♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Kimball: You know, every holiday, most of us make mashed potatoes.

But when I was in Paris recently at a restaurant called L’Office with Chef Julia, she showed me an approach that violated everything I believe, my dear beliefs about mashed potatoes.

She bakes them whole in the skin on a bed of salt.

She wants them super dry.

Then, instead of adding butter to them, she adds warm cream until she beats the heck out of them with a whisk.

And finally, she adds, not melted butter, but cold butter at the end and whisked that.

So she just beats it and beats it and beats it.

And what do you get?

You get a super fine puree that has wonderful flavor and actually wonderful texture.

Who knew?

So for the holidays, let's go to Paris to L’Office and we'll show you how to do French mashed potatoes.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Speaking French ] ♪♪ [ Speaking French ] ♪♪ [ Speaking French ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Borge: This holiday season, we aim to change the way you cook your holiday roast with the reverse sear method that makes for a stress free, fail safe way to cook the roast to the exact temperature you want it.

If you're familiar with our reverse sear steak method, you'll know that we start out the cooking at a very low temperature to begin with, and then at the very end, we raise the heat to get a nice browned crust on it.

And that's why we call it the reverse sear.

It works fabulous for an individual steak, but we discovered it works equally well for a large roast.

We're working with a pork loin roast today.

This is large enough to serve about eight people.

We're going to start by putting a dry rub on the roast, which gives it an incredibly flavorful crust.

You can use any spices you like, but we love this combination of fennel seeds and coriander, and a little bit of smoked paprika, and of course, a little bit of salt and pepper.

We'll stir it together.

This roast has been sitting out about an hour.

You want it to come to room temperature, because the oven is set for only 250 degrees, and a room temperature roast will cook through a little more evenly.

Put all the spices right on top.

We want to spread it all over the sides and the underside.

I love using parchment for this.

Roll it around and get those spices evenly adhered.

We created a really delicious shallot and pear sauce to go with this roast.

And the great thing about it is it cooks right on the same sheet pan as the roast.

No extra pan needed at all.

We start with a pound of shallots cut into wedges.

We have about a tablespoon of oil on them.

These are going to go in the sheet pan and go into the oven at the same time as the roast.

Then we will use a rack to put the roast on.

You want to put it fat side up.

This goes into the oven just like this 250 degrees, low and slow.

And that's how the reverse sear method starts.

We're going to cook the inside of it first thoroughly all the way through.

Then raise the heat and give it a nice browning on the outside at the very end of cooking.

This stays in the oven for about one and a quarter to one and three quarters hour.

You want the internal temperature to reach about 125 degrees at this stage.

This method frees you up to focus on the rest of the meal without stressing out about the main course.

That is lovely.

Now I need to raise the oven heat to 450 degrees.

So now it's time to add the pears to the sheet tray along with the shallots.

We'll just take this off for a minute.

These are beautiful Bosc pears.

Add them to the bowl.

This is the same bowl we used for the shallots by the way.

Didn't even have to wash it.

We'll add some golden raisins.

Regular raisins are fine too, if that's what you have.

Currants are delicious, also.

A little bit of water.

And this is sherry vinegar.

If you don't have sherry vinegar, by all means use a really nice wine vinegar or even a balsamic vinegar mixed with a wine vinegar is a nice option.

And then a nice big sprig of rosemary.

We're going to leave this whole because we're going to take it out later.

Put that in, toss it together, and then we'll add a little bit of oil to this as well.

So we've almost got like an oil and vinegar dressing on these pears.

It's delicious.

Once everything is tossed and nicely moistened, then we'll add a little bit of salt and pepper.

This way the salt and pepper just sort of sticks very nicely.

One last toss.

To give the pears a chance to get a little bit of brown, we're going to put them on the outside of the sheet tray right alongside the shallots.

Then we'll take all this delicious dressing, pour it right over the middle, and then just drop that rosemary right on top there.

Return the roast to the pan.

Now this will go back into the oven at 450 degrees.

And that's the sear portion of this method.

During that time they'll get a nice darkened crust on the roast.

These spices will turn into a firm, crispy surface and the roast will get a little bit brown on the outside, and that takes about 20 to 25 minutes.

The internal temperature at that point should be between 130 and 135.

♪♪ This is one pretty roast.

All right.

Now we're going to let this rest right on the cutting board where we'll carve it on later in about 20 minutes or so.

Move the rack.

You can take the rosemary off.

Give these just a little stir.

See how the edges are starting to get brown?

This is exactly what you want.

The pears and the shallots go back into the oven for about five to eight minutes.

The roast, meanwhile, is sitting and resting, and we're going to tent it very lightly with a little bit of foil.

We'll just tent it like that and let it sit over there loosely.

Now, when these come out of the oven, we'll mix in a little bit of whole grain mustard, a little water to make a delicious sauce.

We'll just sit here and stir and let the whole thing get heated up.

This is so pretty.

All right, we have our platter waiting.

The roast has been sitting and resting just about ready.

You can plate this however you want, obviously, but we really love putting the pears and the shallots on the platter first, and then laying the sliced meat out on top.

It just makes a beautiful presentation.

Oh, there we go.

You'll see.

Beautiful.

Very tender and delicate.

There could be a lot of stress around the holidays when you're making a centerpiece roast to feed a lot of people.

People do tend to have a lot of expectations this time of year.

This method, we hope, will convince you to change the way you cook your holiday roast.

It is a fail safe method, stress free for the most part, and is guaranteed to give you a beautiful roast.

You can see that putting this down on your holiday table in front of your guests is going to elicit some oohs and ahs, and for good reason.

Oh, I'm just going to take a little bit of this right now.

Now the shallots and pears have absorbed that delicious juices from the vinegar, mustard, and a little bit of water.

All those flavors mingle together beautifully during that long and slow roast.

This is an intense knockout flavor combination that really is very special.

Look at the meat when you slice it.

It is juicy and tender all the way through from end to end.

And that is due to the reverse sear method of cooking.

Low and slow in the beginning, fast and hot at the end.

And that is how you change the way you cook your holiday roast.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Gill: If you treat your vegetables like meat this holiday season, and we mean that literally, then they can take center stage.

We're going to make tandoori roasted carrots.

We use a yogurt marinade to adhere flavor to the outside while we roast them to a beautiful golden brown.

So for this recipe, you want to get nice carrots with the tops still on.

Scrub your carrots well, but you don't need to peel them.

And then for the best flavor development, we want surface area.

So this is a roly poly carrot.

It's got rounded edges which means it doesn't lay flat on the sheet tray.

But when we cut it at a steep bias and use this yogurt marinade, we're going to maximize the amount of flavor we create.

I do like to cut off the root ends so it doesn't burn.

We'll let these rest while we make our marinade.

So we're going to use our spices in two steps.

We're going to save some for later.

So just remember don't put all of it into our yogurt.

So first we'll start with the spices.

So we're using garam masala, fennel, and turmeric, because we're inspired by the flavors of India, where sort of tandoori cooking is really prevalent.

However, for the holidays you want to think about the flavors already on your table.

So, for example, the pork loin you just saw, it has fennel and paprika.

You might want to use those in this spice mix to sort of tie these two dishes together.

Really, this is a template for making the most delicious roasted carrots you've ever had.

Mix this together.

Okay, so I'm going to save about four teaspoons of the spice mix to go in our marinade.

We're saving this little bit of spice for a spice butter that we're going to use later to tie it all together.

Make it really special.

To the spices in the bowl, we're going to add in some Greek, so thick yogurt.

So we just want to mix this together.

Okay, and then before my hands are dirty, I'm going to prep the pan.

You just want to spray it.

We want the flavor on the carrots, not the sheet tray.

Usually we toss vegetables in a bowl, but we have these beautiful long bias cut carrots and they don't fit in a bowl.

So I just use a larger platter or plate.

You could even use another sheet tray.

Just don't use the sheet tray you're going to bake on, because that extra yogurt will burn because we're going to roast these at 500 degrees.

Get all the yogurt in here.

It didn't look like much marinade, but you can see it's easily coating all of the carrots.

And then what I like to do is make sure when I put them on the sheet tray, I put them cut side down.

That's the part that gets all the deep browning, right?

They don't have to be lined up like little soldiers, but they do want space around them.

All right, let me wash my hands and I'll be right back.

All right, so very easy prep, and they're ready to go into the oven.

High heat, 500 degrees.

So why such high heat?

Tandoor ovens are extremely hot, way beyond 500 degrees.

So we're trying to mimic that.

And that heat is going to caramelize the sugars in the yogurt.

So we get an extra layer of flavor.

It's also going to sort of suck the yogurt onto the carrots.

So all the flavor is stuck on them.

It's like this beautiful spiced crust with the luscious carrots underneath.

♪♪ The carrots are almost done.

And if it were a normal Tuesday night, I would just eat them as is.

But it's the holidays, so we want to gild the lily, make these extra special, and we're going to do that by making a spiced butter.

While the pan is still cool, I'm going to add the butter because I want it to melt slowly.

I don't want to burn anything.

And then once it's melted, I'm going to add shallot and garlic.

We don't want them to hit a really hot pan.

We want to develop some sweetness, but we also want to keep some of the pungency of the shallot, because that's going to counterbalance how sweet we get these carrots when we roast them.

Garlic burns super fast.

So we want to make sure that the pan is not too hot again.

So we get a lovely sweet flavor out of the garlic, but not something too acrid.

This spice butter is definitely a recipe within a recipe.

You don't need to only make this when you're roasting these carrots.

I might finish a lentil soup, other roasted vegetables, a roast chicken, some fish, almost anything with a spice butter and it instantaneously elevates it.

So I've got a little browning on my shallots.

My spices go into that cooler pan so they have the time to develop flavor.

And immediately, this smells amazing.

Do stir it constantly.

Again, spices burn quickly, especially ground spices.

If it were just whole spices, you'd have a little more leeway.

So you can think about that.

You also get nice texture.

I love that we have the fennel seeds in here because they're actually going to provide a little crunch.

So I'm going to turn the heat off and we're just going to let it rest and wait until our carrots come out of the oven in just a second.

Look at these carrots.

See how the yogurt has really created this spice crust?

That is why we use it as the marinade.

I can see little fennel seeds in there and all that beautiful browning in some places charring.

It's got such depth of flavor.

We're going to do more.

We're going to add this spice butter.

You want to add it right on to the sheet tray.

And then just toss them here.

Make sure they're glistening on all sides.

All right.

So now we want to plate these.

Get a couple at a time.

Put them in a nice pile.

Make them look sort of askew and beautiful.

To finish off, we're going to use some herbs to brighten and freshen, create a little contrast, as we are wont to do at Milk Street.

Match the herbs for what else you're serving with the meal on the holidays.

It doesn't have to be the mint and the cilantro.

You want the different dishes on the table to sort of speak to one another.

Because I don't actually have guests right now at a table.

I'm just going to taste this right off the platter.

I'm tasting the butter.

I'm tasting cilantro and it's delicious.

So because we rethought how to roast vegetables, no longer just salt and pepper for the holidays, we're treating them like meat and we're giving them a yogurt marinade and maximizing the amount of flavor and texture we can get out of them.

They get their star billing.

That's long overdue.

-Ysewijn: Hello, Milk Street, welcome in my kitchen here in Antwerp.

My name is Regula Ysewijn, and I'm going to talk to you about gingerbread today.

And first things first, we do not call gingerbread gingerbread in Belgium because ginger is not the main spice that we use in our gingerbread.

We have also different names for all of our different gingerbreads.

So on the one hand, we have this cake-like gingerbread or peperkoek or honey cake, as we call it.

And then on the other hand, we have biscuits.

We have different molds for all our biscuits.

So these ones are coming from this type of mold, which is rather modern.

This is 20th century.

But then we have this one, which is the Saint Nicholas mold.

Now, the story of Saint Nicholas is a gruesome one.

The legend goes that this holy man was passing a butchery shop, and he discovered that the butcher had imprisoned children, had cut them up and put them in pickling vats to sell in his butchery shop as pickled meat.

And he resurrected the children who you can see on the biscuit mold.

And because he saved the children, he became the patron saint of children.

And we all get these beautiful sweet treats and chocolates to celebrate him.

Now we've seen all these molds and all these different shapes of Belgian gingerbreads.

Let's make some of our own.

♪♪ ♪♪ Just work it a little bit.

♪♪ So if I have to pick a favorite from all the gingerbreads, I would say it's like choosing a favorite child because all of these gingerbreads, they are for different occasions.

These ones were used to ask someone to marry you, for example.

So these were very, very special cakes and biscuits.

And I think maybe we still feel the importance of it.

And also the spices, they warm you up.

And I think that's why we still love them all over the world.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Kimball: You know, gingerbread has been around for, I don't know, 5,000 years.

Ancient Greece, China, of course.

But ginger bread, which is also made, by the way, with bread cooked in honey and spices, is a different animal.

Now, Regula Ysewijn when you just saw her, has all these wonderful molds for gingerbread.

So you have kings and queens, et cetera.

Some of them are very large, but this is a ginger cake.

And the question is, can we add depth of flavor to this?

So it works as a one layer cake.

And can you actually taste the ginger?

Is it really a ginger cake?

This particular recipe comes from a friend of mine, Ana Sortun.

We found a recipe in one of her books that was similar to what we're doing here.

So how do we get started?

Well, obviously we have molasses.

Now, the dark stuff is no good 'cause that's gonna absolutely take over the entire recipe.

You want sort of a lighter molasses.

We have stout.

Guinness was actually a food and was sold as food and thought about as a food.

It was dinner.

If you were a coal miner, let's say in England, you were paid at the pub, that's where you got your check, right, or your cash.

So you go down to the pub, which they did after work, and their dinner was Guinness.

Some espresso powder, and we're going to bring that up.

Just get it to a simmer.

And then we're going to do one of those volcanic, you know, experiments like you did as a kid in sixth grade.

We're going to add the baking soda to it.

It's going to bubble up.

So make sure your saucepan is not small.

You want to have enough room for that bubbling.

Otherwise you'll have a indoor volcano, which is not really what you want.

In any baking, you want a chemical reaction where both sides kind of even out.

So we're trying to balance out the baking soda with the molasses here.

So we've got this up to a simmer.

It's off heat.

Bubbles up nicely.

Here we go.

So now we're just going to let that cool off.

The dry ingredients, let's just talk about this because this, this seems a little -- it's a walk on the wild side.

So we were really wanting to emphasize ginger.

How much ginger should we use?

Well, we tried a tablespoon and that wasn't enough.

And then two tablespoons.

We got up to a quarter cup of ground ginger, which sounds insane, but actually we needed that much because don't forget you've got molasses and you've got stout and some other things.

Cinnamon, nutmeg go in.

And we had baking soda there and we had baking powder here.

Salt, of course.

So those are the dry ingredients.

Now it's the classic eggs and sugar.

And we're going to beat them for a few minutes, incorporate some air.

And that's going to help with a lift here.

[ Mixer whirring ] So now it's nice and thick.

So we do that.

And you have to be a little patient because you want to incorporate as much air as possible, because that's going to be part of the lift.

We have baking soda, baking powder, now oil.

Oil does two things.

You get a moister cake and it stays moist longer.

Butter tends to be on the dry side.

So just incorporate this.

Now this mild tasting mixture.

The dry you don't want to add all at once because it'll clump.

In case you're wondering, you can smell the ginger.

So I'm going to give it one quick mix here.

And then I'm going to do maybe, you know, 20, 30 seconds sort of on medium just to do a final mix.

So butter and flour baking pan.

So 350 oven, you know, 45, 50 minutes, something like that.

So let's get it in the oven.

♪♪ So you might say we're done, but we're not done because we're going to like add more flavor on top.

So we have powdered sugar.

We have some more of the stout and we have molasses.

And we're just going to make a typical icing which is powdered sugar-based icing.

So the trick here is to create a coating on top that's not too runny so it's going to run off the sides, but it is eventually going to cover the top.

All right, so you have a fairly thick icing.

One of my favorite little gimmicks is a really short offset spatula.

You know the bigger ones can't get into a cake pan.

And finally, crystallized ginger.

So now it's time to wait 30 minutes until everything sets up nicely.

And then we'll see if we have that great depth of flavor that I promised at the beginning of this recipe.

Now tell me that doesn't look pretty tasty.

This is just one of the best -- I know I say this a lot, I apologize.

I don't apologize, this is one of the best recipes we've done in Milk Street.

This is really good!

It's what a really good dessert should be.

It's got a lot of things going on, a lot of different layers of flavor.

You know, gingerbread seems to be one of those sort of forgotten recipes from the past that nobody really cares about.

If you pay attention, right, and spend some time with it, you know, it's like, it's like having a pet dog, like you need to take care of it.

So we spent a lot of time on this.

And also thanks to Ana Sortun, this is just a tremendous cake and you don't need to serve it with anything else.

A cup of coffee, you're good to go.

Or a glass of Guinness.

This is absolutely fabulous.

So you guys can go watch something else now.

I'm going to finish this.

Mm.

This is absolutely fabulous.

So if you want a true gingerbread, something that really has ginger and molasses and stout, depth of flavor, great frosting, great bright taste with a crystal ginger on top, you might want to give this one a try.

So for this recipe, all of our holiday recipes, and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street, please go to MilkStreetTV.com -Kimball: Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com Along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and our tips and techniques library.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

-Announcer: The Season 10 Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show, from Brazilian cheese puffs and French toast to skillet lasagna and Japanese cheesecake, the new Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of The Milk Street Cookbook for 34.95, 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

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