SKINNER: I spent the next three years in a P.O.W. camp,
SKINNER: Forced to subsist on a thin stew made of fish, vegetables, prawns, coconut milk,
SKINNER: And four kinds of rice.
SKINNER: I came close to madness trying to find it here in the States, but they just can't get the spices right!
BART: Um, my punishment?
SKINNER: Hm? Oh!
Hey, what's up guys, welcome back to Binging with Babish
Where this week we are taking another look at the foods from "The Simpsons".
Now, if you're having guests over and you don't have time to whip up let's say, some steamed hams
The next best thing might be Principal Skinner's P.O.W. stew.
Which sounds a lot like a Thai Tom Kha Goong.
Which I'm sure I pronounced correctly and inoffensively.
Regardless, it's served with four different kinds of rice.
And until recently, I, like you, cooked my rice to a gloomy paste.
Until I discovered the art of pressure cooker ri-
Pressure cooker rice coo-
Pepper...
Pressure cooker rice cooking.
What I'm doing here is combining the prescribed amount of rice and water as outlined by the product packaging,
And placing in the pressure cooker for 25 minutes for harder types of rice like brown rice and red rice,
And as little as 1 minute for a more quick cooking rice like jasmine, or this absolutely beautiful green jade rice.
And since I'm cooking them back to back, I'm placing them all in a casserole side by side, covered with tinfoil in a 200 degree Fahrenheit oven,
Keeping everything warm while we make our stew.
Now this is first and foremost a seafood stew,
So we're gonna start with some prawns that we are gonna shell and devein by making a small slit on top of the shell of the prawn
And pulling out the little digestive..uh...you know, poop tract.
Rinse and repeat, but do not throw away your shells, we're making a little bit of shellfish stock to put the amp up on the seafood flavor.
We're starting by adding some scallions to some oil that's been preheated over medium high heat,
Adding our prawn shells, and sautéing until they start to show some color.
At which point, we're going to deglaze with a few glugs of white wine, and a solid cup, if not two cups of water.
We're then going to let that simmer for a solid 45 minutes, until it's nice and seafoody.
Draining and setting aside, while we prepare the vegetable elements of our stew.
We're gonna start with some minced garlic, some minced ginger, minced lemon grass, minced shallot, some trimmed green beans, and some chopped shitake mushrooms.
We're gonna sauté these all together until fragrant, deglaze with a little bit of our seafood stock, and add some kaffir lime leaves.
These are a little bit hard to get ahold of; if you can't find them, just use some freshly squeezed lime and lime zest.
We're also gonna add a few tablespoons of green curry paste, sautéing and letting all those flavors get to know each other, before we add some bamboo shoots, some sliced red bell pepper.
And at this point if you want to heat things up, you could add some Thai Bird's eye chilis.
But I'm not in the mood for spicy tonight, so I'm sticking with some fish sauce, and another two or three cups of our shellfish stock.
We're also going to add one can of coconut milk.
And ideally at this point you want to add Thai basil, but I couldn't find any, so regular basil will do in a pinch.
And now we're going to add our seafood
I went with some sliced monkfish, for the fish element, and our shell deveined prawns.
And now let's see if we can get the spices right.
I'm gonna add a little bit of ground cardamom, and cayenne pepper. And a little pinch of brown sugar
Before covering and poaching for five to ten minutes until all the seafood is cooked through.
And now to plate up the wholly unnecessary four different kinds of rice,
And ladling alongside it: our stew.
Now I gotta say, this stuff turned out really, really, really good.
And it's interesting, because there's so many different ways you can customize it.
But not as many different way as you can customize a "Crayon Sandwich".
You've might have seen me make the grilled Crayon Sandwich with Rhett and Link on "Good Mythical Morning",
And as pretty as it was, it was wholly inedible, so I decided to make a rainbow grilled cheese sandwich.
So I'm taking three different kinds of cheese, and coloring them with food coloring, mixing them around, and spooning them into some rainbowy rows,
On top some plain white sandwich bread.
And then I'm going to make this as I would any other grilled cheese sandwich.
Melt lots and lots of butter in a nonstick pan, butter one side of the bread, place the sandwich non buttered-side down in the skillet, toast, and flip.
Slice in half on the diagonal (remember, we want to see all these colors)
And to get that stretch, you gotta sorta wiggle that sandwich together, and then pull apart.
I know it's not made of actual crayons, but this is a Ralph Wiggum sandwich that is actually good enough to eat.
I'm very sorry, but I could not come up with an appropriate substitute to thumb tacks.