February 1, 2022 • 27 mins
In this episode, Bobby & Sophie compare and contrast some of the surprising differences between Italian American food and traditional Italian food. Tune in to find out what “Red Sauce” Italian is, learn about some of surprising highlights from this cuisine, and lastly, Bobby teaches Sophie to make a delicious and simple Chicken Parmesan, a beloved staple of “American Italian” food.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
All right, guys, welcome to Always Hungry from My Heart Radio.
My name is Bobby Flay, and I'm here with my
daughter and co host, and I'm always Hungry. Sophie and
I gather around my stove to cook together. Well you cook,
I asked the questions, and eat the food and does
any food left? We come to the table together to
share a meal, connect as a family, and tell the
stories that matter to us. All right, so we're gonna
(00:28):
make some chicken Parmesan's so good. We're talking about Italian
American dishes. So what I do is I usually take
chicken thighs today by mistake, but you usually use chicken breasts.
But chicken thighs work. So I'm gonna season salt and pepper.
They're pounded out so that they're they're the they have
a uniform thickness so they cook evenly. So and then
(00:53):
I have flour, egg, and breadcrumbs like in a dredging station,
like a play filled with flour, and plate with legs,
and a plate with some panco bread crumbs, and each let,
each one of these components is season with salt and pepper,
including seasoning the chicken salt, pepper, every layer must be seasoned.
So we take we take the chicken, we put it
(01:16):
in the flour. There's a classic sort of dredging station,
just like a very light dusting of flour. Shake off
the excess. Then you go the flower chicken into the
bag again, chake off the excess, just cover it and
then into the bread crumbs, and then the egg will
(01:41):
hold onto the bread crumbs. This is the crispy part.
They're gonna use some canola oil a good amount because
the the bread crumbs are gonna soak it up. So
(02:01):
basically you're making a bread and cut with first. Yeah,
I've never made chicken parm You never have, so usually
(02:24):
make it with chicken breast. I'm using chicken thighs. Actually,
I read a story the other day that because there's
been so much um, there's been a shortage of chicken breast.
There is that a lot of the chicken restaurant chains
are using chicken thighs. Now, by the way, they should
be using chicken thighs in the first place. This is
your first time making chicken farmer chicken thies, No, I
(02:45):
mean chicken thighs, I think, But for both of us,
I want a favorite thing. Yes, it's true though I've
been trying to buy chicken breast at the grocery store
like the last two weeks, like Sunday Monday, and can't
get it. Oh, you can't get it. Really, So we're
(03:06):
talking today about um Italian American dishes sort of like
not versus classic Italian, but like there is a difference
and there, you know, there's there's been some creative license taken,
um you know by basically everybody, which is what happens,
which is you know, the way, you know, the way
(03:27):
things evolved. But I was just thinking about this before.
Like in Los Angeles is a guy named Evan Funkie
who's um he's really been um so revered as one
of the better Italian chefs in Los Angeles over the
last handful of years, and he opened a restaurant called
Felix in Venice. Speech Um. He studied in Bologna, Italy
(03:53):
at the school that I know of, which is really
fantastic school for pasta. And if you haven't been to Bologna,
it's a place that you should go immediately. It's so good.
The food there is so it's it's some of the
best food in Italy. You know, it's obviously where Bolognese
was born. Um, so you go you go eat there
(04:15):
and eat like lasagna Bolognese, and it's very different than
the lasagna that you're getting in an Italian American restaurants here.
And and that's sort of like what I was trying
to say before, which is that you go to Bologna
and you order lasagna and it's the spinach um noodles.
He's it's his green noodles with bejamil. You know what
(04:36):
benjaminin is. It's like a cream sauce, right, so not
ricotta cheese, but but um but bejamil. And then like
a you know, a meat sauce that has you know,
almost no tomato and it sometimes they put tomato paste
in it there. But basically in Italy bolognes A is
not a tomato bass sauce. It's a meat based sauce
(04:58):
and sometimes they put tomato paste in, but they almost
never put tomatoes in it. Now in this country, we
actually you'll see a lot of tomatoes in Bologner sauce.
I do sometimes I was gonna say, that's so different, yeah,
but usually made with like and I actually no garlic.
They don't use garlic in there. Yeah, they don't use
garlic or tomatoes garlic, So what's in there? A lot
(05:20):
of times it's like it's like carrot selery onions and
then um, you know meat, so it could be beef, pork, um,
you know, some sort of some sort of stock. And
then sometimes they put a little tomato paste in there.
But basically that's what it is. And um, you know.
So so so when you order lasagna Bolognesi in Bologna,
(05:43):
like you're getting like a bologner sauce, you're getting bejaml
and you're getting these green noodles. It's delicious. If you
order lasagna and an Italian American restaurant, it's gonna be
tomato sauce and ricotta cheese, you know, which also is delicious. Um.
But you know, it's just like you know, there's been,
(06:04):
for lack of better description, there's like classic Italian restaurants
in America, and then there's what we call red sauce
Italian you know restaurants, you know, and when you think
of red sauce, you're thinking about like, you know, dishes
like spaghetti and meatballs, chicken palm um, you know ville
Parmerjan Big CD you know, red sauce, lasagna, things like that,
(06:24):
and and that's that's been. Um. That's a very popular
cuisine here. You know, it's it's you know. But then
like you have people like Evan Funky, who you know,
does he does you know at Felix, he does classical
classic Bolognier's cuisine from Bologna. And he just opened a
new restaurant that you and I both went to the
(06:44):
other night separately, um called Mother Wolf, and it's based
on the cuisine of Rome, which is very different than
the cuisine of you know, Bologna or Milan or a
Moufie coast or you know. So he's cooking like you out.
I'm sure he has the four classic pastas. The carbonara
I had pepe it was so good and so um,
(07:12):
you know, And so those are really like those are
renditions of classic dishes in Italy. And then you have
like restaurants here. Some of them are very like casual,
some of them were upscale, but for the most part
it's it's sort of like sort of the American made
up version of that of that cuisine. And I have
to say, I love that food. I think there's I
think there's room for both. So you want to get
(07:54):
the basically you want to get to break from nice
and golden brown. So it's chicken thighs take longer than
chicken rest. There's more's fat in me. It's not already
doing like a bread of chicken color. Seriously, it's so
many chicken cutlets growing up. Oh my god, I love
like a chicken cutlet sandwich can like an Italian belly.
(08:18):
It wasn't gone to be a time place new your house,
and was so good I think, so yeah, okay, so
now you're transferring it too. It's like a sheet tray. Yeah,
but I'm gonna I'm gonna put it in the oven first.
I want to. I wanted to cook a little bit more,
(08:39):
cook it through before I got melt, the the tomato
and the momson. But this made on the montreto. I mean, okay,
so what else do we have here? So we have
tomato sauce. Obviously you can make your own, or if
listen in a pinch, there's good quality tomato sauceas out there.
I use Rao sauce pretty good like it too. Do
(09:02):
you make your spata sauce? Sometimes three mdients tomatoes, growing tomatoes.
I like to make cherry tomato sauce too in the summer.
That's like a fresh one. Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's
different than this. This is can tomatoes. But like when
(09:24):
you go to Italy, you like, you don't see you
see meatballs, but you don't see spaghetti and meatballs and
you see spaghetti on its own. Of course, you know,
spaghetti is one of the most popular noodles, and it's
used you know, not just with tomato sauce, but with
you know, cream sauces and mushroom sauces and zucchini sauces,
and you know, all kinds of things, you know, but
you never see spaghetti and meatballs alone. I always think
(09:47):
of that meal. I always think of these sort of
Italian American red sauce meals is like great Sunday dinners
for this country. Like what's an example of a restaurant
of a red sauce Italian? I mean, Carbone is the
It is probably the most upscale one that I can
think of. It's not it's not inexpensive. They have you know,
it's very good service. When I say very good service,
(10:08):
I mean it's like, you know, very serious professional service.
You know, it's not just like you know, running gun restaurant,
but which you know there there's definitely restaurants like that,
you know when you think of like, um, you know
there's a place called Carmines in New York and also
in Las Vegas. I think there's one of Atlantic City
as well. There's one of the Bahamas too. Yeah, I
(10:29):
mean they just fill your table with giant platters. Like
if you order squid, it's for like nine people. Fried calamari,
you know, it's fun. Yeah, I know, it really is.
And like that's like that's another kind of dishes, like
you know, fried calamari with like red sauce next to it,
Like that's you know, that's definitely an Italian an Italian
American version, you know John and Vinni's is would I
(10:51):
would consider an Italian American restaurant as well? Oh definitely.
God really really really really well done. And you know
it's like it's really interesting because in this country, like
in Las Vegas, like you know, Maufie is very very Italian,
and but there are still people who are like where
(11:12):
are the Italian where's the Italian restaurant here? Because they're
looking for chicken parm and they're looking for spaghetti mepos,
which which a lot of America thinks of as as
as classic Italian, but it's really an American Italian version
of it, which by the way, I have no problem with.
It's like, you know, I love a bake ZD. Now,
so big ZD is ZD which looks like pana, but
(11:34):
it's ZD and you know, it's tomato sauce and it's
mozorele cheese parmesan, you know, and you bake it in
the oven. Baked pastas or I love like pasta alforno,
which is like you know, you can obviously find those,
especially in the south of Italy, you know where they're
you know, they're they're done in like earthen ware dishes
or some cast iron or cast roles, like really beautiful
(11:57):
and they're they're really like um you know, like baked
yolki and things like that, Like they're they're really really
beautifully done um as opposed to like when I think
about big z D, I think of it it's just like,
you know, just trying to feed a bunch of people,
you know what I'm saying. It has a different sort
of finesse to it. That said also delicious, and I
(12:18):
think that that's really the key, Like chicken parmesan. I
mean it's like I crave chicken parm all the time.
I mean, let's face it, it's chicken, a breaded chicken.
It's got delicious tomato sauce and some melted cheese on top.
Who's who's going to say no to that? I used
to go to. This is crazy, but I used to
go to when I ran cross country in high school.
(12:40):
I used to go to that Italian deli A and
S and Fairfield and eat a chicken parm sandwich before
my races. What yeah for stamina? I don't know, go
really quickly before the bus left the chicken parm sandwich
and eat. I do not know that I would have
voted against that if I knew that. That's why I
wasn't talking. You're actually a pretty good runner. That's one
(13:02):
of the things that um, you and I have in common.
We both ran a cross country in high school, so random,
you're you're a really good runner. Though M had my day.
Um So Chapino Italian or Italian American Italian. It's actually
it actually um originated in San Francisco. Oh yeah, it
(13:27):
was the Italian American immigrants on the on the docks
of the on the water in San Francisco. Actually I
knew that. And they would they would make tomato sauce.
They would take the scraps of fish that the fishermen
didn't want. They'd make stock out of the bones, and
then they would chip in, so to speak, like whatever
(13:47):
fish they had, put it in the brothy tomato sauce
with like crushed red peppers and some garlic, and they'd
make this this broth and that's chapino. It's actually an
American dish. I forgot about that story. Yeah, people wouldn't
think no, all right, okay out of the oven. Right,
so I'm gonna take I'm gonna take to tomato sauce.
(14:10):
I'm not gonna cover every piece of the chicken. Okay,
what's on crispiness there? This is so simple soul first
once a real yeah in parmrigano. Top of that, back
in the oven, yep, salt and pepper, salt and pepper.
(14:34):
Then you kind of melt them all together. How long
are we gonna leave it in the oven? Forna leave
it in the oven. Probably about six or seven minutes.
We want to tomato sauce to get nice and hot
and bubbly, and then we of course we want to
cheese to melt as well. Are there any like um?
(14:59):
Italian American Rush? So you go to in l A? Well, yeah,
I mean I go to John and Viney's all the time.
Of course, you and I go to John and Venez
a decent amount. What's the place in Los Vilas? Yea, yeah,
really fun, really fun brunch place. They have a good
chicken parm there too, Yeah, really good chicken parm there. Um.
I have a concept that I want to do. I'm
(15:20):
not telling people the name, but it's based on It's
based on this kind of cuisine, but like in a
very swanky way. It's uh. I'm struggling with the idea
of it because it's one more thing for me to do.
I'm not struggling with the concept. I've written the menu,
I've worked with Olivia on you know, our designer on
(15:44):
you know conceptual boards as they call them, and you know,
it feels like a very New York or Old Hollywood
kind of restaurant to me, could be both, could be
Vegas too, But it's you know, it's based on this
kind of cuisine, but sort of um, you know, just
kind of polished up a little bit in terms of
like um, in terms of like maybe the service or
(16:06):
or the you know, or the presentation of it so
to speak. You know, but still you know, kind of
you know, fun and bustling. Yeah. Do you like a
swanky or Italian restaurantor would you rather go casual? No?
I I you know, I like a little I like
a little swank in my step, so to speak. So like,
you know, we went to this restaurant, Mother Wolf last night.
(16:27):
We just went to the bar and had a couple
of cocktail oside of the spagliato, and um, they're making
some beautiful Italian cocktails with like blood orange. So it's
really nice. And the bar actually reminded me a little
bit of a maufie, very sort of um grown up bar,
you know what I mean. And uh definitely had that
sort of like that Italian like of Italy classic feel
(16:47):
to it. I just kind of love that feeling, you know.
And the you know, the staff, the service staff had
like the white jackets and black ties on, and so
it felt like a little more buttoned up and frankly, like,
there's so many casual restaurants in the world. It's nice.
And when you can go to something that's a little
bit more upscale, every one's in a while, you know,
why not, because that's you know, that's the way restaurants
(17:09):
used to be in general, and everything got casual, and
so now I think, like, I like being able to
like put on a sports coat and like go hang
out at a bar and drink a fancy cocktail. I
think it's really nice. Oh you know what I had
to do the night that I loved were like these artichokes?
Is that classic Italian fried artichokes? I don't think they
(17:30):
were fried? Hold on because in the Jewish ghetto in Rome,
that's one of the most classic dishes. I love artichoke.
That's something I didn't always. That's like a new love
of mine. Yeah, they're really good, but that's a that's
a classic Jewish ghetto Roman things. Oh and what about
the um fried stuff? Squash blossoms? Love when you make those,
(17:50):
and he makes a great he makes great squash blossoms.
You remember what was in him was acatta classic I
usually served by with the nanchovy sauce. I don't know
what he did. Yeah, that's so good. But I I
love fried squash bossoms. How do you feel about spahetti meatballs?
I don't like spaghetti meat balls. No, I like them both,
but separately, I don't like them together. Yeah, have you
(18:11):
made balls? I've made turkey meatballs, so the classic meatballs
as you use three meats, use veal, use um, pork
and beef, and then I put a little bit caught
of cheese and mine and some bread crumbs and then uh,
the Rocottic gives it some some juiciness keeps them. Yeah,
(18:34):
and then um, parmesan cheese, garlic, onions, and then you know,
you fry them in tapan, get him crispy, and then
you put them in tomato sauce and let them cook
for like hours. So good. And then we also had
a calibrese a pizza. So that was that was good?
Was it like spicy sauceage on top or something? Okay,
like soaper soda? It was? And what was the dough
(18:56):
like crispy very which yes, my favorite? Um mazzarella palmadoro.
How do you pronounce this? N d u j A
and Julia Julia spigger, spiggarello, spiggarella. Okay, pepper and Chino.
That was on the pizza pepper Yeah, yeah, so it's
(19:18):
like a spicy sausage. It was so good. Yeah, but
I like and I also like, my pizza has to
be crispy. Yeah, so you don't like Naples salt pizza. Okay.
I will eat any pizza. I'll eat Domino's pizza, but
I prefer crispy, crispy pizza. All right. At the oven, oh,
(19:56):
with sizzling. Hopefully stricken is cooked. It smells good. I
don't know, chicken parm with some thighs. It doesn't sound
all that bad. No, a little chili oil talked with
some basil. Thank you. Wow, it looks so good. This
(20:25):
is so good. All right, Let's just say you were
a judgeing the Food Network and you tasting, how would
you describe it? Okay, so it's a little on the outside.
It's like a little crispy. The bread crumbs are crispy
on the outside. Oh, whoa, you put chili oil on tops.
I'm getting a little kick there back of my throat. Um.
I think that the cheese is melted perfectly like it's
(20:46):
not too spread out, so you get bites of just
tomato sauce and then bites of mozzarella tomato and chicken.
I actually really like, I mean, I'm just a chicken
thigh person in general, but the chicken thige is how
much juicier than like a chicken breast? Always it's good, right,
it's it's yeah, it is good. What about Okay, so, um,
(21:08):
there's been some debate whether or not one of your
favorite dishes is Italian American or not. I'm not We're
not going to. We're not going to to finalize the
debate here. Penny Alla vodka, that's got to be American
Italian I think so too right? Yeah, God, it's so
it's like too creamy almost for it to be well.
(21:29):
Also vodka, I mean, I love Penny Alla vodka so much.
Oh my god, you do for sure? Yep. Where do
you eat that? Jhona, Venny's Jon and Vinny's Uh yeah,
where do I eat that? I don't. I make that
for myself at home a lot. So, like you know,
there's also like interestingly enough, like in the south of
(21:51):
Italy there is, um, there is a Parmigiana situation, but
they never use meats. But there's no chicken parmegian. There's
no veal parm jan, there's no port parmesan, there's none
of that. There is an eggplant parmegiano, but it's different
than what you think. There's no mozzarella cheese. It's basically
a little tomato and some and some parmesan. That's it layered. What. Yes,
(22:14):
it's baked in the oven. It's alforn. No. Yes, it's
very good. So you get you get that like um
crispeak and creamy sort of texture of the eggplant. You
have the saltiness from the parmegiano regiano cheese and some tomato,
so it's that's it. So it's not like a bunch
of melted cheese on top of it. They also do
with zucchini. Okay, I don't know. I find the mazzarella
(22:34):
to be very important. That's your that's your American palette.
There's also something called chicken franchise, which is really kind
of funny. This is something that they created like in
the fifties or sixties when French food was like king
you know, everywhere, including America. They wanted to do an
Italian version of a French dish. So they called it
(22:57):
Chicken Franchise, which is basically a lemon butter sauce on chicken,
but it's you know, it's like breaded and then it's
like a lemon butter sauce on top of it. It's weird,
but it's basically chicken cutlet with lemon and butter. What
about a margarita pizza? What about it? Is it Italian
or American? I think it's Italian, but you have to understand, like,
(23:20):
you know, then like New York style pizza and all
that was really New York style pizza was It's such
an amalgamation because it has some it has some margarita elements,
but it's also it's it's it's it takes its cue
from Naples, but it's usually crispier than that, you know,
So they took like the Naples sort of style, but
(23:41):
they made it crispy as opposed to a knife and
fork pizza, which is what you find in Naples. Right.
You basically can't pick up a slice of Naples pizza.
It's very hard to do it because it's it's SAgs,
it doesn't have a doesn't have a firm crust, and
it's meant to be that way. It's very quickly cooked,
very high heat, and then it's just kind of like
soon is like the cheese melts, it's it. They take
(24:01):
it out. So you would consider Rio's to be a
red sauce totally Italian. Yeah, with Rayo's, it's like, you know,
you sit down, it's like you know, they have there's
a guy named Joe there, who who there's no menus,
there's no menus. Um. Joe sits down, so you're at
the table. Joe grabs a seat. He had a chair,
(24:25):
he turns it backwards, sits on the chair, so he's
sits on the chair so it's backwards, and he says,
he always says the same thing, Welcome to Rao's. This
is what we like to do. You know. We have
we have um. You know, he talks about like the
seafood salad that's famous there. It's like lobster crab and
shrimp in a lemon dressing. Then they have um, you know,
(24:46):
then they have mozzarella and tomatoes, they have mozarell they
have roasted peppers. You know, he goes you know, he
goes through all the salads and this and that. Then
he's like then we have pasta's you know, we have
they have one pasta that has cabbage in at that
famous for what Yeah. And then um, but you know
then they have like, um, you know, spaghetti and clams
(25:07):
and I mean you know you can imagine spaghetti with
tomato whatever. And then it's like then then he says,
and then we have veal. We can do a veal pacata.
We can do veal of milonnaise. We can do He's
just rattling all this off. We can do a vealed shop. Yeah.
And then it's like and we have chicken. We It's
just like honestly, he goes through it. It's like he's
a machine. But just like there's like he's Joe is
(25:29):
famous for that. He's the best. Um. And then he's
like you have to have a meat balls, you know,
And so the peoples come out and you're like they're huge,
and it's like it's that though they don't come on
a ball of spaghetti. It's like it's sauce. And that's
how I like pet balls. I want him in a
lot of sauce. They also have lemon chicken. Their famous
(25:49):
for that. Okay, really good, I mean yeah, but that's
definitely an Italian American situation. Yeah for sure. What's like,
what's like a pizza that you make that maybe is traditional,
but then you add your own flavor to do you
have like a signature in that in that sense that
starts off traditional and then whether it's topping wines or
I like to make this sort of I like to
(26:12):
make a pizza with with an Shoby's and squash blossoms
on it, but I put an egg in the middle.
Oh that's so American. Well it isn't. It isn't really. Yeah, Um,
I haven't really seen it that much in Rome, but
like I've seen like the squash blossoms in the antio.
I meant the egg. It's a great lunch pizza, you know,
(26:32):
or brunch. I love a brunch pizza. Yeah. So I'm
gonna give you two choices. You get to eat an
Italian American meal, we get to go. You get to
go to Italy and eat an Italian meal. I'm gonna
choose the Italy one. Okay, I'll see it, let's go.
Always Hungry is created by Bobby Flay and Sophie Flay.
(26:54):
Our executive producer is Christopher hasiotis Always Hungary is produced, edited,
and mixed by Nathan hosts Dressler. Always Hungry is engineered
by Sophie Flay. For more podcast in My Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
All right, guys, welcome to Always Hungry from My Heart Radio.
My name is Bobby Flay, and I'm here with my
daughter and co host, and I'm always Hungry. Sophie and
I gather around my stove to cook together. Well you cook,
I asked the questions, and eat the food and does
any food left? We come to the table together to
share a meal, connect as a family, and tell the
stories that matter to us. All right, so we're gonna
(00:28):
make some chicken Parmesan's so good. We're talking about Italian
American dishes. So what I do is I usually take
chicken thighs today by mistake, but you usually use chicken breasts.
But chicken thighs work. So I'm gonna season salt and pepper.
They're pounded out so that they're they're the they have
a uniform thickness so they cook evenly. So and then
(00:53):
I have flour, egg, and breadcrumbs like in a dredging station,
like a play filled with flour, and plate with legs,
and a plate with some panco bread crumbs, and each let,
each one of these components is season with salt and pepper,
including seasoning the chicken salt, pepper, every layer must be seasoned.
So we take we take the chicken, we put it
(01:16):
in the flour. There's a classic sort of dredging station,
just like a very light dusting of flour. Shake off
the excess. Then you go the flower chicken into the
bag again, chake off the excess, just cover it and
then into the bread crumbs, and then the egg will
(01:41):
hold onto the bread crumbs. This is the crispy part.
They're gonna use some canola oil a good amount because
the the bread crumbs are gonna soak it up. So
(02:01):
basically you're making a bread and cut with first. Yeah,
I've never made chicken parm You never have, so usually
(02:24):
make it with chicken breast. I'm using chicken thighs. Actually,
I read a story the other day that because there's
been so much um, there's been a shortage of chicken breast.
There is that a lot of the chicken restaurant chains
are using chicken thighs. Now, by the way, they should
be using chicken thighs in the first place. This is
your first time making chicken farmer chicken thies, No, I
(02:45):
mean chicken thighs, I think, But for both of us,
I want a favorite thing. Yes, it's true though I've
been trying to buy chicken breast at the grocery store
like the last two weeks, like Sunday Monday, and can't
get it. Oh, you can't get it. Really, So we're
(03:06):
talking today about um Italian American dishes sort of like
not versus classic Italian, but like there is a difference
and there, you know, there's there's been some creative license taken,
um you know by basically everybody, which is what happens,
which is you know, the way, you know, the way
(03:27):
things evolved. But I was just thinking about this before.
Like in Los Angeles is a guy named Evan Funkie
who's um he's really been um so revered as one
of the better Italian chefs in Los Angeles over the
last handful of years, and he opened a restaurant called
Felix in Venice. Speech Um. He studied in Bologna, Italy
(03:53):
at the school that I know of, which is really
fantastic school for pasta. And if you haven't been to Bologna,
it's a place that you should go immediately. It's so good.
The food there is so it's it's some of the
best food in Italy. You know, it's obviously where Bolognese
was born. Um, so you go you go eat there
(04:15):
and eat like lasagna Bolognese, and it's very different than
the lasagna that you're getting in an Italian American restaurants here.
And and that's sort of like what I was trying
to say before, which is that you go to Bologna
and you order lasagna and it's the spinach um noodles.
He's it's his green noodles with bejamil. You know what
(04:36):
benjaminin is. It's like a cream sauce, right, so not
ricotta cheese, but but um but bejamil. And then like
a you know, a meat sauce that has you know,
almost no tomato and it sometimes they put tomato paste
in it there. But basically in Italy bolognes A is
not a tomato bass sauce. It's a meat based sauce
(04:58):
and sometimes they put tomato paste in, but they almost
never put tomatoes in it. Now in this country, we
actually you'll see a lot of tomatoes in Bologner sauce.
I do sometimes I was gonna say, that's so different, yeah,
but usually made with like and I actually no garlic.
They don't use garlic in there. Yeah, they don't use
garlic or tomatoes garlic, So what's in there? A lot
(05:20):
of times it's like it's like carrot selery onions and
then um, you know meat, so it could be beef, pork, um,
you know, some sort of some sort of stock. And
then sometimes they put a little tomato paste in there.
But basically that's what it is. And um, you know.
So so so when you order lasagna Bolognesi in Bologna,
(05:43):
like you're getting like a bologner sauce, you're getting bejaml
and you're getting these green noodles. It's delicious. If you
order lasagna and an Italian American restaurant, it's gonna be
tomato sauce and ricotta cheese, you know, which also is delicious. Um.
But you know, it's just like you know, there's been,
(06:04):
for lack of better description, there's like classic Italian restaurants
in America, and then there's what we call red sauce
Italian you know restaurants, you know, and when you think
of red sauce, you're thinking about like, you know, dishes
like spaghetti and meatballs, chicken palm um, you know ville
Parmerjan Big CD you know, red sauce, lasagna, things like that,
(06:24):
and and that's that's been. Um. That's a very popular
cuisine here. You know, it's it's you know. But then
like you have people like Evan Funky, who you know,
does he does you know at Felix, he does classical
classic Bolognier's cuisine from Bologna. And he just opened a
new restaurant that you and I both went to the
(06:44):
other night separately, um called Mother Wolf, and it's based
on the cuisine of Rome, which is very different than
the cuisine of you know, Bologna or Milan or a
Moufie coast or you know. So he's cooking like you out.
I'm sure he has the four classic pastas. The carbonara
I had pepe it was so good and so um,
(07:12):
you know, And so those are really like those are
renditions of classic dishes in Italy. And then you have
like restaurants here. Some of them are very like casual,
some of them were upscale, but for the most part
it's it's sort of like sort of the American made
up version of that of that cuisine. And I have
to say, I love that food. I think there's I
think there's room for both. So you want to get
(07:54):
the basically you want to get to break from nice
and golden brown. So it's chicken thighs take longer than
chicken rest. There's more's fat in me. It's not already
doing like a bread of chicken color. Seriously, it's so
many chicken cutlets growing up. Oh my god, I love
like a chicken cutlet sandwich can like an Italian belly.
(08:18):
It wasn't gone to be a time place new your house,
and was so good I think, so yeah, okay, so
now you're transferring it too. It's like a sheet tray. Yeah,
but I'm gonna I'm gonna put it in the oven first.
I want to. I wanted to cook a little bit more,
(08:39):
cook it through before I got melt, the the tomato
and the momson. But this made on the montreto. I mean, okay,
so what else do we have here? So we have
tomato sauce. Obviously you can make your own, or if
listen in a pinch, there's good quality tomato sauceas out there.
I use Rao sauce pretty good like it too. Do
(09:02):
you make your spata sauce? Sometimes three mdients tomatoes, growing tomatoes.
I like to make cherry tomato sauce too in the summer.
That's like a fresh one. Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's
different than this. This is can tomatoes. But like when
(09:24):
you go to Italy, you like, you don't see you
see meatballs, but you don't see spaghetti and meatballs and
you see spaghetti on its own. Of course, you know,
spaghetti is one of the most popular noodles, and it's
used you know, not just with tomato sauce, but with
you know, cream sauces and mushroom sauces and zucchini sauces,
and you know, all kinds of things, you know, but
you never see spaghetti and meatballs alone. I always think
(09:47):
of that meal. I always think of these sort of
Italian American red sauce meals is like great Sunday dinners
for this country. Like what's an example of a restaurant
of a red sauce Italian? I mean, Carbone is the
It is probably the most upscale one that I can
think of. It's not it's not inexpensive. They have you know,
it's very good service. When I say very good service,
(10:08):
I mean it's like, you know, very serious professional service.
You know, it's not just like you know, running gun restaurant,
but which you know there there's definitely restaurants like that,
you know when you think of like, um, you know
there's a place called Carmines in New York and also
in Las Vegas. I think there's one of Atlantic City
as well. There's one of the Bahamas too. Yeah, I
(10:29):
mean they just fill your table with giant platters. Like
if you order squid, it's for like nine people. Fried calamari,
you know, it's fun. Yeah, I know, it really is.
And like that's like that's another kind of dishes, like
you know, fried calamari with like red sauce next to it,
Like that's you know, that's definitely an Italian an Italian
American version, you know John and Vinni's is would I
(10:51):
would consider an Italian American restaurant as well? Oh definitely.
God really really really really well done. And you know
it's like it's really interesting because in this country, like
in Las Vegas, like you know, Maufie is very very Italian,
and but there are still people who are like where
(11:12):
are the Italian where's the Italian restaurant here? Because they're
looking for chicken parm and they're looking for spaghetti mepos,
which which a lot of America thinks of as as
as classic Italian, but it's really an American Italian version
of it, which by the way, I have no problem with.
It's like, you know, I love a bake ZD. Now,
so big ZD is ZD which looks like pana, but
(11:34):
it's ZD and you know, it's tomato sauce and it's
mozorele cheese parmesan, you know, and you bake it in
the oven. Baked pastas or I love like pasta alforno,
which is like you know, you can obviously find those,
especially in the south of Italy, you know where they're
you know, they're they're done in like earthen ware dishes
or some cast iron or cast roles, like really beautiful
(11:57):
and they're they're really like um you know, like baked
yolki and things like that, Like they're they're really really
beautifully done um as opposed to like when I think
about big z D, I think of it it's just like,
you know, just trying to feed a bunch of people,
you know what I'm saying. It has a different sort
of finesse to it. That said also delicious, and I
(12:18):
think that that's really the key, Like chicken parmesan. I
mean it's like I crave chicken parm all the time.
I mean, let's face it, it's chicken, a breaded chicken.
It's got delicious tomato sauce and some melted cheese on top.
Who's who's going to say no to that? I used
to go to. This is crazy, but I used to
go to when I ran cross country in high school.
(12:40):
I used to go to that Italian deli A and
S and Fairfield and eat a chicken parm sandwich before
my races. What yeah for stamina? I don't know, go
really quickly before the bus left the chicken parm sandwich
and eat. I do not know that I would have
voted against that if I knew that. That's why I
wasn't talking. You're actually a pretty good runner. That's one
(13:02):
of the things that um, you and I have in common.
We both ran a cross country in high school, so random,
you're you're a really good runner. Though M had my day.
Um So Chapino Italian or Italian American Italian. It's actually
it actually um originated in San Francisco. Oh yeah, it
(13:27):
was the Italian American immigrants on the on the docks
of the on the water in San Francisco. Actually I
knew that. And they would they would make tomato sauce.
They would take the scraps of fish that the fishermen
didn't want. They'd make stock out of the bones, and
then they would chip in, so to speak, like whatever
(13:47):
fish they had, put it in the brothy tomato sauce
with like crushed red peppers and some garlic, and they'd
make this this broth and that's chapino. It's actually an
American dish. I forgot about that story. Yeah, people wouldn't
think no, all right, okay out of the oven. Right,
so I'm gonna take I'm gonna take to tomato sauce.
(14:10):
I'm not gonna cover every piece of the chicken. Okay,
what's on crispiness there? This is so simple soul first
once a real yeah in parmrigano. Top of that, back
in the oven, yep, salt and pepper, salt and pepper.
(14:34):
Then you kind of melt them all together. How long
are we gonna leave it in the oven? Forna leave
it in the oven. Probably about six or seven minutes.
We want to tomato sauce to get nice and hot
and bubbly, and then we of course we want to
cheese to melt as well. Are there any like um?
(14:59):
Italian American Rush? So you go to in l A? Well, yeah,
I mean I go to John and Viney's all the time.
Of course, you and I go to John and Venez
a decent amount. What's the place in Los Vilas? Yea, yeah,
really fun, really fun brunch place. They have a good
chicken parm there too, Yeah, really good chicken parm there. Um.
I have a concept that I want to do. I'm
(15:20):
not telling people the name, but it's based on It's
based on this kind of cuisine, but like in a
very swanky way. It's uh. I'm struggling with the idea
of it because it's one more thing for me to do.
I'm not struggling with the concept. I've written the menu,
I've worked with Olivia on you know, our designer on
(15:44):
you know conceptual boards as they call them, and you know,
it feels like a very New York or Old Hollywood
kind of restaurant to me, could be both, could be
Vegas too, But it's you know, it's based on this
kind of cuisine, but sort of um, you know, just
kind of polished up a little bit in terms of
like um, in terms of like maybe the service or
(16:06):
or the you know, or the presentation of it so
to speak. You know, but still you know, kind of
you know, fun and bustling. Yeah. Do you like a
swanky or Italian restaurantor would you rather go casual? No?
I I you know, I like a little I like
a little swank in my step, so to speak. So like,
you know, we went to this restaurant, Mother Wolf last night.
(16:27):
We just went to the bar and had a couple
of cocktail oside of the spagliato, and um, they're making
some beautiful Italian cocktails with like blood orange. So it's
really nice. And the bar actually reminded me a little
bit of a maufie, very sort of um grown up bar,
you know what I mean. And uh definitely had that
sort of like that Italian like of Italy classic feel
(16:47):
to it. I just kind of love that feeling, you know.
And the you know, the staff, the service staff had
like the white jackets and black ties on, and so
it felt like a little more buttoned up and frankly, like,
there's so many casual restaurants in the world. It's nice.
And when you can go to something that's a little
bit more upscale, every one's in a while, you know,
why not, because that's you know, that's the way restaurants
(17:09):
used to be in general, and everything got casual, and
so now I think, like, I like being able to
like put on a sports coat and like go hang
out at a bar and drink a fancy cocktail. I
think it's really nice. Oh you know what I had
to do the night that I loved were like these artichokes?
Is that classic Italian fried artichokes? I don't think they
(17:30):
were fried? Hold on because in the Jewish ghetto in Rome,
that's one of the most classic dishes. I love artichoke.
That's something I didn't always. That's like a new love
of mine. Yeah, they're really good, but that's a that's
a classic Jewish ghetto Roman things. Oh and what about
the um fried stuff? Squash blossoms? Love when you make those,
(17:50):
and he makes a great he makes great squash blossoms.
You remember what was in him was acatta classic I
usually served by with the nanchovy sauce. I don't know
what he did. Yeah, that's so good. But I I
love fried squash bossoms. How do you feel about spahetti meatballs?
I don't like spaghetti meat balls. No, I like them both,
but separately, I don't like them together. Yeah, have you
(18:11):
made balls? I've made turkey meatballs, so the classic meatballs
as you use three meats, use veal, use um, pork
and beef, and then I put a little bit caught
of cheese and mine and some bread crumbs and then uh,
the Rocottic gives it some some juiciness keeps them. Yeah,
(18:34):
and then um, parmesan cheese, garlic, onions, and then you know,
you fry them in tapan, get him crispy, and then
you put them in tomato sauce and let them cook
for like hours. So good. And then we also had
a calibrese a pizza. So that was that was good?
Was it like spicy sauceage on top or something? Okay,
like soaper soda? It was? And what was the dough
(18:56):
like crispy very which yes, my favorite? Um mazzarella palmadoro.
How do you pronounce this? N d u j A
and Julia Julia spigger, spiggarello, spiggarella. Okay, pepper and Chino.
That was on the pizza pepper Yeah, yeah, so it's
(19:18):
like a spicy sausage. It was so good. Yeah, but
I like and I also like, my pizza has to
be crispy. Yeah, so you don't like Naples salt pizza. Okay.
I will eat any pizza. I'll eat Domino's pizza, but
I prefer crispy, crispy pizza. All right. At the oven, oh,
(19:56):
with sizzling. Hopefully stricken is cooked. It smells good. I
don't know, chicken parm with some thighs. It doesn't sound
all that bad. No, a little chili oil talked with
some basil. Thank you. Wow, it looks so good. This
(20:25):
is so good. All right, Let's just say you were
a judgeing the Food Network and you tasting, how would
you describe it? Okay, so it's a little on the outside.
It's like a little crispy. The bread crumbs are crispy
on the outside. Oh, whoa, you put chili oil on tops.
I'm getting a little kick there back of my throat. Um.
I think that the cheese is melted perfectly like it's
(20:46):
not too spread out, so you get bites of just
tomato sauce and then bites of mozzarella tomato and chicken.
I actually really like, I mean, I'm just a chicken
thigh person in general, but the chicken thige is how
much juicier than like a chicken breast? Always it's good, right,
it's it's yeah, it is good. What about Okay, so, um,
(21:08):
there's been some debate whether or not one of your
favorite dishes is Italian American or not. I'm not We're
not going to. We're not going to to finalize the
debate here. Penny Alla vodka, that's got to be American
Italian I think so too right? Yeah, God, it's so
it's like too creamy almost for it to be well.
(21:29):
Also vodka, I mean, I love Penny Alla vodka so much.
Oh my god, you do for sure? Yep. Where do
you eat that? Jhona, Venny's Jon and Vinny's Uh yeah,
where do I eat that? I don't. I make that
for myself at home a lot. So, like you know,
there's also like interestingly enough, like in the south of
(21:51):
Italy there is, um, there is a Parmigiana situation, but
they never use meats. But there's no chicken parmegian. There's
no veal parm jan, there's no port parmesan, there's none
of that. There is an eggplant parmegiano, but it's different
than what you think. There's no mozzarella cheese. It's basically
a little tomato and some and some parmesan. That's it layered. What. Yes,
(22:14):
it's baked in the oven. It's alforn. No. Yes, it's
very good. So you get you get that like um
crispeak and creamy sort of texture of the eggplant. You
have the saltiness from the parmegiano regiano cheese and some tomato,
so it's that's it. So it's not like a bunch
of melted cheese on top of it. They also do
with zucchini. Okay, I don't know. I find the mazzarella
(22:34):
to be very important. That's your that's your American palette.
There's also something called chicken franchise, which is really kind
of funny. This is something that they created like in
the fifties or sixties when French food was like king
you know, everywhere, including America. They wanted to do an
Italian version of a French dish. So they called it
(22:57):
Chicken Franchise, which is basically a lemon butter sauce on chicken,
but it's you know, it's like breaded and then it's
like a lemon butter sauce on top of it. It's weird,
but it's basically chicken cutlet with lemon and butter. What
about a margarita pizza? What about it? Is it Italian
or American? I think it's Italian, but you have to understand, like,
(23:20):
you know, then like New York style pizza and all
that was really New York style pizza was It's such
an amalgamation because it has some it has some margarita elements,
but it's also it's it's it's it takes its cue
from Naples, but it's usually crispier than that, you know,
So they took like the Naples sort of style, but
(23:41):
they made it crispy as opposed to a knife and
fork pizza, which is what you find in Naples. Right.
You basically can't pick up a slice of Naples pizza.
It's very hard to do it because it's it's SAgs,
it doesn't have a doesn't have a firm crust, and
it's meant to be that way. It's very quickly cooked,
very high heat, and then it's just kind of like
soon is like the cheese melts, it's it. They take
(24:01):
it out. So you would consider Rio's to be a
red sauce totally Italian. Yeah, with Rayo's, it's like, you know,
you sit down, it's like you know, they have there's
a guy named Joe there, who who there's no menus,
there's no menus. Um. Joe sits down, so you're at
the table. Joe grabs a seat. He had a chair,
(24:25):
he turns it backwards, sits on the chair, so he's
sits on the chair so it's backwards, and he says,
he always says the same thing, Welcome to Rao's. This
is what we like to do. You know. We have
we have um. You know, he talks about like the
seafood salad that's famous there. It's like lobster crab and
shrimp in a lemon dressing. Then they have um, you know,
(24:46):
then they have mozzarella and tomatoes, they have mozarell they
have roasted peppers. You know, he goes you know, he
goes through all the salads and this and that. Then
he's like then we have pasta's you know, we have
they have one pasta that has cabbage in at that
famous for what Yeah. And then um, but you know
then they have like, um, you know, spaghetti and clams
(25:07):
and I mean you know you can imagine spaghetti with
tomato whatever. And then it's like then then he says,
and then we have veal. We can do a veal pacata.
We can do veal of milonnaise. We can do He's
just rattling all this off. We can do a vealed shop. Yeah.
And then it's like and we have chicken. We It's
just like honestly, he goes through it. It's like he's
a machine. But just like there's like he's Joe is
(25:29):
famous for that. He's the best. Um. And then he's
like you have to have a meat balls, you know,
And so the peoples come out and you're like they're huge,
and it's like it's that though they don't come on
a ball of spaghetti. It's like it's sauce. And that's
how I like pet balls. I want him in a
lot of sauce. They also have lemon chicken. Their famous
(25:49):
for that. Okay, really good, I mean yeah, but that's
definitely an Italian American situation. Yeah for sure. What's like,
what's like a pizza that you make that maybe is traditional,
but then you add your own flavor to do you
have like a signature in that in that sense that
starts off traditional and then whether it's topping wines or
I like to make this sort of I like to
(26:12):
make a pizza with with an Shoby's and squash blossoms
on it, but I put an egg in the middle.
Oh that's so American. Well it isn't. It isn't really. Yeah, Um,
I haven't really seen it that much in Rome, but
like I've seen like the squash blossoms in the antio.
I meant the egg. It's a great lunch pizza, you know,
(26:32):
or brunch. I love a brunch pizza. Yeah. So I'm
gonna give you two choices. You get to eat an
Italian American meal, we get to go. You get to
go to Italy and eat an Italian meal. I'm gonna
choose the Italy one. Okay, I'll see it, let's go.
Always Hungry is created by Bobby Flay and Sophie Flay.
(26:54):
Our executive producer is Christopher hasiotis Always Hungary is produced, edited,
and mixed by Nathan hosts Dressler. Always Hungry is engineered
by Sophie Flay. For more podcast in My Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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