This One Change Unleashed My Cooking Creativity

one of the most important changes that i've ever made in my cooking career is learning how to let the ingredient dictate what i make rather than the other way around so when i started cooking i used to think of something in my head or something i saw online or on a tv show and i would decide that's what i want to make then i would go to the market and get the ingredients and make it but then as i started going to farmers markets and hunting down fresh ingredients i realized that i had it all wrong my inspiration started to come from what i saw when i went to the markets and what was in season and that started driving everything that i made in the kitchen and that's what we're going to be focusing on in this series i've got a bunch of fresh veggies growing in the garden the markets are popping off right now so every episode i'm going to be picking one in season veggie and really letting that veggie just drive my inspiration and creativity as i put together a few meals today we are focusing on the potato [Music] the garden is officially popping first year we're even getting grapes not the best but i'll take it we've got cucumbers grown over here lettuce bed looking awesome got a whole bunch of radish and peppers and kale delicious blueberries oh actually i think we're starting to ripen on these blackberries that was probably a little early but i'll still try it too early way too early and then the whole apple and pear orchard is looking pretty nice but what we're after is right over there there we go that patch is what we're after so what we have right here might be surprising to a lot of you i know it's kind of shocking to me but these are potatoes i know it looks like just a bunch of green growth but what we're interested in of course is underground and this is actually my first time growing potatoes but it could not be easier you know when you leave your potatoes out and they sprout well those are the little eyes and that's what's going to grow into these plants right here plant your potato with that sprouted side pointing upwards so then in the spring when the sprout emerges from the soil you get these plants that start to grow which then absorb the energy from the sun and put it down below where you have this incredible root system expanding in all sorts of ways and off those roots are the potatoes which are actually considered tubers i am going to harvest these by digging up all of this soil and seeing what's underneath oh i see something i totally forgot i planted a purple potato as you can see here and then oh look at this little guy here's the original potato as you can see everything shoots off this potato so by planting this one it just multiplies into many check that out they're coming little guys that's all right whoa that's the biggest one yet oh jackpot whatever this variety was is a winner so these by the way are considered new or young potatoes the skin is very thin very tender which is awesome for eating terrible for storing these would rot pretty quickly so if you want to actually store potatoes over the winter you keep them in the ground a few more months and the skin continues to develop and get thicker so it can protect them in the storage but i don't have that many potatoes so we'll just use these all in the next few days let's see if i missed anything oh i did had to dig a little deeper where are you my beauties treasure hunt okay i think that's it so this isn't a great harvest right here but this is my first year growing potatoes i put very little effort into it and i can tell you it was at least very fun to grow these and i'm sure they are going to taste incredible so i'm going to pop these potatoes in the basket they're going to be the main sort of driver for all these meals but i do have a bunch of other things that are coming in right now that can just provide some more inspiration so i'm going gonna harvest basically anything that is ready to go right now first things first i'll definitely snatch some of this garlic well that's starting to look really nice definitely have to grab some of these onions i think i can harvest my first zucchini these are babies but super tender look at these daikons just blowing up out of this soil also as the daikon radish sprouts i've been eating these tops and they're super tender like almost like a broccolini look at that daikon two ways here's some parsley got a bunch of basil here now we can grab some eggs which is something i can always rely on i got about nine yesterday so this will be plenty there's one final stop i started this herb bed closer to the kitchen which is ideal so i'm just gonna harvest some thyme rosemary and some of this oregano and we'll process [Music] ever since i saw those potatoes sprouting outside i've been dreaming of making a spanish style omelette or tortilla de patata specifically so for the prep the first thing i'm gonna do is chop up these onions i'm gonna remove the bulb chop that in half and then cut them up into nice thin slices and since we've got the green onions on top i figured i might as well slice through those well and get those in the mix so i do want to mention that a traditional spanish tortilla is just onions potatoes and eggs but i mean it's almost impossible to resist this fresh garlic so i'm just gonna rip off one clove and slice that nice and thin just like the onions and now for the potatoes i'm just gonna stick with these golden boys for this recipe strictly for the aesthetics and since i don't have a mandolin in the kitchen right now i'm just gonna chop them right in half and then rattle through some nice thin slices [Music] now that the prep's done i've got a nice little 8 inch saute pan i'm gonna put that on a medium-high heat and add a hefty bit of olive oil because what we're going to do now is add all of those potatoes and onions to this oil and basically shallow fry them until they're nice and tender and caramelized one reason i don't make this dish often is the insane amount of olive oil you have to use which is so classic spanish cooking epic amounts of olive oil but we do need to basically shallow fry these potatoes and onions so while everything is frying and getting soft now's the best time to start cracking some eggs i'm going with six just kind of by feel but it really all depends on the size of your pan and the amount of the other ingredients that you're frying off and i'll whisk these eggs together until they're nice and smooth maybe just one more egg so we're looking very nice here you can see the onions are caramelized the garlic is definitely nice and caramelized the potatoes we're not making potato chips they're not going to get super dark but you want them nice and soft and cooked through so what i'm going to do is take this this is where you get some really interesting and fun technique pop that into the egg rather than just pouring the egg right over so when we stir this up that warm potato and onion will slowly start to set this egg and i'm also just gonna add thyme from the garden not traditional but it's screaming to me like it's the right ingredient and then i'll just hit it with a pinch of salt to season and then i'm gonna stir everything together and just get some tinfoil over that and just let that sit and set for about 10 minutes and after 10 minutes you can see just a little transformation that egg is just slightly starting to set from all of those warm veggies so this is the residual oil for frying off all the veggies which is a bit too much so i'm gonna reserve some just so i have enough to coat the bottom of the pan and once my oil comes back to temperature i'm gonna pour over that egg and potato mixture and let that cook on a nice even medium heat until you start forming an undercrust so you can see the key here is to use enough oil where you get a non-stick surface and that egg has a chance to create a nice crust and really separate from the past so i'm just gonna give it a little peek about every 30 seconds just checking in on it to make sure i've got a nice even brown crust make sure it's separated put the plate on top and flip a tiny bit more oil just because this isn't a nonstick pan and we'll slide right back on that you know it wasn't too messy so this is just going to cook for two minutes on the other side and in the meantime i can wash off this dirty plate as well as clean up the rest of the kit look at that i think we're done it's slipping right out there's my clean plate and boom check the underside on this nice top got a little crispier oh wow holy hell that looks good i think this might just be the first thing i've ever made completely from garden ingredients everything except olive oil and salt which i'm not making here wow wow this is a true delicacy it's just incredible when you can make something so good out of just a few ingredients and simple ingredients here in the states we eat a lot of potatoes with eggs but they're usually separated like hash browns or home fries and then your side of eggs this is the best way to combine them oh my god my wife is gonna love this one that is one of the best things i've had in a while so this next one is certainly an experiment but i've got a fun idea that i think will work so my mom used to buy these things from trader joe's i think they were called veggie birds nests or something like that basically a bunch of veggies shredded up and deep fried and for us since it was like multiple veggies that was i guess healthy and that's kind of the idea i'm going with obviously shredded up and fried potatoes we know that's delicious but what happens when we add in other veggies i've got these zucchini which i know will fry up nice now the daikon i've got a good feeling about but i've never fried that up in pancake form so i'm going to make some type of veggie fritter we'll call it so i'm gonna be using both kinds of potatoes that i harvested for this recipe and i'm gonna shred everything on my box grater on the largest scale grate now i can leave the skins on no problem because these are the young potatoes that skin is nice and tender plus you'll get some nice extra crispy bits in there and really the key here is just not cut off your fingertips so i'm just gonna leave that end piece intact and i'll just compost that and once i'm done with the potatoes i'll take those little zucchinis i'll grate them up as well and then finally i've got the daikon radish which will be grated up just like everything else that is a nice mix of fresh veggies and colors exactly what i was going for beautiful stuff what i'm gonna do is salt and just give that a mix to draw out some moisture and the idea is that this right here should be hopefully the perfect size for a small little eight-inch pan like this so i'll just let this sit for probably 10 minutes to just start letting that osmosis take place in the meantime since we're waiting i thought this would be the perfect opportunity to make a mayo from scratch now i've got these fresh chicken eggs and really i just need one and actually i only need the yolk so i'm gonna separate the white from the yolk add the yolk to a bowl and just give that a quick little whisk just get a wet towel under this absorbs the noise and reduces the clanking and then just slowly as slow as you can emulsify in some oil i'm using olive oil this is one step you do not want to rush or you won't get a thick mayo so once you give it a nice whisk then we go back with just a little bit more so we're starting to get thick as you can see now i can get a little bit more aggressive now that is some thick beautiful mayo but we're not done i got a clove of that fresh garlic from the garden let's garlicify this thing i've got all these beautiful herbs why not just pick a few and use them parsley oregano and a little bit of the basil so i'll just pick off all of the herbs from the stems i'll add those in a bunch and just give that a nice fine chop all right herbs going in to finish it off a little squeeze of lemon for that acidic hit and of course a little bit of salt mix that all up let's see what we got here that certainly looks incredible oh that garlic has a nice hit wow so i'm gonna turn on my pan get that preheating and we can squeeze off some of this water probably should have done that in a towel i wasn't really thinking so well there but that's definitely more dry so now that i've got these somewhat drier veggies i'm going to add those to a bowl and what i think i'm going to do is just add one egg to the bowl which i think will be enough to really bind everything together without actually reducing the overall crispiness of the veggies and i'll just mix everything together until it's well incorporated the great thing about this recipe is i get to use the leftover oil from the tortilla nothing goes to waste i'll give that a nice coating and on we go again this has never been attempted at home i've done things similar to this of course but we are certainly recipe testing right now and then i'll just maintain a nice medium heat for a slow crispy crust first of all what a missed opportunity to not use the egg white as the binder rather than just crack a whole nother egg but you live and you learn now when you're cooking a pancake like this you know we're not cooking a steak we want a nice even heat so we get a nice even brown on the bottom it's crispy on the outside and it's also cooked through in the middle and i think we are getting there right now this might be a little difficult to flip but let's give it a try i think this requires some chef skills no spatula hey now that's an easier way to do it than the tortilla i'm pretty happy with that you can still see some of those nice green specks darker in some spots but pretty even overall all right we've got a great little uh canvas right here but we're not done just yet remember these the tops of the daikon basically just broccolini i'm gonna fry this up right now and add that to the top there's a little bit of oil in there i'll just add a tiny bit more i'm just going to rip these in half add a little bit of salt so these are already so tender as is so i really just want to give them that nice char for flavor give it a try oh yeah yeah you know what it needs a little squeeze of lemon this will also help wilt it down just a bit and those are done so i'm thinking a little smear of this mayo or aioli i think those are the same exact thing wow feeling very cheffy right now with this dish incredible so i'm not gonna lie when i started this video i was inspired by what's in the garden but i figured i'd be bringing in some additional ingredients and it just kind of turned into these completely home-grown dishes i think the only ingredients i brought in were this lemon i actually am growing lemons in the backyard experimenting with them and olive oil is that it salt i do live by the ocean maybe i could harvest some sea salt let's do it let me try the pancake on its own first wow it's like i forgot for a second that there were other vegetables in there you just think okay that's a crispy potato latke type thing wow that mayo is working so well with this fritter oh my god the freshness is off the goddamn chart the little acidity lemon hits in the mayo and the garlic it's just the perfect balance now you lose a little bit of crispiness for sure adding the other vegetables rather than just potatoes but it makes up in flavor it's just a little bit more enjoyable to eat than just potato but not quite as crispy it's a balance so i would say mission accomplished the goal of these dishes was to start with the ingredient as the inspiration not the other way around and for both of these that's certainly what happened and personally i think it's just a more rewarding product in the end when you take that route so i'm gonna go eat the rest of this but keep an eye out for more homegrown content

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 264,727

Keywords: brothers green, pro home cooks, spanish, spanish omelet, omelet, eggs, scrambled eggs, potato, fried potato, potato pancake, new potato, purple potato, Jewish food, latkes, daikon, radish, garlic, garden, garden tour, harvest, how to grow, how to grow potatoes, vegetable, food show, cooking show, kitchen studio, fresh picked, tortilla de patatas

Id: YUeYlSR36R0

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2022