Jean Tang: So the first time I tried this restaurant was a couple of weeks ago and I just had to bring you guys in here because the food is superb. We’re about to meet Chef Marc Taxiera. He is going to make a piselli which is the sugar snap pea salad with a yogurt dough dressing.
Marc Taxiera: The most important part of the ingredients is the yogurt, we will use a organic yogurt. You can find that in supermarket, I know that some carries good organic yogurt as do most other places.
Jean Tang: And it’s plain yogurt.
Marc Taxiera: The other thing we need is dill, we have some dill here. Just chop that dill, very simple so we will just add the dill, this is about maybe like two teaspoons, it’s really your flavor preference more than anything. Everybody always ask me about recipes you know and they’re not exact you know if you like more dill, you can add more dill. Lemon zest really brings out the flavor of the piece.
The citrus reacts with the piece to kind of make it—
Jean Tang: And the sweetness?
Marc Taxiera: And the sweetness yeah.
Jean Tang: Nice.
Marc Taxiera: So we’re just going to do some lemon zest in there. You don’t have to put it all, maybe like half.
Jean Tang: Wow look at that. That already smells amazing.
Marc Taxiera: Yeah, the lemon I love, the lemon zest really adds a lot of flavor to it. Alright, so that’s the dressing and we’re just going to put that on the side. Now we’re going to blanch the sugar snap piece. You know when you get the sugar snap piece, they come with two sides that you have to clean.
Jean Tang: Basically like a little zipper – the fat ends and then you kind of pull it off.
Marc Taxiera: What we’re going to do is just put them into the boiling water, this is salted boiling water.
Jean Tang: That’s about a pound of peas.
Marc Taxiera: Yes. You don’t want to cook them too long, you just really want to bring out the flavor and the color if you have a color, they really came in with an intense green and what will happen is if you leave for too long, it’s going to turn like a really horrible looking green like an olive color green. So you just kind of barely cook it and it stays really intense green.
Jean Tang: Yeah, it’s beautiful, right.
Marc Taxiera: And they’re still raw and they still get that crunch. So once it was drained for the sugar snap peas, you took all the ice out and you took all the water and you just want to add them to your serving bowl.
Lamb’s quarter is a type of spinach and it grows wild and you forge it. It’s called lamb’s quarter, it’s a little thick and you can also call it goose foot, that’s another name for it because the top of the leaves looks like a small goose foot.
Jean Tang: I can’t believe that’s spinach.
Marc Taxiera: Yeah, it’s a wild spinach and it really adds some nice balance to the yogurt. Some salt, a little bit of pepper and then we’ll just going to use a little bit of the dressing. Alright.
Jean Tang: That’s the—you’d say.
Marc Taxiera: Yeah. It also feels good like if you’re barbequing and stuff with the condiments like some nice ribs or something.
Jean Tang: It’s just so amazing and fresh.
Marc Taxiera: Yeah, that’s the great thing about this dish. These are pea greens, corn shoots, some edible flowers to garnish it.
Jean Tang: Oh, isn’t that beautiful.
Marc Taxiera: And there you go, there you have it.
Jean Tang: Okay, can I try it?
Marc Taxiera: Sure.
Jean Tang: Breaking the wine and behind the dish.
Marc Taxiera: Sure.
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