DeVonn Makes Spicy Peanut Butter Noodles with Sausage

Did I say sausage already?

I can't emphasize that enough.

Wait, I'm, that sounds actually not good.

I'm going to go, let's go,

let's try that again.

I can't emphasize sausage enough.

That is not what I want to sound like.

[upbeat music]

Hi, I'm Devonn, and today we're making a spicy,

peanut-butter-based noodle sauce

with pad Thai noodles and sausage.

I really like this recipe because most of the ingredients

you can probably find in your refrigerator or pantry.

The cool thing about the peanut butter today

is that we're working with Lavi,

which is a Haitian-based peanut butter company.

And that's why I have my friend, Souki,

on the Zoom call today.

Hey girl, I'm so excited to be here.

You look spectacular.

What's up?

Can I borrow that shirt please?

Oh my, can I borrow yours?

I mean, seriously.

I'm always trying to figure out what's the best way

to support Jamaican brands, and Haitian brands,

and any sort of Caribbean diasporic company, small.

It's really important that we do that.

So, tell me about Lavi.

Basically, we launched because in Haiti,

more than 60% of the population relies

on farming for their livelihoods.

Peanuts are such an important and essential crop there

because they're really cheap protein.

And we like to believe these farmers are entrepreneurs

in their own right.

I mean, they've been cultivating

the lands since they were kids.

And we essentially just wanted to give them

the tools to be able to do what they do best

so they could compete in the global market

and empower the communities themselves.

This peanut butter's really special

because it's got a little bit of scotch bonnet in it,

which I, for one, love.

Can you tell me a little bit about why that is

and just like the flavor of the peanut butter in general?

In Haiti, peanut butter is a staple just like it is

in the US.

But, ours is savory.

The product is actually made by my fabulous colleague,

Sergeline Malvoisin.

So she is a Haitian woman,

and she basically framed it off of a old, family recipe.

So, her mom used to make bomba when she was a kid,

spicy peanut butter.

So she just replicated that exact, like, simplicity

of the ingredients,

and just like pulling from natural resources.

And basically, there wasn't really a market

for spicy peanut butter outside of Haiti

before she conceptualized this idea.

It comes from a black woman,

a boss in her own right.

And I think it's so important that we support more brands

that also represent not only black, black culture

but black women, specifically.

100% an icon.

I love the recipe.

I was really inspired that the peanut butter had

all these like really complex notes.

It's spicy. It's sweet.

It's savory. It's a little salty.

And obviously, it's nutty, as well.

And so, what I wanted to do was make a,

sort of like my rendition of like a pad Thai,

peanut, noodle sauce with a rice noodle

and smoked pork sausage.

All right, well even though I can't be there,

I trust you're gonna do us proud.

I am so, so happy and excited for this collaboration.

That sounds like the absolute perfect meal.

Devonn, you always kill it.

And girl, do your thing. You got this.

Thank you.

Talk to you soon, love.

Bye, love!

So now, we're gonna get into how to make the sauce.

So what I have here are four cloves of garlic.

And we're gonna give them a press

with the back of our knife.

I'm just going to take the skin off

and pop the garlic out.

And then, in my bowl, goes all of my ingredients.

I'm gonna set this onto my cutting board.

Just take a handy microplane and process all of the garlic

into the bowl.

So, grating garlic is really important

because what you want

to do is create a more well-rounded flavor,

and texture, and pretty homogenous mixture

when you put everything into the bowl.

Take probably like two inches

of ginger.

I always like to knock it off into kind if easier shapes

to work with.

You can use a spoon to take off the ginger skin.

The skin causes bitterness in the sauce

and it really doesn't have that much flavor to it.

We're gonna take the ginger and we're going to grate it

with the microplane into the bowl.

And ginger's also very aromatic.

With every swipe, you get a little waft of ginger smell.

Its basically like a little, nose detox, honestly.

The next thing I'm gonna go is I'm going

to just add in all of the liquids.

We're gonna take a spoon,

we have the agave that we'll add.

I'm using agave as opposed to using honey

just because I wanted to try to keep the sauce

as vegan as possible.

It's really important that a recipe can adapt

to all sorts of dietary restrictions

so that a lot of people can enjoy it.

And then we have our sesame oil,

rice wine vinegar that go in as well.

Coconut aminos,

you get coconut aminos from the fermented sap

from coconut palm.

So you have something that's kind of akin

to fish sauce, but it's a bit sweeter.

You don't actually have the, the anchovies so it's,

again, it's vegan.

And a bit of salt to give it that kind of savory flavor

that I think really pairs well with the peanut butter.

So what we're gonna do is we're going to just add

about a quarter cup of peanut butter to the bowl.

I'm using two types of spices.

We have the chili paste

and we also have the spice that's coming

from the peanut butter.

And I like to mix my spices because the way that spice hits

the back of your tongue,

or different regions of your tongue,

is always different depending

on what type of chili you're using.

So, scotch bonnet, it's spicy but it's also kind of sweet.

It has this very round spice,

whereas chili paste kind of like is that tickle

at the top of your tongue, at the tip of your tongue.

So, those differences are important.

We're gonna add just, kind of a, I think a quarter teaspoon.

And so, I'm going to just now give this a mix.

You want to make sure that your sauce actually sticks

to the noodles and sticks to the veg.

Oh my God.

This peanut butter is phenomenal.

Cool, so now that our peanut sauce is done,

I'm gonna set the sauce aside

and we're gonna start prepping our veg.

Now, scallions are really cool

because they're kind of like a more mellow,

oniony flavor.

But as your process them, when you slice them,

you want to make sure that you put them into an ice bath.

And that's important because you want to make sure

that you're pulling out that pretty like delicate,

but still oniony flavor and you're left with something

that's like a crisp, cool, refreshing green.

I'm gonna chop off that end.

And then I like to just cut my greens

and the top separately.

And then just cut them on a bias.

And they go into the ice water.

I like to cut it at a bias just because

it's, it's mostly stylistic.

It's mostly me trying to be cute.

I'm gonna give this a swirl.

Just to make sure that they're all completely touching water

and submerged.

Start with the cabbage.

So, halfway through the stem

and we're just gonna go ahead an just take out the core.

Cabbage is a really resilient, sturdy vegetable.

But if you break it down a bit thinner,

once the acid from the rice wine vinegar

and the lime juice hits the cabbage,

it'll start to actually break it down

and have it become a bit more soft and mellow.

So, we're going to just do thin slices on the board.

And then, yellow carrots.

I'm going to peel these.

And this color is iconic.

The cool thing about cooking and food

is that like it's usually one of the only ways

that a lot of people get to experience other cultures

if you're not traveling from place to place.

And so, cooking is really, I think,

kind of like that thing that transports you

to a different destination

and also helps you to really just appreciate diversity,

and appreciate other ways of being and other ways of eating.

Again, this is our.

I'm gonna take two Thai bird chilies.

And again, this is how we're kind of like

layering our spices, right?

And you can kind of use this based

on your own sort of spice level preference.

But, I'm gonna go ahead and use two,

seeds and everything.

I want to make sure this starts to break down a little bit,

so what I'm gonna do is squeeze a little bit of lime juice

into the bowl, gonna roll it around,

get those juices flowing.

You just wanna take half of a lime,

give it a squeeze.

And them I'm gonna take two pinches of salt.

And then what you wanna do is you just wanna make sure

that you give it a stir,

just to make sure that it's completely coated in the,

the citrus and the salt.

Okay, so let's get started on the noodles.

I'm using a, as the packaging says,

traditional pad Thai rice noodle.

Rice noodles are really good

because they're super absorbent.

They're also a bit lighter

than your typical sort of like Italian pasta noodle.

Throw in the noodles.

So then, I'm gonna transition on over to my sausage.

Today, we're gonna use a sweeter variety of sausage.

It's a sweet Italian sausage.

But, you could use any sort of like pork sausage you wanted.

This dish is really adaptable.

So essentially, like, if you're a vegetarian or vegan

and you want to, you know, stick to tofu or seitan,

you could totally do that.

So, what we're gonna do is we're going

to add a tablespoon of a neutral oil.

I'm using grapeseed oil here.

Just have it on like a medium, a medium-high heat.

The oil's gonna heat.

And while that's happening, I am going to just uncase

the sausage.

Okay, so once all of the sausage is uncased,

just break it up into sort of like the,

the width or diameter of a quarter

so that you kind of have like these sausage chunks.

So, once all of my sausage is in the little shapes,

little mounds, I'm just gonna slide them off

of the plate into the pan.

We're just gonna make sure that

the meat is actually brown all the way around.

So, as you can see here, you have really great browning

on one side, and we're just gonna flip it

and get it going on the other side.

And one of my favorite things

about cooking dinner in my house is that it was

always like a fun challenge to make a dinner happen,

and I think that's the really cool thing

about like growing up in a West Indian, black,

immigrant family is that you were always trying

to just like find combinations and be creative

with what you could make.

And sometimes it was inspired by my family's history

in New York.

Sometimes it was inspired by family's history

in Jamaica.

But, the most important thing is that we were spending time

together and cooking together,

and that's what food does.

So now, we're got a really good color all around.

What I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna finish the noodles

in the skillet.

And the reason why I'm gonna transfer them over

to the pan is actually because we want to make sure

that we're not wasting any of that really delicious,

incredible sausage juice.

So all of that flavor is just actually gonna go

into the noodles.

And so, once that is done,

I'm gonna turn all of my heating elements off.

And so, the next step is getting

the noodle salad sausage dish together in a bowl.

I'm gonna start with pouring my peanuts onto my board.

I'm gonna give them a rough chop.

And these are already roasted.

And so, peanuts back in the bowl.

I'm gonna add about a teaspoon of oil

and a couple pinches of salt.

And then I'm just going to give it a little mix.

So, we're just gonna go fishing for our scallions.

You might get a little bit of ice there, it's fine.

And we're gonna let that drain.

Grab all of my other stuff.

Grab a big bowl,

cause essentially what we want to do

is combine everything together into one dish.

I'm just gonna start with half

of the peanut sauce that we made.

And I'm just gonna coat that

in the sauce.

And then I'm going to take my cabbage and carrot salad

and add it, too.

We want to give this a stir.

It already smells so good.

And I'm gonna take half of the peanuts

that I have here and I'm just going to add this

to the bowl, as well.

Okay, so we are basically 80% of the way there with dinner.

It smells so good and now it's time to plate.

I love cilantro for a dish like this

because I feel like it adds this level of freshness

and herbaceousness to the dish that I think it really needs.

And so, I'm just going to chop off the bottom row of stems.

But, I like them as kind of like really big, fun,

graphic elements for the salad.

Transfer this in,

and then what we're gonna do is we're just going

to take our scallion,

add a bit to the top.

We have a bit of cilantro that we're gonna just keep

on the side to garnish.

And then, I'm going to take peanut

and put it into the top, as well.

Oh my God, and last but not least, lime.

Gotta finish with lime,

so we're gonna take one lime

so that you can squeeze and have like a fresh burst of lime

when you start eating it, as well.

And so there you have it.

We have our spicy peanut noodle dish

featuring the incomparable Lavi peanut butter.

And let's see how we did.

Wow, that is so incredible,

so much depth of flavor,

so simple to come together.

The dish is really good.

It's bright.

It's got heat. It's got sweetness.

It's nutty.

It's a textural fantasy.

It's an adventure.

The sausage is cooked perfectly.

And the cilantro is herbaceous,

it's kind of lifting it up a bit.

And, it's really, really easy to make

with pretty low-cost, accessible ingredients.

I think that Souki, and Sergeline,

and everyone at Lavi would be so excited

to feature this dish

and see that their peanut butter has been put to good use.

And I'm excited for everyone to try it at home, too.

Let me know what you think.

Till next time, till the next recipe,

enjoy making dinner.

[upbeat music]

It smells so good!

Can I do that?

I'm just kidding, I won't do that.