- [Andrew] So Aaron, this is the wasabula? - This is our wasabula. It's a type of wild
arugula that was selected over multiple generations
to go after its sweet heat. - Should I just eat one leaf? - [Aaron] Have some
fun, grab three or four. - Okay, (chuckles). - [Both] Wow! - It's wasabi. - It's hitting my nose now. - Starting to hit it, right? - It does have like this sweetness though. (gentle music) - Hello, I'm Andrew. - Hi, I'm Rhien. - Welcome to my kitchen. Today we're talking about a recent visit we took to Girl & Dug. They're down by San Diego. Girl & Dug grows a variety of
these specialty ingredients that service restaurants
who need very specific stuff for the dishes that they're making. Never heard of a lot of
these vegetables before, so we thought it would be super cool to cook with them for the first time. We met with Aaron who runs the farm to learn about what they do, and then we brought a
bunch of produce back, and we cooked this big spread and now we're gonna
tell you how that went. - Ice plant, I was so blown away, 'cause I've never seen
something like this before. - Yeah, it's crazy. It looks like it's been frosted over. - This is a field of ice plant. It is a delicious edible succulent. - [Rhien] Is this nectar? - [Aaron] It is the crazy
way that the ice plant stores its moisture outside of its body. So the little clusters
are the immature leaves. - [Andrew] Oh, I see. - Wow, it's so pretty. I wanna see your reaction. - Oh! - Crunch. - I mean the texture is, it's like bursting all these little balls of juicy plant liquid. It's surprisingly salty in taste. - Yeah, it's got a little
braininess, a little saltiness. You can find them growing wild on beaches. - [Rhien] Oh, I can see that. - [Aaron] If you hit the right one, like something like that
or a little buds emerging, you're gonna get a tartness out of it too. - Oh, wow.
- Hmm. - [Rhien] It's very tart. - Yeah, it tastes like a seasoned plant. - [Aaron] Yeah. - If I have this flower, wasabi leaf, wrapped with rice it's like
almost eating like sushi, like Acura sushi. - Yeah, I can see what you mean. - So I thought it would be
fun to make vegan sushi. (Rhien laughs)
- Yeah. - Using this ice plant
'cause it tastes like Acura. - Oh, sorry, it's just so salty. (Rhien laughing) It's like eating a pickle. - So I made a sushi rice and wrapped with seaweed around it. So it kind of looked like
Gunkan Maki, we call. - Yeah, like the one that
we had in Tokyo together. - [Rhien] Yes. Yeah. - [Andrew] Exactly. - Gunkan-maki, Gunkan is a battleship. - Hmm, Gunkan-maki, I love that. - 'Cause it kind of look like battleship. So I wanted to replicate, I put seaweed around it
and put ice plant on top and also put wasabula on top. So it kind of has wasabi flavor as well. And we also got this sorrel flour. I thought it was pretty,
so I'm gonna put it on top. Dip in the soy sauce and we ate it. But I saw it was a little bit
less strong than I wanted. Like it Akura is such a strong flavor. And this one doesn't have that much punch. - Yeah, the ice plant tastes
briny and like the ocean but it's not quite as, you know, like a mouthful of seafood
as the Acura would be. - Yeah, but it was good. - The main thing we thought
we would do with the wasabula is a green sauce to
accompany some grilled meat. - [Rhien] Do you think that little flower? - [Andrew] The flowers
are insanely delicious. - Okay.
- Oh yeah. - Oh my God. (laughing) (indistinct) - [Andrew] Sean is about
to eat the wasabula. - [Sean] Oh, wow! (beep) - (Rhien laughing) So they breed together like wasabi leaf and like, arugula? - Not wasabi leaf, so that's
what's so surprising is, it's just the name. It actually is a breeding
within the arugula plant and not cross mixed with
another species, so. - Wow. - It isn't even in here, that's crazy. - Yeah - 'Cause the flavor is like spot on. - If I told you this, we've got wasabi roots
growing somewhere down here, you would actually believe it. I would believe it. - Yeah.
- We could try making like a chimichurri for steak with this. - Done it and it's freaking awesome. - Yeah. Okay. - Steak and chimichurri, wasabi? - Yeah, this is like spicy 'cause then it's also like
horse radish with steak. Like also the green. So chimichurri is usually
primarily parsley. I started with wasabula. I added maybe 30% as much
parsley and started adding the typical olive oil, some minced garlic, red wine vinegar, some red chili flakes, and some salt and water
and mixed that together to just sort of experiment
with the flavor. Because typically chimichurri doesn't have an herb that is spicy the way that this wasabula is. - Right. - I was worried that it
was gonna be too intense. Like when we were eating the wasabula, it was almost like a dare. Like, how many leaves are
you gonna put in your mouth? - Yes. - But even after chopping
up the first handful, it wasn't as intense as
I thought it might be. So I kept adding and adding and adding until it was mostly wasabula. (Rhien laughing) When I thought the chimichurri
was in a good place, we set it aside for it to
develop its flavor a little bit. Next, we moved onto the Oca. - Oca, yeah, this potato. - But not a potato. - Right? Chew bar. - This is Oca, O-C-A. They eat like a potato. They're starchy like a potato, but they're actually not a potato. They're a completely
different root vegetable, a tuber, native to Peru although a lot of South American countries actually have their own varieties too. - This is actually one of those things that a chef asked us to grow. So we took a crack at it. Speaking of flavor, they're
a little like baked potato with sour cream and a
little MSG that was in it. - Ooh!
- Really? - Yeah. - That's when you cook
them down with a little bit of acidity in them depending
on the color you get. - [Andrew] Can you eat them raw? - [Sean] I'd recommend cooking them. Just a nice, hard roast is great. Raw, they'll have a little bit
of a gritty, starchy texture. - [Rhien] I posted on the Instagram, a lot of people from
New Zealand, they said they have it there too. - So in New Zealand, it's commonly called the New Zealand yam, I think. - So we had this big meat board planned. So we wanted to keep
the Oca pretty simple. It became very tender. Little crispy on one side. - The color though.
- The color dissipates a lot. But I think that's normal for most sort of root
vegetables like this. - [Rhien] Oh, like radish. When you roast the color it's gone. - So next there was the meat, because we're making this chimichurri, chimichurri is often served on a whole spread of different
meats and savory items. So we wanted to replicate
sort of a big spread of meat. - So we ended up with a flanks steak, this Berkshire pork rib chop, also a little hanger steak on the side and these Merguez sausages,
which are with lamb meat. First the was the sausage. We simply put that in a low oven to cook slowly and evenly through. And then we tag teamed
the rest of the meat. So I took the beef, you started with the pork chop. And because we're cooking with
all these unique vegetables, we kept the meat pretty simple. Just salt and seared. - [Rhien] Yep, and are we
gonna put chimichurri on top. - When the sausages were done in the oven, we gave those a quick sea in the same pan. So then it was time to
plate everything up. I began by slicing the different steak. - I started making salad
with wasabula and parsley. - After the steak, I sliced the pork chop which we ended up plating
on a bed of Perilla Leaves. - Yeah, when we went to the farm when we did a taste Perilla leaf I really wanted to eat Korean barbecue. I was thinking like, "Oh, I
wish there is a pork belly." - This is another one of
the big pieces of produce that they grow at the farm. Sesame leaf often also
referred to as Perilla leaf, it tastes very unique but to me tastes like it's
just made up of a bunch of other tastes that
I'm very familiar with. So it's like a little
bit basil, almost minty. And then the top is very green and then the bottom is this- - Purple.
- Purple color. Yeah, next was this sausage which I simply sliced on a
bias and piled off to the side. - [Rhien] Get more excited. It looked like a feast. - Oh, in the little tomatoes.
- Yeah. Little tomato, atomic tomato.
- This was very impromptu at this stage. We thought, "Oh my God,
we have all these meat." Maybe we should add
something green on the side. - [Rhien] Yeah, so the atomic tomato, it almost looked like
dark purple, almost black. - [Andrew] It's almost
like an image from space. - [Rhien] Yeah. (laughs) - Like it's mostly black and
then there's a shock of green, little splash of red. It felt like we were playing
with paints or something. It's like all of a sudden we were like, "Oh, this is looking pretty cool. "What if we put some of
those sorrel flowers on top? "What if we put some more
chimichurri over here? "Oh, maybe a little handsy on the side." So that was the board,
that was vital time to eat. - [Rhien] Yes, we were so hungry. Ready to eat. - This was great.
- It was delicious. You've been thinking about for a long time and finally you ate it, it's
like most satisfying moment. - Yeah, I think the
best way to eat a salad is wrapped around a piece of meat, not the other way around. Usually it's like, oh, you
put meat on top of a salad. So that was our feast. Now it was time for this dessert. - We made a dessert. - Which we actually started
before any of the other steps, how dessert usually happens, but- - It takes time.
- Yeah. - So this is Pichuberry Berry, native Peru and has this crazy mangoy,
pineappley tropical flare, in contrast to the hus cherries that are more common in the states. This one is about two
to three times larger. - So pretty. - It's like opening presents. - Yeah, it's also a little- - Yeah, my kids call them present berries. - Oh, that's so cute. Kinda reminds me of Harry Potter's- - Oh, the snitch.
- Yeah. - Yeah, 'cause it's got like little wings around a little globe. - Wow. - Has a different taste
when I first bite it. - Hmm!
- It's like eating a kumquat and a tomato at the same time. - I definitely taste vanilla too. - Yeah.
- It's sweet. - I mean it's so fruity. Oh, and I was gonna ask, so
the flower turns into the husk. Is that right?
- Exactly, yeah. - There's a good one. - [Andrew] Oh wow, so that's the flower. That's gonna turn into one
of these little berries. - Oh, wow!
- She struck gold. - Yeah, golden pick. I wanted to make pavlova. When you make pavlova you
want to put something tart. So it cut a sweetness from the meringue. So immediately I feel like,
oh, it's gonna be great. - In the Pichu berry it has a lot of what I associate with
like passion fruit flavor which is often on pavlova. - Right, I should have
to say that.(laughs) - I remember when we walked
over to this part of the farm I was like, "Aaron, these
aren't looking too good." (both laugh) I don't know if these are ready, but I was mistaken because
in fact it's inside here. - Beautiful, so the first
thing I made was meringue, 'cause you have to bake it almost one hour in oven, lower temperature. - I also helped you make
meringue because the bowl- - [Rhien] (chuckles) Yes, you're holding stand mixer 'cause-. - I don't know why they make it that way. When you have the low
volume of egg whites, the beater doesn't hit the bottom. So I have to raise it ever so slightly. And if you're careful, it
doesn't touch the bowl, it just gets as close
as it can to the bottom. Also, vanilla been in the meringue. - Yeah, so I added vanilla beans
'cause I wanted to make it, added all, see if you add vanilla beans, you can see the little
dots on the meringue. I thought that it would be pretty, and while we are baking meringue, I started making the Pichuberry curd. - Yep, I helped you separate
the Pichuberry from the husks. Got about a pint of them. - [Rhien] I cooked with
a little bit of water, make it break down easy. And then I strained it, extract the juice from the Pichuberry. - It smelled so good. Once it started cooking. That's when it really had like the passion fruit
smell was everywhere. - It smelled so good. I wish you were here again. And also I wanted to utilize what we have. So I used egg whites but I didn't use any egg yolk from the meringue I made. So I wanted to use all the yolk, usually the lemon curd recipe I have, it's using whole egg and the yolk, but I asked my pastry
sensei, June, (chuckles) like does it work if I only use yolk? And he said, "Absolutely." So I-
- That's who you were texting? - Yeah. (chuckles)
- Okay. - So June confirmed. So I made the peach berry curd only using the leftover egg yolk. I also added lemon juice. Make it a little bit more tart. I am so happy, turned out. So meringue is so sweet. So I whip cream without any sugar and I also added cream fresh so it gives more tartness
to the heavy cream. - [Andrew] And it was
time to plate, right? - Yeah, like I wasn't sure how to plate. So I decided to kind of do smear curd on the bottom of the plate. Cut meringue in half. So I can put filling inside, put the meringue stuff
with the heavy cream, cream fresh mix, put the curd on top. I put the meringue top back
and put the peach berry and it kind of looked like
very minimalist dessert. - It was amazing looking. I thought it was like the fanciest plate. It was like the color of the curd with then like the soft
color of this husk. And then that little pichuberry inside and just being like a
little snow mound in itself. - Yeah, it kinda reminds me of tin garden. - Is that garden
- Tin garden dessert. - It was really good.
- Thank you. But it didn't have a lot
of Pichuberry flavors. So Andrea suggested why
don't we chop a bunch of pichuberries and stuff it. And I was like, "That's great idea." 'Cause when I used to make Pavlova, we used to put fresh berries in it. That made a lot better too. - Yeah, there's a lot
more pichuberry flavor. And then also you have even more texture. What I love about pavlova is it's like, it's a soft meringue flavor,
but it's a little bit chewy and then you have whipped cream, which is also a soft texture, but it's a little bit different than the meringue softness. And then you also have this
cream, which is also different than the way that the
fruit gushes naturally. So it's like a lot of the same texture but subtly different. Well, this is how we cooked
a bunch of vegetables that we've never cooked before. It was super fun, I hope you had fun. If you wanna try some of these yourself, I'm sure you could find
them through Girl & Dug, but thanks for watching. - Thank you for watching. I think this is something
we never cook with before but maybe those people who it's watching this video right now, maybe this is not
something unique to them. So I wanna know how you guys cook 'cause I know a lot of people have cooked with oca from New Zealand
and South America. - [Andrew] Hmm!
