- This is how you are going to make baked Ziti, known as Pasta Al Forno. In Italy, young people between 25 and 35 have ranked this pasta as best pasta in Italy. Find out, why. And I'm making for you the real Pasta Al Forno. (fun piano medley) Hi, and welcome to Vincenzo's plate. Guys, we have some really important steps to follow, okay. So please, stay with me and lets make best Pasta Al Forno you ever made. So, we always start from
the sauce and here we have the base of the sauce
which is homemade passata which is tomato puree. You can just buy a bottle from the shop, make sure it's
a beautiful Italian passata made with love. I use about half onion,
so we cut it in half and we want to chop the onion very nice and thin. So you can use any technique that you like to chop the onion, but
what I like to do is I like to make sure they're
nice and thin, okay. So you cut the onion and
the reason why we do this is because when eat the Pasta Al Forno we don't have chunks of onion. Okay, time to make the sauce. So in a nice pot, you wanna put about
four to five tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, and then we want to do the sofrito,
we wanna cook the onion. So we wanna put the onion in there and brown it, and when it becomes brown we are going to add the sauce. So after about six or seven minutes, we have a beautiful, golden brown onion, look now how it looks. It's time to add the sauce, the beautiful homemade sauce, or Italian passata from the
shop, look how beautiful it is. Make sure you stir it properly so you get the onions to go everywhere. For this recipe I like to use two bottle of passata just because we need the beautiful sauce in this pasta. I like to add a pinch of rock salt to my
tomatoes because it gives the beautiful flavor. And if you have some
leftovers, let's say you're not going to use all of it, you can always keep it in the fridge for the day after or for
the week and you can make anything you want with the extra sauce. At this point, we want
to cover the tomato sauce and slow cook it on a low
heat, for about 30 minutes. So the sauce is ready,
but now we need to decide what ingredients we are going to use for our Pasta Al Forno. Let's learn more about Pasta Al Forno and the history of Pasta Al Forno. In Sicily, they do use mini-meatballs, they do use a type of round pasta called Aneline. The put lot's of pecorino,
they put riccota. In Naples, they put mini-meatballs and pork ragu next to it. In Calabria, they like to put salami, they like to meat, they put peas, eggs. In the North, like in Emilia-Romagna they put bechamel. See, like in Naples and in Sicily they use
ricotta, in Emilia-Romagna they put bechamel. We're I'm from in Abruzzo, we don't put bechamel
or we don't put ricotta but we like to use peas,
we like to use eggs, we like to use mince, meat mince or meatballs. What I'm doing today is
I'm going to show you a way, a classic way of making Pasta Al Forno using pork and veal. It's a mince, it's nice and then we are going to cook them, slow cook that
in extra virgin olive oil until the meat becomes nice and soft. The other ingredients
I'm going to add today, are the eggs, beautiful hard-boiled eggs. I'm going to add cacciatore
salami, calabrese style nice and spicy. It's a Calabrian inspiration. So now, in another pan I'm going to add some top-quality
extra virgin olive oil, about three spoons, and then we add the pork and veal mince, and this it needs to be cooked, slow cooked because you don't want the meat to stress. You want the meat to be relaxed and to be nice and moist. Try to break it so that we get small pieces of meat, we don't want big chunks of meat because this needs to be
spread in the pasta later on like when you make a lasagna. I like to cover it so we
keep all the steam inside which helps to cook the meat and it will help to keep
the meat nice and moist. So after about five minutes, you have a look. Have a look, the meat is see, half brown, two more minutes, cover it and we will be fine. So after about half an hour, our sauce is beautiful and ready. And what we need to do to finish it off, we need to add a little bit of beautiful
organic basil from the garden. Break it with your hands, you put it inside just like that, because if you cut the
basil on the chopping board you are going to ruin, you're going to leave all the
flavors on the chopping board. So the only way for you to get the flavors out of it is to use your hands. So now we mix it very well, so we get a nice basil sugo. Beautiful but ready to go. Our meat is also ready, see. What I like to do now, I like
to get a little bit of sauce and put it in the meat. Not too much, just maybe two, two spoons and this will be added
to the Pasta Al Forno when we're assembling, okay. We are going to cover them so they stay nice and warm. What we want top do next is we want want to bring to boil, a large pot with a nice amount of water because
we need to boil the pasta in there, and also we want to bring to boil, a small pan where
we can cook our boiled eggs. So this is how I like
to make my boiled eggs. I want the water to be
boiled already, I don't want to wait, I don't wanna
put the eggs in the water because I wanna cook them now for 14 minutes and I wanna make them hard. You can make them, or you
can cook them for 12 minutes if you don't wanna make them too hard but, the reason why we
need them hard is because we're gonna cook them in the pasta. You don't want them to be too soft. Okay it's been 12 minutes
now, now here I have water, with ice because we need the eggs
to get cold straight away, we only need to make them
cold so what we do now we get the egg and we put them straight in the ice, and we leave it there
for a couple of minutes until they become nice and cold. Now the classic pasta for the Pasta Al Forno are rigatoni. They're good and they will become crunchy to perfection, the top
part of Pasta AL Forno needs to be crunchy. Ziti are great too, and in America you love Ziti and they're very popular. Here in Australia, we don't
really find Ziti very easily, they're not common. You can use conchiglioni as well but they're just, I don't know, they're
good but they don't become as crunchy on top, as good
as the rigatoni or Ziti, so go for rigatoni. Interesting, because in Sicily in some parts of Sicily they use Analine which is like a round pasta, it doesn't really become crunchy
but it's still delicious. Time to cook pasta, guys when you cook pasta always use a large pot and put a nice amount of rock salt, okay. So we are cooking half kilo pasta and the pasta I chose are rigatoni just because they're beautiful,
they become crunchy on top and for me, it's the perfect pasta. Okay, this is an important topic. How long do we cook the pasta for the rigatoni Pasta Al Forno or Ziti? My advice is don't listen to
most of the people who tell you you cook the pasta halfway, it's a big no, simply because
not many people are used to al dente pasta. In Italy, me, I love al dente pasta but many people don't like it and if you only cook the pasta halfway it's gonna be extremely al dente. So Pasta Al Forno needs
to have the crunchy top part, crunchy top part and inside it needs to be moist an nicely cooked. You know, you don't want
them to be too al dente, otherwise we have the crusty part, too hard, the middle part too hard, it's not enjoyable. My recommendation is to
follow the three minutes rule. So what I do is, I cook the pasta and take it out three minutes before the instruction on the packet. So the pasta I'm cooking today takes 14 minutes to be cooked, so I'm taking
them out at 11 minutes so three minutes before. So if your pasta cooks for 10 minutes, take them out at seven minutes. The reason why I do this
is because we are not using a very wet sauce, you know like we're
not using a lot of sauce. The pasta is not swimming in a pool of sauce. Remember the three minutes rule, okay. Take the pasta out three minutes before and then, you're going to mix it
with the sauce, off course. Always mix it with the sauce and then we assemble the dish. For this baked Ziti, Pasta Al Forno we are using four different type of cheeses. The first one is the pecorino, then we have mozzarella
cheese, fior de latte and buffalo mozzarella. This two cheeses, they need to go in the middle part and then
we're gonna use provolone, which is nice dry cheese. Let's prepare our ingredients,
the eggs are nice and cold right now so they should
be very easy to break. Keep it wet and the skin should come off very very easily. So here we have a beautiful rigatoni cooked for 11 minutes,
so three minutes less than the packet, the
instruction on the packet and we're gonna put it in the sauce. We mix it with the sauce. Here guys, I just want
to show you how al dente this pasta is. So here I break it and see that inside? It's like still white, it's pretty al dente. Now gently mix your pasta but don't be too rough, we don't wanna break it. Just mix gently so you have
the sauce going everywhere and you must do this in
a pot, please don't do it in a salad bowl. So you got the pasta ready. Right now I wanna show you how perfect these eggs are. Cooked to perfection, so
I'm gonna cut them in half and as you can see, see they're nice perfectly boiled, hard-boiled and that's what you get, okay. And I'm not gonna cut anymore because, the way we're gonna cut
these eggs is like this. We cut it like that because we wanna make it look pretty when you serve the pasta. Cut it like this and then what you can do, you can cut this in half. Okay. Another great ingredient
we're going to use is the Calabrese cacciatore
salami, the reason why I do this is because in Calabria, Calabria they make the best
salami's on the planet, okay. Please don't use chorizo, you know if you're my friend
and you wanna cook Italian food you don't use chorizo, okay? Here is a beautiful Calabrese spicy salami, okay. We cut it like this and then we need to cut this into small small cubes. With the cheeses, I still like to cut it nice and thin like if
you're making a pizza. So, you want to create cubes, cubes of mozzarella, this is the fior
de latte, nice and creamy. The buffalo mozzarella is
very creamy as you can see. And the other cheese we need to use, for the top part, is the provolone. You wanna cut your
provolone into small cubes. Ladies and gentleman, this
is the most important part of the recipe, the assembling time. What we need to do is, we start by adding some sauce at the bottom. Then, what we do add the pasta in there. Here we out the pasta, we
have one layer right now and now we fill it up with our favorite ingredients. So here we have, the meat first. Now if you want to use
different ingredients, go for it, but don't use chorizo,
just use Italian salami. So here I've got, the meat everywhere, a little bit more because we love meat, and now is the time for us to be gentle. So, first we want to add the mozzarella, fior de latte. Then we want to add the pecorino cheese and you want to be very generous with the pecorino cheese. You don't like pecorino,
feel free to use Parmesan. Now, I'm adding the salami, okay. So I've got salami, and then we're gonna add the eggs but you wanna spread the eggs in a way that you see them when you
eat them, so spread them around and then again. We start again with the new layer, so we put more pasta on top. You can do more than one layer,
you can do two, three layers and now, I'm starting again with the provolone. Remember I told you put the provolone on the top level? Then I go with the meat. Just be a bit gentle, be nice, be generous and then a nice amount of salami on top. Here I put the pecorino cheese on top and here, need to be very
generous guys when you do this. And then we put the eggs on top again. I've got some more salami here, let's put more salami. Look, I've got some
buffalo mozzarella left. You don't have to put it on
top but I've got some left so here I'm gonna put some more top and now we're ready to bake it at 180 Celcius degrees for 30 minutes, or until you see this pasta to become nice and crunchy. You want the pasta on the edges here to become crunchy, here do that, press it. All right, we're ready
to put it in the oven. Okay guys, here I wanna
show you what's happening, it's been cooking for about 20, 25 minutes. As you can see, the edges are
not, I mean they're crunchy but, you want them to be kind of burned. They need to look a little bit black. See this one, it's on the way it's not far. I will say, 10 more minutes. So in total, 35 minutes
and it's gonna be ready. So it really depends on your
oven, sometimes your oven can be stronger so just keep
an eye and then you will tell when it's ready. This is the Pasta Al Forno
you have been waiting for. And finally, the most
important and best part of the video recipe. So this, I'm going to eat this by myself or I think Susanne is gonna have some, if I don't finish everything. As you can see, it's cooked to perfection. I've got this beautiful
crunchy parts on top, I've got the moist pasta
inside, still al dente but moist if you know what I mean. So let's see how it is. (crunching) That's the crunch that you're looking for, 100%. Look at this piece here,
look at this beautiful piece over here, look at this. Ready for the bite, look I've got egg, I've
got cheese, I've got salami and I have meat, and a crunchy bit. So thank you so much for
watching this episode. We will see you in the net
Vincenzo's plate video recipe. (Italian phrase) Vincenzo's plate. Yes.
