♪♪ -"Cook's Country" is about more than just getting dinner on the table.

We're also fascinated by the people and stories behind the dishes.

We go inside kitchens in every corner of the country to learn how real people cook.

And we look back through time to see how history influences the way we eat today.

We bring that inspiration back to our test kitchen so we can share it with you.

This is "Cook's Country."

♪♪ -Today on "Cook's Country," Bryan visits the Basque Block in Boise, Idaho and makes his version of clams with chorizo.

Jack talks all about Worcestershire.

I talk about the magical pairing of shrimp and garlic, and Christie makes Bridget gambas al ajillo.

That's all right here on "Cook's Country."

-Funding for this program has been provided by the following.

-Monument Grills, offering innovative technology and design for the grilling enthusiast.

With a lineup of gas grills to suit every level, our mission is to ignite your passion to pursue the art of grilling.

Learn more at monumentgrills.com.

♪♪ -Boise, Idaho is a town with no shortage of beautiful views and Western charm.

It's also home to one of the most well-preserved Basque neighborhoods in the country.

The Basque Block is home to about 16,000 Boiseans who trace their roots back to the Basque Country, a region in the Pyrenees mountains between Spain and France.

Basque people started immigrating to Boise in the late 1800s to work in the sheep industry.

As the community formed, it worked hard to preserve the traditions of the old country, including music, dance, and luckily for me, food.

I'm here to learn about the art of this incredible cuisine from Basque Block's unofficial Mayor Dan Ansotegui.

♪♪ Dan is a chef and owner of Ansots, a cozy little restaurant specializing in Basque-inspired small plates.

It's a family operation run by Dan, his wife, and his daughter Ellie, who makes all the restaurant's pastries.

[ Cheers and applause ] -We're going to start, I think, with the chorizos.

Most everything here, or a lot of the things here, are based on something to do with the chorizos.

-For Dan, the best chorizo was made by his late grandma Epi, who cured the sausage in a vat in her basement.

And Dan's been doing his best to recreate her recipe through his own process of trial and error.

-Things weren't written down.

It was always kind of a taste thing.

So we're on recipe number 18 right now.

-Dan was always surrounded by great Basque food growing up, but it wasn't until he got the opportunity to visit the Basque Country as a young man that his passion to cook was ignited.

-I think when I went to the Basque Country as a young guy, everything that I kind of grew up with kind of came to life and it's like, okay, now I want to start doing this.

And so I started paying attention.

I started asking the Basque ladies, "How do you do that?

What are you doing right now?

And how does this turn into that?"

-These rich family traditions are what drew Dan's daughter Ellie into the restaurant business, too.

-It's just what I've grown up with all the time during family holidays or just dinners around the table.

We'd always just have some sort of Basque cuisine, I feel like.

And so this restaurant for me was more just I get to work with my dad, I get to still eat amazing food, I get to feel full.

It's good.

-Back in the kitchen, Dan walks me through the chorizo making process, which begins with high quality pork shoulder.

-This is from Snake River Farms here, and it's just a beautiful Kurobuta pork fat that we use and just enhances that.

You get that wonderful flavor, color, everything that makes a chorizo really that much better.

-Once he has the right ratio of lean pork to fat, the meat is cooled to around 32 degrees and put through a grinder.

But while the meat definitely matters, Dan explains that it's the pepper sauce that really defines the flavor of Basque chorizo.

-It's the ingredients of chorizo, the basic ingredients are very simple.

Three ingredients -- we've got salt, fresh garlic, and the Choricero pepper.

Choricero pepper, 400 years ago was a chili pepper of some type.

And so we have these beautiful peppers that were grown here locally.

And we use these for as long as we can in the season.

-Dan combines the ground pork with the pepper sauce and lets it sit overnight before stuffing it into casings.

Then the sausage links are strung up to cure for at least 24 hours.

During that time, they start to harden.

-So then that'll hang and then these will change over -- you'll see a difference by the end of the day even.

-All of the food at Ansots is flavorful, garlicky comfort fare.

But one of the standouts on the menu is a simple dish that pairs his chorizo with sauteed clams and wine.

-This is everything that we're going to be using.

We've got our chorizo going with the garlic.

Next we're going to add -- we've had our olive oil already.

We're going to add our clams.

We have here clam juice white wine.

-The broth is lightly thickened with a cornstarch slurry and then finished with chopped pimentos and fresh parsley.

It's the perfect expression of Basque cooking -- simple, elegant, and deeply flavorful.

Each dish has its own identity, but the core ingredients paprika, garlic, chorizo, and peppers play together in satisfying ways.

My time here at Ansots has deepened my appreciation for the beautiful culture that Dan and others have worked so hard to carry on in Boise.

Basque culture is a celebration of food, dance, music, and family, and they're always happy to welcome you at the table.

-Everyone works so hard in our family to make a better life for the next people, and then all of these wonderful things came along with it.

There's the language and the music and the food and the dancing and the card playing and the storytelling and all of these things.

But really, to me, it's just that memory of those wonderful people that that got us here.

♪♪ -Bryan, I love your On the Road pieces where you explore small neighborhoods that have a strong cultural identity because you're essentially telling the story of America.

Who moved where and why, they brought their food with them.

So it's the story of America told through the dinner table.

-Yeah, one plate at a time.

And like, who knew that Boise, Idaho, of all places, would have this strong cultural pocket of Basque people.

You know, it doesn't only exist in Idaho, it's also Reno, Nevada, It's back to California.

But it's such a joy to get to explore the food and also the stories behind the food and the dishes.

So today we're going to be talking about Dan Ansotegui's clams, and chorizo.

-That chorizo looked fantastic.

-Yeah, it is an amazing thing.

So we're going to talk about the clams to start.

We have littleneck clams here.

This is about 2 pounds of littleneck clams.

And the thing you need to know about working with clams is that they come covered with a fair amount of sand.

-Yes they do.

-So I always like to take all the clams and just slosh them around a little bit of water and kind of knock off the loose sand.

But you can also just scrub them with this brush and just knock off all the sand, because that is one thing you don't want to have in your finished dish.

-Yeah.

-And when you're buying fresh clams, you want to make sure they're closed tightly like this.

They smell fresh, they shouldn't smell, you know, rancid or like, fishy really.

And, you know, for this particular dish, you want to stick with littleneck clams or something smaller than this.

No bigger than this, 'cause then it kind of moves out of the realm of a tapas dish into something more of an entree, I guess.

All right, now we're going to talk about chorizo, or as Dan pronounces it, "chori-cho."

-Oh.

-Yeah, different pronunciation.

-Okay.

-He makes his own.

So he makes chistorra, regular chorizo, and motzak.

Motzak is what he uses in this dish.

All the chorizos he makes are fresh chorizos, so meaning they have to be cooked before they're eaten.

The motzak in particular is flavored with rosemary and roasted garlic.

-Ooh.

-It's a little bit fatter, a little bit chubbier than the other varieties of the chorizo that he makes.

Since we can't get that very easily, we're going to use Spanish dry-cured chorizo.

So this is fully cured and ready to eat.

So we're going to use about 2 ounces of this, which is yay much.

-[ Laughs ] -I made this dish so many times that I could "yay" it through, you know.

And we're just going to slice it thin anywhere between 1/4 and 1/8 of an inch.

-You know, I love that Dan was trying to recreate his grandmother Epi's sausage because I feel like she had nothing written down, so he was just figuring it out.

He said he was on test number something.

-Yeah, number 18 or something like that.

Yeah.

-I feel like that's the position a lot of people are in, trying to document their family history for future generations.

Nothing's written down.

So there's a little testing involved.

-Yeah, and the funny thing about, you know, the peppers that they use, uh, sometimes they're able to get those chistorra peppers, they're locally grown in Idaho.

other times they import them, but sometimes they can't.

And they have to use a combination of Mexican peppers to get that same flavor.

-Huh.

-So it's really interesting.

It's a constantly evolving process.

So we can add our chorizo to our skillet.

Then we're going to slice up 4 cloves of garlic nice and thin.

All right, so our garlic would go in there.

And then we could add 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil to our skillet.

I want this to be nice and rich.

We'll turn this to medium high heat.

We're going to let this cook for about 3 minutes, until the garlic begins to brown around the edges, and that paprika starts to ooze out into the oil.

It'll stain the oil red with it.

-You can see it's already happening.

-The dish comes together very quickly.

Okay, you see how the oil is nicely perfumed and colored with that paprika?

-And so aromatic.

Right.

-So we could add our clams now.

There, our washed clams.

We're going to leave this over medium high heat.

We're also going to add 2 tablespoons of chopped pimentos.

-Mm-hmm.

-And in order to help the clams steam a little bit and pop open and to create a really nice flavorful sauce, we're going to add some white wine.

But first we're going to add a little bit of cornstarch.

We have a teaspoon of cornstarch.

We're going to add to 3/4 of a cup of white wine.

You could use any kind of dry white wine that you have here -Okay.

-So add the white wine to this.

-Ooh that's a hot pan.

-Yeah.

We're going to keep it on the medium high heat 'cause we want that kind of hot steam to pop those clams open.

We'll let this cook for 8 minutes until those clams open up.

-Sounds good.

-You could see that all of our clams are opened.

You smell that, too?

It's a combination of the sea and that chorizo.

Now, this would typically serve about four people as a tapas, you know?

-I would eat this as a meal, actually.

A little salad on the side.

-You're about to.

You're about to.

So I'll divide these up between the two of us.

If any of the clams at this point have not opened, we want to just discard those clams.

And now we can add a tablespoon of parsley.

And now I like to spoon the sauce over top of the clams.

That way it gets in each one.

So this is great, I love putting this on a platter at a little gathering.

You know, a couple of glasses of wine out, a big thing of sliced bread.

-Yeah.

'Cause you want something to soak up that sauce.

-First of all, I like to go in and just try some of the broth.

-Mmm.

-Yeah.

-Oh!

-It's just so simple.

So straightforward.

The wine is just enough acidity to cut the richness of those clams in the chorizo.

-Yeah.

-And the olive oil makes a nice luscious sauce.

-Mm-hmm.

That broth is drinkable.

There weren't many ingredients in that sauce.

Just garlic, chorizo, broth, and little pimento.

Yeah.

There's such a depth to the flavor.

-I'm going for a clam.

-Mm-hmm.

-And they're just cooked through.

-Mm-hmm.

-They're still tender, not rubbery.

When you overcook clams-- -Oh, it's bubble gum.

-It's bubble gum.

-I'm gonna stab clam chorizo and a piece of bread.

-Mmm.

-Yeah I got the clam and chorizo.

-Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

That little bit of pork from the chorizo is lovely with the clam.

-Mm-hmm.

Hearty pork and delicate seafood.

Just a combination you wouldn't think goes together but it sings.

-It's perfection.

Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Bryan, this is terrific.

It was so easy and it has so much flavor.

-Hey.

My pleasure.

-If you want to make this Basque dish by way of Idaho, start by scrubbing those clams thoroughly to remove any grit.

Cooked the chorizo in the skillet to release its flavor, and add a little cornstarch to the cooking liquid.

From "Cook's Country," with special thanks to Dan at Ansots, clams with chorizo.

This is a meal.

I mean, I understand it as a tapas, but, oh!

-That's a great thing about tapas.

They could be anything that you want them to be.

♪♪ -Inside this little bottle is a secret sauce that's not only going to make your Bloody Marys and your Caesar salad dressing delicious, but so much more.

Before we talk, though, about what's inside the bottle, can we have a conversation about how to pronounce it?

Because it's pretty confusing.

Now there are two parts of the word, and most sources will agree that the first part is Worcester with a "O" sound.

So the first part is Worcester.

The second part gets kind of confusing now.

I grew up calling it "Worcester-sheer."

I don't know that that's actually right.

There's some anglophiles who insist on calling it "Worcester-shire," which sounds so fancy.

But if you look at other English words that have "shire," which is county, when it's attached to other words like Lancashire or Gloucestershire -- places, cities in England -- the ending is more a "sure" sound rather than a "shire."

And then there are people who say it's "sha."

No "R" sound, just a "sha" at the end of it.

You can call it whatever you want, because I'm going to call it whatever I want, but make sure that you're using it.

Now, you want to be using it because it's packed with umami.

There's onion, there's garlic, there's molasses, there's tamarind.

All of that complexity makes a sauce that's absolutely delicious.

The reason it's so delicious, it's fermented fish.

The tradition for these sauces actually dates all the way back to Roman times.

Something called garum, which is a fish sauce.

This sauce, if you go on the internet, says it was inspired by something in India.

I'm not sure that's actually correct, 'cause they've been making fish sauces in Europe for more than two millennia.

Now we use Worcestershire sauce in beef pot pie filling.

It adds a sort of a savory funkiness to it.

It's wonderful in a pan sauce for steak, Caesar dressing for anything like Caesar Brussels sprouts.

So delicious.

Whatever you want to call it, you do you.

Just make sure you have a bottle of Worcestershire sauce in your refrigerator.

♪♪ -Shrimp and garlic is a combination found throughout the world, but its origins are hard to pin down.

The variety of shrimp and garlic dishes is endless, with variations that include lemon, Creole seasoning, rosemary, and even beer.

Shrimp scampi is a well-known version of garlic and shrimp that became popular in the US after World War Two.

Scampi is an Italian word for shrimp, so the name of the dish translates literally to "shrimp shrimp."

In Spain, gambas al ajillo is a popular tapa.

This version of garlic and shrimp was likely influenced by the ancient Romans, whose empire included modern Spain.

Garlic was important to ancient Romans, and shrimp were plentiful in Spanish waters, so it's not far fetched to assume that they were combining the two.

At "Cook's Country," our version of gambas al ajillo is inspired by the Spanish take on this classic pairing.

♪♪ -You're in for a treat today because we're making a tapas classic -- Gambas al ajillo.

Love this dish.

What's not to like?

It's sliced garlic, plump, juicy prawns or shrimp all bathed in sizzling hot oil.

Mmm, mmm, mmm.

Add a little crusty bread and you've got a real treat.

Speaking of treats, Christie's here and she's going to show us how to make this at home.

-Well, Bridget, this dish is all about big garlic flavor and sweet tender shrimp.

And these are two items that are notoriously easy to overcook.

But we have a protection plan in place to avoid disaster.

-Fantastic.

-So I have 1 1/2 pounds of extra large shrimp here.

We know that that's 21-25.

That means 21 to 25 shrimp per pound.

I've already gone ahead and peeled and deveined most of these, but I left a few just to kind of walk us through that whole process.

-Right.

-So different ways to skin a cat.

-Mm-hmm.

-And kind of peel it open.

-From the leg end.

-Yes.

-The leg part, yep.

-Kind of like you would a lobster.

And we're going to take the tails off and then devein these as well, because we've got that long tract along the back of the shrimp.

-You actually see that more with farmed shrimp than you do with wild shrimp.

-Really?

-Yeah.

Yeah, it's part of the diet that they feed them.

-We can also use our shrimp scissors instead if you want, and trim, go through the back of the shell and then peel it off that way.

-When you're buying shrimp, be sure to buy frozen shrimp.

Frozen shrimp are much better because they're frozen at sea.

They actually feel fresher than the stuff that's already thawed at the supermarket.

-I promised you that I would keep this shrimp safe and tender and juicy while we cook this.

So the key to doing that is salting it.

I have 1 1/2 teaspoons of kosher salt.

Now obviously this is going to season the shrimp.

But what it's really going to do is help the shrimp hold on to its moisture.

So even when it cooks, it's going to stay nice and juicy.

And this is only going to take about 15 minutes.

We're just going to cover these.

And I'll let them sit in the fridge while we wait.

-Perfect.

-Bridget I also promised you big garlic flavor, right?

-Sure.

-So I have six, count 'em, six cloves of garlic here.

And I'm going to mince these.

While we want big garlic flavor we're not going to rupture the cells quite as much by mincing them as we would if we pressed them.

So I'll use my bench scraper.

Now I have 3/4 of a cup of extra virgin olive oil, which sounds like a lot, but this is a tapa and it's always served with crusty bread.

-Mm-hmm.

-And so really, the infused garlic oil is almost as big a draw as the shrimp is.

-100%.

It's not just the cooking medium, it's an ingredient in the dish itself.

-Right, I am going to turn this to medium low, very low heat.

And I'm using a cast iron skillet.

This is a 12-inch cast iron skillet.

It's going to hold the heat really well.

But we're also going to serve it in this.

-Is this your insurance?

-This is part of the insurance.

Yes, and the fact that we're heating the oil and the garlic together.

-Okay.

-And bringing it up.

We didn't heat the oil first and then add garlic to that hot oil, where it's so easy to burn.

In this way, it's a slow, gradual climb.

It's going to take 8 to 10 minutes for the garlic to get to the light golden brown we want.

-Perfect.

-But we cannot have this sizzling garlic shrimp without a little kick of heat.

-Mm.

-So I have some red pepper flakes here.

If you want the full effect of this, you need to kick it up to a full teaspoon.

-All right.

-[ Laughs ] So it's going to take 8 to 10 minutes to get to the light golden brown color that we want.

So in the meantime, we'll do the last bit of prep work we need.

-Great.

-I have some parsley here that I've already taken off the stems because we don't like to eat the stems with parsley.

And now I want about 1/2 a cup of chopped parsley.

And first I'll slice through it, keeping my knuckles out ahead of my fingers.

And then I can rock back and forth.

-Gotcha.

-I think that looks like a good 1/2 cup for us.

So I'm just going to keep an eye on this garlic.

Should be about 5 minutes longer.

-Okay.

Great.

-Okay, Bridget, take a look at this.

See, what we have are some nice, light golden brown pieces of garlic.

-I'm listening.

-And we want to capture them here before they go further, because we're going to keep cooking this and we're going to add the shrimp.

-Got it.

-This is our 15-minute chilled salted shrimp.

-Mmm!

-So I'm just going to spread this out.

Now adding the shrimp to the pan is going to cool the oil a bit.

So that's going to protect the garlic.

Keep them from overcooking.

And it's also going to lower the temperature so the shrimp don't cook too quickly.

We're looking for pink bottoms.

So 2 minutes on each side, about 4 minutes total.

All right, Bridget, I think we are just about here.

-I hope here is done.

-Well, and you know that there will be carryover cooking too, because we still have this hot oil.

So even when we take it off the heat, they will continue to cook through a little bit more.

So it's always good to catch it before it goes too far.

And notice the shrimp haven't curled up that much, which is a good sign.

They shouldn't curl too much.

If they're really tight little "C's", you've overcooked the shrimp.

These look really nice.

All right.

So we are going to bring this right onto a trivet.

The only thing we're going to do I'm going to keep a little towel over the handle.

And now we'll sprinkle it with the parsley that we chopped just to give it a bright fresh pop.

Some color, some fresh flavor.

-Oh my goodness.

You know, I usually see this dish in the little ceramic crocks that come out to the table.

I'm actually really excited.

I mean, I use that cast iron skillet for everything.

Never thought of it for this dish.

-It's going to stay hotter longer if you keep it in this.

I'm not going to skimp on the oil.

-Thank you.

-All right.

Shall we?

-We shall.

Big, bright but deep burst of garlic flavor.

It's still really bright, though.

-It's almost more along the roasted garlic.

It's not as sharp as sauteed garlic can be.

-Touch of toasty caramelized flavor.

Getting a little bit of that chili flake.

It's not overpowering.

It's beautiful.

It's actually nice and warm, but everything is coating the shrimp, which is juicy and plump and seasoned itself.

This is what you have to do.

You have to go in there and start to mop it up.

Mmm!

And just like I thought, the oil in the bottom of the pan is infused with shrimp flavor along with the garlic flavor.

So you get that brininess, you get that really, really deep garlic flavor.

A little bit of heat.

-Oh, yeah.

There's nothing else standing in the way of the heat, but it's right in the forefront here.

-This is beautiful.

I loved watching it all come together in the cast iron skillet.

Actually, thank you for that, because I'm always looking for different things that I can do with that skillet, so really appreciate it.

This was wonderful.

-I had so much fun.

-Why don't you try this shrimp dish at home?

It is so, so tasty and easy.

And it starts by salting shrimp and letting the shrimp sit for 15 minutes, cook garlic and chili flakes in olive oil, and finally add the shrimp and cook it for only just a few minutes.

And don't forget some crusty bread to mop up all of those beautiful juices.

So, from "Cook's Country," gambas al ajillo.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season, along with product reviews and select episodes.

And those are all on our website, cookscountry.com/tv.

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-Funding for this program has been provided by the following.

-Monument Grills, offering innovative technology and design for the grilling enthusiast.

With a lineup of gas grills to suit every level, our mission is to ignite your passion to pursue the art of grilling.

Learn more at monumentgrills.com.

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