Sara's Weeknight Meals

(peaceful music) - [Narrator] Sara's weeknight meals is made possible by - [Announcer] Aboard Oceania Cruises, our guests embrace a passion for travel.

And our chefs are inspired by the flavors of the world and committed to providing fine dining at sea.

That's Oceania Cruises.

Oceania Cruises, your world your way - [Announcer] Since 1921, Season has brought you skinless and boneless sardine filets.

Our sardines are wild caught and contain essential vitamins and minerals for everyday meals.

Seasoned sardines rich in Omega-3s and protein, And it feels good.

- Sunsweet, amazing prunes and prune juice.

- [Sara] And by Mutti Tomatoes of Parma, The Republic of Tea, and USA rice.

- [Sara] It's that time of the year when bakers shine because holiday meals are as much about the desserts as about the main course, and have we got some showstoppers for you, ready?

Oh yeah.

Oh, that is so ready.

It's crunchy, it's creamy.

You've got to make my glaze roasted pears with the short bread pecan brittle, and creme fresh.

Then my epiphany about pot stickers.

Oh, how about putting some fruit in there?

And bam, the dried fruit pot sticker was born, filled with dried plums and apricots, fried till it's crispy, drizzled with raspberry sauce.

Topped with vanilla yogurt, OMG.

And it wouldn't be the holidays in my house without this ridiculously easy peppermint bark.

On Ask Sara... - I'm wondering what is a blind bake pie crust?

- [Sara] Isn't that beautiful?

How sweet it is, just in time for the holidays, today on Saras Weeknight Meals.

(upbeat music) I've been cooking with wonton wrappers for years.

Wonton wrappers are square, fresh pasta that are used in Chinese cuisine.

So I've made pot stickers, which are traditionally savory, stuffed with vegetables or pork or shrimp.

And then one day I was like, oh, how about putting some fruit in there?

I think that would work beautifully.

So today I've got dried apricots and dried plums, AKA prunes.

Now apricots are not all that sticky, but prunes are.

So you can just brush your knife with a little bit of neutral oil.

And then it's so much easier to cut these in half.

Everybody associates them with digestive health and yeah, they're very good at that.

They bring both a little touch of sweetness and also some acid plus great depth of flavor.

Okay, now I'm gonna talk about wonton wrappers.

I've got them covered the way I cover them when I'm working with them, which is with a damp paper towel, and then some plastic wrap because they dry out quickly.

And I'm only gonna work with a few at a time.

I start by wetting all four corners.

I'm using my finger, this is just water.

And then we're gonna stuff them.

And I'm gonna put two of each halfs in the middle of each wonton wrapper so you can make 'em ahead of time just like this.

And then keep 'em covered with a damp paper towel and plastic wrap, you know, maybe even overnight.

So I'm gonna transfer these to a half sheet pan or a small sheet pan that's got parchment on it and been dusted with a little bit of corn starch so they don't stick.

I'm gonna make some more.

I need six for our purposes today.

A full recipe will make 12.

(upbeat music) Let's get these guys cooking.

I've started to preheat my pan.

It's a non-stick pan.

I'm gonna put in a little bit of vegetable oil.

I like rapeseed actually, it has a high smoke point and a little bit of butter.

You could do all oil.

I like a little bit of butter in there just for the flavor.

We're gonna let this melt completely.

Yes, you wanna hear that sound when they go in.

While these cook away, let me tell you the story of how the pot sticker got its name.

This story comes via my friend Martin Yen.

Way back in the imperial days when the chef was cooking for the emperor, he was making dumpings and he sort of forgot what he was doing and wasn't paying attention.

And they got very dark on the bottom.

The emperor said, these are really good.

What do you call them?

So the very crafty chef came up with pot stickers.

Let me see.

Oh yeah, that's pretty darn good.

When you add the water, it's about a quarter of a cup.

You need to have a lid handy and watch out, 'cause obviously it's gonna sputter, when we're adding water to hot fat.

So I'm gonna let these steam for about six to eight minutes, or until they're translucent.

We're gonna make a quick sauce with Greek yogurt and we're gonna add just a tiny bit of sugar.

This is, you'll see this is a very low sugar dish.

We're gonna add a half a teaspoon.

That's all of sugar and a half a teaspoon of vanilla extract, the real McCoy.

So there we go.

And that's it for our very complicated sauce.

And then I've made a raspberry sauce, fresh raspberry sauce.

You can use a store-bought one, and we'll see how our pot stickers are doing.

What we're looking for is to be able to see through the wonton wrapper.

That means that the pasta is cooked, the wonton is cooked, and you can see the fruit through it.

Yes, you see, you can see the apricot right there.

Yeah.

Now we're gonna crank this up and give it some heat so we can recrisp them.

Okay.

You hear that noise?

It's like most of the water's evaporated.

It's beginning to sputter.

I'm gonna take a look at the bottoms, but I feel very sure that these are ready to go.

Yes, there we have it.

See how beautifully crispy that is?

I'm gonna put some raspberry sauce on the bottom to begin with.

And I, a portion here is three of my pot stickers.

So pretend you get your inner Jackson Pollock going on here.

We're gonna put more on top 'cause it's nice to have a little more of the raspberry sauce.

And we'll put one, two, three.

I turned off the heat and then we must drizzle a little bit more on top.

(peaceful music) Wow, and a little dollop of our Greek yogurt.

And finally, a sprig of mint.

So I made this at home for my husband to test out the recipe.

What did he do?

He ate the mint.

And his comment was, wow, I just love that potsticker with the mint.

So it made me rethink how to serve this recipe.

And I think that every pot sticker must have a little piece of mint.

So there you have it, my dried apricot and dried plum fruits pot stickers.

Wow, that looks pretty beautiful if I do say so myself.

Mm mm, wow.

Mm.

(peaceful music) If I could invent my favorite fall dessert, it would involve pears of apples, fall fruits, ooh, some nuts.

Maybe some pecans, some hard caramel, something creamy, little creme fresh.

And best of all, some shortbread.

So I thought, what the heck?

Let me invent it, and I did.

So that is what I'm gonna make for you right now.

It's glaze roasted pears topped with a pecan brittle pecan shortbread brittle, and then with some cream fresh.

Hey, it's an easy dessert too, which we love during the holidays 'cause they're so stressful.

All right, so let's get started with the brittle part of this yummy dessert.

I've got here three tablespoons of toasted pecans.

Pecans, I never know which one is right.

And this is an oiled sheet pan.

And I toasted them at three 50 for, you know, like what?

Five, six minutes until you start to smell them.

I'm gonna chop into third inch pieces short bread chunks.

Now in England where they love shortbread, they have a rule, a law that you cannot sell shortbread unless it's 51% butter.

Real butter is in there, not, you know, fake.

And Julia Child would approve.

I mean, she was all about the butter.

So what we're gonna do is sprinkle the shortbread on top.

All right, so that's about a third of a cup of chopped shortbread.

Okay, so now on to the caramel part of this.

I need about half a cup of sugar.

So this, this is the dry way, meaning there's no water added.

Another way that people make caramel is to combine sugar and water in a small pot.

The trouble is that the sugar tends to climb up the sides of the pan and crystallize and then fall back in and make all the rest of the sugar crystallize.

It never becomes a hard caramel.

So I prefer to put dry sugar in there and just let it melt.

Caramel gets very, very, very hot.

So be careful.

And also don't walk away.

It goes from golden to burnt like that.

I've got a pie tin here.

I'm gonna brush a tablespoon of melted butter on the bottom and then two tablespoons of sugar.

I'm gonna sprinkle evenly over that.

You can see this is getting a little brown.

I'm gonna pause for a second and just bring this in there.

So this cooks more evenly.

Okay, now I'm not gonna do anything else except watch this.

You see how quickly that happens.

All right.

You see that's a nice color.

So now I'm gonna pour this very carefully.

Caramel is so dangerous, it really could tear up your skin.

I'm gonna pour it over the top of my cookies and pecan mixture here.

Okay, so that is gonna harden completely in, I don't know, about 10 minutes.

I'm gonna get my pairs going here.

The kind of pear you want to use is either this is an Anjou or a Bosc pair.

Those are the ones that have the long top and are sort of brown.

And the reason for that is they hold their shape much better okay?

So that's two tablespoons of sugar, one tablespoon of melted butter.

And now we're just gonna squish the pear in here.

We put curved side down.

This is a great way to cook pears that aren't ripe.

Now, that is not all.

I'm going to squeeze two tablespoons of lemon juice and brush some of that on top of the pears, which keeps them from turning color too quickly.

And then sprinkle another teaspoon of sugar on top.

Now the sugar will help to brown it.

These are all ready.

I'm gonna pop this in a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes to get it started.

Okay, while the pears roast for 10 minutes, I'm gonna see if my, oh yeah.

Oh that is so ready.

It's just, it's, it's, you know, there's so much fun, look at that, isn't that fun, in cooking.

And this is one of them.

You know, magic.

I just made candy and you saw how easy it was.

I mean you could eat this straight up, but we're gonna chop it.

(knife rasping) (brittle clinking) All right, you know what, I need to go check the pears.

(peaceful music) We're gonna add a third of a cup of water.

The lemon juice that we didn't use before and into the pan, not on the pears.

Just a little pinch of salt.

About an eighth of a teaspoon.

Now it goes back into the oven for at least a half an hour.

It may take a little longer.

(upbeat music) Okay, oh boy.

These look fantastic.

Wow, okay.

Okay, I'm gonna pick two of these guys.

We're just gonna put them down, and then we are gonna put some of the glaze over.

We just keep building, building, building.

Now we're gonna do our praline and be generous 'cause this is yummy stuff.

Oh boy, here.

There we go.

And then to top it off, either whipped cream, ice cream, or creme fresh.

Now I picked creme fresh, but I just like the richness of the creme fresh.

There we go, and then I got some lemon verbena.

We go, yum.

Oh wow.

The great moment has come.

Mm, it's crunchy, it's creamy, it's just so delicious.

You have got to make my glaze roasted pears with the short bread pecan brittle, and creme fresh.

(upbeat music) One of my favorite segments we do on my show is called Ask Sara.

It's where we ask you the viewers to write in with your burning culinary questions.

And today I have a guest with a really good one related to baking Patty O'Hare Williams from Marblehead, Massachusetts.

What a beautiful place you live in.

Hello and- - Hello.

- Wow, look at that art behind you.

You're a watercolor artist?

- Yes I am.

- Oh, I'm so interested, that's another conversation 'cause I've just gotten into watercolors, but let's get to the point here.

What is your- - Okay.

- What is your question today?

- I'm wondering what is a blind bake high crust?

I have several tried and true recipes that I use from my mother, and that one is a chocolate peacan pie, and the other one is a strawberry rhubarb pie, and they both are like big crowd pleasers.

Everybody loves it, but would a blind baked pie crust actually improve either one of them?

- Are they little soggy on the bottom?

- They don't seem to be.

Maybe the custard is after a day.

- Yeah.

Well that's understandable.

But any rate, when you blind bake a pie, and let me explain.

Blind baking just means pre-cooking the pie shell so that it doesn't get soggy.

And you do it when you have a wet pie, like a custard pie, say a quiche or a pumpkin pie or a streusel pie that tends to be wet with a streusel topping or a meringue pie.

Pies that don't cook at a high temperature or for very long in the oven need to be blind baked.

And how you do it, it's first of all, you roll out your dough and you chill it, you roll it out, put it in a glass pie plate.

This is what you wanna use.

If you want a nice bottom crust and you leave it in the fridge for two hours so the gluten can relax and it won't shrink as much when you go to bake it.

And then you need to put in some weights.

So the weights are to keep it from puffing up.

If I just baked this naked like this, it would be all puffed up and it would crack.

So I take some, you can take either foil or parchment, I prefer foil.

And you press it in all around the pie.

This has the pie shell.

This had the added benefit that it protects the edge.

So you don't need sort of a pie edge protector.

Then you need to put in weights.

You can use pie weights, which a lot of people do.

You can use rice the trouble with, and you can use rice over and over again.

The trouble's when you can't, you're wasting food.

Ditto.

You can use dried beans.

But I just discovered a new way to do this, which is sugar.

And I learned this from Stella Parks who's written one of my all time favorite books called "Brave Tart."

And she has, you put sugar in and you fill the foil with it.

And why sugar is so great is 'cause it gets into all the nooks and crannies.

Woof, and then you just press it in and we preheated the oven to 350.

And Stella Parks also likes to cook it at a lower temperature all the way through.

She never removes the weights, she just puts it in like this on an aluminum sheet pan, which also helps to brown the bottom.

And she gives it about an hour, 45 minutes to an hour until it looks like this, isn't that beautiful?

And then you go ahead and fill it with whatever else and continue baking.

And you will have a really nice bottom crust.

So that's why you blind bake a pie and how you blind bake it.

So I hope you try that particularly with the rhubarb cream pie because that's a very wet filling.

Yeah, and let me know.

All right?

- I will, thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

- And I'll have to come check out your painting sometime soon.

- Anytime.

Come to Marblehead.

- I'd love to.

Thank you Patty so much.

And if you have a question out there that you'd like me to answer on the show, just like we did with Patty, please write to the website SaraMoulton.com and let me know what your question is.

(festive music) My nephew Peter Murphy, makes peppermint bark every year around the holidays.

And we are just so happy to get it.

You know, also because the stuff you buy in the stores is so expensive.

This is easy to do.

Why not?

So we're gonna start with the peppermint candies here.

You need about 35 or 40 for this recipe.

We're gonna crush these.

And when we're all done, we need about a cup.

So keep that in mind.

And I'm doing this in a double bag so that it doesn't come through, right?

And just go to town.

(rolling pin banging) Oh, one little guy.

I missed him.

Take that, there we go.

So we need to save, oh, about a quarter, or a third of this for the top.

I know that it's a cup 'cause I've measured it before.

So we'll set this aside and go on down and get going with the chocolate.

Now there's two different kinds of chocolate in this.

We're using dark chocolate, bittersweet and white chocolate.

So I've already melted 12 ounces of dark chocolate here.

This is bittersweet.

And there's many different kinds of bittersweet you can buy these days.

You can see them in, in the little bars.

They say 65%, 70%, 85%.

What that means is how much cacao is in there, how much coco liquor.

And the higher the percent, the more the coco liquor, the stronger the chocolate taste.

However, I feel that you get to the point of no return.

I'm gonna just line this with a little bit of aluminum and it gets almost bitter.

It's almost too much chocolate for me.

So my favorite percentage is 65%, which is at the lower end.

You can also just use chocolate chips.

So lemme just smooth this out again, offset spatula, one of my favorite tools.

'cause you can get in anywhere.

Again, doesn't have to be perfectly smooth.

We're looking for about an eighth of an inch thick.

That's the most important thing.

And then we're gonna pop this into the fridge to set up a little bit.

'cause the top layer is gonna be white chocolate.

And this takes you, you wanna put it in the fridge for about mm seven to 10 minutes to set up.

If I did that any longer, if I left it in there like 20 minutes, you wanna let it warm, warm up a little bit at room temperature because the cold chocolate layer, you go spread white chocolate on it.

If it's too cold, the white chocolate won't stick.

We need 12 ounces of white chocolate too, it's equal parts dark and white chocolate.

Now white chocolate is not really true Chocolate.

It's it's cocoa butter.

It's the fat part of chocolate.

There's two parts of chocolate.

There's the cocoa liqueur, which is the chocolate part.

And then there's the cocoa butter, which is the fat part.

So the cocoa butter is what gives chocolate its mouth feel.

It's wonderful creaminess.

And when you buy a chocolate bar, there's always cocoa butter in there.

This is my giant bench scraper.

It's called a cake lifter.

'Cause you can lift whole layer cakes to frost them.

I love this thing.

You just have to find a home for it.

That's the problem.

'cause it's so big.

So now I'm gonna put my white chocolate over the warm water.

So when you melt chocolate, you can set up a double boiler situation, and this is my favorite kind.

You put a bowl over barely simmering water.

The water shouldn't touch, and the bowl should fit snugly over the top so that no water can come out and get into the chocolate.

Chocolate doesn't like water.

What happens is if the liquid comes out, the steam comes out and gets into the chocolate, the chocolate will seize up.

If that should happen to you, don't panic.

Add a little bit of flavorless vegetable oil to the chocolate and it should smooth out just fine.

So this is gonna take a minute to melt.

You just have to be patient.

Okay, so we're gonna stir in the two thirds of the crushed peppermint.

That's so pretty right away.

Just that.

And I cool down the white chocolate.

You want it to be less than warm.

Let me get the dark chocolate layer out.

Here we go, and you could do this, speed this up too by throwing it into the freezer if you want.

It's gonna go right on top.

Oh, that's so pretty, isn't it?

(festive music) And then you just wanna spread it all the way to the edge using your trusty offset spatula.

And then the two will become one.

Meaning the two chocolates will become one.

Here's our reserved candy for the top.

This would be a fun thing to do with your kids.

Obviously when you're doing the melting part, you want to be in the driver's seat, but in terms of spreading it, it really doesn't matter that it be perfect and they would have fun decorating it.

Wow.

How festive.

Okay, back into the fridge.

Now this needs to set up again for about another 30 minutes, maybe a little longer.

And that will make it really nice and crisp.

(upbeat music) Wow, should be ready to break.

Let's just try it.

It's so nice.

It comes right off the foil.

There we go.

(chocolate snapping) Sort of fun, 'cause some of it comes off on your hands too and you just have to lick your hands.

Oh, all right.

Now let me show you how I made my package.

I just took a regular tin, you can buy them in bulk and took a pretty piece of ribbon and just tied it around the outside.

Got a little sticker of a gift card and hand wrote just a little greeting.

And there you go.

I recommend if you haven't tempered the chocolate, keep these in the fridge and they'll stay nice and crisp and tasty.

Okay, so happy holidays.

Special gift.

For recipes, videos and more, go to our website saramoulton.com.

"Sara's weeknight meals" is made possible by... - [Narrator] Aboard Oceana Cruises, our guests embrace a passion for travel and our chefs are inspired by the flavors of the world and committed to providing fine dining at sea.

That's Oceania cruises.

Oceania cruises, your world your way.

- [Announcer] Since 1921, Season has brought you skinless and boneless sardine filets.

Our sardines are wild caught and contain essential vitamins and minerals for everyday meals.

Season sardines, rich Omega-3s and protein.

And it feels good - Sunsweet, amazing prunes and prune juice.

- [Sara] And by Mutti Tomatoes of Parma, the Republic of Tea, and USA Rice.

(peaceful music) (upbeat music)