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- [Announcer] The following episode of "Charlotte Cooks" is brought to you by Central Piedmont Community College and viewers like you.

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- Coming up on this episode of "Charlotte Cooks", we're cooking with these gorgeous mushrooms, all locally grown.

Why don't you tune in and see what we're gonna make with these beautiful mushrooms.

(upbeat music) Welcome to this edition of "Charlotte Cooks".

I'm chef Pamela Roberts, and today we have a real treat for you.

We have chef Julia Simon with us from Nourish Charlotte.

She is known to people all over town as the vegan chef, right?

So you are head of some vegan organization here in town?

- Yeah, I do a lot of organizing around the vegan scene in Charlotte, but I'm the president of Charlotte Veg Fest, our biggest vegan gathering.

Last year, we had 5-6,000 people join us for the festivities, but really it's just an exciting time to be vegan in Charlotte.

There's, you know, myriad restaurants, all the different cuisines that you can imagine are being represented.

Nourish Charlotte, my business, does farm to fork organic whole foods, plant-based.

So we try to keep it really healthy.

- And local?

- And local.

We're big proponents of local growers of all things, but mushrooms are a really interesting meat substitute, right?

So when vegan chefs, you know, do, like, cooking, we talk a lot about meat substitutes.

What are we substituting for the protein?

So mushrooms are beautiful because they're good for you.

So they're whole foods, right?

So we're gonna do some really interesting things with mushrooms today, I'm really excited to show you guys.

- So you got some really cool mushrooms sitting right here on the plate.

Tell us about, I mean, look at this.

This is not a mushroom you'd go and you'd pick up in your local grocery.

- [Julia] This is true.

- [Pamela] You're gonna have to go to the farm in order to find something like, I mean, this is beautiful.

This is, what kind of mushroom is this?

- The king oyster or trumpet mushroom.

And farmer's markets are a great place to find locally grown mushrooms too.

- [Pamela] So what are we going to make with the trumpet mushrooms?

- With the trumpet mushrooms, we're gonna do a oyster mushroom scallop treatment, right?

So it's really not all that different than cooking a fresh scallop, but we're gonna basically take it through a couple of steps and you'll end up with this gorgeous, juicy mushroom scallop.

When you're making this dish, you really want to find large oyster mushrooms, right?

So the ones that you can get the store can kind of be a little bit small for this purpose.

So think about going to a local farmer's market and seeing if you can get a really big mushroom from one of your local growers.

So basically that's gonna be what we make the scallop out of.

So the bigger the better, and this is a pretty simple cut.

So basically, I'm just gonna take the cap off.

Do not waste this delicious piece of mushroom.

- So find another use.

That cap is not gonna be part of our scallop.

- No, we're just using the middle or the body of the mushroom, right?

So I'm gonna take the top and the bottom off.

Okay.

Simple, simple.

We're gonna save those for another use 'cause we love mushrooms.

And then, you know, you're kinda gonna make a decision about how many scallops you can get from this.

So I'm gonna say three.

Okay, and I'm doing like a, I don't know, 3/4 of an inch cut, right?

So then you kind of have these nice little shapes that you can kind of begin to see the scallop in, right?

Now, here's a really nice trick.

If you want to get a nice texture and add some, like add some kind of texture to these like blank sides, really easy way to do that is just putting a little gentle score.

Right, put the tip of your knife on each side of the mushroom.

- And that doesn't have to be very deep, does it?

It's not like you're cutting it or slicing it.

You're just making a little etch into the top.

- Yes, and that's gonna help the fat and our marinade kind of seep in there and have a color differential.

And it'll just look kind of great on the plate.

Not essential, does not help it cook any better, but you know, aesthetics are important.

You eat with your eyes first.

- [Pamela] So will these shrink up very much?

- They will.

So I know this looks like really crazy and large.

- It does look big.

- But it's gonna contract.

Right, any mushrooms, you remember, like mushrooms are funny, just like spinach.

There's a joke, right?

Like you put all of the spinach in the world on a plate and it just shrinks to a tiny little bit.

So these guys are gonna.

- Where'd it all go?

- Yeah, these guys are gonna definitely come down in size a little bit.

So we'll do three.

And like, so what do we do to make this taste like a scallop, right?

So in this bowl I have one of the key pieces of building flavor for a vegan palate.

Tamari, right, which is a gluten-free soy sauce.

You can use soy sauce if that's what you have, no problem.

But I've got a little bit of tamari, I have an acid.

That could either be a little lime juice or a little rice vinegar.

And then the really important piece of this marinade is seaweed, right?

So we really want to use, this is kombu.

This is a salted, dried seaweed, very strong seafaring flavor.

This is gonna be the base of how we get this delicious mushroom not only to taste like a mushroom, but also tastes like a scallop.

So I kind of have a marinade or a tea going in here.

So I'm just gonna kind of dip these guys in here.

In my pan I have a little bit of coconut oil.

You can kind of use any high-heat friendly oil.

If canola is your favorite, that's fine.

I actually like the little bit of fruity kind of backdrop this provides.

- I was gonna ask you about the coconut oil. '

Cause sometimes it lends a little bit of a sweetish flavor to the cooked goods.

So sometimes you want that.

- Exactly.

- And sometimes you don't.

So this time you would not necessarily find the refined coconut oil that's doesn't have the scent or the flavor.

You want to have that unrefined, so it has all that wonderful.

- That tropical, yeah.

And especially since we're planning on serving this with a green curry sauce.

We're kind of all singing together in the same language.

- And that would go wonderfully with it.

'Cause we have coconut rice too, don't we?

- We do.

It's gonna be a super yummy plate.

I will say that you want to be careful about how long you marinate these mushrooms for, right?

So a lot of times when we're dealing with meat, we'll do things like marinate things overnight.

That's not really effective for this purpose.

You really only want 15 minutes, 10 minutes.

We're gonna speed it up a little bit because we want to make it, you know, cook it and make it beautiful.

But you don't really want to leave this overnight.

Just kind of dip and steep just a few minutes.

- What would happen if you did leave it overnight?

- They can get very waterlogged and you can you can still saute them, but the texture won't be quite as pleasurable.

We want them to be just like a scallop would be, sort of crisp around the edge and like sort of soft in the middle.

And you can see that scoring, right, that decorative scoring?

- As soon as you get that in the marinade, that scoring starts showing up.

Absolutely it does.

- I'm gonna turn this down.

Now, you don't need super high heat, but you want a pretty hot pan, yeah.

And these guys, yes, since there is a little bit of liquid in that marinade.

- It's gonna spit at you.

- It is, it is, but it's worth it.

Just avoid it.

Don't get burned.

We have medium high heat or so.

And we're really gonna just kind of get them in there and let them hang out.

You can see if you're looking around the bottom of them you can see they're starting to brown.

There's a lot of activity around the base of that mushroom because the mushroom's kind of releasing liquid and we're definitely getting some action with that fat.

- [Pamela] You really need to make sure your pan is really hot before you get in there in order to really get that nice caramelization.

- Right, you might toss a little bit of the marinade into the pan to see what it does.

- See if it pops and explodes.

You can see the action when you put it in there.

If you guys put the mushrooms in and it's not making that, and talking back at you, take it out and let the pan get a little bit hotter.

- [Julia] I would agree with that.

- Ooh, look at that.

- Starting to look really pretty.

- [Pamela] Yeah, really pretty.

- It's not quite there though.

So this is a big, thick piece of mushroom.

So we definitely want to give it the time that it needs.

- So would you put these in the oven at all?

Or can you do this?

You can absolutely do them in the oven.

That's a great question.

Yeah, I love it.

- [Pamela] And what temperature oven would you use?

- I would do 400 and I would do, and no parchment.

I would do a nice, you know, a nice treatment on a plain pan with some fat in it.

And I would do the same thing.

I would do the trick where we get the pan in the oven ahead of time and get it a little warm.

So when you toss your mushrooms onto that pan you hear them sear a little bit.

- Yeah, you gotta hear it.

- 'Cause you want to trap that moisture in, right?

You want to get that nice caramelization and trap that moisture right in there.

- Yes.

Oh, they look fabulous.

They smell good too.

- [Julia] Yeah, and I'm getting hungry.

- [Pamela] That's that marinade that you had, right?

Tamari, and what else was in there?

Tamari, kombu?

- Tamari, kombu is a really important part, and then maybe a little rice vinegar or a little acid, right, and that'll kind of help treat the mushroom protein and like, and change it slightly.

- Now, if you're choosing the rice vinegar would you use a seasoned rice vinegar or an unseasoned rice vinegar?

- Great question.

I don't really know.

I think use your taste.

Remembering that seasoned vinegar or seasoned rice vinegar typically has refined sugar in it.

So if that's something you're trying to stay away from then maybe just unseasoned rice vinegar.

- That is really a good point, because seasoned rice vinegar really does have sugar in it.

And also having sugar in the marinade would contribute to a little bit more burning in the pan.

- [Julia] That's true, caramelization.

- So just be careful of that and just be aware of that.

It says right on the label of whether it's seasoned or not.

- And these look really good to me.

They're gonna be most delicious right now too.

You can see their texture is gorgeous.

They're just, they're a little bouncy.

You can see that the middle is a little wetter, like a little more moist than the outside edge.

We've done a really great job of caramelizing them.

They're ready to go.

Now, you can make these ahead.

They will be most.

- And how would you hold them?

- You would chill them and then you would bring them back to life in an oven.

You would gently reheat.

I would not put them back in the pan.

But this moment is when they're most delicious.

Yeah.

If you've got the time, pan fry it and serve.

- So to go with these, we're gonna make a curry sauce.

- We are.

- Is that right?

So get over to the blender, and I'm gonna give you your ingredients for the curry paste and what do we have here?

- Basically, we have ginger.

So whole ginger, and I peeled it.

The only reason to peel ginger is because of the texture of the skin.

It's not gonna make things taste strange, like carrot.

Leaving carrot peels on can be a really bitter process.

So you can, kind of up to you.

I like to remove it.

I like a smoother curry paste.

Right, so we're gonna put this in.

- [Pamela] It's kind of like leaving the skins on tomatoes.

- [Julia] Yes.

- You know, it's so thin, and you know, sometimes you wanna take it off, sometimes you don't.

- A little shallot or onion.

So shallots are definitely the more traditional ingredient.

But today we have a little white, sweet onion.

Throwing that in there.

We're gonna do a little bit of garlic.

That's about 10 cloves of garlic.

If garlic is not your jam, pull back on the garlic a little bit.

And then I went ahead and minced, and it could be, I know it's kind of weird putting something minced into a blender 'cause you're like, "That's what a blender does, Julia."

But if you don't take lemon grass down a little bit before blending it, what you'll end up with is a whole bunch of hair.

And like, your blender will be kind of yelling at you, and you'd be like, why?

And it's because it's just spinning around the base.

Lemon grass is extremely fibrous.

- Yes, it is.

- Ditch that guy in there.

All right.

Further cool things that are happening in here, Kaffir lime.

So I was bragging to Pamela before we started that we have a really cool lady who's growing like local Kaffir limes.

They are not cheap, but they are totally worth it.

And if you can get them fresh, you will notice the difference.

Just super aromatic, punchy, gorgeous, almost citrusy.

Just lovely.

Six of those.

- That was really one of the key secrets to some of these really good Thai dishes too is having that lime.

It's so good.

- And I'm doing the same thing right here, right?

So we could be using ground coriander, but we're using whole coriander because it will be punchier.

It will be more aromatic, and I'm actually not gonna use all those.

I'm gonna use most of them.

- And those of you who don't know, coriander seeds come from the cilantro plant.

And so you've got two things from one plant.

You've got coriander and you have cilantro.

- Yes.

I like to add a little bit of turmeric into my curry paste.

This is not essential but it is an anti-inflammatory and it's just like kind of a health-boosting ingredient and it kind of fades right in there.

She can kind of get your daily dose of turmeric this way.

- And does it do anything to the color?

I mean, a lot of times it adds some color to curry.

- Yes.

It'll help the green pop.

- Yeah, okay, good.

Green pop, yes.

- I like to get fancy with my salt and I use a little bit of smoked salt.

Up to you.

Regular salt's totally fine.

- [Pamela] Now do you smoke your own salt?

- I don't.

Cheating, cheating again.

(both laughing) But I'd like to.

I've never experimented with that, Pamela.

I'd like to.

- We've done that in class sometimes is smoke some salt.

It comes off pretty well.

It's actually quite amazing.

You gotta have it chunky enough though.

- Yes.

That makes sense.

- All right.

So you need some green stuff next.

- Ma'am.

- So green stuff.

- And just for the kicks, we're gonna add a little bit more Kaffir lime.

We love Kaffir lime.

We both love Kaffir lime, we're just doing it.

Okay, it's crazy town over here.

This is our mint cilantro, same rule as the lemongrass.

You can definitely throw an entire, like, handful of sprigs into the blender.

It will blend more easily if you mince first.

- And that includes the stalks and stems and everything.

So you don't just have to pick the leaves off.

- Correct.

And so here we are to the point where we're using a pepper.

So this is a mild green curry paste.

And the reason that you know that is because we're not using any chili peppers in the making of this paste.

We are using this bowl of just regular standard green pepper.

It's been chopped.

If you're a hot head, and I am, but I didn't want to like.

fry us today.

Go ahead and cut, I don't know, a quarter, a half of the volume of your green pepper in this recipe into jalapeno.

Bring some super spicy chilies in.

That's how you adjust the mildness to the heat of this curry paste.

- So you could use habaneros or Scotch bonnets.

- You could go crazy.

- [Pamela] Even those ghost peppers that are grown in South Carolina for some real extreme heat.

- I would love to eat a Thai curry made with ghost pepper.

Like, one bite, and that's it.

- I look at a ghost pepper and run.

Those things are strong.

- They can get you.

Okay, so no liquid.

Weird, right?

That's because so many of the vegetables in here carry so much liquid that we're not gonna really need any.

Or that's the theory.

- And we're making a paste, not a liquid.

- Right.

We don't want to make a sauce here.

We want to make something that we add to a sauce, sort of a condensed flavor.

- And that's next.

- Yes.

- Yay.

- So let's get this guy blended.

- That's such a gorgeous color, look at that.

- It looks like spring.

It's so vibrant.

- Oh my goodness.

That's a gorgeous.

- Great.

So you can see, oh my gosh, it smells so good.

- I bet it does.

It hasn't reached this part of the kitchen yet.

- Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, beautiful, fresh.

Okay, really did not take me very long.

So you want it pretty smooth.

If you were doing this in a mortar and pestle, probably wouldn't get this far, right?

But it would still be delicious.

So yeah, just nice and pureed A similar, you know, sort of a homogenous color, okay?

- Smells so good.

- There's nothing you can buy canned that will smell like that.

- No, no.

You can't buy that.

That is awesome.

- Okay, so next we have to make a curry sauce out of that.

- We're basically just gonna add a little bit of fat to our pan, okay?

Saute our curry paste, and then we're just gonna add coconut milk and call it a day.

- Why do you saute the curry paste a little bit?

- You want to break down some of those raw aromatics and have it be a little less harsh.

Remember all of that garlic that we put in there and all of that ginger?

So to the palate, those can be really, really, really strong, and we want them there, right?

We definitely want our aromatics present, but we don't want them, like the garlic and the ginger, overwhelm.

So this will kind of help break it down a tiny bit.

- So how much of the curry paste are you gonna put in there?

- That's a great question.

- Are you gonna put all of it in there?

I'm not, I'm gonna probably pour about half of this, and the thing about making curry paste, it'll stay for a very long time.

And you can always freeze it.

- Will it stay green?

- It'll stay green for awhile, but probably not permanently.

If you freeze it it definitely comes back to olive.

But yeah, you can make more than you need, freeze it, really easy.

It's still more flavorsome than buying canned, for sure.

But yeah, we don't need quite all of this.

Remember, we added a fair amount of salt to it, so we don't need quite all of it, but we are gonna put some.

And I put about 3/4 of a cup.

I love a green curry, so I definitely go probably a little overboard.

You want to base it on your personal palate.

It's definitely up to you.

You want to put that fat in the bottom of the pan so that it doesn't stick.

That's why we added a little bit of coconut oil.

- And once again, that's the coconut with the full flavor to it, because we're adding coconut milk.

- So much coconut.

Coco loco over here.

So just enough to take down that edge on that garlic.

And then we'll go ahead and add our coconut milk.

Now, you can leave it just like this.

This will be delicious, right?

This is tasty.

This is basically a quick curry sauce, you know, middle of the week, getting it done.

Now, I like to add a little bit of citrus.

So I like to add a little bit of lime.

And I like to add that, I was saying that secret to vegan umami, tamari, just to kind of bring the flavor of the sauce up a little bit, just to make it deeper and richer and bigger, okay?

- Soy sauce is one of those ingredients that really can add a great depth of flavor to dishes.

Even to salad dressings, for crying out loud.

It's really quite amazing when you add a little bit of soy sauce to something how much it can alter and enhance the flavor.

- So you want to be careful with how much tamari you add to this, though, because you don't want to take this to brown.

No, I mean, that would be, yeah.

I mean, that's why you have to be kind of deliberate about it.

- You want it to be one of those ingredients that people can't detect.

- Right, exactly.

I hide it in everything.

It's ridiculous.

- It's a good one to hide.

- For sure, for sure.

Now, if you are trying to stay away from soy, there are things in the market you can use instead.

Coconut aminos, you know, there are other, other soy sauce building methods applied to different, something other than soybeans, right?

Coconut, for instance.

There are some alternatives, but nothing's quite the same.

- Isn't that the truth?

You can have substitutes, but you know.

- It's not quite the same as tamari.

And I love it tomorrow because it's free from wheat and, you know, Nourish cooks very gluten-free.

So we definitely stick with tamari.

Now.

- So your company sticks to gluten-free cooking?

Oh, that's wonderful.

- Certified gluten-free kitchen.

- There you go.

Awesome.

- So I want to talk a little bit about anytime we're working with coconut milk, okay, we need to be a little bit careful.

So coconut milk wants to break.

- Yes.

- Yes.

So, and coconut milk, like any dairy-like substance, will break at high heat.

So you basically just want to take it right to the edge of the temperature that you'd like it.

If you simmer it for a long time, you'll see the fat break away from the liquids.

And it'll be very strange.

It's like when you pour milk into a hot cup of coffee and everything's this weird cloud, so just gotta be pretty careful about that.

So you can see the edges are simmering.

You can see that it's hot, pretty happy with that.

I'm probably just gonna cut the heat.

You know, you could take this further and do maybe some Kaffir lime and some lemongrass ahead of time before you put the coconut milk in, you know, but since we made our curry paste from scratch this is gonna taste amazing.

There's no way that it won't.

All right, so what can we do to make this even more special?

We can add a third element.

- And what's our third element?

- Coconut rice.

- Coconut rice!

- [Julia] The best rice ever.

- We have some coconut rice.

Now how would you make coconut rice?

- I know, I kind of cheated, you guys.

I'm sorry.

I went ahead and made this ahead of time but you just want to basically get a fresh rice.

In this case, we used jasmine.

You could use basmati, you could use regular long grain, and you basically just very carefully, either in a rice cooker or you can do it on the stovetop.

Just low heat, get everything in the pot, two parts water to one part coconut, and then one part rice.

And you basically just treat it like sushi rice, a very low simmer.

I like to add a little sugar to mine and a tiny bit of salt just to like pop up all those flavors.

- Well, the sugar would pop the coconut flavor a lot.

- Yeah, for sure.

For sure.

But it's super lovely.

You're reinforcing this coconut backdrop from here.

You've got that coconut flavor here, and I know it kind of sounds like we're going way too hard at coconut with this recipe.

- But it's not gonna be overwhelming.

It's gonna be just subtle and nice.

- That's the thing.

It's super nice.

- [Pamela] So are we ready to plate up these scallops?

- [Julia] I think we are.

- Okay.

You got your bowl?

- I do.

- All right.

Just come right on over here and show us how that's gonna get plated.

- For sure.

And you're probably gonna need some of these microgreens, aren't you?

- Yes.

Garnish is very important, especially if you're, you know, I mean, I'm sure you guys have like family members that are a little skeptical about your culinary forays.

So always remember if you make it look fancy, they're gonna be curious.

- Yeah.

You gotta make it look good, you know?

- You eat with your eyes first.

- Absolutely you do.

- So, you know, if you're plating, always a good idea, always a great technique is to kind of start asymmetrically.

If you want to make it look like a modern plating technique, bring the rice off to the side.

Don't just pile everything in the middle, right?

So I'm gonna get my rice just like that.

And then I'm gonna hold my bowl steady and just pour this lovely gravy, all right, this is basically Thai gravy, into the side that is not where the rice is.

- That looks so good.

- Right?

So we've got visuals.

We can see our rice.

We can see our gravy, right?

Our Thai gravy.

And then we're just gonna gently layer on, look at how beautiful and juicy that scallop is.

It's so great.

- [Pamela] Oh, look at that.

Oh, they're gorgeous.

- They're very nice.

- They're gorgeous.

- You put that little guy's edge right in there.

And then, like we said, eat with your eyes first.

So these are some little baby basils.

It's a really nice flavor with the coconut.

It's kinda Thai basil-y, which is definitely part of the Thai repertoire.

And you might just put a couple little green guys too just for kicks.

- That looks gorgeous, Julia.

- Thank you.

I'm very happy with that.

- That's gorgeous.

- This is definitely a date night meal.

- You know, there you go.

Company's coming, let's have scallops.

So we've got more to make with these mushrooms, though, don't we?

- I know, that was just the stalk of one.

- Yeah, right?

That was just the stalk of one.

I mean, look at these mushrooms that we have.

So next you're gonna show us how to do what we call pulled pork, but it's not pork at all.

It's mushroom.

- And better for you.

- And a whole lot better-tasting, I bet.

So now how do we do this?

- We're gonna get a little fancy and we're gonna smoke our mushrooms.

It's really easy.

I feel like it's one of these techniques that we kind of think of as really really fancy stuff, difficult to do, but you can do it in any old grill.

We're using indirect heat.

Super easy to do.

And really mushrooms are like that, right?

So if you were smoking pork, it might be an overnight process, but with mushrooms, because they're so fibrous and spongy, it's really more 10 minutes, 12 minutes, and then just, you know, got some notes on what kind of woods to use, but very easy to do.

Don't be intimidated, okay?

And then once we have them to this state, right?

- [Pamela] They look great.

- They're beautiful.

They're large.

Once again, the ones that you might get in the store might be a little bit smaller, but that's okay.

- [Pamela] So show us this technique, Julia.

- Yes, ma'am.

So you've got your beautiful whole smoked mushroom.

It's kind of difficult to do if you leave the cap on, we might, just like we did with the scallops, take the cap, the top, and the bottom off and kind of reserve those.

I like to mince these because when we're talking about meat substitutes, we want a variety of textures.

That's how we get them to be convincing.

- There we go.

But really the big piece of this technique is just getting your fork out and kind of going at it.

All right, so we're basically striating the protein with a fork, and you see how it's kinda coming apart?

- [Pamela] Oh, look at that.

- [Julia] Yeah.

- [Pamela] Huh.

That's pretty good.

- Yeah, so you're getting all these like, almost like string cheese a little bit, you know, it comes apart kind of fibrously.

You might break it up a little bit and, you know, with your hands and with your fingers, but you want that variety of textures.

If you're eating pulled pork, you're getting all these different shapes and textures.

- It's not all the same.

- Exactly.

You don't want it to be homogenous.

- [Pamela] I love that technique.

That's awesome.

- So we've got this nice little pile, right, of kind of striated pieces.

I might break a few up with my hands and then you might just put like a quick mince, right?

Just put a little dice on those guys.

You know, we don't want to waste them, you know?

And that variety of texture is key.

Great.

Super simple, super easy.

Right, right, right.

Okay.

So beautiful, beautiful.

We might get them in a bowl, marinate them a little bit.

So I like to use a little tamari or a little coconut aminos, you know, a little bit of nutritional yeast, a little bit of fat, right.

Get them in an oven, bake them about 20 minutes, pull them out.

And then you've got these beautiful very meaty-looking textured mushrooms, right?

So this is three caps of smoked mushroom that we baked a little bit in the oven, we'll include that marinade recipe.

They look good, they look nice, but they don't look like barbecue quite yet.

And that's because we have a finishing technique to apply.

So in this little skillet, I have a little bit of coconut oil, love that coconut oil.

And then two onions that have been thin-sliced and caramelized.

Once again, going for that textural difference.

We want those big, different shapes.

We want the shapes to be different in the mouth, the mouth feel to be really interesting when we're talking about meat substitutes.

So I'm going ahead and adding my smoked king oysters that have been baked, see how stringy that is?

- Gosh, that looks like pork.

- Yeah.

And you've already applied one level of vegan umami flavor by smoking them, right?

So we're just gonna kind of finish it.

All right, low heat.

There's a lot going on here.

We don't want to burn anybody.

We just want that caramelization.

We're mixing those beautiful caramelized onions, right?

That nice golden caramelization with our roasted mushrooms.

We're gonna turn the heat up a little.

- It's beautiful, Julia.

- Thank you.

It smells nice too.

- It really does smell great.

- Super savory, super delicious.

- It's amazing how much of the smoke flavor, I mean, there smoke aroma comes out when you start cooking them up and getting them nice and hot.

- Absolutely.

And you want to be careful when you're smoking.

Anything that's a vegan protein doesn't really stand up all that well to mesquite.

Some of our harder, more resinous woods really will overwhelm the flavors, as you can imagine, because they're so resinous.

So, so dense in flavor.

So, you know, use applewoods, things that are a little lighter, okay?

All right, so you can hear it simmering.

It's sounding really nice.

We've got a little homemade barbecue sauce here.

Now, this is a North Carolina barbecue sauce.

We've got a, like a vinegar base, a little bit of tomato, and a little bit of maple syrup.

And we're basically just using the residual heat from caramelizing those onions to reduce that barbecue sauce down and get it to coat our gorgeous protein.

You guys can see it's simmering nicely in there.

You're just kind of removing that water from the sauce and heating everything through really nice.

- Ooh, it smells so good.

- The smoking and the baking are what did the work in this recipe.

Great.

Smells nice.

- It really does.

- All right, so we're gonna move that off.

- So now that's ready.

- Yes.

That is ready to serve.

You can do sliders with that.

You know, we've got two different techniques.

We're actually gonna do a little bit of taco building.

- [Pamela] Why don't you do a little bit of a taco thing?

That looks fabulous.

- [Julia] Super good stuff, thank you.

- It smells amazing.

- And you can kind of do whatever you'd like.

I like a little pineapple sauce on here.

There's a whole bunch of fresh minced cilantro in there.

Some lime and some jalapeno, 'cause I like a little bit of kick to set off that flavor set.

You know, we've got a lot of sweet and umami going there.

So a little bit of heat's really beautiful on top of that.

- Why don't you put a slider right there, show him how to put a slider together.

- Great.

And the same protein, right?

You can use this for multiple things.

You can fold this into mac and cheese and it's delicious.

There's lots of things that we can with this recipe.

But this is just a little toasty slider bun, right?

Very simple.

We're gonna put a little bit of slaw, right.

And that's just a-- - [Pamela] Because barbecue pork is good with slaw.

- It is, it is.

And that's just a little bit of, you know, mayonnaise, very simple slaw, very simple Southern slaw.

And then we're just gonna put a little bit of our barbecue on top, darlings.

And that guys, is ready for a very safe picnic.

- Julia, this is really eye-opening.

And I really do hope that some of you guys out there will try some of these vegan recipes and not even think about it as being vegan, but think about it as being delicious and flavorful because that's what all of our meals should be.

You can find our recipes at pbscharlotte.org or you can send me an email, and my email address is pamela.roberts@cpcc.edu.

And I'd be happy to send you a copy of the recipes.

Don't shy away from this, guys.

Find you local mushroom purveyor, and go get some trumpet mushrooms, go get some beautiful oyster mushrooms and make these, and then write to me and tell me and tell Julia too, 'cause I can get back in touch with her, how delicious these are.

So thank you for watching this episode of "Charlotte Cooks" and we'll catch you next time.

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