Simply Ming

MING: Hey, Ming Tsai here.

Welcome to Simply Ming at Home, with my son, Henry Tsai.

What are we cooking today?

Starting with a five-spice old fashioned.

Then making a five-spice old fashioned tea without the booze for Henry.

Then an express red roast chicken with bok choy, followed by a vegetarian version using acorn squash.

That's all coming up right here on Simply Ming at Home.

Simply Ming is brought to you by Subaru of New England, proudly celebrating 50 years of love.

Authorized retailers at SubaruOfNewEngland.com.

Here's to the next 50 years and beyond.

MING: Hey, Ming Tsai here.

Welcome to Simply Ming at Home.

And please welcome my son Henry.

We're going to start with a cocktail and then make a really tasty tea.

All right, Henry, we're gonna get started.

Hot pan, five-spice syrup, guys.

Cinnamon, star anise, Sichuan peppercorn, fennel, and clove.

All right, dry hot pan.

Henry, to the back, please.

Just move it around.

All right.

MING: And what what we're trying to do is get it such that it starts to smoke.

Once it starts to smoke, we're gonna add equal parts of just water and brown sugar.

All right?

That's how you get a five-spice syrup.

All right, Henry, let's check this out.

Oh, that looks pretty good.

So, what we're gonna do here, guys, is make this simple syrup, okay?

One-to-one ratio simple syrup.

Super-easy.

Water, sugar.

I'm choosing brown sugar, because I think brown sugar just has much more flavor, all right?

And here's the spices.

Ah, look at that, see that?

It's starting to smoke, all right?

That's all you're doing.

What's happening is, it's releasing the oils, all right?

And it's getting super-aromatic.

So now that gets dumped into my simple syrup.

There you go.

So now, you bring this to a simmer, and you bring it down by 50%.

Once you have the simple syrup done, you then can make the cocktail.

This is a old fashioned.

Got a good, uh, bourbon here.

We're going to take...

It's a stirred drink, guys, we're not actually shaking this.

So I'm gonna start with... the booze.

Two ounces of that.

Here we have the five-spice syrup, all right?

So a little bit of that, as well, like that.

We have a tea bag for Henry and black tea.

Henry, fill that up with your boiling water.

Will do.

MING: To this, we're just going to add some ice, because you need ice to properly stir something.

And the reason I'm not shaking is, I just don't want to waterize.

I just want to get it really, really mixed well without waterizing it.

So I'm gonna give it about...

I don't know, like, 30 twists, right?

Can I just drink this?

MING: Okay.

So I got my drink.

I'm gonna start with fresh ice.

Always fresh ice, guys.

So now we're going to strain it into the fresh ice.

Oh, yeah, that looks good.

And to this, you got to add an orange peel, right?

Just with a sharp knife.

It's really more of an orange flag.

I'm just trying to get just that, all right?

And if you actually squeeze it, you'll be amazed how much orange comes off of that.

Mm-hmm.

MING: So, Henry, for you.

Always rub the rim, guys, with your, with your zest and whatnot.

Henry, semi-sweet, a little sweet?

I'll take sweet.

Why not?

MING: Sweet.

All right.

It's a virgin cocktail.

MING: There you go.

That should be plenty sweet.

I know your tea is going to be much more delicious than my old fashioned.

Of course, as one would expect.

MING: 'Cause only the best for you.

Cheers to you all.

Oh, God.

Oh, my God, that's good.

MING: Is it good?

Yeah.

MING: It's pretty good, right?

It's very, very good.

MING: Okay, here we go.

Henry, I'd love to just sit and drink with you, but let's get cooking, shall we?

We're gonna first do our microwaved sweet potatoes.

A little water, please, Henry.

Mm-hmm.

MING: So, foil in the oven, one hour, 300, you'll cook the potatoes all the way through.

The faster way is just take a sweet potato, wrap it-- go ahead, Hen-- wrap it in a paper towel.

Get your hands wet.

Get the paper towel wet.

Okay?

Into the microwave.

And that's gonna take about five to eight minutes.

All right?

Then you want to just moisten it, because you want to keep the sweet potatoes moist.

All right?

So here I have a microwave.

Drawer microwave, which is actually kind of convenient.

All right, we're gonna go 6:66, just to see.

So, Henry, let me get you on some stuff, all right?

First and foremost, I want you to take this bok choy.

The bok choy, guys, is gonna go in both of my dishes.

So, Henry, I know you know how to do this.

Henry is going to cut this in half.

Grab that water we have there for you, Henry.

He's going to halve this and de-core it.

There's always dirt and grit in bok choy.

And then we're gonna put it in a bunch of water, because you just want it to sit in the water, really rinse it well, and then you spin it.

All right?

You go to town, Henry, go.

Do that.

Will do.

MING: Then what I'm gonna do is get the chicken going first.

All right?

So, in our fridge, we have some bone-in chicken thighs.

And seasoned it up, right?

I have a pan behind me that's getting nice and hot.

And I'm gonna go to the back here.

Just Henry is fine, you can stay there.

So I'm turning this pan on high.

And I'm just gonna add this chicken, and, guys, I don't need any oil-- why?

There's plenty of fat in chicken fat.

So just salt on one side.

I'm gonna put salt and pepper on the other side.

Now, my right hand has a bunch of chicken stuff on it.

So I'm gonna grab more salt with my left hand, because you don't really want to be putting raw chicken juice right into your, into your salt.

All right, check that out, Henry.

I'm gonna wash my hands quickly here.

So now my hands are clean.

Now, this side I'm gonna liberally, basically put twice as much black pepper, because the other side, like I said, didn't have any.

So what I'm doing here is, I'm just cooking this chicken, and I'm gonna cook this for a good ten, 15 minutes to get it almost all the way cooked through.

Then I'm gonna cut it into three big pieces to add to my red roast liquid.

All right?

All right, Hen.

Let me tell you about everything that's going to go in.

It's Thai bird chilies, star anise, star anise, Thai bird chilies, cinnamon stick, brown sugar.

Tamari.

Keeping it gluten-free.

So, I'm using tamari, which is gluten-free soy sauce.

A good, good drinkable red wine, here's a pinot noir.

And a bunch of scallions, all right?

So why don't I go ahead and prep these scallions.

How's your bok choy coming there?

Coming along pretty well.

They're getting bokked and choyed.

(Ming chuckling) I'm running out of things to say, chef, can you tell?

MING: That is not a good joke and then don't say it again.

(Henry laughs) So I'm taking off the ends, because the ends of scallions you don't really want to eat.

And here, again, it's going into a braise, this red roast liquid.

So I can have about-- what's that?-- an inch and a half, two-inch slices, like that?

The other ingredient we add to this-- always, always-- ginger, right?

You guys know I love my ginger.

In this instance, this has been washed, as you saw me do it earlier.

So, here, I'm just gonna thin-slice it.

I peel ginger if you're eating it, like, in a stir fry.

Here we're just doing some really nice long, thin slices.

So I'll take, take that off.

Henry, how's your bok choy coming?

Wonderful.

MING: So I'm gonna do some big slices like this.

All right, so it's a beautiful looking ginger like that.

So here I can add my scallions.

I can add my ginger.

All right?

Like that.

Two or three cinnamon sticks straight in.

Two or three star anise, as well.

Not more, huh?

Because it's very strong.

Same for Thai bird chilies.

Couple like that.

Then we get to add... Three cups or so of water.

So here's two cups right there.

And I'm going to add three cups of soy sauce.

All right?

So, guys, I'm making the red roast liquid for both dishes, okay?

So this is gonna...

I'm gonna, once this comes to a simmer and the brown sugar melts, I'm then going to-- so it's three cups-- I'm then going to separate it, put half with the chicken and half with the squash.

And then the red wine.

Okay?

Then we have our brown sugar.

Boom.

Back here.

All I want to do is bring this to a simmer so the sugar starts to melt.

So, acorn squash.

Love acorn squash, right?

Again, wash everything.

So, what I'm gonna do is, I'm actually going to take this end off, right?

There's a center of acorn squash, right?

So, I'm gonna cut it and do, like, half-moons, all right?

Because you want to take out the center.

And what I want to do now is go ahead and take out all the seeds, all right?

Like that.

These seeds, you actually can take off all these "shishies," as they're called, all this hair.

And then you could actually roast them with salt and eat them like pumpkin seeds.

Sunflower seeds, right?

All right, there's our squash.

All right.

So I'm gonna kind of zebra it.

Meaning I'm going to take every, I don't know, every two inches.

The straight-edge one?

MING: Yeah, something like that.

No, this is perfect.

Okay.

MING: Right?

So, I'm taking some of the rough off of the skin, but I'm leaving some because I want to have a little bite to it.

All right?

So something like that.

So I do it with this one, as well.

Henry, if you want to go ahead and cut these scallions up again, just thin-slice.

Give me some green and some white, please.

Will do.

MING: There we go.

And I believe your sweet potatoes are done.

MING: So you see this, guys?

The potato's steaming.

It's still really hard.

So that was six minutes.

Six minutes and 66 seconds, to be exact.

So I'm actually turning the...

I'm turning the...

I've turned them upside the other way, right?

Because the bottom is a little soft, the top is not.

So I'm flipping them all over.

And, I'm gonna go back in another five minutes, all right?

Because I'm having fun with numbers, I'm gonna go 5:55, okay.

All right, Hen, let's check out our chicken over here.

(sizzling) Oh, yeah, look at that.

Look how good that chicken looks, guys.

Look at that.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, then, here, guys, we have the five-spice liquid coming together.

I'm just making sure the sugar melted, I'm gonna give it a try.

Oh.

Hey, that's pretty good.

So, I want it to simmer for about five more minutes to get the ginger a little soft and the scallions a little soft, and to have those aromatics, the star anise, and the Thai bird chilies to come out.

We have this squash.

So I'm gonna do-- because it's gonna be super-quick braise, right?

I'm gonna do thin slices, what is that, about a quarter of an inch of this squash.

Any squash would work, guys, right?

I have some butternut squash behind me, as well.

I have more acorn.

I just couldn't find delicata out here in the mountains, but they would all work.

So, by the way, here's some knife tip.

This is really hard to try to cut vertical.

So I put it down on its side, and I come across this way, and I go halfway, then...

I don't want to go all the way, because I could get my hand.

I don't want to do that.

Now it's halfway, I just go straight through.

All right?

Knife safety.

So again, nice, soft like this.

There you go, Henry.

Use the cat's claw.

Two fingers.

The rest come along for the ride.

MING: Oh, hey.

Of course.

MING: Hey, have you been watching Simply Ming?

I don't know, chef.

When do these happen again?

Tune in every Tuesday?

MING: I don't know why you're so sarcastic.

Must be Mom.

Yeah.

MING: Right?

Likely.

MING: All right, so here's all my squash here, guys, right?

We have the bok choy.

That bok choy is right here, guys, okay?

So what I'm gonna do with this bok choy is, I'm going to add more water and spin it nice and dry.

I like, I love how you did this, Henry.

Henry did an awesome job, cutting it in half, then he V-ed out the core.

That's fantastic, Hen.

All right, Hen, you want to take care of this?

Just add more water, rinse it well, and then give it a spin.

Will do.

MING: I think, I think, I think spinning...

Spinning stuff is so great, because it dries it out.

Let me just show you what's going on here.

We have chicken, which looks awesome.

We have nice simmering red roast, which is awesome.

So this is looking really good.

Henry, how's it going?

Going well, just... MING: Spinning it.

Drying these out.

MING: These salad spinners are some of the best things ever.

I'm telling you, I love it.

All right, the idea of this whole season-- besides having a great time with Henry and cooking-- is to make a "normal" dish, meaning a dish with protein and-- you know, meat, it could be chicken, today's chicken-- and then make a vegetarian and/or vegan, kind of healthier version of it.

I think chicken's actually quite healthy in general, but acorn squash is even healthier.

All right?

So...

This chicken looks awesome, Henry.

Henry, clean your board, put all your scallions on one side for me.

Yes, chef.

MING: What I'm gonna do is now... take this chicken.

Mm-hmm.

MING: Put that in a bowl, please, sir.

Okay.

MING: And let this rest here like this, okay?

And this chicken is gonna get cut up.

So, I have all this awesome chicken fat, right?

I don't need to eat all of this in this dish, but-- grab me one more bowl, please, Hen.

I'm gonna dump out the majority of this.

And believe you me, if you eat scrambled eggs the next day with chicken fat?

Delicious.

All right?

So I'm gonna dump most of the chicken fat out like that, all right?

This has the fond, which is all this awesome chicken juice that's been cooked, stuck to the pan.

Absolutely leaving that, because, again, I'm gonna add red roast liquid to this, add some of more... Actually, I'll take half of your scallions right now.

Okay.

MING: We're gonna add this cut-up chicken, red roast liquid, and that's gonna start to braise.

All right?

So... Henry, we're going to take this chicken, and we're going to slowly-- without burning ourselves, 'cause this is so hot, right?

You could take two hours and braise the chicken slowly.

That would work awesome.

But what we're gonna do instead is take this chicken, because there's a bone in it, right?

I want to keep the bone in, because chicken on the bone...

So, this is gonna be raw in the middle, right, here, guys?

But here's the bone, right?

You can feel the bone, so I'm gonna take the meat off of one side of the bone, get a really nice big piece.

See, it's still a little bit, it's still raw, right?

It's supposed to be.

And I'm gonna take that.

So now I have three equal pieces of chicken.

See that?

So do that again.

Take it off one side.

Take it off the other.

Why am I not deboning it?

There's such great flavor on the bone.

Why debone it, right?

So you do this again, this side and this side.

So this is how you do the red roast express, guys, right?

You could do it whole, and take your nice hour and a half, two hours.

But for an express, because usually, husband or wife, or boyfriend or girlfriend, are coming home, you want to get it done more quickly, all right?

So, again, just go along.

You could actually flip it and see how, where the bone is, like that, right?

And then I come on this side.

So now I have all this awesome chicken.

So I can take my pan again and add all the chicken to this, right?

I'll grab my tongs, because I'm going to keep it clean.

There we go.

All right?

See that?

Oh, yeah, baby.

That's what we're talking about.

All right, Hen, follow the chicken.

Here, I'll put it, I'll put on this one so there's little bit more room to look at.

I feel like "follow the chicken" would be a good motto for life.

MING (laughing): Follow the chicken?

Yeah, possibly.

Okay, so now, here, guys, we have our red roast liquid, right?

So I'm gonna take a ladle now.

And... Ladle this red roast broth, right?

I'm trying to take half of this stuff, meaning half of the cinnamon, half of the ginger, half of the Thai birds.

Oh, yeah, look at that.

Okay.

That's looking good.

And I love that we've rendered off some of the fat, so this actually makes it even healthier chicken.

So now I'm gonna bring this to a simmer.

Gonna take a cover.

Because when you cover a braise, it traps the heat, and it'll help cook it faster without drying it out.

All right?

So now that's done.

So now here I have my red roast, right?

Which you guys saw earlier.

And to this, I'm going to take my acorn squash, and just lay that in and let this go nice and slow, as well.

The bok choy is going to be added to both pans, but just the last three or four minutes of cooking, because the bok choy cooks super-fast.

All right?

So here, same thing.

I want this to get into the squash, all right?

So we're gonna bring that to a simmer.

But I'm also going to cover it, because I want to keep that heat trapped in.

And the other scallions Henry did, we're gonna put that on top, just so it has some fresh scallions, as well.

All right?

Boom.

Henry, we're practically done.

Wow.

MING: I want this to simmer, guys.

So that's a little bit strong.

So now I can go to about medium, all right?

You can already see how the chicken's already cooking.

So my spices in here, guys, is the base of this flavor.

It's cinnamon, star anise, and Thai bird chilies.

Cinnamon stick?

Well, that's where cinnamon comes from.

So I guess, if we had to choose a holiday, I'm cooking Christmas, so to speak.

And star anise and cinnamon is an awesome combo.

Kind of sweet.

Hence, I love the Thai bird chilies, because it's so spicy.

Good way to balance it out.

All right, Henry, that's done, this is done.

Okay, all right, Hen, check out these potatoes.

So, that was six minutes and then five minutes.

So, nice and hot, right?

(exhales excitedly) MING: So, Henry, get a spoon and scoop it in here.

These are all different types of sweets.

I got-- that's a yam, right?

Look at that-- oh, wow, look at the color of that one.

Oh, that's amazing.

MING: Beautiful.

So we're just making literally a rustic mash.

I'm not even adding fat to this.

I'm just gonna add salt and pepper and just mash it with the big spoon that he's doing.

And that's going to kind of be the base of our dishes.

So I'm gonna turn these off.

We're going to do one plate like this.

And we'll do one on that.

Okay.

Like that?

MING: How's that coming?

Coming along.

MING: Look how pretty that is.

That is awesome.

Beautiful.

MING: All right, Hen.

Let me... Yeah, do that last one.

All right, so, guys, we're just gonna mash this up.

Little salt, little pepper.

And pepper like this.

Mix this up like this.

I love this tri-color mash we have going on.

And by the way, sweet potatoes are so healthy for you, right?

Over the other potatoes.

All right, so, I'm gonna put a pile like this.

This is going to be for our chicken.

And here, I'm going to just do kind of a line of this down the center, and this is going to be for our squash.

All right, the last thing we have to do, though.

(in sing-song voice): You forgot the bok choy!

So, bok choy, for two minutes.

Will cook super-quick.

Like that.

And ditto for in the chicken.

Will cook really quickly, as well.

On the bottom, like that.

And you can take this chicken, right?

You can put the bok choy on the bottom into the broth, and you can see... how this bok choy is just going to wilt so quickly.

All right?

Like this.

Look how good this chicken looks, guys, right?

Look at that.

How beautiful is that chicken?

Oh!

And fully cooked, which I love.

So that was a really quick... All right, let's go to this other one here, Henry.

I'm going to not use... Just get the squash, get that bok choy down.

Oh, yeah.

That's looking good, Henry.

All right, this is gonna take just one minute on this.

And our chicken is looking so good here.

Let's plate this up, Henry.

Oh, yeah.

This ain't your nainai's red roast.

MING: So here, check this out, guys.

Chicken like this.

It's okay, serve the big pieces of ginger.

People can take a bite.

They may eat it, they may not.

Here's some bok choy.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, my God, my mouth is literally watering.

Literally.

Me, too.

MING: All right, a couple of more pieces of bok choy.

Oh, yeah.

Then to this.

The genius is in the sauce, right, guys?

So get this sauce on the chicken.

On the bok choy.

Oh, yeah... Oh, that looks so good.

So, there it is, guys.

That's the express red roast chicken and bok choy.

That's looking really good.

So now we have the vegetarian version.

All right?

So, I'm going to take same tongs, but I'm going to rinse them.

Now, Henry and I are not religious about not eating chicken.

So that's okay.

I'm gonna lightly take out this squash, right?

Take out some pieces like this.

Some bok choy.

Oh, God, that's looking good, Henry.

Wow.

MING: That's looking really good.

And, when the squash is braised like this, I assume you can eat the skin.

MING: Absolutely.

This squash is going to be so tender.

And again, bok choy, that literally took two minutes, right, guys, the bok choy?

And there we go.

Oh, that looks good, too, Henry.

Let's wipe up the rims and we will feast.

Feast!

Oh, my God.

This stuff looks pretty good, Hen.

So here.

Nice, clear red roast.

This is a little thinner than the chicken one, because it just didn't reduce as much.

But that's fine, because acorn squash has a really delicate flavor.

Oh, yeah, let me get... Boom.

All right, there we have it, guys.

Red roast chicken la express, right here with tri-mash, a little baby bok choy.

And then we have our delicata squash, as well.

All right, we're gonna try this, because that's why we're here.

I'm gonna start with the veg.

All right, I'll start with the meat, then.

MING: Okay.

On your left.

MING: Look at that squash.

Oh.

Oh, wow, it's so soft.

MING: Oh, that works.

Mm!

MING: That works for me.

You can say that again.

MING: Bok choy still has a little crunch to it, right?

Mm-hmm.

MING: How's that chicken?

So good, so good.

MING: Look at this chicken, guys.

Super-moist still, being cooked in the red roast.

Mm.

You know what I like about it?

It's got that little seared taste from searing the skin.

Oh, yeah.

MING: Which in traditional red roast is just braised.

I think that's a better version.

All right, Henry, we cooked up two awesome dishes.

Red roast chicken express, and then a vegetarian version of it.

And a couple of cocktails-- one with booze, one not.

Thanks, dude.

Cheers.

Thank you very much.

MING: And thank you all.

And, as always, peace... And good eating.

MING: Oh, he's so good.

See you next week.

For more information on Simply Ming, including upcoming guests and more, visit us online at ming.com/simplyming.

Simply Ming is brought to you by Subaru of New England, proudly celebrating 50 years of love.

Authorized retailers at SubaruOfNewEngland.com.

Here's to the next 50 years and beyond.