Cook's Country from America's Test Kitchen Season 18 Episode 2

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Cook's Country from America's Test Kitchen Season 18 Episode 2  #RealityTVDeep

Transcript

00:00Cook's Country is about more than just getting dinner on the table.

00:09We're also fascinated by the people and stories behind the dishes.

00:14We go inside kitchens in every corner of the country to learn how real people cook.

00:20And we look back through time to see how history influences the way we eat today.

00:25We bring that inspiration back to our test kitchen so we can share it with you.

00:31This is Cook's Country.

00:37Today on Cook's Country, Brian pays a visit to a Portuguese bakery in Fall River, Massachusetts,

00:44and shares his version of pastiche de nada.

00:47And Jack challenges Julia to a tasting of canned diced tomatoes.

00:52That's all right here on Cook's Country.

00:55Paul River, Massachusetts, is home to one of the largest Portuguese communities in the country.

01:12The city's deep ties to the European coastal country are reflected in its monuments, storefronts, and of course, cuisine.

01:20I met up with the owner of Portugalia Marketplace, Michael Benavidez, to learn how the city has become a haven for Portuguese food lovers.

01:29The Portuguese people came here to work hard and provide for their families.

01:32So here you had, you know, a community of blue-collar Portuguese folks who were very faithful to their community, faithful to their faith, and stuck together.

01:42We created a little subculture locally.

01:45Yeah, I think even as you walk around the city a bit, you could hear people over here Portuguese being spoken.

01:50Michael's parents, like many Portuguese at the time, moved to Fall River to work in its booming textile industry.

01:58In addition to his factory job, Michael's father, Fernando Benavidez, opened Portugalia.

02:03His goal was to bring a bit of the homeland back to his Portuguese community here in Massachusetts.

02:08Since he founded the company 35 years ago, the marketplace has taken on a life of its own.

02:14We had families coming from Connecticut, families coming from Western Mass, from Northern Mass, from New Hampshire.

02:20You know, they'd come down because where they were living, they didn't have any Portuguese shops or commerce.

02:26This place is also serving as a cultural hub for the community.

02:32Michael and his sister, Jennifer, inherited the store from their father.

02:35They continue to import and sell Portuguese specialty foods, including hundreds of varieties of tinned fish

02:43and over 1,300 different Portuguese wines and spirits.

02:49And while Portugalia is a standout in Fall River, it's definitely not the only option for good Portuguese food in town.

02:57You have Europa, Queen's Bakery, their pops are really good, their pop six, and of course Barcelos up the street.

03:04And Barcelos Bakery is exactly where I was heading to next.

03:09Husband and wife team Antonio and Sara Rodriguez bought Barcelos 20 years ago.

03:14And since that day, they've dedicated their lives to making the bakery resemble a traditional Portuguese cafe.

03:21When somebody walks in, they're like, oh, I feel like I'm in Portugal.

03:24I feel like I'm in St. Michael.

03:26I'm like, yes!

03:27That's the best compliment, because that's what we aim for.

03:29From the decorations, all the way down to the acoustics, they haven't overlooked a single detail in designing the cafe.

03:39And it's that same meticulous approach that they bring to their baking.

03:44Over the years, what's been one of the biggest sellers here at the bakery?

03:46It's been the pesteix de nata.

03:49It's always been that.

03:51Pesteix de nata are a classic Portuguese egg tart.

03:55With a sweet custard filling surrounded by a crisp pastry shell, it's the perfect pairing with a shot of espresso.

04:02And Tony makes some of the best in town, and maybe the most in town.

04:06After making almost $300 a day for 30 years, you could say Tony's got his one-man show down to a science.

04:14Are you the only person in the bakery who does this?

04:18Well, my daughter and my wife help me.

04:21But I do the dough, it's me.

04:23Fill it up, it's me.

04:25Do the cream and stuff.

04:27They don't know the recipe.

04:29They have an idea, but they never did it.

04:33I guess when I die, I bring it with me.

04:35After preparing the dough, Tony shows me how to press them into the traditional cups.

04:46So you go around, push with your finger next to the walls.

04:56That's good.

05:02Then, Tony brings out the custard.

05:05All right, so what's the method for filling these?

05:08Use my finger.

05:10So no fancy equipment, just...

05:11Today, they have machines for everything.

05:14We try to keep the things the old-fashioned as possible.

05:18Finally, the pastiche de nata are baked in a very hot oven.

05:27Dang.

05:28Don't touch it.

05:28Yeah.

05:29Burn your fingers.

05:31But it's that hot oven that gives them that perfectly golden, crispy bottom.

05:36That's the perfect color.

05:37I like it.

05:40Nice and crispy, too.

05:41Mm-hmm.

05:42On my coffee break, I finally lean into a few pastiche de nata.

05:53The pastry's light and flaky.

05:57Really, really crispy.

05:59And the custard itself, nice and soft and runny.

06:04Not overly set.

06:05It's just the perfect amount of sweetness.

06:06And the cinnamon on top really cuts the whole thing.

06:09And it's really incredible.

06:15Just like Michael received the torch from his father,

06:17Tony and Sarah will likely hand the bakery over to their daughter one day.

06:21And who knows?

06:22Maybe she'll pass it on to her kids.

06:24What I do know is that the Portuguese community in Fall River

06:34pours their heart and soul into their food.

06:37For the uninitiated, it's an opportunity to experience a new cuisine.

06:41But for many in Fall River, it's a way to taste a bit of home.

06:45Well, Brian, it was so cool to see that little bit of Portugal here in Massachusetts.

07:02Yeah, I have to say, Tony and Sarah are just wonderful people.

07:05Barcello's Bakery makes some amazing stuff.

07:07And I am absolutely in love with these pastiche de nata.

07:10I've had them in Portugal.

07:12There's something that was introduced to me by my Portuguese in-laws years ago.

07:15And I absolutely love them.

07:16And I'm happy to share this recipe with you.

07:18So let's get started.

07:19Here we have one and a quarter cups of all-purpose flour.

07:22And to that, I'm going to whisk in a half teaspoon of table salt.

07:26You want to mix this salt in so it gets evenly distributed in the flour.

07:30And then to that, we're going to add a half cup of water.

07:34We're going to mix this on medium-low speed.

07:36What we're trying to do here is just really make a dough that just comes together

07:40and doesn't activate a lot of the gluten.

07:42It takes about two to three minutes.

07:43And if it starts to stick to the sides, we'll give it a scrape halfway through.

07:46Okay.

07:49All right.

07:49So the dough has just come together.

07:52Just pop this out.

07:53And we're going to turn the dough out onto a well-floured counter.

07:58This recipe uses a lot of bench flour.

08:01And we're going to put a little bit more flour on top of this dough.

08:03So we're going to pat the dough into a rough four-inch square.

08:06And we're going to cover it with some plastic wrap.

08:07And we're going to let it sit for about 15 minutes just so the dough has time to relax.

08:12All right.

08:13Our dough has been relaxing for 15 minutes.

08:15It was very tired.

08:16Now...

08:16Very funny.

08:18You're very funny.

08:19We're going to roll it out into a 15-by-13-inch rectangle.

08:24So this is the type of recipe where you need a lot of bench flour.

08:27So you want to make sure there's plenty underneath the dough.

08:29So I'm going to flour liberally underneath and a good bit on top.

08:34And we're going 15 inches tall and 13 inches wide.

08:38All right.

08:41Let's say it's approximately 15-by-13 at this point.

08:43All right.

08:44So what we're going to do is we're going to brush off all the excess flour from the dough.

08:47Because we're going to layer some butter in here.

08:50So this is about five tablespoons of softened room-temperature butter.

08:53We've cut into half-inch pieces.

08:54We're going to layer it across the center third of this dough.

08:57And what we're going to do is we're going to smear it into an approximate 5-by-12-inch rectangle right here in the center.

09:04So this is sort of like a cheater puff pastry.

09:06You know, a typical puff pastry, you roll cold butter into the dough, you chill the dough, you put more butter in, roll it, chill it.

09:13We're going to put all this butter in right up front before we do our first chill.

09:16And it's really important to have this room-temperature butter.

09:20I see.

09:20See how easily it spreads?

09:21Mm-hmm.

09:23And now we're going to do a letter fold.

09:24We're going to fold the top down over the butter.

09:30And then we're going to brush this excess flour off.

09:33And the reason why we brush the excess flour is so this part of the dough sticks to that part of the dough.

09:39Now we're going to rotate this dough 90 degrees.

09:41Give it that spin.

09:43I'm going to put some more flour underneath here.

09:46A little more flour underneath here.

09:48And we're going to roll this out twice more.

09:51Again, repeating the application of the butter.

09:53Okay.

09:53Okay, each time.

09:56See, by doing this, we'll get these micro layers of dough that are sandwiching the butter.

10:00And it'll end up in a really crisp, light, and flaky crust.

10:04We're going to roll this dough out into a 15 by 13 inch rectangle twice more.

10:08And each time we're going to apply some more butter to the fold and roll it out.

10:11All right, Tony.

10:13So that is our third and final application of the butter in between the dough here.

10:18And so we're going to roll it out once more to 15 by 13.

10:22Okay, so I'm just going to square this off a little bit here.

10:28So now we're going to brush the excess flour off the dough.

10:31And if you're cooking with somebody, you want to brush the flour towards them.

10:34So we're going to roll this nice and tight all the way up.

10:41And as you're going through, you want to just sort of even out the roll.

10:44And if you find that you have an excess amount of flour on here, just give it a brush.

10:49Again, because the idea here is that the dough sticks to itself as you roll it.

10:52So if there's a lot of flour in the bottom, that's going to inhibit the stickiness.

10:58And then we're just going to wet the top edge of the dough here.

11:00You can use your finger if you don't have the brush.

11:08Okay, and just give it a squeeze.

11:11And we're going to pinch this seam.

11:15It sticks together.

11:17And then we can spend just a moment kind of reshaping this dough and make sure that the log is even.

11:25And it's okay if the ends aren't perfect because we're going to trim that before we start filling the cups.

11:30So now we can take this dough and we're going to refrigerate it.

11:33We'll put it on our parchment-lined sheet pan here.

11:35We'll cover it with plastic wrap.

11:37And we're going to throw this in the refrigerator.

11:38And it will chill for at least an hour.

11:40But it could really go up to 12 hours.

11:42And the reason why is because now is the time we want to set that butter and make sure it's firm within the dough.

11:47Because when it bakes up, the butter is going to melt and create steam and create those flaky layers.

11:52Okay, Tony, our dough has been chilling in the fridge for a couple of hours.

11:55And you can see it's firmed up quite a bit.

11:58And that's exactly what we want.

11:59So we know that butter is fully chilled.

12:02And so at this point, we want to trim it down to 12 inches.

12:06So this is the point where we can get rid of our imperfect ends.

12:09And we can just go ahead and lop that off.

12:15And we'll lop this piece off.

12:19And now we're going to cut this into 12 one-inch chunks.

12:23So every inch or so, we'll just make a little mark.

12:32Beautiful.

12:34Okay, so we've got our 12 pieces of dough.

12:36Now, traditionally, these peste estenata are made in these little pastel cups.

12:42But we're going to use something that's a little bit more common in most kitchens, and that is a muffin tin.

12:47So we're going to put one piece of dough inside of each of these cups.

12:51And we've gone ahead and sprayed this with a little bit of vegetable oil spray.

12:56Now for the fun part of the recipe, we're going to press this dough into these cups.

13:00So you have a little water bowl there, and it's best to use a couple of wet thumbs, like the Fonz.

13:07And we're going to go in and just start pressing in the center.

13:11And then kind of work the dough into the corners of the cup and up the sides.

13:19So you want to give it a shot?

13:20I'm excited.

13:20Okay, thumbs.

13:21Yeah, thumbs like the Fonz.

13:23Thumbs in.

13:23Okay, and then just go thumbs first, and then you can switch.

13:30That's really cool.

13:32All right, Tony.

13:32We're going to keep pressing these in until they're all done.

13:35Then we're going to cover it with plastic wrap.

13:37I'm going to throw it in the fridge for at least an hour or up to 12 hours.

13:41Again, so we re-solidify that butter.

13:43Sounds good.

13:44All right, so now it's time to start with our custard.

13:47Our custard has three pieces.

13:48The first is our hot component, where we have a cup of milk, half a cup of water, and one and a quarter cups of sugar.

13:58So we're going to turn this on to medium-high heat and bring it up to a quick simmer.

14:02And we're really just trying to dissolve that sugar.

14:04So we'll give it a quick whisk, and we'll let it go for a couple of minutes to fully dissolve the sugar.

14:09And over here we have our flour mixture.

14:11So this is three tablespoons of flour, and to that we're going to add three quarters of a teaspoon of table salt.

14:16We'll give that a quick whisk to combine.

14:18And then we're going to add a quarter cup of whole milk.

14:23And this flour, the purpose of it in our custard, is to really help thicken it and keep the egg mixture from breaking while it's in the oven.

14:29So just whisk this together.

14:31And you can see it takes on sort of a pancake batter-like consistency here.

14:35And finally we have six egg yolks.

14:38We're just going to beat these up.

14:40So we'll just whisk this together.

14:43Okay, you can see our milk mixture is coming to a simmer.

14:46And really the main goal here is just to dissolve the sugar.

14:49So it really only takes a couple minutes at this stage.

14:52And I like to keep it moving so it doesn't scorch on the bottom.

14:56Now we're going to slowly drizzle this milk mixture into our flour milk mixture.

15:02So we'll start off going slowly.

15:07Now we're going to add this hot milk, flour, water mixture to our beaten egg yolks.

15:13So this I will drizzle in a little bit slowly because we want to temper the eggs and make sure we don't scramble them.

15:18Just a little bit at a time.

15:19You're just keeping the eggs moving, right?

15:23So that that hot liquid doesn't settle in one place.

15:26Exactly.

15:27That makes sense.

15:28And there we go.

15:30All that's incorporated together.

15:31And now just in case we did curdling the eggs or getting little pieces of flour stuck in there,

15:35we're going to strain this whole mixture.

15:36And that is our custard.

15:41So we're going to let this cool down to room temperature.

15:44All right, Tony, we have our chilled pastry cups.

15:46We have our room temperature custard.

15:48I'm just going to give it a quick whisk to reincorporate anything that might have stuck to the bottom.

15:52And then we're going to go ahead and fill our cups.

15:56Now as you're filling them, the first pass, you don't want to go too high.

16:00You know, we have extra.

16:02We'll come back around.

16:03You just want to make sure that you don't spill over the edge of the cup.

16:06Looks perfect.

16:09So one of the main challenges we face with this recipe is that these are traditionally baked in a 650 plus oven.

16:15All right, and they're baked really quickly.

16:17Obviously, our oven here is not going to go to 650.

16:20And the added challenge is we're baking these in a nonstick muffin tin, which has a maximum rating of 450 degrees.

16:27So what we ended up doing was setting our oven to 450 degrees, throwing the oven rack up to the upper middle position,

16:33about six inches from the top of the oven, and throwing a pizza sauna in there to preheat for a good hour.

16:39This is going to give it a nice blast of heat from the bottom and really get those cups nice and crispy.

16:44So we're going to let those bake for 27 to 30 minutes until the pastry cups get nice and brown around the edge.

16:49And hopefully we get some nice browning on the custard tops.

16:52There are an overwhelming number of options when it comes to buying canned tomatoes.

17:03Some are quite expensive.

17:05Some are imported.

17:06And today, Jack's going to let us know the difference between all these options.

17:09Yeah, so these are all already diced tomatoes.

17:12So super convenient.

17:14Some Italian brands, some American brands.

17:16You can start tasting.

17:17You're going to notice three things.

17:19Size of the pieces.

17:21It can be a petite dice, which is small, and some of the chunks are larger.

17:25Flavors.

17:26What else besides tomatoes are you tasting?

17:28And then texture.

17:29Are they soft or are they firm?

17:31So let's start by talking about salt, first of all.

17:33So as you might imagine, the brands with salt taste more seasoning.

17:38But they also are less bitter because, you know, there's a little bit of bitterness in tomatoes.

17:42And the salt kind of tamps down the bitterness.

17:45And so the brands without salt tended to taste a little bit more bitter.

17:50Interesting.

17:51Texture is all about whether or not they add calcium chloride.

17:55It's a firming agent.

17:56And if you don't put that in there, you're going to have very soft tomatoes.

17:59Okay.

18:00Found that one.

18:02The last thing is citric acid.

18:05So a lot of manufacturers add that for brightness and acidity.

18:08It kind of amps up the natural acidity of the tomatoes.

18:11Again, companies that leave out the citric acid, they're going to be less bright.

18:15They're not going to have the tartness and the acidity that you would get if you add the citric acid.

18:20So it's very easy.

18:21Read the label.

18:22Some of them just say tomatoes.

18:24Well, it's going to taste like tomatoes.

18:26Many of the others will have tomatoes, salt, citric acid, and calcium chloride on the label.

18:31So.

18:32They're really different, first off.

18:34Very different.

18:35And if you were just using a standard recipe, you'd wind up with very different sauces here.

18:40This one, I mean, it tastes like a sauce almost already.

18:43You put it in a recipe and it's good.

18:45The chunks, they hold up, but they're not super crunchy.

18:49Like, there's not too much of that citric acid.

18:52And they're not too big on this one.

18:53Right.

18:53Which I think is nice.

18:54Yeah.

18:55These ones, they're very big.

18:57And they're a little plain tasting.

18:59Okay.

19:00This was very different from the others.

19:02You were talking about salt.

19:04I don't think it has any salt in it.

19:05It almost has no texture.

19:07It feels like a puree.

19:09But surprisingly, not bad.

19:10It's just, you'd have to know what you were doing with it.

19:13You couldn't just plug this into a recipe that called for diced tomatoes.

19:16You'd be sorely disappointed.

19:17Okay.

19:18This one was okay.

19:19Almost tasted like sauce.

19:20It's sitting in puree.

19:21Had a lot going on.

19:22This would work well.

19:23But this was by far my favorite.

19:25I think it's because the liquid it's sitting in.

19:27This feels like a puree.

19:29Whereas this feels like a liquid.

19:30And when I'm looking for a diced tomato, I'm looking for that liquid.

19:33Yeah.

19:33And the liquid often is a sign, the juice is fresher, right, than that thick puree.

19:37Yep.

19:38This is fascinating because we found there's a big philosophical difference between American companies and Italian companies.

19:44And you picked this out.

19:46The Italian companies are largely doing just tomatoes.

19:49Interesting.

19:50And their philosophy is, okay, people are going to figure it out.

19:53Yeah.

19:53American companies are going to deliver a tomato that's already got salt and acid in it so that, you know, it's ready to go.

20:01Our tasters liked the American brands because that's what we're used to.

20:05We had American tasters.

20:06My guess is we did the tasting in Italy.

20:08We would have gotten very different results of the same brands because Italian cooks are used to different tomatoes, ones that are just canned tomatoes with none of the other added ingredients.

20:17Oh, very interesting.

20:18So let's start here.

20:19This is one of the two Italian brands.

20:21You weren't wild about it.

20:22Our tasters weren't wild about it because it's just tomatoes.

20:25Yeah.

20:25And you missed the other things that we're accustomed to as Americans.

20:29The canned tomatoes, aren't they supposed to have citric acid and salt in them?

20:32Right.

20:32And it isn't a bad tomato.

20:34It's just different.

20:35Let's go here.

20:37Okay.

20:37To the one you like the best.

20:38The tasting panel agreed with you.

20:40This is the San Marican, not Marzano because those are Italian.

20:45Oh.

20:47It's a little confusing.

20:48They're actually made with tomatoes from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

20:51Really?

20:51Not from Naples.

20:53That's odd.

20:53This was the winner because the pieces were nice and small.

20:58They were firm.

20:59They were bright.

20:59They were nice salt.

21:01Just a lovely tomato.

21:03This was, I think, your second favorite.

21:04And this was the runner-up.

21:06This is from Cento.

21:07It's one of the petite diced.

21:08So it has the smallest pieces.

21:10If you want really teeny pieces, those words will indicate that it is a smaller diced tomato.

21:17You know, it was a very good choice, just wasn't quite as good as the winner.

21:22And there at the end, this was kind of at the bottom of the rankings when it came to the American brands because the pieces were just so big.

21:29Yeah.

21:29If you were making them in a soup, the pieces are almost so big they're not going to fit on a spoon.

21:33That's true.

21:34All right.

21:34Thank you, Jack.

21:35This is really interesting.

21:36Oh, thanks, Julia.

21:36So there you have it.

21:38If you're shopping for canned diced tomato, reach for the San Maracan diced tomatoes.

21:49All right, Tony, it's been about 28 minutes.

21:52And you can see that these are nice and bubbly and brown.

21:56Oh, boy.

21:58Beautiful.

22:00All right, you can see how these have got some nice browning here on the edge of the cups.

22:04Nice little golden brown on top of the custard as well, just like they do at a Barcello's.

22:09I'm so excited for this.

22:10So we're going to let this cool for about five minutes in the cups so they're just a little bit cooler to handle.

22:15Then we're going to take them out of there, transfer them to a wire rack.

22:17We'll let them cool for a little bit longer.

22:19They're magical.

22:20That's beautiful.

22:22Spectacular.

22:24Okay, so we're going to let these cool for about 30 minutes.

22:27Antonio, Paste Estonata are fully cooled.

22:29We're going to sprinkle them with a little bit of ground cinnamon, which is very traditional.

22:36And a little bit of powdered sugar.

22:40All right, can I serve you?

22:42I'm ready.

22:43I feel the exact same way.

22:46All right, I'm so excited for you to try these.

22:47I love these so much.

22:48I'm really excited about this.

22:50I just have to look at the bottom, though.

22:51Check my bottom.

22:52Check the bottom.

22:52It's looking good.

22:53Okay.

22:54Three, two, one.

22:55All right.

22:55Okay, bye.

22:56Bye.

22:59You've made some great things, and your excursions are providing us with so many amazing recipes.

23:09But this one, it's so beautiful.

23:12The contrast between the sweet custard and the crackly crust is just amazing.

23:17I've eaten six of these in one sitting.

23:19No way.

23:20Oh, yeah.

23:21I'm a big boy.

23:23All right, Tony.

23:24All right, Brian.

23:25Cheers.

23:26Pinky out.

23:26Thank you, Brian.

23:30You're very welcome.

23:30This was delicious.

23:31I'm glad.

23:33And if you would like to enjoy the sweet taste of Portugal by way of Massachusetts, make

23:37a quick laminated dough using softened butter.

23:41Use a room-temperature custard and bake on a preheated pizza stone.

23:46From Cook's Country, an amazingly delicious pastéis de nada.

23:52I'm going to have to go in for a second.

23:53I'm going to get another bite.

23:55I'm going in for a whole other one.

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