♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - This week on Milk Street, we're doing vegetable makeovers.

We start with Persian-style jeweled rice.

Instead of a fancy wedding dish, we turn this into something you could make any night of the week.

Then we do a tomato and cucumber salad, quick and easy.

We finish up with one of our favorite recipes, roasted cauliflower with tahini.

Please stay tuned as we do vegetable makeovers.

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♪ ♪ - So today we're going to cook Persian jeweled rice, which is something made for a feast or a wedding, or a special occasion.

- Mm-hmm.

- And the reason is, it takes about two days to make.

It has six layers, it has pistachios, it has barberries, which are sort of sour currants, and probably has some saffron in it, maybe some sugar syrup with orange, et cetera, et cetera.

It has a lot of stuff in it.

So we love the recipe, but we're going to actually do this in less than an hour, so we're gonna strip this down and make it simple.

By the way, Persia's those, one of those terms that's a little confusing.

Persia is essentially modern-day Iran, a little bit bigger area, and about half the people in Iran speak Persian or Farsi.

So about half the population, you could say, is still Persian.

So that's the difference between Iran and Persia.

With that in mind-- cook onions.

- (laughs) So, as you said, this is a labor-intensive dish.

But it's a labor of love.

It's meant to be served for a special occasion.

We wanted to serve it for any occasion, so we wanted to streamline the recipe a little bit, and also kind of pare back on the sweetness.

It's very sweet.

It's meant to bring sweetness to an occasion.

- Are you trying to say something to me?

- (laughing): No!

- Like maybe I need an extra helping?

- Well... (both chuckling) - Perhaps.

- We wanted some sweetness in the dish, but it was a little bit cloying, so we're going to pare that back a little bit and streamline.

So what we have here is a couple of onions.

They're cooking in some butter with a little bit of salt.

What we're trying to do in our version is really take some ingredients that are naturally sweet and really highlight that sweetness.

So we have these onions over a medium heat.

We're really trying to pull out their sweetness but not take them to caramelize.

You want a little bit of browning here, but again, not too much browning or that'll be more bitter than sweet.

You know, about a year ago, we had Barbara Lynch here.

She's a well-known chef in Boston.

And she said something I really liked, which was, "You should cook onions with your ears," that is, you should listen to it.

- That's interesting.

- And that noise, which is not angry and is not quick and hot, is just the right temperature.

So you can hear it.

- It's sizzling.

- Sizzling, but quietly.

- Quiet sizzle.

So to this, I'm gonna add some pretty traditional spices.

We have some cumin, some cardamom, and then just a little bit of salt and pepper.

(pan sizzling) Boy, you can really smell that.

Changes the way this smells so much.

So now, as we would for rice pilaf, we're gonna toast our rice in this buttery onion mixture.

I have two cups of basmati rice.

Typically in the supermarket, you're gonna find Indian or Asian basmati rice.

In Iran, you would probably find sadri rice, which is sort of a cousin of Indian basmati.

And so we're gonna put this in and toast it.

We did not soak the rice, so we skipped a step there.

But we did rinse the rice.

You want to rinse your rice here.

We want this to be a really nice, light, fluffy rice dish.

We don't want any stickiness, so you want to rinse and drain the rice.

So we're gonna toast this.

And because we have all of these brown spices in this pan, it's kind of hard to tell when it's toasted.

So another great way to tell when it's ready is, the rice is gonna turn sort of from opaque to translucent, and that's going to take about five to seven minutes.

In the meantime, let's talk about the liquid we're going to add here.

We're not just using water, we're using saffron water.

- Yeah, the thing about saffron that was interesting, 'cause we actually import saffron from Afghanistan-- it's a women's collective who does it, it's great.

But a lot of saffron, as you probably know, isn't saffron.

It's dyed corn silk.

You know, if you go to a market, you see this huge pile of saffron, you're going, like, "That's $100,000 of saffron."

So it may not actually be the real deal, and here's a quick and easy way to find out.

So if you buy some saffron in the market, the first thing you look at, it should look trumpet-- that is, one end should be a little thicker than the other.

Because corn silk will be all the same diameter.

But the way to really tell is, you just add some cold water... And this is what you want to see.

You see a little bit of a golden color at first, but if you pour water into saffron and, boom, it's, that's a reddish orange in about ten seconds, well, that's the dye coming out.

So real saffron is gonna take a little time to color the water.

See the change in color?

But obviously, if it's dyed, that dye's gonna come right out of the corn silk, whatever they're using, and, boom, you get that reddish color.

So this is nice, it's been sitting for half a minute, it's just got that sort of yellowish color.

It will continue on that way.

The last thing you can do also is to pick up the saffron after it's been soaked.

And if you go like this, it should still say, stay intact.

If it starts to completely disintegrate on you, again, that's corn silk.

So... See, you...

This is great.

You looked at me... - I was just fascinated here.

- You were actually fascinated.

- Learning things from you.

I can't believe it.

- It's incredible-- anyway... - So we took the saffron, added it to two-and-two-thirds cups of water, and put it in the microwave for about a minute.

Just to warm up that water, and then the, the saffron kind of steeps in there, and really, you can start to smell its aroma, and it, it will color the water, but it will also flavor the water.

So I'm gonna go ahead and add that.

(sizzles) Boy, you can smell it now, huh?

- And it sounded good, too.

- (laughing): It did.

- Right?

- It did.

So now we're gonna add some of our jewels to our jeweled rice.

The first thing is a couple of carrots.

These have been grated on a box grater.

I'm not sure what jewel they would represent.

Is there an orange jewel?

This is another case... - Wait, is this, like... Do we have an anniversary now, 'cause you've been on the show so long?

- (chuckling): Yes, it's the topaz anniversary.

This is another ingredient that's naturally sweet.

So that's where we're getting some of the sweetness in our version of this Persian rice dish.

So you mentioned the barberries.

Those are really small berries that are really, really tart, almost like citrus.

Instead, we're using some dried cranberries.

Again, this is another ingredient that's got some sweetness to it, it's tart-sweet.

So a little bit different than a barberry.

But we're getting some of that sweetness we need in our version here.

Just gonna mix this together, and then we'll bring this up to a boil.

I'm gonna cover it, reduce the heat to low, and we'll let this go for about 30 minutes.

We want those carrots nice and tender and sweet, and we want the rice to absorb all of that really flavorful saffron liquid.

♪ ♪ Are you ready for the big reveal?

- I am.

- Look at that.

- Ooh, that looks good.

- Doesn't that look beautiful?

Just gonna fluff the rice.

Mm... you can smell that saffron.

Really smells great.

- Mm... Saffron's a, sort of an odd flavor, don't you think?

I mean, it's really interesting.

- It is.

- You can't really pinpoint it.

It's kind of... it's almost tropical...

It's... yeah.

- It's definitely its own thing for sure.

- But especially with something sweet, it's a really nice balance... - It does.

So to this, I'm gonna add a little bit of grated orange zest.

This is where, in the more traditional version, if you were serving this for a wedding, for example, you would add the sweetness in the form of citrus syrup or candied orange peel.

We liked the orange flavor here, but not all of that sweetness.

So now it's time for our final jewel-- the emerald.

These are pistachios that we've chopped up.

Normally, when we add nuts to a dish, we ask you to toast them to really bring out their flavor.

In this case, these are raw.

We really wanted the vibrant green color here since this dish is so much about presentation.

We also found that toasting was a little overpowering.

So I'm going to add some of these pistachios in.

- So, needless to say, this isn't just a quick side dish.

I mean, this could be sort of the centerpiece of the plate, right?

- Absolutely.

Look, it's gorgeous.

Can I put some more on mine?

- Yes.

- You're now bejeweled.

- (laughs) - Like that.

It does look beautiful, also.

- It's gorgeous.

It smells amazing.

- It has a wonderful smell.

Mm!

(chuckling): This is really good.

- It's so good, and it's so beautiful, and has so many different flavors going on in here.

There's sweet, there's tart.

- I have to say, in the pan, it, it looked a little heavy to me, but now I taste it, it's incredibly light.

- It is.

- I mean, usually, if you put a lot of stuff into a rice dish, or a bean dish or something, it gets really heavy.

This is not heavy.

- It's not at all.

- So you made Persian jeweled rice.

We took a two- or three-day recipe, put that into about an hour, so it's not layers and layers and layers.

It's not quite as sweet as probably the original.

Obviously, it doesn't have quite as many ingredients, but it's light, it's fluffy, has a little bit of sweet, has a little bit of sour to it, has the onions, has a lot of depth with the saffron, great color, and absolutely fabulous taste.

So is this our... is this our anniversary dish now?

- (laughing): I guess so.

- Every year on this show we'll be making Persian jeweled rice.

♪ ♪ You know, one of our favorite recipes here at Milk Street is the cucumber salad, and you can find them all over North Africa and Egypt and Algeria, also in the Middle East, like in Turkey.

And you start, obviously with a cucumber.

You can add tomatoes, you can add pistachios, green chilies, peppers, whatever you want to it.

This particular recipe we call Persian tomato and cucumber salad.

It comes from the town or the city of Shiraz in Iran.

It's called Shirazi.

And it's very simple to do, but we're going to start with a large sort of English-style cucumber.

If you can find smaller Persian cucumbers like these, that's great.

They don't have to be seeded, but this one will need that done to it.

So we'll start by removing the ends.

We're not gonna peel it.

We...

I am gonna cut it in half.

It's so long, it's easier to manage.

And then we'll cut it in half, obviously, to seed it.

When I seed, I like to use a teaspoon measurer.

It has a fairly thin, sharp edge to it, which is nice.

And these English cucumbers are nice because the seeds are relatively small, which is terrific, and the meat is nice and dense.

It's not too soft.

So, we have it seeded, and now we'll cut it into pieces.

It's always good to turn a vegetable over to the flat side when you cut it so it doesn't roll around.

It's nice and stable.

So the next thing we found is, of course, cucumbers have a ton of water in them, as you know.

So these salads, as they sit, 'cause there's salt in the dressings, become watery.

So the simple solution to that, of course, is to add salt to the cucumbers.

We'll also do that with the tomatoes.

This is a pound a half tomatoes that were cored, cut into chunks, then we're gonna add some salt to this, a couple of teaspoons of kosher salt... And let that sit about 20 minutes.

I'll just toss this a little bit.

Now, when we come back in a little bit, in 20 minutes, that there will be about a half a cup of water that comes out of that, so that means that when you dress it, it's not going to dilute the dressing.

So meanwhile, we're going to start working on our dressing.

♪ ♪ So now it's onto the dressing, and we start with three scallions.

Now, we divided the white part of the scallion from the green.

People often ask, "Why would you do that?"

Well, the white part of the scallion is sort of oniony.

So when you want an onion flavor, it's great.

The green part is sort of grassy, so we're gonna add the green part at the end.

But we're going to start with the white part, and you can tell these have been cut on the bias.

So we're gonna add a little trick here, which is to take about a half-teaspoon of kosher salt.

It'll help tenderize them.

I'm gonna massage them together.

And also, it tends to blunt that sort of strong oniony flavor you get from the white part of the scallion.

♪ ♪ Then we'll add the other ingredients.

We have a little bit of lime zest.

Dried mint, not fresh mint.

About a tablespoon of that.

We take one garlic clove, and we grate it, to get a lot of flavor out of it.

And finally, a quarter-cup of lime juice.

And mix that together.

And this can sit while we wait for the tomatoes and cucumbers to release all those juices.

♪ ♪ So it's been 20 minutes, which is enough time to release a lot of the water from both the tomatoes and the cucumber.

And you can see in the bowl, there's a good half-cup there.

So we'll add tomatoes and cucumbers there, and now we have a few additional items to put in to finish up the dish.

We have the green part of the scallions, which we cut up earlier.

We have a little cilantro, of course, which goes with the dish.

Then a little bit of black pepper, as well.

♪ ♪ I'm gonna toss this first, but you can add a little bit of olive oil if you don't want just that much lemon juice.

You want to make more of a classic dressing, a little less acidic, you can do that.

♪ ♪ Always the simplest recipes with the freshest ingredients are the best.

Just a handful of ingredients.

A little bit of the garlic, the mint, the lime zest.

Mm, that is so good.

And it's one of those recipes you can make almost any time.

Persian-style tomato and cucumber salad, really simple to do, takes just half an hour.

And it has the bright, fresh flavors of summer.

♪ ♪ - So we all know how important salt is to cooking.

It rounds out the other flavors in a dish which otherwise might be flat.

But salt also is important to cocktails.

And I'm not talking about putting the salt on the rim of a margarita.

I'm talking about adding salt directly to your cocktail, and it takes only the tiniest amount to bring balance to a cocktail.

There are two ways to do this.

The pros like to make saline solutions-- a mixture of salt and water-- that they then add by the dropper-full to their cocktails.

Now, this allows them the maximum amount of control.

It's very easy to do, but I actually prefer to use a shortcut.

I just add kosher salt directly to my cocktails.

As long as it's a cocktail that you're going to mix, stir, shake in some way, it's going to dissolve without any problems, and it saves me the trouble of having to make a saline solution.

Now, not all drinks require salt, but many do benefit from them, and one of my favorites is the French 75, a bright light, bubbly drink that's been around in some form since around the 1800s.

So let's make a French 75.

We are going to start with one-and-a-half ounces of gin.

Don't go for the top-shelf stuff.

Mixed cocktails are never a good opportunity to use top-shelf, because you're not gonna appreciate the nuances that you're paying for in that bottle.

To that, we're gonna add three-quarters of an ounce of lemon juice.

And three-quarters of an ounce of agave or simple syrup.

Now, they both mix equally well.

I prefer agave because I can buy it and I don't have to make it.

Simple syrup isn't complicated to make, but it can be a bit of a pain.

I'm gonna add six to ten granules of kosher salt and just a dash of Angostura bitters.

♪ ♪ Now we're gonna add our ice.

And now we're gonna give it a shake.

Eight to ten seconds is plenty.

♪ ♪ Now we're going to strain this into a flute and then we finish it with a couple of ounces of prosecco.

♪ ♪ And that is how you make a perfectly balanced French 75.

Cheers.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know, Beirut is a really interesting place, because there's Kentucky Fried Chicken posters up all over the place.

And then there's also really great sort of modern food.

And there's also sort of classic food from the villages.

So we went to a restaurant called Soukel Tayeb, which is right in downtown Beirut, and the guy who runs it is this amazing guy, Kamal Mouzawak.

He looks like Robert De Niro, maybe ten years younger, and he has a mission, which is to bring people from all over Lebanon, local cooks in small villages, to cook for a week in this little restaurant.

Businesspeople, everyone downtown, can come and eat the food of their childhood.

Sort of reconnect to what Lebanon means to them.

And one of the dishes we had that day, Fatiya was the cook for that week.

She made some roasted eggplant with lamb, some fish tanjia, little purses stuffed with bitter greens.

But she made this cauliflower dish, which was amazing, roasted cauliflower.

They were making it there for hundreds of years before we got on to it.

It was just delicious and was also very simple.

So we brought that back here.

- We did, and it is so flavorful, and it is so easy.

I'm not kidding.

I made this last night with my four-year-old, and he did all of the work, except for cutting up the cauliflower and dealing with the screaming-hot oven.

- God, you're a much better parent.

My four-year-old never did all the work in the kitchen.

That's amazing.

- I mean, it was a good day-- it's not every day.

We basically stir everything in this bowl.

But before you do that, you want to make sure that you take your sheet pan and cover it completely with foil, and then make sure you oil it really well, either with cooking spray or some cooking oil.

It's gonna save you a lot of scorched scrubbing at the end of the day.

So in here, we have some olive oil and tomato paste.

And I'm gonna add a couple of tablespoons of tahini.

And a tablespoon of hot sauce.

And you don't want anything too vinegary here, Chris.

We're just looking for a little bit of heat.

We have some cornstarch, which is gonna make that coating kind of puff up and get nice and crispy, and then a couple of tablespoons of water just to loosen it up.

I'm going to do two teaspoons of kosher salt, because this is the only time we're really gonna season it.

And a teaspoon of black pepper.

And this almost may not look like much now, but it is going to stain the cauliflower a really beautiful, orangey-red, fiery kind of color.

And here's where things get messy.

So could you hand me the cauliflower, please?

Now, this is a large head of cauliflower-- like two, two-and-a-half pounds.

So, if you find the baby ones at the market, you're gonna want two.

And the hardest part of this recipe is just this messy part.

So if you don't mind getting messy, then... - This is the part you had your four-year-old do?

- You know what?

He didn't want to do it.

He was, like, "I don't know, Mom, you can do that part."

(laughs) I don't know what that says about him, but he was much more into the measuring and mixing.

All right, and you really want to make sure you're working that mixture into the florets.

And the other very important piece of this, Chris, is that you want a screaming-hot oven.

So 500 degrees preheated.

And that is going to get us some nice caramelization and a little bit of char, actually, on the edges.

And you want to make sure as many of these pieces are cut-side-down as possible.

All right, I'm going to go wash my hands.

If you wouldn't mind putting this in the oven.

Again, it's 500 degrees, and it's just 25 to 30 minutes, no stirring, and you'll see how beautiful it is when we're done.

- Okay.

♪ ♪ - All right, Chris, look at how pretty this is.

- You know, I have to say, it is beautiful.

- Well, another thing I like about it is that it has the mouthfeel like it's deep-fried, and it's not, just roasted.

So it's really pretty.

We're gonna make it even prettier.

We have a little bit of chopped cilantro here and some lemon zest, and that's just gonna really brighten it up.

We have that kind of fiery savory flavor from the tahini-hot sauce coating.

- So this is the vegetarian version of chicken wings.

- It is!

- Yeah, isn't that what it is?

- Absolutely!

- Maybe we should have called it that-- cauliflower chicken wings, yeah.

- This is football food!

- So this does bring me back to that lunch at Soukel Tayeb.

They had, like, 12 different things, maybe more.

She made a whole buffet, essentially.

And the food was just great.

But all the people working there, you know, had come in from other places in Lebanon to cook for people in town.

We need that here.

- I would love that.

- Well, it was just lovely, because the food was great.

And it's not the kind of food that you're familiar with if you know a little bit about that food.

It's just all local recipes.

It was just really terrific.

So with that in mind... - All right, well, let's... - Let's taste it.

- I could eat this whole plate myself, but I'm gonna... - And you may.

- I might when you're not looking.

All right, and then we have some extra tahini and lemon.

- Would you like some tahini?

- I would, please-- love tahini.

Thank you.

Lemon squeeze.

Do you like lemon?

- Mm-hmm.

Okay, A for looks.

Looks aren't everything, but... - It's a good place to start.

- Mm... Wow.

You know, I've never been a huge fan of cauliflower, because it doesn't have a ton of flavor.

Now I like cauliflower.

- Cauliflower is having a big moment right now, Chris, in the food world.

I mean, cauliflower is kind of the blank canvas.

I think of it a little bit like tofu, but it really absorbs all of those different flavors.

They get kind of stuck in the little crags of the florets, and it's delicious.

- It also goes to show you can put tahini on everything.

We actually put it in brownies, don't we?

- Mm-hmm.

- So brownies to cauliflower, tahini is absolutely the most all-purpose thing you can keep in your refrigerator.

So if you want to take something that's rather bland-- a head of cauliflower, two-and-a-half pounds of cauliflower-- and spruce it up very quickly in a hot oven, try this recipe, which is roasted cauliflower with tahini.

Great flavor, a little bit of spice to it, and it turns something bland into something spectacular.

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

All episodes and recipes from this season of Milk Street Television are available for free at our website, MilkStreetTV.com.

Please access our content, including our step-by-step recipe videos, from your smartphone, your tablet, or your computer.

- The new Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show, from authentic lasagna Bolognese and roasted cauliflower with tahini and lemon to Indian butter chicken and flourless French chocolate cake.

The Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price, and receive a Milk Street tote with your order at no additional charge.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- For 25 years, Consumer Cellular has been offering no-contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like.

Our U.S.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you.

To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

♪ ♪ - Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to be the first to welcome you to Tel Aviv... - Welcome to Oaxaca's airport.

- Welcome to Beirut.

♪ ♪ (man speaking Hebrew) (speaking world language) - Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris.

- We call it supa kanja.

It's the word for gumbo.

♪ ♪ - Christopher, you have to make the authentic, original cotoletta alla Bolognese for me.

♪ ♪ - So this is the Eduardo García blender.

- This is the no electricity.

♪ ♪ - Next is dessert.

- That is really good.

♪ ♪ I notice when you cook sometimes, you add a little bit of something and then you just put the whole bowl in.

- I like to be generous with my food.

Generosity is important in cooking.

- That's true.

♪ ♪ - Can start building bridges, and food is definitely a perfect common ground.

♪ ♪ - This is a generational thing.

It's, it's something that you inherit.

♪ ♪ - Yeah, that was great.

(woman speaking Mandarin) - What was this for?

What did she say?

- You get one more chance.

- Salute.

- How is it?

He's speechless.

- I'm speechless.

That's so good.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪