tv The Ed Show MSNBC January 4, 2013 12:00am-1:00am PST
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miley cyrus but the family behind this legendary landmark has never given up the secrets of its killer chow until now, get ready to cook up tasty mexican dishes at home, with the dynamic duo of casa vega restaurant at their home coming up next casa vega restaurant at their home coming up next on my family recipe rocks. ♪ we've touched down in the san fernando valley just over the hollywood hills in sherman oaks california. now today were cooking it up with christy vega fowler owner of the hollywood hot spot casa vega restaurant. christy has taken over the restaurant from her father ray who opened the doors in 1956. right from the start casa vega was a hit with some of hollywood biggest stars. marlin brando, gary cooper, and john wayne were regulars here, and today that tradition is still alive and well with tinsel town a listers love
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the laid back atmosphere and authentic mexican food. christy welcomed us into her home to share three family recipes that are legends on the casa vega menu. lovely kitchen, lovely home, you've got stuff already prepared. ready for you. this pretty exciting because casa vega has been around for a long time since 1956. exactly yes. wow. and who is this fine gentleman here? 56 wonderful years. i've been to the restaurant before and this is just exciting because there are recipes that people have started their own generations too but this has been around for a while. i'm excited so what are making today. today were making tamales, our casa vega tamales, and were making our vegetable filling. okay and what else are we making? were making chicken enchiladas and soup. what? albondigas soup. it's a meat ball soup it's delicious. sweet. what do we have first? tamales i guess. the tamales are near and dear to
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my heart, this is defiantly my grandmothers recipe, her recipe she was known for tamales, i think casa vega has some of the best tamales ever. first it's the masa. it's the base of the tamale. we have our masa dough, it's a corn meal dough, and out chili paste, which is made out of california chilies. we make that in the restaurant, adds a little flavor. with this tamale we flavor the dough with the home made chili paste, and we do chicken or beef and were going to do veggies today. what's nice about the masa dough is you can flavor it any way you want. so you can even add strawberries, make a breakfast tamales you can do anything you want. this is all new to me. this is out of my complete zone. some i know how to make i've seen that, i've never really sen a tamale being made. and also healthy for you. alright let's do this. first were going to add our masa dough.
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christy adds in the masa which is a mexican corn meal dough. she then adds a chili paste to the mixer. and then were going to add a little bit of oil. she adds the canola oil to loosen the masa and then its time to mix. now add our baking powder. and a little bit of salt. you can see its starting to get stickier. as we go. so well loosen it up, mix it one more time. add that chili paste right. exactly to give it a lot more flavor. you said you can put in anything you want. now it's taking like and orange look to it. add a little bit of water to loosen up the dough. so since were using the mixer, how was it done back then making these tamales? did you have a mixer? at that time they used to have hand mixers. but this was the same thing they did but they.
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right cranked it. when you were young did you like stay by the kitchen, dad more the cook, mom, who did a lot of the cooking. when i was really young my grandmother did a lot of the cooking, the mexican old recipes. then she taught it to my mom, she's irish but she thinks she's mexican. and she fully inherited them. so we have this. we have the dough its flavored and delicious and we have the corn husks soaking in water. you want them soaking when you start in really hot water. how long do you soak them for? when you get the corn husks from the store they're going to be hard and tight so this makes them pliable and flexible and easy to work with. we have our filling, our cheese, monterey jack cheese, our olives and our chilies. first step is to pick a corn husk that fits in the palm of your hand. the husks have two different sides so its important to have the smooth side up.
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take a tablespoon and maybe a little bigger of the dough and then put it on the palm and smear it? smear it, but don't smear it too much because it will get even more sticky. you want to keep this part free and this part open and then sides in middle. yeah perfect. doing a very good job. and then we can add our fillings. and you can do all cheese. i love olives so ill probably add a little more olives. customize it. yes. look at that. looks killer right her. that looks great. very cool. so were going to, kind of roll it. i don't know kind of, you have to tell me. i've never done this before. you know kind of just do it. well take the right flap and fold it over and then roll it. roll it like that.
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and then square it right here. right? and then fold it. and you've got your tamales. that's it? yeah that's it. i did it. before placing these puppies in the steamer christy and i build the remaining tamales with cheese and veggies so they can all steam as one happy little tamale family. blankets of love. they're going to sleep, taking a nap a little bit. we want them to stand up. so you can use the foil and kind of put it in there. almost like packing something away with packing peanuts. see perfect. so a half hour. cover it. and for a half hour and then they'll be ready. simple. simple as that. up next we start our casa vega soup. then christy shows us the secret behind the recipe there restaurants most popular dish. when my family recipe rocks returns. ww
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we're in sherman oaks california at home with the wonderful vega family. ray vega who opened the restaurant casa vega when he was just 22 years old has been bringing authentic mexican food to the los angeles area for over 50 years. after retiring just a few years ago ray passed the torch to his daughter christy which wasn't easy for mr. vega. defiantly some of the intention my dad had letting go of the restaurant is i'm a girl and i'm small and petite in stature and i talk sweet so i think he was worried i wouldn't be able to handle the business side of the restaurant the venders and the different aspects with the employees, but he saw me hold my own more than once or twice and realized that it was completely fine and i could handle anybody. it was completely fine and i could handle anybody. in addition to kicking it in the restaurant, christy
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has also mastered all the recipes that casa vegas is known for. so, with the tamales steaming in the pot its time to get started on our next dish the traditional mexican soup, albondigas. so tamales are steaming so were going to make soup. yes albondigas soup. albondigas soup. perfect. so first were going to start with the meat balls. and that's what it is meatball soup. abondigas. abondigas. who are these guys. these are my boys, this is ryan jr. and jackson. what's up dudes. say hi. want to put that in there. pour that in. sweet. good job. like a true chef. we get some help from her boys with an egg, four tablespoons of long grain rice, one table spoon of garlic powder, and black pepper, a half a cup of chopped onion and a quarter cup of green onion. we throw it in with ground beef.
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this recipe came from a restaurant on alevera street. the historical street in the 1930 so they developed the albondigas, tamales and all the recipes there. these were the recipes from tijuana. when that restaurant closed my dad opened casa vega we brought the recipes to casa vega. then you mix it with your hands, this is a great recipe for kids because they like to get really messy. get on in there. that's good you get your kids to do it you don't have to get your hands dirty. yep get it all on that shirt. with everything mixed together its time to roll this meat into a meat balls. starting to roll. well roll like little meatballs. maybe like a teaspoon size. just roll it.
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exactly. it's a little one. see i'm italian, i make the meatballs. this is a soup so you want it small but i make it big like bah. meat balls are done as far as rolled. next is to make the broth for the meatballs. okay so well turn on. i already put it so an easy six cups of water. christy uses 3 cup of tomato sauce. 1 ½ teaspoons of chicken base, a teaspoon of salt and cumin and a half teaspoon of oregano and white pepper. you can add vegetables to it if you like. you can kind of tailor it to how your family likes to eat it. at home we do it super simple. this is a little different but we said its simple to make. the tamales there steaming. making this meatball soup, how do you say it again. abondigas. and its really good, i think people that have it love it. have you ever had it? this is exciting. yes. i've had a tamale before but i've never had albondigas soup.
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you have to say that way seems like you have to. once the ingredients have been added she brings it to a boil and then christy adds the meatballs. coming up next christy breaks down the recipe on the top selling on casa vegas menu. then its time to dig into these authentic mexican classics. when my family recipe rocks returns.
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we're at home with rayay vega and his daughter christy vega. cooking up three authentic mexican dishes that are crowd favorites at their family restaurant casa vega in sherman oaks california, earlier christy showed us how to make homemade tamales. which were fun and easy to put together? we just finished albondigas soup but christy had one more thing for us. so now one last dish chicken enchiladas. so now we are making... chicken enchiladas. chicken enchiladas. and the chicken enchiladas are our best sellers, chicken, cheese, beef, but when people think of mexican food they think enchiladas. of course and so do i. so what do we got going in here. what's first. were going make our sauce. were going to add about a half of cup of canola oil, and were going to add about a half a cup of flour. what were going to do is bring this to a boil, what's nice about
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enchiladas is i think they're impressive when you make them at home, and people think they're a lot harder than they actually are. right honestly i've never made an enchilada before. the secret is the sauce. enchilada is wrapped up cheese , chicken, but it's the sauce. so you're giving us like ancient secrets. the keys. to the casa vega enchilada. this is like locked down for many years and now they're opening it to you. just to you. shhh, don't tell anyone. to this. boil. we've got our boil coming. and were going to add our chili paste, which we also use in our tamales. and its sort of our signature flavor, it is our signature flavor this blend of chili paste we use. but for people at home go ahead and buy tubed chili paste, or canned, whatever you can find. make it easy.
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smells good already. this is starting to flavor it. to cool the sauce christy adds a half cup of cold water and brins down the temperature. then she adds in half a cup of chicken broth. you've been hands on at casa vega. you've been kind of the cook, the server, the waiter, the hosting. you do, what do you not do. well i do all the business part of the restaurant but i, but my favorite part, believe it more than server, bartender, on the floor is in the kitchen. i feel at home there, i love it. i love the vibe. i work in the kitchen twice a week. to show the guys i'm not someone who sits in the office, ill go wrap tamales. that way i also get to see who comes in late. vendors aren't bringing in what they're supposed to bring in. to finish off the sauce, christy adds one tablespoon of chicken base, a teaspoon of cumin, and some garlic powder, then another half cup of water to loosen things up. what's nice about it is its not taking a long time at all.
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so easy isn't it? i know. i'm dumb i would have been making enchiladas all the time. what the hell was i thinking. its just about all together. and that's our enchilada sauce. with the sauce done we heat up the tortillas with a touch of canola oil just so they stay soft and not get crispy. so we warm the tortillas. yes we warm the tortilla which is important so you warm with a little oil so they're nice and flexible so they don't break. its nice you did that and they're margaritas. you need to have these when you cook. yes you do so cheers. christy's first step in building the enchiladas is combining the shredded chicken with some salsa. this is what makes any homemade enchilada pop. help me out here, get on in there mix it all up. alright we have our tortillas they're warmed. were going to take about a small handful of chicken. want to make one?
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yeah what the heck. he's going to make one too. help me out? good thank you ryan. space it out a little bit. just in the middle. down the middle. oh down the middle. like a little landing strip. this is the middle. alright then well add a little bit of sauce. add some on yours. little sauce on the landing strip never hurt no body. and that again brings the flavor inside. okay and then well add a little bit of cheese. want to put a little bit of cheese right there. we put a touch of monterey jack cheese inside and time to wrap these babies up. over and tuck. you guys go to sleep. put them next to each other. we make a few more making sure the tortilla seam is facing down. make sure we put sauce. we rolled them up. put the chicken in, the sauce.
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put cheese in as well. what's the next step. now i moved some sauce over there. into something easy to pour in. top the enchiladas with the sauce. awe heaven. now some people like their enchiladas with a little bit of sauce. we drench it. love it. we don't even want to see any tortilla. amazing. doesn't it smell good. and now well sprinkle some cheese on top. okay. for this were going to put it in the oven for about five to ten minutes because we made kind of a larger plate and bake the cheese and melt it all on top and then were going to eat it. up next it's the moment you've all been waiting for. the taste test of casa vegas legendary recipes unlocked when my family recipe rocks returns.
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mexican food that's become a favorite among hollywood stars. they have a great family bond. with traditions that will be carried on for generations to come. carrying on the tradition means a lot to me because the restaurant symbolizes my dad, if i always take care of the restaurant with 100% of my heart in a way i'm taking care of my dad and what he worked for, and carry that on for him. it means a lot to me. all of these dishes were not only easy to make but were packed full of flavor with their traditional mexican flare. to try these casa vega recipes for yourself go to livewellnetwork.com. and make sure to check out our facebook fan page to follow us on the road as we discover amazing home town cooks across the country. alright so we've got the enchiladas out of the oven onto the plate. everything is plated. it looks like were going to eat for forty of us, but its me and you at the moment. eat well. that is defiantly well.
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what are we going to dig into first. i think we should try the tamales. here we have a tamale, just cheese, and then we had one with a spanish sauce, salsa on top. this is wet and dry. so if you wanted wet you get it with the sauce, without its dry. got ya. i'm gong to dig into the wet one first. help me out here as well. why not share. get a little guacamole in there too. yes. oh my god. have you got into the inside. yeah. got right there. what is that. here give me this. that's the best part. with the cheese and the olives or did you want to try the dry. sorry dry. i'm very proud of her. she's keeping casa vega moderate. our food now, its healthier than its ever been. and she's doing thing that our customers are wanting.
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so this was in for about how long was it. the meatballs took only about ten minutes to cook so it was really easy. yes! that is so good. its like flavorful. the cumin, i cant even talk. and the broth is just ridiculous. the cooking is so easy. it just wonderful being part of that community. and you get to know them and they get to know you. and they get to the feeling this is their restaurant. alright so this is the enchiladas. yes this is what we made. alright. so we just cut in, dig in there. just cut into it. get in there.
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what i want to do the sauce is like, i want to just throw it on everything. right? its awesome. now we had a blast hanging out with christy and her dad and we appreciated how they unlocked their secret recipes to us. tradition runs in this family strong. you could defiantly taste the love for their food and customers in every bite. unbelievable. thank you so much for cooking these dishes. what's cool about this is this has been going on for generations to generation. to see these handed down like that and you get to share it with the world. people come all across the world and people eat at casa vega. i appreciate it. its been a blast and cheers. cheers. what do we say audios. see you later. yeah audios. see you next time on my family recipe rocks.
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you know the reason why i think its always had a big celebrity draw is its dark and cavy, there's not windows, red leather booths. so you can't really see who's in there, so celebrities feel comfortable and we have back doors and they go out the kitchen and stuff like that so we make it nice for them. [ male announcer ] the emotional burden of debt, not everybody can understand it. the worry... the endless collection calls. we know what it's like to be in your shoes. we're the providers of careone debt relief services.
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how do we know? bernie dancel, who created careone, has been in your shoes. over 20 years ago, he had his own battle with debt, which motivated him to start what is now the nation's largest brand of debt-relief services. we've helped over five million people just like you find a better way out of debt. call our certified credit counselors for your free personalized plan. it's not a loan. it's not bankruptcy. we help you consolidate your unsecured debt into one affordable monthly payment. the only shame in being in debt is staying in debt when the solution is right in front of you. we understand. we were founded by someone who's been there. call us today or visit careoneworks.com. careone. we know what it's like to be in your shoes. on today's let's dish, smoked salmon and crab chowder, bass veracruz and guilt-free vegetarian stuffed peppers.
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plus cinnamon bread pudding! ♪ good morning guys! ♪ good morning guys! -good morning chef! ♪ hi there. thanks for joining us! on today's show, we're making a whole smorgasbord of recipes that you are going to want to try. i made these dishes, countless times, and i'm excited to share them with you. i'll make a bass veracruz which is usually made with red snapper and then we have the chef from froodease who will be making for us a vegetarian stuffed pepper, that's healthy. and the grand finale, chocolate chunk bread pudding. sounds amazing and definitely tastes amazing. so lets begin with my smoked salmon, crab,
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and leek chowder which is different from most chowder's that you've had. oh, so yum. it starts right over here in this pan. and i've been sautéing, or what we call in this business, sweating, which means sautéing it kind of low heat. i have three cups of leeks in here and a third of a cup of diced up celery. into this i'm going to put a third of a cup of all purpose flour. and, i'm just going to mix that up and basically what i'm going to do is let that flour cook for oh just about a minute or so. and what happens is, as we cook the flour, especially with the butter in there, it makes something called arrowroot, and arrowroot is a fancy word for thickening. and that's going to thicken up our chowder. okay that is, great. alright, in goes, some milk. i'm going to put two and a half cups of milk.
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right over those leeks and celery. and now look, i'm taking a whisk and i'm going to stir this. the spoon comes out because whenever i use arrowroot, i want to be sure that i don't have any lumps. okay! let me just take a step back because i mentioned there are three cups of leeks in there. now, how do you actually clean these things? leeks not only taste great. they make really wonderful soups and wonderful chowders. in my house, we cook them a lot. just slice off the bottom of the leek, the sort of fuzzy part. that we put off to the side. and then i'm just going to remove the dark, green leaves. and i do that, basically one leaf at a time. and i can make it cut, sort of where the light green and the dark green meets each other. and that's, about it! now the dark green leaves i'm going to put those off to the side.
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we're not really going to use them. but now the problem with the leeks is that inside is a lot of dirt. so i clean this by opening it up like so. cutting it in half, slicing it one more time and then all i have to do now, is dice them up! what's really important is that you take the leek and you cut it into quarters like i just did. this then, goes into cold water. lots of cold water. i'm going to stir it up like this with my hands, rub it together and then what happens is, all the sand and dirt inside, falls to the bottom and when it's nice and clean i just lift the leeks right off the top. that's it, that's how you clean a leek! now let's get back to this chowder. you can see that the milk has come to a boil, and the flour has done it's job. look how thick it is. now that's too thick for a soup but here we go.
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four cups, of low sodium chicken broth. goes right into our chowder. and a little bit of lusciousness. this is a cup and a half of heavy cream. one potato that's all diced up. put that into our soup, along with a little bit of seasoning now. the seasoning is about a teaspoon of thyme leaf and two bay leafs. that now has to come up to a boil and we turn it down into a simmer. and by the way, the kind of potato we use, be sure that you use one of these when you're chopping up a potato for a chowder because a russet potato, these big earthy potatoes, have the most starch and as a result thicken the soup as we cook it. so now we're just going to be cooking our soup! alright, that chowder is looking beautiful. it takes about 30 minutes or so to cook.
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it's going to get thick like we've done here, but the other thing is, you're going to pull a couple of potatoes and then just take a knife and slice one of those in half. and the potatoes should be very tender. if they're not tender, it's not done. you don't want crunchy potatoes. so right now the chowder is almost done except we need to pt in the smoked salmon, which means you can flake it. it can chunk apart just like so. you want to put about eight ounces. flake it up again, just by hands just by nice chunks if you will. and then eight ounces of crab meat. now be sure that the crab meat, that whenever you use crab, before the crab goes in, you just want to give it a little squeeze like this, be sure that there are no shells hiding inside the crab. it's never a pleasant surprise, when you bite into one of those. alright eight ounces of crab go into our soup. just a couple of things left to do. one, slice a
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lemon in half. we're just going to put a teaspoon or so of lemon juice just go get that sparkle, that acidity, little white pepper. a touch of salt and that's it. now this recipe sounds and tastes fancy but as i've shown you, it's incredibly easy to make. try it out or yourself! in a few minutes, we're back with a bass veracruz entre. become a fan of lets dish by going to f a cebook.com/letsdishtv and clicking like. tender ae
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stuffed in our pepper. colorful and smells so good. alright, for stuffing our peppers, it's pretty simple. what we're going to do is cut off the cap. and tn 'rgong pn oun her.gong so you ta o bk tht rbig chuboo tere.,our can eaveae take ut all the seebtalig . asgood tp. absollyanwe saving thetop. li to bake te tops onhede. you can u is -preentation, k emn e e. nothing is wad. i loe it. absolelor put i so then wht wee i do is taki er so then wht wee i do is taki press it gntlyo t
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uice off to tsitoatoes,r so ouf hich we'll get t a ltlit lat. do fresh tmatoes. wl ju like e teach e students i iry shool, sometimes the tomatoes at te store aren'tsoeaif. sit'stter to use a for three inutes. fer three mintes, ys. ca see that tomaoeha soibu some of thei oinoe the reste of thei ohe ingredients i ha t luid fromthe 8 ounc c ototos. it goestohe tomates lonwisome reallyr fainin ssonin. qurer cup f ched up green olis h meo. two tablespoon iced jalapen yocabuthse in ajar athrocerystore d #little bt ofrbgon. about a teooofried roregano, hlfaonf"dried thyme,at o lemonjuic about a tablesn olemo juice. and im, which re thoeey y litthat heyactal h in the catan, ths een better. at this point, we're goigpto tu. what it looks like when it's done, is this right over here. so let's put our fish dish together. we start by putting a little of the tomato mixture on the bottom of a 9x13 baking pan, just like so. and on top of that we're going to put our pieces of bass. just six pieces of bass. sort of evenly spaced, right on top of that. and you can see this is such an easy dish to make. because all that's left to do, well a little bit of salt on the fish. little bit of pepper and then we pour on the rest of this, just tomato. across the glaze, that's perfect.
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and you know you can see the flavors in this are quite interesting. they're spicy, they're acidic. they have olives in there also which blend a couple of other flavors. this then goes into the oven. about 400 degrees and it doesn't take long about 20 minutes or so, depending on the thickness of the fish. look at this. coming right out of the oven. nice, and steamy hot and all of those tomato flavors. they're just going to go right into those pieces of fish. i can dish up onto a plate, maybe a couple pieces of lime off to the side. now once you made it, all you got to do is serve it with tiny potatoes and you will have quite a feed. make this dish, search bass veracruz at livewellnetwork.com for the recipe. our guest chef shares his guilt-free vegetarian stuffed peppers.
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restaurant but from different restaurants. we feed you recipes from entertainment restaurants and restaurant outside and companies as well. and so back of water tower right? it is. and we have, we feature an amazing salad bar with over 50 items daily. a hot bar and a prepared salad bar which mixes up to over 80 items daily. i got to get over there. so what are we doing here today? what are we going to be making? well we're going to be making one of our most popular items off the hot bar. this is our guilt-free vegetarian stuffed peppers. i like that. we call it guilt-free because it's full of grains and vegetables and is so low in fat. it's very satisfying. i can't wait, this sounds great. so what do we do here? what we did was, start by sautéing some vegetables. onions, carrots and celery. and by sautéing it, we're bringing out some of the natural sweetness of the vegetable.
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caramelizing it. great, we started with the onion carrot celery, then we added some mushroom. then what we're going to do is add some of our grains. the first grain we're going to use is the really couscous which is like a pasta ball. so we're going to add ur couscous, and we're going to sauté that up. and get that, bring out that naughty flavor from the couscous. so we can brown them in a little bit? yeah a little bit. that won't hurt. and then we got the vegetable stock inside. once this is brown a little bit we'll add our vegetable stock, and we'll let it simmer until the couscous is simmer. about 10 or 15 minutes. so it goes really fast, yes, it goes very fast. and some of the other items used are going to be part cooked. smells fantastic by the way. there you go. mix that up. then we can cover that and let that simmer until it's real tender.
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and then we're going to fold in some other grain. so for color and texture, we're going to use some black lentils or blue lentils which are part cooked, and we're going to use some brown rice. typically with grain, you'll do two parts of water per grain, simmer just a pinch of salt just until they're tender. i can use other grains if i want to. if you have left over chinese fried rice, whatever's in the refrigerator, exactly. no, you can substitute some vegetables if you have green beans instead of zucchinis. yeah it's going to come out really good. so that's simmering very nice. once again we'll fold that in the zucchini and squash don't need to be cooked very long. so when the couscous is done, it goes in and wahl ah. finish your top part and that's what it's going to look like. so that's the finished mixture? gorgeous. it's all real tender and ready to be stuffed in our pepper. colorful and smells so good. alright, for stuffing our peppers, it's pretty simple. what we're going to do is cut off the cap. and then we're going to use a spoon and spoon around here.
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so you take out back that big chunk, of seeds, you can leave a bit of the bottom there. but we'll make sure we take out all the seeds by tackling it out. that's a good tip. absolutely, and we're saving the top. i like to bake the tops on the side. you can use it as a presentation, or bake them on the side. nothing is wasted. i love it. absolutely or put in chili, or the fried rice. so then what we're going to do is take our filling and we're going to stuff it in there. press it gently to get out some of the air because as it bakes it'll collapse like that. you want to press it down lightly. got one more there. and then, well what we're going to do is we're going to bake it with marinara sauce, mixed with water.
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you want to delude it a little bit so the marinara doesn't burn and squirt. can i do marinara from the jar? absolutely just put more water in it. those are strong. and then so what we're going to do is take our marinara sauce, put it in the bottom. so what we're going to do is we're going to cover it with foil, loose it over the top, maybe tight and then we're going to cover and bake it in the oven. temperature? about 350 for about 45 minutes to an hour at the most. make sure that it's hot all the way into the center. and the peppers get nice and tender. they'll be very tender. the filling should be hot all the way and enjoy. wonderful dish, and guilt-free. i love that. thanks for coming to lets dish. thank you. to learn more about foodease and this recipe log onto livewellnetowkr.com and search veggie stuffed peppers. when we come back, an absolutely sinful dessert that can prepped out a day in advance.
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okay now time for dessert and this is going to be decadent. chocolate chunk, cinnamon bread pudding. i love bread desserts and this is so simple to make, and you can even compare in advanced to save some time, while you're making dinner. it al starts here, with our cinnamon bread. and this is two pounds of cinnamon bread. actually we cut it up into little chunks and if you notice, it's kind of stale a little bit, which is exactly what you want for bread dessert or custard like we're making. so i'm going to take this and put it into this enormous bowl over here and into that, i'm going to pour one and a half sixths of melted butter, like i said. this is decadent, this one. and i'm going to put in 12 ounces of chocolate chips.
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buy the best ones you can find because really, it gives this best flavor. if it has great chocolate, it makes for a great dessert. okay, stir that up. the butter is soaking inside the bread. and that is, by the way, why the bread is dried because the dryer the bread is, more liquid it will absorb, especially things like well custard, which we're going to make right now. so in this bowl, i'm going to go ahead and put eight eggs and six egg yolks, along with one and a half cups of sugar. and three tablespoons of brown sugar and then to add a nice little bit of flavor i'm going to go ahead and put in three tablespoons of vanilla extract. now the first step to making a custard is to mixing the eggs and in this case, eggs and egg yolk. to mix it with the sugar.
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and what we're doing is mixing it, until the sugar gets dissolved into the egg mixture. and by the way, the reason that we have a bunch of egg yolks in there is, the yolk adds more color, more flavor and how do i say this, decadent to the final bread pudding. alright that's it, just whisk it until the sugar is dissolved. that's great. and then into this goes one quart, of whole milk. now i have to tell you something, if you really want to go with the big decadent thing, you can even put in maybe a little half and half to replace some of the milk. okay here we go, the custard now gets poured on top of the cinnamon, bread. and i'm going to stir this, and let it sit for 20 minutes while the custard soaks into the bread. okay there we have it.
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this has sat for 20 minutes. and the way you know if it has sat long enough, you can give the pieces of bread a little squeeze and they should be like sponges. you can see that the custard squeezes out of all them. if you see that, we're ready to go. all that dried bread has absorbed, most of that custard. now this gets toss into a 9x13 baking dish. and as you can see this makes for quite a few people actually. there it is, toss it in. i just love this. there's something about old bread and custard that is just one of my favorites. what i'm going to do then is take a little bit of brown sugar. sprinkle it across the top of the bread pudding. it's about two tablespoons and this goes in a 350 degree oven, for about an hour now. watch this, after
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an hour, oh, man does that look good. here it is! it's beautifully browned and you can tell it's done if you press on it, it sort of feels nice and firm. we have to let this cool down before we finish up the dish. it takes about 45 minutes for the bread pudding to cool down. you don't want to get it cold, just so it's not piping hot. and right over here i have some melted chocolate that i melted over a double boiler, so a little bit of boiling water beneath it. about three ounces of chocolate chip. i'm going to spoon that chocolate right over the top of the bread pudding. and this is sort of our final touch of decadents. now if there's any left over of bread pudding which is highly unlikely, you can heat it right back up in the microwave and serve. alright that's it for our show. i hope you enjoyed the recipes. for more check out our website atlivewellnetwork.com or email us at letsdish@livewellnetwork.com.
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