USA Rice, Sunsweet, Ninja, Chef's Choice, and thanks to the generous support of - [Narrator] 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.

(upbeat rock music) - I always try to buy sustainable fish.

By that, I mean fish that hasn't been over-fished.

- Put it in the pot, just let it do its thing.

- No one knows that more than Floyd Cardoz, one of the foremost Indian chefs in America.

- It's an introduction to Indian spices, very mildly spiced.

- He's got a wild-striped bass curry that is a salute to the oceanside town of Goa, India, where he grew up.

- So coconut milk is traditional in Goa?

- Very, very traditional because it's on the coast, nice and silky.

- Oh, it's perfectly cooked.

We're going to visit with an oysterman to find out how he harvests these delicious bivalves.

- There's a perfect oyster.

Awesome!

- Back in my kitchen, I got my own seafood recipe.

It's farro, which is ancient wheat with greens and shrimp and feta and oregano, and it all goes in one pot.

An amazing combination, I'll demonstrate to a young bride, along with tips for beginner cooks.

I'm gonna quiz you after this.

(laughs) (upbeat rock music) - Italy was so good.

It was just such a relaxed time.

I think every chef should go to Italy.

- And the food was just extraordinary?

- Just so much fun.

- Wow.

(uptempo jazz music) Hi, I'm Sara Moulton.

Welcome to Sara's Weeknight Meals.

I love Indian food.

The husband and I use it as our go-to when we're tired of the usual suspects.

Making it at home, especially for weeknight meals, easy, and especially when you have the help of my good buddy, Floyd Cardoz.

I'm so happy you're here.

- Hey Sara.

- Let's start with the first recipe.

What are we making?

- The first thing we're gonna do is a dish that my grandmother made, that my mom made, and that I made for my kids when they were younger because it's an introduction to Indian spices, very mildly spiced.

- Okay.

- And you can make it hot or not, but it's a curry of striped bass, and it's got some vegetables in there with a cauliflower.

- So, it's healthy too?

- So it's healthy because most kids don't like to eat vegetables.

So we added in the curry.

- You just snuck it in there.

I'll get going down here.

I know you want me to start on the spice mix.

- That's right.

You're using unsweetened coconut and garlic.

- Okay, so a half a cup of unsweetened coconut, and I'm gonna make a paste in this blender, and what are you doing down there?

- I'm actually seasoning the fish with salt.

- You're gonna pop it in the fridge while that happens?

- After you season it, just pop it in the fridge till you're ready for it.

- And I'm gonna add six garlic cloves, just peeled.

- The other element in this curry is sliced onions.

So we gotta take white onions.

We're gonna slice them really, really thin, and I'm gonna saute them in a little bit of oil.

- Should I add just a tiny bit of water to this?

- I would start adding a little bit of water.

- Just a tiny, tiny bit.

- Don't put too much because if you have too much, it's not gonna grind very well.

- But we're just using the water to help it to grind up.

- So I'm gonna add a little bit of canola oil, and I'm gonna add my sliced onions into the pot.

I'm going to heat the pot up slightly, not too hot 'cause I don't want the color in there.

(Indian music) Good food takes time.

- It's beginning to look like something.

You could've done this with fresh-graded coconut too, but no home-cook in their right mind is gonna do that, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

- The main thing is don't use that sweetened stuff 'cause this is not a dessert.

So we're gonna add two tablespoons of cumin and two teaspoons of turmeric.

Wait a sec, we have to pause for a second.

What is that chile called?

- It's called a (mumbles) chili.

(mumbles) ?

- But they're called finger-hots, at Asian stores, they're called just chili peppers.

I prefer these to jalapenos because they have a very nice aroma.

- Oh yeah.

It's so much more than just.

- It's floral, almost.

- I love chilis.

You're going to leave the seeds and ribs and everything in?

- I like to leave everything in, but if you don't like your food too spicy.

- I do, no I do, I love spicy.

- Go ahead and take them out.

Obviously, if you can't get these chili peppers, you can always use a jalapeno.

- I've got the turmeric and cumin in here, and I'm gonna add some black pepper, but while I'm adding that, can you just talk to me about cumin and turmeric?

I know turmeric is used a lot for it's coloring ability, I mean look at it.

It's bright yellow there.

- It's a beautiful spice, but the other thing about turmeric is it's an amazing antioxidant.

- Oh.

- It's an antibiotic.

- Oh.

- So if you have, in India, if you have a cut, you would put a little bit of turmeric on your skin.

If you have a sore throat, you'd gargle with a little bit of turmeric in warm water.

It's a great spice.

You're gonna add the chili peppers in there.

- Should I add the spice mix now?

- Let's go with that in there.

So what you're gonna do now is you're gonna cook this out about three or four minutes on moderate heat.

- This sort of brings the spices out, yes, yeah.

- You lose some of that raw spice.

You're also trying to get the essential oils that every spice has into your curry.

- Okay.

- In the meantime, I'm gonna cut some cauliflower.

- Okay.

- And I'd like you to cut some zucchini.

- Okay, well, do you want me to halve them first?

- Yeah, let's halve them.

(guitar pop music) - We're gonna add some fish stock to this in a minute.

(guitar pop music) Alright, should I grab the fish stock for you?

- Uh, yes.

- Okay, 'cause boy, that is smelling so wonderful.

Do you want me to pour this in?

- We can go right in right here.

- Okay, and I think that's about five cups.

Woooo, I'm smelling the chilis too.

(guitar pop music) - I'm gonna add a little bit more salt in there.

I'm gonna cover this so that it kind of comes up pretty quickly.

- Meanwhile, you're cutting up the cauliflower.

I love cauliflower.

It's so healthy, it's like broccoli.

It's come up to a simmer.

So we're gonna just take the lid off and let it simmer for 15 minutes.

- Yeah, yep, that's it.

- So meanwhile, why don't we go over and take a little look at your book and have a glass of wine.

- That would be a good idea.

- What do you think?

Okay.

Are these mostly home-cooked recipes?

- Most of my dishes started off some way, shape or form at home.

I find that when you cook, it's all coming from your heart.

- Aw, absolutely, absolutely.

- It's not just creating stuff for the sake of it.

- So why don't we go take a look and see how it's doing?

(guitar pop music) So, it's been about 15 minutes.

It is reduced enough?

- Yeah, it's looking nice.

We got to get our coconut milk together.

- Okay, should I add the whole thing?

- Add the whole thing.

- Whole can goes in?

- Whole can goes in.

- Okay.

Eww, that looks so delicious already.

- And then, as soon as it comes up, we're gonna add the fish in.

The other thing you don't wanna do is if you want it to come up normally, you say, you should put your lid on, it will come up faster, but coconut milk, you don't wanna do that.

- Oh, okay.

- We don't want to make a mistake with the coconut milk.

- Does cider vinegar go in there too?

- Yeah.

- So, it sort of balances out the creaminess.

- The sweetness.

- Two teaspoons, one, two.

There we go.

- So I'm gonna add the fish.

- Alright, and we're cooking it with the skin on?

- I like to add the skin with fish because if you don't like to eat it, don't eat it, but it gives the sauce, the curry, a lot of body.

So we add the fish that is already seasoned.

(Indian music) - Everything goes in one pot?

- One pot.

So, I'm gonna move this to the back and continue cooking.

- What temp do we want it at?

- We want it come up, then we're gonna turn it down.

- Okay, so I'll put it on high for now.

- Yeah, and the other thing you wanna do is you don't want to stir it a lot right now because it breaks up.

So once you put it in the pot, you just let it do it's thing.

- Let it do it's thing.

- So let's add the zucchini to the pan.

It's nice and hot.

We have some canola oil in there, and I'm gonna add some salt.

- Okay, again, season as you go, right, don't wait till the end?

- And pepper.

So our zucchini looks kind of.

- You want just a little color on it.

- Little bit of color.

I'm gonna start plating.

- Oh really, we're that close?

- Yeah, we're that close, we're that close.

So let's plate with some rice.

- Alright, and that's Basmati rice?

- It's Basmati rice or any other rice you like.

Find the fish, go very, very gently because you don't want to break the fish.

- We went through all this trouble to cook it gently.

- Exactly.

- Look at that beautiful color.

- I like to do that, like to put that on my rice.

Get a few pieces of cauliflower.

- What part of India would you say?

- My family is from Goa.

- Oh, from Goa, okay.

- So this dish is from Goa.

Get a little bit of this in the plate.

- So coconut milk is traditional in Goa?

- Very very traditional because it's on the coast and all of our dishes have coconut in there.

- I'm so excited about the fish.

- It's nice and silky.

- Oh, it's perfectly cooked.

Umm, wow, wild-striped bass curry, deliciously different on a weeknight.

I'm gonna take another bite.

(country guitar music) Oysters are one of the oldest foods eaten on the east coast of this country.

We're gonna visit with an oysterman to find out how he harvests these delicious bivalves.

(guitar pop music) - My name is Yardar Nigard.

I'm a partner at Hemlock Oyster Company, and we're oyster farmers.

Our oyster beds are in Long Island Sound off the Connecticut shore line.

- [Narrator] Oystermen have farmed these waters for over 200 years, scattering seed oysters, mostly blue points, and dredging them up years later, but other oystermen could poach them.

Predators like starfish and ducks would eat them.

- Normally, the predators can get at the oysters at will, especially in shallow water.

Wintertime, you'll just see flocks of ducks, acres of ducks just diving down and eating all your oysters, that you've just made a great effort to feed a whole bunch of ducks, tens of thousands of dollars worth of oysters.

(upbeat piano pop music) - [Narrator] Now they grow them in massive-layered cages that not only protect the oysters, they hold more of them, 15,000 each in all stages of development.

- These are seed oysters we bought from the (mumbles) at five millimeters three months ago, and now they're about an inch in size, and they're ready to go out in the cages.

From this time, it'll take about another year, and even up to two years to reach market size.

- This is just so good.

- I'll pass on the pearls.

Just give me these.

- Yeah, right?

Wow, unbelievable how nice they are.

- [Narrator] This year, they will harvest two million oysters fed on plankton from the 120 acres of shoreline they lease from the state.

- They're gonna develop their flavor profile based on what's in the water column, what type of plankton is present, the water temperature.

They're very particular about what size plankton they actually digest, and if it's not the right size, it actually gets passed off, rather than going through the whole digestive cycle.

So this oyster we've had for about two years now.

You can see the different rings of growth from each season.

So, this will have a nice rich meat inside with full brine and have a really good taste, and it's not so big that it's more than one bite.

An oyster should never be more than one bite.

About three inches is perfect.

When you open an oyster, you don't want to cut the meat inside.

You want to just get the oyster a little bit open, flip the knife over, cut the top shell off nice and smooth, cut the adductor from the bottom.

There's a perfect oyster.

Umm, awesome.

(symphony music) - [Narrator] Yarder used to have a seafood store and catering business.

He doesn't miss it.

- It's kind of relaxing sometimes, although it is work and the nice thing about this business is I don't have 50 or 100 incoming phone calls everyday.

It's nice being out here on the water and getting away from it all.

(symphony music) (guitar pop music) - My next dish is fantastic.

It's Greek.

It's farro, which is ancient wheat with greens and shrimp and feta and oregano and it all goes in one pot, and I brought in some troops today, a big troop.

This is Marin.

She is the daughter of my producer, Natalie, and I understand you're engaged to be married.

- I am, I am.

- Is it in a couple of months?

- Next year.

- Next year, oh good, well you've got plenty of time to practice this dish.

That's why we're making it 'cause I think this is a good dish both for the hubby, although he should cook for you too.

Start early, and also for entertaining.

So continue with the tomatoes.

- Okay.

- I'm gonna get the shrimp going.

We're gonna start by cooking the shrimp just a little bit.

I'm gonna start a little bit of oil, about a tablespoon and a half.

So we're gonna be using farro, which is an ancient form of wheat, but you could use even leftover Chinese takeout rice.

(laughs) You could use bulgur, you could use brown rice, you could use anything you want in here, but if you were gonna use farro, and we'll talk about it in a minute, and we're gonna use it today, it's something you can make on weekends, and then you can freeze it in one-cup, two-cup, or three-cup amounts, the amounts that you would use later on in the week, and then you can just defrost it and add it to recipes.

So we already cooked some farro, and we're gonna add that today.

How are you at mincing garlic?

- I can do it.

- I'll bet you can.

Move the grapes down.

So what you're gonna do is mash this and peel off the garlic and then give it your best bet.

- Okay.

- There we go.

Oh, very good.

That's impressive already.

- A little pound.

- I'm just getting a little sear on these, not much.

Of course, I should have my onions chopped already, but that's alright.

I'm gonna do that.

I'm gonna get started, and we're using shrimp, but this is sort of a forgiving dish.

You could use other protein.

You could use leftover protein, leftover chicken or anything.

We're gonna build flavor.

So this is a good recipe to learn about building flavor.

Everything that I'm sauteing now, I'm gonna add to this strainer here, and while the juices from everything I cook is gonna go down into this strainer.

Now if we just left everything in this pan as we added it, it would be very watery and we don't want a watery sauce.

We want a concentrated, flavored dish.

So you're gonna see what we're gonna do, and that's just one of those tricks.

- The shrimp smell really good.

- Don't they?

- Yeah.

Is it okay to buy frozen shrimp?

Is that okay?

- I really recommend it, as a matter of fact, buying a whole big package of frozen shrimp.

You can sometimes buy them individually frozen.

I really recommend that in a bag and then you can take out only as much shrimp as you want and then grab it as you go.

So while that cooks, I'm gonna start crumbling the feta because we're gonna need about half of this.

We need a total of four ounces.

This is eight ounces.

I hope you like feta cheese.

- Love feta cheese.

- Okay, good.

- Any kind of cheese, really.

- You can just keep an eyeball and give a little stir, stir.

Could you put a pinch of salt in there too?

- Sure.

- When you're cooking, it's important to season as you go 'cause if you wait till the end, then it tastes like food with a salt hat.

There's no combination, and if you add it as you go, it just points up the flavor of everything.

So we're gonna put half of this in and half of it goes on top.

So there's that.

Let me just get that a little browner, and then we'll add the garlic.

Sometimes people tell you to brown garlic, and that's just wrong 'cause it just gets bitter.

- See, I think that's the mistake I always make.

I put the garlic in first.

- Oh, no, no.

- Wrong way?

- Garlic, one minute, one minute in there.

Now, I've got some oregano from your mom's garden.

When you're chopping big, leafy herbs like this, pretend that they're a solid thing and then you can really chop pretty fine and the reason I wanna get them like this is 'cause if you just throw them on the board and hit them with a knife over and over and over again, they'll get wet and slimy, and we don't want that.

We're almost there.

We're just trying to get a little color.

Sometimes with onions, you want it to be what's called translucent, and that's just they're soft and they really got a good start on them, but sometimes, you really wanna bring out the natural sugars, which is what we're doing here.

Let me make room for my famous tomato trick.

I don't know if you find that when you're cooking you start with an expansive counter and by the time you're done, you're like in a little, tiny corner surrounded by junk.

- Well, we don't have much counterspace to begin with.

We live in a teenie apartment.

- So you take two plates or two lids and you line up.

So we want about a cup.

So we'll do this twice.

I'll do it the first time, you'll do it the second time.

- Okay.

- And you know, the more cherry tomatoes, the better.

Okay, so you line them up.

I just love things like this.

So then you put on your lid.

So you see I got them smashed down there, and you take your knife.

This is a cerated knife, which is the knife you wanna use for tomatoes.

- Okay.

- You have to get down to the level of the tomatoes, or you won't be able to see what you're doing.

Oops, and then, tada.

- That's so cool.

- Isn't that wonderful?

- I usually get lazy and just put them all in whole.

- I know and they don't pop the same.

Cherry tomatoes really don't give it up easily.

- So I'll do the rest of this?

- You'll do another one, yeah.

Here goes our garlic, and remember I said, just a minute.

I'm going to quiz you after this.

(laughs) - Better pay attention.

- So now we're going to add some pepper flakes.

I like heat.

- I love spicy.

- Oh good.

- Extra spicy.

- That was the right answer.

(laughs) Very good, okay.

- I put pepper flakes on everything.

- Okay Marin, go for it.

- Let's see if I can do this.

- Take your time.

- And I don't worry about cutting myself this way either.

This is great.

- No, you're protected.

Okay, let's see.

- How'd I do?

- Gorgeous!

So look at this.

Now you even made up your own bench-scraper.

- Easy.

- Oh, A+.

These just take a minute, and then I'm gonna need your help.

We're gonna dump them.

What I'm gonna do is lift this up in a minute, and you're gonna pour all of this in there.

- And what's the point of straining all the liquid into here?

- We're saving the liquid because when we combine it all later on, it's gonna be very wet, and if we just left all the green liquid and everything in there, it would be sort of a soupy mess.

So we're gonna concentrate it.

I'm gonna ask you now to grab me the greens from behind you.

We've got a mix of spinach and kale.

You could use any greens you want, and we're gonna put half of that in here.

- Okay.

- Oops, with more oil.

That's a total of a quarter cup olive oil for all of it.

So go ahead, put just half of it in there.

- And does it matter what kind of greens you use?

- Well, it's what greens you like.

We've got baby kale, which is very tender, and a pinch of salt.

We season as we go.

Just until, okay, that's good.

Then we're gonna do round two.

Now, in the meantime, oh boy, I'm making you work.

You wanna grab a container of what looks like rice of some kind in there.

- Okay.

- That is farro, and this is farro.

That is what it looks like in the pack, but you can open it up.

That's two cups, and here's what happened is that, this is a whole-grain farro, and a whole-grain farro means that it takes a while to cook.

It has all the parts on it.

So we soaked it overnight, and then we toasted it in a dry pan and poured water on it to soak it overnight.

The toasting gives it flavor.

Look at how this is going down.

- Should we put more in there?

- Yes, let's just do that.

Go ahead, dump the whole thing in.

If you get the quick-cooking farro, and how you know is you read the back of the package.

So this said it cooks 50 minutes, 5-0 minutes, and I know that's the whole farro.

So by soaking it, it only took us 20 minutes to boil it like pasta because we soaked it overnight.

Okay, a little more oil.

You wanna stir this?

- Sure.

- We wanna just barely wilt it.

- Okay.

- Oh, you know what?

I was supposed to add oregano.

(laughs) One really good rule is to read the whole recipe before you start so you don't get to that point in a recipe where it says to chill it overnight.

- Yeah.

- And your guests are waiting anxiously at the dinner table.

Let's come over here.

We're gonna do the same thing we did before.

We're just about there to assemble the whole thing.

- Now if I'm not lucky enough to have a fresh herb garden like my mom, can I use dried oregano?

- I'm okay with that.

I'll tell you, the only herbs I don't like, let me just tell you, I'm gonna add a half a cup of wine.

The dried herbs that I don't like are the ones that are the floppy herbs, like basil and dill and cilantro and parsley 'cause they just to me taste like dried grass, not that I've ever eaten dried grass.

So I don't really know what it tastes like.

We're gonna reduce this.

Watch out.

- Wheew.

- Wheew, drama.

Dried oregano is fine and the general rule is for every tablespoon of fresh herb, you will need a teaspoon and a half.

So we're gonna just reduce this down.

- That smells amazing.

- You wanna press down on that to get our liquid.

We're gonna add the liquid from that.

Yeah, it's accumulating, and we're just about ready to go.

So look at all that liquid.

We're just gonna reduce it down.

It'll take two secs and then everything else is gonna go in.

Do you wanna measure me a cup of chicken broth?

- Absolutely.

- So we're concentrating flavor.

That's the whole point of reducing this liquid here.

You see how we've got just about a tablespoon, you see how syrupy that is?

- Yeah.

- It gets a little bit sweet.

Everything that we have in here has natural sugar.

So I'm gonna quick, get the chicken broth in there.

Okay, in goes our farro.

- You can smell it.

It smells much stronger now.

- It does, doesn't it?

- Yeah.

- There goes the farro, and you wanna dump everything in there, being careful not to wear it.

Just dump it in.

There we go, and you can stir it around.

The liquid too.

- Add the liquid too.

- Don't waste any precious liquid.

It always amazes me what cooking gives to you.

There's gifts everywhere you look.

So half of the cheese goes in there, and you can stir that up too.

I know it's pretty well seasoned.

So I'm not gonna worry about it 'cause we've been very diligent.

Then the other half is gonna go on top.

- These colors are so pretty too.

It's like a very bright, summery.

- Well, you know, that is Mediterranean cooking in a nutshell.

Smush it down a little bit.

Then we top it off with more cheese 'cause that's what the recipe said.

(laughs) You know, when you make a recipe for the first time, you should really follow it exactly the way the author wrote it because they might know something you don't.

You wanna open the oven door.

We're gonna put it in a 375-degree oven for 10 minutes, until it's all melty.

The farro will heat up and the cheese will melt.

I'm gonna tidy up.

Do you mind setting the table?

- Absolutely.

(soft guitar music) - So you hungry?

- So hungry.

This smells amazing.

- Even though we reduced all that liquid, see, it's still quite juicy.

Okay, there we go, second one, and we're serving this with pita, just some nice bread, but pita is very appropriate, and this wine, I'm sure you've never heard of or had called retsina, which is a bone dry, Greek wine, and I have a particular fondness for it because the first time I ever got drunk, it was on retsina.

(laughs) So, here's a question, do you think your husband-to-be, what's his name?

- Will.

- Tell me if you think he might like it.

Um, very good.

- Oh, that's amazing.

- Aren't those grains wonderful?

- Um hmm, a little crunchy almost.

- They are.

So Marin, thank you so much for coming and cooking with me.

You're a great student.

- Thank you.

- Yeah, and thank you all for joining me today.

I'm Sara Moulton.

I'll see you next time for some more of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

Oh, you have to try the wine, and tell me what you think.

It's very unique.

It's got the flavor of resin because it was stored in resin barrels.

- Umm.

(soft guitar music) Oh yeah.

- So does Will cook?

Not very much.

So his famous meal that he made was nacho pasta.

He took leftover pasta, put it in the microwave with some cheese, some hot sauce.

I thought he made this like delicious (mumbles) pasta.

(soft guitar music) (laughs) - That is brilliant, I like that.

(soft guitar music) - [Narrator] For recipes and videos, to go our website, saramoulton.com (soft guitar music) - [Narrator] Sara's Weeknight Meals is made possible by USA Rice, Sunsweet, Ninja, Chef's Choice, and thanks to the generous support of - [Narrator] 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 interlude)