Milk Street dresses up salads! We start with Vietnamese Chicken Salad with Sweet Lime-Garlic Dressing (Goi Gà), a symphony of tastes, colors and textures. Then, we show you why warming your beans is the key to better flavor with a recipe for Greek Bean Salad (Fasolia Piaz). Finally, we make a Spanish spin on the classic Caesar: Romaine with Manchego and Smoky Pepper Dressing.
Get the recipes for:
Vietnamese Chicken Salad with Sweet Lime-Garlic Dressing (Goi Gà): http://bit.ly/3I3SXFy
Greek Bean Salad (Fasolia Piaz): http://bit.ly/3JDHX2l
Romaine with Manchego and Smoky Pepper Dressing: http://bit.ly/4g3WCQe
#MilkStreetTV #MilkStreet #Food #Cooking #Salad #Chicken #Vegetables
♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ – You know, I’m sick
and tired of boring salads. So we decided to jazz up
salads today on Milk Street. I went to Vietnam years ago,
and I loved those flavors– you know, lime juice,
a little fish sauce– really bright, clean flavors,
so we applied those flavors in a Vietnamese-style
chicken salad. Then in Greece, of course,
we love a typical white bean salad,
but we found a way of getting flavors
into the beans. And finally, we did
Caesar salad, Manchego cheese. So stay tuned with us
here at Milk Street as we take a fresh look at
exciting new salads. – Funding for this series
was provided by the following: ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ – So what is there to say
about chicken salad that’s never been said before? You can add mayonnaise,
celery, you can have grapes,
you can put apples in it. Nothing wrong with those. But I was in Vietnam,
I don’t know, 15 years ago, and I noticed that the flavors were really simple
but really clean. We thought we’d take
the notion of chicken salad and add a classic sauce,
if you like, or combination of ingredients to make it
really clean and bright. So this is the formula. Now, Julia Child always used to
tell me she’d have these little formulas in her head, like, how
to make a custard, et cetera. This is one
of the standard recipes, “sauces” you’ll see all over
the Far East. Which is two parts lime juice,
roughly one part fish sauce. Fish sauce, if you buy the lousy stuff in
the supermarket, is lousy; it tastes like fish. The good stuff does not. It just has a lot of depth of flavor,
so don’t be scared of it. They always add a little sugar to this. And we’re gonna add
a little garlic, grated garlic as well. So onion is next. We’re not gonna dice it. This is a salad–
it’s obviously not being cooked. So we want the texture. So we have the sauce,
we’re just gonna let the onion sit in the sauce for
a few minutes. Just takes away some of
that bite. Gives it a little bit
extra flavor as well. And that will be our dressing.
We’ll set that aside. A few other ingredients,
cabbage, we’re gonna shred it. A couple of chilies. I tend to, as you might expect; ’cause I don’t
like a ton of heat, I’m gonna actually seed this. You can
leave the seeds in if you, if you like pain. Just slice these across. What else do we have?
Well, we have a little basil. We’re gonna just
tear this into big pieces. A lot of basil I find
at supermarket… (sniffs) …doesn’t have a lot of flavor. And when you can actually
smell it. Put it in your hands like that,
you should actually have a fairly strong smell. So we have
all of our ingredients. The last is chopped peanuts. We’ll put about half of them
in the salad, half for this topping;
so we have shredded carrots, about three cups
of shredded chicken, cabbage,
the peppers, the chilies. And another tip I have, which we’re not following
right now, is I like to use
humongous bowls. I find anytime I toss a salad
or something, I just use a giant bowl. It’s just a little easier,
I think. This is fine. But if you have a bigger bowl,
it’s always good to have one really
humongous bowl around. So that was basil, cilantro. I’m gonna put about half
the chopped peanuts in this, and then we have our dressing. So I’m gonna get a bigger bowl because this is gonna be hard
to do, so. The bowl for set decoration is
now gonna be used for a salad. That’s so much better. There you go. When people tell me that
what they’re about to serve me is healthy, it always makes me nervous, because that makes me think
it’s not gonna taste good. (chuckling): But this is a case
where I can say, hey, it’s healthy, you know, but it actually tastes great. So it’s got
the best of both worlds. And we reserved some of those
chopped peanuts for the top. So we have texture, right, with the cabbage, and we have
the nuts on top, et cetera. Bright, fresh, nice color, a little bit of hints
of flavor from Vietnam. And taking a classic
and turning to something that we really
love here at Milk Street. Mm. I’m not going to tell you
it’s healthy. It’s just delicious,
and that’s good enough for me. So if you want to trade up
chicken salad, you want something with
more flavor and more texture, try this Vietnamese-style,
or influenced, salad; very bright flavors,
great textures, great color, and it’s absolutely one of our
favorite salad recipes here at Milk Street. ♪ ♪ – Mostly,
salads serve the function of being
a palate cleanser, right? They’re that refreshing bite
between rich things on the table, and that’s thanks to
the acidity in their dressing. At Milk Street, the function
of that acidity or tartness– sourness– is so important
to our cooking, that we reach far beyond
the world of vinegars. We do love vinegars, but we have developed
four categories to think about sourness. So these are
four ways to be sour. So our first category,
our first way to be sour, are everyday vinegars. These need to be versatile. So they need to be used
for salad dressings, to deglaze a pan,
a little pop in a rice dish. They should be held
at arm’s length ’cause you’re gonna use them
all the time So our second category
are aged and concentrated. But they’re not all vinegars. Think of them as
salad dressing in a bottle. They’re so reduced in flavor,
that the acidity’s balanced with some caramelization. And you’re gonna use them
as a drizzle, as a glaze, and definitely on dessert. Our third way to be sour are your specialty vinegars.
these can be a little; further away than your everyday in your reduced
and concentrated. This is like
having a house wine. You bring it out
when guests are coming over and they know
they’re eating at your house. You want at least one
specialty vinegar at home. I’m gonna show you how to use it to make a really simple
vinaigrette that Matt’s actually
gonna use later in the episode. All right,
so here we have lettuces, but also bitter things. We have endive and radicchio. And keep that in mind,
’cause it’s gonna affect how I build my vinaigrette. I’m gonna use the calamansi. I’m choosing that because
we have these bitter greens. And this has a sweetness to it. And I know that I wanna balance
how bitter the greens are. So I’m gonna use
a little more of the vinegar than the classic
three-to-one proportion. And a little salt. And I think black pepper as a spice is great with this. You could also use a little cumin or coriander
if you want. How acidic a dressing
needs to be really depends on what you’re serving it with. So if this salad was going
with really rich main dishes, I would skip the oil altogether. My friend Viola Bottoni, when
she’s serving something rich, she just takes the greens, sprinkles them with salt,
squeezes fresh lemon juice or drizzles of vinegar, and tosses it with her hands, and that’s the palate cleanser. I tend to just spoon it on top
and then dress it right when it gets to the table so nothing gets too soggy. So we have our fourth category, which really represents
Milk Street’s love of and dependency on sourness and tartness
to brighten things up. And this is
the “not vinegar” category. So you have citrus, of course, yogurt and sour cream verjus, which is
a mildly acidic grape product. It’s great
for making a pan sauce, especially for people
who don’t drink alcohol. Then you also have
tamarind and tamarind paste. And then my favorite
of all the not vinegars, dried sour spices–
so this is sumac. These are dried black limes, sometimes known as omani lime, and they’re fermented
and dried salt-cured limes. These are
incredible flavor booster. So why do I love
the dried spices so much? Purely a texture thing. Let me demonstrate. You have a perfectly roasted
chicken with crispy, golden skin. So many of us
take a piece of lemon and squeeze it all over the top. What does that do?
Soggy, soggy, soggy polka dots where the liquid
from the lemon juice destroys your beautiful,
crispy chicken skin. So instead,
if you take your sumac, sprinkle this on top. When we bite into it,
we’ll get the benefit of the brightening from the sourness, but we won’t
get any of the sogginess. It’s perfect. Let’s review
our four categories. We have our everyday vinegars,
reduced and concentrated, specialty vinegars,
and our not vinegars. I’ve showed you how
to use three of the categories, but not the everyday vinegars;
in the next segment, I’m gonna make a
Greek bean salad, and it’s gonna use red wine vinegar. ♪ ♪ We’re actually using two sources of tartness in this recipe. We’re using red wine vinegar, but we’re also gonna be using
lemon juice at the end. Let’s start with the
main body of our salad, which is four cans
of white beans that are drained and rinsed, and we’re gonna add
half a teaspoon of salt. We’re gonna stir them up–
and now the key to getting a really flavorful bean salad, even when you’re
gonna serve at room temperature, is to heat them. We’re gonna put them in
the microwave for three to three and a half
minutes. When they’re in the microwave,
they’re gonna swell. When we take them out
of the microwave and we add some flavoring agents
as the beans contract, as they cool down,
they’re actually gonna absorb and then get coated
in that flavor. We’ll have flavored beans,
not flavor on beans. (beeps) You’ll notice none of my
other ingredients are prepped. ‘Cause this is how I
actually cook at home. I read the recipe.
I have three and a half minutes. That’s a perfect amount of time
to get my ingredients cut up. We’re gonna
start with a red onion. And you want them so thin
that sometimes when you whiff and
you actually miss the onion, that’s better
than getting thick pieces because we’re
not cooking this onion. The vinegar alone is gonna sort
of cook or pickle the onion. We also wanna grate some garlic. So both of these
things are being used raw. And we’ve burst tons
of cells cutting them up and grating them up so they have
a lot of flavor. But you know what? I’m looking at my microwave,
and I need to stir my beans. (beeps) So another reason
to read your recipe before you start cooking is
that often when I have red onion,
I’ll pickle it on the side while I heat my beans. But I know that this is only
gonna sit for at least 30 minutes
in a high acid vinegar, and that’s going to
mellow them out and sort of pickle them
in the salad. It saves a step of work. So take the time to read your recipe
before you start cooking. You may save time in
the long run. And now our beans are almost
done, so I can grab those. Give it the good old
kitchen shoulder shrug. Okay, and while they’re
nice and hot from the microwave, you wanna get all of
your flavorings in right away. So in goes the garlic, about half your onion. And then we’re gonna add in
our red wine vinegar. We’re gonna add in a little bit
of olive oil and salt and pepper. In Greece, you often use
a pretty potent red wine vinegar,
one with a high acidity. That’s because it’s cutting
through other rich flavors. So here we have a lot
of starchiness, and we wanna soften our onions;
acid’s great for that. Okay, we wanna let this sit
for at least 30 minutes. The longer it sits, the mellower
the onions will become. All the flavors
will meld together. So I like to make this dish
at least a day in advance. I take it out of the fridge,
though, and let it come
to room temperature before I finish it. For a Milk Street recipe, this needs
to now have some punch, needs a little fat, needs some
acid, it needs some herbs. We’ve got all of that covered. Let’s start with our avocado. So we didn’t prep these earlier because the avocado will brown. I score the outside of the skin, and then it’s really easy just
to peel back the avocado skin. And then from there. This is like butter.
This is gorgeous. That’s gonna add the fatty
element that any big dinner salad
needs, right? There are components to a salad
that actually feels like a meal. So if you want this to be
lasting, don’t skimp on fat. We also want herbs
for brightness and freshness, and we can
use the parsley as-is. If there are really
big leaves of parsley, you know,
you might tear this one in half. But it’s really great
to use herbs as leafy greens. They pack a big punch of flavor. The dill I like to cut, because this is not friendly to your
dinner guests, you know it’s gonna hang
from a tooth and make
for awkward conversation. Chopping the dill means that it’s gonna be evenly
distributed all over the salad. We’re gonna release more
dill flavor. So this can go in too. Now is when it comes
to layering acid. So we have a lemon, we don’t need that much
more liquid, but we want
a lot of lemon flavor. So we wanna zest
a good portion of the lemon. And that just
packs the essential oils, which carry all
that bright lemon flavor. A lot of the work we’re
actually asking lemon juice to do is from the lemon flavor
and not the acidity. But since
this has sat for a while, the vinegar’s mellowed out. More red wine vinegar here
would be a little harsh, but even just
a teaspoon of lemon juice has a brightness
and a freshness without any of the harshness
of a high acid vinegar. Every dish, especially one with
this much starch, wants a final bright pop,
and one way we’re getting that is from
adding the lemon zest and the lemon juice. Little techniques
for layering acid that really make the salad better. We’re almost done. One last touch–
a little drizzle of olive oil. And now we have this completed
Greek white bean salad. Now with a piece of bread
and a hunk of feta cheese, this is a salad
that can stand alone. ♪ ♪ – So I don’t know about you, but dinner salad to me tends
to be whatever I can find in
the crisper drawer. There’s little premeditation to
what ends up in the salad bowl. So my casualness with salad doesn’t mean I don’t care
very much about it. I pay a lot of attention
to how I prepare what goes in the salad,
how to bring out its best flavor, and how to make
it look best and taste best. So let’s go ahead and
work through a few different really common
vegetables and make a really nice salad
here. So I love romaine. It’s perhaps
the lettuce I have most in my crisper drawer at home because it tends to hold well,
it’ll last for a week or so. So with romaine,
I tend to just cross cut it. So I’m gonna go ahead, I’m
gonna take that Romaine heart. And I can just hold that heart
and just cut crosswise. We’re not going too thin, so
I go to about half-inch thick. We’re just
gonna go all the way up that romaine heart
in nice even pieces. We’re gonna
discard those very top ends of that romaine heart ’cause they tend to be
pretty bruised and they tend to
be really mature at the tip. So they can be a little bitter. One thing I always do when I
cross cut romaine hearts is I’m gonna
give it a little fluff and make sure there aren’t any brown bits, and then I’m gonna
place it in my salad bowl. Now, when I’m building a salad, I do make sure to keep everything in little piles
until I’m done. This is gonna look
like a Trivial Pursuit piece by the end of this. Now, I want a slightly
sweeter grain in there, too. So let’s go with
a little butter lettuce. Now, butter lettuce is very, very delicate. If you cut butter lettuce,
those leaves are gonna get mashed, and it’s a very organic shape. It’s just not gonna
look right if I cut it. So I’m gonna
use my fingers for this. So I’m gonna tear off a few
leaves, and I’m gonna tear off
the bottoms, and I’m just
gonna tear those into pieces. Just sort of very organic. So just a little bit.
Not too much butter lettuce. So radicchio,
it’s shaped like a cabbage. The first thing I’m gonna do
is I’m gonna cut it in half. And we have a core. You really don’t want to eat a
radicchio core because it can be very bitter. I’m going to
put it cut side down. It’s not going to slide around. And I’m going to cut
that half into a quarter. Hold my knife at an angle
and just cut out that core. I’m going
to cut that just in half again and just cut crosswise;
if we leave it in big pieces, it’s going to be too bitter. It’s going
to overwhelm that salad. We want little pops and accent of that flavor
to tie our salad together. So I will put that in
my bowl there. Now, with
these beautiful radishes, what I’m going to do here,
I’m going to leave a little bit of that top on. And this provides
a handle for cutting. Let’s keep those fingers safe,
so I’ll cut off that root end, cut in half
through that stem end, and then we can just
cut very clean slices. I really think of salads as a great way to practice
my knife skills, and I find all the knife work for
a salad meditative and one of my
favorite parts of making dinner. One of my other absolute
favorite go-to’s for salads is fennel. Now fennel has
that licoricey anise-y flavor. It’s got a really crisp,
crunchy texture. There’s a lot of stock left
on this fennel bulb. So let’s go ahead.
We’re going to cut those off. Now the feathery green bits,
you can go ahead and even just
add these to your salad as long as they’re
clean and fresh looking. So we’ve taken the stalks off and now we’re left
with that fennel bulb. We’re going to put it down
on that flat bottom, then we’re going
to carefully cut it in half. Now we have these two halves. So the first thing
I’m going to do is peel off that tough exterior layer. And what we want to do is
we want to cut them crosswise to the root end. When you cut crosswise,
you’re cutting across the fibers of the fennel
so it will turn out more tender. Adding salt will help soften the texture and draw out the moisture a little bit. So I’m gonna add a pinch of salt and just give it a little fluff. So the one thing
we don’t have yet is cucumber. One thing I always do with
cucumber is peel and seed it. I’m gonna pinch it
so it doesn’t slide around and I’m gonna cut
it in half lengthwise. The seeds and the goo
in a cucumber do absolutely nothing
for a salad. And all you wanna do is scoop out that channel. I like using a really thin,
sharp edge spoon for this. Now we have this
gorgeous cucumber flesh which we can cut in
a variety of different ways. More often than not, I’m just going to cut it on a
bit of a bias and I’m just turning that
cucumber a little bit and I’m
just going to cut crosswise. In addition to exposing
more surface area, so they absorb more flavor
and release more flavor, bias cuts
are just really pretty. All we need now is a dressing. So this is the calamansi vinegar Rosie talked about earlier, which is just an absolute
favorite. Pour it over our greens. I’m gonna start mixing
everything up. I’m lifting from the bottom and sort
of fluffing it all together. So I’m being very gentle
when I’m plating that salad. I’m just carefully, carefully
placing that salad on the plate. Give it some nice height. So there we have this
gorgeous salad with all the different shapes, all these different flavors: succulent, chewy, tender. And we’ve cut every vegetable to really maintain its flavor
and bring out its best texture. So next time you’re
emptying out your crisper drawer to make salad for dinner, really consider
how you’re prepping it. ♪ ♪ – When you think of memorable
salads in the group of classics, the Caesar
ranks pretty high up there with its crispy romaine,
crunchy croutons, creamy garlic dressing
and a shower of Parmesan. But if you took
those elements and made a sharp turn
into Spanish territory, you end up with something
out of this world fantastic. Our romaine salad with Manchego and smoky pepper dressing
keeps the best elements of crisp romaine, crunchy croutons and makes an incredibly rich, garlicky dressing based on a Catalonian romesco sauce with this base
of smoked red peppers. So we’ll start
with the croutons. We have a quarter cup of
olive oil in a 12-inch skillet. So the choice of
bread for these is a basic French baguette-style loaf. We’ve taken a portion
of the baguette and cut 12 slices about a quarter-inch thick each. These will simmer in the olive
oil for about three minutes. You want to turn
them over halfway through, and both sides will get a deep, golden, toasty brown. Okay, so we’ll just
transfer them to paper towels. And while these are hot, you want to sprinkle them
with a little bit of salt. Little pepper’s always nice. All right, we’ll let those cool
down until they get completely crisp, and then we’ll
start making our dressing. Okay, the croutons
are cool enough to handle, and now we’re going to break
them up into smaller pieces. About a quarter-cup’s
worth we’re going to use in the dressing. So the last
two slices I’ll break up right into the food processor. Then we’ll add
our roasted red pepper. And of course,
this is a garlicky dressing, so we’re gonna add a
big fat clove of crushed garlic. Then we have sherry vinegar, which is
the Spanish vinegar of choice. Then to this version of romesco,
we add a little bit of smoked paprika, which is a Spanish-style
paprika, and something very special
we’re adding to this salad is smoked almonds. And of course, every
good sauce or vinaigrette needs a little bit of olive oil. And we have
a quarter cup of that here. Gonna pulse
this a few times until it’s sort of mixed up together, and then we’re gonna let it go
until it gets really smooth. Okay, this
is looking pretty good. Okay, so now we’re
going to taste for seasoning. Add salt and pepper
if we need it. Mm, this is so good. So let’s talk
about why the crust is important for emulsification. It’s the crust on
a loaf of bread that gets brown in the oven, and that browning
is caramelization. And that browning also turns the starches into
sugars called dextrins. And it’s those dextrins that are
fantastic for emulsification. So if you’re using bread,
it’s a thickener for anything with a liquid base,
leave the crust on. Okay, so the next thing is to test the texture of this
dressing. That is pretty thick. That is not gonna do well on a lettuce leaf. That’s gonna
be pretty thick and gloppy. So we’re gonna add
a little bit of water to this. Couple tablespoons,
maybe three at the most. All right. That is looking really nice. Got something that’s a little
bit thinner– can you see that? It’s dripping off a little bit,
but it’s thick enough to still cling to the spoon. That’s a nice thickness there. Okay, best part of this salad: the assembly. (laughs) We’re using hearts of romaine. We’ll just cut them into
half-inch wide strips right across the top. Okay. Oh, this is gorgeous,
crispy romaine. We’re going to add
a little bit of torn fresh mint. This just adds
a bright herbal element. Okay, we’ll take about half of
this, which is about a half cup, and we’ll toss it in, and then we’ll see if we need
to add a little bit more. But I think this is
gonna be a nice amount. Instead of a shower of Parmesan, we have a sharp, salty Manchego cheese, which is a Spanish cheese,
of course, finely grated;
we’ll just sprinkle some of this over the top. We’ll sprinkle over some more
of the chopped smoked almonds. And of course, can’t forget those fantastic croutons
we made. My favorite part. It’s a gorgeous salad. I mean, the color of the romesco
dressing is just fabulous. And a final
grating of Manchego cheese. Mm. It’s all the best elements of a classic Caesar, with flavor seriously ramped up. It’s really a versatile,
incredibly flavorful, unforgettable salad. And lucky you, you can get
this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street
at MilkStreetTV.com. – Recipes and episodes from
this season of Milk Street are available at
MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes,
and step-by-step videos. Access our content any time
to change the way you cook. – The new Milk Street Cookbook
is now available and includes every recipe
from our TV show. From Vietnamese chicken salad
and tiramisu to easy-stretch pizza dough
and Austrian apple strudel, the new Milk Street Cookbook
offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes. Order your copy of the Milk
Street Cookbook for $29.95; 40% less than the cover price. Call 855-MILK-177 or
order online. – Funding for this series was
provided by the following. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
2 Comments
You douche! So, don't get the horrible "stuff" aka fish sauce at the grocery store…but you don't mention a brand you recommend or where to purchase. Your recipe is rendered USELESS or have a fishy chicken salad. 🙄🙄🙄
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