- It's not on, just kidding.
(laughs)
(bright music)
So excited!
More bacon.
- Hello chef.
- (laughs) Hello McGraw.
- So, we have a challenge for you today
that might be a little bit difficult,
might be a little bit hands-on.
Today the goal is to make soba carbonara.
- Dun, dun, dun.
Soba carbonara he says.
Soba carbonara this guys says.
He's taking soba noodle,
classic delicate noodles generally enjoyed
with a light, elegant broth
and asking me to put some heavy, rich,
bacony, eggy sauce with it.
I'm into it, let's make it work!
- I expect you're gonna run into a few problems, obviously,
'cause these things kinda conflict.
- Kind of? (laughs)
Polar opposites.
- And I know that it's not exactly traditional,
but hopefully the internet forgives us.
- (laughs) They're gonna be mad!
- All right, well good luck chef.
- Okay, so when I think about carbonara,
I think silky, rich, definitely hearty.
It's not delicate, you know,
it's one of those dishes that's kinda like
stick to your ribs.
And then when I think about soba noodles
I think the complete opposite of carbonara.
I think almost feminine, soft, very elegant.
With those two thoughts,
my goal is to create, essentially create, something new.
That's basically what it's gonna be.
Starting with our buckwheat flour!
We need some eggs.
Soy, some garlic.
All right.
Bacon!
We have Parmesan cheese.
I'm gonna throw my broth in this Instant Pot.
Gonna use this for our egg.
Okay, I think I'm gonna start with the broth.
No, yes, yes.
The stool camera's off.
Why?
Okay, I'm going to start with the broth,
and then I'm gonna do the noodles,
and then I'm going to make all the accoutrement
for the bowl of noodley broth carbonara and soba.
I'm losing it.
(evil laugh)
Okay, for the broth--
this is like one of my favorite things to make.
When I was a kid I used to make soups and broths,
and so I think that's really the base
of building the flavor.
It's important to have alliums i.e. shallots, garlic,
or onion flavors that are really the base.
And then aromatics, you know, I think with this one
we're gonna use some bay leaf,
and I'm also going to deglaze with some saké.
This bacon that was sent to me is cured,
so for the broth I might use the cured bacon,
and then just kind of like julienne this
because I want to have some bacon strips for garnish.
(upbeat music)
Basically just going to cut all of my mushroom.
But I like to use these mushrooms
because texturally they're really meaty.
Shallots.
You know shallots, they kinda have this sweeter sort of
lighter approach to an onion flavor.
I think I'm gonna kind of roast them a little bit,
just to get a tiny bit of color on them
so my broth has some depth of flavor basically.
Couple garlic pieces.
I'm just gonna smash them,
they'll cook down in the broth itself.
I don't need to chop it.
I'm going to open up some Parm.
The main variable here
I feel like that's the most challenging
is the soba noodle itself,
I mean, it's definitely no easy task.
I have extra bacon,
and I'm going to use this one.
This one's so smoky and so salty in a good way,
so I'm going to use some of that in this
and the other bacon I have as well.
Parmesan rind, shallots, bay leaf,
garlic, sliced bacon, mushrooms.
Serving cheese for later.
So first we'll use butter for the fat.
(spoon hitting metal bowl)
Butter, bacon, shallots.
Why don't I just bring this whole tray over.
Garlic.
Oh my god, this smells amazing.
Okay, I'm gonna add some mushroom.
This is pretty much ready to go to add my liquids,
so I'll add a little bit of saké
and deglaze all that sort of Maillard reaction
that's happening on the bottom.
All this crispiness we want to get off.
So I want to use a dry saké over a sort of sweet saké
because I am sort of mimicking the idea
of basically like wine.
So this is the mirin that I made.
I'm gonna add a little bit of mirin.
But yeah, so I don't wanna use a sweet saké,
because I wanna be able to control the sweetness.
And I know what that mirin tastes like.
If I add sweet saké, it might just become too sweet.
I just really want something dry.
I mean, it smells so good.
(upbeat music)
Nice, nice.
A little bit more soy
and lid goes on.
(inaudible)
More bacon!
Excellent, excellent.
What I'm gonna do is blanch some bacon,
and I'm going to roast it off.
Blanching it first will sort of help me release
some of the salt, some of the fat,
and ultimately I'll get a more tender bite of bacon.
So first I'm just going to run my knife through
and chop it down.
Water is boiling.
Drop my bacon in so that it can blanch a bit.
Eggs cooking.
They've been in there about 20 minutes.
It should take about an hour or so.
(upbeat music)
Blanch bacon, babies, totally.
And it's such an amazing texture
when you roast it after you blanch it.
Carbonara reimagined.
I'm gonna add a piece of garlic when I roast it.
A lot of the nuances are gonna come from layering flavor,
that's super, super crucial
in developing delicious bites.
(sizzling of bacon)
So that's gonna continue to get some color.
And we're gonna grab some snow peas.
And some scallions.
And mostly a lot of the sort of
heavy lifting of this dish is complete.
So snow peas, clean these guys up a bit.
Okay, this is what we want.
Nice, crisp texture but still tender.
Okay, bacon.
We can check on our broth here.
Smells good.
(upbeat music)
I just want to sort of blanch and shock these snow peas
so they're cooked through.
Just gonna make sure they're really cold.
They're super tender.
Let's test one of these guys.
Everything's kinda starting to come together.
Before I start my soba noodle,
I wanna make sure everything is happy, working great.
Okay, what have we got here?
(upbeat music)
Nice yolky, jammy, not super jammy.
That's gonna meld nicely in with the broth.
That's a happy egg.
It's coming together, slowly but deliciously.
Snow peas, we have bacon, we have the broth working,
we have our eggs that are cooked.
Let's make some soba noodles.
So, I'm going to need all purpose flour,
and I'm also gonna need buckwheat flour.
Voila!
So, here's what flour looks like.
I'm pretty sure you already know that.
Buckwheat, you might not know about.
Super earthy.
Really interesting texture, it almost is grainy.
So really what I wanna do is sift some of the larger,
sort of outer hull pieces out.
What I'm going to do is grab my scale
and I'm going to measure the amount of flour that I need.
Let's do this in grams because it's easy to do grams.
In terms of ratio of flour,
I think I'm gonna use about 70% buckwheat,
30% of AP flour.
140, let's do 150.
And we'll do 60 of buckwheat.
Buckwheat flour.
So generally, you wanna use
a super specific finely-milled flour
for making soba noodles,
but I don't have that exact super fine milled flour,
so I'm attempting to achieve a similar sort of grain
by sifting some of the larger pieces out.
140.
It's crazy how much of those larger pieces come out.
Okay, so flour, AP flour.
Fun!
My next kitchen is gonna be so big.
(laughs)
Soba time.
So it should be similar texture to wet sand.
I heard that a lot of artists and soba noodling makers
actually make soba with their eyes closed
because you have 10 senses in your fingers
as opposed to two or one in your eyes.
So just kneading the dough.
So I'll just place a little bit of tapioca starch,
basically, that's just so nothing sticks.
(upbeat music)
Okay, let's see what we've got here.
So essentially, I'm trying to create
a sort of rectangle shape.
Just add a little bit more tapioca starch.
So let's see if it works if we roll it.
I'm not 100% sure.
(upbeat music)
These guys in and see where we're at.
Okay, batch one.
See where we're at.
A little rinse action.
There's the data.
See if we're heading in the right direction.
I just wanna go a little bit longer on the noodle.
Now I'm gonna do another round.
Number two.
These are a little bit longer strands of noodle.
I might not roll the next batch out so thin,
but it has a nice chewy texture, happy about that.
Now I just think the most is in place,
I think more so now it's about
kind of dialing in mouth feel,
dialing in sort of the depth of the noodle.
(upbeat music)
Never would have thought,
and that's the important part,
is like not giving up.
(laughs)
I just needed a win, you know?
I needed that one just to look at them.
My dream come true actually.
(slurping of noodles)
Let's assemble some soba!
Some beautiful, light scallion.
A little bit of soba, yum.
Actually, I went with an Asiago-Parmesan for this
because I wanted to play against
the nuttiness of the soba noodle.
I think that will be nice.
Season this egg a bit.
A little Espelette pepper, some Maldon sea salt,
'cause we wanna make sure
everything is seasoned individually.
What I'm going to do is place some of the snow peas,
the roasted bacon.
So happy.
Okay, so then I'm gonna put just a little bit
of Parmesan cheese in here.
(whispers) Yes.
I'm really proud of this actually.
I think this is a nice, respectful way to both traditions.
It's elegant, it's light,
and you're still using the technique.
I think, really, it's about--
I'm just gonna break this yolky egg open.
So that's really gonna make this broth rich and delicious.
I mean, who could be mad at that?
(slurping of noodles)
(laughs)
I just ate carbonara.
In my brain, it tells me I'm eating carbonara
but yet refined and elegant and light.
Both were respected throughout the process,
and we kinda just really created something new.
(upbeat music)
(slurping of noodles)
Don't mind my slurping.
(laughs)