where each week, you show me what you have in your kitchen

and I cook up a recipe to make your quarantine life

just a little bit tastier.

Oh yeah, that's good.

Let's do this.

(upbeat music)

If you're in a position to give,

please help Feeding America.

They're getting food out there to people

who really need it right now.

Okay, so I've received so many submissions,

which is incredibly touching.

- Hi, Antoni.

- Hey, Antoni.

- Hey, Antoni.

- The first one that really stood out to me

was this lovely young lady named Brenda.

- Hi, my name is Brenda,

and we need your help in the kitchen.

- So she's self-quarantined with her husband in Syracuse.

Brenda's a pharmacist.

Her husband is a physician working on the front lines

in the ER right now, which, hats off to him.

- If you could help us come up with something new

and fun and fresh to cook.

- I'm really excited to help her out.

Let's give her a call and see what we can do.

- Hi! - Hi!

- Hi, Antoni! - How's it going, Brenda?

- Good, how are you?

- You know, figuring it out like everybody else.

- Yeah, I know.

I'm just copped up in the house.

- So I was really touched by your video.

Are you the one providing meals for the family basically,

for you and your husband?

- I wanna say yes, but honestly,

he helps cook, too, when he's home, so he does a lot.

He's a very good husband.

We do cook a lot together,

but I'm trying to cook more often than I was before.

- Is your husband working longer hours than he usually does?

- Ever since COVID, they've pulled most of their residents

out from whatever rotation they were doing,

and they're just all focused on tending to COVID patients.

- Oh my gosh.

We have to find, like, little nuggets of

trying to figure out how to make the day special, you know?

Yeah.

So tell me what are some things that you have

in your fridge that you're just kind of,

either that you haven't touched

that've just been sitting there

or that you're using but you want new ways to work with.

Just show me what you're working with!

- [Brenda] I have eggs, crushed tomato sauce.

I have chicken sausage.

- Perfect, great.

And you have peppers there!

- [Brenda] Yeah.

- We could totally use those.

That's great.

- [Brenda] Onions, basil, garlic.

- Wait, what was the wildcard?

- [Brenda] Korean hot pepper paste.

It's spicy.

- Let's put that to use then.

Wait, have you ever had shakshuka?

- Is it an Indian dish?

No.

Yes, you don't know what it is, which makes me excited!

- I'm looking forward to seeing what we come up with.

- All right, bye, Brenda.

Thank you so much.

- Bye!

- Looks like we're making shakshuka.

Let's get started.

First I'm gonna go with my (speaking foreign language),

which is french for literally putting everything in place.

I wanna get all my components ready.

Okay, so I did my best to get the ingredients

that Brenda had.

So we have these little mini baby peppers,

which are really nice and sweet and awesome.

I think she had a red onion,

but I only found a yellow one,

so workin' with what we got.

Some garlic and precooked chicken sausage.

I have a can of whole tomatoes.

I didn't have the concentrated chili paste,

but I had a chili sambal oelek sauce,

and then some eggs, some fresh basil,

which she had, as well,

and I found a couple oranges laying around,

so I'm gonna add a little bit of zest just for fun,

but they're not necessary.

Brenda has precooked chicken sausages.

These are really great.

I like to have these, as well.

But if you have kielbasa, merguez, literally type

of sausage will do for this.

So you're just gonna cut these into slices.

So next up, the onion.

I only need about a half for this,

so I'm gonna save the other half and wrap it

in some Saran wrap and just keep it in the fridge.

Here's the thing about onions.

I keep them in a cool, dark spot,

the same way that I do with my tomatoes,

sweet potatoes, potatoes, and garlic.

They do not belong in a fridge

except when they've already been cut.

Then you have to put 'em in the fridge,

and I suggest using them max a day or two

and figuring out some way how to use them.

I wanna have nice, big chunks,

and I want my shakshuka

to be nicely texturized, if you will,

not just a word for hair.

So what I'm gonna do is hold the onion like this

and then make a little incision here and then cut through,

and what you're left with,

these beautiful little sections and nice little strands.

Next up, garlic.

I love garlic.

If you like a nice, little aggressive bite of garlic,

which I do, I'm gonna do little, thin garlic slices.

If you don't, you can shop it up as fine as you want.

People get intimidated by this sometimes

when I show it to them, but if you actually just leave

your knife nice and flat like this

with the sharp part pointing down

and just apply a bit of pressure with your hand,

the skin comes off really easily.

And now I'm just gonna cut these up

into thin, little slices.

And our last component, these adorable, little peppers.

You have regular bell peppers, green, yellow, orange,

or if you don't have any, you know what's really good?

The marinated ones, as well.

So in case you guys were wondering how the hell

we're getting a bird's eye view of me cutting peppers,

that's because Kevin is helping me.

Kevin came here for my birthday,

and then he was meant to go back to New York

when COVID really hit hard.

We both decided to stay here.

- Yeah, I'm definitely not stuck here.

- [Antoni] Not against his own will.

I didn't force him.

- I am being forced to film this, though, so.

- That's true.

- To be clear.

- Perfect.

So we have all our components ready.

Let's move on to the stove.

All right, let's make some shakshuka!

So first off, I have a pan on medium, medium-high heat.

I'm using just a regular aluminum pan.

I don't wanna use nonstick or anything with a plastic handle

because I will be putting it in the oven.

Gonna add some oil.

So I'm gonna put my chicken sausage in first.

The chicken sausage doesn't have to be cooked,

but I want to render a little bit of the fat

'cause I want there to be nice, little, crispy bits.

So I'm gonna put that in the pan first.

(sausage sizzles) And sizzle.

(sausage sizzles)

I should just let it sit there,

but I can't help myself.

I always have to fuss.

This is a beautiful, little piece.

See how nice and brown it is?

The sausage is ready, so I'm just gonna put it

in a little bowl, and even though chicken sausage

is really lean, there is a little bit of excess fat

that comes from cooking it.

You wanna leave that in the pan

'cause that's gonna flavor all our other components.

Add a little bit more oil.

And then I'm gonna put my onions in.

They're gonna take the longest to cook,

and you wanna cook your onions until they get nice

and translucent and clear, about five to six minutes.

I love the smell of onion when it cooks.

The only thing better than onion cooking

is onion and garlic cooking.

So if I have any big pieces, I wanna break 'em apart

so that we just have single little strands of the onion.

I like to season every step of the way.

(salt grinds)

See how you're getting all these crispy bits on the pan?

Don't worry about those.

There's so much flavor,

and when we add the tomato sauce,

which there's plenty of tomato juice in,

that's gonna deglaze.

So it's gonna get all those crispy bits,

and everything is gonna mix together

into a nice, little, beautiful, rich sauce.

And then we add our peppers,

and these baby peppers are really nice and thin,

so they're a lot quicker to cook

than regular bell peppers.

Add a little bit of salt.

And what I'm gonna do now in the middle,

I'm gonna create a little bit of a well.

And then you're gonna put in your garlic slices in.

That's a lotta garlic, but it's okay.

Now or add to the garlic,

I'm gonna put a little bit of cumin,

which is traditional in shakshuka,

and I'm also gonna put my chili paste.

That is gon' be spicy!

The garlic is nice and softened.

It's starting to turn a nice, little golden.

The bottom here part starts to really sizzle,

and that's what we wanna get it to.

So now, with our tomatoes,

since we're using whole tomatoes,

if you're using puree, cubed, a ready-made tomato sauce

with limited ingredients, hopefully,

you wanna put all the liquid in first,

and we have our whole tomatoes

we're just gonna hand crush in here.

Of course I wore a white T-shirt for this!

It's nice when you have big chunks in it,

and this is gonna break down more

as it cooks anyway, so you don't have to be stressed out

if you have any larger pieces in here.

All the juices, all the tomatoes are in there.

Thought I got my T-shirt, but I didn't!

And I'll now put back my chicken sausage.

And now we're gonna let this cook

for about 10, 12 minutes.

We want it to reduce down a little,

all the veggies to soften even more,

and on that note, let's go to happy hour!

(suspenseful music)

(dog barks)

- Today's happy hour's gonna be five fast facts about Neon.

She will be jumping into many shots,

and you will hear her barking in the background.

- Neon, enough.

- Our first fast fact is she's a foster dog from APA,

so she's been quarantining with us for about a month now.

Our second fact, she's actually able

to express a really impressive range of emotions, anywhere

from pensive scholarly woman,

all the way through to demented clown

that's going to ruin your child's birthday party.

Our third fact is she loves mango skins,

bit mango skins hate her.