- [Narrator] Sara's Weeknight Meals is made possible by Sunsweet and - Cooking is the first kind of love you know.

It first started when I was child with my grandmother doing fresh pasta and now I transmit it to all the guests.

Is something made specially for them.

- [Announcer] Oceania Cruises, proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

- [Sara] Key West, Florida, the Conch Republic is a magical little island that plays by its own rules.

And its culinary king is Norman Van Aken a Florida food legend who's my cooking partner today.

- We're making a version of my Bahamian Conch Chowder.

We're gonna use some local fish, because conch is not going to be available everywhere.

- No conch in Kansas.

- No conch.

- [Sara Voiceover] On Ask Sara - So Hi Ryan.

- [Sara Voiceover] A viewer from Houston has a question.

- How do you choose the right avocado and how to know when it's ripe, and how to cut it the right way.

- [Sara] Here's how I'm gonna do it.

Good to know because back in Key West, we're making - [Norman] This mysteriously named salad called cutup.

- What did you bring us?

Oh, what is that?

- An avocado.

- [Norman] Somebody bring avocado, somebody bring mangoes Somebody brought papaya, and they would contribute and I'll make the version of whatever cutup was that night.

- I love it.

I want to propose a toast.

- [Sara Voiceover] The culinary salute to the Conch Republic.

- Drink up.

(laughing) - [Sara] Today, on Sara's Weeknight Meals.

In 1971, Norman Van Aken came to Key West to cook And he didn't want to leave.

- [Norman] The thing about Key West is that most of us knew we were in love with the place.

It wasn't just a place to live and work it was our personal and collective Shangri-La.

Long before Jimmy Buffett wrote "Margaritaville" we had already pledged allegiance to the magical scrap of land at the end of the rainbow.

We just felt lucky when we walked the old, small streets and alleys protected by some ancient maternal force.

Something deep in our souls told us this was a place where we could find peace and quiet and camaraderie of like-minded people.

On top of that, the city was stamped with a raffish charm, a joie de vivre.

You could remake yourself in Key West and no one minded as long as you helped keep the good times rolling.

We lived day to day, but were intent to do it in quality drinking establishments and places to enjoy the crazy matrix of foods not eaten in most of America, save New Orleans.

- [Sara] In years to come, Norman Van Aken fused the flavors of Key West into something he called New World Cuisine.

One of the Beard Foundation's Who's Who and a culinary force in Florida, he returned to his roots to cook with me at a beautiful Key West home.

(mellow island music) - You know, I feel like we're in the middle of Paradise here.

- We are.

- Yeah, and we're cooking, and it's outside.

What are we making today?

- We are making a version of my Bahamian Conch Chowder.

Actually I shouldn't say mine, because when I first got to Key West in the '70s, other people were making it for probably centuries.

But we're gonna use some local fish fish that people could now make this chowder anywhere because conch's not gonna be available everywhere.

- There's no conch in Kansas.

- No conch in Kansas.

- No, no, no.

- None from Illinois, where I'm from originally.

- Okay.

- But there's beautiful snapper and grouper and all kinds of other fish that will work beautifully in the soup.

The word conch is an interesting word 'cause if you read it on a printed page you'd think it'd be pronounced consh so be in the know and pronounce it conch.

- Okay, and I just wanted to say for those of you who are like, "What is that?"

You know that big shell that you listen to the one that you want to hear the ocean in?

That big, gorgeous shell, that's conch.

What's inside is the yummy stuff that you would put into the chowder.

- Conch is so very important to Key West.

Actually the people who are born here are known as Conchs.

We make conch fritters, we make conch salad, and we make conch chowder.

- Yum.

So what do we got going already?

- I've cooked two ounces of slab bacon with a quarter cup of olive oil.

And then I've got some Scotch bonnet chiles which are in this dish here so that they can stay away from my skin.

And then some garlic would go great in here right now.

Sara, if you can reach that, a tablespoon.

- [Sara] Here comes the garlic.

- You notice how we sliced the garlic?

I didn't mince it up because I wanted the-- - Yeah, I was wondering about that.

- Well, I like the flavor to be more delicate.

The more you chop up garlic as you know-- - The more you get out of it, yeah.

- So I like the more gentle way.

- [Sara] Nuanced.

- Yeah, exactly.

One sweet onion, could you now add that to the pot?

I've got some celery, bell peppers, red bell peppers could be used as opposed to yellow.

Yeah, just go ahead and put that in, Sara and I'll stir as we need.

- [Sara] Okay, but I do want you to tell me about Scotch bonnets.

- Scotch bonnets are interchangeable with habanero chiles.

So much more heat than say, a jalapeno chile but the have the Caribbean flavor, I love to use them.

Sara, can you add that yellow pepper that you diced before?

- [Sara] And I'm cutting up these carrots.

- I'm gonna go ahead and add in the four celery stalks that I've diced, and then you add in your chopped up carrot, and I'm gonna cut up some fennel.

About half of a nice sized bulb is good.

We're gonna coat the vegetables with the bacon and olive oil fats because that's gonna get that great flavor deeply imbued within the vegetables.

So here's our fennel, which adds a nice licorice sort of note to the collective vegetables.

- Now that's interesting, is that really traditional in this chowder, or is that something you're adding?

- You know, talk to the local conch people the people of Key West, and you're gonna get different versions of recipes all down the line.

- Well the reason I asked is because fennel is rather Italian.

- There's Italian history here.

Actually, when I first moved here, I'd see menus that would say calves liver, Italian style.

And I was thinking, "Really, wow, that's interesting."

Key West is a polyglot place.

I mean you have all kinds of people from all over because we're an island and there's been so much trading that has gone on through here.

The Navy had a major presence here for a long, long time.

So you can do lots of different things, please.

Asian influences are also true here because of the Asians that came to work the railroads in Cuba eventually migrated here as well, Sara.

Let's put a little salt and pepper in here too.

- [Sara] Okie dokie.

- [Norman] I always like to season - [Sara] Season as you go, if you wait til the end you end up adding way more than you need.

And it doesn't penetrate or flavor it the way it should.

- Right, and I also cook with my hearing.

The sound of this, I decided to yank up the heat a little bit because I want to hear that sizzling continuing to go on.

- [Sara] I'm trying to figure out, oh there it is, okay.

- [Norman] About a tablespoon of the crushed red pepper.

So we're just going to sprinkle that over there like that.

And look, any time you're using chiles you can decide whether or not you want something hotter or not hot.

I'm a hot loving kind of-- - [Sara] Me too.

- Yeah?

Okay, we're gonna let this cook for five to seven, as we say, so let's take a look at that fish we got.

- All right.

I'm gonna bring you a-- - The fish that is not conch.

- (laughing) That's local snapper, boy is that gorgeous.

Clear eye and a nice smooth scale.

- That's one of the benefits of being in Key West is that you have extraordinary bounty of seafood all around us, so we're spoiled and we admit it.

This is a unique version, or variety that's better for snapper, this is called a hambone snapper.

- Oh.

- I don't know where the names always come from but I love the colorful nature of that name.

American red snapper is another fish to use but the most important thing is freshness.

- So use something local, or as fresh as you can get.

- Absolutely.

So here we go, just cutting it into not too tiny pieces, 'cause they'll begin to become smaller as we saute them and also as they cook in the soup.

And if you could just add a little salt and pepper to the fish, that would be great.

- Are we gonna add it to the pot now or are we gonna do some later?

- We're gonna give it a little start in a saute pan and get the flavors moving that way.

Also, that will improve the texture.

If you drop the fish in here raw, it will cook but texturally it's just better to do it with a little sear on it first.

- That is a great tip, I'm partially from New England even though I grew up in New York City.

And we always just throw the fish right in the pan.

- Yeah?

- But I never thought of browning it first that's brilliant.

- Okay, so a little salt and pepper on there and then this is happy now, and we'll go ahead and put in the fish stock.

About two quarts, which we made from the bones of the fish that we fileted.

- [Sara] Now, what if you don't want to go to the trouble of making a fish stock, what could you use in its place?

- You could either use clam, the bottled clam juice in the store, or chicken stock.

All right, so we have some beautiful fish stock.

See how nice and clear that is?

This is gonna add a ton of flavor.

Now I'm going to take a couple bay leaves.

You just crack them so they release their aromatics and then I like to start off with the whole tomatoes, Sara so that I can put them in here, and then before I add in the tomato puree, I can just take the spoon and give them a little break up.

Okay, and the rest of this.

- So I think that was a 28 ounce can of whole tomatoes and a 15 ounce can of sauce.

- [Norman] Right, now we're gonna bring that back up to a simmer, so before we move over let's go ahead and put some herbs in here, what do you say?

- [Sara] So how much thyme do we need?

- [Norman] About a tablespoon of thyme and some sweet basil is always good too.

- [Sara] And how much basil?

- About two tablespoons of that as well.

So some sweet basil.

Okay, so that's gonna get to know each other.

We're gonna let that simmer together once your thyme is in there, and then we'll get the skillet to saute the-- - [Sara] Fish.

Brown the fish, yes.

- The snapper in this case, or a hambone snapper.

- I love that, hambone, that's so counter intuitive.

Oh, there's no ham in it.

- Well you know the fishermen come up with different names.

Okay, all right, so we're just going to continue to simmer that, now we've got a skillet here.

- Gonna get it hot.

- We're gonna get it hot, because if you don't get it hot the fish grabs the skillet, right?

Okay, so go ahead take the olive oil and you can see that it's already starting to add some smoke so we're gonna lift if off the heat which you can always do when you're cooking.

A lot of people, you can go ahead and help me.

You lift the pan off the heat-- - [Sara] And the heat goes bye-bye.

- And slows things down, and you can hear it.

And so what we're gonna do is just make sure we don't crowd it too much.

- [Sara] Got it, got it, got it.

- Okay, we're back on the heat.

You can see that it's needing a little bit more oil.

- Now this is interesting, this is something I would have used a non-stick pan for because fish tends to stick.

- [Norman] If you have a non-stick pan, by all means use it.

- It looks like you're doing fine because you heated the pan so well too.

- I'm not gonna cook this all the way through.

I'm just getting that nice little color on there.

It's gonna make the texture in the soup a whole lot better.

Gonna flip that over, now we're gonna go onto a plate here.

- I just want to point out do you want to hold up the spatula?

- Sure.

- This is the right tool for the job.

It's called a Peltex or fish spatula 'cause it's flexible so you can get under the fish without breaking it.

- These are great, and they're inexpensive.

- I use them for everything.

- [Norman] Okay, so-- - [Sara] That's so interesting, next time I make my New England fish chowder I'm gonna do that.

- You're gonna get every little bit of the fish bits off the bottom of this thing too because they're loaded with flavor.

- [Sara] Do we add the fish to the soup now?

- Not quite, we're gonna start with the potatoes so let me go grab the soup.

- Okay, and I'll just park the fish over here.

- Yeah, come on over here.

Oh my gosh, the smell of the stock working on top of this, the tomatoes, I am excited.

- And these are little baby red potatoes that have been pre-cooked.

- When you cook them ahead of time they can drink in the soup.

- They absorb more.

- They absorb better.

- [Sara] So do you cook them completely or just til they're just barely done?

- Just barely done is fine.

- But if you wanted to, you could add them raw.

- You could, yeah.

Just with more time in the soup when that happens.

- Got it, okay.

- We're gonna add probably about half of these let me see before I add the whole amount.

- [Sara] I'm gonna stand back.

- [Norman] And if you have more than you need make hash browns the next day.

- I like the way you think.

- American Fries, right?

- Yes, yum yum.

Doesn't that look good?

- That looks good, yeah, perfect.

Okay so we can go ahead and let these guys get to know each other.

We'll wait on the fish and maybe we can begin-- - [Sara] The dressing.

- You're reading my mind.

All right, so we're gonna make this mysteriously named salad called cutup.

- Really?

- Yeah, I had no idea Sara, as long as I've lived here I've never heard of it til about two years ago.

I was invited to a dinner party with Janet and we went to the home of people who were born and raised in Key West.

Somebody would bring avocado, somebody would bring mango somebody brought papaya, somebody would bring tomato and they would contribute and all make up the version of whatever cutup was that night.

- I love it.

- I do too.

So make a simple vinaigrette, right?

- Okay, so a teaspoon of sugar.

- So that will dissolve the sugar.

- And the salt.

- And the salt and the vinegar.

- Right, and how much here?

- [Norman] A pinch is good, yeah.

So now the vinegar will kind of help dissolve it.

- It just dissolves so much better it doesn't dissolve well in oil.

I'm gonna just eyeball, we want a quarter of a cup.

- [Norman] And so this is sherry wine vinegar.

- [Sara] I love it.

- [Norman] Sherry vinegar, like balsamic vinegar has that inherent sweetness.

- Well and also, it's high in acidity which I like.

And it's robust, I just love the flavor of it.

It's my favorite.

Let's see if that looks like it's dissolved.

Can you tell?

Yeah.

So now we're gonna add the three tablespoons of hazelnut.

- [Norman] Hazelnut, and then we'll finish with the canola.

This is just gonna add a nice, gentle coating to the mixture of fruits.

- And it's interesting, I want to note that we only used a little bit of the nut oil because nut oils can take over, so you always cut them with a neutral oil, and we're using canola.

So half a cup of canola, okay, there we go.

- Grapeseed oil is another one that you could use.

- I love grapeseed oil, that's actually my favorite 'cause it's so neutral.

It's funny, when I went to cooking school I always go back to, "When I went to cooking school..." I would never, I thought, something with no flavor why would you ever add that?

Oil isn't just in there for its flavor it's in there for a whole bunch of reasons.

- Could I add just a touch of-- - Of course, hey, this is your recipe, you're in charge.

- [Norman] I love cooking with you.

- I love not being the person in charge.

Not that I'm usually, these days.

- That's our vinaigrette.

- So now we're just waiting for your guests.

- We have to wait for them, because they are going to be the people who bring us the ingredients for the cutup.

- I got it.

- We'll be a mystery space for a little while.

- The fish, we wait til the very end.

- Pretty much, yes.

This is looking good, Sara, so while it's getting happier, let's go have a glass of wine.

- Oh yes, let's.

- Let's do that.

- While we wait for our guests to arrive with their backyard fruit, here's a tip for cutting avocados you're gonna love.

I get all sorts of questions on my website from viewers and I love them, because they're oftentimes things that I don't know or I research.

I've a really good one for you today.

It's from Ronnie, who's just moved to Houston, Texas and it's about, very appropriately, avocados.

So hi, Ronnie, how do you like Houston?

- Hi Sara, Houston's great.

I haven't had a bad meal since I've been here so that's probably my favorite part so far.

- Better food in Texas than the Northeast?

What do you like about the Texas food?

- Well it's just fresh, I'm a big fan of barbecue but there's also a really good Mexican food scene here and that kind of leads me to my question about avocados.

- All right, so shoot, what's your question?

- My question today is how to cut it the right way.

I feel like I'm wasting so much good avocado.

- All right, this is one I can really do easily.

How to cut it, we were all taught to take the avocado, we all watch it on TV all those cool chefs, they take a big knife, right and they go around and they cut the avocado in half.

Boink, and then they take the big knife and they take the heel of the knife and they hit it into the pit.

Well, I worked with the California Avocado Commission and they said, "Please, you don't know how many people go to the emergency room, especially 'cause of that last wonk.

Please do it differently."

So here's how I'm gonna do it.

All right, so first of all, don't ever hold something up in the air and a knife up in the air at the same time.

Put it flat on the counter, take your knife put your fingers on top and go all the way around just like you would if you were up in the air.

Okay, so we've gone around half, now turn it a quarter turn and do the same thing all over again.

Go all the way around, notice my hand is above everything's above, oh I'm not gonna be able to do the reveal I want, 'cause it's already falling apart.

Look at that, isn't that amazing?

You see how that pit just came right out?

- I wasn't even close.

- (laughing) Okay so what you can do now you see this is a firm avocado, so I can probably just peel this off, that's one way to peel it.

Another thing, if it's a little riper and you don't think you're gonna be able to just peel off the skin like that you can take your spoon and just put it underneath between the shell and the avocado and just scoop it out.

And then you can slice it or do whatever you want to do with it.

So you see, it's really very simple to get the avocado out, and there you go.

- Thanks so much Sara, it's a great tip.

- [Sara] I have a very special question about tomatoes and it's from Carly in Dallas, Texas.

- Yep, down here in the Big D. I was just calling in 'cause I love putting cherry tomatoes on my salad and pasta but there's so many of them and they're so small and they just take so long to cut them.

- [Sara] It's tedious.

- It's such a hassle.

- Tedious, right?

So okay, I have a cool trick.

- Definitely.

- Cool trick to show you.

I have to put on my glasses 'cause this calls for precision.

All right, so first you take two you could use two plates, we're using the lids from take out, you save those and recycle them and they're very cool and they're somewhat flexible.

So let me get these guys out of the way.

All right, then what you do is you get your victims your cherry tomatoes, and they could be ovals they could be any size, and you put them on okay, there's the rim side and the flat side.

You put them on the flat side and you fill the whole thing up.

I just love this because really it's can just so slow you down to cut them in half but you want to often, especially I like to salt my tomatoes before I put them in a salad because it brings out their flavor.

Okay, so you see the very difficult thing I already did.

They're all ready to go, move that out of the way.

Then you put the flat side of the other lid on top.

I'm gonna move it a little closer to me so I can get right down at eye level.

All right, you take a serrated knife and you get right down to the level of the tomatoes so you can see where you are going.

Okay, if you didn't get down there you wouldn't slice them so evenly.

And then, ta-da, you see this?

- Oh my gosh.

- Isn't that fantastic?

- [Carly] That's so much easier.

- [Sara] This is the sort of stuff-- - That was so fast.

- That keeps me up at night, you know?

So I see more cherry tomatoes in your future what do you think?

- Definitely, I'm definitely more likely to use them since it won't take me hours to cut them.

- I know, really.

Fun, huh?

Thank you for that cool question.

I love those kind of questions.

If you all want to send me a question for my website just go to saramoulton.com and maybe we'll put you on Ask Sara.

So you've been here for a million years.

- Oh yes, I came here as a child basically, at 21 years old.

- And your son lives here now too?

- He does, my son, daughter-in-law, and our granddaughter, Audrey.

- Wow.

I love this weather, wind coming in from the ocean.

Love it.

- [Norman] Oh wow, look it, here's Maria and Rob.

- Hey guys, brought you a little gift.

- [Sara] Oh, mangoes.

- [Norman] Thank you, for our cutup salad.

- You'll do better with that than we would.

- [Norman] Oh my gosh, so fantastic.

I can't wait to share the history of the salad.

Oh wow, here comes the other cutups.

- That looks like the littlest cutup.

What did you bring us?

Oh, what is that?

- An avocado.

- [Sara] An avocado, thank you.

- Go grab your seats, and Sara and I are gonna make some salad for you all.

Sara, look what they brought us for the cutup salad.

- [Sara] Oh wow, that is one huge papaya.

- That's a Jamaican papaya and these are the local Florida avocados.

- [Sara] Right.

- For cutup everybody brings something from their backyard, I brought the mango.

Not actually from my backyard but from a close by backyard.

- You pilferer, you.

You're taking off the top and the bottom.

- Yeah, I do it this way, I've seen other people do it other ways.

- [Sara] The pit goes down the middle.

- Yeah, so it's the oblong kind of way and so I cut that there, and then I have to make room for the pit.

So this part actually, I can use the fruit that's over there but then what you do is you take the knife and you without going completely through the skin-- - [Sara] You score it.

- [Norman] You score it, well deeply, like this.

- [Sara] Go all the way down.

- Go all the way down like that.

- [Sara] But not through the skin.

- [Norman] And then this way as well, and you'll end up with a cubed mango already, watch this.

Try and make sure that you're not gonna have the skin go into it, and you see like that?

- That is beautiful.

That was a magic trick.

I like that magic trick, let me get you a bowl to put these in.

- Okay, and meanwhile I'll cut the other one up, okay.

(island percussion music) - So this is the last little bit that we're gonna get those nice cubes out of.

Skins there, there's just a little bit left on here and I hate that.

- On the pit.

- On the pit, but right there, that's some beautiful fruit, don't waste it.

You know I ask myself sometimes what would Julia Child do?

- Right.

- [Norman] She'd enjoy this, right?

You know her.

- I love her in the kitchen, remember she famously said, "Remember if you're alone in the kitchen--" - "Save the liver."

- Yes, we know all the things.

- [Norman] And then we have the local Florida avocados here.

- [Sara] As I recall these are lower fat a little more watery, not quite as concentrated in flavor but they're delicious.

- [Norman] They're delicious, I love them.

- [Sara] And local.

- [Norman] And local.

Okay, these are Jamaican papayas so they're the big boys.

- [Sara] Get these cubes roughly the same size.

- [Norman] The skin is definitely not flavorful that you want so you want to make sure that you get rid of the skin.

You just want to shape it to where it's gonna be in the same kind of relative size cubes so that it's nice and even for the salad.

- Oh that looks so beautiful.

All right, so should be put our dressing in there?

- Please.

- Do we need all of that, should I just do it?

- Well don't go with all of it til we know.

We can always add but we can't take it back out.

Not very easily anyway.

- This is true.

- [Norman] Let's see, like I say we can always - [Sara] You know what, you know what.

- There we go, there we go.

- I just made a decision .

- An executive decision, but remember it's a cutup so if somebody brings tomatoes add some tomatoes.

There's not only one way to do it.

- I like the mix that we got.

- Well, and we got tomato based soup, so we're good in that way.

- Time for fish?

- Yes, please.

All right, there's our hambone snapper that's gonna go in there, if you would.

And I'm just gonna fold that in and I bet you want to add a little hot sauce.

- I do, I thought you'd never ask.

The older I get, the more excitement I need.

- Bottled excitement, go ahead.

Beautiful, we can also put some of that on the table for people who are even more, ba-boom.

So that's it.

- Okay, that's it.

- It's ready to take to the table.

- All right.

- [Norman] All right.

- [Sara] Okay everybody dig in.

This is my favorite kind of soup.

How's everybody like the heat in this?

- [Norman] Too spicy for you?

- [Maria] It's got all the right spice, it's good.

You can cook this any time you like, move in.

- He did most of the work.

No, he did most of the work.

I have a question everybody.

How many people at this table are Conchs?

Wow, just one, the littlest.

- Just Audrey.

- Is anybody here a freshwater Conch?

- We are.

- [Sara] What is that?

- So when you're born here in the Keys, you're automatically a saltwater Conch.

But if you live here for a certain period of time you're considered a freshwater Conch.

- And how many years is required?

- I believe it's seven, I'm working on my citizenship.

(laughing) - [Norman] Of the Conch Republic.

- Of the Conch Republic.

- A toast to the whole table to our delightful neighbors here, not mine but yours.

For coming, for bringing fruit to cutup and I want to know, is there a Conch toast?

- Drink up.

(laughing) (guests chattering) (mellow island music) - [Narrator] For recipes and videos go to our website saramoulton.com.

Sara's Weeknight Meals is made possible by Sunsweet and - Cooking is the first kind of love you know.

It was starting when I was child with my grandmother who made fresh pasta.

And now I transmit it to all the guests.

Is something make special for them.

- [Announcer] Oceania Cruises, proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

(Classical music)