WELCOME TO OUR KITCHEN: We're making a spicy pork dipping sauce for vegetables
Hey there. We're Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough. Together, we've written three dozen cookbooks (working on #37 right now) and we've sold almost 1.5 million copies of our books.
We're delighted you're joining us for our adventures in food and cooking. In this episode, we offer a simplified version of more traditional Cantonese dish: a spicy pork dipping sauce (almost a ragu) for raw vegetables. We've got a one-minute cooking tip about easy, cheesy dumplings. And we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week.
Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:
[01:00] Our one minute cooking tip: how to make easy, cheesy dumplings for chilis and stews.
[03:04] We're making warm a coconut curry pork dipping sauce for vegetables. Think of this as our easy take on a traditional Cambodian dish--or better yet, a spicy, Asian-inspired pork ragu that you can drag all sorts of raw vegetables through for a fun and tasty dinner.
[16:42] What’s making us happy in food this week: satsuma oranges and old-school chicken soup.
Transcript
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:And I'm Mark Scarborough.
Speaker:And together with Bruce, we have written three dozen cookbooks, are writing
Speaker:the three dozen plus one right now.
Speaker:I can't wait to tell you about that.
Speaker:But the latest one out on the market is the Look and Cook Air Fryer
Speaker:Bible with over 700 photographs.
Speaker:Every single step of every recipe.
Speaker:is photographed.
Speaker:Thanks to the folks at voracious on imprint of little brown for
Speaker:making such a beautiful book for us.
Speaker:We're very excited that it's out there.
Speaker:Check it out for your new air fryer and the new year.
Speaker:But in this podcast, we're not talking about air frying.
Speaker:Instead, we've got a one minute cookie tip.
Speaker:We've got a weird recipe that Bruce has.
Speaker:crafted out of a strange bit of inspiration.
Speaker:We'll tell you all about that.
Speaker:It's for a meat sauce that you can drag raw vegetables through.
Speaker:Very interesting.
Speaker:And we'll tell you what's making us happy and through this week.
Speaker:So let's get started.
Speaker:Our one minute cooking tip, easy, cheesy dumplings.
Speaker:You can make them for any stew or chili, and it all starts with store bought.
Speaker:If possible, not from the can, but from a plastic bag.
Speaker:Or even from a pizza parlor.
Speaker:You can go in and ask them to buy a dough.
Speaker:Do you notice that in, not necessarily, I don't know about chains like Papa
Speaker:John's, but in, uh, pizza, a lot of pizza parlors, you can go in
Speaker:and just say, Can I buy a dough?
Speaker:And they'll look at you weird, and they won't know how to price it, so
Speaker:they'll charge you like, A couple bucks, but you can, they've got them sitting
Speaker:right there so you can buy them outside of places like New York or Chicago.
Speaker:That might not be so easy to do.
Speaker:Local pizza places, maybe places that sell pizza by the slice is
Speaker:where you kind of want to go.
Speaker:And that's, that's a real New York thing.
Speaker:You know, in New York, if you say to someone, what'd you
Speaker:have for lunch at a slice?
Speaker:That means you had pizza.
Speaker:I know, of course it's a weird New York thing.
Speaker:Okay, so anyway, go back to the pizza.
Speaker:So you have your pizza dough, you leave it at room temperature for a few hours
Speaker:to soften up, and your yeast activates and it rises, and then you gently fold
Speaker:in some shredded cheese, and if you've seen the episode of Schitt's Creek,
Speaker:and you don't know how to fold cheese, well, yeah, I don't know, just fold.
Speaker:I don't know how to fold broken cheese.
Speaker:If you say fold that cheese one more time.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Uh, so you fold in the cheese, and then you roll it into balls, and
Speaker:you drop that dough right on top of your simmering chicken stew or
Speaker:your chili, cover it, simmer it 20 more minutes, and you're done.
Speaker:Now we're not talking about, like, enclosing the cheese in the dough,
Speaker:we're talking about literally sprinkling cheese all over the dough, and then
Speaker:kind of kneading it all together.
Speaker:Kneading it in, kneading it in.
Speaker:And creating, then cutting off little balls And rolling those balls,
Speaker:yep.
Speaker:And they steam and they puff and there's something I love about a cheesy pizza
Speaker:dough dumpling sitting on top of chili.
Speaker:Oh, my Texas relatives are all coming to kill us right now.
Speaker:They're, they're getting in their trucks and driving up
Speaker:here to New England to shoot us.
Speaker:And in fact, if you use mozzarella cheese, you could even put it on
Speaker:top of like a bowl of bolognese.
Speaker:Oh, there you go.
Speaker:Now, I don't have any Italian relatives but all the Italians from New Jersey
Speaker:are driving up here to tell us.
Speaker:There's gonna be a dead horse head in my bed tomorrow, I think.
Speaker:Oh my gosh.
Speaker:Um, so, before we get to the next segment of the podcast in which
Speaker:we're gonna go to the kitchen, let me first apologize for my voice.
Speaker:I still have this weird respiratory thing that's hanging on.
Speaker:If you've been listening to the podcast, you know this.
Speaker:And it's still sitting around.
Speaker:It's not COVID.
Speaker:And it's just not going away really fast.
Speaker:So, I'm sorry my voice is giving out constantly.
Speaker:But let me also say that we have a newsletter and you can subscribe to it
Speaker:by going to our website, bruceandmark.
Speaker:com.
Speaker:And there's a form there, fill it out.
Speaker:I do not capture your email.
Speaker:I do not even know that you've signed up.
Speaker:And furthermore, I do not.
Speaker:ever allow anyone to sell it under any circumstances.
Speaker:You can unsubscribe to that at any time.
Speaker:It includes the recipes from this podcast and also bits about our
Speaker:life here in rural New England.
Speaker:So let's head to the kitchen.
Speaker:Today I am making a really interesting dish that is made with ground pork and
Speaker:I'm going to call it a pork dipping sauce.
Speaker:I want to explain where this came from.
Speaker:So, we were up in Maine on holiday.
Speaker:I mean, we'd spent a time up in Maine, trying to get away
Speaker:after we'd finished a book.
Speaker:I think we went to Portland and we were eating like crazy in Portland, Maine,
Speaker:which has an excellent food scene.
Speaker:And we were on our way back here to our place in New England, and we
Speaker:passed through Lowell, Massachusetts.
Speaker:And if you don't know, Lowell has a gigantic gigantic Cambodian population
Speaker:and we decided we were just going to try a Cambodian restaurant.
Speaker:So we yelped it in the car.
Speaker:We found one.
Speaker:We went to this restaurant and lol, they suggested we try this dish,
Speaker:which I couldn't possibly pronounce.
Speaker:I'm going to pronounce it poorly.
Speaker:The way it's written in Roman letters in the English alphabet is Prahokitis.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And Prahok, P R A H O K, it's actually the name of this fermented fish, usually
Speaker:mudfish, that is pounded into a paste.
Speaker:And this paste is a staple of Cambodian cooking.
Speaker:It is, but,
Speaker:but we're not making a Cambodian dish.
Speaker:So here's what's happened.
Speaker:This dish of meat sauce came to our table and a big platter of raw vegetables.
Speaker:And we didn't know what to do.
Speaker:We had to call the waiter over and she said to us, Oh, you just pick up.
Speaker:The, I'm not kidding, the slice of eggplant, the carrots, the celery,
Speaker:the zucchini rounds, you just pick them up and you drag them through
Speaker:this meat sauce and eat them.
Speaker:At first I was like, what, wait, raw eggplant, seriously?
Speaker:But it was one of the most absurdly delicious and comforting
Speaker:lunches I've had in a long time.
Speaker:So what happens here?
Speaker:is that we've come back to our house and Bruce has been playing
Speaker:around and he's created not anything that is even close to bahakitis,
Speaker:or however you say it, prahakitis.
Speaker:I don't even know, I'm sorry, please forgive me.
Speaker:I do not even know the slightest word in Cambodian.
Speaker:But he's created something that is like this, that it's a
Speaker:meat sauce for raw vegetables.
Speaker:It's really wild.
Speaker:It is really great.
Speaker:Start.
Speaker:So I'm starting by making my own curry paste because you need a
Speaker:curry paste at the bottom of this.
Speaker:If you don't want to make your own curry paste, you can go to your age,
Speaker:local Asian market, and you can buy a.
Speaker:bottled or jarred red curry paste, but here's the thing, don't buy one that
Speaker:has red chilies as the first ingredient.
Speaker:It's going to be way too hot.
Speaker:Chilies should be in there, but maybe not first.
Speaker:Maybe you'll want to see shallots.
Speaker:It should definitely have lemongrass.
Speaker:It should have macrute leaves.
Speaker:It should have garlic.
Speaker:But I'm going to make my own chili paste here.
Speaker:What I've done already is I had three guajillo chilies.
Speaker:I scraped out the seeds using my surgical gloves, which you all know I love.
Speaker:And I broke them into pieces and I soaked them in hot water for 20 minutes.
Speaker:Guajillo chilies.
Speaker:This is an interesting bit here.
Speaker:And some people may not know what they are.
Speaker:They have a very chocolatey flavor to them.
Speaker:When they're dried, they get, they're not, I was going to say,
Speaker:they get very Earthy and chocolatey, but they're also not terribly hot.
Speaker:They're a little hot, but they're not mind bogglingly hot as guajillos You
Speaker:can find them in large supermarkets amongst the dried chilies Or there's
Speaker:a billion online suppliers that will send you guajillo chilies You can keep
Speaker:them in a cool dark pantry sealed up in a bag for a year a long time They
Speaker:will eventually start to break down and rot But it takes a long time.
Speaker:So as Bruce says, he's soaked these in boiling water for 20 minutes.
Speaker:Well, put boiling water on them and soak them for 20 minutes.
Speaker:And now we're going to put them in, uh, we're going to use a NutriBullet.
Speaker:I love my NutriBullet, I'm very excited about it.
Speaker:Maybe you know this, but if you follow us on social media, but I've been
Speaker:cooking much more vegan food lately.
Speaker:And, uh, when I cook and, uh, every vegan chef I follow on TikTok.
Speaker:And on Instagram reels uses neutral bullet.
Speaker:So I convinced my chef husband that we needed one and now he loves it.
Speaker:He, at first he was resistant and now he loves it.
Speaker:Anyway, you can use a food processor.
Speaker:It's a little big, a mini food processor might be better.
Speaker:You can also use a blender, but again, there's not a ton of stuff here.
Speaker:So it's hard to get it blended.
Speaker:Other alternative.
Speaker:is a mortar and pestle.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And you can crush it.
Speaker:You can crush it all up.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So we're going to put the chilies, the drained chilies into the Nutribullet.
Speaker:And then we're going to put three stalks of lemongrass.
Speaker:And this is just the middle tender part.
Speaker:You're not going to use the outer dry leaves.
Speaker:You're going to pull all the outer leaves off.
Speaker:You're going to use only the tender inner core.
Speaker:We're going to put four garlic cloves.
Speaker:And I love this.
Speaker:piece of fresh turmeric.
Speaker:There are four makrut lime leaves, and these are fresh.
Speaker:We got them at a local Asian market.
Speaker:You can use dried makrut lime leaves.
Speaker:If you don't know about makrut, M A K R U T lime leaves, look them up online.
Speaker:Again, a common ingredient in Southeast Asian cooking, a lot of
Speaker:Asian cooking, and a lot of Indian cooking even, right, at this point.
Speaker:So, and Malaysian cooking, yeah, very common across the board there.
Speaker:So again, these are fresh.
Speaker:Uh, you can use dried and then some
Speaker:ginger and then I'm going to how much I have another one inch piece.
Speaker:It's about the same size of turmeric and ginger and I'm
Speaker:putting in a quarter cup of water.
Speaker:I might have to add more, but first I'm going to screw on the bottom of this
Speaker:neutral bullet and I'm going to blend it.
Speaker:Yeah, and it needs a little bit more water.
Speaker:So I'm going to put a little bit more water in.
Speaker:You can go up to a half a cup total.
Speaker:The pain in the neck about the Nutribullet is to put more water
Speaker:in, you have to kind of re unscrew it and take the whole thing apart.
Speaker:I know.
Speaker:Unlike the Vitamix, which you can just pour it through the top.
Speaker:But it's, this is really too few ingredients for a good Vitamix.
Speaker:You can do it, but it's going to be frustrating.
Speaker:Uh, many food processors are going to let you off and pour right through the top,
Speaker:but Um, the Nutribullet can be a pain.
Speaker:Okay, so now we've got the
Speaker:chili beans.
Speaker:It's really better
Speaker:now.
Speaker:So now we're gonna make the pork dip.
Speaker:And here's how you're gonna do it.
Speaker:You're gonna go to the stove, and you're gonna get a wok, and you're
Speaker:gonna heat it up, get it nice and hot.
Speaker:Okay, here we go.
Speaker:Over a high heat.
Speaker:There we are.
Speaker:It doesn't take long to heat up.
Speaker:I have this thing called the Wokman.
Speaker:It concentrates the flame on the bottom and it's
Speaker:super You can't use it on an
Speaker:electric stove.
Speaker:Use it on a gas stove.
Speaker:So it really heats it up fast.
Speaker:And into that I'm putting three tablespoons of oil.
Speaker:You can use a neutral
Speaker:flavored oil or peanut oil.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And I'm dumping in the chili paste and I'm going to Fry this
Speaker:until it is very, very fragrant.
Speaker:This is going to take about 30 seconds.
Speaker:If you have a vent over your stove, it's a good idea to put it on.
Speaker:Otherwise you might, uh, disturb other people in your house.
Speaker:So once that it gets really hot and, uh, uh, also your eyes start to burn,
Speaker:then you want to crumble in one and a half pounds or 675 grams of ground pork.
Speaker:If you can find lean ground pork, that's great.
Speaker:If you can grind your own, you're insane.
Speaker:Oh my gosh, you're insane.
Speaker:But you want to do that in and you want to now toss it and stir
Speaker:fry it Okay, so this pork is going to take very long to get cooked.
Speaker:I mean it takes a minute or so Like what we're looking for is that We lose that
Speaker:pink raw color and it starts to brown.
Speaker:It's going to go a little longer when we add the other aromatics.
Speaker:So what are some of those other aromatics?
Speaker:Well, while Mark is stirring that pork up, I have four Anaheim chilies.
Speaker:I like Anaheim's because they're hot, but they're not too hot.
Speaker:And I'm going to toss them in while Mark is doing the pork now.
Speaker:So they just add some of their fragrance to that.
Speaker:And now we have a thing about sugar.
Speaker:You can add white sugar, you can add brown sugar.
Speaker:I'm actually using palm sugar because I love palm sugar.
Speaker:And it has a little edge of caramel to it already.
Speaker:That's a tablespoon of that.
Speaker:And then two tablespoons of shrimp paste.
Speaker:And if you don't know about shrimp paste, get ready.
Speaker:It's a little bit stinky.
Speaker:Uh, it's a, it's a fermented product, right?
Speaker:And it, what it does is it mellows, just like fish sauce, over the heat
Speaker:and gives this pork an incredibly deep, complex, savory flavor.
Speaker:Look for a shrimp paste that has oil floating on top of it.
Speaker:Don't get one that's dry.
Speaker:I love the ones that are, that almost look like chili crisp, that
Speaker:they have oil floating on top.
Speaker:And we're also adding fish sauce because I want this to be really complex and
Speaker:really deep and really delicious.
Speaker:And then what are you putting in now?
Speaker:Okay, this is one and a half teaspoons of chicken soup powder, bouillon, right?
Speaker:Bouillon, chicken bouillon powder.
Speaker:So, what we're doing here is we're adding a lot of salt, of
Speaker:course, and a lot of savory base.
Speaker:It's all to balance that sugar.
Speaker:So, one and a half teaspoons of chicken soup powder or chicken bouillon.
Speaker:You can crush up a cube and get one and a half teaspoons as you need it.
Speaker:Finally, here we go, a cup of coconut milk.
Speaker:Do not use low fat coconut milk by any stretch of your imagination.
Speaker:You're going to use, you want the full creamy richness.
Speaker:To cut the spice to balance it all and now we are just going to let this
Speaker:bubble away for about 10 or 15 minutes to reduce because there's a lot of
Speaker:liquid that coconut milk We want this to become actually almost the texture of an
Speaker:Italian meat sauce And so we are going to let this bubble and then we're going
Speaker:to come back when it is ready to taste
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Now it is ready to taste it's come Off the heat.
Speaker:It's cooled down a bit.
Speaker:It's quite thick.
Speaker:It's kind of like bolognese.
Speaker:It doesn't smell like bolognese, but it's kind of like bolognese in its texture.
Speaker:And what we have here, what we have today is a bunch of, of cut up, uh,
Speaker:zucchini and, uh, pickling cucumbers.
Speaker:And we can drag these through the sauce.
Speaker:They're dead raw.
Speaker:You want dead raw vegetables, tomatoes if you like, onions, sliced onions, yes, if
Speaker:you like radishes, yes, cabbage is really a wonderful thing too, cabbage is great,
Speaker:bok choy is great, uh, kale if it's small and digestible is great, believe it or
Speaker:not, small collard greens that have the stems cut out are great, raw, and believe
Speaker:it or not, again, I keep saying believe it or not, I had this with eggplant the first
Speaker:time, with thin slices of raw eggplant.
Speaker:So what you want is raw vegetables here, and you're gonna drag
Speaker:it through this meat sauce.
Speaker:And then you're gonna eat it.
Speaker:Oh, oh, this is delicious.
Speaker:I love Asian flavors.
Speaker:I love the fish sauce.
Speaker:I love the coconut.
Speaker:I love the sugar.
Speaker:I find this so comforting.
Speaker:There's something about the coconut and the sugar and the chilies
Speaker:that for me it's a comfort food.
Speaker:Yeah, it's really wild.
Speaker:Um, this is really an unusual recipe.
Speaker:I mean, this is an original creation from Bruce.
Speaker:It may have been inspired, I'm not sure, but this bears no
Speaker:resemblance to anything that is authentically Cambodian or anything.
Speaker:This is kind of his original riff.
Speaker:Off that, using more accessible ingredients, I know, I know,
Speaker:um, the lime leaves and it's not terribly accessible, but
Speaker:But red curry paste is very accessible.
Speaker:You can
Speaker:find it and It's so tasty and delicious, and it is really a great contrast
Speaker:warm against the cold raw vegetables.
Speaker:I love them cold.
Speaker:Again, we got this in the restaurant originally with tomatoes, onions.
Speaker:Just a whole big, giant platter of vegetables to drag through it.
Speaker:I really like it with cabbage and, uh, and, you know, cord collards, as I say.
Speaker:I think you nailed that when you said the temperature that's that is, it's that
Speaker:contrast of the cold vegetables, the warm sauce, the crunchy of the vegetables,
Speaker:the rich chewiness of the pork.
Speaker:It's a combination that's unique that.
Speaker:I had never tried before and I just love this.
Speaker:Right,
Speaker:and yes, could you eat this on rice?
Speaker:Of course you could.
Speaker:But it's better with the raw vegetables.
Speaker:Just trust us on this.
Speaker:It's a very unusual flavor profile.
Speaker:It is deep, complex, sophisticated.
Speaker:It's probably not for the third grade set.
Speaker:But it is really unusual and interesting and it's a wild
Speaker:way to wake up your palate.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Before we get to the last segment of our podcast, what's making us happy in food
Speaker:this week, let me say that it'd be great if you could subscribe to this podcast.
Speaker:If you could rate it, give it a rating and even a review, even
Speaker:great podcast as winners, thank you to all of you who have done that.
Speaker:Uh, we so appreciate it because we are willfully unsupported.
Speaker:So it is the way that you can not woefully willfully willfully unsupported.
Speaker:So it is the way you can support us.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Off to what's making us happy in food this week.
Speaker:It's the same thing that makes me happy.
Speaker:Every February, Satsuma oranges,
Speaker:oh my goodness, they
Speaker:are tiny little mandarins that are so intensely orange flavored.
Speaker:They're a little sour, but still sweet.
Speaker:They don't have seeds.
Speaker:You can peel them and eat them in one bite.
Speaker:bite and they make me so happy and I buy enough that I could even squeeze some
Speaker:and have juice with a little bit of we
Speaker:had laughing is because we went to California to see our niece.
Speaker:She had the lead in her high school musical for her senior year.
Speaker:She was aerial in a little mermaid.
Speaker:The Little Mermaid.
Speaker:All the mermaid.
Speaker:How about just little mermaid
Speaker:? Okay.
Speaker:I don't, don't even know.
Speaker:Believe it or not, I had never seen, I think it's The Little Mermaid said
Speaker:Mermaid, so I knew nothing about it.
Speaker:I didn't know anything about Ursula.
Speaker:I knew nothing.
Speaker:So I know I'm a bad gay, but I had never seen any of these things.
Speaker:So, um, we went and saw her and, uh.
Speaker:On our way home back to New England, we had to fly through a snowstorm and
Speaker:through a snowstorm into New England, we landed in a snowstorm, we drove out of
Speaker:the airport in a snowstorm, and instead of going straight home, being ever now
Speaker:the intrepid New Englanders that we are, we actually stopped at a Whole Foods so
Speaker:Bruce could buy said Satsumas because, you know, God forbid we should just
Speaker:drive home and try to get home safe.
Speaker:And boy,
Speaker:I am so happy with my Satsumas.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:it's crazy.
Speaker:So what's made me happy in food this week is something that Bruce
Speaker:made for me to help me get over this respiratory grossness, and
Speaker:that is a giant pot of chicken soup.
Speaker:And he made real chicken soup as we call it in our house, which
Speaker:by that he means Jewish chicken.
Speaker:Jewish penicillin.
Speaker:It's clear.
Speaker:The way I judge a good chicken soup is not just the flavor.
Speaker:It has to be
Speaker:clear.
Speaker:No, and I am different.
Speaker:I brown the chicken.
Speaker:I essentially make chicken stew, so I don't make anything like And what he did
Speaker:is he took a bunch of chicken wings and put them in an instant pot with water.
Speaker:And he cooked them in an instant pot until they were dead.
Speaker:A long time.
Speaker:And then he took them out.
Speaker:He took all the meat off the wings.
Speaker:He saved the meat to the side.
Speaker:He clarified the juice of any flesh.
Speaker:I
Speaker:poured it through my super fine mesh conical strainer.
Speaker:Right, to get
Speaker:rid of any impurities.
Speaker:And then he heated that and reduced it a bit, right?
Speaker:A little bit.
Speaker:And cooked noodles separately, egg noodles.
Speaker:And then ladled the hot soup over the cooked noodles and added back
Speaker:a little bit of that chicken meat.
Speaker:It was So delicious.
Speaker:Play your
Speaker:cards right and what's left of it, you're going to get kreplach with that chicken.
Speaker:Kreplach.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:See, I live Jewish dumplings.
Speaker:I live in a delicatessen.
Speaker:That's where I live.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Thanks for being a part of the show.
Speaker:We kind of, that was a weird recipe, but we were really excited about it and really
Speaker:love it with the crunchy vegetables.
Speaker:Give it a try.
Speaker:If you want to find that recipe, you can find it on our website, bruceandmark.
Speaker:com.
Speaker:You can also see Bruce making this recipe on our TikTok channel,
Speaker:Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:Or in our Facebook feed, Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:See, it's all Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:We did that on purpose and you can find Bruce making it there
Speaker:and find the recipe in those places, as well as on our website.
Speaker:And we'd love to have you back next week.
Speaker:And every week we tell you what's making us happy in food this week.
Speaker:Tell us what's making you happy in food this week on our Facebook
Speaker:group, Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:And if it's really fun and exciting, we'll talk about it here on our next episode.
