus I want to eat them and then what we’ll do once our cookies are panned up and evenly spaced is reduce our oven to 325 and we’ll pop those back in for about 12 minutes or so at which point

We’re going to pull them out and flip them and while you can use tongs I do suggest using your fingers since it’s a great way to build up calluses so we’ll go ahead and turn over each one at which point we’ll put those back in our 325° oven for I’m going to

Say about 20 minutes or so but that’s a while guess because what you really want to do is bake those until they’re exactly how you want okay some people like these very light other people like them dark brown but I like to go somewhere in the middle and bake mine until they’re a

Gorgeous golden which is what I have right here okay so I don’t let them too dark but I do want them crunchy all the way through so for me these were just about perfect and at this point I have some horrible news right we have to let these

Cool completely before we serve them so this point we’ll go ahead and transfer those to Iraq to cool down and those are the official instructions unofficially of course we’re going to grab one and eat it warm mostly so I can let you hear that crunch oh yeah that sounds right and the

Taste was every bit as impressive but anyway we will let the rest cool down to room temp at which point I will show you the second best way to eat these and that’s by dunking it in a hot cup of coffee of course the best way is to dip it in

Sweet Italian dessert wine with vinsanto being the classic choice but it was too early to drink it was only 10:00 and I have a strict rule no drinking before 11: so I went with a coffee which is still an amazing combination and by the way it’s not the

Avocado toast is preventing me from buying a house it’s this almond milk I steam for my coffee this stuff’s like $10 a qut but anyway that’s it how I do almond biscotti like I said with the holidays coming up not a bad idea to have a few

Plates of these around not to mention if you’re looking for some kind of edible gift to give away this really would be a great choice so for those reasons and more I really do hope you give these a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more

Info as usual and as always enjoy Scalia that’s right the first time I heard the name Scalia I thought for sure that was a Viking princess but I wasn’t even close it’s actually an incredibly delicious Greek garlic Dipper spread made with Believe It or Not mashed

Potatoes and not only is this a fabulous dip for vegetables and Breads and things like that it’s also served as a side dish for things like fried fish and grilled Meats so this stuff’s as versal as it as easy to make and to get started I’m going to go ahead and peel and

Quarter this giant potato and while technically you can make this with whatever potato you want I highly recommend the starchy and absorbent russed potato and by the way according to the old school recipes we’re not supposed to peel the potato we’re supposed to cook it whole and then peel

It so it doesn’t absorb too much water which kind of makes sense until you consider the fact that most of those recipes also tell you to save some of the boiling potato water to thin your dip out with later and that’s where they lost me and because of that I think it’s

Just easier to peel it and quarter and cook it like this which we will as usual do in some very generously salted water and what we’ll want to do here is bring this up to a simmer and then we’ll continue cooking on medium until these are just tender

Are definitely not falling apart but very very tender and since that’s going to take a little while we should probably multitask by prepping our garlic paste while we wait and for that I’m going to take a whole bunch of freshly sliced garlic like about six

Cloves and to that we will add some nice coarse kosher salts at which point we’ll go ahead and pulverize this down to a paste and because of the friction those grains of salt provide this is actually not going to take very long using a mortar and pestle which really is the

Only proper way to do this right you’re never going to get this down into as fine a paste using like a food processor or blender so try to use one of these to get it at least this fine otherwise you’re going to have to mince it super

Super fine on a cutting board and then use the flat of your knife to crush it down into a paste which will work but you’re going to lose a lot of that garlic oil on the board so to summarize everybody needs to have this tool in the

Kitchen and that’s it once that’s set we’ll Reserve that until needed and we’ll head back to check our potatoes which like I said should be very tender as tested with a knife and then once we’ve determined those have been cooked perfectly we’ll go ahead and drain those very well and then

We’ll let them sit just like that in the strainer for about 5 minutes before we transfer those into some kind of mixing bowl and then we’ll work those over with a potato masher until they’re very very smooth and yes if you have a potato ricer go ahead and use it but a regular

Masher works just fine here plus I’m going to pass all this through a mesh strainer later oh besides breaking down the potatoes what we’re also doing here is releasing a tremendous amount of steam and Heat which is good because I do not want to cook my crushed garlic which is what

We’re going to add next and by adding them at this point they’re going to retain that beautiful raw sharp garlic flavor which I think makes this dip so good right some recipes do call for roasted garlic which is of course mild and sweet but I don’t want mild and

Sweet all right I want something bold and aggressive you know like a Viking princess but anyway we will mix in our garlic at which point we’ll go ahead and add some acidity in two forms right we’ll do the freshly squeezed juice of a half a lemon plus a couple tablespoons

Of white wine vinegar and for the record some recipes call for all one or the other then we’ll go ahead and stir and mash that in at which point we’re going to stop and switch to a whisk which we’ll use to incorporate the last major ingredients and that would be our olive

Oil preferably something on the milder and fruer side and of course extra credit for using something from Grease and the reason we’re going to use a whisk here and stir this in in like three or four additions is so we get a beautifully smooth and creamy emulsification all right this base

Mixture contains a lot of water and as you know oil and water don’t like to mix which is why we slowly whisk in olive oil when we make a salad dressing so sort of the same principle here so like I said we’ll go ahead and whisk that in

In like three additions versus dumping it in all at once and then once that’s set we’ll move on to the always important tasting and adjusting step and that’s going to almost always mean adding some more salt which will vary of course depending on how much you put in

Your water and of course you may want to sneak in a little bit of cayenne and then we’ll give it a mix and give it one last taste and if you wanted to you could also add a little bit of herb here okay A little bit of fresh parsley would

Be fine or some chives would also work and I know some people that swear by a little pinch of dry oregano so if you want to tweak this a little bit feel free I mean you are after all the Socrates of what goes in these but personally I like to keep this fairly

Straightforward and I’m just going to garnish with a little bit of fresh oregano later and that’s it our scorion is scored done and we could serve it just like this which is pretty smooth but to take this up to the next level and Achieve perfect smoothness I’m going

To invest the extra 3 and a half minutes and pass this through a fine mesh triner which is going to result in something much more luxurious and by the way you people with the potato ricers stop rolling your eyes all right we know you’re better and

That’s it once that’s been passed and we finally understand the true meaning of luxury we can go ahead and serve that up as a Dipper spread next to some vegetables or any other spreadable or dippable edible things and for a little extra visual interest I always like to

Go around with a spoon like this to sort of create some circular Peaks and valleys into which I’m going to drizzle some olive oil so definitely an optional step but it is a proven scientific fact that people love shadows so I think you should do it and then I went ahead and

Finished that up with a little bit of fresh oregano and my scor doia was ready to enjoy and this stuff would be amazing on like a thousand different things B some fire roasted baby Bell haves worked especially well and as far as the taste and texture goes I do kind of like the

Potato hummus comparison even though it doesn’t have that tahini Sesame flavor but the acidity and the sharpness of the garlic along with that sort of neutral starchy base really does deliver kind of a similar effect and by the way making some Little Greek potato dipped tacos with fried eggplants ended up being a

Great idea and of course no one sits around thinking I wish I was eating something on sliced cucumber but this stuff could change that as that really was a fantastic combination and since there’s no guests in the room let me go ahead and double dip and then I went back and started

Over with another roasted pepper which while I was eating that reminded me of that old saying man cannot live on vegetables alone so I decided to finish up by showing you some hot carbon carb action oh yeah raise your hand if you’re like me and enjoy the occasional mashed

Potato sandwich and even though serving this with vegetables is probably more popular it really is magnificent onbread and like I said in the intro this is also served as a side dish for pieces of fried fish or maybe grilled meat or grilled fish as we’ve had this with

Grilled salmon and it really was incredible so next time you’re planning a cookout maybe keep this in mind since it’s best enjoyed a room temp which makes it very user friendly for a picnic and other similar Gatherings but no matter where you enjoy it or what you

Enjoy it with I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy Italian flowless chocolate Tor that’s right I’m going to share how I like to make torta Capra which

Apparently was invented on the island of Capri although I’ve been there and I didn’t see any of this but In fairness I was only there 6 hours four of which I spent inside the blue grot but anyway if you’re looking for something very simple and easy and super sexy to serve to your

Lover chocolate lover or otherwise this is it and to get started the first thing we should do is prep an 8 in cake pan and by prep I mean butter generously and then I also like to cut out and place a round piece of parchment in the bottom

And then once our Pan’s greased and papered we’ll toss in a little bit of flour and then we’ll sort of rotate and shake and knock the pan around and that flour will stick to the butter and this is going to help our cake come out very easily after it’s baked and once that

Looks good we can go ahead and knock out the excess but don’t throw it away scrape it up and sift it back into your canister and that’s it our pan is prepped and we can move on to our chocolate and what I have here is 6 ounces of dark chocolate which as you

Can see has been broken up and then to this we will add some cubed up butter and we’ll grab our spatula and head to the stove where we have a saucepan of barely simmering water set over low heat and what we’ll do is place our bowl of

Chocolate and butter on top and we will simply wait for everything to melt and once it looks little something like this it’s not a bad idea to give it a stir so we can sort of see where we’re at but also stirring butter and chocolate is very

Enjoyable and yes you can definitely do the step in the microwave but you know what the house was kind of dry so I decided to multitask so I melted chocolate while humidifying the air oh yeah it’s good for the pores but anyway once everything’s melted or extremely

Close to it we’ll go ahead and remove that from the Heat and give it one last stir to make sure it’s very very smooth and if it’s looking good and mine was looking very good we can go ahead and toss in some unsweetened cocoa powder

Along with a nice big pinch of salt and then two optional ingredients about a tablespoon of coffee lur plus a very small Shake of cayenne right barely a hint and then we’ll finish this up by adding one cup of almond meal also known in some parts as almond flour and we’ll

Take our spatula and give this a mix and yes it probably would have been easier to use a whisk but you know what I already dirtied my spatula and now I’m on a mission to make this entire recipe using just one utensil but no matter what you use make

Sure you keep stirring and keep mixing until everything’s been very thoughtfully and very thoroughly combined and once it is we can set that aside and we can crack four large eggs into another Bowl to which we will add a little touch of white sugar and then we’ll grab our electric hand mixer and

We will mix this on high until it’s very light and very fluffy and very very thick ow and pro tip if you use room temperature eggs which I did this mixture will whip up faster and to a higher volume than if you use cold eggs and yes you can do this by hand

With a whisk but the bad news is it will take forever the good news is though according to recent madeup studies if you do it by hand you’ll burn the same number of calories as one portion but either way once our mixture is nice and thick and fluffy like this we’ll go

Ahead and grab our chocolate mixture and we will transfer that in and then we’ll use our spatula or in my case spoonula to fold that in until it’s just combined and while I do this let’s go ahead and talk about final texture since there are basically three ways you can go here

Okay you can just dump in the chocolate and then whisk it in not worrying about losing too much air which will give you a very firm dense texture and then the second method which I’m using here is to sort of semi gently fold it in right bringing that mixture from the sides and

Bottom up over the top and then every once in a while giving it the occasional stir and unlike whisking it in this method will preserve a lot of those air bubbles which will produce something a little bit lighter and that’s the texture I enjoy most for this and then

The third method which would be the lightest version would be to actually separate the eggs and just whisk in the yolks and then beat the whites into a mering and fold those in very gently but for me all that extra work to get just a little bit extra lightness really is not

Worth it so I’m definitely a fold and stir guy but no matter which method you use once that chocolate mixture has been Incorporated we can go ahead and transfer everything into our prepared pan oh and if you can try to get it all in the pan and not on the table I mean

Come on that pan is a pretty big Target and I have no idea why I was trying to transfer it in from like 2 feet away but anyway once that’s been transferred in we’ll go ahead and give that the old tapa TAA just to bring those few larger

Bubbles up to the surface which can cause holes and that’s it we can now transfer this into the center of a 350° oven for about 25 to 30 minutes or until it looks like this and this appears to have cooked long enough but it’s a little tricky with flowerless cakes to

Tell by looking or touching so what we’ll do is test with a wooden skew near the center which won’t come out completely clean but almost clean okay A little chocolate smudge is fine fine but if it’s covered with what looks like raw batter put it back in but this was

Perfect and if it is what we’ll do is let it cool in the pan for 30 minutes during which time it’s definitely going to sink down a little bit but that’s normal and fine and at any point while we’re waiting we can take a thin knife and go around the outside around the

Outside around the outside just to make sure our Tor is not sticking to the pan and then once that has cooled for about 30 minutes I’m going to place a round piece of parchment on top and then place a plate over that and we will flip that over and because we professionally prep

The pan this is going to slide right out with no effort revealing a perfectly smooth surface or what also could happen is it sticks and you have to bang it a few times and it comes out without a perfectly smooth surface okay so both those things can

Happen and often do but don’t worry once this cools and firms up we are probably going to flip it over anyway and serve it with the other side up but the point is we have options and that’s it we will simply let this cool completely before serving although I highly recommend this

Goes in the fridge overnight since I think the flavor is much better and also I much prefer serving this chilled so that’s what I did I went ahead and wrapped it up and popped it in the fridge and then I pulled it out the next

Day and I decided to go ahead and flip this over because I thought this side would look a little better which it did except for a few crumbs here and there that flaked off which like an absolute lunatic I waded up and used to plug some holes because I have a serious

Problem but anyway once we fix up whatever needs fixing up I’m going to go ahead and finish this off by dusting the top with cocoa and a very generous dusting at that and once that’s accomplished you could just serve it like this but I’m not going to I have

One more trick up my sleeve well actually two tricks but the first one is I’m going to take a couple ramkin like this which will allow me to lay this cooling roack right over the surface so that it’s almost but not quite touching the cocoa oh and right here I decide to

Give it a little turn so you will see the lines I’m about to make at an angle and the lines I’m talking about are going to be created by dusting over some powdered sugar and what’s going to happen once we dust the top with this and then we remove that rack it’s going

To leave some beautiful and I think very provocative lines and then for one last touch I’m going to do a little heart design in the center with six strategically placed raspberries and yes I was very upset and annoyed that my finger hit the powdered sugar and made that Mark so I did what

Almost no one would do I grabbed a little bit of powdered sugar on the tip of a knife and I spent about 10 minutes fixing that up but anyway that kind of attention to detail will be up to you I mean you are after all the cupid of

Whether or not to be stupid but for the record I regret nothing including what I’m about to say and that’s it once we have our heart on the top of the Tor we can go ahead and cut a wedge and serve up and I garnish with three more raspberries plus a nice

Piping of whipped cream although I wouldn’t say no to a scoop of vanilla ice cream and then I grabbed a fork and went in for a taste and that my friends I think is the perfect flowless chocolate cake I mean Tor really same difference okay flow does have its

Advant ages as far as help creating the structure of a cake and giving us a nice crumb but what it also does is dilute the chocolate flavor but here we don’t have that problem okay this is pure chocy goodness with zero starchy distractions but because we fairly

Carefully folded we did retain a good amount of air bubbles in that batter so looks to the contrary the texture is surprisingly light and not super firm and stodgy so to summarize I absolutely loved how this came out oh and for the record that whipped cream is not

Sweetened all right while it’s not super super sweet the cake has plenty of sugar so for me an unsweeten whipped cream along with those tart fresh berries are the perfect things to serve this with and while I really do love the coffee lure in this you could also use

Something like amoretto or Rum or any flavorful booze of your choice but no matter what you use this gorgeous flowerless chocolate torque could not be easier and not only do I think you’re going to love it but I think whoever that special someone you serve it to

Will as well which is why I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy avgo lemono soup that’s right it was Socrates who said wisdom begins in

Wonder and if you’re wondering what that has to do with this video nothing but Socrates was Greek and so is this amazingly delicious lemony chicken rice soup all right so let me show you how to put this together and for step one we’re going to need some chicken broth so in

My stock pot I have one big chicken to which We’ll add the traditional onions carrots and celery along with a couple bay leaves and a little pinch of dry oregano and that’s it and we’ll go ahead and we’ll fill that up with cold water and by the way I usually like to use

About a 3B chicken and this was like a giant 4 and2 lb chicken so I couldn’t quite fit the 3 quarts of water I want you to put in here but as as usual I’ll give you all the accurate amounts on the blog post and then you know the drill

Put it on high heat till it comes to a boil after which we’ll reduce our heat to maintain a nice steady simmer and like I said as you can see here my chicken was way too big so it is kind of breaking the surface here but that’s not

Going to matter that meat will cook through no problem and like making any stock or broth you’ll want to skim any of that scummy foam that comes to the top and then like I said we’re going to simmer this gently you want to adjust your heat somewhere between low and

Medium low and then we’ll cook that from anywhere between 1 and 4 hours and that’s that’s going to depend on if you want chicken meat in your soup or not I do so I’m going to go with the shorter cooking time here but we’ll get into that in a minute and while that’s

Happening we’ll move on to an incredibly important step the diced onions all right we want to finally chop up a couple onions I think we want at least two cups and what we’ll do is we’ll Place those onions on medium heat with a nice drizzle of olive oil and a big

Pinch of salt and we’ll want to cook these onions until soft sweet and golden and what we want to end up with is something that looks like this and if you were to taste a little of this it would be nice and soft and fairly sweet

Which is key here because this is what’s going to offset the tartness from the lemon juice so that’s looking good at that point you can turn off the heat and Reserve until needed and at this point we’ll go check our chicken and as I mentioned the cooking time is going to

Depend on if you want to use the meat in the soup or not and one indicator I look for is if I’m able to dislocate the hip joint with my tongs that tells me I’m ready to proceed so I cook mine for about an hour and 15 minutes basically

Until it was just cooked through now on the other hand if you don’t want chunks of chicken in your soup you would cooked this for like 4 hours until it all just completely fell apart and all the flavor from the chicken meat was in the broth

So that is the other method which again we’ll discuss on the blog but anyway at this point I’m going to remove that meat to a bow to cool along with any of the other solids by the way one of these strainers called a spider are incredibly

Useful for this type of operation so I’m going to remove all the solids from the stock leaving just the broth and of course once that meat cools down we can shred it or chop it or cube it or dice it and put it into the soup at the end

So our broth is ready our me is Cooling and we can move on to final production and all that means is adjusting our heat to medium low and we’ll also at this point transfer our sauteed onions into the pot along with one of the two things that’s going to slightly thicken this

Soup the rice and not just any rice ideally you’re going to use our boreo rice which is the same rice used for risotto and only because a thousand people will ask yes you can use any rice you want they just don’t work quite as well in my opinion but that’s going to

Be your problem so we’ll go ahead and we’ll stir that in and we want to let that cook stirring occasional for about 30 to 45 minutes or until it’s very very very soft and tender I’m also at this point going to add a couple teaspoons of salt remember we didn’t add

Any to our original broth so I think we’re going to need at least that much here but obviously we’re going to taste and adjust before we serve it so we’ll add some salt and like I said we’ll let that simmer until very soft and while we’re waiting for that we might as well

Go ahead and squeeze our fresh lemon juice and we’re going to need a lot of it so I’m going to squeeze a/2 cup of fresh lemon juice if you’re not going to use fresh lemon juice for this don’t even bother making the recipe and if you

Can when you’re doing yours try to do it so some of the juice actually goes into the cup so half cup of fresh lemon juice and at this point we’ll go back over and check our rice which for me at this point was simmering for about 40 minutes

Okay personally I like to go until those grains of rice are kind of falling apart and as you can see the starch from the rice is going to kind of thicken that broth slightly and I should mention if you do want it a little starchier you can actually Blitz this with your

Immersion blender for a minute and kind of puree some of that Rice into the soup or which I like you can kind of Smash some of the grains against the bottom with your Ladle or a spoon spoon or a potato masher something like that but anyway like I said we’re going to cook

Our rice until very soft and once our rice is set we can move on to the final step the avgo lemono so avgo lemono basically means egg and lemon sauce which at some point in history got turned into a soup so in a bowl I have

Two large eggs which will beat up with a little black pepper and cayenne and why are those yolks so orange is this a special variety no it was just bad lighting so we’ll beat those eggs up at which point we will whisk in our lemon juice and then what we’ll do is we’ll

Take this mixture and whisk it into our hot soup but not yet we have to temper the eggs and all that means is slowly whisking in a couple cups of our hot soup mixture into this bowl so that everything warms up before we add it to

The Soup pot so we’ll stir in one cup once that’s in we’ll go ahead and stir in another and if you feel the side of the bowl it should be very hot at this point and once that’s been done then we can safely whisk this into our soup and

There’ll be no danger of those eggs scrambling okay we’re not trying to make egg drop soup here and once our eggs and lemon are stirred in we will add our reserved chicken meat if desired I just cubed mine up and by the way that’s not

All of it I saved about a third of the meat for chicken salad that’s not a bad idea so we’ll stir in our chicken meats and then all we need to do to finish this soup off is cook it over your lowest heat setting for about 5 minutes

Until the chicken’s heated through and that’s it now of course before you serve this you got to give it a taste does it need more salt does it need more lemon believe it or not mine was perfect so I didn’t have to adjust but you may so

Check check it out but anyway once your soup is exactly how you want it we will go ahead and lad that up into some hot bowls and then if you want and I do cuz I have a food blog we can garnish with a pinch of parsley and then I’m going to

Do a little bit of freshly grated lemon zest mostly so people don’t think they’re eating corn chowder and that avgo lemono soup is done and while it may not be the most stunning soup visually this thing is like in the top five most delicious soups in the world

The combination of that beautiful fresh chicken broth with the tartness of the lemon and the savoriness from the eggs just aant F castic combination and by the way people that send me the emails wanting something delicious you could serve to a large group that’s not really

Expensive this is it a few dollars worth of ingredients here go a long way in fact I made a big old pot of this for my last World Cup viewing party of course I had to change the name to a gold lemono soup which people seem to

Enjoy although they did tell me to please stop doing that but anyway that’s it and since we started this video with a quote from Socrates let’s finish with one one he also said the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing which if you think about it is a

Terrifying thought which is why the world needs Comfort foods like this amazing soup so I really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy green no bean hummus that’s right we are making this

Very exciting hummus alternative with one of the least exciting vegetables ever and we did that by by using a trick that pretty much only chefs know and just so everybody’s clear we’re not making this because it’s lcal or keto friendly or for most people easier to digest no the real reason we’re making

This is because it tastes really really good and this truly is one of my all-time favorite dips so with that let’s go ahead and get started by prepping our zucchini and what I’ll do first is go ahead and cut this in quarters and because this one is so big

After quartering I’m going to go ahead and trim out the seeds oh and pro tip trim the ends of your zucchini before you quarter it so you can do that once instead of four times but anyway if you’re using a big old zucchini like this what we’ll need to do is slice down

To trim out those seeds because those are kind of fibrous and don’t really have any flavor and the flavor they do have is kind of bitter so if your zucchini look like this that’s definitely something you’re going to want to do first and then once we do have those quartered and seated and

Possibly trimmed we’ll go ahead and cut them up into about 1 and 1/2 in pieces or at least something close and by the way if you’re using standard zucchini from the grocery store they’re generally much smaller and younger than this and you probably won’t need to take out any

Seeds and you could just skip to this part where you’re cutting them into chunks and then once we have those cut up we’ll go ahead and transfer those into a bowl and in case you’re keeping score at home I cut up three and then what we’ll do is go ahead and sprinkle

Over two tablespoons of kosher Sals and then we’ll I’ll toss it with that zucchini very thoroughly and I know that looks like an insane amount of salt but don’t worry we’re going to rinse most of it off and it’s this Chef’s secret that’s going to take care of the three major complaints

About zucchini and that is its watery a little bit bitter and pretty much tasteless but if we toss it with salt like this and then let it sit for about 15 or 20 minutes that’s going to pull a whole bunch of moisture out of the zucchini which will make it less watery

Remove the bitterness and and concentrate those sweet natural flavors and you don’t have to but about halfway through I do like to give it another toss and while this is pretty much done every single time zucchini is used in a restaurant if that is the chef is any

Good this is almost never done in the home kitchen which really is a shame since it makes such a huge difference so I let mine sit about 15 minutes tossing it once halfway through and right here you’re going to get a great look at just how much liquid has been pulled out

And once that’s been accomplished what we’ll do is grab a strainer and we will rinse that zucchini really well and then we’ll let it drain really well at which point we can transfer that into a bowl and then we’ll drizzle over a couple tablespoons of olive oil and then we’ll

Toss that until it’s evenly coated and that’s it once our zucchini has been lubricated we can transfer that onto a foil line baking sheet and we’ll arrange those pieces as close as we can together while still keeping them in a single layer and the reason we want everything kind of nice and tight

Together is because once we’re done we’re going to pop these under the broiler for about five or 6 minutes or until they’re lightly charred and hopefully look like this and then what we’ll do is give these a toss and then rearrange them into that nice tight single layer again and while we’re

Tossing if some of the brown spots facing up end up facing down even better that way the other side can get a little bit of color as well so we’ll pop these back under the broiler for another five or 6 minutes or until they’re just barely tender but not soft which is

Exactly what I accomplished here and then what we’ll do is grab our strainer again and we’ll go ahead and transfer our broiled zucchini in or grilled zucchini as they call it in England and then what we’ll do is give those a little press and we will simply

Let those sit there and drain until they’ve cooled down all the way to room temp so I let mine sit there for about 45 minutes while I was doing some other stuff and you’re probably not going to get too much but you will notice some more liquid has drained

Out and then what we’ll do with this point is transfer that into a blender or a container like this if we’re going to use a stick blender and we will add the rest of our ingredients and since we’re trying to call this a hummus that will definitely include some tahini which as you

Probably know is basically a sesame seed butter and then we are definitely also going to need some raw garlic and I’m going to go with about three fre cloves but everything in here is to taste and then besides tahini and garlic the other critical hummus ingredient would be some

Freshly squeezed lemon juice and again this is to taste so I usually start with a half and then go from there and then I’m also going to toss in some freshly sliced basil leaves since that is such a perfect herb with zucchini and then we will season this up

With some salt as well as some ground cumin some freshly ground black pepper a few shakes of cayenne of course since that’s good for the blood pressure and the libido and that’s it we’ll finish up with a little bit of olive oil at which point we can blend this as

Smooth as we want and I have no way of knowing how smooth you want yours but I’m going to try to get mine pretty smooth and fairly hummus likee in texture and yes you can definitely get it smoother in a regular blender but I am partial to this immersion blender and

As you can see as long as you blend it for a couple minutes we can get this relatively smooth and right here I determined I’d reach the texture I was going for so I went ahead and cleaned that off and then gave it a quick taste

Just to see if it maybe needed more salt or possibly another squeeze of lemon but I’m happy to report I thought it was perfect which means it’s ready to wrap and pop in the fridge until it’s thoroughly chilled okay you could serve this right away but it’s just not going

To be as is good I think the taste and texture are better cold so I went ahead and pop that in the fridge for a few hours at which point I transferred some into a serving Bowl surrounded by some blue potato chips I know peer bread would have been a more classic choice

But man I really love potato chips blue or otherwise and then before we garnish I like to take a spoon and do sort of a decorative swirl on the top just to make that surface a little more visually interesting and create some dramatic shadows and once that was swirled I

Drizzled over a little bit of olive oil before finishing up with some Cho pistachios since they are green and pair perfectly with everything else in this but if you wanted you could use some fresh herb or whatever else you want I mean you are after all the teddy Deus of

What you think will please us so as usual please customize this as you see fit and that’s it I grabbed a chip and dug in and that my friends truly is shockingly delicious and the reason it’s a shock is because when I say the word delicious nobody and I mean nobody thinks it’s

Zucchini but by using that salting technique and then roasting it under the broiler we’ve eliminated all the things people don’t like about zucchini and ended up with something super Savory with a gorgeous earthy sweetness that marries perfectly with everything else we put in here and know it doesn’t taste exactly like humm

But I really do think it’s close enough okay it does have a similar flavor profile but in a much much lighter delivery system which on a hot summer day might be exactly what you’re in the mood for especially if those hot summer days include any long car trips if you

Know what I’m saying but as I mentioned in the intro we are not making this because it’s more artsy and less fartsy we are making this because it’s a profoundly delicious dip that even the biggest zucchini haters will have to admit is awesome which reminds me if you

Do have some zucchini haters coming to the party don’t even tell them this has zucchini in it okay let them eat about half a bowl first and then tell them and trust me they will be shocked and amazed and impressed impossibly annoyed but mostly impressed and I should mention

Culinarily speaking this is probably closer to a baba Gan than a hummus so if you were going to make that and wanted to take a break from the eggplant you could certainly follow this recipe and call it zucchini babaan but anyway I went with green no

Bean hummus because I know there’s a lot of people that love hummus but unfortunately the garbanzo beans in hummus do not love them but no matter what you call this it’s very easy to make very nutritious and as I’ve already mentioned about five times incredibly delicious which is why I really do hope

You give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy Greek feta and spinach potato casserole that’s right the feta was Greek but as far as the rest of the

Recipe goes I’m really not sure okay this was definitely inspired by Greek cooking and if they haven’t combined these ingredients together in this way yet I really think they should since I absolutely love this and I’m pretty sure you will as well and to get started the

First thing we’ll do is peel just over 2 lounds of Yukon Gold potatoes and then we’ll cut them in half and add them to a saucepan and the reason I said just over 2 L pounds of potatoes is because we need two lbs peeled for the recipe which

Means we probably want to buy about 2 and 1/4 PBS and then once cut We’ll add enough cold fresh water to cover those by about an inch and then we’ll head to the stove where we’re going to place these over medium high heat and yes we’ll definitely want to add

Some salt to the water as usual since nobody and I mean nobody should cook potatoes in unseasoned water and once our pot is simmering we can back our heat down to medium low and we will simmer these for about 15 minutes or so or until they’re just barely tender as

Tested with the tip of a knife and while you could slightly undercook these what we don’t necessarily want to do is have these falling apart and absorbing a ton of water but right here mine felt just about perfect so I went ahead and pulled those off the

Heat and I drained those very well in a colander and that’s it we’ll simply let those cool down to room temp before we slice them up and while we’re waiting for that to happen we can move on to our spinach mixture and that will’ll start by transferring half a pound of spinach

Into a saucepan which should probably be the one we use for our potatoes that we just rinsed out and once we transfer the spinach in we’ll turn our heat up to medium high and then we’ll simply toss the spinach in this dry pan until it

Wils which is only going to take like a minute or two so do not go anywhere we need you to work those tongs the whole time since we want to catch the spinach right when it wilts but before it goes too far and gives up all its liquid so

As soon as our spinach looks like this we’re going to quickly pull it off the heat and I’m going to transfer it into this container where as you’ll see I’m going to add the rest of the ingredients and then eventually puree everything using an immersion blender and speaking of the other ingredients

After we add a little splash of water we’re going to pour in a generous amount of olive oil or right preferably Greek but any good olive oil will work and then we’ll also add a couple peeled garlic cloves as well as some freshly and thinly sliced green onions we will

Also want some freshly grated lemon zest but not the juice just the zest which is where most of the lemon flavor comes from and then we’ll season this up with some freshly ground black pepper as well as some salt and then we’ll finish up with one large

Egg plus half of our Greek feta cheese which we will crumble in and then we’ll save the other half to crumble over the top and once the FED is in we will add the last ingredient the secret ingredient about a/4 cup of fresh mint leaves which really does magical things

In this so while you could do this without that I don’t think it’s going to be as good so find some mint and you might be thinking at this point shouldn’t you have used a smaller container to make this even more impossible well no this is fine and it’s

The one that came with the blender and I’ve made this before so I know it works no the problem here is not the size of this container it’s that cord bouncing up and down which I find distracting and disconcerting so let’s change camera angles and yes of course feel free to do

This in a regular blender it does not matter as long as this gets pure a smooth and that’s it once Blended we’ll simply set this aside and we will move on to slice our now cooled potatoes into a bowl which we could do using a cutting

Board but I decide to cut them like my grandma used to cut them in her hand with a really dull knife which the legal department would like me dist stress is the key to this whole operation do not under any circumstances cut potatoes in your hand with a sharp

Knife and it’ll be easy to tell if your knife was too sharp because you’ll see blood in the bowl or all right so it’s going to be up to you to pick the right knife I mean you are after all the Charles Darwin of not hearing an

Abulance siren so if you don’t have an extremely dull pairing knife like this just go ahead and use a butter knife or like I said a real knife on a cutting board but either way we’ll go ahead and slice those about a quarter of an inch

Thick and then we’ll go ahead and grab our spinach mixture and dump it in along with the couple shakes of cayenne I forgot earlier and we will toss everything with a spatula until it’s perfectly in even combined and by the way sliced cooked potatoes love to stick to each other so

Make sure all these potato slices are separated and coated with this mixture and if you happen to break up a few potatoes don’t worry about it right once baked that won’t matter and that’s it once it is mixed let’s go ahead and transfer that into an olive oil baking

Dish and in case you’re keeping score at home this was a 1 and 1/2 qu size but anything similar should work nicely and that’s it once we have everything transferred in and distribute it evenly we’ll go ahead and finish the top by crumbling over the rest of our feted

Cheese and again not to brag but mine was from Greece but as long as it’s feta and you can crumble it it should totally work for this recipe but in any event we’ll go ahead and crumble that over the top which for a normal non- filming person should only take a couple seconds

But if you’re shooting a video and you’re a little bit nutty about this kind of stuff it might take you about 5 minutes like it did me to get every single crumble in the perfect spot even though there’s no such thing and that’s it once our potato casserole

Is cheesed it is ready to transfer into the center of a 400° oven for about 35 to 45 minutes or until it’s cooked all the way through and that feta on top starts to take on a little bit of color which hopefully looks like this oh yeah

That looks like something I’d like to dig right into but in general these kind of casseroles we usually like to let sit for about 10 15 minutes before we start digging in so that’s sort of what I did and for a fancy plated presentation i’ probably cut squares but for this first

Taste the spoon is fine but no matter what shape you go with that my friends is just absolutely delicious right I’ve never really met a potato casserole I didn’t like but this thing is unlike any other version I’ve ever had and while it might seem kind of weird to combine

Spinach and potatoes it really does work beautifully here probably CU fed it goes with both of those ingredients so well and actually the way we’re using the spinach here it almost acts as sort of an herb especially with that little hint of our secret ingredient mint so while

You can definitely taste the spinach in this format it kind of becomes something else and that subtly herbaceous vegetal goodness makes for one of the most unique and interesting casseres you will ever have potato or otherwise and because of all those things I just said this would make a

Fantastic side dish for so many things like for example a pomegranate glazed lamp chop which no is not going to be the next video recipe right this was just a prop chop so that’s the bad news the good news is however I will be filming a lamp Chop video for how to

Broil lamp chops and I think I’m going to do those with a sweet and sour Tamarind glaze okay we’ll see I’m still working on it but no matter what you serve this with if you like potato gratons and potato casseroles and Greek food and things that might be Greek food

Then I’m pretty sure you’re going to enjoy this which is why I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and is always enjoy tiam Musa semi

Fredo that’s right we’re doing a frozen mousse that tastes like tiramisu using this very easy time tested ATT iant technique and while this might seem like more of a warm weather dessert at the end of the video I’m going to make a very compelling argument for why this is

The perfect thing to serve after a heavy Rich holiday special occasion meal so prepare to be compelled but first things first and to get started the first thing we’ll do is separate some eggs which a lot of people are scared to do and in the business we call that separation

Anxiety so to get over that let me show you a foolproof method okay all we have to do is crack an egg in a bowl and then simply get in there with a clean hand to get your fingers under the Yol and as you lift that out the white is going to

Slip between your fingers leaving that Yol in your hand which you can then transfer into one bowl and then transfer the white into another and I find this a very foolproof method for people that have trouble with the shell to Shell method or to crack it right into your

Hand method like I usually use and then what we’ll do once we have four eggs separated is go ahead and set aside the whites okay we can just leave those on the counter and then we’ll take our yolks and we will add some kind of dark roast instant coffee and what you see

Right here is a dark Italian Roast from a certain Seattle Bay coffee chain but any highquality instant dark roast coffee will work and then to that we will also add a little splash of Marsala wine and then we will follow that with a little more than a little

Touch of sugar which kind of looks like a lot but it’s not since this recipe is going to make like 10 portions and then what we’ll do is take a whisk and give this a quick MI Mi just to combine those ingredients before we head to the stove

Where we’re going to briefly cook these yolks using the most dangerous most terrifying method ever and yes I am exaggerating slightly to build tension but what we’ll do with a towel in one hand and our whisk in the other is cook this mixture stirring over medium low

Heat until it thickens up a little and is hot to the touch and yes this is generally done over gently simmering water but if you’re brave and a little bit crazy you can do it directly over over a pretty low flame and achieve the same results in a much shorter amount of

Time plus it’s way more exciting this way oh and a couple Pro tips first of which is do not catch that towel on fire and above and beyond the whole towel catching on fire thing if our Heat’s too high we’re not going to be able to catch

This at the perfect moment and we’ll end up with coffee and Marcel flavored scrambled yolks which I’ve never tried but they don’t sound great okay so we’ll pretty much whisk constantly over medium low heat and we’re B basically done when we get to What’s called the ribbon stage

Which means the stuff dripping off our whisk form ribbons on the surface that are visible for about a half second to a second so at this point mine was looking pretty good and just to give you a rough idea that took me about six or seven

Minutes and we’ll go ahead and set this aside while we move on to our final two very simple components the first of which would be whipping up those egg whites but before we do let’s add a very very very tiny pinch of salt all right let’s barely a quarter of a small pinch

And besides a very tiny bit of seasoning they say that little bit of salt will help the whes whip up a little better and what we’re shooting for here is fairly stiff peaks right we don’t want this mering to get super dry and chunky but when we’re finished and we pull the

Whisk out of the mixture those whites should be sitting up pretty high and proud on the end and hopefully look something like this and that’s it once our whites are done we can set those aside and we can finish the last component which which is whipping up

Some ice cold heavy cream okay the colder the cream is the faster it gets thick and by the way if you do your whites first we can use that same dirty whisk for the cream but don’t do it the other way around since the fat in the cream will prevent the whites from

Whipping up into full volume and yes of course you can use an electric mixer for these whisking steps but I think I have a better feel for things if I’m doing it by hand plus According to some recent madeup studies the amount of calories we

Burn doing this by hand is exact ly the same amount as one dessert so we got that going for us which is nice but anyway we’ll whip our Cold Cream until we have like medium stiff peaks and once that’s been accomplished we’ll go ahead and lose the Whisk and we’ll grab a

Spatula and our now probably room temp coffee and egg yolk mixture and we’ll go ahead and transfer that in and then using a combination of folding and stirring with the tip we will mix that until just combined and if you’re confused by recipes that say fold something in this is what we’re talking

About our it all means is scraping product from the side and bottom of the bowl up over the top and as we’re doing that we’re turning the bowl and giving it the occasional stir with the tip that’s right just the tip and then what we’ll do once that coffee and egg

Mixture just barely disappears and everything’s looking light and gorgeous we’ll go ahead and transfer in half our whites and we will fold and stir those in using the exact same technique and once that first addition of whites has just barely disappeared we will add add the rest and we’ll fold those in and

Please do not under any circumstances stress about knocking too much air out of this mixture all right you’re not going to and even if you did once this freezes you’re still going to have an amazingly delicious and perfectly textured dessert in fact the rougher you

Are with this and the more air you knock out the closer to the texture of ice cream you will get so yes with this recipe the worst case scenario is basically coffee flavored ice cream so hopefully that makes you feel a little bit better oh when some people say it’s

Okay to have some streaks of egg white in there so as not to over mix I do not agree with these people or as we call them in the business streakers right no one’s ever been eating a semi Fredo and said this is good but I wish there were

Some streaks of egg whites in it so I always fold mine until I can’t see any more egg whites at which point it’s ready to transfer into whatever we’re going to serve this in which for me will be these little 4 oz jam jars which I think make the perfect portion and of

Course come with an airtight screw on lid but I should mention that traditionally this would be transferred to a plastic line metal loaf pan and then Frozen and then cut and served in slices so if you don’t want small individual portions feel free to do that

I mean you are after all the Steely down of whether to use a Steely pan but personally I do enjoy these small little cute portions and that’s it once we have that divided up evenly we’ll go ahead and screw on the tops and we will pop those in the freezer until completely

Frozen which is going to take I’m not sure since I usually leave these in the freezer overnight but anyway the point is you got to freeze these before you serve them which I did and then we could definitely serve these as is and only a real jerk would complain but if we

Wanted to fancy it up a little bit we could top this with a little bit of whipped cream and then maybe top it with some shaved Chocolat or a light dusting of cocoa depending on our mood and that’s it our tiam Musa semi Fredo is ready to more than semi- enjoy since I’m

100% confident you are going to fully love this and as you probably know semi Fredo means half cold although in this context it more refers to half Frozen and that’s because the texture does not get hard right even fully Frozen this has a beautiful soft creamy texture on the

Palet and it really is similar to a very light Airy ice cream right kind of a cross between a frozen custard and a coffee ice cream with that sweet little boozy hit of marsala all right for something so simple and easy to make the results really are extraordinary which

Brings us to my compelling argument portion of the program okay like I mentioned this seems more like a hot weather dessert but I think this would be perfect for one of those really heavy holiday meals because not only is this feather light and relatively low in the calorie Department in fact more than

Half of this is air which has zero calories so if you had one of these and then told someone you didn’t have dessert that would not be a lie it would only be a half truth or a semi- truth if you prefer so the fact that these are so

Light I think makes it perfect after a heavy meal but we also get that little bump of caffeine for a little bit of an after meal pickme up which may help you get through a couple more of your uncle stories and yes I am that Uncle but

Anyway that’s it what we’re calling tiam Musa semi Fredo just a decadent and Rich tasting dessert but it does not feel rich in decadent and whether you enjoy it in the heat of summer or after a long decadent holiday meal I really do hope you give this a try soon so please

Follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy Frozen zabayon that’s right if you like regular zabayon you will absolutely love the Frozen version if that is you’re getting a real Frozen zabon and not simply an

Ice cream flavor with a little bit of Marsala wine which is unfortunately what most of the recipes out there are and above and beyond the flavor you’re about to see what might be the best way to make ice cream without a machine and I know I said this wasn’t ice cream but

You know what I mean so with that let’s go ahead and get started with six large egg yolks in a metal mixing bowl to which we will add the tiniest pinch of salt right just a little hint and then we’re also going to need some white

Sugar as well as the star of the show some marsalo wine and by the way I’m using the regular dry style and not the sweet marcala since I actually think that makes us come out too sweet and then what we’re going to do is set our

Heat to medium low and we’re going to cook this whisking constantly until it becomes hot to the touch and thickens up beautifully and by the way doing this directly over the flame is by far the most dangerous and riskiest but also the most fun and fastest method but if you

Don’t think you can handle that much excitement you could if you want use the more traditional method of doing this over a double boiler which simply means set this bowl over a saucepan of simmering water but as long as your flame is not too high and you don’t let

Your towel catch on fire I think this method works out just fine and I’d say it’s probably the best way to go but anyway you decide I mean you are after all the polline shinon of your Frozen zabon by the way that was my mother’s maiden name and she would have

Absolutely loved this stuff but no matter what method we’re using we’re going to keep cooking and whisking until this gets very very thick and reaches what we call the ribbon stage where if we drip some of the mixture off our whisk onto the surface those ribbons

Stay visible for at least a few seconds which in case you’re keeping score at home took me about 10 minutes and then what we’ll do once we think our egg mixture is cook long enough is remove that from the Heat and let it cool down completely which is most efficiently

Done by placing this and whisking it over some ice water but if you’re saving your ice for cocktails you could just let this cool down on the counter giving it the occasional whisk but the point is let it cool down completely before you add the whipped cream which is the next

Step so to a cold mixing bowl we will add one cup of heavy cream and we will whisk that until we achieve soft peaks and the colder your cream as well as your equipment the faster and easier this is going to happen so it’s not a

Bad idea to actually put your bowl and whisk in the fridge before you do this especially if you’re doing it on a day like I am when it’s like 90° and that’s it once we’ve achieve nice soft peaks we’ll go ahead and take a spatula and transfer that into our egg

And marcala custard and we will gently fold that all together until it is just barely combined in fact 97% combines even better because as we transfer this into whatever we’re going to freeze it in that will take care of that last 3% of mixing okay so what I’m trying to say

Is don’t over mix this is we want to retain as much of that air in the mixture as possible right just because those bubbles are microscopic does not mean they can’t pop so do not overwork this and then once that’s set we’ll transfer into some kind of freezer friendly

Container which as you probably can see I did freeze ahead of time to minimize any potential melting and then I like to lay a piece of plastic over the surface before covering this and freezing it for at least four or 5 hours although overnight is probably better and that’s

It I think you know the rest we will go ahead and serve that up hopefully with lots of fresh seasonal fruits oh and apologies to time travelers from the 1980s for me not garnishing this with a sprent okay this needs nothing else and that my friends if you’re a zavon lover

Or any kind of lover that is going to be one memorable dessert experience and quite often frozen desserts that aren’t made with a machine can have sort of a weird crystallized icy texture but not here this stuff is incredibly smooth and creamy on the palette so I really do

Think you’re going to be impressed with the texture and then there’s the taste which because we did not use too much cream is very very zabayon like and not like most of the other recipes for this which really tastes more like a plain vanilla ice cream with a little bit of

Marsala in it but having said that if you want something slightly less intensely flavored you could double the cream or split the difference and use one and 1/2 cups and everything else will work out just the same oh and speaking of marsala one thing that makes this dessert so interesting and unique

Is the fact that most people don’t sit around drinking marcala wine on a regular basis and if they do probably not for long so what happens when people dig into this is they can’t quite place what the flavor is okay it’s kind of familiar but nothing pops into your brain instant

Like if you were eating something that was strawberry or chocolate or coffee or vanilla Etc so other than the incredible texture and vantastic taste which pairs perfectly with fresh fruit that’s probably my favorite part of serving this dessert confusing my guests especially the ones that have never had

Zabon oh and one last thing before I sign off I kind of hope you use a dry marcala but this technique will work with any dessert wine quote unquote all right something like a Saturn or I know some people even use prco but anyway whether you make this as shown or tweak

This to your tastes I really do hope you give it a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy Harissa and I know what you’re thinking not another Tunisian

Recipe but it’s okay this is one of my favorite hot sauces in the world and one you really need to know how to make and like most hot sauce recipes you can totally adapt this to your personal pain threshold so here we go so I’m going to

Use various kinds of peppers I have some red bell peppers we’re actually going to fire rosos on the stove I have some red Fresno chilies those are spicy those we’re just going to blanch along with the very hot habanero pepper and some garlic cloves and then a very specific

Spice blend I have some cumin some dried mint some coriander and some carway seeds all right step one here I’m going to fire roast my red bell pepper over an open flame all right so we’re doing two things here we’re charring the skin so it can be removed and we’re also

Partially cooking the pepper so just keep turning it until the entire surface is pretty charred and then we’re going to go ahead and throw this in a plastic bag to steam so after you rock the bells you’re going to have to let them LL Cool J down and by doing that inside the

Plastic bag here they’re going to steam and that Skin’s going to peel right off all right so I’m going to let my Peppers cool while I’m on to the rest of the ingredients which basically you’re going to get a quick blanch in boiling water

So I’m going to cut off the root end of the garlic cloves I’m going to leave the peel on them though I’m going to throw those in boiling salted water along with my Fresno chilies and my habanero and by the way some people call that a scotch

Bonnet pepper I don’t because I do wear a lot of Scottish hats and it gets confusing so once we toss that in we’re going to wait for it to come back to a boil and we’re just going to let that boil for 3 minutes and that’s just going

To ever so slightly cook and tenderize the pepper I mean just barely it’s also going to just kind of take the edge off the garlic so I like my Harissa very garlicky so I don’t want cooked garlic but but a short blanch like this is really not going to cook the garlic it’s

Just going to take that little bit of super peppery raw edge off while still giving you that full punch of garlic and bonus it also makes it super easy to peel and again that was just barely 3 minutes at that point I’m going to fish

It out with my strainer I’m going to lay it on a plate and let that cool enough to handle which I didn’t do see me handling this it’s not cool I’m burning my fingers so I’m not sure why I kept doing it and you can see that garlic

Skin comes right off the clove all right to prep the peppers I’m going to cut them in half and I’m I’m going to just scrape out the seeds and the membranes all right and that’s it so pretty and as you may know the seeds are where most of

The Heat and pepper is so especially with the habanero make sure you remove those okay so our peppers have been prepped our garlic has been peeled our bell peppers have been steamed in the plastic now for about 15 minutes which makes the skin super super easy to peel

Off with the back of a knife and you can rinse this underwater if you have to although it’s recommended you don’t just peel it with a knife you can wipe with a paper towel and that’s it and of course you’re removing the seeds and membranes from that too but you knew that all

Right so all that’s ready to go and last step here we got to toast some seeds so in a small dry sauté pan over medium heat I’m going to add my coriander and my carway seeds and we’re simply going to toast that for a few minutes until we

Can just barely smell the spice the Heat’s going to bring out those essential oils and it really does make a big difference if you heat these seeds up first before you grind it so might seem like a small annoying step that you want to skip but don’t a sauce as

Awesome as Harissa deserves better so when those are done I’m going to dump them in my mortar and I’m going to crush these with a pestl I’m also going to add in my other spices which are ground cumin and yes I could have toasted that

Too dried mint and salt and I’m going to grind that until very fine by the way if the Foodie in your family does not have one of these ancient and amazing kitchen tools be sure to buy them a mortar and pestal as a gift they will love you and

You will love their food and everybody wins all right so once that’s done we’re going to finish this all in a blender so I’m going to go ahead and dump in my Peppers my garlic and of course the spices we just toasted in ground and

Then last but not least we need a little bit of acid and oil for acid I’m going to use fresh lemon juice you can certainly use vinegar and then just a little splash of oil but not extra virgin olive oil you could use a light olive oil or just a regular vegetable

Oil and the problem is sometimes when you blend extra virgin olive oils because of the friction and the heat in the blender they turn bitter so just a light oils better here and then if we want we can introduce a little extra virgin olive oil at the end for flavor

Which as you’re about to see I’m going to do so we’re simply going to puree that in the blender till smooth you know I like to stop halfway and scrape things down just for fun and as I just mentioned when this is just about all

The way pureed and I think I’m like 5 seconds away from being done I’m going to drizzle in a tablespoon or so of really really beautiful extra virgin olive oil that literally just gets a few seconds of blending and that’s it Harissa pour it in a bowl taste for

Final seasoning maybe a little salt mine was plenty spicy enough because I had those Fresno chilies and habanero in there but if you want to spice yours even further go ahead I like how you’re thinking and what is this good on everything you’ve seen me use this many

Times in videos it really is a magical ingredient incredibly versal a spoon of this literally in any Savory dish will make it better and you remember that old saying once you go Tunisian the other sauces aren’t as pleasing so I hope you give this a try head over to

Foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy staella soup that’s right this soup is dedicated to anyone who’s ever had one of those days which is everyone yep you get home after a long day and you’re stressed and you’re angry and you’re frustrated and just generally

Upset with the universe and everything in it and above and beyond that you get home and you realize you’re also tired and starving plus did we mention there’s nothing in the house to eat well my friends good news because that’s exactly why this soup was invented this stuff

Has proven to cure W out Alia and several things that don’t so let’s go ahead and get started and the first thing we’re going to want to do is bring some stock or broth up to a simmer over high heat and today I’m going to be using a nice rich chicken broth which

May or may not be homemade but please know that this is going to work pretty much exactly the same with any kind of meat or vegetable stock and besides bringing this up to a simmer the only other thing we’re going to want to do is make sure this is seasoned properly so

Make sure you give it a taste and add some salt if you have to which I did I also added a pinch of freshly ground black black pepper okay so make sure you check that out and adjust if you have to and then what we can do while we’re waiting for

That to come up to the simmer is put together our egg mixture which not surprisingly is going to start with three large whole eggs and by the way if you’re into rules of thumb we basically want one egg for every two cups of stock and then to the eggs we’re going to add

Some freshly chopped Italian parsley if you have it which you do since you have a plant in a pot on a window sill or should and then to that we’re going to add a couple tablespoons of semolina flour which by the way is optional but I do

Prefer it if you have it and then we’ll go ahead and toss in some finely grated cheese which is not optional and I’m going to use two kinds some parmesano regano and some peino romano and of course you can just use one or the other and then let’s go ahead and season this

Up a little bit with a nice big pinch of salt as well as a good old Shake of cayenne come on you’re not going to try to forget about your horrible day without Cayenne area and then we’ll also do a little bit of fresh Su ground black

Pepper and then last but not least we’ll do a little pinch of nutmeg and yes of course freshly grated I’m insulted by your question that’s really the only kind anyone should use so we’ll grade in a little touch of nutmeg and then we’ll simply take a whisk and mix this very

Thoroughly and theoretically in the few minutes it took you to put this together our broth or stock will have come up to a simmer and we are ready to stratch aella and to accomplish that all we’re going to have to do is slowly pour this in while stirring with a spoon and as

You can see I’m using the freakishly small small wooden spoon and what’s going to happen as we stir that mixture into this hot simmering liquid it’s going to form what appears to be thousands upon thousands of tiny little torn Rags which by the way is what

Stacha Telly means and as soon as that stirred in believe it or not that’s it all we’re going to do is leave the heat on until this comes back up to temperature and starts to simmer again and you’ll notice when you first stir this in it’s going to look kind of

Cloudy and weird but don’t worry just keep stirring leave it on the heat and it will go from looking cloudy and weird to looking clear but still weird but that’s fine that’s what it’s supposed to look like and of course like everything we serve we’re going to taste it one

More time before we dish it up and once we’re happy with the seasoning we will grab a ladle and go ahead and serve this up into some hot bowls and personally I think all those millions of little tiny Rags are so interesting looking you don’t really need a garnish here but I

Did notice a little parsley on the cutting board so I tossed it in I didn’t want to waste it as well as a little bit of chili flake and then last but not least a couple optional drips of olive oil since you really should include a little bit of fat with every

Meal and that is it our stacha Tellis soup is done you pair that with a nice simple green salad and maybe some crusty bread and you’re talking about an incredibly fast incredibly simple and yet profoundly satisfying and comforting meal it really does make everything seem like it’s okay and suddenly that idiot

At work does not seem like that big of a problem and you probably already thought wow this would be an easy soup to adapt and add lots of different things to yes absolutely a lot of people like to throw a handful of spinach in here or swiss

Chard as well as adding some additional meat whether it’s chicken or sausage you are after all the David Le wroth of this raggedy broth so please feel free to adapt this and accessorize as you see fit so even though you weren’t in a good mood after work and you didn’t have any

Time or energy or ingredients for that matter you still probably will be able to pull off something like this and if you can everything’s going to seem a lot better and that’s because it is a lot better okay so anyway I really hope you were paying attention and heard what I

Was strot to telling you because this really is a soup everybody should have in their repertoire especially after one of those days so I really do hope you give this a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as

Always enjoy Italian rice croats also known as rice balls if you form them into balls but this video was shot at a recent family dinner at my Uncle Bill and an Angela darden’s house and I really really love these and I wanted to show you how they make them so here we

Go now you can make these completely vegetarian if you want but we like to do chicken giblets that’s right gizzards a few Hearts I got a couple pounds there Uncle Bill puts them in a pressure cooker with a little bit of water about a cup and some salt and he cooks those

In the pressure cooker for about 1520 minutes until tender and yes pressure cooker Lids are hard to get on anyway 18 minutes or so later our giblets were done simply drain them and let them cool a little bit and then we’re going to chop those up so besides the giblets

We’re also going to need of course rice so we’re going to boil two cups of rice in salted water all right when it was nice and tender we dumped it onto a sheet pan to cool down a little bit we want to work with this while it’s warm

But not hot so I’m just going to leave that on the sheet pan till it cools transfer it into a large bowl and the rice is ready to go all right once our chicken gizzards and hearts were cool enough to handle Uncle Bill chopped them coarsely in a food processor just a

Couple on and offs he likes it really chunky see that still pretty big pieces and you can certainly do that by hand and once those were all chopped up we added them to our warm rice and that’s basically the base of the rice croat all right so that’s ready for the rest of

The ingredients and I got to give you a little warning I will have all the specifics on the blog as I said as far as amounts but they’re not real big on measuring stuff around here so we’re going to guesstimate M you really just wing it but I’ll get you close so we’re

Going to put in a couple cups of grated Parmesan cheese you could use peino Romano any nice grated Italian cheese will work some fresh parsley which Uncle Billy doesn’t usually put but we kind of forced them cuz we had some a little bit of breadcrumb a couple eggs and a little

Bit of marinara sauce right not too much and that’s basically it so I volunteered here to mix it up I grabbed the wooden spoon and I started mixing and you really want to get this thorough thoroughly mixed and at this point Uncle Billy slapped my hand and said what the

Hell are you doing we don’t use a spoon for that we use our hands so he washed his hands and he got in there and he got in there deep and he mixed this properly so you want to use your hands for this you want it really really thoroughly

Combined you’re just going to go in there and you’re going to mix it and fold it and smash it together until it looks like that then before we form the balls or the croats depending on what you’re into we’re going to wrap that and we’re going to refrigerate that that for

About an hour until it cools down and it will firm up nicely makes it much much easier to form all right so this was about an hour or so later you can let it go longer but you definitely want to let it cool down and then you form your

Croats and of course we’re not measuring this either he just takes out a little bit and forms it with his hands into the classic croat kind of a football shape American football that is not that you know boring stuff the rest of the world plays and calls football all right and

The rest of the process could not be simpler after your rice balls or your rice Croquettes are formed you’re going to Simply roll those in plain breadcrumbs until they’re coated it’s going to stick very easily to that semi sticky rice and that is it so we line

Those up on pans you can do these way ahead of time if you want and it’s never a oneperson operation my mother Pauline was rolling them my aunt Angelo is rolling them so they’re not really authentic Italian Croquettes unless the whole family pitches in once you’re rice Croquettes are breaded we’re going to

Simply pan fry those in some vegetable oil we put about an inch of oil in a heavy Skillet on medium high heat and you’re just going to cook those nice and brown now uncle Billy was very insistent that these should go pretty dark brown I thought they were ready to turn there

And he was like no don’t turn them yet so I listened to him why cuz he knows what the heck he’s doing he’s done these a thousand times so when he thought they were Brown enough we turned them over okay but nothing too complicated just Brown them on all sides everything in

There is basically cooked you’re just heating them through and getting a nice crispy outside now I really love the chicken gizzards in there but where the meat is exposed to the oil it does get a little darker than the rice but I don’t think that looks bad at all and of

Course the parsley cooked a little dark too but again that’s an optional ingredient Uncle Billy normally does not put parsley but like I said we had some fresh parsley and we basically made him add some once they’re browned all over you’re going to transfer those to a paper towel to drain and serve

Immediately these should be served nice and hot we like to throw some fresh lemon on the plate you can also serve this with some tomato sauce or an aoli you know pretty much anything Works they’re so delicious and there you go you know what’s coming next right I’m

Going to bite into one of these and it’s so good the cheese the rice a little bit of tomato and of course the chicken gizzards and hearts make it awfully good just a great rustic homey comforting delicious snack or appetizer great for parties so thank you so much

Uncle Billy and Aunt Angela love you guys thanks for sharing the recipe all the information is on foodwishes.com as usual and as always enjoy pumpkin Zepp that’s right we’re going to do a seasonal take on this very simple Italian donut if you happen to be looking for something a little out of

The ordinary for your upcoming Halloween party these could work all right they may not be as scary is those bleeding eye truffles or those super spooky spider cupcakes but nevertheless I think they’re very appropriate and will be very very well received but anyway let’s go ahead and get started with this Ultra

Simple batter and the first thing we want to do is put together our dry ingredients so we’ll start with some all-purpose flour to which we’re going to add some baking powder not baking soda baking powder and we also want a pinch of salt as well as a generous

Spoon of cinnamon and some freshly grated nutmeg and you don’t have to use fresh nutmeg if you don’t want it to taste quite as good you can go ahead and dust off that old can in the pantry and then all we’re going to do is take a whisk and mix this

Enthusiastically for about a minute and that’s in Li of sifting sifting is so 20th century so we’ll give that a proper whisking and we will set that aside while we work on the wet ingredients which we’ll start with our secret ingredient Rota cheese so I’m going to

Add some full fat Rota to a mixing bowl and then to that we will add our pumpkin puree and as always I’m using pure canned pumpkin that should be the only thing on the ingredient list all right we don’t want to be using pumpkin pie

Fill in here and by the way on the blog post I’ll explain why you never ever want to use fresh pumpkin for this so please check that out and then we’re also going to need some sugar but not too too much this is not a super sweet

Doughnut and then last but not least we need two large eggs and believe it or not that’s it so at this point we’ll take a whisk and mix this thoroughly and I may have mentioned this before but one thing I always like to do when I’m mixing something is try to remember what

I forgot and as I was mixing this I looked over and realized I never put the vanilla in so I’m going to stop and add that a nice little splash of real vanilla extract so that’s not a bad tip to pass along instead of just mindlessly stirring something try not to forget to

Remember what you may have missed and then once we have that mixed nice and smooth we’ll go ahead and mix our wet ingredients into our bowl of dry ingredients or should we do dry to wet I never can remember remember although for this I’m almost positive it doesn’t

Matter in fact I know it doesn’t matter but anyway we’re going to take a spatula and mix our dry and wet ingredients together to form what’s either a very very thick batter or a very very loose dough and as soon as that’s done assuming your oil’s hot we can start making

Zpp and the way we’re going to form these and get this batter into the oil is by using the old two spoon method which simply means you scoop some with one spoon and then use the second spoon to push it off into the oil and I’m

Showing you that in the bowl here cuz I didn’t know if I could film it over the top of the fryer so you can practice that move a few times in the bowl and then once you think you have it down we can head over to the fryer where we’re

Going to fry these at 375 for about 2 minutes or so so using the old TW spoon method I’m going to drop Six in here and not from too high up you don’t want to Splash yourself so get low and what we’ll do is we’ll let those fry for

About a minute at which point we want to turn them over which by the way they may do by themselves but anyway like I said we’ll cook him for a minute we’ll turn them over and all that’s going to take is a little nudge with your strainer and we’ll give the other side

About a minute for like I said a grand total of about two to 2 and 1/2 minutes at which point as usual we will remove those to a rack to drain and our pumpkin Zepp also known as the world’s easiest Donuts are done and you are not going to

Believe how light these are and how hot when they first come out of the fryer so be careful but these really are incredibly light not to mention really delicious and that’s serving this plain but we’re not going to serve it plain I highly suggest you give these a little

Toss in some cinnamon sugar and if you’re not into cinnamon sugar you could just use plain powdered sugar or maybe some kind of icing that’s up to you you are the boss of making sure people go nuts for your Donuts but personally I really do think that cinnamon sugar

Looks and tastes great and would that have been easier in a larger Bowl yeah significantly easier but eventually I got them done and that my friends is one nice looking pile of seasonal Donuts and look how gorgeous that color is I mean if you don’t think that’s a great

Color you’re not that good at colors cuz that is beautiful and in addition to their impossible lightness and gorgeous appearance The Taste is also excellent they have a sort of subtle but still identifiable pumpkin flavor which is obviously helped by the cinnamon and Nutmeg and what I think is very

Important they’re not too sweet right there’s nothing worse than a too sweet doughnut and for me these are just right so I really do love how these come out in fact these delicious fritters are so fast and easy I’m actually a little concerned you’re going to make these too

Often so please I implore you use this video responsibly okay so I really do hope you give these a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy this is an Italian omelette kind of borrowing a few french techniques and

French gois this is a really simple easy fast delicious way to do a quick little omelette so I have my stainless steel pan on medium heat with a good couple tablespoons of olive oil all right you need a good amount of oil in this one

And what I’m going to do is I’m going to swirl the oil around to coat the pan now in general the French omelets are fairly gently cooked you usually don’t want any color on it this Italian omelette is going to be cooked a little hotter and I

Want a little bit of golden brown on there you’ll notice I only have three eggs there and I’m using a big pan so I want this really thin it’s almost like a flowless egg crepe more so than a thick omelette so once the egg hits the hot

Oil it’s going to kind of Bubble Up and the Bottom’s going to seal you’re going to lift up the edges that are cooking with your spatula tilt the pan and let the raw egg run underneath which is going to kind of create these layers of eggy goodness and it will also cook a

Lot faster because if you just let it sit there the bottom will get too Brown by the time the egg on the top is cooked so once it stops kind of running once it doesn’t really have enough eggy liquid to run under I’m going to turn off the

Heat I’m going to use my spatula just to even out the raw egg that’s left it’s a very thin layer that’s going to finish cooking just with the heat that’s underneath it okay so the heat’s off this is in real time okay I’m not editing this so that’s how long it took

I’m going to crumble an ounce or two of fresh French goat cheese I had some ch chive plants that were desperate to be trimmed so I got some fresh chives black pepper and there was no salt in the eggs so I’m going to give it a nice big pinch

Here big sprinkling of sea salt then I’m going to fold up the bottom third and then the top third kind of like a you’re folding a letter for an envelope okay you see it’s got that nice golden brown but not too dark brown omelets or bitter omelets so you really

Don’t want a dark brown I’m going to scoot that down towards the end of the pan and I’m just going to flip it over on my plate and that I’m sure there’s an Italian word for it but that’s a just a really thin nice Italian omelette all

Right it’s very tender it’s very creamy and custardy inside because I didn’t cook it very long and I use that lift and pour the egg underneath system that you can rewind and watch again and that is unbelievable look at that melty goat cheese beautiful fresh herb unreal

Anyway that’s what I had for breakfast hope you enjoyed that anyway there’s not really any ingredient list it’s eggs cheese and you know you saw the rest I hope you give that a try and as always enjoy fata that’s right this is like my new favorite food it’s incredibly delicious

Very comforting super easy to make and this very rustic Italian ovenbaked pancake for lack of a better description is made with garbanzo flour and the first time I made this I could not believe how such a simple batter could produce such a tasty and interesting dish that apparently is really good for

You so step one in a mixing bowl we have our garbanzo bean flour now I found this next to all the specialty gluten-free flowers at the regular Supermarket but if you can’t find that there any health food store is going to have it and to our graban bean flour we’re going to add

Enough warm water to make basically a thin batter not too hot just barely warms fine and they say you should stir it in gradually but you know what I’ve never been a big fan of what they say so I just dump it all in in whisk and it

Works perfectly so I’m not sure why the recipe say at it gradually but suit yourself and we want to mix that up until completely completely smooth so keep whisking yes if you want a dirtier blender or immersion mixer you can use those so we’re going to mix that up

Completely smooth and at that point all we’re going to do is cover it I’m going to use a plate instead of plastic wrap because I love the earth I want it to be nice for your grandkids so we’re going to cover that with something and we’re

Going to let it sit there for 2 hours at room temperature so you’re going to need to go find something to do for a few hours what did I do while I waited just chilled and after 2 hours we’re going to uncover it and it’s going to look like

This yes it gets it’s a little foamy so at this point you’re going to need to take a spoon or a ladle and skim off that foam my source is deep within the fata subculture tell me that foam is what people have trouble digesting and

If you don’t skim it this recipe will be much noisier all right so we’re going to skim off as much of that as we can and like I said it’s going to make it more artsy less artsy and after that we’re going to add the last couple ingredients

We of course going to need some salt and a decent amount of it we’re also going to add some olive oil and then one optional ingredient ingredient that’s not in the traditional recipe but it is a common addition some very finely minced Rosemary and we’re going to stir

That in very well and we’re going to let that sit there for about 10 minutes while we preheat our oven and prep our pan so on the stove we’re going to place down a 10in cast iron skillet and we’re going to place that on high heat and get

It smoking hot and by the way while we’re doing this you’re definitely going to want to preheat your oven to 500° so that’s ready to roll and once we think our pan is really hot we’re going to pour in some additional olive oil yes a

Lot of it but don’t worry olive oil is really really good for you or at least that’s what a doctor that worked for the olive oil company said and why would they lie they have to take an oath so pour in the olive oil and then stand

There looking at it and as soon as you see that first little wisp of smoke quickly pour in your batter and it would probably help if unlike me you poured it right in the center I kind of went in from the side but don’t worry it’s not

Going to matter but you’re going to pour in that batter and then you’re quickly but very carefully transfer that into the center of your preheated 500 degree oven and let that bake for about 25 to 30 minutes or until it looks like this and I remember thinking the first time I

Made it before i’ even tasted it I said to myself look at that that’s going to taste good and I was right and by the way this is one of the few things we make I don’t make you let cool a little bit as soon as you can transfer it onto

A plate you want to serve this right away it’s not nearly as good cold and then traditionally all this is garnished with is freshly ground black pepper and you might be thinking I’ll just use that stuff I have in the can it’s worked fine for the last 7 years years why change

Now trust me fresh black pepper for this please and as soon as we’ve peppered that we’re going to go ahead and take our pizza cutter and we’ll cut this up into I don’t know six or eight portions that’s probably what they get in Italy in La you probably get 16 portions out

Of this in Chicago of course this would be a single portion so it depends on where you are but anyway you decide you’re the hidey fce of your slice and then as soon as that’s cut up serve it immediately this is way way way better hot than cold and because of that extra

Hot oven and that olive oil we’re going to get a beautiful crispy crusty exterior and yet the inside’s going to stay nice and moist kind of dense but not unpleasantly so just very very earthy and comforting and satisfying just truly delicious stuff after this first bite I was like what are you doing

Just use your hands come on and if you have not made this before before you go putting a bunch of toppings on it try it just like this it is so good you’ll know why it’s not traditionally topped with anything of course having said that do

Not be surprised if you see a future tricked out version and the possibilities are as vast is they are exciting so stay tuned for that but in the meantime I really really hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as

Always enjoy Tora dero that’s right this delicious Italian rice pie is generally made as a dessert but it’s also wonderful in Savory form which is what we’re going to do here utilizing some leaks and spinach and besides making for a very easy lunch or side dish this is

Also perfect for playing a practical joke in your family you yes you tell them you’re having pie later and then you bring this out and Crush their dreams but don’t worry One Taste and all will be forgiven so let me show you how to put this together and step one is

Sautéing the leaks so we’re going to put a large Skillet down on medium heat with a little bit of olive oil and we’re going to dump in a couple Cho leaks with a big pinch of salt and we’re just going to saut those until they’re kind of soft

And sweet and that might take 5 minutes that might take 10 minutes I refuse to commit to a specific time but you’ll know just give them a stir once in a while keep an eye on them and when they start to get pretty soft and just pretty

In general that’s pretty much it and when they reach that point they really should look something like this and then what we’re going to do at that point is make a little space in the center and we’ll toss in about three cloves of finely minced garlic and we’ll go ahead

And mix that in and saut that for about a minute so stir that garlic in let it cook for about 60 seconds and then all we’re going to do is turn off the heat and just set that aside until needed which is going to be very soon so our

Leak and garlic mixture set and it’s on to the rest of the ingredients the first and probably most important is the rice so we’re going to need a couple cups of cooked rice okay this recipe is perfect for when you have leftover rice quite possibly from a tie dinner the night

Before and then to that we’re going to add some chopped cooked fresh spinach and as long as you squeeze it very dry you can use frozen spinach no problem but of course we’re going to use fresh cuz we’re better than that but regardless make sure it’s squeezed perfectly dry and chopped pretty fine

And then to that let’s go ahead and add our leak mixture we’re also going to need some beaten eggs to kind of bind this together a little bit so we’ll pour those in and then a whole bunch of freshly grated regano Parmesan and for this it’s totally fine to use the fake

Cheap kind I’m just kidding it’s totally not all right use the good stuff and then after the cheese goes in let’s go ahead and season this up with some salt of course in a good amount this will be totally Bland if you UND salt it we’ll also put in some freshly ground black

Pepper and of course a couple shakes of cayenne and yes one of these days I will do a video explaining the Cayenne fetish and then I think we should also give it a little pinch of nutmeg of course we’re going to use freshly grated by the way

Can I call that a nut cuz if it’s not I call it a nut people will go nuts but anyway a little bit of nutmeg and then let’s go ahead and spatulate this until it’s thoroughly thoroughly combined and take your time Cho fresh spinach is notorious for kind of clumping together

And we don’t want any pockets of pure spinach and as I’m mixing this I should tell you this is perfect for using other summer veggies just cook the veggies tender chop them up and throw them in it’s fine trust me so give this a very thoughtful mixing and once you’re sure

That’s happened just go ahead and set that aside while we prep our pan or dish and in my case I’m using a glass pie dish but really any heat proof pan or dish is going to work and what we’ll do is we’ll grease this with a little bit

Of olive oil brush that all over and then I like to give it a little extra sprinkling of cheese before we dump everything in and I really don’t know if that has any effect but you know what I’m not going to take any chances and then yes you guessed it let’s go ahead

And transfer our mixture into the dish and we’ll take our spatula and we’ll smooth that out and make sure it’s all perfectly distributed or distributed if you prefer and then once we’ve done that and that surface is nice and smooth let’s go ahead and give it a little old

Tapa tapa just for good luck and then before we pop this in let’s go ahead and dust the top with a little more parm and that is ready to bake so we’re going to transfer that into the center of a 350° oven for about 35 to 40 minutes or until

It looks like this it should be lightly browned around the outside around the outside around the outside and a little firm to the touch and at that point we have many options we can eat it piping hot like this we can let it cool to just

Barely warm which I think is the perfect way to serve it or there’s even some freaks of nature that like this cold so you really can’t enjoy this at any temperature but like I said I like mine warm so let me cut a slice and here unfortunately my fancy pie spatula

Serving thing was not flexible enough to get in here so I switched to the pallet knife which worked better and right about here your family’s finally realizing they’re not having dessert pie but don’t worry One Taste and they’re totally going to forget about your cruel

Joke so we’ll go ahead and serve that up and that’s spinach and leak torto D Rizo is done so let’s dig in for the official taste and you can see the texture fairly dense but still nice and moist and like I said earlier you can totally adapt

This use all kinds of different peppers and vegetables different cheeses although you know what don’t do this with kale we’re doing too many things with kale let’s just relax with the kale for a minute but anyway just very tasty very delicious very comforting and as

The old saying goes and by saying I mean commercial this is good and good for you so I really hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy Italian wedding soup if you grew up in the

Northeast and are Italian or no Italians and went to weddings you probably had this soup so what I’m going to do is take a beef soup bone a beef shank you want to look for one that has a nice big piece of marrow bone in it I’m going to

Brown that on both sides in The Soup pot and a little bit of vegetable oil I’m going to add the classic miroa celery carrots onions I’m going to add a couple quarts of cold water okay I’m going to throw in a bay leaf few cloves of garlic

Some black pepper corns and we’re going to make just a simple full beef stock we’re going to bring this up to a simmer and then back the heat down just so it does that a slow gentle simmer for like four or 5 hours you’re going to simmer

It until the meat falls off the bone you’re going to add more water if necessary to keep the level sort of around which you started at I want to end up with about a quar of beef stock okay so while our stock is working I’m going to make the meatball mixture this

Is boneless beef short ribs that I want you to put in the freezer till they’re firm then I want you to cut it in cubes put it back in the freezer until it’s just almost Frozen it shouldn’t be hard but it shouldn’t be soft all right it

Should be just very very firm and cold to the touch all right so half Frozen I’ll say so as the meat is firming up in the freezer let’s get our wet ingredients ready I have an egg some crushed garlic some fresh Italian parsley heavy cream the secret

Ingredient all right give that a whisk then I’m going to add parmesan cheese and fresh breadcrumbs that’s the inside of a loaf of Italian bread one cup that I just pulsed on and off in a food processor to make a fresh breadcrumb very important you don’t use dried

Breadcrumbs it won’t be as tender all right the meat’s been in the freezer about 15 minutes so it is firm to the touch not frozen firm I’m going to add my salt and pepper and I’m going to pulse that on and off until it resembles

A I don’t know like a sausage mix so like a coarse grind because it’s cold it’s going to work add the breadcrumb mixture and we’re going to keep pulsing on and off until it basically comes together like a ball now you’re thinking wow that’s going to be really tough and

Over mixed it’s not just relax because you’re using such cold meat and because of that cream and fresh breadcrumb mixture these meat bottles are going to be so tender all right so refrigerate that I have a bunch of kale I’m going to take the stems out very simple just pull

It right out I’m going to give that a rough chop the other ingredient is something called pastina little tiny pasta in fact these are shaped like stars look at that so cute look at that fingerprint all right I’m going to strain my beef stock that took like 5

Hours and like I said I had about a quart when I was done because some evaporated I’m going to add to that a quart of chicken broth that’s right it’s going to be half beef broth half chicken broth which makes the ultimate Italian wedding soup and what may seem kind of

Minor but is really important about a teaspoon of tomato paste all right bring that to a simmer taste for salt and pepper I’m going to add my kale and I’m going to let that simmer for 15 minutes minutes in the meantime perfect opportunity to make our meatballs I’m

Going to use a little tiny sorbet scoop here and just form them into little balls you can roll them in your pans if you want make them neat or you could just scoop and have them IR regular it doesn’t really matter but I like those little Scoops for that kind of a job

Makes it really easy and they all sort of come out the same size and by the way this is kind of a big batch of Meatball mixture I only used about half for the soup and I saved half for spaghetti meatballs so you can just refrigerate

Any extra all right the greens have been simmering for 15 minutes I’m going to add a/4 cup of the pastina I’m going to let that cook for 5 minutes it’s not going to be totally cooked but the pasta will almost be cooked at that point I’m going to carefully slide in our

Meatballs come on stupid inertia all right those are in give it a stir and that simmers for 15 minutes by that time meatballs cooked in tender pasta very tender and slightly slightly has thickened the soup all right shouldn’t be thick just a little bit of I don’t know heavier viscosity in the

Broth not a thickness a richness and check out this great final shot sure it’s out of focus but at least the lighting is bad sometimes I like to garnish this with just a little bit of fresh black pepper maybe a little extra parmesan cheese sprinkled over and that’s pretty

Much it it is so delicious and comforting and those meatballs are so tender you just got to give this a try seriously so good and don’t wait for a wedding to make it it’s not a hard recipe you can make the meatballs ahead of time and so forth give it a try so

Delicious all the ingredients are on the site and as always enjoy green hummus that’s right we’re making a very delicious green hummus using fresh basil white beans and garbanzo beans for a delicious and super super super easy spread or dip so here’s how you put it

Together I’m going to start with a big old bunch of basil this is from my backyard so beautiful I’m going to pick off the leaves I’m going to throw that into some boiling water believe it or not just for a few seconds this is like real time this is like 20 seconds just

To sort of lock in that green color so basically what you do is you pop it in that boiling water that simmering water 20 seconds or so all right fish it out with a strainer into some ice water which stops the cooking and when you squeeze it out you’re left with

Beautiful bright green basil that will actually hold its color now you’ve seen us use that trick for pesos before now if you want to skip that step you can but basically as your hummus sits out it can turn kind of gray and ugly so I like the trick of blanching

The basil first so I had about a third of a cup packed of basil leaves throw that into a blender with lots of garlic some lemon juice some olive oil not all of it I like to put most of my olive oil in at the end as you’re going to see I’m

Going to dump in my garbanzo beans and my white kidney beans some black pepper and a good amount of salt you need enough salt here otherwise it’s going to be very Bland all right so I’m going to pulse that on and off a couple times to get it going I don’t

Want to have to add a lot of liquid here to dilute it just so it you know purees easier so this will puree very smooth but you got to pulse a couple times use a spatula mix it up Pulse a couple times and so forth when it starts to puree and

It looks like that then I add the rest of my olive oil which is another couple tablespoons I heard a long time ago that if you blend olive oil too long it gets bitter in the blender so that’s why I just start it with a little bit once it

Starts to puree then I put the rest in I don’t know it probably does nothing who knows you could probably put in all the oil at the beginning but you know better safe than sorry so right there I was in good shape this pureed very nice and

Smooth if you’re an idiot like me you can actually keep the blender on and use your spatula to kind of help things along not recommended because if you’re not paying attention you can lose the tip of your spatula and then you’re throwing away your rubber infused hummus

Are you going to taste and adjust your seasoning make sure it’s got enough salt maybe you need more lemon juice maybe you need more pepper up to you you’re the boss of your hummus so I love regular hummus but when you add the deliciousness of fresh summer basil very

Very excellent version okay so green hummus call it what you want pesto hummus basil hummus you make up your own name and then people will think this is your recipe and you will get all the glory which is fine I don’t need any GL Glory I’d rather have the money and I

Know all the grocery stores now sell like tubs of hummus but it’s expensive and it’s not as good as this and this took like 2 seconds to make in fact you probably make this and go you know what I got to have a party now what am I

Going to do with all this dip and you start calling some friends and then of course it was time for the obligatory taste and man I’m not lying so delicious if you like comments you’re going to love this if you like pesto you’re going to love this if you like anything on a

Chip you will love this and anyway I hope you give this a try all the ingredients are on foodwishes.com as usual and as always enjoy ralada galada is a fantastic Italian condiment SLS sauce and it goes on top of Rich Meats stews soups things like that this is

Traditionally served on the famous Oso Buco the brazed ve Shanks so what it is is a couple tablespoons of finely minced parsley raw garlic not cooked garlic if you ever see someone trying to serve a roasted garlic remola I think you should slap them actually no don’t do that

Physical violence is never the answer but you should give them a Stern talking to has to be raw garlic and then we’re going to Freshly grate some lemon zest use a micr plane or a zester you just want the yellow surface that has all the lemony goodness some people add salt and

Pepper to their grala I don’t because usually what I’m putting it on is already perfectly seasoned so that’s that’s up to you we’re going to mix that together with just enough olive oil to make it wet so I put a little in and I stirred it around and I said to myself

That’s not enough olive oil so I put in another little splash and then I said that is enough olive oil so you mix this up now this is meant to be eaten right away you don’t want to be keeping this for you know days and days in the fridge

I have used it the next day it’s okay but really made to be used right away this is really good on almost any kind of stew or Rich soup where you have especially where you have smoke Meats cuts through the richness cuts through the fat and just brings the dish up a

Whole another level anyway that’s how you make grala you’re going to see me use that on a lot of things this fall and you know what when you make it and try it on one of these types of dishes you’re going to understand why cuz it’s

So good go to the site get the ingredients and as always enjoy pork and beans and greens or at least my Italian version of pork and beans and as you know beans and greens very popular for New Year’s in the South so they say if you eat beans and greens usually

Blackeyed peas uh you’re going to have a very prosperous new year you know no guarantees but it’s not going to hurt all right so we’re going to take our mortar and pestel and we’re going to grind some herbs I got some black pepper some dried rosemary some fennel seed

Salt some hot pepper all these are on the uh site by the way ingredient amounts some cumin and some dried oregano so I’m going to make like a southern style dry rub only with Italian ingredients so I’m going to grind it not quite to a powder but you know pretty

Well ground I’m going to add a couple cloves of garlic I’m going to mash those in and because of all the friction with the salt and the spices that’s going to Mush down to a nice kind of paste almost like a wet sand I’m going to put in some

Brown sugar to kind of caramelize things a splash of vinegar and a splash of oil all right give that a mix so that’s where we’re going to put on our pork shoulder pork roast so I want you to buy a big old pork shoulder boneless and

We’re just going to cut it in chunks now for this recipe you can just roast that whole shoulder and slice you know Pieces Just Like a pork roast but what I like to do is cut it in I don’t know six or seven eight pieces and you can just

Follow the muscles in between the layers of fat pretty easy trim any excess fat off if you find it and that way I can cover this with that wet rub or a wub as I call it and what will happen is you’ll get extra caramelization a little extra

Crust I like the crust all right I don’t care if it’s super you know moist and tender I want it kind of crusty and chewy so we’re going to put that in the oven at 350 for about an hour I’m going to turn them over I want a nice crust on

Both sides you can see the fat coming out some of the juices I’m going to put that back in for another half hour and you’re going to see all that caramelization from that rub I’m sorry the wub is on there and look at that that’s beus so that was

About an hour and a half Al together but basically what you want is the outside’s kind of crusty not burnt but kind of crusty and and chewy and the inside is like you know fork tender all right on to the beans these are just white kidney beans kolini beans that’s one can some

Lemon some garlic and arugula not that prepackaged baby stuff I wanted full grown adult arugula ARP arugula if you will all right all the senior citizens got that joke all right we’re going to take a pan with a little bit olive oil sliced that two cloves of garlic put it

In the cold oil bring it up to temperature medium heat when the garlic starts to sizzle add your beans add your red pepper little pinch of salt and just cook that on medium heat until the beans get a little kind of sticky just a little bit maybe 3 or 4 minutes don’t

Let the garlic burn I’m going to pour in the juice of a lemon that’s going to kind of deglaze things a splash of chicken stock stir it around we’re going to add our full grown adult arugula and then you’re going to stir that around for like 1 minute no longer turn it off

Cuz the heat from the beans and the stock are going to wilt that arugula perfectly if you wait till it’s perfectly wilted in the pan by the time you plate it here it’s going to be overly wilted so just when it starts to wilt take it off the heat I’m going to

Put some in a plate here spoon over some of my lovely beans garlic hot pepper I’m going to top it with a chunk of that caramelized pork with that beautiful Italian wub on there of course you’re going going to drizzle some of the juices over it and uh there you go my

Version of beans with greens the New Year’s Day classic tradition in the South and like I said a little Italian spin all right let me take a bite of this m oh my God I mean you can’t fake sounds like that listen M oh so delicious and uh you know I know it’s

Usually blackeyed peas and color greens but hey I went with white beans and arugula and you can’t go wrong with a chunk of pork on things you I’ve said that for years simple country homecooking very rustic translation there’s no recipe really comes out different every time but anyway if you

Go on the site there’ll be some kind of ingredient list and uh give it a try and as always enjoy chambat that’s what my family called it there’s the real name chambat uh that’s thanks to Scott and Boston who helped solve this childhood mystery I always wondered where the name

Came from and you’re going to read about that today uh it starts with some sausage sometimes olive oil and garlic that my Aunt Joyce who made this for me sweated down all right she did that before I got there so I wasn’t able to film it but you know

How to sauté onions and garlic and sausage uh until they’re translucent now basically what this is is a vegetable stew that is uh simmered in a tomato mixture so what she took was uh large can of whole peeled Tomatoes she pureed that with her stick blender she also had

A small can of tomato sauce so basically she had about 36 o just over 2 quarts of tomato puree when she was done she also put in just a splash of water to rinse that out we never waste stuff all right at least she doesn’t I

Don’t know if I would have done that but anyway that’s what you’re supposed to do uh she threw in some chopped basil about I don’t know half a bunch salt and pepper to taste that’s up to you I like to put in some red pepper flakes uh she

Went with just black pepper uh you know she was the chef that day I don’t argue with the chef but if you want a little spicier some pepper flakes are nice and here’s the other essential ingredients potatoes green beans uh zucchini which was always in there and we always had

That a lot of that around in the summer of course uh green and red bell peppers and I hope you’re sitting down cut up hot dogs you got to read the blog today I’ll explain all that okay so what she does in the simarine Well it’s not

Simmering yet but it will be in the soon to be simmering tomato mixture she’s going to add her potatoes which you can see she cut in like 2 or 3 in pieces her cut up Peppers again 2 3 in pieces are fine and her zucchini and what you’re

Going to do is you’re going to simmer the potatoes the zucchini and the pepper in the Tomato mixture again it was already uh started with the sauteed onions and garlic and a little bit of sweet Italian sausage I’ll have all the amounts on the site today you’re going

To add that and you’re going to cover that and you’re going to simmer that for about 15 or 20 minutes and what’ll happen is the vegetables will start to soften slightly now she was worried here she’s like I got to switch to a bigger pot I said you can’t we’re already

Filming you can’t switch pots halfway through so she added her blanched green beans now I’m going to explain on the site today why you don’t want to add raw green beans to a tomato sauce it’s very scientific I’ll I’ll s like alt and brown as you read it all right so she

Stirs in her green beans and then yes hot dogs now this was always made growing up with some kind of sausage and I think my grandfather who made this dish the most often for me in my childhood and I probably ate this thing three times a week at least in the

Summer I just think hot dogs were the cheapest sausage available and I think that’s why he used them but any sausage will work it is delicious with hot dogs believe it or not all right so simmer that for 15 20 minutes more maybe even more than that until the potatoes are

Tender the vegetables are tender and you have an incredibly flavorful vegetable stew hey you vegetarians of course you can leave out the meat but uh try it with the hot dogs it’s really good of course it’s good with any kind of Italian sausage sweet hot you name it

Visit the site uh I think interesting article today and Enjoy oh