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hey there
my name is alexa buckle your seat belt
because you're about to come with me
on an international culinary journey
recently i took a dna test and i found
out i have three major components of my
ancestry
ashkenazi jewish british and portuguese
so this was really cool for me to learn
about but then it hit me
that i don't really know as much about
those three cultures as i would like to
and i really wanted to learn more so
then naturally i thought the best way to
do that would be
through food the plan is to make a dish
from each of the three parts of my
heritage
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i started off by trying to cook some
traditional jewish foods
my grandma made the absolute best matzo
ball soup i'm not even just saying that
sadly my grandma's no longer with us so
i can ask her advice
but luckily i am in the us capital of
jewish cuisine
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it's much more fun to talk about history
through food
i was gonna say it's like food learning
about a culture and a cuisine i feel
like
food is the number one way to do it whoa
i'm getting a real ashkenazi jewish
education here
european jews fled or immigrated to
new york those foods were brought with
them and landed here for the most part
soup is another very classic
quintessential jewish dish and one of my
personal favorites so we use
a quarter teaspoon and then they get
rolled out into tiny cute little balls
oh my god that's the cutest thing i've
ever seen
it's a little rule
yeah she's perfect she's perfect so for
my traditional jewish matzo ball soup
that i'm making here at home i'm gonna
use kind of a combination
of techniques and hope for the best i'm
going to use my grandma's technique on
making
the broth sweet and flavorful and
delicious i'm going to use my own
culinary technique for making the broth
technically correct and i'm also going
to use the pokey's idea
of making the matzo balls really really
tiny and bite-sized
and hopefully this combination of ideas
turns out to be
the perfect unison so wish me luck my
matzo ball soup recipe i've come up with
is going to involve
two days of work day one is for making
the homemade broth from scratch because
i'm extra like that
my grandma's matzo ball soup was the
best soup i've ever had
ever she did always tell me when i was
little that what she used to give it
kind of a nice sweetness
was rutabaga which is a strange
root vegetable that i'm going to
incorporate into my homemade broth and
hopefully
this will have the flavor that reminds
me of my grandma's
so bless my grandma's heart getting that
giant rutabaga
sliced up was the hardest thing i've
done in a long time i am
sweating getting this rutabaga into the
soup better be worth it
besides my nemesis the rutabaga my
grandma didn't tell me what else she
used in her broth so i'm going with some
tried and true ingredients i think will
work well
her soup was so flavorful and comforting
it really was food for the soul
in my opinion it's all about using the
right combination of veggies herbs
spices and chicken
alright it is a new day i have my
chicken broth that is now a gelatinous
blob from sitting in the fridge
overnight so i can remove some of this
fat from the top
this is a technique i figured out on my
own i don't want the broth to feel too
greasy
my grandma's was nice and clear so
that's what i'm going for now it's time
to incorporate the advice from the
masters
making my tiny matzah balls they're
really easy to make and look so lovely
covered in the broth containing my blood
sweat and tears
kind of kidding but not really now time
to make it pretty okay this is it baby
matzo ball soup multiple days of work
trying to make it like my grandma's
we've got itty bitty baby matzah balls
i love them they're adorable
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this is the closest soup i've had to my
grandma's
oh my god it's so good
this really takes me back i'm so happy i
did it
okay so we are here in the room where it
happens
the room where it happens and i am
drinking some
late afternoon english tea to get into
the spirit excellence
so i was born in london england
in the 60s and my dad decided that
he wanted to pursue the american dream
and bring
me my older brother younger sister over
to the states
lived pretty much like every other kid
growing up in new york but we sure did
hold on to
our uh british heritage in the form
of food my grandma was a master at
making fresh pastries so of course
that's what i'm going to do here
my absolute favorite dish of my grandmas
was her british mince pies
they're small pies filled with mince
meat which is not meat
it's a fruity cinnamony filling and the
pies are the best i made mince pies with
her several times growing up but i don't
remember exactly how she did it
hopefully this is pretty close it's a
good thing i have you as
an assistant and cultural guide that's
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right
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this took me all day and i will admit
that right off the bat they're not
perfect they're not
what i remembered i'm still excited
about them they smell great
and they're really cute they're cute
little pies and that's why i used to
love them so much i'd eat i just wolf
them
you know on thanksgiving they're my
favorites so i'll give it a taste
they're close they're still delicious
and i still feel
british af for making these
i am british she is british i am
cheers
even though i'm more than 40 percent
portuguese i gotta say i really don't
know what i'm doing here
let's see what my dad has to say it's
his side of the family that's portuguese
i ate a lot of portuguese food growing
up
i would have liked to have made that
stuff for you guys when you were little
but you were very picky
and i didn't think you'd like it well
that's a valid point i guess
i guess i could just go to a restaurant
up here and learn about portuguese
food from a chef
how big the prawn is because i should
know the most famous
sorry in portugal and i'm very
embarrassed that i don't but
no longer i will be educated now
while i'm ashamed at how little i know
about portuguese cuisine i
am picking up on the fact that
portuguese chicken pdp is a game changer
the chicken pdp is one of the most
famous dishes we have what's your
favorite
chicken even when i cook it i get
hungry what makes it like what is the
preparation on the chicken that makes it
different than just like roasted chicken
if the marinade it's the sauce the piri
piri sauce
that we make it's amazing
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okay i'm a little bit nervous about this
one i'm going to try and do the chicken
pdp here at home my friends at the
restaurant told me the marinade is the
key to developing the quintessential
delicious portuguese flavors
so i'm getting real intimate with these
chicken breasts getting them slathered
in marinade ingredients
so full disclosure marinating this
chicken is not a very glamorous process
i feel like i'm covered in raw chicken
juice and garlic
but hopefully messiness equals flavor
in this situation my portuguese experts
also told me to cook the chicken low and
slow it's topped with a piri piri sauce
for even more flavor here it is my piri
piri chicken that was certainly a labor
of love
it smells so good let's see how it
tastes
it's really fantastic and the recipe
they gave me
it's really good i'm bummed my dad
thought i was too picky to enjoy this
type of food growing up turns out
chicken pdp actually came from angola
and mozambique when portuguese settlers
brought back the chili pepper
portuguese culture is a hodgepodge of
many different tribes i'm really
proud of myself for making something
that's so traditionally portuguese
something that i had like
no experience with so mission
accomplished
i feel like i did a really good job
making my matzo ball soup
my mince pies and my chicken pewdiepie
and it also makes me feel like i know a
lot more about those three ancestries
thank you for joining me on this
culinary journey
i hope you had as much fun as i did
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you