(twangy music) - I'm in Chinatown picking up some Asian ingredients with Dale Taldae.

You might remember him as a contestant on Top Chef.

Back in my kitchen, we'll make a signature dish from his restaurant.

Crispy Oyster and Bacon Pad Thai.

And where did those oysters come from?

We'll find out as we join an oysterman on Long Island Sound.

Then I'll make another Asian inspired shellfish dish, this time with mussels, and bok choy and black beans.

Served over a fragrant bed of tea-infused rice pilaf.

I'm Sara Moulton.

It's shellfish, Asian-style on Sara's Weeknight Meals.

(upbeat music) Funding provided by: - [Voiceover] Subaru builds vehicles the versatile Subaru Forester.

With symmetrical All Wheel Drive, and plenty of cargo room.

A recipe made for whatever the days brings.

Subaru, a 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.

- [Sara] And thanks to the generous support of (twangy music) Where I live, New York's Chinatown is the best place to shop for Asian food and ingredients.

And the best person to shop with is Dale Taldae.

Frequent Top Chef contestant and an expert in almost every Asian cuisine.

So we've gotta pick ingredients-- - For the Pad Thai.

- Alright so, looks there's some lemongrass.

- [Dale] Yeah, if you want to-- - Yeah, really smell it, you have to break it a little bit.

- [Dale] You gotta break it a little bit.

- Oh wow!

And then we need some chilies too, right?

Okay, so we need some peanuts too?

- [Dale] Yeah, yep.

- [Sara] Oh yeah, here's some scallions.

Good.

Okay, so let's see, bean sprouts we need too.

- [Dale] Yes.

- [Sara] Okay.

- [Dale] All for the Pad Thai.

- [Sara] We need oysters.

Dale has a favorite source.

The fish here are so fresh, they're still swimming.

What are these?

These are frightening looking.

- [Steven] These are called oyster crackers.

You actually crack the oyster with their teeth.

- You're kidding?

You know we have to get some oysters.

- [Steven] We got some Blue Points today from Connecticut.

I open it Asian-style with a big knife.

- Oh my God, okay, I'm standing back.

Oh my God, that's great.

Have you ever done it Asian-style?

- No, no.

(laughs).

I don't have the nerve.

- That's beautiful.

Nice and moist.

- [Dale] They're nice big oysters.

They have a beautiful brininess.

And they're local, they're right in Connecticut, so.

- [Sara] Okay, so how many do we need?

- [Dale] We need, about a dozen.

- You got a dozen, put ice in the bag, you'll be good.

- Thanks so much Steven.

- Well, you know, I could eat my way through Chinatown, but I think we got get cooking.

- I know, I'm starving.

Thanks a lot Steven.

(disco style music) - Welcome to Sara's Weeknight Meals.

I'm so excited to have Dale Taldae here, this guy, star chef, Top Chef.

He's got two amazing restaurants in Brooklyn, and we're going to make one of your signature dishes, your version, a very interesting version, of Pad Thai.

- Yes, yes, yes.

- And we have so much to do here, we got to get started.

So where do we start?

- So we start with the sauce.

It's my version of a kind of a Pad Thai sauce.

- Okay.

- The beginning of the sauce starts with a little bit of oil in the pan.

- Okay.

And a tablespoon of minced garlic, - And two tablespoons of minced shallot.

- Okay, so that's the base.

So maybe while that's cooking, you can tell me about the lemongrass?

- Sure.

- Cause not everybody knows about it or can get it, it's one of the important ingredients in Thai cooking.

- Sure.

It's very aromatic, it literally grows like a grass, and most of the flavor is centralized here.

So what we do to prepare the lemongrass, is we take our back of our knifes... - [Sara] Don't lean in too far there.

- No.

Cause you really have to release a lot of those essential oils.

- Now, I always thought if I get married again, I would carry a bouquet of lemongrass and Kaffir lime leaves.

- The smell of it is absolutely wonderful.

- It's just like essence of wonderful lemon.

- Yes.

Now we can just mince it up.

- So we had two tablespoons of shallots, one tablespoon of garlic, and teaspoon of, what the heck, freeform.

There we go.

So now we're going to add everything else.

- And once this gets going, and you start to smell the garlic and shallots, everything else goes inside.

- So half a cup of water, half a cup of sherry vinegar, that's sort of different.

- Mmhmm.

- How come sherry vinegar?

- [Dale] We like the complexity it added to the sauce, instead of white distilled vinegar which they normally use.

- I love sherry, this is my favorite.

Okay then we have this tamarind paste.

- It's a tamarind concentrate, it's -- - About a cup.

This is a very easy way to use tamarind, it's -- - It's pretty good for the home cook.

Okay paprika.

Oh that's interesting.

- It adds a very nice color to the dish, and that's what we want in to the -- - And this is going in too, this is our Sriracha.

- And a tablespoon of Sriracha.

- Wow, look at that.

That glows in the dark.

So a tablespoon of each.

- Some nice heat to it.

- And then a cup of sugar, this scares me a little bit, but this is a huge batch, right?

- This is a batch that you could make and reserve and save -- - Just keep in the fridge.

And two cups of fish sauce, which is so important, right?

- [Dale] Yeah.

And this is what's is really going to bring a depth of flavor to the dish.

And balance out that sweetness with a lot of the salt.

- Right.

So we bring that up to a boil.

And I think we've got everything, oh, no, we forgot, now you want to add my second favorite ingredient, Kaffir limes.

- Kaffir lime leaves.

- Now lets just smell that too, cause that, wow, that's just it.

You know, what if you can't get fresh Kaffir lime leaves?

- My suggestion is THAT you could probably use lemon and lime zest or the peel.

- Yeah.

The two?

- Yeah, it's the two together.

I feel it comes closest to the aroma that this gives.

- Okay.

Now this is one of those recipes where you have to get everything ready before you start, right?

- Just like traditional, a lot of Asian cuisine, you have to everything ready because it's a very fast cook.

- Yeah, cause I mean, if we were still slicing the scallions while we were cooking the red onion, the red onion would be burnt by the time we were done.

- Cause it's such a high heat, yes.

- Okay, so you want me to do that?

- Yeah, please do.

I'll prep out of these.

- So this is sliced, the red onion?

- Yeah, sliced, julienne.

- [Sara] Okay.

- Nice little, big pieces.

- Oh with the scallions you're going to cut them into lengths?

- Mmhmm.

And then we do a little julienne with the carrot.

(slicing of knives) - And you want to use one whole fresh Thai chili, right?

- Yeah, I love the fresh heat.

The fruit fresh heat that these chilies provide.

- So, we've got some bacon we already cooked, correct?

- Bacon we've already cooked, that's also going to go inside.

- And you need me to beat up a couple of eggs?

- Yep.

- Okay.

How did you take it to hear, to this special version?

Bacon and eggs -- - Yeah, it-- - Oysters, what an odd trio?

- In my mind, I loved Pad Thai cause of the eggs, and of how I thought of kind of a brunch dish, and so then that led me to bacon, and once I got to bacon, I thought, what goes great with bacon?

I was like, well, oysters go great with bacon so it went from egg to bacon to oysters to back to the Pad Thai.

It became a little bit of excess but in a good way.

- I'm going turn down our sauce, and that simmers for about 20 minutes, and what happens, it just gets nice and thick?

- It really is not reducing, you're just trying to meld the flavors together, bring out the aromatics, and then after 20 minutes -- - [Sara] We strain it.

- We strain it.

- [Sara] And it's ready to go.

- And then the sauce, as it is, will last for-- - Forever.

- Yeah, a couple of weeks.

- Cause there's a lot of sugar and salt in there.

- Lot of sugar, there's a lot of salt, yep.

- I just want to make sure we've got everything we need here, everything's in one bowl.

- We topped it off with a little bit of preserved radish, which is a very traditional ingredient that they use for this Pad Thai.

- [Sara] So we're just waiting for this to get hot.

- Mmhmm.

- Okay, I'm rooting for you.

You're going to do this real fast, right?

- It's going to go really, really fast.

- Go!

Our oil is still heating up cause we got to top it up with some fried oyster.

So I'm going to keep my eyeball on this too, while I cheer you from the sidelines.

- If you could get me some noodles?

- The noodles.

Okay.

- The noodles that we soaked.

The famous noodles.

And you wanted to show them package?

- This is typically how the noodles will come.

Dried.

- And those are rice noodles.

- These are rice noodles.

- Should I drain these?

- Yes, drain the water.

- So how do you treat them, what do you do to them?

- We really just soak them, it's easy, you can soak them overnight, in cold water.

- [Sara] So we have everything ready.

- We got a nice hot wok here.

Key, out of Asian cooking, is getting a nice hot wok.

And first ingredient, egg.

Always add egg to the wok first, so that nothing sticks to the wok.

And a trick that I've learned, cooking with the wok, is that all the guys that would always teach me, they'd say keep your eggs young.

So they mean, don't get any color on them.

And this dish, is really, you can really start to smell the aromatics come out now.

- Oh yeah, I'm excited.

- Then right when you start to smell all the onions, I feel that chili.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- [Sara] Should I start the oysters yet?

- Yes.

- And we got them shucked already, at the fish monger.

And I'm going to toss them in, this is rice flour, right?

- [Dale] Yes, yes.

- And then, - We use rice flour at the restaurant to keep it nice and crispy.

When you use rice flour in this dish, what happens is that this dish is completely gluten-free now.

- Oh!

- Instead of using all purpose flour.

So everything in this dish, yeah -- - So the noodles and the rice.

That's great.

Okay, I've got my oil at 365, and we're using an oil that has a high smoke point, right?

- Mm-hmm.

- And what oils would you recommend for that?

- Peanut oil if you have, but just a regular canola oil would be great.

- That's good, that coated enough?

- Mm-hmm.

(sizzling oil) - So I"m going to go ahead and strain this off.

- Let me ask a question Dale, does this look good right here?

- [Dale] Yeah, that looks great.

- Okay, good.

Do you want me to salt them when they come out?

- Yes.

So I've strained the sauce and then we're just going to add it to the Pad Thai.

- Okay, great.

You know, it's so amazing, for all the work we did, it's done in like two minutes.

- When we finish the dish, we just add a little bit of roasted peanuts, and a very liberal amount of bean sprouts.

- There's just one or two ingredients in this dish, that's all.

- That's it.

- You know what, I'm going to get the plates.

- Towards the end of the cooking, we really just kind of liberally add cilantro.

- And then you have, is that Thai basil?

- And Thai basil.

But I like when I use cilantro, and some of these vegetables, I like using the stem too.

so like it has a lot of texture in it too.

- Cause it's not tough like parsley stems.

- I love the way that whole leaves will perfume the entire dish.

- Yeah, it just keeps getting better and better.

There's so many layers of flavor in there.

- You can really tell what's in it.

- Wow.

- I wish you wouldn't make me wait any longer, please.

- Here you go.

So for all that knife work, it did come together pretty quickly.

- Yes.

There we go.

- A little lime on top of the oyster and some of the Pad Thai, and then dig in.

- So I'm having Dale Taldae's special, Bacon Egg and Oyster Pad Thai.

Yay.

Wow.

You know whats' so great about this?

The noodles absorb all the flavor.

- Yeah.

- That's what they're doing in there.

The best Pad Thai I ever had.

Thank you Dale.

- Thank you Sara.

- Oysters are one of the oldest foods eaten on the East Coast of this country.

We're going to visit with an oyster man to find out how he harvests these delicious bi-valves.

- My name is Jardar Nygarrd, I'm a partner at Hemlock oyster company, and we're oyster farmers.

Our oyster beds are in Long Island Sound off the Connecticut shoreline.

- [Sara] Oystermen have farmed these waters for over two hundred years.

Scattering seed oysters, mostly Blue Points and dreading them up years later.

But other oystermen could poach them, predators like starfish and ducks would eat them.

- Winter time you just see flocks of ducks, acres of ducks just diving down and eating all your oysters, you know you've just made a great effort to feed a whole bunch of ducks.

Ten of thousands of dollars worth of oysters.

- [Sara] Now they grow them in massive layered cages that not only protect the oysters, they hold more of them, 15 thousand each, in all stages of development.

- These are seed oysters we bought from hatchery at five milimeters, three months ago, and now they're about an inch in size any they're ready to go out in the cages.

From this time, it will take about another year, and even up to two years to reach market size.

- This is just so good.

- I'll pass on the pearls, just give me these.

- Yeah right.

- [Sara] This year, they will harvest two million oysters fed on plankton from the 120 acres of shoreline they lease from the state.

- So this oyster we've had for about two years now, you can see the different rings of growth from each season.

So this will have a nice, rich meat inside with full brine and have a really good taste, and not so big that it's not more than one bite, an oyster should never be more than one bite.

About three inches is perfect.

When you open an oyster, you don't want to cut the meat inside, so you want to just get the oyster a little bit open, flip the knife over, cut the top shell off nice and smooth, cut the adductor from the bottom, and there'e a perfect oyster.

Awesome.

- [Sara] Jardar used to have a seafood store and catering business, he doesn't miss it.

- It's kind of relaxing sometimes, although it is work, the nice thing about this business I don't have 50 or 100 incoming phone calls everyday.

It's nice being out here on the water, and getting away from it all.

(sparkling music) - Asian bi-valves are on the menu today, and up next are my mussels, Asian-style, with Darjeeling pilaf.

I'm starting with the pilaf cause it takes a little longer then the mussels, you know it's interesting cause I have tea every afternoon, my mom used to do that, I'd come home from school, it was fantastic after a bad day, and she'd make tea and we'd sit down, and maybe have a cookie if I was feeling skinny, and talk about my day, i just loved it, and to this day, I still do that every afternoon.

And one of my favorites is Darjeeling, and I thought why do I just hold onto tea as my afternoon drink?

I should use it in recipes.

So here I've incorporated it into my pilaf.

We need about two teaspoons of ginger, this is sort of the Asian influence here.

And then some garlic as well.

Now I've already brewed some Darjeeling, very strong tea cause we want to bring that nice flavor in there.

And let me get these things cooking.

Let me turn this on.

And here we go.

Just a little bit of oil, I'm using grapeseed oil, i generally use a flavorless vegetable oil and my favorite is grapeseed, when I'm doing Asian cooking.

Now a pilaf is a rice dish where you toast the rice first.

And we're adding these flavorings, so we've got our ginger, and some garlic, you could add some onion too if you want, but I'm just keeping it real simple because we've got plenty of things going on with the mussels.

Now while that's getting a little fragrant, let me grab my rice.

I love rice for Asian dishes, it's so appropriate, white rice is great, any rice is great, but because it's a great sauce absorber.

You just want to capture that sauce somehow, and why not do with rice.

This is particular kind of rice from the West coast called Calrose, and it's a medium grain rice which is similar to Arborio.

So we're going to saute the aromatics first, and then add the rice.

And what this does is give it a little bit of extra flavor, it coats all the grains and makes it really nice.

I'm going to take my very strong brewed Darjeeling, so that was a cup of rice, its now a cup and 3/4 of the tea.

Isn't that a beautiful color?

Darjeeling has a flavor like a Muscatel, it's sort of a robust tea.

Bring this up to a boil, and we turn it down to a simmer, and I'm going to put some paper towels on top, which helps to keep the steam in.

It should cook perfectly in about 20 to 25 minutes.

And then you just let it sit for 10 minutes and fluff it up, and it's good to go.

Good.

Now we're going to come on down and start with mussels.

Again, Asian dish so Asian ingredients.

When you're making Asian dishes, like this one, because everything only spends about a minute in the pan, if I didn't prep everything ahead of time, it would all burn by the time it got its chance in the pot.

I'm going to keep the whites and the greens separate, cause the green's are going to in as a garnish later.

I've already minced some ginger and garlic, we have a teaspoon and a half of garlic and two teaspoons of ginger, so there's are whites.

Now what's so great about mussels, like calms, is that they're a two-fer.

You don't just get the delicious mussel, you get the juice that it gives up.

So I just love cooking with both of them.

There we go.

And now I've got over here, some fermented black beans.

They're not actually black beans the way you think of them, like Mexican black beans, these are actually fermented soy beans, and what's so great about them is they add depth of flavor, but they're very, very salty, so you need to rinse them.

And now I'm going to mash them before they go into the dish.

I'm sure you've had them in broccoli with black bean sauce, and you know what, these days you can find fermented black beans, even in the supermarket.

And if not, at Asian stores.

Just, instant flavor.

There we go.

And again, we're working with grapeseed oil.

About two tablespoons, and then our ginger and garlic, And go, yeah, there we are, now I can hear the sound, it's making noise, you want your pan to talk to you.

In go our black beans and now we're going to add some dried small chilies, I'll do four.

I love that heat.

And now, I'm going to take one red bell pepper and cut it into lengths and then two inch strips.

Give it a stir or two.

Another minute or two.

We're just softening them cause they're going to cook in there.

This is all going to cook in with the mussels.

Okay.

So today, I have wild mussels.

This have already been scrubbed.

You have two main choices at the fish monger.

You have wild, and you also have cultivated.

Now how I know these are wild is cause they're really big.

The cultivated are much smaller, shinier shells, and they rarely come with this.

This is referred to as a beard.

Sometimes it's hard to pull out just with your hand, so you take a towel and pull off.

There we go.

I have one more here I think.

This guy, is not kicking.

If you see any that are open, tap them and they should close if they're still alive, and if not into the garbage.

Dump them in.

Then we're going to add a half a cup of chicken broth I like a flavored liquid and I'm not really a fan of the fish stocks that you buy in the supermarket or the clam juice, but because we all know how salty shellfish can be, I either use my own homemade chicken stock when I have it in the fridge, and that is very low sodium, or I use the low sodium stock from the supermarket because most chicken broth that you buy in the supermarket is very salty, so we don't need salt, upon salt, upon salt.

This is going to take, cause these are big guys, this might take up to five minutes for them to open, and what I'm going to do as they open, I am going to remove them, because if I waited for all of them to open, the first one that opened, which might be two minutes from now, would be in there for another three or four minutes while the last one opens, and all its doing when it opens up is getting tough.

We're going to add to our chicken broth that we have left, it's a cup total, so half a cup goes in then, we're going to add two tablespoons of cornstarch, one tablespoon of rice wine, or sherry, and two teaspoons of soy sauce, light would be a good idea here, again cause we're trying to keep the sodium down, and the cornstarch is going to dissolve for a minute, I'm going to chop up my bok choy.

So here's our bok choy, we're cutting it in half, this is baby.

We're just going to cross-cut slice it.

Oh, I see some activity.

Yes, okay.

Here we go.

I can see in this corner, there we go.

If you have one, like this one, that's been here, last one in, and it's not opened, it's probably not going to open, and as a matter of fact if it does open, it might be filled with sand.

So I'm just going to throw it in there, that can happen.

We don't want to risk it, we've got all this delicious juice in there.

Now, you see how the cornstarch has separated out in the out in the bottom?

I want to thicken this, but I have to re-whisk it.

So now my liquid is going to go in there with me whisking.

Cornstarch is the thickener of choice for Asian cooking.

We want to bring it back up to almost a boil, it doesn't need to be quite at a boil, cornstarch thickens pretty quickly.

And then, I'm going to add in, there we go, all of my bok choy, and we're just going to steam it for a minute.

We're just going to cook it in the liquid.

It's going to give off some water, so it will thin down the sauce a little bit, we want it to be crunchy though.

That is beautiful.

Okay.

So now I'm going to put the mussels, you could do this with calms, exact recipe too, and just let them re-heat and give off their liquid.

And I'm going to check my rice, and I think we're ready to go.

Okay.

Let's fluff this up and it's time to serve.

Just a little bit, be gentle with the rice, like it light and fluffy, just like that.

Okay, so I'm going to start with a little rice on the bottom, and then our mussels and their delicious sauce.

See that pretty color, that is from the Darjeeling, and the flavor it wonderful.

So we'll take some mussels and I've got to get the liquid too, cause the liquid it's all about the gravy, but the mussels are awfully good too.

What's good about this, it's good diet food.

It's fairly low cal, absolutely, it's very lean, there's not a lot of fat and calories in this, but what's great about it is it takes so long to eat the mussels, you can only eat one at a time, it's one of the dishes that makes people slow down and eat the way they should, you can't just scarf it down.

There we go.

Our scallion greens, yay.

I wish you could smell this, it smells so good.

Okay, time to eat.

Bi-valves for dinner, what a great idea, I mean whether you make Dale Taldae's Pad Thai oysters, or if you make my mussels, Asian-style, with Darjeeling tea pilaf, so simple, so delicious, on a weeknight, I'm Sara Moulton, I'll see you next time.

- [Sara] Sara's Weeknight Meal continues online.

For recipes, helpful tips, messages and lots more, visit us on the web at saramoulton.com forward slash weeknight meals.

And go to 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.

The 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.

- [Sara] And thanks to generous support of: