Ayesha Nurdjaja, executive chef-partner of Shuka and Shukette in NYC, takes on the surprise grocery bag challenge. Eater presented her with these mystery ingredients: frozen sweet potato fries, escargot, whole black garlic, lotus root, and baby quail. Going out of her comfort zone, Nurdjaja flexes her creative muscles, making a sweet potato-and-escargot-stuffed quail that'll impress any dinner date.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 If any of my cooks are watching this, they're laughing their asses off right now
00:03 because if I saw somebody mixing this amount in a small baby bowl, I would be flipping.
00:08 I would be like, "What, are you kidding me? Are you?"
00:11 First of all, I've never done that voice before, so I don't even know why I just impersonated myself and another person.
00:16 However, I would be flipping out.
00:18 I really want to stuff these in their hole.
00:24 That's pretty good.
00:27 Yay!
00:30 Hi, I'm Aisha Nerjaya, and I'm going to be cooking on the fly.
00:34 Okay, up first, I've got to find my theme.
00:36 Date night dinner.
00:39 Woo, fancy!
00:41 Alright, let's see what we've got.
00:43 Sweet potato fries.
00:46 Yeah, buddy! Escargot.
00:50 Ooh, whole black garlic. I love this.
00:54 Okay, a pair of dumbbells.
00:57 We've got lotus root, and then this secret...
01:02 Aww, baby quail.
01:06 So what I'm thinking... I'm thinking. That's what I'm thinking. But I think I got it.
01:10 Of all these ingredients, there's two of them that are kind of, like, a little stumping me.
01:13 I've eaten lotus root many a time, but actually never cooked it.
01:16 So I'm thinking about what I'm going to do.
01:18 And the sweet potato fries. I mean, obviously, if you fry them, but you're expecting more from me, aren't you?
01:23 So I think I'm going to make stuffed quail with escargot and the sweet potatoes.
01:27 I'm going to do a black garlic and onion puree on the bottom, and herb salad with pickled lotus root.
01:31 So first I'm going to separate the butter from the escargot, because I'm going to be using them separately.
01:37 I want to cut the escargot when I get them in the quail.
01:39 Escargot is one of those things that I kind of don't really make, but I love to eat out.
01:43 Okay, time for our baby quail. Yay!
01:46 We just want to make sure that the cavity is cleaned.
01:48 90% of the time, they come really clean, so it's good.
01:51 But we want to make sure that we have enough room so that we can stuff.
01:53 I like feathers on my coats, but definitely not in my food.
01:57 And you're going to scrape anything on the inside, but like I said, these come pretty much clean.
02:01 So we're going to start on the onion puree.
02:03 You're going to take a nice white onion here, cut the top and the bottom off,
02:06 and slice it really thin because we want to caramelize it as quick as possible.
02:10 I'm going to throw in some black garlic, of course, but I'm also going to use some regular garlic
02:14 and some thyme just to carry those aromatics throughout the dish.
02:18 Black garlic thyme.
02:20 The thing about black garlic is because it's so fragrant and delicious, like, it's hard to have restraint.
02:25 So even though you want to put like 10 or 12 cloves in, like cut it by half
02:28 because I'm sure that it's going to really pack a punch of flavor in here.
02:32 So I'm just going to slice the escargot in half because when we stuff the quail,
02:36 I want like every bite on the inside to have a little bit of escargot in it.
02:40 Lotus root next.
02:41 My philosophy when you get something that's this hard and you don't know what to do with it,
02:45 when in doubt, pickle it. So that's what we're going to do.
02:48 I think the pickling will add a little acidity to the dish, which could be nice
02:51 because everything else has like such a luxurious feel.
02:54 I haven't had lotus root like this in a while, so I'm just going to...
02:57 Woo!
02:58 It empties out any kind of liquid that you have in your mouth instantaneously.
03:02 Quick pickle, salt, sugar, a little bit of vinegar, some water.
03:06 I have some mustard seeds and black peppercorns, and I'm actually going to throw in some beets.
03:11 So the beets in there, they're good for pickling and you can eat them later,
03:15 but they're also going to be good in lending themselves the color to it.
03:18 So I'm going to bring this to a boil and then shut it off.
03:21 I'm going to add a little stock. Not a lot because we don't want this puree to be loose.
03:29 I want to pick up all that fond that's on the bottom,
03:32 and I want to make sure that the garlic stays in this little onion bath
03:36 and doesn't burn on the bottom.
03:38 So what I'm going to do now is like really thinly, small dice the black garlic
03:42 and reinforce inside the butter for the quail so we get it like kind of in two ways.
03:46 I'm like 60% confident that this is going to be good, so I'm going to have to bring it.
03:49 So remember when I told you when in doubt, pickle?
03:51 That's all good, but sometimes things go awry.
03:54 So I'm just looking at this lotus root right now, and it's kind of looking Barbie pink,
03:57 and I don't know if that represents me.
03:58 So we're going to fry some in case.
04:00 So when we go to plate, we have options, guys, options. We're all good.
04:04 Onions are done. They're exactly where I want them to be.
04:06 They're nice and tender. The black garlic has like lend itself to it.
04:09 So I'm going to set this aside because we're going to puree this.
04:11 And I'm going to set aside these lotus Barbie pickles, and we'll see how that goes.
04:15 So we're making our sauce.
04:17 We are going to take the thyme and the thyme sprigs out
04:20 because we don't want to blend those in there.
04:22 We are going to throw in the black garlic, any kind of juice.
04:25 After I'm finished with this pan, you're not even going to know that I cooked in it.
04:28 [blender whirring]
04:34 Onion black garlic puree, check.
04:37 So we've picked the butter out of the escargot, and by the looks of it,
04:40 I'm going to tell you that there's some herbs in there.
04:41 There's a faint taste of garlic, but we really need to like bump up this flavor with this stuff.
04:45 In here, we have the butter, the escargot butter, the black garlic's really, really thin,
04:50 some cilantro, lemon zest, parsley.
04:53 And then we're going to do, what any brave person has to do is a little taste test.
04:59 Don't -- my date's not here, so he doesn't know that I licked my finger.
05:03 But use a spoon next time, okay, guys?
05:06 And if any of my cooks are watching this, they're laughing their asses off right now,
05:10 because if I saw somebody mixing this amount in a small baby bowl, I would be flipping.
05:15 What I would say is, "Hold on a minute. Let me get you another bowl."
05:18 And then I would bring a smaller bowl with like a teaspoon,
05:20 and then just put it on the cutting board, and they get the picture.
05:24 I just busted this open.
05:25 Fries in here, nice and long, ready to go if you're at home.
05:29 Put like a Dutch oven, 350.
05:31 Fries, golden brown and delicious.
05:33 Extra crispy sweet potato fries.
05:35 And, of course, whenever something comes right out of the fryer, you got to hit it with that sope.
05:39 So, like I said before, we have a contingency plan just in case the Barbie lotus root doesn't work.
05:44 We're going to fry some, because I know that lotus chips are the bomb.
05:47 Okay, lotus root chips are out.
05:50 They kind of look like tricycle wheels.
05:52 Throwing them on here, hitting them with the obligatory seasoning, and that's it.
05:58 All right, let's stuff our quail.
06:00 So, we have our crispy sweet potato fries here.
06:03 I really want to stuff these in their hole.
06:05 We're going to mix the sweet potato fries inside the escargot in another small teeny tiny bowl,
06:10 because that's the theme of the day.
06:11 And then we're going to take the fries and kind of wrap the butter around them and then stuff them in there.
06:16 Listen, when you're stuffing, you got to use your hands.
06:18 So, don't yuck my yum right now.
06:20 They're clean.
06:21 Escargot and the butter is binding it.
06:23 And then we have to find candidate one to get stuffed.
06:28 I mean, these bad boys look good.
06:30 I'm going to season them with a little bit of salt and a little bit of olive oil,
06:34 and I am going to put them in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes.
06:38 Usually, when I cook proteins, you definitely want them to be room temperature so they cook evenly and easily.
06:43 That being said, because there's the stuffing in there and we worked that butter, I really want the butter to solidify.
06:48 I think the last decision that I'm thinking about is, like, do I close the legs or not?
06:51 I think we don't.
06:54 I think what I'll do is I kind of smash them a little bit before we get them in the pan.
06:57 The legs are going to cook really quickly.
06:59 Obviously, you can see that the meat is really thin.
07:01 I am going to season them on both sides, even though I seasoned a little bit before.
07:06 Now we got to get them in the pan.
07:08 Okay, we're going to put a good amount of olive oil in here.
07:10 I wouldn't say that we're shallow frying it, but we definitely want it to cover the bottom.
07:13 I'm going to flatten these out because we're going to cook them on the breast side down first.
07:16 And right now, we're just going to look to get some color.
07:18 I want to cook them breast side down first because I want to keep the breast juicy.
07:21 So, right now, I just want the skin to be crispy on the other side.
07:23 We're going to flip them over and put them in the oven for, like, two or three minutes.
07:26 And I don't want to overcook the breast part.
07:28 So, we're kind of, like, flipping them a little bit back and forth on the breast side.
07:31 We want to make sure, and I'll show you how it's going to look golden brown.
07:34 But as you can see, like, a lot of that good butter is kind of leaching out.
07:37 And although, like, when you think stuffing, you don't want the stuffing to leach out,
07:40 but in this case, that's exactly what we want.
07:42 Nice golden brown on the breasts.
07:45 We have some poppage, but that's all right.
07:49 This is rustic cooking, guys.
07:51 So, we have the quail golden brown.
07:54 Making sure they're not sticking, they're sliding around as if they're in Bryant Park at the ice skating rink.
08:00 We have the oven at 400, throwing them in there.
08:03 Three minutes, four minutes, and we should be good.
08:05 The breast on--ooh.
08:08 Could you imagine after I treated you so nicely?
08:13 Quail's in the oven.
08:14 I'm going to pull my pickles out of the liquid,
08:16 and I'm going to end with a nice, really herbaceous, crispy salad to go with our dish.
08:20 They're looking good.
08:22 A little barbie, but not as bad.
08:24 I have some radicchio in here, or some traviso.
08:27 This is the long stem.
08:28 We're going to actually pick some leaves of parsley.
08:32 And I think I'm going to shave some fennel really thin.
08:36 And just a little bit of olive oil around the bowl, not on the salad, because we're not ready to plate yet.
08:41 Okay, lemon juice, even though this is lettuce,
08:43 it kind of has the strength to take on that lemon juice and just hold there for a minute.
08:48 We have our quail right out of the oven.
08:50 You can see that the stuffing is popping out a little bit, but I kind of like that.
08:52 It's, like, organic.
08:53 It's, like, giving you a preview of what's going to be on the inside.
08:56 You can see that some of the butter has melted, but not completely.
08:58 We're just basting with the butter just to get more color on the outside, but these guys are done.
09:02 So I'm going to take these out of the pan, put them on the resting rack so they can hold for a minute
09:06 while we get our plate together.
09:08 Getting the quail on the plate, only thing that, to me, could have been, like, better is the color of this,
09:13 but that's okay because we're not going to really showcase it.
09:15 What I'm going to do is kind of put a little bit around,
09:18 so it's not so intense, the flavor.
09:20 You don't need to have it, like, everywhere.
09:22 So lotus root came out good both ways, crispy and pickled, so I think I'm going to use it that way.
09:26 So we're just going to throw the salad down.
09:28 We have the puree, and if you can see, I'm, like, strategically hiding our puree.
09:34 So I'm going to get the quail down, legs up, which is a good pretense for a date-lightening-night meal now.
09:39 Get our lotus chips, a little fennel-frawn action here, a little bit of fresh lemon juice.
09:44 I'm going to do a little bit of olive oil, and there we go.
09:47 This is a potato and escargot stuffed quail with black garlic and onion puree
09:51 and a bright acidic salad of radicchio and lotus root that's crispy and pickled and some fennel.
09:57 And I've got to dig in because I've got to tell you the truth, you know.
10:00 I'm going to go for the stuffing first because I've been eyeing this escargot with the potato.
10:06 That's pretty good.
10:07 I'm going to slice a piece of this breast and dip it into that garlic puree, see what we got.
10:13 I mean, I have to say, on presentation, I've got to give this 10 out of 10.
10:16 I think if I was dating somebody that made this for me, I would seal the deal that night, you know what I mean?
10:20 Let's eat.
10:24 I have to tell you the truth.
10:25 This dinner is so way out of my wheelhouse, meaning it's not what I cook at home.
10:29 And if I was thinking about a date, I don't know that these ingredients would be the first to come to mind,
10:33 but on the spot, with the time that I was given, I have to give this dish like a 9 out of 10.
10:37 I'm only not giving it the other point because I don't want to seem pompous on the show, but this is damn good.
10:41 Stuffed quail for the win.
10:42 Come on in. Let's get to the taste. I'm dying to hear what you think.
10:45 Do I like a surprise? Maybe.
10:47 Do I like a mystery ingredient basket where I have to make a date night?
10:50 Not so much.
10:51 But I got to tell you, I nailed it.
10:53 Flavor's on point, and if I was given this, I would date me.
10:56 [music]
10:58 [BLANK_AUDIO]