Family Meal Fridays: Chris and Rick

Hi, I'm Rick Martinez,

a Contributing Food Editor here at Bon Appétit.

I'm Chris Morocco, Senior Food Editor

at Bon Appétit and Healthyish.

And we're making family meal.

I get hungry and what happens when I get hungry.

No he gets hangry.

Yeah let's be clear.

You are pretty much an expert on Mexican food.

I thought we could maybe combine two

of your favorite things which are pork and caramel.

So we're making Burmese red pork stew.

And we're going to do it on top of some fried crispy tacos.

These amazing things.

Are from a restaurant called Suerte in Austin.

These are so good.

It's dense, chewy, nutty, beautiful.

So let's get going with the pork.

I need to get this oven on

'cause we're going to be braising this.

And luckily we already marinated the meat.

So let's do it.

I'm just gonna keep eating my tortilla.

All right sounds good man.

You can do the caramel if you want to start that

and then like prep some chopped ginger and garlic.

I already marinated this yesterday

in sesame oil, chili oil, and soy sauce.

So it's kind of like this soy sauce is the seasoning.

We're just gonna use this marinade

as you know part of our cooking liquid.

Like why throw away all that flavor?

I mean who throws away flavor, God.

Exactly not this guy.

Or me, no.

Not in this kitchen.

On the side why don't I start this caramel.

I'm gonna do this dry.

I can't tell you how many times my wife

has looked in the fridge and been like

there's no food here.

Making something out of nothing

it's like part of the trick sometimes right?

I probably could've let a little of the marinade fall off

a little bit more.

But it's okay it's gonna color eventually.

So yeah basically the caramel's going to get poured

right into this once all the meat

is kind of back in here and it's all browned off.

That's a lot of caramel.

It's a lot of caramel.

Yeah you getting nervous?

[Rick] Or excited, one of the two.

But caramel you know it skews the sweetness

in such a savory direction.

I mainly wanted to render a little

like the biggest pieces of fat in here.

I just want to make that clear.

We're not dumping that.

That's going back in.

See wait, see that?

Flavor.

That's being saved yeah.

Flavor.

Your nickname in the kitchen, sugar man.

Sugar many yeah.

Because I love sugar.

Wow you're already ready for sorry.

Yeah man let's, can we put a push on that caramel please?

When do you add the garlic and the ginger?

We can add it now actually.

I just want something bright and super textural

'cause this is gonna hopefully get pretty soft

and kind of unctuous.

And I was thinking about you know kind

of scallion salsa, scallion relish.

You know like you get as a condiment.

You take cabbage and you bring out that

kind of like you leave the crunch.

But you just bring that edge.

You know that charred kind of edge to it.

It's so delicious.

This is what it looks like.

We still have some chunks of uncaramelized sugar in there.

So this is the point where you want

to really make sure that you're swirling your caramel.

A to melt the sugar but then also

to make sure that it doesn't burn.

When I go to Mexico I might put

a few bags of dried chilis in my suitcase on the way back.

These are called cascabel chiles.

They have a really really beautiful flavor.

It's very earthy.

It's a little bit sweet.

Now I am going to throw in some cashews which I love.

That's what the pork's going into.

I just need to add a little bit of sambal.

Careful that could be real hot.

I know.

Just saying, I'm just saying.

[Rick] What's my name?

What's my name?

What's my name?

Just saying sugar man, just saying.

So you're gonna do a couple tablespoons of sambal.

All right?

Looks really good.

You know I would way rather have this be

this like concentrated really kind

of like nice jammy sauce.

And this is going to be ready to go in

as soon as you are done toasting

off your cashews and stuff okay?

You let me know when you're done showboating

with your chilis over there okay?

You know good things take time Morocco.

From the man who made me spend half an hour on caramel.

So I'm gonna start jammin' on slaw here.

Wow team work.

That is indeed a family meal.

All right since you're hogging up the oven,

I am going to use a skillet.

So this is a hot cast iron skillet.

Got it on high.

And I'm just gonna let this go

for maybe three, four minutes a side.

You're gonna pull out the vegetal notes

of whatever it is that you're using

in your salad if you use a really nice fruity olive oil.

Ooh.

That's really good.

So I have some herbs in there.

I have some basil and some tarragon.

I love doing combinations of herbs in salsa.

The orange and the red habanero are

a lot sweeter and fruitier

which is what I typically prefer.

But you know there are some days at the store

that all you can find are green.

So while you chop those habanero

I am going to blend the salsa.

We've got the two salsas.

We've got our cabbage.

And then it's just the eggs and tortillas.

Look at these tortillas.

You can actually even see like,

Flecks.

little little flecks of the red in there.

All right.

Sorry I'm just gonna wait here until this oil gets hot.

So this is sort of my technique for making puffy tacos.

I guess I should probably do more than one at a time.

But it's fun to stand here with tongs over hot oil.

[Chris] Eggs are crispy.

[Rick] Thank God.

Once these tacos are done I think we're ready

to call everybody in right?

Yes.

Or we could just eat this first.

All right, you know what?

I'm gonna keep frying.

You go grab the team.

You got it.

Cool.

All right be right back.

Drum roll.

They should.

Oh look at that steam billowing out there.

These are without a doubt the best corn tortillas

I've had in the US.

We're going to just fill it up.

Oh wow.

We have a cool sort of roasty toasty tomato cashew salsa

that has cascabel and berita chilis.

And then we have a kind of it's not quite green,

not quite ripe mango with green habanero,

basil, tarragon, and red onion.

Thank you.

I actually don't know how to eat this.

[Rick] Go for it.

Oh yes.

See what I do is when I see a chili I just.

Flick it off?

I didn't know I have the same thing.

Bye thank you next.

Where's [beeping]

He's sleeping.

He's getting his beauty rest.

I told him he looked tired this morning and was not into it.

[Chris] You told [beeping] he looked tired?

Yeah.

[Rick] So you're the reason why he went home.

He did look tired and he never looks tired.

So I was like something must really be wrong here.

You need to go to sleep.

Wow.

That's amazing.

Somehow I got so excited I ended up

with two forks over here.

[laughing]

It was worth the sweating and the crying.

Thank you so much.

Awesome.

See you guys.

Dude Morocco we did it.