Molto Mario: Pasta Sauces featuring Michael Stipe

hello welcome my name is Mario Italian this is multi Mario I'm here with my good friends Ken Kristy and Michael and today we're talking about the basic pasta sauce primer you've seen me talk about this in a thousand shows over the years forever basically when it comes down to it these are the building blocks to make great pasta dishes they're very simple they're very accessible and they're pretty much throughout the entire entire Peninsula the Italian culture is it to say and what it means is that everywhere there's gonna be a simple basic sauce everywhere there's gonna be a ragu or a meat sauce and everywhere that they ever make any baked pastas there's gonna be a bechamel sauce so we're gonna make those three sauces today and then I'm going to show you how to quickly combine them with either one noodle or another and we'll talk a little bit about the specificity of the noodle to the condiment choice now the most important thing to realize is that it's all very easy whenever I talk in wax and you'll see me talk for a half-hour while I cut up one onion it's all because it's so simple that there's really not that much real action to do and when you're talking about Italian cooking we're not talking about really kind of making a hero wordy defying some fancy guy was a really tall hat who's got a degree in chemistry we're talking about the cooking of grandmas and if we could talk and and manifest that in our cooking then in fact we're gonna really understand the matriarchal portion of what Italian cooking is all about it's all about that hospitality it's all about the simplicity and most importantly it's about the satisfaction that you get from a dish of something as simple as pasta now we're gonna make our basic tomato sauce that I've probably referred to more than three hundred thousand times over time and it's very simple we're gonna take onions and this is a Spanish onion it could just as easily be a red onion it's probably not going to be a leek or scallion but it could be a shallot and we're gonna use extra virgin olive oil and put it in a relatively hot pan and start to caramelize it now when we talk about caramelization what do we mean we mean that the natural sugar or starch in something is going to actually come out and transform itself into something even sweeter and the way that you do that is by adding direct heat to it we're using a lip the lipid of choice in my favorite sauce the basic tomato sauce is gonna be extra virgin olive oil as you get further north you'll discover that they're gonna use butter as you get even further north than that they're gonna use lard but basically it starts at the top near the austro-hungarian Empire and that's the Lord built for emerald lives up there in the large world then you come down and then there's Butler and there's hunt unns and tons and tons of cattle cows milk cheeses blah blah blah then you get down to immediate Romagna where it starts to get a little great and then below that from tuscany on south pretty much the lipid choice is extra-virgin olive oil or olive oil in any one of its thousand of ways of serving it now we're gonna take some garlic and when i use garlic a thinly slice it that is to say if you wanted to pick it out you could but you probably don't have to and i'm just gonna throw that in there now the order that this off all goes in here isn't that relevant but the most important thing to realize is that before you get your tomatoes in there you do not want to be throwing them on top of raw Angus so you want the onions and the garlic and a little bit of this carrot to actually be already cooked so what we're gonna do is little carrots you need to peel them like those are you don't have to peel carrots and if you get organic carrots it's probably even better just to wash them because there's gonna be a certain amount of fiber and texture and sweetness in the skin itself but often enough there are even a little bit bitter the skin so if you peel them you're gonna be do better you could grate it like this which is what you want to do I don't know if you any of you ever saw my very first show back in 1994 but while I was doing this for my very first show all of a sudden I grated my finger it was a was it really a bloody mess I pretty much covered it up as good as I can but if people still ever get a chance to see that show you could see me at one of my most embarrassing moments Moorea what about the thing with alcoholic what about what if someone in your family doesn't like garlic or is allergic to it doesn't like the taste of it then it's very easy to delete one of the things that when you start to remove the components of something that's not that when there's only four or five components you remove 20% of the ingredients it's not a bad thing it won't just have that same kind of taste but garlic is probably the one and onions are the other the one of which people are most afraid of it if they don't like it by all means just delete it it's not gonna make that big of a deal you may have to overcompensate have to compensate later on by adding a little bit more salt or a little bit more seasoning so that it starts to have a little bit more flavor because you've taken out one of the building blocks of it but certainly garlic allergy and garlic uncomfortability is something that's really big and a lot of people in New York have that same kind of an issue now traditionally when people think of basic tomato sauces they think tomato basil and in fact we're going to add basil at this to at the last minute to show you the plethora of variation that you can use it for but when I talked about using a basic tomato sauce I love the herb time so what we're going to do is just take a little bit of the thyme and the way you do that is you just rub your thumb along the stems going either one way up or down and just pinch it off a little bit when you're pinching this you'll notice that all of a sudden that flavor comes out that's because you're releasing the essential oils that are in that that actually give it that flavor now what makes an herb and edible herb if you think about all of the thousands of plants around us what who decided that this one was going to be good but that a pine tree wasn't going to be good well in fact you can taste all these things and when you start to travel around the world you'll see that all those sumac is something that looks just like kind of a decorative thing when you're traveling around the the Atlantic Northeast zoom executing and a lot of Turkish and Middle Eastern cooking we would never think of going over there and eating it and they would probably never think of picking up rosemary and putting it into their food because they're like well that tastes like a pine tree so now how that developed is just over time people started to like thyme or rosemary or sage and basil but didn't pick out either the Angelica which is now trendy or other herbs that are now coming along as people are starting to think about it now the next and most important ingredient here is what they call Pilate these are Pomodoro Pilate or peeled tomatoes the kind that I like are from in and around Campania my favorites are San Marzano however there are some Marzano varieties of tomato that you can get from anywhere from Iowa to California to Spain and all these other places so it has to be San Marzano but also grown in Campania and most specifically if you can get those they kind of actually grown in the town of or in the region of San Marzano itself which is in the shadow of Vesuvius which probably is why it's so delicious because of that volcanic soil that happened way way back in 72 AD that kind of ground has created a beautiful environment to grow vegetables in and if you're ever in Naples and you're eating all of a sudden just the regular old grilled eggplant and just plain old ordinary sliced tomatoes those are the things that just drive you wild you're just like I can't believe this tastes so good why doesn't it taste like that at home well it can yes you doing with your you're squishing I'm squeezing these because I hate the way that they have a texture when they're processed in a food processor with one of those little dipstick things because I like their still to be a little amount of chunks but I like it to be relatively random so now you can see that we've started to caramelize in the pot here just a little bit around the outside edges what we're gonna do is we're gonna add this here we're gonna stir it around and I'm gonna add just a touch of salt now we're gonna bring that to a boil we're gonna lower the heat we're gonna simmer it for about 25 minutes we're gonna drop a little spaghetti so I can show you what a beautiful spaghetti with basic tomato sauce tastes like and when we come back we'll start to talk about a little ragu Bolognese some bechamel assemble it'll tell you thoroughly so please stay with us you hey welcome back now we've got our basic tomato sauce I took out about two-thirds of it because if there's any mistake that American cooks make when they're cooking pasta is that they tend to over sauce it they put too much stuff on in Italy the main event is the noodle and the rest is just the dressing very much like we dress salads now I've got it in there I'm allowing it to start to soak what I'm always telling you to do is what I really mean that is to say take it out about 30 seconds to 45 seconds before it's the al dente that you want and cook it in the sauce so the two separate ingredients the noodle and the sauce come together as one and that's important to understand almost as important as it is to just finish it right here in the pan without too much stuff on it you can see I've just got this here and you're gonna say gosh this is so darn good it's because I didn't put too much sauce on it there's just a little basil in here at the end and you could add cheese here but you don't need to cuz we're talking about the simple building blocks how do you know how much pasta to cook that's a good question ken in Italy they tend to use about a hundred grams per person for an appetizer hundred Rams is a little bit more than 3 ounces so one of those one-pound packages will serve five people really because it's about 454 grams as it were and but in my case because my hands are exactly the size and shape that they are this is exactly enough for four people that must be about 400 grams but that's because I possess the long delicate fingers of a pianist as opposed to the short stubby fingers of a sausage maker you notice that there we go so go ahead here we are Ken just a little bit of noodles and serve them up now the next thing we're gonna make are the two kind of components to making a lasagna the first of which is a bechamel sauce and this is something that you're gonna use to make into any kind of a baked pasta and what it does is it kind of serves to keep it nice and moist add a certain amount of richness and it's absolutely essential in lasagna Bolognese but it could just as easily any pasticcio of pasta pasta show being just anything that's kind of mixed up and served Howie yes sausage that you're making they can you freeze them and absolutely and that's exactly what I've done with this we made enough for probably five dinners like this you just put them in the little quart containers with the tops on them and toss them in the freezer pull them out the day before you use them and that will go for the bechamel as it will go for the meat sauce or the regular Bolognese now to make the bechamel we're going to take five tablespoons of butter and four of flour the traditional rue is made of equal parts equal portions or parts flour and butter but I've always found that it's a little difficult to work with I'd like it just a little bit wetter as opposed to a little bit drier now I've got that I've got my milk to which I've added absolutely nothing and I'm going to pour that in having heated it up and I'm going to whisk it through to see just how much it'll take but this is about four cups of milk for four tablespoons of flour it's better that this is a little thin than a little too thick because I can always use it when it's thin if it's thick it'll tend to set up just like a pudding when it's cool or room temperature and that's no bueno if you're trying to make a lasagna so we want to have it just a little on the thin side because also it's going to be always a little bit less viscum in more viscous when it's warm than it is when it's cool and when you're assembling a lasagna often enough this is actually room temperature or cool so now what you want to do when you've made your bechamel we like the season it with just a little bit of nutmeg but you can also just season it with a little bit of salt and we're going to turn the heat way down and just allow it to kind of cook and in this cooking what you're doing is removing some of that cakey flour early taste and you want to make sure that you cook it for at least 15 or 20 minutes so that that gets out now the next component is going to be the world-famous meat sauce of Bologna or ragu Bolognese and what we're gonna do is we're gonna take some carrots some onions and some celery and because we want these to almost disappear into the sauce I'm gonna cut these up into pieces that are very very small because effectively this is going to become part of the texture or the thickening of this sauce now traditionally when we're in a media room Anya and we're making this sauce we're using three meats pork veal and beef but you could just as easily use just one of those if you wanted to make a beef ragout or a veal ragu or a poor regu you could do that in this case instead of just plain pork or pork sausage we're just going to use finely ground pancetta which is the seasoned pork belly or the bacon of Italy now the trick to this dish is we're actually going to use to lipids lipids of five tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil and three tablespoons of butter and we're going to cook these guys here in that until they're completely softened we're not looking to add color here we don't want these to become deep dark caramelized and golden brown we're looking more to sweat those so what may happen is we'd actually put a top on it or just turn the heat down but actually by adding this much stuff to it it's going to slow it way down to the most important thing at this point is to get it stirred around now we're gonna sweat this for probably 10 to 15 minutes until it's nice and soft if it started to go so quickly by all means you would just take a little bit of water like that and just splash it in because again we really don't want this to become color when we come back I'm gonna show you how we make the basic pasta for this we're gonna finish up our ragu and I'll show you how to bring two of these things together in a magnificent simple plate of patio Fla out regularly so please stay with us I welcome back now our little dog lotto or our mirepoix is it would be called or our sofrito as would be called an Italian is now completely softened and at this point it's just a question of simplicity we're gonna take our ground beef we're gonna take our ground veal and we're gonna take our ground punch at then this is what punch Ethel looks like it's this little wheel sometimes you'll get what's called punch at the stays ax which looked like slab bacon but it's effectively the same thing it's a salted pork belly it has a little bit of spices on and what we're gonna do is we're gonna stir that through just like so and then we're gonna think about the rest of the ingredients that go there I'm gonna let this start to sweat just a little bit but the other things that go in the classic ragu Bolognese and not necessarily in all meat sauces a lot of times this would be enough a lot of times if they were in a region that just had pigs they would just use pork or if they just had water buffalo they would just use water buffalo whatever it was they would use what was ever local and easily available to them because that's how these traditions have started is by using whatever was around you the other ingredient that we're gonna use is tomato paste milk and white wine which always throws people because the lactic component of this particular sauce is what makes it so unctuous when it comes now what does this sauce traditionally serve with when we talk about two kinds of pasta there's the dried pasta that is to say made with the hard wheat of the south and then there's the fresh pasta although every part every region of Italian culture has a fresh pasta as a kind of a holiday thing the main one comes from a media Romagna and they use the soft wheat that week which grows on the plains in and around emilia romagna with just eggs and the trick here is obviously we use the well method you've seen me do it a thousand times they also call it the fountain method in Italy and what you do is you just get the eggs in there and the traditional recipe is three and a half cups of flour to four eggs it's always better to have a little less flour than a little too much flour Oh careful does really make a difference doing it that way instead of in a bowl work well this is the way they do it in Italy can if we'd like to do it the way to go to your house it'll be the mold of Ken's Oh No you know it actually doesn't it doesn't really make that much of a difference but the idea that what we try to try to understand here on this show is the way that they really do it in Italy and although you could probably just put this in a mixer this is the way they really do it and it's it actually you kind of get into the the traditional way and it's funner that way so what you want to do is start by working the fork around like so and then just splash this stuff in here and get your watch a little higher on your wrist and then you'll bring it all together and you just start working with this stuff and in the kneading process you'll understand you'll start to feel how it starts to come together and that's a good thing and what you really want to do is work it and work it and work it to eventually develop this concept called gluten now soft wheat has a little bit less gluten than hard wheat but in working it you can develop that gluten and what that does is it gives it the elasticity that's eventually going to become that al dente Neuss in the - now there's nothing compared to the other dentists of a foot of a hard pasta this is the one that you guys just had it had that almost caviar crunch to it this will never have that amount of chew to it but it'll have a certain kind of splendid bite to it and that's why we that's developed in this way by actually needing it now we bring this whole dough together and I always use a little bit yes a little bit less flour than is called for and the whole thing starts to come together and you give it a little pinch and a little pinch and then pretty soon you have a dough ball and from the from the ashes are from that mess you'll see that some of these dry pieces are coming apart that's all right now I'm gonna leave that for a second because now we've got our meat that started to actually brown a little bit here and now we're gonna add tomato paste and I'm going to add why from tube instead of from a can I find that it's it's basically the same product and a tubes easier to use you don't have to open the cannon when you're done with you just put a little top on it and you put it away and you can use it again because I rarely use a whole can of tomato paste and I love the way tomato plays taste so now I've got my tomato paste I'm gonna add a cup of milk and I'm gonna add a cup of wine notice no canned tomatoes no basil no herbs this is something that never really comes out to be a deep red sauce regular boilie is almost like a pinkish Brown like the the t jelly or the tiles on the ceilings and the roofs of all the houses and alone you when you talk about Bologna we refer to it as three things Bologna the red because it was an original communist place Bologna la Delta because it was the first University in all of Europe and Bologna at La Casa the fat one because its traditional for using all these rich delicious flavors now I'm going to bring that up to a boil I'm going to season it with just a little bit of salt here and I'm going to turn it down to just a simmer now this stuff having needed it for a little while would eventually become this stuff and in the interest of expediency I'm going to show you how we can make perfect simple paleo tele the kind that we're going to start with our ragu using this amazing tool and although traditionally the way that they would make this pasta would be to roll it out between a metal dowel or a metal rolling pin and a wooden board because they want that kind of toothsome texture the Emiliana are crazy and they think and they know I mean this is actually true that if you roll it between wooden wood you get something that adheres to the sauce a little bit better as opposed between the metal dowels like this right here which is going to make it a little bit more what we call Leisha or smooth so when you go out to a traditional Italian meal in Emilia you're hoping that the grandmother or the wife or the mom or even the dad or the cousin is actually rolling it out between those two wooden pieces but in my world I like to actually make this a little bit easier for us to do so I'm going to roll it through this and what you'll do is you'll consistently make this old and rolled and rolled and I do it twice through here because as we run it through here we're even kneading it just a little bit more developing that gluten just a little bit further and giving it that beautiful chew that we're hoping for and will keep rolling this through when I come back I'll show you how we've actually created the lasagne how we've used this ragu Bolognese and I'll have made an entire plate of these tight a lay so we can see how it's gonna taste with a beautiful meat regular so please stay with it hey welcome back now I just made that fresh pasta we ran it through this machine and in fact you roll it into the sheets you does to a little flour you let it rest for a second and at this point this is fresh pasta that will cook in 30 seconds because we haven't allowed it to dry we haven't messed with it too much we're putting it in plenty of boiling salted water and then what I have here is something we made with that ragu Bolognese and green noodles and effectively when you make a lasagna like we did we don't use this one here we use those noodles that I just made the freshmen we've infused them with a little bit of spinach and we just roll out those big sheets and then blanch them and then layer them with this bechamel with this ragu and a little bit of parmigiano-reggiano and then we bake the whole thing and then you allow it to be served at basically room temperature this isn't something that comes out of the oven gets cut and brought to the table because then it would just kind of ooze out and look kind of like noodles and sauce but when you served it just right that is to say at room temperature with a little bit of parmesan in the bechamel on top that's what makes it so good now I've made enough ragu here obviously for a couple of weeks and what I want to do is just use a little bit to dress these fresh noodles that I just made so I've cooked them and that's the chef o'clock saying yes that's been about 30 seconds can we drain it like that and then it goes straight in there and we lose the spaghetti from the first part then we take a little bit of the undisputed king of cheeses and grade it over the top and now I took those noodles out in just the right amount of time then what I'm gonna do with this cheese is create just another little bit of a texture and then to take it to the plate you just toss it like this and the noodles get dressed just perfectly and notice there's not too much ragout here it's really all about the noodle but that's our basic pasta sauce primer thanks for being here guys it helps you all on the next multiply Oh

Channel: Molto Fan

Views: 953,347

Keywords: food network, mario batali, michael stipe, rem, pasta sauce, fresh pasta, bolognese

Id: -QvWpWm_PEg

Length: 22min 11sec (1331 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 30 2016