- [Sara] "Sara's Weeknight Meals" is made possible by.

A journey aboard Oceania Cruises is designed to cultivate curiosity.

Guests can explore local treasures and epicurean traditions.

Staff and crew are dedicated to guests' interests, relaxation, and entertainment.

Evenings offer craft spirits, international wines, and dishes prepared by our master chefs.

That's the Oceania Cruises small ship experience.

- [Sara] And by USA Rice.

(upbeat music) Guernsey is one of those magical islands you've heard of, but don't know much about.

It's small, everyone knows each other, and that's what makes it unique.

- We all look out for each other.

It's really, it's really- - It's a real community.

Take the tradition of hedge veg stands, where local gardeners share their extra produce on the honor system.

This is like your supermarket.

Your country supermarket.

- Way better than a supermarket.

- Well, this is true.

I fell in love with Guernsey's charming critters from the eponymous cows to the local goats.

- Just hold her like she's a little baby.

- Okay, oh, oh, oh.

Yes, you are sweet.

Later, in a Guernsey kitchen.

And we're about to make the most iconic dish of the island, and it's called the bean jar.

Every family has a different recipe.

But in this one, a shocking ingredient.

It█s really quite controversial.

You're kidding.

Back in my kitchen.

My all-time favorite white bean and vegetable soup, flavored with pancetta and garlic and topped with the most amazing dumplings.

So, are you ready for a good time?

It's such a pleasant day.

I got to hold a baby goat.

I get to learn all about regenerative farming.

I got a cow to slobber all over me.

It was just the best day ever.

Today on "Sara's Weeknight Meals."

Why am I bounding along in a truck on the island of Guernsey off the French coast?

We are on the lookout for hedge veg stands.

- [Antony] There's one just there.

- My trusty guide is islander Ant Ford Parker.

He owns Outdoor Guernsey, and he's promised to show me the best this special island has to offer.

So tell me, what's so unique about Guernsey?

- [Antony] We're right next to France, but we're not French and we're not English.

- So what are you?

- Well, we're Guerns.

- You're Guerns.

- We're unique, yeah.

And it's a great place to be.

It's that we're very unique and we can, we all look out for each other.

It's really, it's really- - It's a real community, yeah.

- Right, we're getting to the country parishes now, and this is where I like to do my hedge vegging.

- [Sara] Hedge vegs are homemade stands set up by farmers to share extra fruits and vegetables with their neighbors.

Fresh local produce is especially important on an island where more than 95% of food has to be imported.

- [Antony] This is one of my favorites.

- [Sara] So this is Edible Guernsey.

- [Antony] Yeah, and it's all people getting together and working their own little bit of plots.

- [Sara] Everybody has their own little plot, huh?

- [Antony] Yeah, they've got their little bits that grow and, yeah, produce some really quality produce, yeah.

- Wow, this is so cool.

Look at all this.

- [Antony] This looks so good, doesn't it?

Now I do know that Martyn said we need some chard, we need some kale, we need carrots and onions.

- [Sara] Okay, okay.

All right, well, here's chard.

Oh, that is beautiful.

Kale, carrots.

Ooh, with the tops on, nice.

- [Antony] They look good.

- Yeah, they do.

And let me see.

Onions, yes.

Okay.

- That's pretty much everything you need.

Right, let's go and add up.

- [Sara] Okay.

- Okay, Sara.

Just have to pay for it and all that.

Here we go.

- Wow, oh, look at that.

- [Antony] Wait, look at this.

- Goose eggs?

- I've got some goose eggs.

These are my favorite.

- Oh, yikes.

Let me see one of those.

Oh, wow.

That would feed a family of four.

Yikes.

Oh boy.

Oh, look at that.

Look at that hedge veg money, I love it.

So you do this every week or every day?

- Pretty much most days, yeah.

- Wow.

This is like your supermarket.

Your country supermarket.

- Way better than a supermarket.

- Well, this is true.

This is true.

So it's the honor system.

- [Antony] Yeah, that's how it works.

- So where are we going next?

- So I though it'd take you to Mandy's goat farm.

- Ooh, ooh.

So there's another hedge veg there, but she also sells some amazing goats cheeses.

- [Sara] Oh, I love goat cheese.

Yeah, great.

- [Antony] You're gonna love this then.

- Mandy and Peter Girard originally kept goats to clear their farmland, but before long, they started selling goat products, including goat cheese, which I am very eager to buy and try.

- Full cream cheese, unpasteurized.

And it's just got that kind of creamy taste.

- Oh, with that wonderful tang.

So tell me about these goats.

- [Peter] Well, they're a rare breed.

So these are royal golden Guernsey goats.

They got the royal title when the king came over at the beginning of his reign.

- [Sara] How many do you have?

- We've got here about 40 goats.

There's about 60 on the island and about 1,400 in the world, best estimate.

- Oh, wow.

- So yeah.

So we're really trying to encourage people to take the breed.

Take the golden Guernsey and breed them so that we get more and more goats.

It's part of our heritage on the island and we want to keep that.

- [Sara] Yeah.

Guernsey's royal goats might have gone extinct were it not for the heroics of local Miriam Milbourne, who was said to have hidden the goats from starving islanders and occupying Nazis at the end of World War II, which helped preserve the rare breed.

- Amazing job keeping it going, really, yeah.

- Well, we're glad she did.

- Absolutely.

- So now here's a question.

Can I pet one of them and get me a little one?

- You can have a cuddle.

- Ah, I want a cuddle.

That's exactly what I want.

You know what I want, okay.

(gentle music) - This is Tiny.

She's only four weeks old.

Would you like to hold her?

- I would.

- Just hold her like she's a little baby.

- Okay, oh, oh, oh.

- There you go.

- Yes, you are sweet.

She just got heavier like a baby, you know, when a baby's ready to take a nappy poo.

So she just went to 20 pounds from 16.

As much as I'd like to spend the rest of the afternoon with this sweet baby goat, there's more for me to see.

Our last stop is a place called Soil Farm, a regenerative farm run by Jock Pettitt and Sasha Marsh.

It's straight out of a children's storybook with chickens, pigs, and the famous Guernsey cows.

Oh yes.

Now you call this a soil farm, a regenerative farm.

Tell me about that.

- So it's all about investing in soil biology and then everything above that works.

So for us, the way we graze the animals, the way we move the animals, short term on cells, moving them around, it's about fertilizing, stimulating the land, and bringing the land back into full health.

- So for example, where our pigs are at the moment, that will, once they've had their time on there, we'll move them off and then we'll plant gourds and squashes and things.

So that then utilizes all the nutrients that have been laid down by the pigs.

And then when the pigs come back in, they eat all the rest of the leftover veg.

And it's all a cyclic system.

Well, it's just the natural nutrient cycling that, you know, traditional farming really focused on.

So we're just going back to that.

- Yeah, that's so great.

My last stop in Guernsey is one of the prettiest, a 15th century house once occupied by the Germans in World War II.

It's now owned by my cooking buddies, Martyn and Wendy Dorey.

Hello, Wendy and Martyn, I presume.

- Sara, yes.

- I've just brought you some lovely greens from the hedge veg.

I'm so excited.

- [Wendy] Good to meet you.

- Yeah.

- This way we can get cooking.

- All right.

What are we making with all this?

A dish as historic as the house, the legendary Guernsey bean jar.

(cheerful music) Here I am in the gorgeous home of Martyn and Wendy on the isle of Guernsey, and we're about to make the most iconic dish of the island, and it's called the bean jar.

- That's right.

- And I presume we start with the beans.

- We start with the beans.

Weight-wise, we've got about the same weight of beans as we got meat.

- And that's about a pound each of haricot beans and butter beans.

(beans rattle) (beans rattle) - [Martyn] And now we're gonna put some water on it.

- [Sara] Okay.

How long do we soak it?

- [Martyn] Overnight, but what you want is a few inches of water over the beans.

- So we're just sort of getting them started with moisture and then tomorrow we'll cook them.

- Tomorrow we'll cook them.

- But very conveniently, we don't have to wait till tomorrow 'cause you've already soaked some.

Let's see what they look like.

Oh wow, look at how big they got.

- [Martyn] Very plump.

- Yeah.

Those are beautiful.

And now you're gonna drain them.

- Smooth and creamy.

(water splashes) - Yeah, do it.

Okay, so we've soaked our beans, but tell me about the bean jar.

- It's a traditional dish.

It's very old.

It really became part of Guernsey's culture because back in the day, people didn't have very much.

They didn't even have ovens in their houses.

So to cook, what they did is they'd buy bread from the local baker and they would prepare these bean jars at home.

And when they bought the bread, they would hand over the bean jar with their names written in paper and the baker would use the residual heat from their brick ovens to cook the food overnight.

So the next day, the ladies would pick up the food and they wouldn't have to cook on washing days.

And it was very communal.

- I love the whole story, but what was in that bean jar?

- There's some fairly traditional recipes, mainly using haricot and butter beans, lard, and meat.

The key is all about letting it cook overnight as slowly as possible.

- All right, so what do we do next?

- The first thing is we're gonna put in the beans.

So I'm just gonna tip them in as carefully as I can.

There you go.

- I could help here, you know?

- [Martyn] Thank you.

Let's layer in some of those lovely onions you chopped.

- [Sara] One onion chopped.

- Perfect.

I've got to say before we put the next ingredient in that this is really quite controversial.

This is a very traditional dish.

People see carrots as a new fangled addition to a traditional dish and- - You're kidding me.

- Well, you know, 1500s was the time- - Oh, this is the controversy.

- And you know, that's too early as an ingredient for many people in Guernsey, but we're gonna have an exciting bean jar by having some carrots.

- Do you know that they're one of the vegetables that has umami?

- Really?

- There's a reason they snuck in there.

They belong in there.

- They belong?

- Yeah.

- [Martyn] Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna put in this amazing beef shin and we're gonna press it in.

So I'm gonna put that in.

- So that must be a two pound piece of meat 'cause we have two pounds of beans in there.

- [Martyn] Absolutely right.

- [Sara] Okay.

- [Martyn] And I'm just gonna wash my hands now.

- [Sara] Gonna hose down, yeah.

- [Martyn] So the next thing is the bay leaf.

- Oh gosh.

Wow.

And we put all that in.

- [Martyn] Do you want to do the salt and pepper?

- Sure.

And this is black pepper?

- [Martyn] That's black pepper.

And a sprinkle of salt.

- Ooh, this looks like sea salt.

- [Martyn] Perfect, yep, that's the one.

- Stop, Sara, okay.

- And now we're gonna put in our beef stock.

- [Sara] All right, right.

- [Martyn] Four cups.

- And now while you're adding that, could you just tell me about your family recipe?

'Cause every family has a different recipe.

- We have a bean jar festival, which lasts about three days, and people argue about what makes the best recipe and who's got the best family recipe.

And some people have put in cider.

If you're a vegetarian, you might have mushrooms rather than meat.

- I'm sure there's arguments about it.

- So in our three-day bean jar festival, two of those days were spent arguing about whether you have carrots or not.

Are you a traditionalist or not?

- Oh, the humble carrot, who knew?

- Humble carrot.

- Yeah.

And I see we have some more stock.

- [Martyn] This is stock cube that we've just dissolved in water.

This is just a sort of top up.

- [Sara] Like a bullion cube.

- You just want to cover it.

Two cups of stock.

- [Sara] Okay, so lid, I presume.

- Lid on and then into the oven.

There we are.

- [Sara] And we have a what temperature oven?

- 120 in the US.

That'll be 250.

- 250 Fahrenheit.

- And we leave it for 12 hours.

- Okay then.

- It's a long one.

- Yeah.

- And that's a secret ingredient to bean jar, patience.

- Let's pop it in.

(gentle music) - What we're gonna do is I'm gonna pass you over to Wendy.

She's gonna show you how to make a great side dish.

- Oh, lovely.

(gentle music) And here I am with Wendy, and I understand you're gonna show me a cool dish to use with this chard.

- Absolutely, it's the most amazing source of vitamin K and vitamin A, and vitamin K is quite hard to get hold of actually in various vegetables.

So this is a really important vegetable for that vitamin.

- And so you've had me separate the stalks from the greens.

- That's right, but the stalks take a lot longer to cook because they are that little bit more dense.

So they need about three and a half minutes of boiling in the water first.

And then we add the chopped leaves for about a minute and a half afterwards.

So this is a really easy dish.

It's five minutes in total to cook.

- Yay!

That's a weeknight meal.

- So we start by taking the stalks and I'll pop some hot water into the dish here and we'll heat this up.

- Okay.

Oh, that's smart.

You did it in the kettle.

- That's right, so if you have boiled water, it means that it cooks much more quickly.

- And that happens so fast.

Brilliant.

- [Wendy] So they've just put some salt in the water.

- I noticed you're using some lovely sea salt.

- Yeah, lovely sea salt.

And then we put the stems in.

- And that's it, huh?

All right.

And then we just get this boiling and oops.

- Absolutely, we'll just swish it around so that it's covering the base fairly evenly and we'll wait three and a half minutes for it to soften and then we'll put the leaves in.

- Okay, great.

(cheerful music) - So this looks like it's been done.

So now it's time to put the leaves in.

- [Sara] Boy, is this gonna be like spinach?

We're gonna end up with a portion for one?

- Absolutely, it does.

It boils down to probably half the size that you see here.

- [Sara] Oh, wow.

- And it only takes another minute and a half, so it's super quick.

- [Sara] Okay.

- So when the greens are done, we're gonna use this to finish the vegetables with and just a touch of salt and pepper, and that's all you need.

- And this is Guernsey butter.

- That's right, and Guernsey butter is naturally very yellow, as you can see.

- I can see.

- Got very high beta carotene in it.

And it's a really amazing heritage milk from dairy herds that are over 500 years old.

So this looks pretty ready.

So what we need to do next is to drain it.

- [Sara] Okay.

- And the beauty of this dish is you can just put it back into where you cooked it.

- Oh, one dish, we like those.

- So it's a one pot dish and we just need a little bit of butter.

- A little bit of butter.

Oh, that is so gorgeous.

- And we'll stir that through.

And just a touch of salt and pepper.

- [Sara] And a little salt.

- [Wendy] And some salt.

- [Sara] Okay.

Wonderful.

- Okay, this looks perfect.

It's ready to serve.

And I think I can hear people coming, so we'll take it to the table.

- Let's go to the table, I like that.

(cheerful music) Oh boy.

Yay!

Oh, that.

I'm so excited.

- [Martyn] Bean jar.

- [Sara] Oh, and it's still steaming hot.

Let me just pass this around.

- [Martyn] Pass it around.

- [Sara] Yes, let's pass it around.

Everybody thinks theirs is the best, of course.

- A friend of ours told us how they went to the bakers.

They put their crock into the ovens and then next morning he had to go and pick up the crock before he went to school and he went out to his breakfast next morning.

- Whoa, breakfast of champions, yeah.

The first bite has got to be your bean jar.

Mm, mm.

You know what?

I'm getting hints of carrot.

(friends laugh) I don't know how I feel about that.

This is delicious.

(friends laugh) So thank you to all of you.

Thank you so much.

It's been such a pleasant day.

I got to hold a baby goat.

I get to learn all about regenerative farming.

I got a cow to slobber all over me.

It was just the best day ever.

Thank you, Guernsey.

- Sorry about the slobber.

(friends laugh) - [Martyn] Oh yes, I remember that.

(upbeat music) - I'm just about to show you my all-time favorite white bean and vegetable soup, flavored with pancetta and garlic and topped with the most amazing dumplings.

Can't wait to show you.

So let's get started.

This is Italian, and we're gonna start with two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in here and four ounces of chopped pancetta.

Pancetta is from the belly of the pig, as is bacon.

The only difference between the two, or the main difference, they're both cured, is that bacon is smoked and pancetta is not.

If you cannot find pancetta, bacon would be a fine substitute, but pancetta is pretty cool.

So if you've never, you know, had it before and you can get it, I recommend you get it.

And I'm gonna cook it for about eight to 10 minutes until it gets a little bit brown and gives off a lot of fat.

(pan clinks) Okay.

I'm gonna say this is good.

It's popping at me.

I'm gonna transfer it to this bowl right here, leaving the fat in there.

Some of the pancetta stays in there and that's okay too.

It's now pancetta-flavored olive oil, which will be so delicious.

All right, so now in the fat that's left in the pan, I'm gonna add a half a cup of medium chopped onion, one cup of cubed carrots, medium chop.

So we have a cup and a half of chopped fennel, fresh fennel.

We're gonna cook this until the vegetables brown a little bit.

In the meantime, I'm gonna mince some garlic.

Now, let me just say about the soup that there's some prep involved.

This isn't exactly something you start at 6:30 and dinner's ready at 7:30.

So what I recommend is make the soup on a Sunday up to the point where you add the greens at the end, and then just park it in the fridge and then make the dumplings I'm gonna show you 'cause they need to be chilled anyway to set up.

So you do those two things the day ahead of time.

And then on the day of, all you need to do is finish the soup with the last minute ingredients and it's gonna be even tastier the next day and so much easier.

All right, that looks pretty good.

And just stir it.

And next we're gonna add two cans of white beans that we've drained and rinsed.

And there's many different varieties of white beans, but you could use any bean you wanted really.

This just happens to be sort of Italian, so why not?

(pan sizzles) And finally, some chicken broth, six cups.

Let me take it all the way up so we can bring it to a complete boil.

I'm just gonna stir it for a second and make sure we get all those little brown bits up from the bottom.

Okay, gonna keep an eyeball on that and come over and get started on my dumplings.

These are just based on fresh breadcrumbs.

Now, how do you make fresh breadcrumbs?

It couldn't be simpler.

You take homemade style white bread, cut off the crust, rip it up a bit, throw it in a food processor and pulse it.

We're gonna start with two eggs.

Anytime I beat eggs, the first thing I do is break the yolk.

It just makes your life easier.

(bowl clinks) Two cups of fresh breadcrumbs and two ounces of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

Okay.

You're gonna see how this comes together.

It's pretty much a magic trick.

I forgot to add my fresh sage, so I'm gonna chop that up right now.

We're gonna need about two tablespoons of fresh sage leaves.

Oh, wow, smells so good.

All right, just a few more little chops.

Okay, the final mix.

Look at this, isn't this wild that just these few ingredients come together like this into a batter?

I'm gonna shape this into 12 balls, so it's time to get a little messy.

There's no way around it.

But I have impeccably clean hands.

So where did I find or where did I get the idea for this recipe?

I have this wonderful series of books called "The Time Life Food of the World," and there is a book for every country, including, of course, Italy.

And in that book, I came across a soup with bread dumplings, and I was like, "Nah, I can't believe that would work."

Well, I made it and it did.

So I pilfered that idea and put it in my most recent cookbook with my favorite soup.

(cheerful music) So now these need to get popped in the fridge for about 30 minutes to just to set up.

Okay, let's see how the carrots are doing.

It's the carrots that need to be cooked 'cause they take longer than anything else in here.

Yeah, these guys are good.

Time to thicken the soup with a potato masher.

Now, if you want, you could take some of the soup out and put it in a blender, but it's so much easier this way and so much less messy.

And finally, we're gonna poach our dumplings in here.

Okay.

I have some that I already made ahead of time and chilled for 30 minutes and re-rolled a bit.

Once they're chilled, you can tidy them up so they look a little neater.

So you see these are award-winning dumplings.

And here's what happens, ready?

They just go right into the soup and we're gonna cover this and poach them for eight minutes or until they're cooked through.

And here we go.

Let me put a lid on.

(gentle music) Okay, a few more things that go in.

First of all, we have some baby greens.

This is baby spinach.

You could use baby kale.

We've got eight ounces.

We just want it to barely wilt and it will be done.

If you can't get baby greens, you can use the larger stuff and just chop it up a bit.

We're gonna add a little bit of hot pepper flakes, about a half a teaspoon.

Our pancetta.

Remember our pancetta from the very beginning here?

That's where we started.

And finally, some lemon, because you just want it to have that wonderful fresh taste.

When you add the greens at the very last minute, they just look so beautiful.

Let me see, we had 12 dumplings, we have four people.

Everybody gets three dumplings each.

So this is dinner, okay?

This is not any first course.

This is dinner.

I believe in soup for supper, breakfast for dinner, sandwich for dinner.

Let's just rethink it.

And I'm gonna put a little bit of my fennel fronds on top.

There you go.

And I'm gonna take a taste.

Wow.

So good, so good.

This is perfect for a cold night.

I mean, did somebody mention winter?

Yeah, this will neutralize it.

For recipes, videos, and more, go to our website, saramoulton.com.

"Sara's Weeknight Meals" is made possible by.

- [Narrator] A journey aboard Oceania Cruises is designed to cultivate curiosity.

Guests can explore local treasures and epicurean traditions.

Staff and crew are dedicated to guests' interests, relaxation, and entertainment.

Evenings offer craft spirits, international wines, and dishes prepared by our master chefs.

That's the Oceania Cruises small ship experience.

- [Sara] And by USA Rice.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)