♪ ♪ - This is such a great throwback to a childhood classic.

It's creamy, silky, and rich, and I hope you love it, too.

- You've got such bright, sweet flavor from our red peppers, a punch from the sun-dried tomatoes, just a bit of cheese, and the brightness of the basil is really highlighting my dish.

- As long as you have tofu, soy sauce, and balsamic vinegar on hand, you could have yourself a delicious stir-fried cumin tofu in less than 30 minutes.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know, great cooks don't really cook from recipes.

They simply cook what they have on hand.

So today we'll do that, starting with a tomato bisque.

It's made from canned crushed tomatoes.

Then a simple pasta dish with a red pesto made from jarred red peppers and sun-dried tomatoes.

And finally, stir-fried cumin tofu, which is a terrific way to use up that leftover container of tofu in your fridge.

Please stay tuned.

♪ ♪ - When I was growing up in India, one of my favorite meals, believe it or not, was grilled cheese with creamy tomato soup.

Today, I'm going to show you a grown-up version of that recipe without the cream and with all of the flavor.

Let's get started.

So, to make this recipe, I'm going to use country-style white bread, and we're going to tear it up into bite-sized chunks.

Now, I've taken the crusts off the bread.

That keeps the texture really even and wonderful.

Let's cook these croutons.

I'm going to get my pot going on medium-high, into which I'm going to melt some butter and some oil.

A little extra glug.

As soon as my butter is melted, I'm going to add some seasonings, immediately followed by my torn bread-- some thyme, some red chili flakes, a little salt and pepper.

And in goes the bread.

I'm going to stir this really well, making sure everything gets coated, and I'm going to cook this until the bread is golden brown.

So my croutons are browning very nicely, they're golden brown.

and I want to pause now before the spices scorch.

So let's pause.

I'm going to put them into a platter in a single layer.

And while they're still warm, I'm going to sprinkle some grated Parmesan cheese right on top.

The heat of the croutons is going to melt this cheese beautifully, and I'm going to let them sit aside to crisp as the cheese melts.

This is such a playful twist on the classic grilled cheese.

I'm really a fan of these Parmesan croutons.

I'm going to let these cool, and while they do, I'm going to move on to cooking my onion and garlic.

So, another reason I love this recipe, because it has very few ingredients, it also has very little fuss.

I'm using two garlic cloves, and I'm just going to smash them to release the flavor, but I don't have to chop them.

Smash and smash with the broad side of the knife.

Let's put the rest of our butter back in the pot.

Okay, that butter is melted.

I'm going to throw in my garlic.

Along with a little additional seasoning, some salt.

A little more thyme.

I love this dish also because it's just one pot and I am lazy, I hate doing dishes.

In go the chopped white onion.

So I'm going to cook this for about five to seven minutes until the onions are softened and translucent.

So my onions have softened, they're translucent.

Everything is smelling amazing.

The flavors are releasing already, and this is my favorite part, it is so easy.

I'm using canned crushed tomatoes.

Those go into the pot.

Let's get all that last bit of crushed tomato.

And then our little secret trick to make this a super, silky, creamy bisque without any cream, we're using some of that country-style white bread.

I'm going to mix this in, add some water, and I'm going to cook this down until the bread has thickened up the mixture.

So that'll take about ten minutes, and then I'm going to cool it before I puree it.

So the tomato mixture has been cooling for about five minutes.

You can see how the broth has thickened up significantly as the bread starts breaking down.

I'm going to add a little extra oil to this.

Always good.

And then we're going to emulsify it using an immersion blender.

You can also do this in a regular blender, but make sure to do it in batches so you get a really smooth consistency.

So my soup is starting to look really thick and creamy, and I'm going to warm this through now.

And then we'll serve and taste.

So the soup has been blended all the way through, a creamy consistency, and I've warmed it, so I'm ready to serve and taste.

Now, this soup falls under the category of bisques because it's thickened in a specific way without cream.

Sometimes you can use bread for this.

Some recipes in other places use rice.

I'm going to top this with those lovely crisp croutons, a very elegant substitute for a grilled cheese, and a little bit of extra freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

And I'm going to finish this with a little extra drizzle of olive oil.

That is comforting to my eyes already.

Let's taste it.

This is such a great throwback to a childhood classic.

It's creamy, silky and rich.

That velvety texture of the tomatoes and the familiarity of the flavor, as well as those crispy croutons, a little bit of heat from the chili flakes and all that thyme underneath.

I love this soup.

This is our tomato bisque with Parmesan croutons, and I hope you love it too.

♪ ♪ - You know, everybody's wrong about the best way to peel a hard-cooked egg.

Now, every couple of years, there's a new series of articles on social media.

The most recent spate of pieces was about you need to steam the eggs instead of boil them, and that's the secret.

Well, it turns out that how you cook the eggs is not the issue.

The issue is how you chill the eggs after cooking.

So we're going to start with four eggs and we're just going to put this in boiling water.

And I learned this technique, by the way, in Paris.

I was at a small bistro and we were making oeuf mayo, which is hard-cooked eggs with a layer of sort of mustard mayo on top.

So we're going to keep this boiling for eight minutes and 40 seconds.

That gives you a cooked white, and a yolk that's still moist, but firm.

So if the cooking isn't really the big deal, what is the big deal?

Well, inside the egg there's a protein membrane made of albumin, right?

And it sticks to the inside of the shell and provides protection for the egg.

The key is to get the egg to shrink quickly once it's cooked, and that albumin releases from the inside of the shell.

Now, if it doesn't and you go to peel an egg, it sticks, right?

The albumin is still sticking to the inside of the shell, so you get this really messy peeled egg.

What we're going to do when this is finished cooking is we're going to use a really big ice bath.

And that's the secret.

You want lots of ice bath, lots of ice.

It's sort of a heat sink, it's going to make those eggs cool down really fast.

And when they cool down fast, that membrane is going to release from the inside and it's going to be really easy to peel.

So now it's been eight minutes and 40 seconds.

And we'll take those out and put them in this big ice bath.

And as I said, you want a big ice bath, you want a lot of cold water to chill down those eggs as quickly as possible.

The faster they cool, the more likely it is that membrane is going to release from the inside.

So, as I said, it's not the cooking method itself, it's actually the chilling that makes all the difference.

By the way, we tried this with new eggs-- that is, fresh eggs.

We actually had some two month old eggs sitting around.

We tried that-- so the age of the eggs makes absolutely no difference.

It's just about the cooling bath.

So, been just three minutes.

And by the way, in three minutes, the egg is still warm.

which is nice depending on how you want to serve it.

So three minutes.

And you can tell we used a lot of ice.

You can't just use three or four ice cubes.

You got to use a lot of ice here.

Okay, now, here comes the test.

I made a lot of promises.

So we're just going to gently crack it here.

Okay, so we're just going to crack it around the equator and then we're going to peel it.

So now we have a perfectly peeled, hard cooked egg.

It's still warm and you can tell the outside peeled really easily and it's perfectly smooth.

So let's cut into it just to show you what it looks like inside.

So that's the egg; so the yolk is set, but it's still very moist, it's not overcooked.

This works, by the way.

You know, other methods say it works 80 percent of the time, 85 percent of the time.

This works.

And you can probably email me if it doesn't, but it works 100 percent of the time.

So how you cook the eggs really doesn't matter.

We used boiling water, eight minutes and 40 seconds for a set white and set yolk, but not overcooked, into a big water bath, use lots of ice for three minutes, that's all you need.

Take them out and peel them, and you will have easy-peel eggs and perfectly cooked on the inside.

♪ ♪ - So today we're going to be making a pasta with a pesto rosso.

Pesto rosso is a red, ultra-flavorful pasta sauce.

And I know that when you think pesto, you're thinking green, but you don't necessarily have to have fresh herbs to make a pesto.

This is actually a really easy pantry pesto that we can throw together.

Pesto is meant to be ground up and pounded up, but in this case, we're going to be using the food processor just to make our lives a little bit easier.

But first, we've got to get our pasta started.

So I'm going to add some salt to my boiling water, and I'm going to use farfalle here.

You can use any short pasta shape you want.

You want something that's going to really cling to the sauce.

Give it a quick stir.

And while this is cooking, I am going to get started on my sauce.

So from my pantry, I grabbed some roasted red peppers.

I've got a crushed clove of garlic.

I've got about two ounces of pecorino Romano, and I just cut it into little cubes.

Some pine nuts.

And some oil-packed, sun-dried tomatoes.

I always like a little spice.

So we're going to add some crushed red chili flake.

And then I'm going to add about a quarter teaspoon of salt and a quarter teaspoon of pepper.

Add my oil in so it can blend up nicely.

All right, we're ready to buzz it up.

I'm going to keep this going in the food processor for about 30 seconds until it's nice and smooth.

All right, our sauce is nice and smooth.

I'm going to reserve about half a cup of my pasta water just to make sure that my pesto rosso clings to my noodles.

I've got my pasta water reserved, it's almost done.

I'm going to go take it, drain it, and add it back to my pot so we can add our pesto rosso for our final dish.

All righty, we've got our pasta out, nice and drained.

I've got my sauce all nicely blended.

Now, if you don't have pine nuts, you can use almonds here.

You can even make this about two days in advance and keep it refrigerated.

But for me, it was just easy to make it while my pasta was cooking.

I'm going to go ahead and add all of my sauce to my pot.

Perfect.

So I've got all my sauce in here, but I'm also going to add about a quarter cup of that pasta water that I reserved, just so it clings to my noodles.

And I'll keep the rest off to the side just in case I need a little bit more to thin it out to make sure that it's coating everything well.

Now I've got everything in here, ready to toss it up.

All right.

We've got the sauce beautifully clinging to our noodles; now it's time for me to serve a little bit for myself.

♪ ♪ So to this, I'm going to add just a little drizzle of oil and some torn-up basil leaves.

And, of course, best part, little extra cheese.

I like cheese.

Sorry.

(chuckles) All right, we're ready to taste it.

(chuckles) Mm-hmm.

You've got such bright, sweet flavor from our red peppers, a punch from the sun-dried tomatoes, just a bit of cheese, and the brightness of the basil is really highlighting my dish.

So there you have it, we have our pasta with pesto rosso.

♪ ♪ - You know, everyone's wrong about pickling.

And the reason I found out about that was I was in Tokyo a few years ago, and I was with Elizabeth Andoh, she's a well-known cookbook author and teaches the art of Japanese home cooking.

And we made pickles in 15 minutes.

And a quick pickle is very common, not just in Japan, but in other cultures.

So we're going to do it right now, and it's less than half an hour, and it's easy to do.

Two things that go together frequently, especially in the Japanese table, are daikon radish and carrots.

But you could certainly do anything you like, like radishes, for example.

Pound of each cut into matchsticks.

And we're going to use just a teaspoon of salt at this point.

And then we're going to massage the salt into the vegetables.

So what we're trying to do here is to get some of the water out from the carrots and the daikon, and we're going to let this sit a few minutes.

We'll pour off the excess liquid, the water, and then we'll put these into a pickling brine, essentially, liquid, for just 15 minutes, and then you're good to go.

You can let it sit longer, of course, in the fridge.

Some recipes, you can do this in a plastic storage bag if you like.

You don't have to do it in a bowl, but you want to really get your hands in there and massage the vegetables.

And this will mean that when you pickle them in the vinegar and the sugar and the salt and the water, you're going to get a crispier pickle, because you've got rid of some of that excess water.

Now I can really feel it, I can feel that water coming out.

They're getting a little slippery.

They're losing some of their volume.

So we'll just set that aside for about five minutes.

Meanwhile, we'll make the pickling liquid.

So this is so simple to do.

All you need is water, three-quarter cup.

Unseasoned rice vinegar, a three-quarter cup, some sugar, of course.

And a little bit of salt.

And we'll just whisk that together.

There are two different kinds of pickles, really.

There's a quick pickle like this, and then there are fermented pickles, which take more time with salt.

So this is the quick version.

Now, while those vegetables sit for a minute, let me show you a thing I really like to use.

You can get these online.

You put the vegetables in here with the pickling liquid.

The thing that's nice is the top goes on, and then you can turn it, and this presses down.

So you end up keeping everything under the liquid just by turning this dial on top.

So if you don't have one of those, we'll just use a bowl and a plate.

But if you do a lot of it, they come in different sizes.

It's a really nice way to easily submerge the vegetables in the pickling liquid.

So it's been five minutes.

Let me just squeeze out any of that excess liquid.

Now, we're going to put that in our pickling liquid, and I'm going to squeeze out whatever I can there.

So the liquid is right there at the top of the vegetables.

More liquid will come out as these sit.

We'll just put a plate on top just to keep it submerged.

Now you can wrap it with some plastic wrap, put it in the fridge.

You really only need about 15 minutes, and you will have quick pickles, but you can leave it for a few hours if you like, or even overnight.

And that's the secret to how to make a quick pickle.

♪ ♪ - The quickest way to get a great meal on the table is to work with high-impact ingredients.

Two of our favorites are soy sauce and balsamic vinegar.

They're both fermented, which is why they add an instant depth to any dish, and they can transform any stir-fry.

Now this dish is inspired by Xinjiang cumin lamb, which originates from the Xinjiang region in northwestern China.

The recipe involves pairing lamb, or sometimes beef, with whole cumin seeds and chilies.

But for our recipe, we actually swap in protein-rich tofu, which readily accepts flavor when marinated for as little as 15 minutes.

Now, to make this marinade, I'm going to pour my ingredients into this pie dish here.

And those ingredients would be soy sauce as well as balsamic vinegar.

And we'll also add in a little bit of salt and pepper.

We'll give that a quick little stir here.

And while those flavors marry, let's go ahead and prepare our tofu.

So here I have a brick of tofu that's been drained and patted dry.

And we're going to cut that in half lengthwise.

And then from there, you want to cut crosswise into half-inch squares.

Just like that.

And now all we got to do is lay our tofu directly into that marinade, tossing to coat as you go, so that way that marinade starts sinking in from both sides.

And like I said, this tofu only needs to sit in the marinade for like 15 minutes, but you can marinate it for up to an hour as well.

You can already see all this tofu is soaking up that marinade so you know it's going to be packed with flavor.

So now this tofu is going to marinate for 15 minutes or up to an hour, and then we'll get cooking.

So as you can see, my tofu has taken on all of that marinade.

And now we're going to dredge it in a little bit of cornstarch to help crisp it up when we sear it off in the pan.

So to do that, going to take a couple of pieces here, pat them dry because we want this extra dry, just like so.

And then we'll transfer this over to a plate that I have prepared with a little bit of cornstarch already laid out.

And we want these to be evenly coated.

Give them a little bit of a toss and then I like to kind of clap along with them just to get rid of any of the excess.

Excellent, and we'll repeat the same with the remainder of the tofu in this dish.

With all of my tofu dredged, we are ready to start frying.

So here I have a twelve-inch nonstick skillet that I'll set to medium-high.

I'm going to pour in a little bit of neutral oil, just to heat until it shimmers.

So now that it's been dredged, just go ahead and lay it directly into the oil and it should start to sizzle on you.

And that cornstarch is going to immediately start to crisp up.

And that actually helps the tofu kind of hold its shape and maintain its integrity.

The one thing about cornstarch is sometimes if you place the tofu close to another piece, it might stick.

So don't hesitate to get in there with some tongs and just break it up a little bit.

And now I'm going to cook the tofu on this side for about three to four minutes to get it nice and brown.

After that, we'll give them a flip and do the same thing on the other.

So it's been three minutes and as you can see, oh yeah, my tofu has developed a really beautifully brown, even crust.

So now I'm just going to flip them and cook them for the same amount of time on the opposite side, three to four minutes.

So that way everything is nice and crispy.

Okay, take a look at that, really beautifully brown.

And now all we got to do is transfer it over to a paper-towel- lined-plate to drain off all that excess grease.

♪ ♪ So now we could get to the actual stir fry portion of our stir fry here.

And we're using the same pan that we cooked all of our tofu in, just with a little wipe down.

Now we're going to return it back to medium heat, and we'll throw in again, a little bit of oil until it's shimmering.

And now we'll throw in our onions that have been thinly sliced.

As well as our cumin seeds.

Now, these cumin seeds have been lightly crushed, and that gives us a really phenomenal, crunchy texture throughout this entire stir-fry.

You could certainly use ground cumin, but I really like the crunch that this provides.

And we'll cook this off until all of the onions have charred slightly towards the edges and have softened just a little bit.

And that takes about three to five minutes.

As soon as the cumin hits that hot oil, you get that really beautifully savory, earthy, almost smoky aroma.

So my onions have softened, but as with any stir fry, things start to move very quickly from here on out.

So it's important to have all of your ingredients at the ready.

So next I'm going to throw in some garlic that's been roughly chopped, as well as some crushed red chili.

We'll sauté that up until it's just aromatic, and that takes about 30 seconds.

You can see now my onions have started to get a really nice char on them, but they haven't burnt.

And they're definitely soft, but still have a nice crunch.

So those are very aromatic.

So now we could go ahead and throw in our tofu.

And I like to just bunch it all up on my paper towel and transfer it on in.

And then we'll follow that up with, again, our balsamic vinegar and soy sauce, As well as a little bit of water.

Now, from here, you want to move things around pretty quickly, so that way everything gets coated in that sauce as it reduces and caramelizes.

If you feel particularly confident, you could give the pan a little flip.

And that is done.

So I'm going to go ahead and pull that right off the heat, and we could go ahead and get to plating.

We will be adding some final touches here in the form of some thinly sliced scallion for some really bright, fresh, allium flavor.

♪ ♪ And I like things spicy so we are going to throw a little chili oil on as well.

Just a quick drizzle.

Now, traditionally, this can get served with rice, but I'm not going to lie, I just want to taste the tofu right now.

So I'm going to steal this piece right here.

Get a little bit of onion.

Look at that.

Mmm.

The tofu really takes on a lot of that marinade.

The onions still have a little crunch.

You get that earthy cumin, and that savory garlic.

I can't believe I only marinated this tofu for only 15 minutes and it tastes this flavorful.

And there you have it.

As long as you have tofu, soy sauce and balsamic vinegar on hand, you could have yourself a delicious stir-fried cumin tofu in less than 30 minutes.

You could get this recipe and all of the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

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