- [Sara] Sara's Weeknight Meals is made possibly by USA Rice, SunSweet, Ninja, Chef's Choice, and thanks to the generous support of.

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(upbeat instrumental music) - Thank you.

- Thank you!

We all love a bargain, two for the price of one, but today, we're gonna save time instead of money by making two meals in the time it takes to make one!

How are we gonna do that?

Well, we're gonna make a meal the first night, then we're gonna repurpose the second into an entirely different dish.

Start with my spicy roast pork.

Very complicated spicy glaze, you won't believe it.

It's as simple as it gets, and so delicious, I had to use it twice!

Mm, very good.

My brother Peter and I both love banh mi sandwiches.

- This is like the original fusion cuisine, French and Vietnamese.

- After a field trip to discover the essential ingredients, I'll turn that roast pork into my version of the banh mi.

I like to have tart, shredded vegetables with the pork to counterbalance the richness.

Another way to double down on dinner.

Make Peruvian baked chicken thighs one night.

That's gonna start smelling amazing.

And the next, they become chicken and tomatillo salsa nachos.

That looks delicious.

But honestly, how can you go wrong with melted cheese?

And on Ask Sara.

- Yeah, so I have two little sisters.

What kind of jobs can I have them do?

- The sooner you start, the better.

This is my younger brother Peter as a little boy.

Who knew he would grow up to be a New York state judge?

And such an adventurous eater!

It was Peter who first turned me on to the Vietnamese sandwich called banh mi, and ever since, we've been on a quest to find the best one.

Today, we're in New York City's Chinatown.

I have found the best restaurant for us, they've got the most incredible banh mi.

- Okay!

- Better than yours!

- I don't believe it!

- Yeah, well, believe it.

So, it's Saigon, Vietnamese restaurant, and The New York Magazine said it's the best one in town!

Usual tiny space, like your joint.

To eat the sandwich is to understand Vietnamese history.

The French colonized Vietnam, and from them, the Vietnamese took French bread, mayonnaise, and pate.

Added their own hot sauce, pickled vegetables and cilantro, and the banh mi was born.

Mm, very good!

- Oh, man!

- It starts in layers, you can't get it all in one bite!

That's funny, it's like compartmentalized, like TV dinner in a sandwich.

Mm, that pate.

- First time I had one of these was in Vietnam.

- Really?

When you took that trip?

How many years ago was that?

- 1994.

- What do you remember about that?

- Just that I saw a guy with baguettes, and he was putting pate on it, and then they put all these pickled vegetables on it, and I said, I want one of those!

- [Sara] Well, that makes complete sense!

- Yeah!

It's like the original fusion cuisine, right?

French and Vietnamese.

- Yeah, of course!

- It's great.

- I love these sandwiches so much, I'm gonna pull a magic trick here: make my own version of banh mi and get two meals out of it, starting with a base of spicy roast pork.

(exotic instrumental music) Hello, welcome to Sara's Weeknight Meals.

Today's theme is cook once, eat twice, and I'm gonna start with two pork tenderloins.

On night one, we're gonna put a spicy glaze on it and roast it, and then the next day, or two days later, we're gonna take the second spicy roast, slice it up, and turn it into that delicious sandwich I had with my brother.

First of all, I'm just gonna season the roasts.

These are about a pound and 1/4.

Now I'm gonna make my very complicated spicy glaze, you won't believe it.

And we're gonna use our secret ingredient, it's very popular in the United States with chefs, you've seen this Thai hot sauce.

It's made from chilies, vinegar, garlic, and salt.

It's the it hot sauce right now.

And actually, I never met a hot sauce I didn't like.

Okay, I'm gonna go get some sugar and add that here.

See, I told you, very complicated glaze, I don't know if you can handle it.

Okay, two teaspoons of sugar, and the reason for this is any time you add something hot to a recipe, you usually wanna balance it in some way so it doesn't just come off as hot.

And what balances a chili better than sugar?

They do a happy dance.

Likewise, and a teaspoon of salt, if you have added too much sugar to something, add a little bit of chilies to it, that will balance the sugar and make it seem less sweet.

Alright, now I'm gonna put these in the pan, I've already preheated the oven to 400 degrees, I'm just gonna get these guys in here and brush 'em up with our sauce.

There we go, make sure you get all of it.

You just sort of paint it on.

So I'm gonna pop these in the oven, give them about 20 to 25 minutes.

What we're looking for is an internal temperature when we're done of 145 degrees.

So while that's roasting, I'm gonna go take care of a few other things, get my side dish going, and pick up the mail!

(soothing guitar music) Ooh, that smells so delicious!

Oh, looks wonderful.

But now, the important thing is, we need to let it rest.

Any time you cook a roast, or a steak, or anything, there's carryover cooking time, and also, it needs to rest so all the juices redistribute, and go back in.

Otherwise, if we slice this right now, they come streaming out, and we would have a dry pork roast.

And when you put the thermometer in a long roast like this, stick it sideways to get more of a reading.

Sideways and through the middle.

Great, there we go, 145.

Then we're gonna cover it, let it rest, and I'm gonna get my side dish together.

I've got some beautiful rainbow chard.

And first, I cooked up some onion and ginger.

So we're just taking a little Asian.

So we're gonna start with the stems.

And after about a minute or two, the stems will start to get more tender.

(sizzling) And now we're gonna add the greens!

(soothing atmospheric music) Right, I'm gonna call that wilted.

Put my pork down here and decide which one I wanna use tonight and which one tomorrow.

So I think I'm gonna take the one that's a little, see, it's a little less done, you can see, 'cause it's pretty soft.

I'm gonna have that straight up tonight, and then we'll save the second one for tomorrow!

I'm just gonna let it continue to rest a little bit.

This pork tenderloin, particularly when you fan it and slice it like this, should serve four.

Sorta fun, you line them up like The Rockettes, right?

Now I'm just gonna put my greens on there.

Oops!

And you know, from start to finish, the pork only took 30 minutes from the moment that we turned on the oven to the moment that here it is!

And we're gonna serve this with beautiful brown rice that we just cooked up, very, very simple.

There you go!

Part one of cook once, eat twice.

(exotic drums music) Alright, it's night two.

I've got my pork roast that I cooked along with the other one, spicy pork roast couple days ago, and now I'm gonna turn it into a banh mi sandwich.

So I'm gonna make a dressing for my shredded vegetables, I like to have sort of tart, shredded vegetables with the pork to counterbalance the richness.

Three tablespoons of rice vinegar, which is a very mild vinegar.

Two teaspoons of sugar, to sort of counterbalance the acid in here.

It's like a pickle, this is like a quick pickled salad, and then, 1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt, just whisk it, I'm gonna whisk it until it's dissolved.

And now we're gonna get our vegetables in there, so we're gonna start with two scallions.

(airy instrumental music) And then we're gonna use one of these English cucumbers, and what's great about the English cucumber is that it has a very thin skin, and it's supposedly seedless.

We need about a cup sliced.

Now, I'm gonna use the food processor to shred the other vegetables.

So I've got some carrots, gonna put 'em in here.

(whirring) Okay.

Now, I just wanna talk about daikon, this has been peeled.

Daikon is in the mustard family, it's a radish, and who knew, I just found out, it's filled with vitamin C, so it's really good for you.

It also, well, here, it's a Japanese word, I also learned this, that means great root.

If you can't get a daikon, you could just use regular red radishes, which would be beautiful in here, so now let's just quick talk about jalapeno.

So every time I go and work with a jalapeno, I wanna check to make sure it's hot.

So I'll just run my finger on the cut side.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

And to see that the flesh is hot, if it isn't, I'll add some of the seed pod, and some of the seeds, and some of the ribs, the stuff that goes up the side, which is the really hot stuff in a jalapeno, but this guy is good, and this guy was its brother, so I'm just gonna add a whole jalapeno, I know I've got the heat I'm looking for.

Okay, so I'm gonna toss this up, and this is ready to roll.

You see how quick that is?

Okay, I've gotta make my mayonnaise, I wanna have everything ready.

We want about 3/4 of a cup.

And then, we're gonna add two tablespoons of the Thai hot sauce.

Okay, and sugar, we need to counterbalance, remember, counterbalance that chili.

So, teaspoon of sugar.

Woo, that was a hard sauce, wasn't it, now?

And we're ready to go!

We're gonna start by slicing our pork roast.

I'm gonna slice it pretty thin.

(relaxing exotic music) We start with our bread.

And lather it up.

Here comes our ham, this looks like good quality, black forest is good.

That goes on the bottom.

And then we have our pork tenderloin.

Still has a little bit of spicy residue from the other night.

Okay.

And liver wurst.

Or just get some nice French pate.

Now we get to the vegetables.

You see, this is quite a big sandwich.

Yum.

And last but not least, you gotta have some cilantro, if you hate cilantro, leave it off.

Okay.

Good to go.

Why not have a sandwich for supper?

So we served that with some terra chips and some iced tea!

Cook once, eat twice, my banh mi sandwich with last night's roast pork.

(light instrumental music) I get a lot of questions on my website for Ask Sara, and I love answering them, and I have one today that's very useful, I think, for moms, and it actually comes from a young lady, Ruth Gallagher, from Barrington, New Jersey!

Very close to Pennsylvania, and it's about her little sisters and how to get them cooking.

Ruth, you wanna share your question with us?

- Yeah, so I have two little sisters, one's 11 and one's six, and I was wondering what kind of jobs can I have them do when we all wanna cook together?

- Well, I love that question, because the sooner you start, the better, and if you're invested in cooking, then probably you're gonna eat it, I think that's a great way to start.

So I think a salad is a good place to start.

Now, your 11-year-old is probably, you know, we have to think they're two different ages, but one, for the six-year-old, it's really fun to use the salad spinner, because it's like a big top, you go like that, just like you would play with a top, and then you hit the brakes, sort of fun, it stops all at once, and plus, which, by the way, everybody should use a salad spinner.

And then you just lift out, you see all that water in there, so that's a fun thing, an easy thing for your little sister to do.

Your older sister could peel the cucumber for your younger sister, and then, it's interesting, because nobody wants to give a young person a knife, but yet you gotta start somewhere!

So you know those little plastic knives you get with takeout?

We're gonna use one of those today, and it works really well with the cucumber, and really, you couldn't hurt yourself with it.

So you could have your six-year-old do this too.

Or your older sister, whatever.

So there we go, so we've got those two things, now, another fun thing to do is when you're making a tomato sauce, what you do is, I always start with whole, plum tomatoes, canned tomatoes, because you don't wanna use the little cubed guys, because there's an additive that's put in there to make them keep their cubes, and I'd rather just have only tomatoes in my tomato sauce.

So I've opened up the can, and then you dump it into a bowl.

Now, we gotta chop this, this is something I'd recommend for grownups too, you go in with the best tool on the planet, and just squish around.

And this is something both of your sisters could do together, which is really fun and satisfying, and you just keep breaking them apart with your hands, and then you're good to go!

When you're all done, a fun drink that could be a kid's drink, that my brother invented, although I doubt he really invented it, but any rate, we call it the Peter soda, after my brother, and it's got two complicated elements, it's got fresh orange juice, or orange juice, and seltzer.

So all you do, and this way, it feels like it's also much healthier than a soda.

So then what you do, you could pour 'em at the same time or not, I think I'm gonna not live dangerously, so you just start with your orange juice, you could do this with other fresh juices, apple juice would be good too, apple soda, and then you just top it off with your seltzer!

And there you go!

- That's awesome!

- Yeah!

So, okay, well, I hope you try all of this with your sisters.

- I absolutely will, thank you.

- Thank you so much, Ruth.

Oh, I have to ask you a quick question.

My daughter's name is Ruth, she hates her name.

How do you feel about yours?

- I absolutely love it, it's a unique name, and it's perfect for me.

- Yeah, you're unique!

Alright, well, thanks again.

- Thank you!

- Okay, and if you wanna send in your questions for me that we can do on Ask Sara, please do, send them to my website, SaraMoulton.com.

(light instrumental music) We don't eat a lot of takeout at my house, 'cause we just don't like it!

But one of the things that we love is Peruvian rotisserie chicken!

And we find it at a restaurant in New York.

There's just something about it that's so special.

As a matter of fact, it was so special, I've tried to bust the recipe, and that's what I'm gonna make right now.

Only my version is not a whole rotisserie chicken, it's chicken thighs.

Why?

Because they look a lot faster than a whole chicken, and they're so tasty!

I mean, dark meat chicken really has a lot of flavor, and when you cook it on the bone with the skin, which is what I'm gonna do, it's even tastier!

So, start with a marinade, I've got in here some cilantro, if you hate cilantro, you could use some fresh oregano.

I'm gonna throw in six garlic cloves, these are sorta small, so I've got a little more.

(jazzy guitar music) So the rest of the marinade, we're gonna add a 1/2 a cup of soy sauce, and then a little vinegar, we got some white vinegar here, just two tablespoons.

This is really a refreshing, wonderful chicken.

There goes a tablespoon of oil.

And this is just vegetable oil.

Tablespoon of cumin.

And 1 1/2 teaspoons of paprika.

Could be whatever paprika you like.

'Kay, now we're gonna do 3/4 of a teaspoon of dried oregano.

Now, you can use 1/4 to 1/2 of cayenne.

I'm gonna go with 1/2.

So that is everything in there, and we're just gonna let it go in here.

(whirring) why am I using a blender rather than a food processor?

Because your marinade will get so much more ground up in a blender than it will in a food processor.

Don't get me wrong, I love my food processor for other things.

This is how I always marinade my meat, vegetables, whatever I'm marinading.

It's just so much easier, so much less messy than putting it in a bowl and tossing it.

And also, this has the added benefit that after you get the marinade in there, you close it up, and you can smoosh it around without getting your hands all dirty.

So that every last piece of chicken in here is gonna get coated.

And we're gonna marinade this at room temperature, 'cause it will marinade and absorb the flavors a lot faster, we're doing this just for flavor purposes, I mean, there's not all that much tenderizing going on.

Okay, I'm just gonna put it over here, and let it marinate for 30 minutes at room temp.

(jazzy instrumental music) So my chicken thighs have marinated for 30 minutes at room temperature, and I'm just patting them dry.

They'll brown when I pat them dry.

Then discard the marinade.

There we go.

Just pat 'em a little bit on top.

Now, I've preheated the oven to 450 degrees, and we're gonna put these on a rack, which means that any fat will drip down.

These are rather large chicken thighs.

Normally, this takes about 20 to 25 minutes to get cooked through.

The good news with dark meat is it's hard to overcook it.

Particularly when you cook it with the skin and the bone.

Okay, into the oven!

That is gonna start smelling amazing.

So now we're gonna make the sauce.

And I just wiped out the blender, you don't need to completely clean it, don't make yourself crazy.

And we're using scallions.

The whole scallions, all parts, the green and the white.

Sometimes they just tell you to use the white, 'cause it's sweeter, the green is more pungent.

Back into the blender.

And then a little bit of lemon juice.

And I'm gonna squeeze that right in.

This is about a tablespoon of lemon juice.

So we're gonna use a serrano.

Now, serrano is a wonderful chili, we need roughly 1/4 of a cup.

I'm going to keep the seeds and the ribs in there, that's where the all the hot stuff is, because I like the hot stuff.

But let me just say about serrano chilies, they're a little hotter than a jalapeno, if you really don't like a lot of heat, I would go for a jalapeno instead, but, yeah, I'm gonna do two chilies, I think that will be better.

Eyeballing, I'm not the best at proportions, but this does not have to be exact.

The thing with any chili, in any category, is even within the same family, like, so all serranos are not the same.

One could be very hot and one could be less hot!

Likewise with jalapenos.

So you just have to, oof!

They smell hot.

Sometimes what I do to make sure they're hot is I just rub my finger on a cut piece of it, and then taste it.

But I can tell these are hot.

Now I'm gonna add a little bit of goat cheese.

"What is goat cheese doing in here," you ask.

Well, it's gonna add a creaminess and a tanginess.

Soft goat cheese, and we've got 1/2 a cup, it's about two ounces.

Tablespoon of vegetable oil.

And that's just flavorless vegetable oil.

Now, this is an odd ingredient, but it's an important part of it, this cream sauce, it's very rich, so we've got a 1/2 a cup of half-and-half!

And then we're gonna add a 1/2 a teaspoon of salt.

Interesting concoction, huh?

And about 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper.

That was exactly 1/4 teaspoon.

(whirring) Wow, doesn't that look delicious?

I have to set aside four of these guys for dinner number two, which we'll make on a later date.

Now, if you really didn't wanna make double duty, you could buy yourself a rotisserie chicken and just start there, but as I said, any time you make something, make extra so you can turn it into another meal.

So I'm gonna put 'em on here, and everybody can help themselves, and then pour my sauce in there.

Let's talk about what we'd serve with them.

Staple crops in Peru are corn, potatoes, and beans.

And we have corn here, and you're saying, "What the heck is that?"

That's actually red quinoa.

Quinoa's an ancient grain that comes from Peru, it's the super protein, it's just an amazing thing.

It cooks in 20 minutes, it's a perfect weeknight choice.

And this is a particular version that's red.

I'm gonna pour some of this juice right on top.

(vibrant instrumental music) And here's my green sauce.

So, tonight we have Peruvian chicken thighs with the special green sauce, and tomorrow night, we're gonna take this chicken and turn it into chicken nachos.

Okay, it's day two, I'm taking my leftover chicken thighs, and taking the bone and skin off, and we're gonna turn them into chicken nachos with salsa and cheese.

I like to just chop 'em, you can shred 'em, I just feel that shredding takes so much time.

I mean, maybe it's nicer, but I mentioned I'm a lazy cook, so I'm just gonna chop these guys.

(tropical instrumental music) I'm gonna spread this chicken evenly over the tortillas.

These are store-bought, but you can make homemade, they're so easy, just brush brush oil on tortillas, and you can put a little chili, a little cumin on there, a little salt, bake it off, cut it into triangles before you actually bake it, and you'll have nice, homemade ones that are slightly lower in fat.

Now for the cheese!

I'm gonna grate about six ounces of Monterrey Jack cheese.

You could use cheddar, you could use any cheese that melts nicely that you like.

That looks good.

So now we're gonna sprinkle, I feel sort of silly.

"This is a recipe, you say?"

But, it is!

(soothing instrumental music) Okay, we're gonna pop this in a 400-degree oven just until it melts and gets hot, and that's gonna be about five to 10 minutes.

Oh boy, that looks delicious.

But honestly, how can you go wrong with melted cheese?

So I have some fun accompaniments, this is gonna make it a little healtheir.

We've got some black beans, we've got some store-bought salsa, you can do green or red, or make your own salsa, green or red.

Of course, a little sour cream, yogurt would be a wonderful possibility as well, and some scallions.

So there you go!

Weeknight meals are that much easier when you can turn the work of one night's meal into another great one later in the week without too much fuss!

I'm Sara Moulton, I'll see you next time for more weeknight meals.

(vibrant instrumental music) For recipes and videos, go to our website, SaraMoulton.com.

Sara's weeknight meals is made possibly by USA Rice, Sunsweet, Ninja, Chef's Choice, and thanks to the generous support of.

- [Announcer] The 2016 Subaru Legacy.

With symmetrical all-wheel drive, plus 36 mpg.

It pairs well with every kind of road.

Subaru, proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

(piano music) (musical jingles)