Original subtitles

In the words of Tom Jones, Jac, it's not unusual.

Oh!

Today is all about unusual vegies.

You've always got a good one to open with.

I try. Really hard to match you.

I love unusual vegies because you get really creative

in the kitchen, which is what we're all about.

So I decided to pick up the good old kohlrabi, which admittedly

I don't use that often in the kitchen either.

I love it in a pickle, in a salad. You can roast it.

Today I'm going to pop it in a salad with some apple, parmesan, mint,

lemon and serve it up with a delicious baked barramundi.

That sounds great.

I'm doing seared scallops with a celeriac puree

and a bacon crumb.

Oh, that sounds so good.

And I do love celeriac,

so I'm looking forward to tucking into yours.

Absolutely.

Look, kohlrabi probably isn't the vegetable

that you'd pick up every week at the shops,

but it's actually really delicious.

We're going to serve it up with a barramundi, Tim.

So if you could actually get the barramundi happening

and into the oven.

So everything comes together quickly and easily.

Can do.

I have eaten kohlrabi before, but I've never actually cooked with it.

Yeah, it's good fun. You know what?

I think it could go well in one of your quickles.

Yeah, a pickled kohlrabi.

That'd be nice. Yeah, it'd be good.

But it is one of those ones.

And that's why we're celebrating today

those unusual vegies that you might walk past at the greengrocer.

And we're showcasing that today. That's right.

So it goes really well in a salad or a pickle.

Or you could roast it up as well.

Yeah. Lovely.

Now, for the barramundi,

we've got four portions, which I love because this barramundi

comes all portioned for you, which makes it really easy to cook with,

because you can just grab what you need.

I love that.

And it's also delivering our source of protein to the meal.

It's going to cook quickly, because barramundi has that soft flesh

that cooks beautifully and quickly.

I love barra.

And I love including fish throughout the week as our dinners.

Not only is it quick, but it's a wonderful source

of a mineral called iodine, which is really important

for our thyroid, which helps support our energy and metabolism.

So just keeping it simple.

Salt and pepper, bit of lemon juice

and then I'll just dot some butter over it?

I'd love that.

I never know with my chefs

if it's going to be some butter or a block butter later.

So you can see the kohlrabi has been finely shaved.

It's really beautiful in a salad.

So I really encourage just to grab one

next time you're at the shops. Yeah.

Give it a little go.

Picturing our under-used vegies as like the loners at the greengrocer.

They're like, "Pick me, pick me!"

And we're picking them today. We are.

They're getting their time in the sun.

That's right. Alright. Are you happy with that?

I love it. If we could get it into the oven.

I've cranked up the oven to around 200 degrees.

That should only take between six to eight minutes, maybe a bit less.

We'll just keep an eye on it.

You beauty. Yeah.

And we'll finely shave our apple.

I've got a pink lady apple here.

Now, if you weren't going to use the apple straightaway,

a great little tip to pop it in some water with a slice of our lemon

to stop it from going brown.

And actually, let's do that.

There we go. There's some water for you.

Unreal. Alright.

Alright, let's get our apple and our lemon in there.

We'll need some lemon for the dressing for the salad itself.

So it's a good way to use up some of the lemon that you use on fish

or in the salad.

And this salad is all about things being finely shaved.

And we're going to do some finely shaved parmesan as well.

And we've got some blanched almonds here.

Blanched and toasted.

Oh, lovely. Do you want me to chop those?

I love toasted almonds. That would be great, too.

Beautiful.

Our fish is almost done.

So we want to get this salad together. Yeah.

I'll actually get you to pick some mint for me

to have in the salad as well.

Beautiful fresh mint.

And we'll drain these apples.

They've stayed nice and fresh and vibrant.

They are! They're beautiful.

It's a great tip. Yeah.

We'll get a nice salad server and all of our kohlrabi...

..we'll get in.

It's very pretty the kohlrabi, isn't it?

Yeah, it looks great.

And do you just want me to tear the mint leaves?

You can tear or finely chop it. Either/or.

Ah, I'll give it a chop.

A little bit of extra virgin olive oil,

because we love our extra virgin olive oil.

We sure do.

And we'll bring our apples in.

And then I'm going to use an apple cider vinegar

to dress it with the extra virgin olive oil.

We'll put some lemon juice in there as well.

Nice. I do love the apple cider vinegar.

It's got a tartness that just goes so well with the actual apple.

So just a very gentle toss with the apple and kohlrabi,

just separating the ingredients so that there'll be a beautiful

contrast of the red apple with the green kohlrabi ribbons.

A bit of salt would be awesome, please.

Oh! Yeah. And just... Thank you.

And we'll get our mint in.

It's a delicate salad.

It's great, though. It's going with a delicate fish.

So it's a nice little team. Aww!

Speaking of the fish, do you want me to get...

I'd love you to check that. Thank you. And bring it out.

Ooh! Oh, how good does that look?

I love cooking with barramundi.

It's got a great flavour.

And you could either serve it whole like that, or you could...

..you could flake it through a salad or anything like that.

So true. Yep. Yeah.

Beautiful. Get our parmesan in here.

And not forgetting the lemon. Oh, yeah.

You just want a nice cheek?

Yeah.

How about a nice cheek for there...

..and a good squeeze...

Good squeeze of lemon would be awesome.

Alright.

And we'll get some of these toasted almonds in as well.

Lovely.

So we're really getting there.

You seasoned it, didn't you? We got to that part?

I did. Different flavours, different textures.

That is what good cooking is all about.

Yeah. So let's get it onto a plate with the barramundi...

OK. ..and try it.

It'll go straight in.

Nicely cooked.

Looks great.

Bit of lemon on the side.

And lots of that beautiful kohlrabi on the side with our fish.

It's a hot summer's night.

We've poured ourselves a Pinot Grigio.

I think this would be a perfect pairing.

Well done. Wow.

There we go.

Let's give it a taste. Oh, I have to.

We just want to go over... Just turn it over.

Get an extra squeeze of lemon on there, I think.

Yes.

I'll do the honours.

This is definitely my kind of meal.

Absolutely.

Fish and salad.

Some nice crusty sourdough might go with it.

Or some good old steamed potatoes.

How goes it?

Jac, barra - beautiful, but I really love that kohlrabi salad as well.

Just delicious.

Creamy. Crunchy. Sweet.

Creamy. Crunchy. Sweet. Bit of salty, bit of sour.

Yeah. I love it.

Embrace the kohlrabi. Mm!

Jac, the humble celeriac.

Do you cook with it much?

Look, probably not as often as I should,

but when I do, I always wonder why I don't cook with it more often.

And it has that creaminess to become, you know, soup or puree.

It's a great vegie.

It's a little different looking.

So we're going to make a delicious creamy puree,

celeriac puree.

We're going to do some seared scallops,

because celeriac and scallops really pair well together.

And then make a cheeky bacon crumb to go on top of our scallops.

Mate, it sounds great. Alright.

For you, can you start by chopping me some dill?

Absolutely can.

And I'm going to start attacking this celeriac.

So what I want to do first is just cut off those pieces

at the top where the celery grows out.

Alright.

I first discovered celeriac, Jac,

when I was auditioning for MasterChef,

and I wanted to try and come up with a fancy puree,

the thinking outside the box that paired really well

with my pork belly dish.

And I came across celeriac, and it worked really, really well.

So that's what I'm trying to replicate today.

I bet it wowed the judges on that show too.

They did enjoy it, luckily.

(LAUGHS) Luckily.

So you just want to remove that fibrous skin from the celeriac

and then just run your knife around the bottom

just to get rid of all of that gnarly, funky skin

and get to that beautiful white middle.

Perfect.

Celeriac is part of the fennel and celery family.

That's why we see the similarity in the tops that's coming out.

And also, I think fennel is probably an unusual veg

that a lot of people don't pick up as well.

So it's interesting, isn't it? All from the same family.

But all can be really celebrated in their own unique ways.

Absolutely.

And that's what today's all about.

So I'm just roughly dicing our celeriac

just into 2-centimetre cubes.

And now you need to be careful, Jac,

because celeriac will oxidise really, really quickly and turn brown.

So we're going to use it straightaway.

OK. So all into our pot straightaway.

Would I be able to get one and a half cups of that milk?

That would be lovely. No worries.

We've got 150 mils of cream

because we're going to make a creamy, luscious puree.

OK?

Sounds pretty good.

There's no boiling our celeriac in water.

We're going to cook it in cream and milk.

Enhance the creaminess with a bit more dairy.

Yeah, that's right. (LAUGHS)

So our milk can go in.

Thank you for that.

I've got a shallot.

Just want to roughly chop that.

That's going to help to give our puree a fantastic flavour.

And it's going to help to flavour our cream and milk mix as well.

And of course...

Quick, before she sees.

..just a little knob of butter in there as well.

(LAUGHS) Ha-ha! You thought you'd get away with that!

(LAUGHS) I tried, I tried. And a good pinch of salt.

Now I'm going to get our pan on

and all we want to do

is we're just going to bring this to a simmer

and then just cook it nice and gently until that's nice and soft.

Then we're going to blitz it with a stick blender

until we've got a beautiful, silky smooth celeriac puree.

Easy! Then it's scallop time.

Yes.

Alright, Jac.

So I've pureed up our celeriac until it's nice and smooth.

Now, you could see that I took off some of that cream and milk mixture

just because I didn't want a celeriac soup.

As gorgeous as that would be... Yeah. Not today's recipe.

..it might just run off our plate.

Would you be able to throw in that dill that you chopped up for me?

I'm just going to a little pinch of salt and a bit of pepper.

And I've got my pan heating up.

Now, I'm using some of that leftover bacon fat

to fry our scallops in the bacon fat.

Makes sense. Why not? Why not?

Alright, so with scallops,

all they need is one minute on one side.

Flip them over, 30 seconds, and out of the pan.

That's a great tip.

Alright, here we go.

We want that sizzle.

(SIZZLING)

Here we go.

I feel like this is a dish for like date night at home.

These are great... Yeah. This is great.

It's a bit fancy.

If you want to impress someone, you pull out this dish.

Now, these scallops were frozen scallops that we've just thawed out.

Really convenient pack.

You just have these in the freezer for that said date night.

And you can just bring them out when you want.

Counting down.

I've got my imaginary watch here.

I think 30 seconds more.

We'll flip them and we'll start to plate up.

Excellent.

So I'm just adding three little delicate dollops

of our celeriac puree onto our plate.

Mm-hm.

It is very delicate.

Getting a bit fancy, aren't I?

This is not the heavy-handed toastie Tim that I'm used to.

I know. I do enjoy cooking like this.

I don't get to cook like this much anymore,

but it's nice to pull it out every now and then.

Absolutely.

Yes, that's what you want to see. Oh, beautiful golden...

Nice and caramelised.

30 seconds on this side and we are done.

I love seared scallops like this.

So simple.

A little bit fancy, but it's not hard.

They're buttery and delicious.

It's interesting, isn't it?

The things that people are unsure about often

are the easiest things to cook at home.

And that's the beauty of being able to showcase

these sorts of ingredients and foods in the shows,

is that you can show people how to make magic with them, really.

Exactly.

These are done.

I'm going to choose the best three.

Sit them proudly on top of our celeriac puree.

These are some meaty-looking scallops.

They're huge, aren't they?

Yeah.

OK.

Then we get some of our bacon crumb.

I don't want these ones to go to waste.

No way! We're going to eat these ones.

I've been eyeing those off the whole time.

Take these out.

I was like, one, two, three... (LAUGHS) Yeah.

OK.

Then we get a little bit of our bacon crumb

and get some of that on top.

Because bacon and scallops are a surprisingly amazing pair.

They absolutely adore each other.

Salty and creamy.

Then we've got some of that beautiful dill.

I just want some delicate little fronds just to sit on top.

Dill's up there as one of my top three favourite herbs, I think.

I absolutely love it, and it goes so well with seafood.

Yeah. There we go.

You would never know that

that came from the gnarly looking celeriac, would you?

Not at all.

You've given it a real makeover and it's a beautiful way to do it.

I feel like we're about to sit down at a fine dining restaurant.

Well, I don't know about that,

but, um, I'll grab a knife and fork and eat it right now.

(BOTH LAUGH)

Pork is absolutely one of my favourite proteins to eat,

and Aussie pork is some of the best you can get in the world.

I'm going to put a really nice little twist on this dish.

With some dates and some tamarind

I'm going to make a beautiful little marinade and a sauce.

So I'm going to start off by getting some dates in a pot

with about half a pint of water, about 500ml.

It's a little less than half a pint.

And we're going to bring that to the boil

and let it simmer and cook down until the dates are completely soft.

I'm going to add into that some tamarind.

So this sauce is going to be packed with flavour,

but it shouldn't be too sweet.

It should be almost sweet and sour at the same time.

Like almost tart.

Sweet and tart are the two sort of flavour profiles I'm going for.

I'm going to add in some muscovado sugar as well.

I love muscovado because it adds that almost molasses flavour

to your...to your sauces.

So add the sugar in there.

A little bit of a stir.

You can see that beautiful, deep, rich colour already in the sauce.

And I'm going to introduce some spices as well.

Some garam masala, some cumin,

and then some fresh ginger for that little bit of heat.

We're going to blitz it up, marinate our pork.

It's going to be delicious.

So you've got that beautiful sauce now.

I mean, just gorgeous smell.

And we're going to use that now to marinate.

Leave it to cool down. Absolutely.

Cool down your sauce first, marinate your pork chops.

Just for speed today, I'm going to put this straight in.

And you want to get a nice coating each side.

So much flavour will be in this pork.

Just gonna put... Top it up a little bit more.

And I'm saving the rest of that marinade as a sauce

to go with the pork at the very end.

Alright. Pan's hot.

And I'm going to use just a little bit of avocado oil in this one.

It's a really nice, mild flavour.

And I'm also going to use it in my dressing as well.

So really tying those flavours. (SIZZLES)

That sizzle's what you want when you're cooking pork.

The smell is beautiful.

You can smell the dates, the tamarind.

Alright, while that's cooking,

I'm going to clean up and work on my salad.

Simple, fresh - mint, parsley, some apple.

It's going to be delicious.

Oh, this smells so good.

And because you've got that beautiful, sweet and sour sauce

in there, it's so sticky,

it's so delicious.

You can see the caramelisation on that pork.

It's just beautiful.

I was going to do one per serve.

I'm going to put two on the plate.

I'm going to use the two smaller ones because this just looks so heavenly.

And it's the beauty of using Australian pork.

Such a good, good ingredient to cook with.

I love pork.

And obviously, one of the classic flavour combinations -

pork and apple.

So we've got apple in our salad here.

Fresh herbs,

mint, parsley, that avocado oil.

And then I'm just going to do a little squeeze of lemon cheek...

..over the top of this.

For me, this is just pure beauty.

Australian pork.

Tamarind and date glaze.

Fresh salad.

What more can you want, guys?

I absolutely love this dish.

I hope you do too.

Usually I do my overnight oats, or my Bircher muesli,

as I like to call it, with milk and with yoghurt.

But what about if you're dairy free?

So we start as you would normally do with your oats,

and I'm just going to do one serve here.

I'm going to pop in some chopped almonds.

I've got some pepitas.

And you just put it in the mix that you like.

Some hemp seeds

and a bit, for sweetness, is a date.

Naturally present sugars. They're not added sugars.

But they add that level of sweetness that you really want.

So I'm popping in my date.

And then I need my liquid.

So I've got a cute little single serve here of coconut milk,

which is perfect,

because how often do you open the whole can of coconut milk

and then it sits in your fridge?

And give that a bit of a stir.

And I'm just going to add...

You can just add some water if you like.

I'm going to add some pineapple juice.

And you want it to look as if it's fairly runny,

because this is going to soak overnight.

OK. I'm going to Glad Wrap it.

So, you've done this before you go to bed at night,

so that in the morning it's all ready for you to tuck in.

Pop it into the fridge.

So here's one that I've already soaked

to show you what it looks like when it's finished.

So you can see that all that liquid has been absorbed

and I've got a nice, thick mixture.

So now we're just going to plate this up.

Pop it into the bowl and top it with whichever fruit you like.

But I have some gorgeous berries,

so I am just going to top it with some berries.

But honestly, these could be whatever fruits are in season.

And some fresh blueberries,

because you can never go wrong with blueberries.

And finally, some mint

is very natural to add to this.

A little bit of fresh mint.

What a great way to start the day.

This is fresh and vibrant, but it's also filling.

It's full of nutrition, and most of all, it's just delicious.

Captions by Red Bee Media