I visit a multi-generational, certified organic farm with roots in Asian vegetables, now producing hundreds of varieties of specialty produce.

Then, my good buddy, Alex, joins me as we share tips for making our highly popular crispy chicken dishes.

Back in the kitchen, I'm preparing a refreshing shaved beet salad with a zesty honey and orange ginger dressing.

And, fresh from the farm, vegetable lo mein.

Plus everyone's soon-to-be favorite, sweet potato bread pudding.

(guitar music) - [Woman] Long Island Farm Bureau is a proud presenter of George Hirsch Lifestyle.

Long island farmers continue their commitment to providing abundant, fresh commodities, supporting farmers and the local agricultural community for over one hundred years.

(slow, melodic music) - [George] How long have you been on this property?

- [Man] We moved here in 1987.

The fall, that was our first cropping year, so it's been, we're going on 32 years.

My grandfather was a laundryman, Chinese laundryman, in Queens.

And growing up, my dad and my uncles all worked in the laundry mat, cleaning clothes and ironing, whatever.

And there was one thing that all my uncles and my dad swore about-- (chuckling) almost swore, but they promised themselves they were not going to do that, absolutely not.

- [George] Now, over the years, traveling from, as we say, Up-Island to out east, how have you transformed what grows here.

[Man] Our crops went from about 15 different varieties of Chinese cabbage and squash and melons to well over a hundred plus.

Heirloom tomatoes, asparagus.

We do garlic, the fall brassicas.

Heirloom tomatoes, we have perhaps 30 plus varieties of cherries, grapes, slicers, bi-colors.

- [Woman] We became organic in 2006-7 we made the transition, and NOFA, New York, is our certifying agency, so they certify us every year.

And we have been named Farmers of the Year this year, so yes, we have made our mark in the last 10 years with them.

- [Man] Overall, the tactics that we've used to make our soil components better, by using some of the organic amendments and techniques has helped us achieve the quality that we're looking for.

So yes, we have been able to practice the organic methods, and then also achieve a higher level of control with some of the bugs and weeds, whereas in the past, we were struggling with them.

- [Man] Today's consumer can recognize the freshness and quality that we have.

And that's been our, one of our best features.

- [Woman] We literally are cutting all day long from the green houses in the fields, and we're supplying that farm market with the freshest stuff, sometimes within an hour or two of it being harvested.

And as people come in, we want, I want my staff, and I educate them, each one very deeply, in what it is that we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we're doing it.

Don't just have staff standing behind the counter ringing you up.

- [Mon] Most beautiful thing about Long Island is that we have underground aquifers.

And those underground aquifers are just an absolute gift from Mother Nature.

To have clean drinking water directly below the farm that we can pump up and water these vegetables with is something that they don't have in other areas of the world.

- [George] Where do you see farming in the future, as far as from a consumer demand?

- [Man] I'm hopeful in that people, as they become aware of where their food comes from, and what is produced locally and how it's produced, become more of a priority.

That price alone will not dictate what they buy and what they consume.

That quality and where it comes from and how it's grown will be more important.

- [George] Well I think your roots are very, very strong.

- [Man] Oh, thank you.

- [George] The best way for food education to take place is through experience.

Local farms are a wealth of knowledge that can be absorbed just by being involved in their world, and one that should be a priority.

(upbeat music) - [George] Preparing a great salad can go far beyond tomatoes and cucumbers.

Sometimes you need to get to the root of a salad.

I literally mean a root of a salad.

I have here a baby, mini beet, and in preparing beets for salads, I will use all the beet.

I will use the bulb.

I'll use the greens within the salad itself.

I'll steam it.

I'll roast it.

Sometimes just shaved thin, all about the texture, the flavor, and other root vegetables such as fresh ginger, shallots, radishes, to combine and round out the most magnificent salad that your guests will talk about.

From my kitchen to your kitchen.

That's good to know.

(guitar music) Making a great salad is all about the color, the texture, and of course the flavor.

So I'm gonna get started here with a different spin of a salad.

It's going to have a little bit of Asian inspiration to it because of the dressing.

It's going to be a honey orange ginger dressing, and for the honey orange ginger, we'll start off with some beautiful, fresh ginger.

And once your ginger is nicely peeled, What I wanna do is make cross cuts into the ginger, not going all the way down.

We want the juice that's in the ginger to kind of jump out into the dressing, the vinaigrette.

Just nice, beautiful bits of ginger.

I don't like smashing ginger and crushing it.

You could shave it if you wanted to.

We want the oils to bloom up, out of the root.

(scraping) So add in our ginger, and next I wanna add in some rice wine vinegar.

The rice wine vinegar is kind of very neutral in flavor, and then to sweeten up the rice wine and the fresh ginger, we put in a little bit of honey.

That's going to give it, not only a beautiful golden color, but it will also add a nice amount of sweetness.

So next, we're going to add in is a shallot.

Either two very small shallots, or in this case, one large shallot.

We'll just add in the pieces of shallot in there.

And we'll let his all bloom together.

And then a generous amount, about four tablespoons or so of olive oil.

So now, for this salad, we're going to use some beautiful, raw beets, because we're going to shave them.

We're going to shave the beets, because we want that eye appeal that comes out of it.

And more importantly, we want the crispness of the beet.

So here I have a purple beet.

(slicing) Here is another beautiful one, just thinking of color.

(faint slicing) Beautiful yellow.

When it comes to assembling a salad, here's where it gets really fun, because it's all about the creativity of the colors and the textures.

So we need a little bit of a base for our salad, and that I'm going to use kale.

I don't want a delicate green; I want something that's really hearty, and again, talk about a super green.

This is a super green.

I have here some Tuscan kale, which is wonderful again to roast.

If you're roasting your beets, you could throw them in the last 10 minutes and let them roast right along with them.

But for this kale dish, since it is raw, I would shave it into ribbon-sized pieces.

It just makes it a little bit easier to serve.

(knife clanking on counter) So I'll put a base of that kale in the middle.

We'll bring up some of our beautiful, French breakfast radishes.

Even more important, if the greens are nice and fresh, use some of the greens from the radish as well.

They also go really nice chopped up in a soup or a stew.

And for the radishes, I would not necessarily shave them.

You could shave them, but these French breakfast radishes look so nice, we're just going to cut them into like little wedges and then put them around the salad.

(slicing) Okay, we'll put a couple of these on the bottom.

Now, if you really, really want to wow, wow, now we're not going to go out and play softball.

What we're going to do is, we're going to use another type of radish.

This is a, it's called a watermelon radish.

It's in the daikon family.

We're going to split this in half first.

And now we're going to wow them.

Just color-wise, put that around, change up those colors.

Use a little bit of your watermelon slices.

You wanna use some of the tops to the beets.

And then, for the watermelon radish, (slicing) Just cut these down into little matchstick-sized pieces.

And we'll use a little blood orange.

The blood orange is gonna give it, again, more flavor, on top.

(light instrumental music) (slicing) I have here some peeled blood orange, just to put around.

Now you can see that beautiful ginger and honey dressing with the shallots on top.

Put it on our beet and radish salad.

It kind of looks like it-- (utensil clanking on metal bowl) a (mumbles) Pollock, huh?

And there you have our artist's delight.

A root beet salad, vibrant and full of flavor.

(loud guitar music) okay, let's get started with the dressing.

I'm going to start with one tablespoon of crushed garlic.

An equal amount of fresh ginger.

And I want that to totally cover the pan.

Now this is a no-cook dressing.

So even though I have a beautiful wok here, that's just so the vinaigrette will mix with everything.

I'm going to take one tablespoon of mustard.

I'll take about two tablespoons, I'll add about two tablespoons of a sweet chile sauce.

And I'll make sure all of those ingredients are covered in there.

A half a teaspoon of hot sauce.

About a teaspoon of sesame oil.

(clank) Two teaspoons of light soy sauce.

I like using light soy sauce, because sometimes the regular soy sauce can become a little bit over powering.

Now you can see how this dressing is actually emulsified.

That's because of the mustard that's inside the dressing.

(clanking) A small amount of pure cane light brown sugar.

Just a slight pinch of salt.

You don't need that much salt in here because again you have the soy sauce.

(spice grinder grinding) Some fresh ground black pepper.

And now we want to drizzle in a little bit of oil.

You could use a soy oil, or I'm using a canola oil right now.

Even a peanut oil would work really nice, but add it in slower.

Add it in a few drops at a time, and you can see how it's holding together, how it's emulsifying.

You don't want to add so much liquid in there, it doesn't have a chance to suspend itself within the base of the dressing.

Now I'll add in some of my pre-blanched, lo mein noodles.

I'm purposefully stirring in some of the noodles first.

I'll let them absorb some of the flavor.

I'll add in some of the snow peas that I chopped.

Some cucumber, some julienne cucumber.

The cucumber is also going to give some wetness to the dressing itself.

The water from the cucumber will kind of thin it out and make it mix really nice.

Now for texture, and for color, just some beautiful carrots.

(clank) And just let that mix.

Now, instead of a lettuce, I have here some baby bok choy.

So we want to take the bok choy, cut out the middle part, (slicing) and then just cut it down.

(chopping vegetables) Mix some of that in.

Okay, we'll add in the remainder of our noodles now.

(utensil scraping on metal) (clank) Now you notice I'm adding in the leaves towards the end, because these are more delicate.

Think of it as a gentle or delicate spinach leaf.

(clanking) Toss that in.

So the secret to this recipe?

It's all in the dressing.

A sesame dressing, with fresh lo mein and beautiful garden vegetables (light upbeat music) Make it a day ahead, and it'll make your day.

(loud guitar music) Now I got mine working.

It's kind of been working along, we'll get to that.

But where are you gonna start yours?

- [Alex] I'm gonna start mine in a pan.

We'll just add a little cracked black pepper, a little bit of Kosher salt.

That's it.

We're ready to go.

So this is something I fry skin side down.

The fat side really.

And you want your pan to sizzle like that, and this little flap of skin that hangs over the side here on it?

I like to open that up and get that into the pan too, because that actually is where the crispiness comes from.

That becomes like-- - [George] That's the gold!

- [Alex] Yeah, that's like a chicken, potato chip, if you will.

- [George] So how long will you cook it on each side, Alex?

- [Alex] Well it all depends.

What I like to do is cheat it a little bit, and check, and you can start to see that some spots are getting golden and crispy, and some spots are still pretty white.

The other thing that's always a tell-tell sign is if it sticks.

Like the outside of this breast right now?

The skin is sticking to the pan, so I know that's not ready to turn.

(sizzling) - [George] That looks really good!

- [Alex] It's gonna stay super super crispy as long as we don't add too much liquid.

We don't want it to steam.

(sizzling) Here I add some cherry tomatoes from the local farm that you and I actually picked.

(chuckling) - [George] On one of our many farm journeys.

- [Alex] Yeah.

- [George] We probably ate as many tomatoes as we picked.

- [Alex] This has been a farm-filled year.

That's for sure.

Just gonna pour in enough white wine.

Just to cover the bottom of the chicken.

(sizzling) but again, you don't want to come up over-- you don't want to come up over the skin.

- [George] Look at that!

That is glorious!

- [Alex] And at this point, you kind of turn the heat down and just let this poach, and take a look at what you've got going on here.

- [George] So this chicken is actually like a riff on one that was ever popular, my one love wings.

- [Alex] I remember those.

I've had them plenty of times.

- [George] And then the only way to make that any better is well, maybe make it with bigger chicken, such as my thighs here today.

(Alex laughing) So this was done with a, the reason that they're one love it's kind of like a Jamaican-Caribbean feel as a signature spice that I have here that has about six to nine of those said before (George and Alex talking at the same time) A little thyme, a little oregano, a little allspice, a little paprika, a little black pepper, a little salt, and a little bit of powdered garlic is in this rub right now.

They were rubbed a couple hours ahead, put into the fridge, and there's two ways you can go about this.

You can either cook it on a very very slow, indirect heat, for about 30 to 40 minutes, or you can even blanch them in a 350 degree oven, for about 10 to 15 minutes before you come out to the grill.

And that, see that's the key.

- [Alex] You can see that crispiness.

- [George] See mine is able to get crispy all the way around because it's that dry heat.

- [Alex] Yeah.

- [George] You had the dry heat until liquid went in there.

But here's where it really gets glorified and you take it up a little bit, is with the one love sauce - [Alex] The sauce, yeah.

- [George] The sauce is just amazing.

It's a combination of about six different types of condiments.

Everything from honey to barbecue sauce.

A little chile sauce, garlic, green onion, ginger, a little allspice - [Alex] Oh my God, it's like a mix of everything I like to eat with chicken.

- [George] It's just absolutely amazing.

A little drop of lime juice on top.

They're gonna get one turn.

- [Alex] Okay.

How long do you wanna cook it on the sauce side?

Because I know you don't want to burn that sauce.

- [George] Don't wanna, don't wanna burn it.

You just wanna let it get a little bit of that dry heat and flavor in there.

And, since I'm coming into the finish of the thighs, now is when I can put the base on.

- [Alex] What I'm gonna do is give it a squeeze of lemon.

That acidity really plays well off of that crispy chicken fat.

Then just a couple tablespoons of butter.

That's what really gives it that beurre blanc flavor, and it helps sweeten it up, and it'll also make the sauce really creamy.

And what you can really do is just take the bottom of your chicken, and help emulsify the butter into the sauce with the chicken itself.

- [George] Your crispy thighs in the pan, and my crispy thighs on the grill.

- [Alex] What more do you want?

- [George] Jump on the one love, and you got it made.

(guitar music) A vegetable for dessert?

Of course!

Especially when it's a sweet potato.

Sweet potato bread pudding.

What I have here is a steamed sweet potato that has been steamed until perfectly tender and then peeled.

There's about half a cup of pureed sweet potato.

And to that sweet potato, I'm going to add in four eggs.

In making a bread pudding, it's a simple custard.

So you just use the basic ingredients of eight eggs to a quart, four eggs to a pint.

So for the pint of liquid that's going to go into this recipe, I will use four eggs.

(whisking) Make sure those yolks and whites are all blended in well.

(whisking) I'm going to add in some softened cream cheese.

About two tablespoons of softened cream cheese.

(whisking) You could almost think of this recipe, this bread pudding recipe, as-- (whisking) Almost like better than a pumpkin pie, cause you don't have to make a crust!

It's like no fuss.

No fuss.

And because it's a bread pudding, you're going to be able to use up some extra bread that you have in the house.

Ideally, it's even better with older bread.

(whisking) so to the mixture we have one teaspoon of vanilla, couple tablespoons of sweet cane sugar, one teaspoon of cinnamon, of ground cinnamon, a little fresh grated nutmeg.

Nutmeg I always prefer to grate at the last minute.

Couple tablespoons of melted butter.

(bowl clanking) And then lastly, a cup and a half of milk.

(whisking, stirring) I'll butter the rameken first.

This is an eight inch rameken, so this recipe would fit even a eight by eight square pan.

Then I'm just going to fan out the bread.

Next, I'll put on some raisins on top.

I always like to add the raisins, because they actually begin to poach.

I'll drizzle a little bit more butter on top of the bread.

So to bake these while they're in the oven, I'll use a water bath, because I want to gently steam as a custard, and then give me a crisp topping.

So we'll put in about a cup of water.

This is a nine by 13 size pan.

Then I'll place the bread pudding inside.

By the time it comes out of the oven, it'll almost be without water.

Now I'll put our custard on top.

And slightly, little by little, just let it absorb in to the bread.

Let it soak in.

Okay, you'll notice, I didn't add in all the custard at once.

I wanna let this sit for about five to 10 minutes, and let all that bread soak in the custard.

Then I'll pour the remaining amount of batter on top.

And then bake it in a preheated oven at 375 for about 25 to 30 minutes.

After that, lower the temperature to 350 for about ten to fifteen minutes more.

And there you have it.

Sweet potato bread pudding, a vegetable for dessert.

A family favorite soon to be yours.

So there you have it.

My good-for-you shaved beet salad with a honey and orange ginger dressing.

A easy-to-prepare vegetable lo mein.

And, there's a lot of love with crispy chicken two ways.

Topped off with a sweet potato bread pudding.

Remember, if I can do it, you can do it.

We'll see you real soon.

For more on recipes, entertaining lifestyle tips, tv series blog, and selected video clips from today's show, join me at http://www.chefgeorgehirsch.com.

(light instrumental music) - [Woman] To download your own episodes of George Hirsch Lifestyle, containing inspiring lifestyle segments, original recipes, and complete how-to, visit http://www.amazon.com.

Or http://www.chefgeorgehirsch.com.

(guitar music) Long Island Farm Bureau is a proud presenter of George Hirsch Lifestyle.

Long Island farmers continue their commitment to providing abundant, fresh commodities, supporting farmers and the local agriculture community for over 100 years.

(brief music note) (brief instrumental music)