Priya Makes Shahi Toast

There are so many good Bollywood rip-offs.

I mean, they just aren't even,

they're so shameless over there.

When Harry Met Sejal,

which is When Harry met Sally,

but the Bollywood version.

Another is Partner, which is Hitch.

There's Krrish which is Superman.

[upbeat music]

We're making shahi toast,

which kind of rhymes with bhaji toast,

but they are totally different.

So shahi toast is not a toast in the traditional way.

It is also not a sandwich

in the way that bhaji toast is a sandwich.

It's actually a bread pudding,

but it's a no-bake cardamom bread pudding

with cardamom, sugar, lots of heavy cream.

You stick it in the fridge.

It's one of those things that you can kinda set and forget.

Very easy to put together.

People love it.

You cover it with pistachios.

It's great.

Well first of all, the bread

that you're using is white bread.

And when they ask me how white is the white bread,

think cast of Friends, Mumford & Sons concert.

This is how white you want your bread.

Someone who is recipe testing this dish

asked me if they could use Uncrustables,

to which I was like are you a monster?

Who is buying Uncrustables?

Please stop buying Uncrustables.

Back to this Mumford & Sons white bread here.

Okay, so you're gonna need five slices.

So we're gonna first just take the crusts off these.

I would say do it with a knife

to make it as angular as possible.

Thought if you don't care how it looks,

you can just rip it right off.

My mom, have I mentioned this,

that my mom, over Thanksgiving, told me

that I'm destined to have knife skills

'cause I'm a left-handed person?

She's like lefties can't operate a mandolin.

They can't cut stuff.

Kitchens are made for right-handed people.

We're cutting each of these breads into fourths.

So again, you're gonna try to make

as uniform squares as possible.

You wanna make this look nice and neat.

If you're super neurotic, this is a great exercise.

So one thing that I realized as we were talking, Tommy,

is that I don't actually know

what the shahi in shahi toast means.

It's S-H-A-H-I, but I truly have no idea.

It's not a Hindi word I know of.

I think it must refer to a name or something.

But I don't know what it means.

Let's see.

Dad will pick up.

He always picks up.

Hi, Priya, baby. Hi, daddy.

Good how are you?

We're making shahi toast. Mm-hmm.

But I had a question.

I realized I didn't even look this up

when I was writing the cookbook.

What does the shahi in shahi toast refer to?

It means royal. There we go.

In Hindi? Yes.

It means royal in, well Hindi and Urdu,

but it's an Urdu word.

Okay, it's an Urdu word.

Okay, why is it called royal toast?

[Dad] I don't know.

Some creative chef came up with the name, you know?

Oh, so it's just like a branding thing.

This wasn't served to royals in India?

[Dad] Nah, it's not very big.

All right, daddy.

I'll call you later. Thank you, Mr. Krishna.

[laughs] Bye bye.

Bye. Bye!

I remembered while talking to my dad

that the other name for shahi toast

involves one of my favorite words in Hindi,

and it's [speaking in foreign language].

And tukra is the word for just like little piece.

And so I am notorious

for stealing bites of peoples' everything,

and so I'm always like, can I just have a little tukra?

'Cause it sort of softens it.

It makes it sound a little cuter.

Like I just wanna tukra,

instead of can I have a piece of that?

Or like you gonna finish that?

I just wanna tukra.

Okay, so we're gonna move this

patchwork of white bread over here.

And I'm just gonna neurotically do it in this exact order,

because you know.

I don't know.

All right.

I love cardamom so much.

It's one of my absolutely favorite flavors.

It has a sort of flowery, naturally sweet,

really heavy flavor.

It's super aromatic.

A little bit goes a long way.

So while at a lot of grocery stores

you'll find cardamom as a ground-up powder,

I really like buying it as these whole, green pods.

I think that's how you're getting the most flavor,

the most aromatics out of your cardamom.

And just in general,

whole spices make a world of difference.

If you can buy something whole,

buy it whole, get a mortar and pestle,

get a spice grinder, do it yourself.

It'll always make a world of difference,

especially with Indian food.

But honestly, for any food.

And they're great.

It's like a natural gum or like a digestive.

Yeah, you can just do it, pod and everything.

Ooh, these are good ones.

These are nice and fresh.

So we're gonna crush four of these in a mortar and pestle.

Which this is just, this is excessive.

So all we need is the seeds from this.

So what we're gonna do is just crush this

until the shells come out, and take out the shells,

and then crush the seeds, so.

Honestly, this feels, I've literally done this

with the back of a whipped cream can.

So if you don't have a mortar and pestle,

there are alternatives.

I've done this with a pasta sauce jar.

All right.

So now I'm just gonna take the pods out.

There we go.

And now we're just gonna crush this into a powder.

All right, done.

That was so easy with this hulking mortar and pestle.

Now we're gonna go make the cardamom cream

that we'll soak the bread in.

Although it is pretty cool that this dish

does not require any oven time,

it's literally just set it and forget it in the fridge.

So my mom's little trick to preventing

the cream from sticking, and therefore burning,

is to coat the bottom of the pan

with two tablespoons of water.

So once we do that, we're gonna put our cream in there.

Here we've got two cups.

And we're literally just gonna stir this

continuously for four to five minutes until it's warm.

And we're doing this on medium heat, yeah.

So I'm gonna talk while this stirs

about how this dish even arrived in our family.

It was really cute, actually.

This was like four Christmases ago.

My mom mysteriously snuck out of the house

and bought white bread, which was kind

of our first clue that something was up,

because my mom literally eats quinoa for breakfast,

so we were like why are you going out to buy white bread?

And she was like don't worry about it.

So she mysteriously goes into a corner

and is slicing the white bread, doing stuff with it.

Literally does not let us watch her make this dessert.

And then we go to my uncle's house.

His name's Hemanth, but we call him

[speaking in foreign language],

because of weird, not weird, but just Indian nicknames

and how you call people who are your uncles.

Anyways, we go to [speaking in foreign language] house,

and my mom is being all sneaky and suspicious.

And she sort of creeps into the car

and comes out with this beautiful

bread pudding looking thing topped with pistachios.

And it turns out that when my mom was living in India

and my uncle, [speaking in foreign language],

was away at engineering school,

when he would come back and my mom didn't really

know how to cook, had limited resources in the kitchen,

she would make shahi toast because

all the ingredients were really cheap.

It was easy to make.

And so that was her thing that she would

welcome him back from engineering school with.

And so he saw it that night and his eyes lit up,

and it was like they were back

to being teenagers in India again.

And it was really cute.

And I feel like at that moment I was like,

this recipe belongs in the cookbook.

So we're gonna mix in six tablespoons of sugar.

And then our crushed cardamom.

And you're gonna mix that in.

And you just wanna make sure

that the sugar dissolves into the cream.

And it should.

If you just keep the pot on the stove

and just keep stirring, from the residual heat

it should easily dissolve.

So just until you aren't feeling

any more sandy bits with your spoon.

You're just gonna stir this in.

Okay, so now we're gonna, stove is off.

We're gonna get this aside.

And now we toast the bread.

So now we're putting the heat on medium-high.

And then we're gonna add two tablespoons of any neutral oil.

You're not gonna wanna pull out your fancy olive oil

for this stuff, anything like avocado oil,

grapeseed oil, those work great.

All right, once the oil's hot,

you're gonna put the heat down to medium-low.

And then you're just gonna arrange all your bread pieces.

It's okay if they're a little crowded.

We're just gonna want them to get browned.

Every time I say something on this show,

I think how do I say that in Hindi?

And nine times out of 10 I don't know what it is,

which makes me think I need to make my Hindi better.

All right, so now we're just gonna wait

for these to get golden brown,

and then we're gonna flip them using oh, no Exoglass.

Brad, did you throw away the Exoglass?

No, i didn't do anything.

What's that? [Priya laughs]

I can't believe I didn't burn the buns last time.

Okay, I think maybe a minute more.

All right, we're gonna flip these before they start to burn.

All right, so we're gonna let these cook for another minute.

Don't these look nice?

I feel like there's something very aesthetically pleasing

about this sort of ombre toast situation.

Okay, these are done.

Okay, great.

We've got our beautiful pieces of bread.

Now we're gonna go over there and assemble.

So we're gonna arrange these

in sort of that quilted pattern.

It should kind of look like,

you know when you're on a plane and you look down,

and you can just see a patchwork

of fields in this grid pattern?

That's kind of what you're going for here.

Next, we're gonna pour the cardamom cream.

So what you're gonna wanna do is just give it

a little stir before you do this to make sure

the sugar and the cardamom have all nicely incorporated.

Okay, now you're just gonna pour it over,

making sure that you're soaking all of the tukras of bread.

Now you all know what that means.

You all speak Hindi now.

Make sure you get, there might some residual

cardamom in the pot, and just make sure

you're getting every little thing.

So I kinda like to just push these pieces

of bread in just to make sure

they're all getting thoroughly coated.

This is sort of just one of my little tricks,

'cause I want everything to be nice

and soaked up and drippy.

We're gonna cover this in plastic wrap,

throw it in the fridge for eight to 12 hours.

Overnight is ideal.

And then it'll be ready to garnish and eat.

See?

It's the same thing 12 hours later.

Ooh, it's cold.

This has honestly been one of my dreams

is to do one of those now I'm gonna put

it in the oven and magically I'm gonna take it out.

And it's done!

And we just did that.

This is sort of, you can kind of feel if you jiggle it,

the cream and the bread has sort of become one.

The bread has sort of fully soaked up

these bits of cardamom,

but there's still some cardamom left over.

That's exactly what you want.

All right, now it's the last step.

Wow, I always forget how easy this dish is.

So you're just gonna top it

with two tablespoons of fresh pistachios.

Just gonna make it look really pretty.

So this is very easy to serve.

Don't be afraid to break the patchwork, 'cause see?

This cuts really easily.

So you're just gonna cut a little piece.

And then give yourself a little bit

of that extra heavy cream.

When my mom and I first made this recipe for my cookbook,

we used regular milk and cooked it down.

And not only did that take long,

but it just didn't taste as rich.

And then we made it with heavy cream

and we were like we are here for this.

All right, I'm just gonna eat this.

Cool to eat?

All right.

Aw, I wish my mom

and [speaking in foreign language] were here.

Just imagine you're in New Delhi

and your brother has just come home from engineering school.

Oh.

Oh my god.

I haven't eaten this in a while,

so I forgot how delicious this is.

Oh man.

The white bread really is key.

The white bread just gets so soft, but not soggy.

The cream is nicely infused with the cardamom.

It's sweet.

It's not too sweet.

It's aromatic.

It kinda melts in your mouth.

I would say this is dessert.

If you really wanna ball out for breakfast,

I would say yes, of course.

It's like, have shahi toast.

It's got bread.

It's got a dairy-based product.

I guess it has all of the makings

of a really good breakfast, I suppose.

But this is dessert.

It's bread pudding.

It's also the only reason that white bread

would ever be in our house in Dallas

is to make shahi toast,

and it is the worthiest use for white bread

that I can possible think of.

This is nice.

Which Hogwarts house?

Oh, I'm a definitive Ravenclaw.

Never has someone belonged in a house

more than me in Ravenclaw.

I think I took the quiz and it tells you

what percentage of each house you are.

I think was like 85% Ravenclaw.

And my sister is also, she's a self-proclaimed Slytherin.

I feel like there's certain Slytherins

who are proud to be Slytherins, and that's my sister.

And then my brother-in-law, David, textbook Hufflepuff.

I feel like I surround myself with Hufflepuffs

'cause they're really chill.

Hufflepuffs, they have no hidden agenda.

They're just fun people just looking for a good time.