- I knew I was gonna fricking love this.
Hi, I'm Beryl and welcome to part two
of foods that shouldn't work together
but totally work together.
We did part one last week.
Okay, now hold on. I'm into this?
I'm actually pretty into this.
Which I will leave a link to up here.
And as I promised, I have three more for you.
So we're going to be looking at dishes
from the United States, from Haiti and from the Philippines.
Let's start.
(violin music)
- Hello, my name is Eureka,
and I am from Port-au-Prince Haiti.
And the combo I want to share with you today
is a smoked herring polenta with banana.
In Haiti, smoked herring polenta
is very popular for breakfast,
but it is if not always served with avocado.
But in my family, we eat it with banana instead.
To prepare this dish, you want to soak your smoked herring
to desalt it, then chop it finely.
In another pan, we're going to add a bit of oil
to fry together some Epis, which is a Haitian spice mix.
And if you don't have Epis
you could add garlic and green onions instead.
When that's all fried and sauteed,
you want to add some onions and tomatoes in that.
And also the smoked herring.
Add in a bit of tomato puree, bouillon or Maggi cube,
whichever one you have, some water and bring that to a boil.
Add in a bit of salt and some clove powder.
When that's boiling, go ahead and wash your polenta
with cornmeal then add it to the boiling water.
Bring it to a boil for about 10 minutes, covered.
After 10 minutes, uncover it, check it,
then leave it to boil again
for another five minutes, then your dish is ready.
So you want to take a bite
of the smoked herring polenta with a bite of banana.
And so you can have that sweetness
and savoriness of the dish put together.
It is amazing.
It came about because my uncle started eating it like that.
Then all my cousins started eating it like that.
And we've never gone back. It is the best combination ever.
Now, some Haitians might say, "No, smoked herring polenta
should only be served with avocado."
But trust me on this one. It is so good.
- Okay. So this is the smoked herring. polenta.
And I actually included the avocado
in this one because I have never had this, full stop.
So pairing it instead with banana
I felt like I needed that base level.
That is so flavorful, the clove has a very bold flavor.
I actually really like this herring polenta,
which, kind of surprising.
Good.
I think in general people might be
a little bit nervous about that, the idea of a smoked fish
in what could be like a porridge dish,
but it's really, really nice.
Okay. I'm going try it with avocado.
It's good with avocado.
I mean, everything's good with avocado.
Now for the combo that's a little bit different, banana.
(laughing) I mean, this one's tricky,
because it's a dish that I'm not familiar with.
So if you had told me to eat this with a banana
I would've been like, "Okay, I'll eat it with a banana."
(laughs) The banana definitely
has a really different combination
than the avocado because it's sweet.
Speaking of a little bit sweeter, come here.
Osh has been a little bit sick this week.
She went to the hospital, but now she's back
and she's feeling a little bit better.
And a lot of you guys sent well wishes
and that was really sweet and she says thank you.
Woof, woof! Okay, sorry, staying on focus here.
Eureka was totally right though, this is delicious.
Maybe you're not a fan of smoked fish or maybe
you just don't think you're a fan of smoked fish.
I still really think you should try this.
It is a very flavorful and complex
and beautiful tasting polenta?
Porridge? It's good, I really like it.
(light piano music)
- Hi, my name is Madeline and I live
in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States of America.
And my favorite weird food combination
that totally works is a peanut butter and pickle sandwich.
Preferably served with a side of chocolate malt Ovaltine.
Last summer I mentioned how much I liked
peanut butter and pickle sandwiches with my grandma,
who I was living at the time, and she said that she had
had them when she was younger and I lost my mind
and now we eat them together whenever we're together,
which isn't super often.
So it's something I really, really cherish close to my heart
as something that's for me and my grandma.
So for the peanut butter and pickle sandwich
it's basically exactly what it sounds like.
You get some bread, you get some pickle.
I like dill pickles. I don't like bread and butter.
So I use dill pickles.
And I do recommend, actually, you get whole pickles
and cut them yourself 'cause dill pickle chips
and pickle chips in general just lose
so much of their crunch and the crunch
is what you want in the sandwich, so get crunchy pickles.
You get some peanut butter.
You put a little bit of mayo on for tang
and that's the basis of it.
It's really delicious. It's nutty and briny.
This is a perfect sandwich.
I don't know what else to say. It's so good.
And I think the way that food
brings us together is really special.
I don't know, I just love my grandma. She's pretty cool.
- I'm actually very excited to try this one.
I think because in the last video I really liked
the peanut butter egg sandwich, so when I saw that this one
was peanut butter and pickle, it was like,
let's keep this peanut butter train moving.
I also love pickles.
Oh my god. (lighthearted music)
I knew I was going to freaking love this.
(chuckling) This is so good. This is so good.
This is so good.
When Madeline sent me the video she gave me
a little bit of context about this sandwich,
that it's a Depression era sandwich from the 1930s
in the US when peanut butter was coming around,
and Emmy made, and I'll leave a link to her channel
and to that video below, made this sandwich
and that's where Madeline found it.
And now I'm finding it.
The internet is just a full circle love fest.
This sandwich is worth the hype.
And if you're thinking,
"Oh, I wouldn't want to add the mayo."
No, you want to add the mayo.
It's a subtle flavor, but it's there.
God, can you feel my energy, how excited I am?
I need to calm down.
I love her story about her and her grandmother
bonding over this sandwich, melted my heart.
That's what food does, you know? It brings people together.
I really want Rajat to try this, but he's on a phone call.
Okay, okay, okay, okay. You have to try it.
- [Rajat] What's in this?
- Peanut butter and pickle.
- [Rajat] Yeah, I like it.
- But I feel like you're not as energetic as I was.
I was really excited about it. (laughs)
- [Rajat] No, I really like it.
I'm eating the rest of this.
- Oh, you're taking it. Okay.
(pleasant piano music)
- Hi, my name is Patricia, I was born in the Philippines,
but I migrated to Sydney, Australia.
And the weird food combination
that I think totally works is cheese on desserts.
And I don't mean cheesecake.
I'm talking about cheese on cake
or cheese on cupcakes or cheese on ice cream.
Cheese milk, cheese ice cream.
This is a very popular Filipino tradition.
So first of all, you need to be using the right cheese.
You can't use mozzarella or Gouda or any aged cheddar.
It has to be really artificial boxed, cheddar cheese.
If you don't have anything like this in your country
you can probably get away with using cheese slices,
like the white cheddar, as long as it's not
a dark yellow cheddar and it's white
you should be good to go.
Personally, what I like to do is I like to take toast
and I like to spread it with condensed milk
and put the cheese on top.
What you get is a really creamy sort of salty.
I think people should definitely try this.
I think it's a bit weird at first, but when you do try it
I think you'll really come to appreciate it.
And I think by trying this
you not only gain an appreciation of Filipino cuisine,
but of the ways that you can experiment
with really familiar flavors like sweet and salty
and add a little bit more complexity,
and it makes eating food really exciting.
- I used to be a waitress. Can you tell?
Look at how good I am at handling multiple plates with ease.
I have a lot of things here
because I got a little bit excited.
I'm gonna start with the condensed milk
with cheese on toast.
(chuckling) Oh, wait, I like that.
I'm more into this than I thought.
What does this cheese taste like?
This cheese tastes like the word "cheese,"
if makes any sense.
I can see why it would pair with sweet.
It doesn't really have flavor. Ice cream with cheese.
I feel like my mind is tricking me
and because it kind of looks like white chocolate
I think that I'm eating white chocolate on my ice cream.
I'm not getting much flavor.
Maybe the ice cream's just really cold
and so all I taste is ice cream.
To be fair, Patricia did have cheese flavored ice cream,
but she said that they put it on ice cream.
Okay. Last one, and this was my own concoction.
I made ube halaya in my potato episode. Roll the tape.
(lighthearted music)
And I put it on toast and I was like,
"We might as well add cheese to the ube halaya."
I kind of like this one the best.
You know, Patricia talked about how in Filipino cuisine
they do a lot of mixing of salty and sweet,
like in the champorado dish that I had.
My God, all my videos are coming together in this episode.
And I understand how this falls in line
with that salty sweet combo.
This definitely would be a good late night snack.
Like I could see myself doing this.
Especially since I have half a block
of that cheese left, you know?
Well, this was another fabulous episode.
I learned that I love pickle and peanut butter
and that smoked herring and polenta is (kisses)
a delicious, delicious breakfast.
I feel like I'm just constantly expanding my own palette.
Which, you know, a lot of you were like, "
Oh, you like everything," like, big whoop.
So what? I do like everything. (laughs)
I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry.
I am going to be doing the episode of foods
that I don't like, and I'm working on it.
I'm just moving a little slow on it. (laughs)
'Cause I don't like those foods.
I also feel like maybe if you tried these,
you guys would like them too.
You just maybe haven't tried them yet.
Anyway, I will see you all in my next video.
So until then, TTYL.