Sara's Weeknight Meals

Vegetables and herbs, whether they are harvested or found, are part of a heritage of flavors some feel have been lost in modern farming. We'll visit professional forager whose unlikely career led her to supply the great restaurants of New York with found food. After a foraging field trip, she'll join Sara to make Mugwort Soup and Asparagus with Wildflowers.

Asian immigrants of all kinds have come to American and adapted their cuisine to ours in fascinating ways. Vietnamese immigrant Hung Huynh not only won the first season Top Chef but became an expert in cooking seafood. His whole Branzino is easy and delicious. We'll visit another group of Vietnamese immigrants in Houston, who adapted Cajun foods to their Vietnamese cuisine with fiery results.

California is farming country and on this episode we get a good look at what farm life really means when we visit a young farmer who documents his life on a vlog. He'll join Sara and a local sushi chef to make inside out cucumber roll and a classic California roll, plus, a totally unique sushi burger.

There are cooking clubs and there are book clubs: this one is both. Each month this Napa, California club picks a cookbook from which to sample recipes at a pot luck dinner at a member's house. Sara joins to make two versions - Chicken and Prunes and Shrimp Tikka with Mango Chutney. We'll also visit a unique men's only cooking club - the Barbecue Pit Boys.

The clean eating of the Middle East is on display when we visit Israeli-American chef Einat Admony and make her signature casserole, Sinaya. Sara contributes her own Baked Chicken Thighs with Artichokes and Lemon Pickles.

Home cooking of Puerto Rico is the focus of this episode. Sara welcomes a fan from Virginia into her kitchen to make Arroz con Gandules. Then Sara makes a sandwich version of a Puerto Rican classic, Picadillo. There are also tips on making a Salad in a Jar to take to work, and on 'Ask Sara', cutting cherry tomatoes.

If you love Paella, the area around Valencia, Spain is the place to go. Every local has a proudly held secret recipe. We'll join one of them, local chef Franck Garanger for a market tour to gather ingredients for a very special Paella, cooked the traditional way, outside in the open air.

The fairy tale village of Madremanya north of Barcelona is our base for making the most Spanish of foods, the small bites called tapas. Sara joins home cook and innkeeper Juame Vidal to make his Catalonian versions of classic tapas like Meatballs with Peas from his garden, Tomato Toast and the Potato Omelette called Tortilla Espanola.

To visit the Amalfi Coast is to taste lemons in every form. So what better place to visit than a lemon farm in Sorrento, overlooking the Mediterranean. We'll make the Italian lemon aperitif, Limoncello, with a local culinary tour guide, then visit a spectacular lemon farm overlooking the Mediterranean, where we make the local farm cheese, caciotta, with lemon.

The rich flavors of Tuscany are ours to taste at Villa Dianella, a 15th century hunting lodge once owned by the Medicis. We're here to taste Chianti wines from the vineyard and then make a spectacular homemade Chianti red pasta filled with local goat cheese and spring asparagus.