- So to open a can of tomatoes,
what you want to do is turn it,
and then you just turn it again.
It's difficult, you know.
That's a joke.
Keep this serious guys.
Who's in there?
(laughs) The homie!
What's up? - What up?
- What's poppin'?
I'm excited to cook, I'm excited to talk to you,
see what we have in store today.
- We got a little somethin' somethin',
which brings me to our challenge for today.
- Interesting. Interesting.
- Hmm. (Nyesha laughs)
- I created this dish, the Roasted Breadfruit Gnocchi.
I serve it with like a tomato dashi,
basically cook that with shiitakes
and kombu to make like a little broth
and then serve the dumplings in that.
That's really the challenge that I have for you today,
is recreating something along those lines.
- I have big love for West Indies, all Caribbean.
Like that's my vibe.
- I really feel like this dish is something that you could,
A, relate to because you spent time in the Caribbean.
Also, I know you are good and you're nice
with like the Asian, with the Asian flavors.
Play with it. Have fun.
- Okay.
- If you can't find the breadfruit,
find a way to make it like smoked.
I think that's like a really important
component of the dish.
It's like, as simple as it is.
It's like the flavors,
like when you bite into it and it just tastes like smoke.
It's very interesting - It is!
- You know, make it, make it nice.
- Yeah, make it nice, exactly.
- Alright, big love!
- Big love to you as well, friend.
(soft drums)
- And action. (laughs)
I really, really love learning about new techniques
and new ingredients that I typically don't use.
So I really had to kinda get out of the house,
and there's like one Jamaican store.
They were out of what I was looking for,
which was breadfruit.
I called about seven or eight places
looking for this breadfruit.
If anyone knows where I can find it,
I still want to know.
I did come across this malanga.
I've never used this.
Kind of looks like a taro.
It's in the taro family.
I think I can sort of use this
as a substitute,
and see if it works.
What I, what my plan is, is to basically
wrap these guys in aluminum foil,
and then roast them at high heat,
probably like 425.
So what I'm going to do is dry roast, and then smoke it.
My sauce is going to be a lot more sort of rich and thick,
I am, instead of using like a
tomato water consomme, I'm going to use some spices.
I'm going to use some coriander, some cumin,
some paprika, a little turmeric,
and kind of do this like, island tomato sauce.
And then I'm going to finish it with a tiny splash
of coconut milk,
because I feel like that'll be a really nice,
beautiful way to kind of like
make this island vibe with what I'm going for.
Okay. It's a process.
Um, cool.
I'm going to prep my tomatoes for my tomato water.
Tomatoes have tons of juice inside of them.
If I pour that into a cheesecloth, right?
If I just basically pulse down the tomato,
put that in a cheesecloth, what's going to happen is
what comes out of the other side of the drip,
is pure essence of tomato.
'Kay, so...queso.
Going to cut these tomatoes down,
throw them in here.
Dun dun dun.
(blender whirs)
Add a pinch of salt.
(blender whirs)
Oh my gosh, this looks so good.
I love fresh tomato sauces like this.
It's a great way to preserve and get the extra mile
out of your tomatoes.
And then we're gonna get some
beautiful tomato water in there. Look at that.
It looks so light, but it's like so flavorful.
Wow. That smoker smells amazing.
Oh my gosh, I should smoke the tomato water.
You guys aren't even ready for this.
(sings)
Excellent, tomato sauce time.
Coconut oil.
(tapping)
Oil of coconut, it's in.
Tomato paste.
So I like to almost fry my, my tomato products.
It takes on this amazing sort of dark, roasty,
concentrated tomato flavor, like garlic.
So I'm just going to take a tiny bit of cardamom.
I'm just going to do it just a little bit of curry powder,
and all those herbs just kind of start to dance.
Splash of cinnamon, like almost nothing.
It's so pretty.
How everything just kind of sizzles,
a little bit of turmeric powder.
It's going to be important to add some salt.
The spices smell so aromatic.
The tomato paste is like really, really bright.
So now it makes sense to add some like the next layer of,
of what we're making.
I'm gonna add my bay leaf, just kind of break that up
and I'm gonna add my curry leaf,
I grew these in my garden.
I think I'll add just a little bit of tomato sauce.
And I will add a little bit of olive oil.
I think that's going to be a nice dialogue between kind of
bringing that Italian flavor, but not,
but also, the sort of Caribbean flavor as well.
Yeah. Smoky tomato water!
It smells amazing!
Tomato water's going in. This is lightly smoked.
So tomato water, spices, crushed tomato.
(tapping)
I think I'm just going to add the coconut milk now
and let that reduce together.
Yes! (laughs)
Yum. That's a good base.
On to the gnocchi.
(funky music)
Okay, let's see what we got here.
Nice smoky texture, pretty soft.
I kind of want to just smash them up.
When I am using kind of
starchy vegetables in my cooking,
I wanna make sure that starch is staying hot because,
it becomes very gluey almost.
Whenever you have had things go gummy on you,
it's because your starch needs to be hot.
This is extremely important.
This is what we have really hot, steamy.
All right. Let's see what we're working with.
Almost just sticking together on its own.
So we're just going to assist that.
Put it onto my cutting board.
Add a little bit of tapioca flour.
And a little bit of garbanzo bean flour.
I'm also going to add a little bit of salt.
Some nutmeg.
Okay. Let's see where we're at with this.
We'll test one.
So right now, it's just kind of barely holding together
as I'm rolling it out.
And then I cut them...
into small pieces.
Just roll it down.
You kind of get these little
rivets around the outside of it,
and that's essentially making way for the sauce to really
kind of stick onto it.
At the end of the day this is
far from a traditional gnocchi. I know.
I think this is more of a, almost like a dumplings in sauce.
See what we're working with.
Let those cook for a minute.
Okay. So all of these are floating now.
See how they taste.
(tapping)
Mm.
Wow. I mean,
I don't think I've ever had that texture in my life.
I feel like this is one of those dishes
that you can eat and you don't feel like
super heavy as well.
So I'm gonna drop these guys down.
I'm very satisfied with this.
I am going to make this a ton.
I'm so happy that Pierre shared this with me
because the texture is impeccable.
And I mean, the possibilities really are endless.
It's not traditional anything, you know.
It's not a traditional tomato sauce.
It's not traditional gnocchi. We're not using potato.
You know, we're not using egg,
we're not using Parmesan cheese.
This is just kind of like hot water dumpling dough
that we're taking and recreating and purposing
into something completely brand new.
And I think I will continue to cook the gnocchi in the sauce
and I don't want it to overcook in the hot water.
(soft beat)
See how this tastes.
That tastes bomb.
This looks nice.
(soft beat)
Yeah. I mean,
I love when it has that kind of chunks of tomatoes inside,
because, kind of gives you a break, you know,
here and there from,
from the gnocchi to enjoy something else within the dish.
I'm a sauce girl, need a ton of sauce.
Place those on..
Love cilantro, love basil,
little tomato powder,
and a touch of olive oil.
We'll see if I did him proud.
So pretty!
I'm a hundred percent not mad at this dish.
You know, this is literally a global mashup on a plate.
You know, we're taking this idea and inspiration of
a classic Italian dish,
being the gnocchi and the technique.
And then we merge it with, you know,
fruits and vegetables from the island
without adding the same ingredients, right.
We're not adding egg to bind.
We're not adding Parmesan cheese.
(soft jazz music)
Guys, I don't even know.
I am like not trying to be like, oh yeah,
I nailed it, like every time.
But like this really tastes freaking bomb.
And like, it's so bright. It's so happy.
Like this dish is, when I eat this,
it like it makes my soul happy.
It's a mashup of a lot of different cuisines
and textures and flavors.