Sohla Cooks 3 Dishes That Define Her Life | Cook My Life Challenge | NYT Cooking

it's not a lot of things i feel like good that i can go yeah i can do that well fried chicken nailed it okay the camera is crooked hold on is the camera straight maybe here we go it's rolling hi i'm sola welcome to my kitchen and today i'm going to cook you through my life i'm going to show you three recipes that kind of really define three important moments of my life how's that so the first dish i want to show you is chicken korma sandwiches this is uh my mom's recipe for chicken korma it's like a it's like an everyday korma my favorite thing as a kid was to pick off the big pieces of chicken from the korma toss it with some of that sauce and then make a sandwich on untoasted white bread with a lot of mayonnaise i think there was six months of my childhood where it was the only thing i would eat and i haven't had one since so i'm excited to see if it's any good carbs always makes everyone feel better to start i'm gonna blend up this is just like totally roughly diced don't have to get crazy because we're gonna blend it up okay and right back in the same blender no need to clean it i'm going to blend up our marinade for the chicken i need the top all right i'm going to grab the chicken my mom would always buy a whole chicken break it down to parts and take off the skin so that's what i did here we're going to be simmering this sauce for a long time so if you do boneless chicken it's going to just dry up and if you keep the skin on it's just kind of floppy and gross oh god it's getting get extra credit and really crush this you can marinate this overnight to be totally honest my mom never had time to like plan meals like that you know she worked full time she would just come home and just let it sit for like 20 minutes while we prepare the rest of stuff that's funny this key is like extra extra dark because i kind of forgot about it on the stove but it's fine it's still delicious look at that onion just bristling away huh wow and i'm gonna give you a quick b-roll of dog sleeping hey clementine i just woke her up how's it going oh geez so much just happened i don't actually make a lot of bengali food at home so every time i have to call my mom so she's very excited about this i first thought of culinary school i had this attitude that i like knew more than everybody else turns out that's totally false when i would make my mom's food i would always try and like you know make it more you know update it refine it do things like add chicken broth instead of water but it actually makes it terrible so now i just trust my mom and i like to make things the traditional way they're tradition for a reason yeah yeah okay they are they're not quite there yet but when you get this close it happens pretty fast it like carries over right in front of your eyes i've burned these so many times if you take them out when they look perfect they will burn just a moment before whoa cool okay going into all that and heat here i've got cinnamon cardamom bay leaf and coriander and that's all the spicy food in here it's nothing crazy this is gonna cook down until it's super thick we want it to have like no moisture left oops i turned it off it has like totally cooked down deeply browned and you can see that the fat has kind of like broken out of it that's like that's the sign some dynamic camera angles for you whoa look at that zoom all right this is great i'm gonna add my chicken and scrape in all of the yogurt marinade i can do that smoothie the chicken is cooked through and like totally falling off the bone it's really important to cook it until the fat pulls out of it like that i always thought it was weird like you're just throwing whole chilies in the pot but it adds this really nice fragrance that will miss if it's not there and then we're ready to go i'm gonna go for a breast actually that feels what like what i want right now i want like big meaty punks i'm gonna dress it in some of this sauce make sure you get some of those frozen onions in there squishy white bread untoasted this is important mayo probably too much edge to edge okay like i mentioned before i haven't actually had this chicken form of salad as an adult so maybe you'll hate it and we're gonna cut up our crust remember this is something eight-year-old we would eat i'm not messing around with crust i'm so picky everybody knows that triangles taste better but my mom didn't know my mom didn't know back then and she would always cut sandwiches horizontally so it's what i'm gonna do today we're going full nostalgia here it's more sophisticated than i imagined really good i can understand now why i ate this exclusively for six months of my childhood you know you're gonna come back to me in six months i'm still gonna be eating the sandwich this is really good i think now as an adult i'll eat the crust between korma and this dish i guess i decided i wanted to become a professional cook i read that book by jeffree steingarden the man who ate everything and in the intro he talks about how he had to in order to be a good food critic he had to like get over all of his picky eater stuff and like eat everything so i kind of went through the same thing i forced myself to eat everything and i hated most of it but i just kept eating it and now i like those things so i started out working at like wherever i could get a job every single chain restaurant i was fired from cheesecake factory but then i really wanted to get into fancy restaurants so i couldn't do that until i went to culinary school and then i got i went on the fancy track which is going to be what i'm going to make for you today i'm going to make through a modern crudo filled with techniques that you'll never need in real life as with any proper modern dish we're going to start with a foam the blender is dirty no it's at the bottom okay so i've got a mixture of lemon and lime juice here and that's going to be the base for my foam i don't remember the ratios there's a certain amount of stuff to use in character but i can't find my notebook so i'm gonna eyeball it but if it's your first time you should definitely look at the rest it's gonna be fine it's just foam guys put your liquid in the blender first and then get it going into like a little vortex and then sprinkle in your powder so it doesn't get clumpy in there and now i'm actually gonna whip it on the sand mixer and it's gonna get super thick it's like a milkshake we're gonna whip it up i believe we have foam check it out it is like just like a meringue and what i like about it is it's actually tasty that tastes like lemon and one and i've got myself a nice little ceviche and this liquid that you've got from it this is called much of the degree [Music] hmm [Music] i'll see you in 10 minutes i'm gonna eat this don't you worry just gonna cut some fish so we got some nice halibut i'm going to use the sharpest knife i have which is this one because i haven't sharpened my knives in five months yes i just need two beautiful little slices whenever you're cutting protein you always go against the grain that's enough it's tasting onion okay so because this is modern fine dining i got the biggest plate i have and we're going to use the backside huh so modern fish right in the middle boom salt a little bit of silk chili similar to aleppo kind of like dried fruit smoky vibe it's very mild you don't want to overwork oh yeah it's got acid it's got lemon it's got lime huh modern fine dining guys i made so many different kinds of ices at this shop i spent most of my time inside of a freezer with liquid nitrogen okay it's melting i gotta take a picture whoa look at that tiny fork i know i've been making fun of it but it's delicious i mean why wouldn't it be this kind of food is ridiculous but that doesn't mean it's bad it's just it's a little stupid sure i learned some cool cooking techniques um but i think the biggest thing is discipline we would start at 10 a.m and we'd work until 2 a.m so i mean now every job feels relatively easy i think when it comes to learning about flavors and you know what food tastes good i think that foundation actually comes from my mother and the food i ate growing up okay so this is the final dish i want to show you the fried chicken that my husband and i made at our restaurant we didn't like think it was going to turn into a fried chicken restaurant it was just one of the dishes but it ended up being the dish that people ordered the most and then by the end we were just a fried chicken restaurant the thing that i like about this fried chicken and i think that why it's like a good way to explain to you how my my culinary journey it's a really simple dish that so many people are really familiar with but we have a couple of tricks up our sleeve to like really take the fried chicken to the next level i really like a dry bread so this i dry bread two days ago flavor really penetrates into the flesh and you end up with like super moist super juicy chicken that also is like really forgiving so if you over fry it it's not going to be dry two days two days dry bryan you gotta plan your fried chicken it's gonna be worth it i like to fry in a skillet when you're doing a deep fry that steam gets trapped because it's completely submerged in oil and what happens is you end up with like a gap but when you do it in a skillet that steam during the first half of cooking is able to escape so that your crust just appears a lot better something that's like higher quality like sunflower or peanut or grape seed and if you really really really want to go for your friendship you've got to do it in large so batter bun is a modified starch if you look it up there's not that much information on it it helps things like really adhere and you know i don't make fried chicken a lot so i like to go for it get the batter vine get the sunflower oil it's gonna be worth it we're gonna supplement it with something called crisp coat this is another modified starch that just keeps things super super crunchy forever okay and then finally a little potato starch that this is just making like light and shattering and thin it's great so if you don't have batter bun or crisp coat that's totally fine just do this with ap flour and a little bit of potato starch and it's going to be awesome i don't know you just think fried chicken that's not that hard but um if you're doing it at a restaurant at a large scale everything's harder this morning i forgot we were doing this tonight during the last watermelon so i'm gonna thin out some yogurt it'll be fine all right guys a very important trick getting those really nice popeye style craggly crunchy bits so you want to drizzle a little bit of your buttermilk right into your flour mixture before you get started and it makes little clumps and it gets so good lightly dust in this batter bind with one hand now you want to shake off all the excess you want it to be a really nice light dusting now we're going into our faux buttermilk we want to really pack it in at this point because we're going for like big craggly popeye style so it's really important now i really like to start my chicken skin side down for the first fry gently away from you hey we did it success booming is my favorite part this is a very big full pot of oil we're living on the edge i think it's gonna be okay but it's like the limit you don't even really need a thermometer by the time it's like deeply golden brown it's gonna be right are you ready to flip oh oh one one is ready to flip oh that looks good that was really good it's not ready yet oh god go back go back it looks really good guys oh boy hey look at them look at them some dried kefir red chilies peon john chilis marbles just enough to cover bring it up to a bare bear simmer and then turn it off we don't want it to get too hot because it will kind of get accurate and bitter you see look at how crunchy oh guys it's filled on the computer once again you can totally have fun with this mix it up sweep it entirely i think it's just like a nice fun way to like wake up your friend chicken i mean if you if you don't like msg you can leave it out but i i truly believe it it makes a huge difference sorry guys you're back lit but there we go huh i feel very confident wait no no just need a little more time i like to start with the dust and this might be weird but i personally like to only put it on one side because it's kind of nice you know you got a hot tub you got a cool side i like to pre-honey my chicken that chicken can be this crispy you'll never you'll never want it any other way it won't really really really really crunchy i'm a more than one white girl the warm spices in here kind of echoes the warm spices in the karma which i didn't even think about but it's totally happening here old school new school we're still just frying in a skillet there's just a couple of twists you know thank you guys so much i'm glad you're able to join me watch me cook my life um what was i supposed to say uh anyways see you next time internet done cut yeah okay

Channel: NYT Cooking

Views: 845,614

Rating: 4.9477081 out of 5

Keywords: cooking, cooks, recipes, recipe, how-to, how to, kitchen, new york times, new york times cooking, nyt cooking, nyt, nytimes, sohla, sohla el-waylly, fried chicken, how to make fried chicken, how to fry chicken, sohla restaurant, halibut crudo, how to make foam, foam, chicken korma, how to make chicken korma, how to cook chicken korma, yogurt, sandwiches, cook my life, frying, fried

Id: G_0DyDpurtM

Length: 16min 7sec (967 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/CrazyRichBayesians]

I mean, it would be pretty funny if, when it's all said and done, this subreddit becomes a way to follow BA alum who are no longer with BA, rather than any place for discussing BA content.

[u/duodave]

She needs a clip-on mic.

[u/gimli5]

Sohla is called a contributing food editor (vs assistant) in the feature BA ran on her this week. Between that and doing video for the NYT does that mean she's now freelance like Rick?

[u/Rated_PG-Squirteen]

This was a great video. Loved seeing Sohla cooking a favorite sandwich from her childhood, some fantastic-looking fried chicken, and then a super pretentious halibut crudo w/ foam.

And she was living very dangerously holding Vito somewhat near the skillet full to the brim with super hot oil.

[u/datrhys]

Sohla published a very similar fried chicken recipe with Serious Eats a few years back before she left. It doesn't include the Crisp Coat or the Batter Bind, and it features a wet buttermilk brine rather than a dry one, but it's otherwise the same for anyone who wants to make it and wants measurements.

https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2018/05/extra-crispy-fried-chicken-with-caramelized-honey-and-spice.html

[u/pxan]

Good video, but did anyone else think the levels were kind of bad? It was hard to hear what she was saying a lot of the time.

[u/gogreengirlgo]

I'm only halfway through, and this video has so much of why Sohla is a gem:

She's in touch with food + meaning -- watching her express how meaningful dishes are to her creates such a compelling story that makes the recipes memorable on top of being delicious.

• Watching her delight and passion to make the first dish wasn't just watching a scientific "test kitchen" / "recipe development" report out of what was scientifically proven to be "perfect" (though, in reality, the generations of Bengali tradition that go into the dish are exactly that, as Sohla alludes to).

• Then, her tasting the sandwich was like watching a real life flashback in the Ratatoullie scene when the food critic tastes + remembers his childhood memories. There's something so deep, human/personable, and relatable when Sohla does that to share her childhood and family food memories so vulnerably and confidently, because we all have similar dishes and memories in our childhood.

Next, she is about to talk about her time in fancy-schmancy restaurants, with "modern" cuisine, and I can't wait to see how she is so smart, yet has attitude, so she will explain some techniques along with some awareness/sarcasm about how excessive/extra it all is.

• She shows that she has mastered the techniques, and knows both what to do and why to do it.

• But, it's not just rote repetition/duplication nor book/head knowledge of what she learned in the fancy restaurants. She goes above that to know where there are tricks, leeway, and room for improvisation. It's kind of like we get the Half-Blood Prince notes in the margins for a process, from someone that truly knows their craft.

This is the kind of genius-level cooking that shined through when she stole the show in the carbonara video.

[u/thelolwai]

Between this video and the fried chicken tips on NYT Cooking Instagram account, I was OVERJOYED to see Sohla in front of the camera again — hoping we’ll see more of her again in the coming months. Love her personality and creativity. LOVE.

[u/jaxwell2019]

I love her so much. I’ve made her serious eats chili crisp a few times now and this fried chicken mashup is going to be my dinner tomorrow. It’s on.