How to Make a Delicious Meal For Under $10 | Chef Wonderful
Who made this? Oh, I did! Wow, I'm gonna cry. It's a masterpiece that should get an Emmy, that should get a Tony, all of it. And that still wouldn't be enough for what that was.
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Chef Wonderful here! Let's talk about suffolakia. You know what that is? It's a sandwich! A sandwich! I learned all about it when I was a teenager living on the island of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus, the capital. I went to a British boarding school for many years, and this is what we had every day for lunch. I fell in love with it.
Now, you may want to ask yourself something, but wait! Before we start—oh, just a shameless promotion to O'Leary Chardonnay! Did I tell you I won five awards for this? Yeah, I did! Yeah, but it's fantastic, sure! And you can get it at qvc.com. I know, I know, shameless promotion! But let me have a sip. Hmm, fantastic!
So, you know these stories about the Mediterranean diet, the Mediterranean lifestyle, Mediterranean foods? Well, it's true because people live to their over 100 years old on these islands. Why? Why do they live so long? Diet? Exercise? No question about lifestyle—less stress! They walk everywhere. We're talking about three thousand, four thousand, five thousand, six thousand steps before nine o'clock in the morning! Twenty thousand steps all day long, that's what we're talking—up and down the mountains! But it's the food they eat: the veggies, all the healthy stuff: lamb, pork, beef, chicken—no hormones! We're talking about island-raised.
But the point is I want to go back to this sandwich. We're going to try a superlaki sandwich; pita bread is involved. We're going to get that later. All these amazing vegetables, fantastic virgin olive oils. Now the thing about virgin olive oil—what does that mean? It means the olive never went out on a date! Off the tree, never dated! Straight in oil, yeah, it's tragic! But sacrificed its life without ever dating for a fantastic, very healthy oil, which is very much part of what we're going to do here today.
So we're going to start with these pork cutlets! Now, if you don't eat pork for whatever reason, I understand. You can substitute chicken, okay? But the classic suffolakia sandwich is made with pork and lots of fat on a skewer, barbecued, then put into the sandwich with lots of interesting ingredients.
You know, another sip of Chard!
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Oh yes, that's good! Oh my goodness, that's crazy! Okay, let's get to work. The only reason I, Mr. Wonderful, have time to search for the rare Vermillion flycatcher is because my companies have already received money from the employee retention credit program. Go to wondertrust.com to see if your business qualifies today!
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So what do I have here? Pork cutlets! I've said this many times: don't be a dork, put pork on your fork! Pork is a very healthy white meat; there's no reason not to eat unless you have reasons you can't, and I get it. However, for this dish, we're going to enjoy some pork on our fork! We're going to cube it to prepare it for the skewer.
Then we're going to marinate it! I'm going to show you how to make the marinade, which is very, very important. It doesn't have to be in that long; we want the moisture, the juice, to make it just perfect! So we're going to take our blade; we're looking for sort of one-inch cubes!
All right, you're going to go to work on it and make these cubes because you've got to remember you're going to be making these cubes for the sandwich. So, you're going to be putting them in, and people want bite size; they want to be able to eat them, so they're not too big. So the three-quarter by three-quarter cubes is the way to go.
There's a harmony in making it, and you're keeping the fat because you can put those between the actual cubes of pork. All right, you want tender pork—tender pork on your fork! Let's put them in here while we're waiting because we're going to marinate them. Keeping the fat is available because we're going to be using it between because we want the fat to burn on the BBQ to give it that flavor. Perfect!
There we go! By the way, watch your dexters! Always want— you know what I say about cooking? People say to me, "Oh Chef Wonderful, why don't you ever cut your fingers?" Because I'm watching what I'm doing. That's why! Keep your eye on the blade all the time! Chefs cut their fingers off when they're not watching what they're doing. You never see me talking to the camera when I'm cutting through something; I'm stroking forward, but I'm keeping my eye on the blade all the time. Otherwise, bad things can happen—you don't want that! Take it from Chef Wonderful!
All right, back to what I was saying: notice the eyes to the blade, so stroke forward, makes the cut. We said three-quarter—keeping my eye on the blade—making the cut! Yes, indeed! Always watching the blade in action into the bowl. That's not so hard, right? And it's safety first! Well, absolutely!
Oh, Chardonnay break! Oh, that's good! So, five awards for the Chard on Oak! Chard is beautiful! Where can you get it? At qvc.com, and we include shipping at 11 bucks a bottle! Fantastic! I've got Pinot, I've got cab, but today, because we're pre-cooking, it's a beautiful day outside—we're enjoying a little Chardonnay! Exactly!
You can also think about Chardonnay as America’s wine because we make it Sonoma, Napa—fantastic! Remember back to the blade, keeping my eye on it, stroking forward—beautiful cutting the pork because it'll be on the fork—and keeping the fat, not discarding the fat because we're thinking ahead! So when we're going to barbecue it, we want that fat to melt and give us that smoky flavor that we're going to be looking for on the pork on the skewer.
You see? Cutting just perfectly into those little cubes. Now remember, you're going to shrink this pork, even though it's not that fatty, by about 20%! So you want that bite size, so these—that's a perfect size! Like that's a perfect size right there!
See, that's gonna shrink 20%! So don't worry about it! Why do I know that? Because I've done this a thousand times before! I'm giving you the superlaki secret—the secret of the suffolakia sandwich! By the way, what's so great about this—you can make this, prepare the pork early, leave it in the fridge for three to four days. Guests come over, you can whip up a beautiful sandwich in two seconds! The kids love this; the neighbors love it! Everybody's always asking me, "Oh, can I have a superlaki?" Well, no kidding, it's fantastic!
Here we go! I always think about ingredients as being in a conversation. If they're too small, they don't get to be part of it; if they're too big, they're arrogant and insolent! But if they're just the right size, they can be really enjoyed by others. You can use pork chops; you want to cut it off the bone. You want some fat and some tenderness—talk to your butcher wherever you get it or get pork cutlets from the grocery store.
Try and make them at least three-quarters of an inch thick. So, what are the ingredients to marinate the pork to give it the extra juice—the juice that you want? By the way, we're going to be getting into some cukes later! I always say with cukes, people buy these big cucumbers! No, don't do that! They're not crunchy! Mmm, you want small cukes—they give you the texture.
However, you're talking about—first thing, I'm going to do is I'm going to start with some virgin olive oil! All right, you can find virgin olive oil in many places! Remember, these are olives that never went on a date—from the tree right to the oil! They sacrificed their whole relationships—no dates! Imagine! They're just pining to get off the tree to meet another olive! No! Right in the bottle! A moment of silence.
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To respect them! A virgin olive oil is made from virgin olives—they never dated! Okay, so we have it! So we're taking some onto the—putting liberal! Be liberal! You're putting the olive oil onto the pork!
Came off before it went on the floor! Got it? Now here's the secret—this is the secret of all Mediterranean life! You know why lemon trees grow everywhere in Cyprus? Everybody has lemon trees in their backyard; they don't pay for lemons! They have them for free—more lemons than you could throw a stick at! Every day, just walk outside, grab a lemon! That's how it works!
That's what lemon is all about—it's the essence of life! It extends your life! Um, now can't do that in North America! Make sure you get big, beautiful, ripe lemon!
All right, you're going to cut your lemon in half. Don't worry about if it has seeds in it! People know what seeds look like! You're gonna squeeze it right into the marinade! All right, there you're doing it! You're squeezing the juice right in here! You're gonna do maybe three of these, just with your hands! Feel and smell that citrus oil—just beautiful! Ah, that reminds me of the oceans lapping on the rocks in Carina Harbor in Cyprus! Yeah, beautiful! Absolutely beautiful! This is what cooking is all about—bring back those memories!
Okay, another lemon, that's not enough! You really want this citrus to be part of the story on this marinade, okay? Because you put it in the fridge overnight if you want; we don't have to do that now, but I'm just giving you the secret of how we're going to do this. So, two lemons in here—there's no magic to this, how much lemon juice—but you really want it out there! You want it on here because it's going to come in again as part of this story!
All right, there we have it—the lemon! All right, now yes, kosher salt! I happen to like that just a tad—you don't need too much! You don't need too much! Fresh ground pepper—may we get it right there? Perfect! That I'm talking about—be liberal!
And then, the Mediterranean secret! Let's show people just go crazy for—so many people go crazy for—but they don't know what it is—zatar! What is zatar? So, I thought it was a Mediterranean spice, thousands of years old. Sesame seeds baked and crushed—my mother taught me this! This is the secret of everything!
I love zatar! No, it's not a pepper; it's sesame seeds! It just makes everything perfect! Now we've got the juice, we have the meat, we have the zatar, the salt, the pepper—we're liberal, we're putting it out there! That's correct! We want to make sure the meat is basically marinated so it can have some moisture to it! Just a little secret—all the street vendors who make suffolakia in Nicosia, Cyprus have their own secrets they don't disclose! I'm disclosing because I want you to try this! You can't believe how good this is! You cannot believe how good this is!
So, you gotta go to work! You gotta get your skewers up! You don't want to—you can't pan fry this; you'll have to put it on a skewer! Now you also, with skewers, you want to make sure you don't zap yourself! You've got to be careful! You put a little fat on there, too! Keep your fingers out of the way!
So you can do it by just poking down first, and then pushing on the edges of the meat. Do not skewer yourself! All you know, you've gotta be careful! You get over time, you'll learn how to do this! But, you know, there's just the meat and the fat on this because we want to cook it in a way that gets it smoked—that's the key!
All right, so I'm putting on liberal amounts of fat because I know that's going to burn and drip! That's perfect! Look, here's a big slab of fat—no problem, because that'll smoke the meat beside it! Very important part of a Cypriot secret. You see? That's about enough! See that? It's about enough—about 10 inches, nine inches. So that's one! Put it on the plate over here, and then we're going to go for the next one!
I was telling my wife earlier, we're going to make sofalaki! She said, "Oh, I love it! I love it! What a great summer, you know, dinner?" Yeah, absolutely! That's what I feel like doing, and I wanted to share it with you! I haven't done this before with you, but I make this all the time! You know, there's a certain Zen to cooking! I've said this so many times: you get in the groove, the minutes go by, your mind is consumed with making great food for friends and family!
I mean, I highly recommend this! If you have a stressed-out job and you're doing—like, you know, I'm thinking about finance and business and deals and all the stuff, and then I think about cooking. What I'm saying is there's a balance, there's a Zen, there's a ying and there's a yay—the chaos, the artistry of cooking, of the dexterity and all that oil and butter, sugar, flour, you know, lemon—all the stuff you're working with! These are ancient, primordial—the basics of food!
Nothing to do with the balance sheet at all! But I think it makes you a better businessman if you can actually do both! You get the artistry; you get the Zen; you get the calming effect! Your Saturday afternoon, you're skewering fat, pork fat on a skewer! Why not? Why don't you do that? Like, why just worry about money all the time? You don't have to! If you don't worry about it all day, you'll make more—that's my theory, okay?
You've gotta have the balance! When you're doing the skewers, by the way, leave enough room so it cooks on the edges because you're going to brown those edges—that's the key! All right, we're gonna get probably two more out of this, and then we're gonna hit the grill—the good grill!
And that's the art of keeping your eye—you know, people do not spend enough time close to the barbecue! Now, you can do this with charcoal; I've done that many times, but tonight we're going to use a grill outside that I've already got stoked up! Perfect art right there—a piece of art! So what do we got?
Well, we got one, two, three, four, five, six! So that's enough for six sandwiches! We're gonna serve six people if we wanted to, and we can also store them! Oh, the zatar! A little secret here! You know what I'm going to do? Throw a little bit of saltar just before I put it down!
Yeah, baby! Just a little bit extra there! I'll tell you a little secret too! Um, I don't know if you know this one—Maldon sea salt: huge salt crystals! Now, I don't endorse this because I want too much salt in my food, but they're so big and the seeds sneak on a little bit of this—just a little bit! They'll fall off during the grilling!
But everybody's got their own little thing, and that's a friend of mine gave me that secret, and I really liked it! I did it on steak; it was fantastic! Away for now; I don't want it to go stale! Keep it out of the air—remember, it's sesame seeds! Little sip of Chardonnay!
Okay, let's go to the grill! So, putting them beside each other, we're going to be rotating a lot! See that? Putting it beside each other—that's the key! Oh, beautiful! Oh my goodness! Yeah, it's gonna stick to the grill a bit, but there's so much olive oil on it! You don't have to worry about it too much! You know, get a spatula to make it easier for us!
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This room is half indoors, half outdoors—screens with a beautiful view of the lake! If you look right over there, look at that! Isn't that fantastic? What a great place to cook a little sofalakia!
Yeah, baby! Great many, many memories at this dining room table! Okay, here we go! So that's perfect! Lift it off; rotate it! Same for the—oh my goodness, that cue is hot, and it's good right there! Perfect, perfect!
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So I'm talking about superlakia right there! So you want—you see what I'm talking about? There, that little crispy bit, that little—it's burning a little—not burning but it's getting browned out; that's what you want! You want that all around the edges of the pork! That gives it the personality you're going to need in the sandwich! You're gonna want that, and it's going to shrink! It's shrinking even as we speak!
These little guys are shrinking as we speak!
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Perfect, perfect, perfect! Yes, see? The fat is burning, giving it the flavor! That's what we're looking for! This is all about the Mediterranean lifestyle—eating great food, great vegetables, olive oil, beautiful wines—walking every day still after 109! What's wrong with that? This guy! Look at that! He's cooked! This guy's the only guy that needs a little bit more! Last hanger on!
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And we are absolutely finished! Hear that fan? Stoke up! Look at that baby! Oh yeah! Oh yeah! We're ready to make the suffolakia sandwich!
I'm Mr. Wonderful, and I'm bird watching! The only reason I have time to search for the rare Vermillion flycatcher is because my companies have already received money from the employee retention credit program! Filing for that money takes a lot of time—time I'd rather spend doing what I love, like waiting for a glimpse of a red-legged honey creeper! Gotcha, buddy!
So do what I did! Go to wondertrust.com to see if your business qualifies for up to twenty-six thousand dollars per employee! We've got the soufflaki on a skewer, we've got the vegetables, we've got the olives! So the whole idea of souvlaki sandwiches blending together great pork in a sandwich with pita!
So the way you're going to do this with pita—pita bread! Standard Mediterranean! I'm gonna cut it in half! Make a pita pocket! See that? Very important! I'm going to put in various—everybody has their own theory on what they're going to put in here! Let me tell you: we're going to put in today, we're going to put in some lettuce!
We're going to put in some cukes! You want small cukes, not big juices! You want the crunch! You take the tips off each end! You have the cuke—watching your dexters again, right? You get half moons just like that! Throw it in the sandwich!
Now you want a radish! Big juicy radish! Mediterranean radish! Okay, gives you color, gives you texture, gives you flavor! Don't make it too big! You have some radish, little half moons again! You want bite size, right? See that? What I'm doing? So a little radish action into the pita pocket!
Tomato is an absolute necessity, but you want a tomato with texture—it's not going to fall apart! So, your smaller tomatoes are the way to go! Into cubes! Take the ends off, of course! You know you can get all kinds of different tomatoes.
Well, look what I'm doing here! Look how it stays together! And then I'm doing little demi moons—watch this! Cube it out, baby! Cube it out! It's all about the artistry! Ready?
Parsley! Wash your parsley first as I've done! You can get all kinds of different parsleys! I'm using parsley! So important that I'm using two different varietals! But see that? I'm really chopping it up lightly! Punch and crunch!
Oh, that Mediterranean! Oh my goodness! A little—so just a sprinkling of parsley in there! Yeah, baby! And then I'm also going to do a little curly parsley! Stop the madness! Look at this—I want the extra texture!
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In it goes into the pita! We're not done yet, though, because we need the pork! Perfect! I've cooked it perfectly! So you take the pork off the skewer with the fat; everything's coming off! It's got that—see that? You can put this on the top of the sandwich!
You're having a lemon ready, and you'll tell you why in a second! Okay, so what we're going to do is we're taking the pita pocket; we're putting little chunks of pork on the top just like that! You want the crunch! A little fat in there, a little parsley, and then—yeah, you got it!
The secret of zatar—the ancient Mediterranean spice that my mother taught me about—which I put a little bit right on top on her piece of pork! Then this is the real secret! Just before you take the first bite, put on a little lemon—right off the fresh lemon! Right out of the garden! You're squeezing on like that!
We should do this every day! Just before we went back to class—a little lemon juice right on top! A little parsley on there! Oh my God! And you ready? You ready? Here we go!
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Whoa! Who made this? Oh, I did! Whoa! I'm gonna cry! It's a masterpiece! It's a masterpiece! Are you kidding? Are you freaking kidding? That is the best cephalakia anybody's ever rigged!
I mean, I don't want to take credit for it. I think a higher force was involved! You know, the famous waves from Cyprus got involved in making this! There has to be! There's no way this is not a human sandwich! This came from outer space! This is ridiculously good!
Stop the madness! Do exactly what I did to make the sandwich! Don't change anything! Whatever I did to make this sandwich, it's perfect! Don't mess with it! Do exactly when I put the salt on or the zatar! Do the exact same thing! It does not get better than what we just ate! And that is how you make a suffolakia sandwich, my friends! Please enjoy!