Asian Flavors Made Easy At Home | Dinner DeeAs

Getting big, bold, Southeast Asian flavors on the table doesn't mean hours in the kitchen or complicated techniques. Today, we're unlocking the secrets of savory caramel, perfectly seared pork, and crisp ribbon salad that comes together in a flash. Sweet, salty, tangy, and spicy, all in under 30 minutes. Your idea for dinner starts here. Let's go. Welcome to the kitchen. I'm Angie Corley. Now here to bring big, vibrant flavor straight to your dinner table is the talented chef John Caponi. He's from Caponi Culinary. Chef John, it is such a joy to have you here. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. He's going to get special with us today because we are making some very fancy sounding dishes. Vietnamese inspired caramel pork tenderloin, rice and cucumber carrot with Thai basil ribbon salad, that sounds amazing. Yeah, so I'm Italian. I was classically trained French, but I love to cook Asian food because There's a lot of different flavors, textures, profiles, color, so I gravitate towards Asian food a lot. Yeah. Now, is this hard to do? It's not hard to do. Okay. It's actually very inexpensive, so I wanted to do something special for you guys. All right. Well, let's do it. We're going to start with the rice or the pork? Yeah, so rice we're going to do real quick. Okay. We're going to make a coconut jasmine rice. Oh, nice. Okay. I use jasmine rice because it's very fragrant. It's very different than just normal white rice. Okay. That looks like you've rinsed that rice. I did rinse it. Yeah, you have to rinse it. You want to get all the starches off. The rule of thumb is you want to rinse it till the water is clear. Okay. Usually around six times is kind of the magic number. I just have a little bit of jasmine rice, some coconut milk, and some water. And then I'm just going to kind of stir that up. I'm going to season it with a little bit of salt and bring it to a boil. Okay. And then cover it. Uh-huh. And then... Now, do we cook it traditionally the same way as we would if it was just water, if we didn't use the coconut milk? Yeah, so the coconut milk just gives it a little bit of depth of flavor. Yeah, that's it. A little bit more texture and a different aroma as well. Yes, well, it smells good already. All right, so now it's time for this beautiful pork tenderloin, which I've seen these in the package. Yeah, so pork tenderloin is readily available. Mm-hmm. you can get at most grocery stores. I wanted to show you there's a silver skin on the pork tenderloin which does not come it doesn't cook okay when you're rapidly cooking it. I have a boning knife here small edge yeah that doesn't look very appetizing is that like a fatty muscly tissue yeah so it's a tendon that does not break down in cooking so you want to remove it. Yeah, we definitely take that. And this is not very expensive. Pork is pretty much readily available everywhere. Yeah, this was about $10. Okay. The whole dish itself could be made at about $4 per portion. Wow. Yeah, very budget-friendly. It is. Yeah, so we're going to just remove the silver skin here. Okay. And then we're just going to cut. And the rest in the middle is kind of more fat. It's not the silver skin. Yeah, so the fat will dissolve when you're cooking. The silver skin will not so we're just cooking. We're just cutting about an inch and a half medallions Pretty simple, and then we're just gonna kind of press them down a little bit. Okay. We don't need to pound them No, you don't have to pound them. I just want to make sure that they're kind of even okay pretty simple And then we're gonna season them with salt and pepper Generously for sure. What kind of salt is this? This is just kosher salt. Okay, and then some pepper And we're going to do both sides. Oh, I was just about to ask. Yeah, before we get to both sides, we're just going to make sure our pan is hot. Okay. A little bit of neutral oil there. That's good. Let's flip. So as a private chef, is there a meat or protein or a dish that's most requested by some of the clients that you've dealt with? Actually, filet mignon is the most requested. Really? Yeah. I find that people that hire me to cook in their homes are kind of afraid to cook steak. Or fish. A little intimidating? Yeah, yeah. I do a lot of fish and I do a lot of steak for sure. Okay. All right. Pan is kind of hot. Yes. We're just going to get a nice sizzle there. Will we cook this completely in the pan, Chef? Yeah. So they're pretty thin. Mm-hmm. I know back in the day, many people would cook pork. Okay. Fully, well done. You don't really need to do that anymore. Good to know. So this is going to be more like a medium, medium well. We're going to do about a minute and a half on both sides. Okay, minute and a half. We're going to come back. Chef John is going to be with us, of course, to show us more magic. That's all ahead on Dinner Dears. Chef John Caponi is my guest and our guide through an easy introduction to Asian cuisine as we make all of these amazing dishes together. Vietnamese-inspired caramel pork tenderloin, coconut lime, jasmine rice, and cucumber. And finally, a carrot and Thai basil ribbon salad. So if you're just joining us, here's what we did before the break. We started cooking up our jasmine rice, combining it with coconut milk, water, a little salt, then bringing it to a boil, a little gentle boil. Covered it, cooking it for about 15 minutes. Then after that, we started on the pork. Now, we cut our pork into little medallions, lightly pressing them into an even thickness. Patted them dry, seasoned with a little salt and pepper. We're searing them now in a hot skillet. We did that for about, what, two minutes? Two minutes on each side, yeah. All right, beautiful sear on top. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's gorgeous. Are they ready? Do you think we're... So I'm going to... I just flipped them a couple seconds ago. I'm going to take them out because actually we're going to make a sauce, and then we're going to finish cooking them in the sauce. Love that. Yeah. So we're going to take them out. Let them rest for a minute. Okay. Like I said earlier, you don't have to cook pork well done. Which, where did we get that from? Is that from back in the day? You've got to cook it well, you know? That's just back in the day. Yeah. We're going to start our sauce with some brown sugar. Okay. Okay. And then we're going to add a little bit of water. This is part of the base of the caramel. Isn't this hard to do, caramel sauce? So this is Vietnamese-inspired, right? I'm not a Vietnamese chef. Normally, you can use granulated sugar, but brown sugar is kind of more foolproof. We're going to turn the volume up a little bit. Oh, I love all the fat and all the... Yeah, leave that stuff in there. Little bits in there, flavor, flavor, flavor. That's good stuff. We're going to let that kind of cook down, let it bubble. Okay. We also have some chicken stock. We're going to add. All right. Okay. That's one of those things you just kind of keep in the pantry. You know, that chicken stock, the box. Let the chicken stock go. And then we have soy sauce. We have fish sauce. That brings out, both of those bring out that umami flavor. Now, is fish sauce really made with fish? I can still guess this. Is it? Okay. It sounds crazy, but, you know. It's kind of unappetizing, honestly, especially when you smell it. You don't want to spill it on yourself by any means. Agreed. But when you taste it, it's incredible. I know. Yeah, a little bit of Fresno chilies. Fresno. Okay, what's the heat level on that? They're not very hot. Okay. Yeah, they're kind of mild. Also, ginger and garlic I threw in there. Mmm. Hmm. And that's kind of it. We're gonna just let that reduce. There's a lot of sugar in there. All that water is gonna evaporate and it's gonna turn into a nice thick sauce. Ooh, wonderful. All right, so let's take a little break. Let's let that get all bubbly and brown and yummy. Don't go anywhere. Next up, we're marrying this amazing caramel sauce with our pork and finishing up our fragrant rice. We'll be back. Dinner Diaz is on the way. So we're in the homestretch with Chef John Caponi, and it's mouthwatering, literally. The Vietnamese-inspired dinner with a caramel pork tenderloin, along with some coconut lime, jasmine rice, and so much more. Here's a little recap. If you missed the last segment, we got that pork all seared up beautiful, got it out of the skillet, let it chill out for a minute, use the same pan for our caramel sauce, combining brown sugar with a little bit of water. Then we added some chicken stock, some fish sauce, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, Fresno chili, and then letting it all simmer. And I think that's where we are, right, Chef? It's boiling. Is that good? Yeah, so it's boiling away. A lot of the water has evaporated. We're just going to add the pork back to the pan. Wonderful. Pretty easy. And don't forget the little juicy bits in the bottom of the pan. In the pan, all that juice. Get that in there. Now, was it a consistency or just a time frame? that you knew that it was time to put the pork because it's consistency so when you're when you're cooking like that you start to see bigger bubbles yeah a lot of the liquid has evaporated gosh it smells it smells so good we're just going to finish it a little bit with a little bit of rice wine vinegar and some lime juice to cut some of that sugar add some acid and a little french technique we're going to mount some butter there's a little shine It's funny, it doesn't smell sweet, but the notes are just dynamic. It's going to be amazing. Amazing. Ah. How long do we let that kind of... Just another like minute and then that's it. Okay, another minute. All right, one last break. Let's do it. We've got so much more coming up because when we come back, we have an extra side to kind of sneak in as we kind of shape up a really bright herb salad and plate it all up. We're going to have an incredible feast ahead on Dinner Diaz. And today, our idea for dinner has been has been an easy introduction to Asian cuisine with an in-demand private chef. John Capone is here, and he's cooking for you and me in our own kind of like, it's kind of like our cooking class. This is so cool. So on the menu, we have Vietnamese-inspired caramel pork, tenderloin. We have coconut, lime, jasmine rice, and cucumber, carrot, and last but not least, how about some Thai basil ribbon salad? Yeah. You got all the ingredients here. This is going to be dynamic. Let me catch you up, though. Before the break, here's what we did. We cooked that pork back in. into that caramel sauce put it all together along with a little rice wine vinegar a little lime juice plus a french inspired touch this is great a little pat of butter sure why not now we've got our pork that looks to be ready is the rice ready to go yeah rice is ready okay what is our next step all right so we're going to take the rice it's already done um you could fluff it in the pan i like to use a bowl okay it also kind of releases some of the heat Because sometimes rice sticks together. That looks perfect. I do add a little bit of oil, excuse me, just to kind of loosen it up. And then we're going to add some scallions and then some fresh lime zest. Mm-hmm. So the lime zest is going to add a little bit of lime oil. Without adding extra liquid or acidity, you just want the fragrance from the lime. See, this is no longer boring rice. Yeah, this is not just like plain Jane white rice. I grew up with boiling a bag rice. Yeah. Okay, so it's definitely not that. We don't do that around here. No, sir. No way. And then I'm going to add a little bit of pepper and a touch more salt. And then we're just going to kind of mix it up. I love that. Fluff it in the bowl. So we're gonna put that to the side, and then what we're gonna do is we're gonna work on the salad. Okay. So the salad... A Thai basil salad. Yeah, so Vietnamese cooking uses a lot of fresh ingredients, so we're gonna use English cucumbers and carrots. I decided to buy rainbow carrots to add a little bit extra color. Extra. Yeah, a little bit extra. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna cut the ends off the carrots. Okay. And then we're going to peel it. This was my job growing up. My great-grandmother would have. Everybody peels carrots. And potatoes. Yeah, carrots and potatoes. So what we're going to do is for the ribbon salad, if you have a mandolin at home, perfect. Just use that. Just use that. But if you don't, just grab a peeler. I prefer this peeler. And you just keep peeling. That's so easy. I thought it was much more complicated than that. No, and then you just, you could flip it. You could put it on the board. I'm going to go forward. And that's how you get your ribbons, pretty easy, right? And we're going to put that over here. What a great way to do a little bit different, you know, just... Yeah, instead of like a shredded carrot salad, like add a little bit of flavor to that. A little something. So if you could take the cucumber, and what you're going to do is you're going to kind of just peel strips, get rid of some of the skin, and you're going to do the same thing. You're just going to kind of go down and peel it. Okay, all right, I got it. You're putting me to work. Do I need to put some gloves? Sure. All right. Let me put a little... And then as you're doing that, what I'll do is I'll start the base of the vinaigrette. Have you thought about cooking classes, Chef? I do cooking classes. Ah-ha-ha. I would have one right now. Glad you asked that. Yeah. So everything I do is fully custom. Okay. So if you're like, hey, I want to learn how to make pasta, or I want to learn how to make Vietnamese cuisine, or Chinese food, or chicken parmesan, or anything. Right. I developed a class specifically for that. For that? Yeah. So in the bowl, I have sugar, some sesame oil, rice wine vinegar. Okay. Okay, you got the sweet, you got the salty, you got the acidity, there's lime juice. I'm going to add a little bit of salt. Chef, am I going to do seeds? So English cucumbers typically don't have a lot of seeds, so when you get to that point, just flip it over. Flip it over, okay. I want to pass this class here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know why. We're going to add some Fresno chilies, a little bit of heat, sesame seeds. Oh, that smells good, right? That smells wonderful. This is sesame oil. That's my bestie. Yep. Okay, so we have the vinaigrette there. And then you have your ribbons. And it's okay with the water content to kind of add that to the salad? Yeah, yeah, it's totally fine. When you're making this salad, you're going to eat it right away, so it's fine. Okay. We're going to just kind of... Add some scallions. You can cut them this way. You can cut them on a bias. Basil is prettier, so we're just going to do that. Do we use the whole thing? Do you go down to the white or just the green? So green is usually for garnish. So GG garnish green. And the whites are usually used to cook. Interesting. So we're going to add our scallions. That's great. So we're not buying anything off the shelf. Do you buy any dressings? Are you like, it's too easy to make this from scratch? Yeah, everything is pretty easy. Yes. Gosh, it smells so good. Yes, this smells amazing. So what we're going to do now is we're going to add our carrot ribbons. We have yellow. We have purple. We have orange. Do they, yeah, do they taste the same? They're all the same. They just look differently. We're going to add some cucumber. Oh, that smells. Amazing. Yeah. And then what we're going to do is we're going to add Thai basil. We're just going to throw... Oh, we don't need to chop that down. We can eat that almost like a lettuce or parsley. Yeah, same with cilantro. Cilantro stems and everything. Throw it in there. Put it in there. Okay. And then we're going to just kind of toss it up. Oh, and that is beautiful. Yeah, this is... This looks great. That's almost a dish by itself. Yeah. So this is going to add a lot of freshness and brightness to the overall dish. So we're kind of done. Okay. We just have to plate. Let's plate. Okay, well, here, let me get this for you. Okay, so we have our rice, right? So jasmine rice, we have, try to make some room, lime zest, scallions. We're just going to put a little bit of rice in the middle. That smells unbelievable. Yeah. Okay, nothing crazy. Maybe like three quarters of a cup of rice. Okay. And then we're going to add our pork. Okay. Something about the tweezers just makes it look fancy. Yeah, it's just a little extra touch. Oh. We'll do about three pieces, about two ounces a piece, so about six ounces of protein. Okay. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna add our salad on the side. Mmm. Let's turn that a little bit. That is so special, look at this plate. So as I'm doing this, right, we have sweet, salty, crunchy, umami, spice, Spice. and then just add a couple more herbs. I love Thai basil we're gonna throw some more on there and then crunchy right we don't have anything crunchy so you could make like crispy shallots on the stove you could make a mess I actually like to use crispy scallions you can buy this at any Oriental store okay so crispy scallions and crispy garlic okay this is just fried it's just fried garlic fried scallions they're shelf-stable you can You can keep them in the pantry. We're gonna just add A little bit all over, a little bit of garlic, and then we're gonna just add a little bit more, excuse me, sorry, of the sauce. Can you please bottle that sauce up? Yeah, this sauce is amazing. I had to take a little nibble. Like half an hour, chef, do you amaze yourself sometimes? Yeah, yeah, I mean, the way people are nowadays, no one has patience to do anything, so if you're not making food in 30 minutes or less, You're not going to get very far. Oh. There you go. Wow. Go ahead. You go first. Okay. Oh, wow. That's so tender. Yeah. I don't even need this fork. Right, Lamps? What's your favorite part? Is it, do I need to put it all on the same plate? Hold on. Let me get a little bit of, did you put everything together here? Yeah, yeah. Definitely. Make sure you get that basil in there. Okay. Let's just put that on there. Hey, use your hands sometimes, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. You missed the pork. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. That is unbelievable. That caramel sauce is so rich and decadent with the flavors and the layers. It's tender. I love the spicy, sweet, with the umami. Oh, all the things you get. Wow. And I just got a little bit of that sesame. Oh, my goodness. It's very bold. It's very fresh. It's good. You better get in here. Yeah, yeah. All right, this is just... Let's try it out. And you know what? The pork-to-be caramel pork tenderloin, it is not too sweet at all. Wow. Chef John, that is dynamic. Private chef meal to your home. Did that hit the spot? That was good. That was good. That's really good. I'm going to get back in there. I'm going to eat that with my hands. All right, y'all, grab Chef John's recipe for this entire dinner. Check out Chef John's website, Capone Culinary. You can book him for a private culinary experience, his chef services, catering, cooking classes, do it all. All right, y'all, as we dig back in, I'm Angie Coley, and we'll see you next time with more ideas for dinner, or as we call them, dinner ideas. Now go get to cooking. Mm.