Thank you all for coming today
to the True Food Kitchen cooking series!
The first dish that we're going to make today, really to me,
speaks of what True Food is all about. It's about simplicity of flavor,
quality of the ingredient, and freshness
and execution. Okay. So the first thing I'm gonna do
is we're gonna make this salad. It's what I call a farmer's market salad.
The real key to shopping is, isn't to say how I need those round carrots that
Chef Michael showed me. You say
I want to get the freshest possible stuff you guys have here. So you go to the market
with no preconceived idea of what vegetable you're gonna put into this salad.
The rule of thumb is, if it is coming out of the ground
at the same time with this other vegetable that's coming out of the ground,
those automatically taste good together. So there's no real
technique and trying to get these flavors to work together. The freshest
is what makes it taste good, okay?
So we're going to do, we've got some beautiful radishes,
different colors of radish, different colors of carrot,
and I just washed these off. We've got a beautiful
Persian cucumber and this is all stuff that I got from a local farm.
I've got some beautiful organic greens, that were grown locally here.
We get all of our local vegetables from
Bob McClendon. He's probably the largest local farmer here
in Phoenix. Bob makes it easy. He puts a lot of vegetables out.
He's very helpful. His vegetables are in good condition.
You sorta have to know what you're looking for at the same time,
and do know the difference between a fresh carrot and an old carrot.
You can tell by looking at them, alright? So, when you go to the market,
pick the stuff that's beautiful and fresh, pick the stuff that you like.
You know right now what's in season: corn, strawberries,
tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, summer squash,
pole beans. If you go to,
if you go to Whole Foods right now you can see all different types of melons.
This is the greatest time to eat fresh produce
and it's also the most refreshing with the weather outside the way it is
to eat something that is just clean and fresh like a vegetable salad.
Okay, so we also have some beautiful heirloom tomatoes.
So you can tell an heirloom tomato cause they're usually kinda ugly.
Heirloom tomatoes, it's a tomato
variety that's more than 50 years old. That's all that means.
So we think of a family heirloom being passed down from generation to generation,
that's all an heirloom vegetable is. It's an old variety.
What you can take away from that is, it's not always going to be organic,
it's not always going to be good. It is gonna always
not be genetically modified. So it's not going to be one of those tomatoes that
they pick green, put it into a carton,
ship it across the country and as it's driving across the country
it's ripening and then it gets to the grocery store and it's been genetically modified
to not break down overtime. So it can be
3 weeks old before it starts to get soft. Heirloom tomatoes are
very temperamental. They're hard to grow, they're not pesticide resistant, bugs
love to eat them. So for a farmer to grow this tomato is a lot more difficult
than to grow the one that is genetically modified to be
pesticide resistant, or shelf-stable, or
ripened off the vine. What ends up happening though, with all that
is lack of flavor. So those tomatoes might need 3 or 4 nutrients to become a
tomato.
These tomatoes need 35, 40, 45 different nutrients to become a tomato.
What does that translate into? Well, it's more nutritious, first,
but it's gonna taste, have more flavor. It's gonna taste better.
I mean I've met a lot of grownups
that won't eat tomatoes, they hate tomatoes, and
it's because the tomatoes that they've been forced to eat over the last 15 years
don't taste good. They're not good. When was the last time you had a really good tomato?
Unless you grew it yourself or you got it at the farmer's market.
Most of the time, they're not very good. They're gritty and mealy, there's no flavor.
they might be kinda green and hard in the center, or watery. They just kinda make
everything taste
crummy to me, so it almost ruins things rather than
making it better. So if you're one of those grownups that used to like tomatoes when they were good
try buying tomatoes at the farmers market or buying organic tomatoes at Whole Foods.
You might be surprised. And there's a big
influx of that happening. There's more, there's more people going to the farmers
market
buying their produce. There's, its kind of a trend, I guess
to shop from the farmer, to use a local farm.
Okay? So, without talking too much.
Start with my lettuce, and then I'm going to
just basically slice all these vegetables up, so they're like
bite-size pieces.
Pretty simple.
Those go into my salad.
And so, I'm just gonna cut this tomato up.
Basically you want to cut all this stuff up into
similar sized pieces, so like large, large
bite sized pieces.
I have my beautiful radishes here.
Then I have
some different types of tomatoes.
These are called peach tomatoes and their kind of fuzzy on the outside.
A little bit of fennel.
This is shaved. I have some roasted beets, again, from the local farm.
And I have a little Manchego cheese.
Manchego is a sheep's milk cheese from Spain,
sprinkle lightly. Manchego is a superfood,
and basically,
because the good outweighs the bad. So
whereas, you know, there's not a lot of cheeses that are superfoods. Manchego is one of them,
Pecorino,
Parmigianno. Usually because they're lower in fat. Cheese has a lot of
good things in it, has a lot of calcium, it has iron, it has protein.
So, in this case, the good things, the calcium,
the protein and the other vitamins in there
are higher than the fat. I love the flavor myself.
I think it's delicious. I think it's great in a salad, but if you love
feta cheese, you can put feta cheese. If you love cheddar, you can put cheddar. If
you don't want cheese, leave the cheese out. It doesn't really need the cheese, I think it's just sort
of a bonus.
And some pistachio nuts.
I'm just gonna make a real simple vinaigrette.
Start with
a tiny bit of agave nectar
and a little lime juice.
To me, a vinaigrette is basically acid and
fat. So your acid could be lime juice, orange juice, lemon juice,
red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar and a
certain ratio of fat to that. In the hard case we'll use extra virgin olive oil
or we'll use expeller pressed canola oil. Those are the two fats
that we use in our savory food.
You could use sour cream if you wanted to, it all depends on
what fat you want to use.
We want this to be nice and light so we're going use a blend of
canola, expeller pressed canola, and extra virgin olive oil.
And that's this, and then the ratio
of the vinaigrette depends a little bit on your own taste
and also how acidic your acid is.
So if you're using white wine vinegar that's pretty acidic,
you're gonna use a little bit more oil or fat. If you're using
orange juice, not as acidic, you can use a little less oil.
Okay? And then I have
this beautiful chili sesame oil that I love
and this is available at asian markets. Very
little of that cause it's pretty strong.
And a pinch of salt.
So I know you were hoping that it was a little more difficult than that but that's
pretty much it,
okay?
And then I take my vinaigrette, put that
on my salad.
And if I was at home, I'd use my hands, but
for you guys I won't do that.
Simply tossing everything together.
And you guys are getting this right now, but there's the finished salad.
So, to me, a real, sort of the epitome of
simplicity, freshness, seasonality,
health this is everything that True Food
is all about and I mean that's, it doesn't get easier than that.
Like I said the hard part is finding those great ingredients.
You can't just go to Safeway to make this salad, it's not going to be good.
We're not doing anything to make those vegetables taste good, they have to taste
good by themselves.
Okay questions?
Any other questions about the salad? Pretty straightforward.
Do you guys like it?
Like it? It's good, no?
Do you notice
there might be things in the south that you guys are eating that I didn't put in my salad?
That's the whole idea, the whole idea is
it's not about it has to have a carrot in it or it has to have a cucumber in it. It
just has to have seasonal stuff. You could put raw corn in there and it would
be delicious. You know, if you just did corn
and tomatoes and the greens, it would be delicious. If you put some roasted egg plant in there, it would
be delicious. So don't let like the ingredient decide,
because you might say, hey I wanna get some great tomatoes, and you go to the
market, and the tomatoes don't look
good. You gotta, you gotta let the market tell you what's good.
Let the market decide what's going to be on your menu for the night, K?
There's about 5 or 6 servings of vegetables in that salad.
So you're getting 65-70 percent of your vegetables
for the day in one bowl. That's why this
salad is so good for you.