Priya Makes Dahi Toast

We are making dahi toast.

So, a quick... (mumbling)

A quick lesson.

(laughing)

(upbeat music)

So, dahi toast is a really classic

weekend breakfast in our house.

It looks and tastes really complex,

but it's kinda more like a more interesting

Indian-ish grilled cheese sandwich,

and it's just as easy to make.

There are two secret ingredients.

One is the Greek yogurt and two is a sourdough bread,

which together add this very addictive tanginess,

and you're going to really like it.

One of the fundamentals of Indian cuisine

is this thing called chhonk.

Basically, it's really simple.

You're just frying spices in oil or ghee.

You can literally put chhonk on anything.

I've put it on a finished steak, I put it on noodles,

I put it on nachos and it tastes really good.

If you take nothing else away from this, chhonk is life.

We're gonna strip the curry leaves.

To me, they smell like Christmas

because we make a lot of dahi toast on Christmas.

Okay, so you're gonna warm your oil on low heat.

So, we're gonna put the mustard seeds first,

and what you're looking for is a spattering sound.

You're kinda looking for them

to dance around in the oil a little bit.

It's happening, people.

So, you're gonna take this off the heat, move this,

and then I'm just gonna (spattering) dunk these in.

And just make sure that they get fully tossed in the oil,

but they get this really beautiful glossy color to them,

which I really love.

So, here we've got the chhonk.

It's really pretty, it smells amazing, it tastes crunchy.

I mean, honestly, I like to do this.

If you can hear the crunch, you did it right.

So, there's a big debate in our family

over the right condiments to pair with dahi toast.

On one side, you've got my dad and me,

and we are team Heinz ketchup.

It's glossy and sweet and perfect

and the most wonderful pairing to this rich, tangy sandwich.

But on the other side,

you've got my mom and my sister who insist that the herby,

spiciness of cilantro chutney,

which is what we're gonna make now,

is the best thing to pair with dahi toast.

Two cups of cilantro, got two tablespoons of lime juice,

salt, sugar, this is a green chile.

We call it hari merch in Hindi.

So, my mom likes...

She uses both the stems and the leaves of cilantro

because she claims that when you're making a chutney,

putting the stems in, the stems have water,

so that helps blend everything together.

I just take everything my mom says as fact,

so let's just say that is a fact.

(buzzing)

I think that should be perfect.

It should have little dotty cilantro bits.

You should be able to taste that there's an herb in there.

You're not looking for something

that's super super homogenous.

And this doesn't seem like a lot of cilantro chutney,

but in the case of cilantro chutney,

a little bit goes a long way.

It's pretty spicy,

so you don't wanna overload your sandwiches

with too much cilantro chutney.

I'm gonna wash my hands.

Sorry, Brad.

Jump right in there.

What are you doin'? Watch out,

you might get bit.

Just sharpening, fixing Andy's knife.

Oh, wow.

Someone chipped it up real good,

so we had to grind some of that out

and then put a new edge on it.

Who chipped it up?

Oh, well, that's a mystery,

but I got my money on Andy. (laughing)

Oh, and I agree with your mother,

there's definitely water in cilantro stems.

There we go.

You heard it from Brad, it must be true.

Fact checked. (laughing)

Voila!

Dahi in Hindi means yogurt,

so the base for the filling for these sandwiches

is Greek yogurt.

The idea of putting yogurt in a sandwich

feels really crazy and absurd,

but once you see what the yogurt does, once you see...

It gets so thick and it still retains that tang.

If we were using ricotta or some other type of cheese,

it just wouldn't have that sourness,

and the sourness is really what holds all of this together.

So, my dad has been making our family's yogurt

for about three decades now.

He does not let us have store bought yogurt in the house.

In fact, when I was testing recipes for the book,

I had to buy yogurt 'cause I wanted to test stuff

with not his yogurt,

and I'd literally come home and he'd

have the containers of yogurt on the counter

and he'd be like, what is this?

Oh, yeah, should I FaceTime him?

[Producer] Yeah, let's do it.

Okay.

Oh, hey, dad.

Oh, oh, yeah, I'm in a test kitchen.

See, it's the Bon...

Oh, see, we're being filmed.

(laughing)

Can you tell me what the best condiment for dahi toast is?

This is really important.

Wait, what?

Chutney?

What happened to team ketchup?

Right, he mixes it.

See, he mixes, he does the swirl thing.

Yeah.

Alright, I think we're gonna get back to cooking,

but I'm glad we got to chat.

Okay, bye, dad.

(laughing)

So, we're gonna do a fine dice here.

The beauty about Indian cooking, though,

is if you don't chop stuff just right,

in the end you're just dumping a bunch of stuff into a pan

and hoping for the best,

and so, it's just very forgiving.

So, don't sweat if you feel like

your onions aren't finely diced enough.

It'll all be okay in the end.

So, we're just gonna dump these in here.

Yeah, I'm just gonna leave it at this many onions.

Alright, now we've got cilantro,

and this you really wanna focus on finely dicing

'cause you don't wanna get those

bits of cilantro in your mouth.

It's kind of unpleasant.

Please do not ever sub out cilantro for parsley.

I will personally come find you.

These are serranos.

We're just gonna chop those really fine.

You can also, if you want them less spicy,

you can de-seed them, but I don't know, live a little.

Okay, this is looking perfect.

Now we're gonna put salt, this is like a half teaspoon,

and then you're gonna put a pinch of red chile powder,

a cayenne, paprika, just nothing smoky,

and this is kinda what it's supposed to look like.

So, we're gonna spread this on the sourdough bread,

make three sandwiches, and go cook 'em.

So, I want to quickly talk about sourdough bread.

When my mom immigrated here,

she had never tried sourdough bread,

and then she want to California in 1983,

had sourdough bread,

and determined that it was the greatest thing

to happen to bread.

And so, while dahi toast is a dish

that just generally exists, like if you...

Indian food bloggers make it, it exists in Indian cuisine.

My mother's innovation was figuring out that sourdough bread

is the best bread to make dahi toast with,

and the reason is that it adds this really pleasant tang.

It's just, it's perfect.

Would it be okay if I just had a...

Could I just...

Just snack on it? Snack on this one.

[Producer] I don't see why not.

You know when you know you play a drinking game

and you have your side beer?

This is my side bread,

and we're just gonna spread this on top.

You don't want it spilling over the sides

'cause that's just gonna burn in the pan.

So, just make sure you're keeping it compact.

This would make a really great relish.

It's sort of like an Indian tzatziki.

You could throw cucumbers and tomatoes in this

and just go to town.

It's really good.

Alright, so just make sure you've got no spillage,

and then you're just gonna top it with the other

slices of bread.

So, we're gonna put this on medium heat,

and you're gonna put about a teaspoon of oil

just to help toast.

Let's give it like 10 seconds to heat up

and then we'll arrange the sandwiches in the pan.

Oh, wow, they fit perfectly.

So, we're gonna let these cook for three to four minutes.

You're looking for golden brown on the outside.

Yeah, this is good.

Oh, this is a dad...

That's a dad one right there.

So, I'm gonna put a teeny bit more oil in the pan

just to help these sides cook.

So, we're gonna put one on a plate

and then you're just gonna top it

with the curry leaves and the mustard seed.

So, you wanna make sure you get some of that oil

that's at the bottom

'cause that oil is infused with the spices

and it's gonna make this taste really delicious.

I like to just completely coat it in curry leaves

'cause I like when every bite

you're getting the crunch of the bread

and the crunch of the curry leaves.

Alright, so you're gonna cut this in half.

You can kinda hear that...

I call it an oily bread crunch.

I cannot wait to eat this.

So, we've got our cilantro chutney,

we just dollop it directly onto the plate, kinda like that.

I'm gonna go the my dad method

and do the swirly thing with the ketchup.

So, you're just gonna do that,

and then I'll just take a spoon

and just kinda swirl them together.

It's not the prettiest thing in the world,

but it's really delicious.

You kinda get the sweetness of the ketchup,

the herbiness and the spiciness of the chutney,

but if you just like ketchup

or you just like cilantro chutney,

you can do one or the other, but I like both.

It's really good.

The double crunch is so key

with the curry leaves and the bread.

This is so good

with the tang of the yogurt and the onions.

[Producer] Brad, you wanna try a dahi toast?

I would love to.

You dip it in the chutney. Oh, okay.

Yeah, I can get into that.

(laughing)

You can also just kinda... Is that ketchup?

It's ketchup mixed with cilantro chutney.

It's my dad's super sauce,

as he calls it. Super sauce!

That's kind of... It's delicious.

It's got a nice little bitterness to it from the red onions

and a little sweetness.

It's quite nice.

It's really good.

It's like the Indian take on the grilled cheese sandwich.

But it's kind of a little better.

I think so.

The word for pea in Hindi is matar,

so the joke is how does a pea talk?

And the answer is it matars.