- I'm here in wine country, Napa Valley, California to make a locavore meal with Bay area chef Joey Altman.

We're going on a field trip to get fresh local ingredients from a farm and a winery.

Then we're making a farm to table meal.

Grilled salmon topping an arugula and grilled corn salad plus a simple sweet pea and avocado crostini.

Back in my kitchen I've got more farm fresh food with a duck salad and pear dressing with Roquefort and walnuts.

It's a spectacular combination I know you're going to love.

We're bringing the best of the farm to your dinner table.

Next on Sara's Weeknight Meals.

(upbeat music) - [Voiceover] Funding provided by... - [Voiceover] Subaru builds vehicles like the versatile Subaru Forester with symmetrical all-wheel drive and plenty of cargo room.

A recipe made for whatever the day brings.

Subaru, the proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

- [Voiceover] Family owned and Indiana grown.

Maple Leaf Farms is a proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

Providing a variety of duck products for home kitchens.

Maple Leaf Farms duck helps inspire culinary adventures everywhere.

Maple Leaf Farms.

- [Voiceover] And thanks to the generous support of... (twangy banjo music) - Hi I'm Sara Moulton.

Welcome to Sara's Weeknight Meals.

I'm here at Boca Farm with Joey Altman, and we're picking up some ingredients to take back to make an amazing locavore meal here in California's Napa Valley.

Lizzie Moore was a teacher before starting the farm a year ago.

So, Boca Farm is a teaching farm.

Local school children from the school next door have their own plots.

Lizzie works to make sure it fits with her Mexican-American heritage.

- What we have growing here are called the three sisters, corn, beans and squash, and it's a very ancient style of companion planting.

And the way that they do it is they plant corn.

- [Sara] That's what this is.

- [Lizzie] This is corn.

- I'm such a city girl.

That's corn, yay.

- It's a mini corn.

- Okay.

- [Lizzie] And then next to the corn, you plant beans, whole beans, and as the beans grow up, they use the corn as their pole to grow up towards the sky, and then once they grow up, they create shade for the third crop which are pumpkins, of the three sisters.

- [Sara] Squash!

- [Lizzie] Squash and pumpkins.

And so here we have-- - [Joey] How symbiotic.

- Exactly, so they're all growing together and kind of helping each other as they grow.

- [Voiceover] This two acre farm is more than a food lab for kids.

The money making part of it is growing bespoke crops for local restaurants.

- [Joey] So this is where you grow for restaurants, right?

- Exactly, so there are five different Napa restaurants that each have their own plot at the farm.

- Really?

- Yes.

- You mean, they have you grow seeds, from seeds for them.

- Exactly, they tell me exactly what they want, and then I deliver it to their kitchen door when it's ready.

- What are we looking at here?

- So these are a pepper called lipstick pepper.

They're still green.

They will turn red hopefully soon if it ever warms up.

- Are they spicy?

- I think they're more of a sweet pepper.

- Okay.

- And then, I think four different kinds of cucumbers.

- Oh, cucumbers.

You know, we need cucumbers for your-- - We do.

You think they would mind if we stole a couple cucumbers from the garden?

- I don't think they'd mind.

- [Sara] Let me see, oh, oh, there's a little guy.

- [Lizzie] This is called a lemon cucumber.

because of the way it looks.

Here's one in here.

Is that enough Joey?

- [Joey] Oh yeah, absolutely.

That's more like a patty casserole.

- Yeah.

We have some squash blossoms.

Here you go.

- [Sara] Those are so pretty.

Oh, look at that.

- [Voiceover] The farm is totally organic, and that's a challenge sometimes.

- Our biggest problem this year is cucumber beetles, spotted cucumber beetles, but they're very attracted to yellow, so we've planted a lot of yellow flowers to distract them in our garden.

- Right, this little labyrinth of beauty here.

- Exactly.

- And the borage are actually quite edible.

They're delicious.

- [Lizzie] Borage are delicious, yeah.

They're my favorite flower, so you'll see it growing everywhere at the farm.

- So I'm going to grab some of the borage flowers cause they have a really great cucumber flavor.

- [Sara] We can eat them?

- [Joey] Oh, absolutely.

- [Lizzie] They're delicious.

- [Sara] My two favorite colors together, yellow and purple, we got them right there.

- Oh yeah, that looks beautiful.

- We're going to be eating in technicolor.

(laughs) (funky music) - So, Joey, what are we making?

- Well, we have beautiful King salmon here that I'm going to put on the grill, and serve with a grilled corn and arugula salad with a sweet pea avocado hummus on some crostini.

And I'm going to have you help me by making the hummus with the sweet peas and avocado, but I'm going to start by getting the salmon on the grill.

This is beautiful King salmon.

It's leaner than your farmed Atlantic salmon.

So it's important that it's well chilled so when it goes on the grill, it can get a nice char on the outside and still stay kind of medium rare on the inside and nice and moist.

It's really important though you have your grill nice and hot.

- Right and have your fish well oiled.

- Well oiled, right cause you don't want it to be sticking.

- [Sara] Yeah.

- I have the corn that I've grilled ahead of time here.

This beautiful sweet corn.

What I like about grilled corn is that corn is really delicious and sweet.

When you add that grill flavor, that little bit of char, that caramelization, it turns to white sugar flavor to like brown sugar flavor.

So it gets wider frequencies of flavor.

- Yeah, to me it's like, it reminds me of popcorn.

- So, hot grill.

I start it at a little bit of an angle.

Just a little bit - [Sara] Oh, we're going to get those nice grill marks.

- [Joey] I'm going to try.

- You want me to get started with the peas down here?

- [Joey] Yeah, why don't you do that.

The peas have already been blanched, and that means just cooked in boiling water with some salt.

- I'm throwing a garlic clove in here, and then-- - You can throw it, toss it, place it, whatever works for you.

- [Sara] Half an avocado.

- [Joey] Little trick about the avocado.

When you're getting an avocado, this a beautiful avocado, and when you pull this nub back, you see that it's green.

So if you're in a store, and you pull the nub back and it's brown there, you just put that nub back like that.. - That's cheating.

That's awful.

- And you put that down and get another one.

- Joey!

- I'm sorry, I'm paying $3 for an avocado.

- Alright, alright I hear you.

- That's not cheating.

- I like that one.

- [Joey] So I am going to get our ciabatta toast, the bruschetta ready by taking this beautiful bread here, and I'm going to cut it in quarter inch slices at a slight angle so I can get a little bit more surface area.

And this I save for me to nosh on.

- Okay, that's beautiful.

Do you get that kind of beautiful bread everywhere here?

You guys are so spoiled.

- We have a spoil of riches here in northern California.

I really, I moved out here from New York in 85, and I love New York, I go back all the time.

Love New York but San Francisco has stolen my heart.

- From the Catskills, from Grossinger's to San Francisco, there you go.

- Right, go figure.

- Okay, so it's about two tablespoons of fresh lemon juice.

- That's right.

Everything I do is to taste.

You know, I shoot from the hip.

Measurements are great for baking, but when you're cooking with these fresh garden ingredients, their flavors vary all the time.

- Yeah, lemons are never the same.

- [Joey] From time to, yeah, so you know, sometimes they're a little bit sweeter than others.

Trick about toast, whether you're doing croutons for anything or bruschetta like this.

I always season it.

- Season it.

- Yeah, it just, every bite becomes that much more delicious.

- [Sara] It's amazing how important seasoning is.

- [Joey] Down these go.

Please remind me not to burn my bread.

It's like when you put nuts in the oven... - Don't burn your bread.

- Thank you.

(laughs) - Oh yeah.

- Okay.

See another trick about doing salmon or anything on the grill, you want to let it cook.

If you try to move it too early-- - [Sara] Before it's ready.

- [Joey] Before it's ready, it sometimes won't come off, and then you wind up not getting the grill marks you want.

- [Sara] Okay, so I'm going to put a couple tablespoons of this in there, lemon juice.

Right, so I'm adding salt here and some pepper.

And a quarter cup of olive oil.

And are we using beautiful California olive oil?

- [Joey] Absolutely.

- [Sara] You want this really smooth, Joey?

- [Joey] Very smooth.

- [Sara] I'm just going to cut the corn off the cob.

- Oh, great opportunity for me to share a story with you.

- Okay, do you have-- - See that's how you do it, right?

- Yes.

- How I've done it for - Okay you're going to show me something new.

- In perpetuity.

And I used to, in the restaurant, we would get these big bowls set up cause we would do a case of corn.

So we'd have these big bowls with another bowl upside down in it so you can set the corn on top, and the big bowl catches it so it doesn't fly everywhere.

And I did that 15, 20 years in the restaurant.

Then on my show, I had a guest come on.

Said, okay, we're going to cut the corn just like you're doing, but instead of standing it up, he just laid it down and he went like this.

And the corn didn't go anywhere, and I was like... - Duh.

- Twenty years, how did that elude me?

- That's absolutely in the duh category.

- I felt like such a moron.

I don't know why people want to just stand it up like that.

It might be, I don't know, I'm not going to get Freudian or anything, but-- - (laughs) Please don't.

- [Joey] Okay, my toasts are beautiful.

My salmon is getting there.

I had a little bit of stickage, but it's going to be beautiful anyway.

- [Sara] Yeah, you know what?

Never apologize, never explain.

That's what Julia Child used to say.

You know, people come over to your house for dinner cause they're so happy that you're cooking and they're not.

- [Joey] You know what?

You're absolutely right.

- [Sara] Don't let them know that you just made them, you did something wrong.

(upbeat music) - And oh, how about that cucumber?

- See they have these big skins here, or big seeds, excuse me.

The texture of the seeds are not my favorite.

- [Sara] And so we're going to add some arugula.

- And then I'm simply going to cut these in quarters like that, and then slice them as thin as I can.

- [Sara] You know, there's nothing like getting it that fresh.

You know, we just picked it.

- [Joey] When you get something that's so fresh from the garden, the vibrancy of the flavors just jumps into your mouth.

It's really great.

So I'm just going to toss this right on top of our arugula.

Look at all these different shades of green.

It's beautiful.

- So, if we did the full amount, I think it's a quarter cup of olive oil and two tablespoons of lemon juice, but I'm going to start with a little bit less.

- [Joey] You know Sara, the thing that I really love about this is that the flavors are going to be so vibrant because most of these ingredients came from just miles from here which makes a huge difference.

So, no matter where you are in the country, if you can't get arugula, use the lettuces or greens that you can get at your local farmers market, but if you're using what's there, you're going to have such an easier time making something delicious.

- [Sara] Absolutely.

Okay, so we're getting there.

- [Joey] That looks beautiful.

- [Sara] I'm just going to put this in here.

- Let's just scrape it right onto the toast.

- I know, it's why dirty something else.

You're absolutely right.

- [Joey] Exactly.

- [Sara] Should I be generous?

- Yes.

- I love the color on this.

- [Joey] It's beautiful.

- [Sara] It's fantastic.

- [Joey] Wait til you see this all come together.

You're going to love it.

This is all about contrasting textures and flavor and harmonizing the flavors.

- And get got this all this morning.

This is how you eat in wine country, huh?

- [Joey] This is how we do it here.

This is how we roll.

- [Sara] I'm so jealous.

- [Joey] Don't be jealous, just enjoy it.

- [Sara] Just come more often.

- [Joey] Exactly.

So I just like to finish the dish with a little bit of salt sprinkled over the salmon, and then a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, just drizzled over the top.

- [Sara] That's so Italian.

- [Joey] Oh yeah, that's Italian baby.

- So, we have some chardonnay to go with that.

And I'm interested, why did you pick chardonnay?

- Well, this chardonnay has great acidity.

It's got a little bit oak, not too much, and it's got some richness, but it's not a butterball, it's really nice and crisp and it's got some great vegetable flavors that I think will really go well with the vegetables we have here, and that acidity will make that lemon sauce come out quite nicely.

- I'm excited.

- And it cuts through the richness, it's just a perfect wine for this.

- Alright.

- Cheers.

(funky music) - [Voiceover] What's more locavore when you are in Napa than wine?

Here there are approximately 400 individual wineries and vineyards of every variety, cover every hill and valley.

We chose one in the Carneros region known for it's chardonnay and pinot noir.

Matthew Glenn is a winemaker in this area.

- So, why is this area such a good place to grow grapes?

- Well, agriculturally, it has great soil, great sunlight, and then the Carneros region is right next to the northern extension of the San Francisco bay, so it's a cooler climate.

Does very well for pinot noir and chardonnay.

- So they like that cooler climate?

- They do, cooler than other parts of the Napa Valley.

- The fog gives them like a little coverture.

- That fog is good for something.

- A cool blanket.

- Besides murder mysteries.

(funky music) - [Joey] So, Matthew, when do you think these grapes will be ready about, approximately?

- [Matthew] These grapes will be ready to harvest in about a month.

And we've just seen the color change since the onset of ripening.

The berries'll start to soften.

The sugar will accumulate, and it'll develop a lot of very desirable aromas and flavors.

This is a beautiful almost ripe pinot noir cluster.

- Now how do you know when it really is ripe?

- Really tasting the grapes in every vineyard.

- You eat them?

- Yeah, I taste them and chew the skins.

- What a concept?

- Taste the flavor.

- Can I try one?

- Yeah, please do.

- Joey, you want one?

- Absolutely.

I love wine grapes.

They're so sweet.

A lot people don't realize how sweet they are.

- They're really sweet, and if you chew the skins, you can taste a lot of the flavors that will be enormous components of the wine.

So in addition, when I'm tasting the grapes, as I squeeze them like this, we can see the juice and then we see the seed come out, and as the seeds mature, they become more brown.

And also, all the colors from red wines comes from the skin, and so as the grapes become ripe, we can see that color bleed out as we squeeze the grapes.

- So, Matthew, Carneros is known for it's long hang-time or where grapes are allowed to be on the vines a lot longer than other parts of the valley where it's a lot warmer.

What is it about Carneros region that allows that to happen?

- [Matthew] You can even feel the breeze right now.

We're at the northern extension of the San Francisco Bay, and these cool breezes pass across these vineyards in this whole region everyday.

And that cooling environment allows the grapes to develop a lot of maturity and flavor on the vine.

- Well, you know, after tasting it in this form, I'd really like to taste the actual wine.

- Let's go back to the barrel cellar and taste some wines.

(funky music) - [Matthew] Take a sample of wine from this barrel, a thief.

- [Sara] A thief?

- [Matthew] Yeah.

- [Sara] That's called a thief?

- [Matthew] It is.

- Oh my God, I mean, so we're stealing the wine, huh?

- [Matthew] Well, you know, people don't always know when we come to take a sample.

- So this is just, we're just tasting it and seeing how it's doing.

- [Matthew] Correct.

- How long will you keep it in that barrel before you put it in the bottle.

- This one will age in barrel for about 11 months.

- How long has it been in there?

- For about ten months, so it's almost ready.

- It's almost ready, yeah.

- It tastes delicious.

- [Sara] Yeah.

It's tasting like wine.

He even had a wine to go with the duck I'm making next.

- And here's the pinot noir.

I recommend for your duck.

It has great earthen character which I think'll marry well with the savory character in the duck, and the acidity really cuts through the sweet dishes.

And I think it'll show up.

- Oh, it's delicious.

This would go good with almost anything, but for the duck, I think it's going to be perfect.

- Thank you.

- [Matthew] Thank you.

- [Joey] Cheers.

- We're going farm to table today, and there's nothing more local than my arugula from my backyard.

I'm going to use it as the base for my duck breast salad with pear and pear dressing, and my buddy Natalie's going to come over for lunch.

(funky music) - Okay now, here's the thing.

My arugula was really dirty.

You know, it came right from my garden which is wonderful, but you have to wash it cause arugula, like spinach, can be very sandy.

And there's nothing worse in your salad than sand.

So this is the base of my salad, and now I'm going to make some wonderful duck breasts and top it with a pear dressing and some sliced pears and walnuts and blue cheese, wow.

So, let me get started with my duck.

Gotta get my duck in the pan.

So this is duck breast.

This is Pekin duck.

I'm scoring the skin lightly, about a quarter inch apart because what happens when you score it is you're going to get more of the fat out of the skin.

If you cook the duck with the skin on which keeps the meat very moist, and then remove the skin, guess what?

The duck meat is leaner than white meat chicken.

So, there you go.

But why would you want to take the skin off?

It is so delicious.

Okay, so scoring it helps to render out more of the fat and make the duck crispier.

Seasoning, we're going to start skin side down, and I love duck fat, I've learned to love it.

I have this friend Arian, and she's convinced me that I should never throw out duck fat.

So, I am not ever going to throw out duck fat again.

So, we're starting.

We don't want to over brown the duck fat.

We're starting in a cold pan, but I've just now turned it up.

It's going to take, I don't know, about ten minutes for all this fat to render out of the skin.

I'm going to wash my knife.

You want to make sure, you know, no cross contamination.

But the good news about duck, unlike other poultry, chicken and turkey, is there's no issues of salmonella, so you don't have to worry about that.

As a matter of fact, we're going to cook it medium rare.

Now, I gotta get the dressing going.

Fruit and duck is a wonderful combination, and so I thought, well let's do a pear dressing.

And pears are still in season.

They go from the winter all the way to June or July.

And the pears that are in season most right now are Anjou.

We've got both the yellow and the red.

Now, I've got a couple of firm pears to put into the salad, but I'm actually going to make the dressing with a very ripe pear.

First I'm going to peel it, and this is, oh gosh, that looks so juicy and wonderful.

Anjou if you've never had them, have a very sweet taste with a slight citrus undertone.

As a matter of fact, pears, just one pear will provide 24% of all the fiber you need to eat in one day.

So, wow, eat a pear.

This is my favorite way to remove a core.

I'm just going to chop this guy up.

He's going into the dressing.

But this was my mom's favorite thing to eat was pear and brie for lunch.

I always think of her with a perfectly ripe pear, and somehow she always managed to get them, just to the right point.

We'd all be jealous when she was eating lunch and we were eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Okay, to this we're going to add some distilled white vinegar, half a cup, and now this seems odd.

We're going to add this to the pears, and cook it down by half.

You're like, wow, that's going to be really sour.

But we're going to add some honey later on which balances the whole thing.

Let me just stir this down a bit.

We want to reduce it a little bit, and we're also trying to get the pears tender.

I'm going to put the lid on to get it started, and once it's started, I'll turn it down.

My duck breasts are looking good.

On to our cheese.

Here we've got some Roquefort.

So I'm just going to crumble some up.

You can add as much or as little as you want.

We're going to add about a half a cup.

Roquefort is French.

I love Roquefort, but then again, I almost never met a blue cheese I didn't like.

There we go.

There's a start.

Now, I've toasted some walnuts.

We're going to go with both walnuts and walnut oil which is a different oil.

I haven't been cooking a lot with nut oils on Sara's Weeknight Meals, but they're wonderful thing to have in your fridge cause they add a different sort of depth of flavor to your dressings.

Let me get my nuts over here.

We've got some toasted walnuts, and we just put them in a 350 oven for about seven to ten minutes.

I'm going to chop these up a little bit.

Now nuts, like nut oils, should be kept in the fridge or if you're really not going to use them for quite a while, to keep them in the freezer.

Just toast them and they come right back to life.

Okay, so nuts are done.

Pears are reducing.

I'm going to take my duck out now, duck breasts, and you can see it's started to cook right there on the side.

So I'm going to put it down here just for parking it for half a second.

I'm going to dump the fat back here.

Most of it, we're going to save about a tablespoon.

You don't need a lot, but it's gonna flavor the other side.

And then salt and pepper on the second side.

Second side doesn't take as long.

(light music) And back in we go.

I'm going to let that cook for a minute.

I need to let this reduce.

And then we're going to puree and make our dressing.

(light music) Okay, these are looking good.

It's the same thing you do with any protein.

You touch it, and I can see that there's some give here.

I don't want these well done.

I want these medium rare to medium.

But it's very important that they rest.

There's carryover cooking time so it continues to cook off heat, but also all the juices need to redistribute.

If I sliced this right now, all the juices would come streaming out and we would have dry duck breast.

We don't want that.

Okay.

This is reduced, that's about what we're looking for.

It's reduced in half.

I'm going to add it to the blender with some salt and pepper, and now we're going to add the honey which is going to counterbalance all that acid.

Just a tablespoon.

(light music) I'm going to puree this, and then add the walnut oil.

We need a quarter of a cup.

Okay, so let me get this started actually.

So, first we're going to puree this, and then once you can see it's pureed, without wearing it, we're going to add the oil.

(whirring) Okay, so the pears.

And I'm just going to slice them and get them ready.

(light music) Nice thin slices.

I'm going slowly just cause I don't want them to scatter too much cause I'm going to try to line them up like the Rockettes.

(light music) So, recently I've decided that it's very important when you're making a salad to season the salad as well as the dressing.

And the other thing is, it's not going to surprise you, the best thing to toss salad with is your hands because I'm not going to put all the dressing on here, just a little bit.

Because your hands are very gentle, and you won't bruise the lettuce.

So often, I'll use tongs if I'm lazy or salad tossers, and the lettuce will just be all bruised.

So I'm going to drizzle some more dressing on afterwards, but I just want to make sure that the arugula has some on it as well.

Okay.

So, here we go.

Now what I like to do when I slice the ducks, is I like to slice it with the skin side down.

It's just easier to do, and you can see what you're doing.

Now this is all more on the medium rare side.

If you want it more well done, you can certainly take it a little further, but this is completely fine.

We're going to arrange some of our lettuce, and put duck breast around it.

I just like it when things are a little bit kicking the same way like the Rockettes did, you know.

So there's our duck.

Wow, that looks yummy.

And then we've got some pretty both red and green.

Okay, last but not least, the Roquefort.

And then we put a little more dressing on top of the whole thing.

Alright, so let me set up the other one, and then I'm going to go out and see my buddy Natalie.

(light music) - [Natalie] Wow, look at this.

- So it's duck breast - I love duck.

- With sliced pear, pear dressing, Roquefort cheese, toasted walnuts and arugula from my garden.

- I think that sounds like so great.

I'm going to dive right in.

- Well I hope you enjoy.

At any rate, I just wanted to say, thank you all and Natalie for joining me on Sara's Weeknight Meals, and I'll see you next time.

(light music) - Where'd you get this idea?

- I love duck and fruit, I really do.

And then when I got to the pears, I was like, oh I love pears and walnuts, and then when I got to the walnuts, I was like, oh I'm going make a pear dressing with walnut oil.

- Wow.

- And then if you have walnuts, you have to have Roquefort.

You know, one thing leads to another.

- Wow, and the duck and the pear together, wow.

- Isn't that dressing something else?

- It's a great combination.

You can have me over for lunch any day you want, okay?

I'll just be back everyday, at just 12 o'clock.

(light music) - [Voiceover] Sara's Weeknight Meals continues online.

For recipes, helpful tips, messages and lots more, visit us on the web at saramoulton.com/weeknightMeals.

And go to our YouTube channel Sara's Weeknight Meals TV.

Funding provided by... - [Voiceover] Subaru builds vehicles like the versatile Subaru Forester with symmetrical all-wheel drive and plenty of cargo room.

A recipe made for whatever the day brings.

Subaru, proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

- [Voiceover] Family owned and Indiana grown, Maple Leaf Farms is a proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

Providing a variety of duck products for home kitchens.

Maple Leaf Farms duck helps inspire culinary adventures everywhere.

Maple Leaf Farms.

- [Voiceover] And thanks to the generous support of... (piano music) (chimes ringing) (chimes ringing)