(upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Sara's Weeknight Meals" is made possible by Sunsweet and by.

- Cooking is the first kind of love you know.

It was starting when I was child and with my grandmother doing fresh pasta and now I transmit into all the guests.

It's something made specially for them.

- [Announcer] Oceania Cruises, proud sponsor of "Sara's Weeknight Meals".

(upbeat music) - Zwilling, makers of Fresh and Save, the vacuum food storage system.

One of the ways Zwilling has been helping cooks do it all in the kitchen for 209 years.

The Zwilling family of cookware is proud to support "Sara's Weeknight Meals".

(upbeat music) - Today, "Sara's Weeknight Meals" is all about pot.

No, not that kind.

I'm talking about casseroles, Dutch ovens, whatever you call them.

They're the perfect vessel for a trio of cozy winter dishes.

Ta-da!

There you go.

We'll start small with some durable personal casseroles filled with penne, Fontina and prosciutto.

Think about this, you pop it in the oven and 15 minutes later, you get this prize, this wonderful personal pasta, crispy on the top creamy on the bottom, deeply flavored.

Then a super chef smackdown with the mother of all casseroles, the cassolette.

Mine is fast enough for a weeknight full of crispy chicken and smokey kielbasa and inspired by her.

- This is Julia Child, bon appetit.

- [Sara] My buddy Ming Tsai comes in with his own version.

We are making Asian ginger orange duck cassolette.

- Cassolette, cassolette in quotes.

- Cassolette.

- So cassolette usually has beans.

- Right.

- So my bean is the edamame.

- [Sara] He's right, it's all about the beads.

So on ask Sara.

- I was really interested to have your opinion on this, what I call my team my bean conundrum.

- Million dollar question.

It's all coming up on "Sara's Weeknight Meals".

(upbeat music) Welcome to "Sara's Weeknight Meals".

You know, if there's anything more lovable than boiled pasta in a sauce, it's baked pasta in a sauce.

'Cause it gets all crispy on top and creamy underneath.

The only trouble with baked pasta is it's hard to get the pasta part of it right.

If you boil it ahead of time, it's soggy.

If you put it in dry, it never gets tender.

I have a secret.

I'm going to take some warm water here and add salt till it tastes salty.

Let me tell you what I'm making.

I'm making baked penne and Fontina with prosciutto.

Then we're going to add 10 ounces of a pasta, in this goes.

Okay so we're going to set that aside for 45 minutes and meanwhile, I'm going to get my cocottes, mini cocottes ready.

So these little guys are the mini version of what everybody gets for their wedding.

You know, that enamel cast iron version of the large Dutch ovens.

Well, here we have one cup mini Dutch ovens, and what's so great about this is everybody gets their own personal little dinner, yum.

Okay, let me butter, oil these, I'm using olive oil.

Let me just mention about these little guys that I just adore, 'cause they're so adorable.

They also come with lids, which is wonderful for presentation but also the lids are self basting.

Okay, so I'm going to park them over here and get the rest of the ingredients together.

So we're putting rosemary in.

I think this will be wonderful, we're going to use about, oh, a tablespoon and a teaspoon and I'm going to just chop it up.

I'm mincing the garlic, I need about two teaspoons.

There we go.

And move on to my prosciutto.

I'm going to tear the prosciutto, and this is good good quality prosciutto, di parma from Italy.

And the reason I'm tearing is it's just very hard to cut, it all sort of bunches up together.

Okay, I'm going to go drain the pasta.

Time to assemble.

Okay.

We have here, three quarters of a cup of fire roasted crushed tomatoes.

I like the fire roasted 'cause they got a little smokey taste.

This is just, everything is gonna get dumped in here and tossed up.

We have three ounces of Fontina, Italina Fontina.

And then we have our prosciutto.

Our Parmigiano-Reggiano, the real McCoy for an ounce and a half.

Our garlic and rosemary.

And finally, one to two teaspoons of hot pepper flakes, half a cup of chicken broth.

You need some moisture in here obviously because we need to end up with sort of a creamy texture, on the bottom and one and a half cups of heavy cream.

There is no way really around the heavy cream, don't try to go lighter, it just won't work.

Heavy cream is one of the few dairy items that can, will thicken on its own.

Particularly with the starch from the pasta, you just have to close your eyes and do it.

Oh, let me add some salt and pepper since I'm tossing up anyway.

(upbeat music) Now I'm going to transfer this mixed pasta into my little cocottes and you know, it's a messy operation, I like to use a one cup measure 'cause I know these hold one cup.

So I'll be able to distribute all the ingredients much more easily.

Now I'm going to top off each one with a few little slices of butter.

All right, I think this looks really good.

I'm going to take them over, pop them in the oven.

450 middle shelf, 15 to 18 minutes or 'til it's bubbly around the edges and crispy and golden on top.

Okay, let's get onto my fennel orange salad.

You want something really refreshing and maybe a little acidic with this creamy dish.

So I'm going to start with the dressing and we're going to use citrus, why not?

We've got two tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, two tablespoons of fresh orange juice, some grated orange rind, about a teaspoon.

Remember to zest the orange before you juice it much easier.

I like adding Dijon mustard, to my dressings, they help to emulsify it.

I've got about a half a teaspoon and then some salt, hefty pinch and some pepper.

And now we whisk it to make sure that the salt gets dissolved because it will not dissolve well in oil.

And then we're going to get some extra virgin olive oil, this is one of those times to pull out the good stuff and we're just going to whisk it in.

That was about three and a half tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.

Okay, fennel.

Some people don't exactly know what it looks like.

This is what it looks like.

The part that you mainly use is the bulb, what's underneath here.

So we're going to need about a pound and a half of fennel, tastes vaguely like licorice or anise.

Just slice it by hand, it's fine and as I said, it's a pound and a half, trimmed.

So that means after you've cut off all the parts, I'm going to first toss this, fennel with a little bit of the dressing.

Okay, oh, that's gorgeous, okay.

I'm going to add a couple of cups of arugula, it's up to you, two or three cups.

I like arugula if you don't use a different green, I just love its bitterness.

It's exactly what my daughter doesn't like about it.

Let's see if I can do this artfully.

Here we go, okay, very nice.

And then I'm going to top it off with a few olives.

I'm going to put some of this orange on top of the salad.

You could use sliced orange, just peel it and slice it.

What I'm using today are supremes, which are sections.

Okay.

I'm going to check my pasta.

Wow.

Isn't this just amazing.

Wow, it's just so wonderful.

So think about this.

You pop it in the oven and 15 minutes later, you get this prize, this wonderful personal pasta, crispy on the top.

Creamy on the bottom, deeply flavored, served with a refreshing salad, a little crusty bread.

I gonna even put a little lid on, you can take it to the table like this and then ta-da!

There you go.

And everybody is so happy with a little bit perhaps of Italian wine, perhaps a Chianti, yes.

- This is Julia Child, bon appetit.

- Call it notalgia but I've been revisiting the dishes I learned when I worked on "Julia Child and More Company".

Here we are in 1979 at the start of a 25 year friendship that changed my life.

By the time I followed Julia to "Good Morning America" in 1981, she'd become a national icon and I'd become her food stylist behind the scenes.

We made hundreds of dishes but French cassolette kind of embodies who she was, hardy and warm and a classic.

(upbeat music) Okay, we're moving on to an iconic French dish, cassolette.

It was something that Julia loved that we made on the show I worked on with her and of course it's normally very complicated, but I've streamlined it.

This is a weeknight cassolette.

You can make this in time for dinner on a weeknight.

We start with eight chicken thighs.

What I did is I cooked them in a tablespoon of olive oil, seasoned them first with salt and pepper.

And now we're browning them on both sides.

And I'm using chicken thighs because dark meat chicken just has more flavor.

And typically a cassolette is made with an assortment of meats.

It could be duck, preserved duck, lamb, always sausage, and they're just full body.

And we're going to jump off almost all of the fat and then add our onion.

And so this is just sort of our flavor base.

This is one medium onion chopped, which is about one cup.

We're going to soften this a bit.

And it's interesting, it's going to sort of the deglaze the pan, sometimes you can deglaze a pan with vegetables because they have so much moisture in them.

They sort of bring up all the brown bits.

All right, those have gotten softened.

I'm going to add my garlic.

Four garlic cloves, minced.

I'm adding rosemary and thyme, a teaspoon and a half of each.

Now we're going to add a little wine.

Now, one of the things about Julia is she really introduced us to wine, drinking it with meals, she always drank it with meals and also cooking with it.

She kept a bottle of vermouth in her refrigerator, vermouth is a fortified white wine, so she would have wine on hand at all times to add to a recipe.

And what wine does for a recipe, is it's a conductor of flavor, so anytime you add alcohol to a recipe, it's just going to taste better.

All right, so while that reduces down, I just want to get most of that raw taste of wine off of there.

I'm going to come down and talk about the pork component and we're using kielbasa.

In Gascony, they would use some sort of local pork sausage.

Now I want to thicken this stew a little bit and what better way to thicken it, then with some mashed white beans.

We're going to put in four cups of white beans.

White beans are the one thing that's constant, that and some sort of pork sausage, in every cassolette that you find.

But I'm going to take out one cup of the four cups and just mash it with a good old potato masher.

And then this is going to act as the thickener.

Okay, we're ready to get everything back into the pan.

So we're going to put the chicken back in And then we're going to add our kielbasa.

Everything goes in.

Just put it in between all that chicken pieces.

Our regular beans, our mashed beans, Two tablespoons of Dijon mustard, I like it cause it's sort of adds a sharpness to it.

And finally, some chicken broth.

I'm going to add a cup and a half 'cause you want to make sure there's enough liquid in there so the chicken really braises nicely.

All right, we're gonna bring this up to a boil.

Turn it down to a simmer, 15 minutes with a lid on.

All right.

I'm pouring a glass of Cote du Rhone to go with my cassolette and another thing I learned from Julia is it's very important to cook with a wine that you want to drink and if you're going to add the wine to the dish, well then let it be the wine you're going to serve with meal.

But let me tell you what else I learned from Julia, I learned many things.

You must always strive for excellence, oh my goodness, if I did not feel that asparagus, I was in trouble.

So I had to learn it right away.

All about excellence, you never stop learning.

I mean all the way 'til 92, she kept discovering new things about food.

Also that you should always have fun, cooking is fun.

Ah, wow.

Look at that.

You see how the beans thicken it, isn't that terrific?

But we are not done, it's all about the bread crumbs too.

You know, obsession with bread crumbs.

So I'm using panko because I'm doing the modern method.

And then just a little more olive oil, tablespoon.

Okay, so sprinkle it all over the top.

And it's just supposed to add like a little crust.

Okay, let me get my door open, I've got the broiler on down here.

And just gonna put it on the shelf.

And it's going to take about 30, 40 seconds to get really nice and brown.

Okay, look at that, wow.

That looks amazing.

Okay but that is a hot, heavy pan so I'm going to just go slow.

I'll put two pieces on here.

Ah, 'cause you want it to be substantial.

And make sure you get some of that yummy kielbasa.

And we'll have a little bit of fresh thyme.

It's always nice to put a little greenery on.

There we go, that looks lovely.

Okay.

Time to taste my perfect, quick cassolette.

It's going to be hot, but it's going to be yummy.

So just a little tiny taste.

Here we go with the beans and everything.

Wow, perfectly seasoned.

One of my favorite segments on "Sara's Weeknight Meals" is this little one we call ask Sara.

'Cause I get to talk to viewers from around the country and help solve their common culinary problems.

Today I have, Esther Rodgers, hello Esther, from Tacoma, Washington.

- Hello Sara.

- Yes, hello, so how can we help you today?

What's your question?

- Sara I enjoy using dried beans.

Over the years I've heard conflicting information, salt while cooking, don't salt while cooking, touch a baking soda, not really sure what that was about.

And I was just really interested to have your opinion on this, what I call my bean conundrum.

- The million dollar question is, should you soak them?

Yes, you should.

Every time, if you can.

They certainly will go from dry to cooked, you know, you just have to boil them longer.

But what I instead is for a pound of beans, cover them with four quarts of cold water and three tablespoons of kosher salt.

What that will do is help them to cook more evenly, tenderize the skins and season them.

What we're going to do now is add the beans to a pot of cold water, which has been salted and then we're going to bring it up to a boil, turn it down to a simmer 'til they're done, takes one to two hours and then you just drain them.

You can save the liquid or not save the liquid.

They freeze really nicely.

As for the baking soda, if you want to, you can add a pinch to the beans after they started cooking, just a pitch, it will speed up the cooking.

Trouble is, if you add too much, the beans will taste soapy.

So Esther, does that answer your question?

- It does but I do have one more question for you please Sara.

How long and in what form can I store them for a few days?

- That's an excellent question.

You can keep in the fridge, I'd say maybe up to five days.

- And should I store them in that liquid?

- [Sara] Yes.

- In the refrigerator.

- Do it either way, in the liquid or not in the liquid.

It's fine, they'll be fine.

- Okay, okay.

Oh that's great, thank you.

- And I just want to encourage all of you to come join me like Esther did with your culinary dilemmas.

We'd love to have you on ask Sara.

(upbeat music) I love it when my old friend Ming Tsai stops by to cook.

Hello!

- Hello.

Hey Sara!

- [Sara] How are you?

- Nice place.

- Nice to see you.

- Look at you watering your flowers.

- I know, I'm so domestic aren't I?

Yeah.

- [Ming] Yeah.

- Those are beautiful aren't they?

My color too.

- Weil I'm here to cook.

- I'm excited, I've got some homemade chicken stock for you and everything.

- Awesome.

- I love duck and I'm so excited we're making it but I'm a little baffled, I like French duck cassolette.

- Oh oui, oui, canard.

- But we are making Asian ginger orange duck.

- Cassolette.

- Cassolette.

- Cassolette in quotes.

- Cassolette.

- So cassolette usually has beans.

- Right.

- So my bean is the edamame.

- [Sara] Okay.

- But it's still classic technique, which is, you have beautiful duck legs, I just seasoned.

I'm going to sear them, just a little oil.

Duck has so much fat.

- Fat, yeah.

So not even a tablespoon just to kind of coat the pan, just 'cause you don't want anything to stick at all right?

- Right.

- Just swirl the pan a little bit.

So and by the way, here's a great tip, when you seasoned like chicken and duck, I don't need to flip 'em, I just do one side and put that good side down first.

And then once it's in the pan, then I'll season this side.

- [Sara] The second side, right.

- The second side, right.

- And you always seasoned before you add it.

- Absolutely.

- And why is that?

- You want this season to cook into your, into your protein, you don't want, you don't want to just season at the end.

There's a big difference in flavor and the levels of flavor when you season before, you season after.

And now I'm going to season the backside.

All I'm doing here is rendering off the delicious duck fat, right?

(upbeat music) - [Sara] You want me to cut the orange, with the rind on.

- I love, the orange turns to like orange confit.

- Yum.

- Delicious.

- So this is like a Sunday sort of comfort meal.

- It totally is a Sunday comfort meal.

All right, I sliced a little bit of ginger, we're going to add once a duck comes out, these are serrano chilies, all you do is wash them.

I got to just take the end off and I'm gonna slice them whole down the middle, seed and all.

- [Sara] Okay I like that.

- Just adds a little bit of heat but all those oranges you're doing there, gonna add a lot of sweetness, so.

all right, Sara so we'll get that nice color like that.

- Oh yeah.

- So give these a quick flip, again these are not even close to being cooked through, right?

- [Sara] No.

- These are raw.

You can see how much fat ended up actually in this pan, just a little bit of duck fat.

- You'll leave it in.

- We're gonna use it.

- So give me your onions, please.

- Okay.

- And we have celery, these are, I call these carrot nubs.

- [Sara] I know, you gotta call them something, they're so weird.

- They are but they come clean and peeled and you dump them there, they're the perfect size.

- They're great, they're pre-prepped.

- Celery in?

- [Ming] Celery.

- [Sara] Everything in.

- Now you got to have a little bit of smoked pork, so just a couple of thick slice of the bacon, right?

- You don't brown it huh?

You just throw it in like that?

- 'Cause it's gonna, it's a braise.

- Okay.

- Right, you got celery, you got ginger, that's been peeled, right?

Good flavor with ginger.

Here's two serranos, they're just halved, seeds and all, 'cause there's heat.

- And these oranges?

- Oranges go in.

- I give like, just a little squeeze, not all the way, 'cause I wanna keep this integrity, just a little.

- With each one?

- Yep.

- Okay.

- And then, the edamame.

- [Sara] That's so wild, so these are not gonna be green when we're done.

- Oh no, they're going to be brown.

So naturally brewed soy sauce, right?

I don't care what brand you use, make sure it says naturally brewed and there's some great organic out there.

And just 'cause we can, a little orange liquor, right?

- [Sara] Boy, this is one heck of a big pot.

- Not much more salt because I already had that soy sauce.

All right and we're done.

Then we're going to take all these duck legs, they get dumped back in.

Then chicken stock.

- [Sara] Okay, so we'll see what this looks like.

- And this looks like a lot but believe me, when all these veg and oranges.

- [Sara] It's gonna cook down.

- [Ming] Gonna cook down.

- Be way down.

- Give me all that stock.

- This is so exciting, I have to say.

- And by the way, you know this, buy your chicken stock.

You can make it, this looks like homemade 'cause you're Sara Moulton but the unsalted ones that you buy are fine.

- [Sara] Aren't bad, aren't bad.

- [Ming] They're not bad.

- Are we going top or bottom?

- Top.

- Okay.

- 350.

- Okay.

You could do this on top of the stove at a gentle simmer too.

- You could, this will take about an hour 45, 2 hours.

- Okay, you know what?

We're going to have tea in my garden.

- A spot of tea?

- Yes, yes we are.

We are.

- [Ming] After you.

(upbeat music) - This is so civilized.

- I know.

- A spot of tea as our duck cooks, I mean, seriously, thank you.

- [Sara] I love tea.

- [Ming] Let me do the Japanese thing, you can't serve yourself.

- [Sara] Okay.

- You know with saki right, you never serve yourself with saki.

And tea should always be served for you.

- [Sara] I didn't know that, wow.

I love tea but I never.

- Cheers, I love tea.

- I just make it and drink it every afternoon.

- Although the first cup in the morning, it can't be tea.

It's got to be coffee, I need that.

- Oh really, so you go both and.

Yes.

- I go both ways.

That's delicious, love it.

- [Sara] Really good.

- [Ming] This has been fun.

- [Sara] This is so much fun, it's old reunion week.

- I'm glad you can still cook Sara, that's good to see.

(Sara laughing) - Oh boy.

- Are you happy that I can still cook too?

- [Sara] Yeah, you can't, you're only getting better actually.

- Oh, I don't know about that.

- You're getting, all the time.

Let's go check out duck, don't you think?

- Absolutely.

- Okay.

- I'm bringing my tea.

- Okay, I will too.

(upbeat music) - [Ming] Gonna be hot too, so definitely take your time.

- [Sara] Boy I can smell it.

- [Ming] Right, I think it's going to be good.

- Whoa, oh my gosh.

- See how much, see how much you reduce down?

- And look at those oranges, they do look amazing.

- Bring that bowl to me Sara will you?

Yeah, these oranges, rock.

Pour a little of the broth on top.

- [Sara] Do you want more meat in there too?

- [Ming] Yeah sure, come on, we're hungry people.

- Yeah, you know what, I've set us up for the garden.

I think we'll go out and eat in the backyard.

- I can't wait.

And we have a Pinot noir for you.

Pop.

(laughing) All right Sara, here's a great Pinot noir.

I didn't invent this, the French invented of course, Pinot noir with duck.

- With.

- This one is from Carneros in Napa Valley.

Love it, give it a smell, it's like blackberry and cherry and current.

Cheers to you.

- [Sara] Yes, cheers to you too.

(glasses clinking) - Thanks for having me.

- Thank you Ming for being here.

And thank you all for watching.

I hope you will try these one pot wonders, by my good buddy, Ming Tsai.

- You gotta try it too there.

- [Sara] I will, I will.

- Chef Moulton, get in there.

I'm telling you, it's about the duck, but it's also about the orange.

Orange slices like it's butter.

- [Sara] Mm wow.

- [Ming] Try a piece of that orange.

- Okay, I'm gonna try a piece of orange, straight up.

- [Announcer] For recipes, videos and more, go to our website saramoulton.com "Sara's Weeknight Meals" is made possible by Sunsweet and by.

- Cooking is the first kind of love you know, it was starting when I was child and with my grandmother doing fresh pasta and now I transmit it to all the guests, is something make specially for them.

- [Announcer] Oceania Cruises, proud sponsor of "Sara's Weeknight Meals".

(upbeat music) - Zwilling, makers of Fresh and Save, the vacuum food storage system.

One of the ways Zwilling has been helping cooks do it all in the kitchen for 209 years.

This Zwilling family of cookware is proud to support "Sara's Weeknight Meals".

(upbeat music)