- And, we're here.
- We are here at Di An Di.
And, our friend Dennis has been working
on a kitchen experiment that's about
to make it onto the menu.
So, we wanna come check it out before it gets there.
Let's go eat short ribs.
(sighing)
Dennis, thank you so much for having us here.
- Thanks for coming.
- Is the pronunciation Di An Di, or Di An Di?
- It's Di An Di. - Di An Di.
- And, Di An Di means, let's go eat in Vietnamese.
So, it's just a cute way of like
getting your friends to go out to eat.
- [Brent] So, what are we doing today?
- So, today I'm gonna show you guys
a dish that we've been working on.
It's a special in the restaurant.
I don't know, it's a cool technique
that we kinda developed here,
and we're still kinda working on.
- Starting here, what's on here?
Because I've seen short ribs,
and they don't always look like that.
What do you have going on?
- How we treat the short rib is,
we coat in in koji.
And, what koji is, is a spore, a culture,
that is used traditionally in a lot of Asian stuff.
So, this is shio koji here, and if you smell it,
it smells of slightly floral, a little bit sweet.
- Yeah, sweet, very sweet. - It's not offensive at all.
- No.
- It almost smells like sake.
- Yeah.
- And, if you taste it.
- [Ben] Oh yeah.
- It's a little salty.
- I really missed the opportunity to have you just feed me.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
It's really great.
It's like pretty salty, kinda like, yeah.
That's a little bit sweet, the floral comes through.
- Yup.
So, we'll take the shio koji, and then we'll apply it.
And, it's just a light brush.
And, we'll make sure we get all the sides.
And then, when you place it on meat,
like I said, it starts to break down the protein,
after a day or two.
And then, it starts to tenderize it a little bit.
And, it draws out the umami.
After that, we'll take it, and then we'll steam it
in this big CVap here, for 24 hours.
You really need that extended time at low temperature
to break down all that connective tissue.
Otherwise, you're gonna end up with
a product that is a little bit gristly, a little bit chewy.
For our tastes, we find 24 hours to be
the right spot, in 140 degrees.
- So, you're starting to have this ready
for dinner service, are you steaming it like
first thing in the morning?
And then, you come back the next morning?
- Yeah, so usually we'll put this in this huge CVap
at the end of the night.
- Okay.
- And then, we'll come pull it out
end of the night the following night.
So, you really have to be on top of
your inventory on this dish.
- So, how many are you able to have available per night?
- So, right now we're running it as a special.
It's kind of a when we have the product in.
We're doing like five or six a night.
And, they instantly sell out.
- I'm sure, yeah. - Yeah.
It'll come out looking like this.
After 24 hours.
And, you can see the koji's kind of cooked.
And, you know, to be very honest,
it's not a very attractive piece of meat right now.
It's been steamed for 24 hours.
- Come on, come on.
- Don't talk that way about it, Dennis.
- [Brent] Yeah.
- [Ben] It's nice.
- It's, you know, it's gray, but it's very soft.
- Oh yeah, it looks like it would be
really, really hard to the touch.
- [Brent] Yeah.
- [Ben] But it's really, really tender.
- And, at this point, for service,
it's ready to go, you know.
And, it's a two step process for the pick up.
We're gonna deep fry it.
And then, we're gonna finish it on the grill,
to get a nice crust on it.
- Yeah, deep fry it.
- All right, so we're gonna drop this in the fryer now.
- [Brent] How long do you have to fry it
to get the crust you want?
- [Dennis] I'd say about a minute 30.
We'll get like a nice color all around it.
- How long did it take you to come up with the process,
like what was the process like for you?
- So, you know, a lot of the new dishes,
it always ends up just being
a collaborative idea amongst the kitchen.
So, we knew we had this delicious fermented sauce.
What do we dip with the sauce?
And, it kind of just all came together really quickly.
- Yeah. - Whoa.
- [Dennis] Yeah, so you look now, you've got
really nice color on it.
- [Brent] Wow, yeah those sugars did the job for ya.
- [Ben] Yeah, the sugars did the job for you real quick.
- We're gonna finish it off now.
We're just gonna grill it again to get
a little bit more of a crust, and a little bit more color.
- Why grill it at this point?
You know, you've kind of, you've cooked it
to where you want it to be, you fried it, it's crispy.
- For me, personally, when it comes out of the fryer,
it's a little too crusty.
It has a crust all around that isn't pleasurable for me.
I want it to kind of soften up again a little bit,
and then just get a nice crust on the top.
So, I'm getting a contrast in textures
on the side and the top.
As opposed to, right now, straight outta the grill,
it's just gonna be crusty all throughout.
That little extra step, I think, adds a,
just makes the dish a lot better.
- I have to say, like when you feel it now
like, this no longer feels like a short rib.
- [Cameraman] You wanna squeeze that one more time?
- Oh yeah, I can squeeze it.
Oh!
Give it a squeeze.
It feels like, this feels like a steak.
- You're gonna like what you see when we slice into it.
- Good one.
Wow.
- His catch phrases are really coming along.
- I don't have one.
- That's all Dennis.
- On the grill, it's gonna be real quick.
It's gonna take about a minute, minute and a half.
So, all this work for this short rib,
really the reason why we're doing this,
is to eat this sauce.
This is nuac mam, it's a pretty stinky product.
It's so stinky that they double top it.
- I've never come across a sauce
that needed to be double topped.
Because you're just like, ah.
- The manufacturer's like, take it easy buddy.
- Yeah, we made it, and we even know
you don't really wanna smell this.
- Exactly.
This sauce, on it's own, is pretty unpalatable.
So, in order to make this a delicious sauce,
we have to kinda doctor it up a little bit.
Add some sweetness.
The acid we're gonna get is from some lime juice.
And then, we got the pineapple.
We have ginger scallion.
And then, the chile condiment.
With lot's of lemongrass, chile,
and then a little shallot oil.
We're just gonna mix it up.
And, that's really it.
Can I feed you?
- Oh please, Dennis it would be an honor.
Oh, that's really, really good.
The citrus and the pineapple.
Like really calms down that fish sauce.
That is so-- - Sweet, tangy.
- Cool, so let's do a plate up.
- Yup. - Let's eat.
So, you know, we're getting a nice--
- Oh man, that's gorgeous.
- Yeah, like a really nice--
- A nice mid rare. - Mid rare.
All the fat has been kinda cooked off.
- Totally.
- [Dennis] You're not getting any
like gristly pieces in there.
- [Brent] Rendered, but yet you still have a lot of that
fat structure in there.
- Usually we're gonna take this,
and we're gonna wrap it carnita like wrap style.
Kinda like a Korean ssambap kind of.
So, I'm gonna serve it with a bunch of
Vietnamese herbs, lettuce, and this woven vermicelli.
And, you're gonna wrap it all up,
dip it in the nuac mam, and put it in your mouth.
It's a eat with your hands type of affair.
- My favorite kind of affair.
- Here you are.
Cheers guys.
- Cheers. - Cheers man.
- After you.
Get a little dip.
- A little dip'll do.
No?
- That one's not gonna work.
- Wow.
- [Dennis] So, that short rib.
- That is so good.
This is so much better than a braise.
- Yeah.
I don't know if it's better than a braise,
but it's a different style of short rib.
- It's better than a braise.
Dennis, thank you so much.
- Thank you.
- This is such a great experience.
- So awesome. - Thanks guys.
- So delicious.
- Now we're gonna eat the rest of this.
- I'm just gonna eat this.
- Hope you're done.
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- You know what?
The bone's the best part.
- Catch phrase.