The delights and problems of watching Molto Mario

this video is sponsored by Squarespace make and run a website for 10% less moola by using my link and code in the description when I was a child this is how my New York italian-american father and grandmother made pasta cooked pasta on the plate sauce on top I naturally thought that's just how it's done then when I was a teenager in the 1990s we got the Food Network and I saw chef Mario Batali do this instead 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 watching Mario Batali do that was the first time I became aware of how significantly Italian food and italian-american food had diverged in the century since impoverished southern Italians flooded into New York on mass that wave of immigration included my great-grandfather from Bari who as family lore would have it sailed across the sea clutching a little fig tree from the old country a fig tree that he then planted in the back of a row house in the Bronx and it was a tree that I visited many times in the process of visiting my spinster aunts who lived in that house until they died and my little tree here is a clipping of a clipping of a clipping of that tree now I love italian-american food culture and I'm quite glad that it has developed the way that it has but when I watched molto Mario as a teenager I could swear I felt it pinging something in my union collective unconscious and it sent me walking down a path that I'm still on now is as good a time as any to acknowledge that Mario Batali is at least guilty of serial sexual harassment to which he has admitted and at worst he's committed sexual assault which he denies this is why Batali no longer owns any restaurants and why he is no longer on TV how should this paint our experience of his old shows that is a question to which we shall return but for the moment I want to talk about molto Mario on its own terms as the made object that it is regardless of what its host was doing off-camera molto Mario debuted in 1996 a Batali was 32 years old and he had hardly done anything in his career yet he'd apprenticed all over Europe back and opened a small trattoria in New York called PO but that was the extent of his empire the more significant thing he done is impressed powerful people with his unmatched gift of the gab I'm gonna play you a minute-long clip from a 2004 episode of molto Mario called bankers of Torino we're talking about the Cucina p.m. on Thursday that's right the cooking from the p.m. on they which if you're familiar with it is in the far northwest corner of Italy it's protected by the Alps although it also has the Alps so it enjoys a very interesting microclimate somewhat passed over by many of the cool breezes but still enjoying a nice cool climate in the fall and a relatively hot Mediterranean like climate because it's right next to Liguria it's famous for making beautiful vermouth and a lot of great wine grows and Pyrmont a perhaps the most famous is which is Barolo and Barbaresco today we're gonna make three dishes a minestrone at a Gurin and a beautiful chicken liver dish all three kind of representing some of the riches and the local products that make regional Italian cooking so delicious the first step of course Mario Batali's lager reoccuring on regional Italian food ways was impressive enough when he was just standing there in his signature orange clogs but then he would keep at it while simultaneously blasting through at least three dishes in a half hour show when the Arabs brought rice and first introduced it to the Sicilian culture in the eighth or ninth century it was actually cultivated there up until the middle of the 18th century and what happened for some reason we do not know is it dried up a little bit in Sicily because when you're there's at least two different things happening simultaneously in that clip and indeed in Batali's brain the gabbing part of his brain is going on about historic Sicilian agronomy while the cooking part of his brain is thinking oh crap I'm burning the butter on national TV I've got to turn the heat down and get the rice in there stat with the notable exception of Alton Brown's rebooted good eats there is clearly nothing remotely this erudite on the Food Network anymore and there's certainly nothing as raw this genre of cooking program was often referred to someone derisive Li as stand and stir and it was shot like an old-fashioned multi-camera sitcom more like a stage play than a movie a set lit up as bright as the surface of the Sun thus enabling cameras to shoot with small apertures and ultra deep focus imagine being a camera operator trying to keep this whirling dervish inside a shallow focal plane at least three cameras I think simultaneously shooting different angles of the action that unfolds in close to real-time batali would often sprint to the finish with his final dish in the last 10 seconds of the show while an off-camera producer no doubt frantically tapped the imaginary watch a touch more cheese and a little bit of toasted breadcrumbs and there you have it a beautiful lamb catch oh hey Waldo thank you guys for being here I want to thank you no thank you guys for being here and I look forward to seeing you on the next welcome live a good stand and stir cooking show is - the Food Network as the music video is - mtz ancient relics of both institutions respective original purposes before mission creep led them to trashy reality competition programming apparently the entropic end-stage of all TV what am I gonna have to do higher beaver to chew it anyway perhaps the greatest testament to Batali's ceaselessly spouting well of smart sounding stuff to say is how little his guests ever spoke their job was to sit on the stool and occasionally giggle despite those stools being perpetually populated by a who's who of New York high society always introduced with merely their first names my name's Maya 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 yes that's freaking Michael Stipe of REM simply introduced as my friend Michael and almost never heard from or acknowledged again in the ensuing episode what an epic humblebrag for a TV show to do that I'm here with my good friends Naomi Jake and Maggie yes that's freaking Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal just my friends Jake and Maggie epic humble brag but in a way molten Mario really was humble in a way that I can see now in retrospect profoundly affected the way that I cook and eat Batali constantly underlined that most great Italian food is born of poverty and that's part of why it's so good what you'll find traditionally in this largely agrarian society is that most often were just using plain old ordinary and that's one of the reasons why when you taste these soups there going to be something that are so redolent of just the simple pleasure of exactly what's in it and not this murky broth made with the feet of some other animal it devotees of my work will detect some resonances in that clip Batali constantly underlined that great Italian food is about making the best of what you have where you are as a result the best way to cook Italian is often to not cook Italian the most important ingredient in a beautiful carbonara is guanciale if you could hand me that there Brooks if you can trouble finding this there's a place called be lazy in New York and probably they ship it but also there's a lot of great really high-quality American Bacon's around and just go out and buy one that's in a slab so that you can kind of but beyond Batali himself the format of molto Mario the show necessarily steered it away from the arrogant presumptuous prescriptivism that I abhor in other cooking shows somebody like Gordon Ramsay is constantly going on about the proper way to cook the most amazing whatever it is as if there is objectively only one legitimate goal and only one way to get there molto Mario rarely traffic's in such prescriptivists claptrap because its format is inherently descriptivists but Talley isn't saying this is the right way to do it he's merely saying here's the way they do it in this part of Italy take what you will from that information does really make a difference doing it that way instead of in a bowl well this is the way they do it in Italy and if we'd like to do it the way to your house for what it's worth I have tried to embody that same approach in my own work I would never presume to tell you the proper way to make pasta I just tell you how I like to make pasta and how I came to discover that that's the way that I like to make and eat it and in the process I hope to inspire and empower you to go on your own journey of self-discovery indeed I have come full circle on pasta I've kind of been loving my sauce on top again lately I love the heterogeneity every bite is a little different because you can dose the sauce onto the noodle yourself in a new waise I hate food where every bite is the same likewise I would never presume to tell you whether you should watch molto Mario and knowing what we know about Mario Batali's personal conduct I'm not going to be the guy that's gonna say oh you got a judge the creation and the creator independently or oh you got to judge people by the behavioral and moral standards of their time you don't got to do anything other than what is right for you but for what it's worth I will now walk you through some of my own thought process on that subject as it pertains to my own habits of consumption the first thing I will acknowledge is that almost no one is blameless in their personal conduct certainly not me and probably not you most of us are quite lucky that we have not as yet come to be defined by the worst things we ever did instead of the best on the other hand if if there exists a problem of people being too quickly ejected from public life for behavior that is as common as it is harmful surely that problem is much smaller than the problem of the behavior and the real harm it causes to real people people commenting on this video that I'm making right now will no doubt debate at length whether Batali's admitted and/or alleged sins should render him permanently persona non grata but let's assume for the sake of argument that they should that Batali is beyond redemption the assault allegations could certainly nudge you towards such a conclusion let's just assume that for a sec should that stop us from enjoying a really great TV show that the guy used to make assuming you even want to watch it maybe you don't knowing what you know about the guy but let's just assume for the sake of conversation that you do want to watch it the question of whether to patronize the wares of a bad person is much easier I think after that person is dead Ricard vogner may have been a proto Nazi but he's dead all his operas are in the public domain so I'm not going to be financially supporting him and his proto Nazi agenda if I buy a ticket to go see dust Rheingold mario batali is still alive and therefore still stands to benefit from my consumption of his products or maybe not because multum REO is as far as i can tell only accessible in these pirated videos on youtube plans to commercially re-release the series were reportedly scuttled after the allegations surfaced in 27 I'm not sure if he is making money from these vids though I suppose I'll find out if and when this video of mine is flagged for a copyright despite being exactly the kind of thing the US Congress envisioned when they codified the fair use doctrine but anyway it bums me out that most of Malta Mario is for the moment lost in the mists of time it bums me out that the creation must be banished with the Creator I'm not saying that's a bad thing maybe that's the way that it needs to be I'm just saying that it bums me out it bums me out for all of the other people who worked on that show almost nobody is gonna watch The Cosby Show ever again and I understand why who wants to watch a convicted rapist sanctimoniously modeled the role of ideal family man but Bill Cosby isn't the only person who made this show for dozens and dozens and dozens of other people this show is their life's work too for some retiree out in Queens being a gaffer on The Cosby Show was the most important thing he ever did in his career and now that record is expunged as someone who worked for years as an invisible producer on other people's shows that bums me out maybe the best way to escape this sticky wicket is to not live in the past what was good about molto Mario can simply inspire others to make something new and better it has obviously inspired me and who cares if the Food Network is a reality trash heap these days if we have things like YouTube you want a smart cooking show with an ultra gregarious host you go subscribe to Helen Reddy ok ok enough about wine let's talk about the me where would you sell a dressing V without me huh you know you're right the mustard man I love her or make something of your own that you wouldn't want to see in the world which is exactly what Squarespace can help you do you don't have to be a trained computer scientist like helen is in order to make a beautiful functional website Squarespace handles all the technicals allowing you to focus on what you have to say to the world which is fundamentally what a website is all about it's your storefront whether it's a personal portfolio site or a literal store with which you can sell things while Squarespace handles all the credit card stuff they can even help collect sales tax and shipping fees the help guides are exhaustive and easy to read your account gives you free access to webinars and other and assistance what are you waiting for build a website and show the world what you've got Squarespace will even host it for you and you can save 10% on either a site or a domain registration by going to squarespace.com slash Ragusa and by using my promo code Ragusa and please try to stay reasonably civil and sensitive in the comments discussion about this one maybe try discussing something less controversial like weather sauce should be mixed through the pasta or just plopped on top actually come to think of it that's a fight that could also easily come to blows

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 1,082,027

Keywords: Mario Batali, mario batali bolognese, mario batali pasta, mario batali cooking, mario batali carbonara, mario batali, food network, molto mario, mario batali chef, cooking show, molto mario full episodes, the truth about chef mario batali, what happened to mario batali the chef

Id: sRWDO2R9o_M

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Mon May 18 2020