Good morning! We're at Villa Rosa, Lella's home, my countryside home. I'm Peppe Guida, chef of the Nonna Rosa tavern, but it's been some years I've carved out this small corner of countryside that I love and where I'd love to live my oldest days. She's my mum, nonna Rosa,
the famous grandma Rosa
R: Good morning everyone from Vico Equense! I'm nonna Rosa, this year it's been 60 years in the kitchen.
P: She's 89 years old, she started when she was 15,
so it's been more than sixty years. P: What are you making for us?
R: Spaghetti with tomato sauce, a very fresh one.
P: Great, I love it! So, what do you need? Water and tomato. In this way,
let's start putting the tomatoes in the water. OK? Why are we putting them in water? R: To wash them!
P: To take the seeds out! P: If you mash them in this way, your shirt will look like
you just shot yourself with a tomato cartridge.
If you mash them like this, in the water, we're removing the seeds and you're perfectly mashing them,
taking out the seeds without making your shirt dirty. Let's be generous!
A nice abundance of tomatoes! OK. Then, together with
tomatoes, we'll need basil, garlic and oil. OK? The garlic is already cleaned.
How much do we need? R: One is enough.
P: Pressed, sliced, cut into pieces? How do you need it?
R: Pressed. P: We're lightly pressing it. Let's go. So, we moved to the flames and we're starting with spaghetti.
Tell me when there's enough oil. R: Enough.
P: OK. P: Pressed garlic. Pasta. Would you throw it in? Here you go. Some salt? R: Yes.
P: Can we already add tomato?
R: Just a little longer. P: It smells like summer,
just like this season, doesn’t it? Meanwhile,
we're stirring the pasta. Tomato should be cooked
shortly. It will initially release its juices, but
it doesn't have to overcook. P: I'd add some more oil! Yes! Do you want to add basil right now? R: Add some cooking water!
P: OK... Being the grandma's assistant, grandma's sous chef is the most complicated task ever. Can I take the pasta out? It's nice and 'al dente'.
R: Spaghetti should be good. P: Nice and 'al dente', with some water dripping down. It shouldn't be strained, as we're cooking it for
another minute in the water of the sauce. R: Of course.
It needs to get the taste of the tomatoes. P: Here we go. P: Is it good?
R: Should be good, we need to taste it.
P: Try it out! This is so complicated that I'm sweating. R: It tastes great!
It's ready in half a minute. P: I'm creaming it for the last
half of a minute as we need some substance, some effort. To cream it, we're adding just a drop of cooking water from the pasta and we're creaming it, letting pasta release a bit of its starch, as it released the rest of it in the water. That bit will make the sauce even creamier. Here we are, it's done! OK, let's go plate it. Here we are. Spaghetti with tomato sauce. This is my daily portion. There's obviously different schools of
thought: some add lots of Parmesan, others add lots of
Pecorino cheese... I honestly just add a drizzle of olive oil out of
the flame to this spaghetti, and it's done. I'm eating it as pure as it can be. It's a whole different thing,
for sure. You're tasting the product, the oil,
you're tasting the tomato... and the summer. You can finish it!
R: With the local basil, directly from the garden! P: You're so nice. Basil is summer! Now we're eating it,
but are we adding a drizzle of olive oil, to finish? Here we are. Voilà! This is the spaghetti that takes
you back, in my opinion, takes you back in time with the stomach and the heart. Seven minutes for a huge happiness at the table.
R: Among all the dishes, spaghetti is my favorite. P: Among all pasta dishes, spaghetti is number one! So, this is spaghetti made by nonna
with her memories and her hand. Now I'm gonna play with these great products,
and let's see what comes out! Given the tradition cooked by my mother, that is so tasty, spaghetti with tomatoes, let's say "a la Scarpariello", I'm proposing you my recipe: 5 different tomatoes with 5 different consistencies. Verbena, lemon and some extra virgin oil for a dish for this summer that
'can dig holes in the ground!' So, I'm showing you all the steps. Displayed here, in front of you. Here it is. I'm adding tomatoes, turned on the cut side towards the bottom. And here is the last piece of tomato, a Pizzutello variety. Let's flavor
with just a branch of thyme and some verbena leaf, a pinch of salt. And 3 small pieces of chili. Voilà! We can use another drop of oil and start cooking. The first step is the base for our sauce. Let's also take our vermicelli, as we're placing our nice skillet over a low flame and cooking them gently. We are roasting them, almost candying them, not burning them,
but letting them caramelize in a base of herbs, garlic, chili and oil. In the meantime, we're throwing our vermicelli in, since it's a sauce that is very quick to make. In the meantime, let's take our service plate, a nice tureen, and start cutting our beefsteak tomato
like it was a carpaccio. Meanwhile, you can hear
the tomato sizzling and doing its job. It's starting to caramelize. Once it's cut, we're lightly salting it, lightly seasoning it
with a drizzle of oil, some of our herbs... This must be a very fragrant dish that makes us leap into the tastes of the Mediterranean scrub. We're lightly seasoning our tomato carpaccio and placing it around our base to create a nice big rose shape. It resembles a sun. It's beautiful, lightly sour, ribbed, a few seeds, really something exceptional. Our tomatoes are cooking. Look how nice they are, they don't have to burn, just caramelize. Let's start making our third consistency, oblong tomatoes,
we're cutting them into fours very quickly and coarsely. Let's just add a pinch of salt and blend them. Here they are. Take a look. This should be the fruit juice of the summer. Here it is,
we're putting this down and let it strain. Let's make our oblong tomato
smoothie finer. It's so nice! Let's put it here. Let's cut the yellow tomatoes in half, leaving a half of them on the side,
and do the same with the red ones yellow and red tomatoes,
let's cut them all in half as we're making two
different consistencies from our date tomatoes.
They're so nice, just like candies! Here we are. We're cutting
them in this way, giving two consistencies. How are we giving these two consistencies? Here we are. We're collecting them and moving them in our skillet, just waiting for us. Let's add half of the tomatoes we cut, of the date tomatoes we cut, add a drizzle of oil and make the fourth consistency.
We're cooking both date tomatoes, yellow and red.
Here is the roasted pizzutello tomato, the pasta is nice
and cooked and there's just one minute left to cook it completely. We're taking it out and creaming it for a minute in the cooking fond,
with the juice from the pizzutello tomato,
caramelized with herbs and lightly, lightly spicy and here we're starting to cream it and adding a drop of water. And we're finishing the cooking. Meanwhile, we're adding some basil. We're tearing it by hand,
so it doesn't oxidize. Look at the colors! It's the season!
For us, it's summer season, but this is really an hymn to the summer. Such colors... Fantastic! A pinch of salt and pasta is now done, here it is. Let's just make one last passage: a drop of water, cooking water and add the fifth consistency. Let's cream it and flavor it
and the dish is done. Date tomatoes, we're adding them without cooking. So, we have a roasted pizzutello tomato, yellow
and red cooked date tomatoes, yellow and red uncooked. Take a look. Mamma Mia, now comes the best. Let's give it a fresh touch, fragrant, very summery, it should be a seasonal
dish, and for us it's summer! We're flavoring it with
some lemon peel, some verbena leaf, we're creaming it a bit more, just to
combine the flavors. Voilà! We're finishing it and closing our nest, as tight as possible, and
we're placing it in the middle of the sun. This dish can be easily made at home, as you can see it's just 2 passages, very simple one. We're covering it.
You should imagine a tureen like this in the center of the table, in full summer, on the terrace... It's just gonna make
'a hole in the ground'! What really
makes a difference in the scenery: we made our oblong tomato smoothie.
Take a look: it's a fruit juice! Take a look. Let's soak everything in! I want this as a cold dish, not a hot one. We're finishing it with some Greek basil. It started as a spaghetti with 5 tomato consistencies and ended up being a tomato pasta salad! Here it is! Make it and eat it, it's so good! And that's all!
