August 31, 2021 • 26 mins
In this episode of “Always Hungry”, Bobby and Sophie dish on “Fresh Pasta”. They discuss some of the most delicious preparations using fresh pasta, Bobby shares some pasta focused highlights from his cooking career, and finally, Bobby shows Sophie how simple it is to make pasta from scratch,
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
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. I'm Sophie Flag and I'm Always Hungry.
Sophie and I gathered around my stove to cook together.
Well you cook, I asked the questions, and eat the food.
If there's 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
(00:26):
this is um one of the most satisfying things that
I feel like a person can make at home, and
I've never done it. We're talking about making pasta and
fresh pasta. Yeah, fresh pasta from scratch. You have done it,
you just don't remember. So today we're talking about fresh pasta,
(00:46):
which you know, I find fresh pasta to be one
of those things that are it's a very satisfying thing
when you when you do it. So basically what I
use is whole eggs and egg yolks and some flour.
You can use double zero flower, you can use all
purpose flour. And you know the old school way to
do it. And so you take a well the flower,
(01:07):
you make a well of the flower. You know, you
measure it out first. This is uh, my friend Mark
Victory's one of his classic recipes in terms of pasta itself.
He's my mentor when it comes to pasta. So it's like,
what is it two cups of flour and then um,
three eggs in one yolk and then you put the
(01:27):
put the eggs in the yolk in the middle of
the of the well and then you just start stirring
it up until it forms a dough. I want to
hand me a fork there. Would you say it's easy?
I think it's very easy. Yeah. The other thing you
can do is you can do it in a food processor,
which if you watch me now, a purist will tell
(01:47):
you that that's, you know, blasphemy. But um, if you
watch me on beat Bobby Flay, because I don't have
any time to play around, I put it. I put
it all in the food processor, the eggs, the egg yolks,
and the flour, and I turned the food processor on
and you know, it beats it into a dough. But
this is you know, the well and the eggs. You
(02:08):
can see how the eggs are and the flower are incorporating. Yeah,
you're just kind of like whisking it with the fork, yes, exactly,
and then it forms, you know, it forms the dough,
and depending on the humidity in the air, um, you
add more or less flour until it has like that
little bit of that that stickiness to the to the
dough itself. Um. And then you need to let it
(02:30):
rest for like at least an hour in the refrigerator
so that it's, uh, it's more appliable when you're when
you're rolling it out and then you're cutting it into
whether it's fed a cheeny or just ravioli sheets or
lasagna sheets or whatever it is. I mean, you know
this can be used for for all of that, and
you know you want to make sure that you need
the the pasta a little bit. So that's posta though.
(02:52):
I mean it's literally a couple of ingredients, right, easy enough. Okay,
So today we're talking about out, we're talking about pasta.
I mean, I guess mostly homemade pasta, pasta you make
it at home. So basically, you know, pasta in general
are usually eggs and flour. Sometimes when you're making the
(03:13):
sort of the bronze dye cut pasta that's gonna turn
into dried pasta, it's usually flour or semolina and water
no eggs, which I always feel like, I don't know,
I always feel like I want eggs in my pasta.
I don't know why. I like the bite that it
gives it. But you know, there's there's different pastas for
different occasions, so that's, you know, that's that's certainly, that's
(03:35):
certainly way it works. And also fresh pasta and dry
pasta are two very different things. They're not ones, not
better than the other, they're very different. Like, for instance,
like some just because it's fresh doesn't mean it's better
for a dish and dried pasta. For instance, I think
that like linguini and clam sauce is better with dry pasta.
I think spaghetti meatballs is better with dry pasta. What's
(03:58):
the difference, Well, the difference is that fresh pasta is
gonna be a lot silkier and have less substance to it.
Usually it usually has it's silkier and it's it's luscious,
and that works in lots of different ways. So like
if I just you know, like during white shuffle season,
which is very you know, they're very incredibly expensive, but
like I want like fresh pasta with some butter and
(04:23):
some white shuffles. That's it. You know, that's amazing to me.
That works better than like, for instance, dry pasta. Uh
if you have some some like really simply cooked I
don't know, fish or vegetables I like. I like fresh pasta.
I mean sometimes they both work, but in some cases
dry postas rather than fresh and vice versa. Just the
(04:44):
way it is. Dry pasta takes longer to cook most
of the time because it's dry, so the fresh pasta.
Fresh pasta can cook somewhere between thirty and forty five seconds,
sometimes depending on the cut and how thick it is.
And then you can also flavor the fresh pastas, which
I also love with what well, one of my favorite
is squid inc You know, it's that yet black pasta.
(05:04):
It has it definitely has a little bit of that
briny flavor. You can put things like spinach in it
and make cream pasta. I like to make fresh saffron
noodles when you put saffron in the pasta dough. Oh
that sounds good. Well, I don't know. Have I had
had that, Viewers, I think you have. At Gotto, we
did we did a saffron We did saffron linguini basically
(05:24):
with muscles. Yeah, I remember that so delicious and that
and that mushroom broth and a little bit of butter.
It's really really good. And then like if you're gonna
make ravioli of any sort, any kind of stuff pasta,
I mean you have to make fresh pasta. It because
you're making you know, you're making sheets and depending on
what you want the pasta to look like, the sheets
(05:46):
are long or sometimes they're short and cut into squares
and then and then folded into different cuts. Like if
I'm making caramela, do you know what that is? So caramelay?
What do you think the word in English is? I
mean it sounds like caramel, right, So what it means
is they look like those candies. Oh we were talking
about this, Yeah, okay, so right now at a maufie
(06:08):
I make, we're making caromela, which is fresh pasta that
you then twist into, uh you twisted into like a
little candy rapper shape. It's really it's really cool. Look
and uh you know that's fresh pasta. But those are squares?
Is there something in the middle? Yeah, of course, what
is it? Well, but for what we're what we're doing
now is porcini mushrooms and roast sweet potatoes together, Oh
(06:30):
my god, that sounds so good. Yeah. It was actually
one of those things where at first I just did
Porcini's and the chef there, Anthony Fustco, like he wanted
to put almonds in it, so he put almonds and
some were caught up in the ground. Porcini mushrooms really
very very very tasty, but it was like it tasted
a little earthy, and actually Christina said to me, you
(06:51):
need it's missing something sweet, and like sweet, what are
you talking about sweet? Like I don't want to I
don't want to make sweet Porcini caramel, So that doesn't
make any sense. But one of the things that I
did at Gatto was we made either sweet potato or
pumpkin caramel as with brown butter. So I just put
some roasted sweet potato in with the porcini and it
(07:11):
actually worked out really nicely. So is there a there's
some almonds in there or now there's definitely almonds in there.
Gives it a really good nuttiness obviously because they're nuts.
Sounds great, And then we make the easiest sauce in
the world, brown butter correct, brown butter, some crispy sage,
little parmigiano kind of on the way out, probably Jona Reggiano.
(07:33):
So so good, that's I mean, brown butter is a
sauce that you should make sometimes. Yeah, it's good for
fish and chicken. It's good for pasta dishes like your
your unofficial uncle Michael Simon. He makes yoki with brown
butter like people make toast. He makes it all the time.
It's like any think he's actually always making pasta. He's
(07:54):
always making yoki with brown butter. I'm pretty sure it's
the only dish it says, go to just and and Frankly,
every time he makes it, it's it's spot on perfect.
Of course, it's so good, like when I make yoki.
He loves like a couple of times he's I've been
challenged in yoki when he's been at beat. That's so funny.
He's like, I can't wait to watch this, watch this.
(08:16):
I'm using your rescipe taught me everything I know. I
know how to do this. When we were making the
(08:39):
pasta earlier, I just didn't really realize how easy it
is and how simple the ingredients are. Like it's really
just so simple to make it at home, like walk
us through it. Eggs and flower. I mean, so basically
a couple. There's a there's technique and of course, I
mean it's it's very simple and once. And one of
the things about pasta is that the more you do it,
the better you get at it. You know, It's like
(09:00):
making pizza doughs, same thing making Tamali's, making rolling gumblings.
Those that kind of handywork you get better than more
times you do it. And so for instance, like you know,
if I'm if I'm gonna make pasta at home, it's eggs,
whole eggs and an egg yolk and then some flour
and then I mix it together. Um, I make a
well with the with with the with the flour. I
(09:23):
whisk up the eggs and then I slowly gently combine
them so that they be they be they make a
pasta dough. And then I need the pasta dough for
a little while. And then I make a disc out
of it, and I wrap it in plastic wrap, and
I put it in the refrigerator and I'll let it
rest for at least an hour, let the gluten's go
to work. And then I have an attachment on my
(09:44):
kitchen aid that's like a sheeter, so that so you
can make sheets of pasta. So no matter what, you
have to make sheets of pasta, because whether you just
make sheets of pasta and use it for like, let's say, lasagna,
or use it for ravioli, Yeah, you have to do
the sheets first before you right, or if you're gonna
make or if you're gonna cut it into like spaghetti
or linguini or feta cheni, you still have to make
(10:05):
sheets first. So it's a two stop process to rolling
out the pasta and cutting it into into strands, and
then you have fresh pasta. I mean you're ready to go. Basically,
that's great. I mean you should let it right out
a little bit. It doesn't have to be that long.
But I feel like that was something that a lot
of people did during the pandemic. They like taught themselves
how to make pasta at home. Yeah, it's also one
of the most satisfying things to do, right, It's so
(10:25):
fun to make your own pasta when you're cutting it
and you and you put it either through the hand
crank machine or you cut it by hand or like
you use like what I do is I use my
kitchen Aid attachment. You have the sheets of pasta and
then you put it through the feta cheeni cut and
it comes out and it's basically sort of drops into
your hand and you have these beautiful noodles. You know,
like I made pasta. I mean honestly, like I get,
(10:48):
I get, I get kind of like high on it.
Like at the time I do it. It's really cool.
I get that, and then you and then listen, everybody
loves pasta, Let's face it. It's one of those things
that you just universally loved, one of the cool fresh pastas.
I learned how to make. I learned from my good
friend and chef Tomaso di Simone at the La Scolio
on the Maufi coast, and he taught me something called
(11:10):
shilotat Telly, I'm mispronouncing it, I promise you, I'm mr
mr pronounce. Is that on your menu now? Yeah? It's
my menu A maufie and it's it's an interesting dough
because it's eggs and flour, but it's also I think
it has some semiline in it as well, but it
also has milk in it, so in some ways it's
like a dumpling recipe, but we're not cutting it into dumplings.
(11:31):
We're cutting it into feed a cheeny so that you
when you bite into it, there's like a little bit
of a chew to it. Interesting. It's really cool. And
there's some parsley running through it as well. Had it
before I had it there, No, I mean before that, no, no, no, no.
Shiloa Telly is a very Amufie Coast pasta cut. It's
from there and uh Tomaso brought me into the kitchen
(11:53):
one morning and he's like, let me show you how
to make this because I because I love it so much.
And they're what they do is they combine it with
some kind of fish or shellfish depending on you know
what what's available that day out of the out of
the Tyranny Sea, which is amazing, and usually some sort
of cherry tomatoes red or yelled tomatoes a date that
they grow on their farm. So basically the shy to
(12:13):
Telly is double zero flour and semolina flour as well,
and then there's whole eggs and milk, some parmesan cheese
and then like some herbs running through it. It's really great,
it's really really terrific. What we do is we make
a scampy sauce for it. So it's shrimp and lemon
and garlic, butter, parsley basil. So it's a it's a
(12:34):
really heavy sauce and you know, lots of fresh lemon,
and it just it really makes that pasta so delutions.
And then we put some anchovy bready crimes on top.
Oh that sounds great. So we have some fresh feta
chini here right. Freda Chini is sort of a medium
sized broad noodle. I love fettucchini. And I have some
water here, salted. You always want it to taste like
(12:54):
the sea, and you want to want it to rapid
boil and fresh pasta. This fresh pasta is gonna cook
in less than sixty secs. You know, supposed to dry
pasta that takes a lot longer. Now we're gonna make
an anchovy butter pasta. Okay, And this is a dish
that I was inspired by in this place in Rome
called with scholi, which is one of the most famous dishes.
(13:15):
I think they used spaghetti or linguini, I can't remember which.
Maybe it's bucatini. I can't remember exactly which cut it is,
but it's around long strand okay. And and what they
do is because I worked with the chef there when
John and I went there, And what they do is
they just take the anchovies and they put them in
the pan and let them anchovies melt and then finish
(13:35):
it with butter at the end. So what I do
is for my dishes, I make, I make an anchovy
butter first, So I take unsalted butter, and I add
anchovies to the butter itself and then food processor into
a food processor, a tiny bit of salt because there's
a lot of salt in the anchovies already, and then
(13:57):
some black pepper, and then I just I process this
so I make I'm basically making a compound butter nice okay.
So so basically what you have is anchiovy flavored butter.
I just feel like, I mean, there's there's no right
(14:17):
way and the wrong way for this, but I I
feel like this way, I know that I'm going to
distribute the anchovy flavor. What's your favorite pasta shape? It
all depends on what the sauce is. A you know,
what what sauce you have is incredibly important. Like, you know,
if I want meatballs. I want spaghetti, which is you know,
spietti and meatballs are a very American rendition of pasta,
(14:40):
of course, but you know, it depends, like I like richiette.
You know what the chet is ears, so it's like
their round that has like a little bit of a
well in it. And we make the orchiete at a
moufie and it's but it's a dry posts so there's
no eggs in the pasta itself. And we make we
make an eggplant bolognes Oh, that sounds really good, so
(15:02):
it's a vegetarian bolognes It's it's not a true bonnis.
Bonis a meat sauce. Usually with stock. There's almost never
any tomato in it. In this case, we do use
a little tomato, lots of roasted eggplant. There's basil and
parceley and oregano in it as well. I feel like
that style of pasta is often paired with vegetables. I
(15:22):
think the most classic richiette is sausage and broccoli. That's
the most classic one, and it's a little spicy. Sometimes
they put a little tomato and cream in there is
really good. We talked about the caramel a you know,
you could stuff that with basically anything, but I love
the idea. It could just be Ricottacotta is the most classic,
like stuffed pasta filling. Also to Maufie, we make something
(15:44):
called annual loti. They're like envelopes, like little pillows of
stuffed pasta. And in that case we have we use
arugula and the ricotta inside, so you get like a
little pepperiness running through the ricotta. And at the moment
we're making a fresh cherry yellow tomato sauce. Oh, that
(16:04):
sounds so good. Summary Yeah, and then some crispy garlic
on top, and then some parmigiano. Yeah, that sounds great.
In in Los Angeles, there's a restaurant called Felix, And
one of my favorite parts about dining at the actual
restaurant is you can watch the chefs actually make and
roll the pasta and shape the pasta. So that's Evan Funky.
(16:25):
He's he's an amazing chef. This guy is dedicated to
hand rolling pasta. So there's an argument that he likes
to make, which is that pasta that's hand rolled and
handcut is better than pasta that you cut out of
a pasta machine or a rolling machine. I I mean,
I don't know. I mean, I mean, I really don't.
(16:48):
I mean, it's it's splitting hairs. In my opinion, I
will tell you that his his technique is beautiful to watch.
He's he went to Bologna and went to school there
to learn how to make you know, classic Bologna style
pasta dishes with a woman there, her name escapes me.
She has a school. In fact, in fact, right before
(17:09):
the pandemic, I signed up. I was going to go
there with a couple of my staff and we were
just gonna go make pasta for a week or two.
And then obviously that didn't happen. But the food in
Bologna is some of the best food in the world,
not just Italy. It's it's spectaculars where Bolognes comes from,
you know, but the food and food in Bologna is
is spectacular. And so yeah, so Evan does a great
(17:30):
job at felix Um hand rolls all of his pasta's.
He does a lot of them. It's to watch. Yeah, No,
it's great, it's really it's really cool. I mean, and
they have these big, giant, long rolling pigs and they
roll it out to this perfect you know depth density,
I should say, and then they cut them and then
they make pasta. You know that's handcrafted as Yeah, for sure.
(17:52):
One of the one of the dishes I really love
it a maufia is they're called rags or pasta rags,
which are you know, the scraps of the sheets of pasta,
so like you know, you're rolling out pasta. Ravioli is
always like scraps so to speak, that don't make the
They don't actually make it as part of the ravioli.
It's it's the pieces that you cut off. I had
never heard of that before. It's really good. First of all,
(18:15):
it's a very cool I just like the concept of
it because you're utilizing everything and it's the same pasta
that any other you know, Ravioli or Lasagne would be making.
But you know, it's it's the it's the edges in
the corners and it's you know obviously started out originally
as as a peasant dish, like utilize everything. But the
thing I love about it is I love the silkiness
(18:36):
and I love the texture of it when you bite
into it. We serve it with an arapiaza sauce, which
is basically means angry tomato sauce. So you know, it's spicy,
so it has you know, Collabrian chili in it, garlic,
et cetera. And then we serve it with a with
a ricotta on top that has some fresh basil running through.
It sounds so good. It's really good. So when you're
(18:56):
making this dish, are you actually using the scraps or
you make it depends if we run out of scraps,
we have to make scraps. It's almost it's almost like
the burnt ends of barbecue, right. No, I'm just curious though,
if it's like you you are actually utilizing everything. We
are definitely utilizing everything. Absolutely interesting. Yeah, I mean it's
it's the green way to cook pasta. It really is.
(19:36):
So we're gonna put the pasta into the boiling water,
to the boiling water, and the key to this pasta
dish is the pasta being cooked perfectly. But also we're
gonna use some of the pasta water. That's gonna have
some of the starts from the flour from the pasta,
and that's going to help to multify the sauce, which
is the butter that's gonna basically just gonna melt, so
(19:57):
it's just not like butter on pasta, right, which it
basically is. Um. And then sometimes I use chives. I
didn't have any chives. We're gonna use some fresh parsley. UM.
I usually make you cut the fresh parsley. I'm gonna
spare you today. I don't want you to think that's
your only job in the kitchen. And you really want
(20:20):
to have all these ingredients ready to go because the
pasta cooks so quickly. All right, So now we can
take the pasta. I'm gonna take the pasta out of
the water and we're gonna put it into a pan.
Then I'm gonna spill a little bit of the pasta
water into the pasta itself, season the pasta itself with
some salt and pepper with the pasta finished cooking in
(20:42):
the water, and then we're gonna add the butter. I
love fresh pasta. Do you how's your ant showy feel?
All right? So you can see the butter is really melting.
You melt the butter. You can just keep stirring it
as it comes to a boil let it finished cooking
in the butter. It's almost like you're you're creating a
(21:02):
sauce and a multified sauce with the pasta, water and
the butter. It smells so good? Does it smell the
anchovie now? In Rome? And it was surely they just
served this? Is it? There's no herbs? I feel like
I remember this. Yeah, there's no herbs, there's no garnish.
It's and you know it has like pretty intense flavor.
(21:25):
Grab a bowl and at the very at the very end,
we just sprinkling a little bit of parsley. Pretty They
probably wouldn't do this in Rome, but I can't help myself.
L a is there where we are. And one of
the other things that I that I do sometimes is
I put toasted bread crumbs on top as well, but
(21:45):
we're not doing that today. Go to try really simple,
really good? Is it the anchovie strong? That's the way
it should be right there? That's actually I do say
so myself. I think it's the perfect balance a manchovie
is in pasta, I mean, because otherwise it just tastes
like butter noodles, you know, which is nothing. There's nothing
wrong with that, but you know, the antio we's just
(22:06):
bringing to another dimension totally. Where did you learn how
to make pasta. I mean I think I taught myself. Yeah,
I mean, look, when I when I want to learn
how to do anything, I do a lot of research
like anybody else. And there are certain people that I'm
really interested in learning from. One of them is my
good friend Mark Vettori, who's got veteran in Philadelphia. He
has there another reson called fear Relos in Philadelphia he
(22:27):
just opened, and then he opened a version of it
in in Vegas at the Red Rock Hotel. He but
Marks pasta is sick. It's so good. It's so like
speaking of a rabbiata, like his pasta is so good.
It gets me angry, you know, but he's you know,
he's the best. And also like when I have a
question about pasta, he answers it. Oh, this was crazy.
(22:48):
So I'm training everybody in the kitchen at the Mouthfia
were like weeks from opening weeks okay, and we've just
gotten used to the kitchen and for the and the
very first day, I start training people on making the
pasta dishes and finishing the pasta dishes. Mark vectually walks
into the kitchen to say, what's up. You know, we're
not open, and I'm thinking to myself, I I'm about
(23:09):
to cook like ten pastas that we really haven't done
before for the staff. Okay, and Mark Victory just walked
into the kitchen. I really want to leave. I'm not
gonna lie like I'm thinking myself, how am I going
to get this guy out of here? Because I don't
want him hanging around, watching, watching, making me watch my
(23:30):
pastas for the first time for the staff. Okay. He stays,
Oh God, eats every single pasta dish, and I'm like, God,
I'm dying. Okay, literally, there's not a single other person
in the United States that I don't want any kitchen
within him. And he's standing there with a fork in
his name. So he eats every single one of the pastas.
(23:53):
So he says to me, Hey, your pastas are really good,
like almost with a surprise, right. So I'm thinking to myself,
he's the nicest guy. Great, no problem. So then he
calls Michael signon the next day and he goes, I
gotta tell you, man, Bobby's pastas are good, and Michael's like,
come on, because Michael, Michael wants me to fail me.
(24:15):
Michael's don't tell him that, yeah, and so he's like.
The thing I like about Bobby's pastas is that he
doesn't put too many ingredients in them. A lot of
times people put too many ingredients in their posta. Just
like anything else, the less is better, simple is always
best if you're executing right. Do you feel like you're
a pasta making expert now that you've spent so much
(24:36):
time in Italy? Am i Aposta making expert? I wouldn't
say I'm Aposta making, but I mean I spent a
lot of time making pasta now. I mean, and it's
one of those things where, like people say to me,
you know you're opening an Italian restaurant. I've spent a
lot of time in Italy. I mean an inordinate amount
of time in Italy, probably a lot more time than
(24:57):
a lot of people cooking Italian food. I'm serious, Like,
I mean, I go there all the time. And when
I go, when I go to a place like that,
I'm cooking. I mean, I'm either going to the market
and cooking in a house that I've rented or um
staying in a hotel, and I'm cooking in restaurants sort
of you know, under the radar. Nobody has any idea
who I am there? So it's great. I think Michael
(25:17):
Simon was with us when we were in Pulia, right,
oh yeah, I remember him making sheets of pasta, like
but like hanging them all over the kitchen. Yeah, we Michael, well,
my so when we went to Pulia, this is this
is a good story. When we went to Pullia, Michael
and I cooked every meal. We were exhausted by the
end of it. It was just like it was painful
(25:37):
how many meals we had. But also we like we
had a clean too, so every time we cooked, like,
oh bro, we have to clean up. Yeah we made
a mess. Yeah we we you know, we made we
made We made tons of pasta. There absolutely when you're
in Italy making you're making pasta, well, I think you
should make mesa pasta. What would you like? Don't say
penny Alla vodka. That's not even Italian. No, I want
(26:00):
your your eggplant bolonets that's not Italian either, but I'll
make it okay. Thanks. Always Hungry is created by Bobby
Flay and Sophie Flay. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis.
Always Hungry is produced, edited, and mixed by Jonathan Hoss
Dresser Always Hungry is engineered by Sophie Flay. For more
podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
(26:23):
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. I'm Sophie Flag and I'm Always Hungry.
Sophie and I gathered around my stove to cook together.
Well you cook, I asked the questions, and eat the food.
If there's 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
(00:26):
this is um one of the most satisfying things that
I feel like a person can make at home, and
I've never done it. We're talking about making pasta and
fresh pasta. Yeah, fresh pasta from scratch. You have done it,
you just don't remember. So today we're talking about fresh pasta,
(00:46):
which you know, I find fresh pasta to be one
of those things that are it's a very satisfying thing
when you when you do it. So basically what I
use is whole eggs and egg yolks and some flour.
You can use double zero flower, you can use all
purpose flour. And you know the old school way to
do it. And so you take a well the flower,
(01:07):
you make a well of the flower. You know, you
measure it out first. This is uh, my friend Mark
Victory's one of his classic recipes in terms of pasta itself.
He's my mentor when it comes to pasta. So it's like,
what is it two cups of flour and then um,
three eggs in one yolk and then you put the
(01:27):
put the eggs in the yolk in the middle of
the of the well and then you just start stirring
it up until it forms a dough. I want to
hand me a fork there. Would you say it's easy?
I think it's very easy. Yeah. The other thing you
can do is you can do it in a food processor,
which if you watch me now, a purist will tell
(01:47):
you that that's, you know, blasphemy. But um, if you
watch me on beat Bobby Flay, because I don't have
any time to play around, I put it. I put
it all in the food processor, the eggs, the egg yolks,
and the flour, and I turned the food processor on
and you know, it beats it into a dough. But
this is you know, the well and the eggs. You
(02:08):
can see how the eggs are and the flower are incorporating. Yeah,
you're just kind of like whisking it with the fork, yes, exactly,
and then it forms, you know, it forms the dough,
and depending on the humidity in the air, um, you
add more or less flour until it has like that
little bit of that that stickiness to the to the
dough itself. Um. And then you need to let it
(02:30):
rest for like at least an hour in the refrigerator
so that it's, uh, it's more appliable when you're when
you're rolling it out and then you're cutting it into
whether it's fed a cheeny or just ravioli sheets or
lasagna sheets or whatever it is. I mean, you know
this can be used for for all of that, and
you know you want to make sure that you need
the the pasta a little bit. So that's posta though.
(02:52):
I mean it's literally a couple of ingredients, right, easy enough. Okay,
So today we're talking about out, we're talking about pasta.
I mean, I guess mostly homemade pasta, pasta you make
it at home. So basically, you know, pasta in general
are usually eggs and flour. Sometimes when you're making the
(03:13):
sort of the bronze dye cut pasta that's gonna turn
into dried pasta, it's usually flour or semolina and water
no eggs, which I always feel like, I don't know,
I always feel like I want eggs in my pasta.
I don't know why. I like the bite that it
gives it. But you know, there's there's different pastas for
different occasions, so that's, you know, that's that's certainly, that's
(03:35):
certainly way it works. And also fresh pasta and dry
pasta are two very different things. They're not ones, not
better than the other, they're very different. Like, for instance,
like some just because it's fresh doesn't mean it's better
for a dish and dried pasta. For instance, I think
that like linguini and clam sauce is better with dry pasta.
I think spaghetti meatballs is better with dry pasta. What's
(03:58):
the difference, Well, the difference is that fresh pasta is
gonna be a lot silkier and have less substance to it.
Usually it usually has it's silkier and it's it's luscious,
and that works in lots of different ways. So like
if I just you know, like during white shuffle season,
which is very you know, they're very incredibly expensive, but
like I want like fresh pasta with some butter and
(04:23):
some white shuffles. That's it. You know, that's amazing to me.
That works better than like, for instance, dry pasta. Uh
if you have some some like really simply cooked I
don't know, fish or vegetables I like. I like fresh pasta.
I mean sometimes they both work, but in some cases
dry postas rather than fresh and vice versa. Just the
(04:44):
way it is. Dry pasta takes longer to cook most
of the time because it's dry, so the fresh pasta.
Fresh pasta can cook somewhere between thirty and forty five seconds,
sometimes depending on the cut and how thick it is.
And then you can also flavor the fresh pastas, which
I also love with what well, one of my favorite
is squid inc You know, it's that yet black pasta.
(05:04):
It has it definitely has a little bit of that
briny flavor. You can put things like spinach in it
and make cream pasta. I like to make fresh saffron
noodles when you put saffron in the pasta dough. Oh
that sounds good. Well, I don't know. Have I had
had that, Viewers, I think you have. At Gotto, we
did we did a saffron We did saffron linguini basically
(05:24):
with muscles. Yeah, I remember that so delicious and that
and that mushroom broth and a little bit of butter.
It's really really good. And then like if you're gonna
make ravioli of any sort, any kind of stuff pasta,
I mean you have to make fresh pasta. It because
you're making you know, you're making sheets and depending on
what you want the pasta to look like, the sheets
(05:46):
are long or sometimes they're short and cut into squares
and then and then folded into different cuts. Like if
I'm making caramela, do you know what that is? So caramelay?
What do you think the word in English is? I
mean it sounds like caramel, right, So what it means
is they look like those candies. Oh we were talking
about this, Yeah, okay, so right now at a maufie
(06:08):
I make, we're making caromela, which is fresh pasta that
you then twist into, uh you twisted into like a
little candy rapper shape. It's really it's really cool. Look
and uh you know that's fresh pasta. But those are squares?
Is there something in the middle? Yeah, of course, what
is it? Well, but for what we're what we're doing
now is porcini mushrooms and roast sweet potatoes together, Oh
(06:30):
my god, that sounds so good. Yeah. It was actually
one of those things where at first I just did
Porcini's and the chef there, Anthony Fustco, like he wanted
to put almonds in it, so he put almonds and
some were caught up in the ground. Porcini mushrooms really
very very very tasty, but it was like it tasted
a little earthy, and actually Christina said to me, you
(06:51):
need it's missing something sweet, and like sweet, what are
you talking about sweet? Like I don't want to I
don't want to make sweet Porcini caramel, So that doesn't
make any sense. But one of the things that I
did at Gatto was we made either sweet potato or
pumpkin caramel as with brown butter. So I just put
some roasted sweet potato in with the porcini and it
(07:11):
actually worked out really nicely. So is there a there's
some almonds in there or now there's definitely almonds in there.
Gives it a really good nuttiness obviously because they're nuts.
Sounds great, And then we make the easiest sauce in
the world, brown butter correct, brown butter, some crispy sage,
little parmigiano kind of on the way out, probably Jona Reggiano.
(07:33):
So so good, that's I mean, brown butter is a
sauce that you should make sometimes. Yeah, it's good for
fish and chicken. It's good for pasta dishes like your
your unofficial uncle Michael Simon. He makes yoki with brown
butter like people make toast. He makes it all the time.
It's like any think he's actually always making pasta. He's
(07:54):
always making yoki with brown butter. I'm pretty sure it's
the only dish it says, go to just and and Frankly,
every time he makes it, it's it's spot on perfect.
Of course, it's so good, like when I make yoki.
He loves like a couple of times he's I've been
challenged in yoki when he's been at beat. That's so funny.
He's like, I can't wait to watch this, watch this.
(08:16):
I'm using your rescipe taught me everything I know. I
know how to do this. When we were making the
(08:39):
pasta earlier, I just didn't really realize how easy it
is and how simple the ingredients are. Like it's really
just so simple to make it at home, like walk
us through it. Eggs and flower. I mean, so basically
a couple. There's a there's technique and of course, I
mean it's it's very simple and once. And one of
the things about pasta is that the more you do it,
the better you get at it. You know, It's like
(09:00):
making pizza doughs, same thing making Tamali's, making rolling gumblings.
Those that kind of handywork you get better than more
times you do it. And so for instance, like you know,
if I'm if I'm gonna make pasta at home, it's eggs,
whole eggs and an egg yolk and then some flour
and then I mix it together. Um, I make a
well with the with with the with the flour. I
(09:23):
whisk up the eggs and then I slowly gently combine
them so that they be they be they make a
pasta dough. And then I need the pasta dough for
a little while. And then I make a disc out
of it, and I wrap it in plastic wrap, and
I put it in the refrigerator and I'll let it
rest for at least an hour, let the gluten's go
to work. And then I have an attachment on my
(09:44):
kitchen aid that's like a sheeter, so that so you
can make sheets of pasta. So no matter what, you
have to make sheets of pasta, because whether you just
make sheets of pasta and use it for like, let's say, lasagna,
or use it for ravioli, Yeah, you have to do
the sheets first before you right, or if you're gonna
make or if you're gonna cut it into like spaghetti
or linguini or feta cheni, you still have to make
(10:05):
sheets first. So it's a two stop process to rolling
out the pasta and cutting it into into strands, and
then you have fresh pasta. I mean you're ready to go. Basically,
that's great. I mean you should let it right out
a little bit. It doesn't have to be that long.
But I feel like that was something that a lot
of people did during the pandemic. They like taught themselves
how to make pasta at home. Yeah, it's also one
of the most satisfying things to do, right, It's so
(10:25):
fun to make your own pasta when you're cutting it
and you and you put it either through the hand
crank machine or you cut it by hand or like
you use like what I do is I use my
kitchen Aid attachment. You have the sheets of pasta and
then you put it through the feta cheeni cut and
it comes out and it's basically sort of drops into
your hand and you have these beautiful noodles. You know,
like I made pasta. I mean honestly, like I get,
(10:48):
I get, I get kind of like high on it.
Like at the time I do it. It's really cool.
I get that, and then you and then listen, everybody
loves pasta, Let's face it. It's one of those things
that you just universally loved, one of the cool fresh pastas.
I learned how to make. I learned from my good
friend and chef Tomaso di Simone at the La Scolio
on the Maufi coast, and he taught me something called
(11:10):
shilotat Telly, I'm mispronouncing it, I promise you, I'm mr
mr pronounce. Is that on your menu now? Yeah? It's
my menu A maufie and it's it's an interesting dough
because it's eggs and flour, but it's also I think
it has some semiline in it as well, but it
also has milk in it, so in some ways it's
like a dumpling recipe, but we're not cutting it into dumplings.
(11:31):
We're cutting it into feed a cheeny so that you
when you bite into it, there's like a little bit
of a chew to it. Interesting. It's really cool. And
there's some parsley running through it as well. Had it
before I had it there, No, I mean before that, no, no, no, no.
Shiloa Telly is a very Amufie Coast pasta cut. It's
from there and uh Tomaso brought me into the kitchen
(11:53):
one morning and he's like, let me show you how
to make this because I because I love it so much.
And they're what they do is they combine it with
some kind of fish or shellfish depending on you know
what what's available that day out of the out of
the Tyranny Sea, which is amazing, and usually some sort
of cherry tomatoes red or yelled tomatoes a date that
they grow on their farm. So basically the shy to
(12:13):
Telly is double zero flour and semolina flour as well,
and then there's whole eggs and milk, some parmesan cheese
and then like some herbs running through it. It's really great,
it's really really terrific. What we do is we make
a scampy sauce for it. So it's shrimp and lemon
and garlic, butter, parsley basil. So it's a it's a
(12:34):
really heavy sauce and you know, lots of fresh lemon,
and it just it really makes that pasta so delutions.
And then we put some anchovy bready crimes on top.
Oh that sounds great. So we have some fresh feta
chini here right. Freda Chini is sort of a medium
sized broad noodle. I love fettucchini. And I have some
water here, salted. You always want it to taste like
(12:54):
the sea, and you want to want it to rapid
boil and fresh pasta. This fresh pasta is gonna cook
in less than sixty secs. You know, supposed to dry
pasta that takes a lot longer. Now we're gonna make
an anchovy butter pasta. Okay, And this is a dish
that I was inspired by in this place in Rome
called with scholi, which is one of the most famous dishes.
(13:15):
I think they used spaghetti or linguini, I can't remember which.
Maybe it's bucatini. I can't remember exactly which cut it is,
but it's around long strand okay. And and what they
do is because I worked with the chef there when
John and I went there, And what they do is
they just take the anchovies and they put them in
the pan and let them anchovies melt and then finish
(13:35):
it with butter at the end. So what I do
is for my dishes, I make, I make an anchovy
butter first, So I take unsalted butter, and I add
anchovies to the butter itself and then food processor into
a food processor, a tiny bit of salt because there's
a lot of salt in the anchovies already, and then
(13:57):
some black pepper, and then I just I process this
so I make I'm basically making a compound butter nice okay.
So so basically what you have is anchiovy flavored butter.
I just feel like, I mean, there's there's no right
(14:17):
way and the wrong way for this, but I I
feel like this way, I know that I'm going to
distribute the anchovy flavor. What's your favorite pasta shape? It
all depends on what the sauce is. A you know,
what what sauce you have is incredibly important. Like, you know,
if I want meatballs. I want spaghetti, which is you know,
spietti and meatballs are a very American rendition of pasta,
(14:40):
of course, but you know, it depends, like I like richiette.
You know what the chet is ears, so it's like
their round that has like a little bit of a
well in it. And we make the orchiete at a
moufie and it's but it's a dry posts so there's
no eggs in the pasta itself. And we make we
make an eggplant bolognes Oh, that sounds really good, so
(15:02):
it's a vegetarian bolognes It's it's not a true bonnis.
Bonis a meat sauce. Usually with stock. There's almost never
any tomato in it. In this case, we do use
a little tomato, lots of roasted eggplant. There's basil and
parceley and oregano in it as well. I feel like
that style of pasta is often paired with vegetables. I
(15:22):
think the most classic richiette is sausage and broccoli. That's
the most classic one, and it's a little spicy. Sometimes
they put a little tomato and cream in there is
really good. We talked about the caramel a you know,
you could stuff that with basically anything, but I love
the idea. It could just be Ricottacotta is the most classic,
like stuffed pasta filling. Also to Maufie, we make something
(15:44):
called annual loti. They're like envelopes, like little pillows of
stuffed pasta. And in that case we have we use
arugula and the ricotta inside, so you get like a
little pepperiness running through the ricotta. And at the moment
we're making a fresh cherry yellow tomato sauce. Oh, that
(16:04):
sounds so good. Summary Yeah, and then some crispy garlic
on top, and then some parmigiano. Yeah, that sounds great.
In in Los Angeles, there's a restaurant called Felix, And
one of my favorite parts about dining at the actual
restaurant is you can watch the chefs actually make and
roll the pasta and shape the pasta. So that's Evan Funky.
(16:25):
He's he's an amazing chef. This guy is dedicated to
hand rolling pasta. So there's an argument that he likes
to make, which is that pasta that's hand rolled and
handcut is better than pasta that you cut out of
a pasta machine or a rolling machine. I I mean,
I don't know. I mean, I mean, I really don't.
(16:48):
I mean, it's it's splitting hairs. In my opinion, I
will tell you that his his technique is beautiful to watch.
He's he went to Bologna and went to school there
to learn how to make you know, classic Bologna style
pasta dishes with a woman there, her name escapes me.
She has a school. In fact, in fact, right before
(17:09):
the pandemic, I signed up. I was going to go
there with a couple of my staff and we were
just gonna go make pasta for a week or two.
And then obviously that didn't happen. But the food in
Bologna is some of the best food in the world,
not just Italy. It's it's spectaculars where Bolognes comes from,
you know, but the food and food in Bologna is
is spectacular. And so yeah, so Evan does a great
(17:30):
job at felix Um hand rolls all of his pasta's.
He does a lot of them. It's to watch. Yeah, No,
it's great, it's really it's really cool. I mean, and
they have these big, giant, long rolling pigs and they
roll it out to this perfect you know depth density,
I should say, and then they cut them and then
they make pasta. You know that's handcrafted as Yeah, for sure.
(17:52):
One of the one of the dishes I really love
it a maufia is they're called rags or pasta rags,
which are you know, the scraps of the sheets of pasta,
so like you know, you're rolling out pasta. Ravioli is
always like scraps so to speak, that don't make the
They don't actually make it as part of the ravioli.
It's it's the pieces that you cut off. I had
never heard of that before. It's really good. First of all,
(18:15):
it's a very cool I just like the concept of
it because you're utilizing everything and it's the same pasta
that any other you know, Ravioli or Lasagne would be making.
But you know, it's it's the it's the edges in
the corners and it's you know obviously started out originally
as as a peasant dish, like utilize everything. But the
thing I love about it is I love the silkiness
(18:36):
and I love the texture of it when you bite
into it. We serve it with an arapiaza sauce, which
is basically means angry tomato sauce. So you know, it's spicy,
so it has you know, Collabrian chili in it, garlic,
et cetera. And then we serve it with a with
a ricotta on top that has some fresh basil running through.
It sounds so good. It's really good. So when you're
(18:56):
making this dish, are you actually using the scraps or
you make it depends if we run out of scraps,
we have to make scraps. It's almost it's almost like
the burnt ends of barbecue, right. No, I'm just curious though,
if it's like you you are actually utilizing everything. We
are definitely utilizing everything. Absolutely interesting. Yeah, I mean it's
it's the green way to cook pasta. It really is.
(19:36):
So we're gonna put the pasta into the boiling water,
to the boiling water, and the key to this pasta
dish is the pasta being cooked perfectly. But also we're
gonna use some of the pasta water. That's gonna have
some of the starts from the flour from the pasta,
and that's going to help to multify the sauce, which
is the butter that's gonna basically just gonna melt, so
(19:57):
it's just not like butter on pasta, right, which it
basically is. Um. And then sometimes I use chives. I
didn't have any chives. We're gonna use some fresh parsley. UM.
I usually make you cut the fresh parsley. I'm gonna
spare you today. I don't want you to think that's
your only job in the kitchen. And you really want
(20:20):
to have all these ingredients ready to go because the
pasta cooks so quickly. All right, So now we can
take the pasta. I'm gonna take the pasta out of
the water and we're gonna put it into a pan.
Then I'm gonna spill a little bit of the pasta
water into the pasta itself, season the pasta itself with
some salt and pepper with the pasta finished cooking in
(20:42):
the water, and then we're gonna add the butter. I
love fresh pasta. Do you how's your ant showy feel?
All right? So you can see the butter is really melting.
You melt the butter. You can just keep stirring it
as it comes to a boil let it finished cooking
in the butter. It's almost like you're you're creating a
(21:02):
sauce and a multified sauce with the pasta, water and
the butter. It smells so good? Does it smell the
anchovie now? In Rome? And it was surely they just
served this? Is it? There's no herbs? I feel like
I remember this. Yeah, there's no herbs, there's no garnish.
It's and you know it has like pretty intense flavor.
(21:25):
Grab a bowl and at the very at the very end,
we just sprinkling a little bit of parsley. Pretty They
probably wouldn't do this in Rome, but I can't help myself.
L a is there where we are. And one of
the other things that I that I do sometimes is
I put toasted bread crumbs on top as well, but
(21:45):
we're not doing that today. Go to try really simple,
really good? Is it the anchovie strong? That's the way
it should be right there? That's actually I do say
so myself. I think it's the perfect balance a manchovie
is in pasta, I mean, because otherwise it just tastes
like butter noodles, you know, which is nothing. There's nothing
wrong with that, but you know, the antio we's just
(22:06):
bringing to another dimension totally. Where did you learn how
to make pasta. I mean I think I taught myself. Yeah,
I mean, look, when I when I want to learn
how to do anything, I do a lot of research
like anybody else. And there are certain people that I'm
really interested in learning from. One of them is my
good friend Mark Vettori, who's got veteran in Philadelphia. He
has there another reson called fear Relos in Philadelphia he
(22:27):
just opened, and then he opened a version of it
in in Vegas at the Red Rock Hotel. He but
Marks pasta is sick. It's so good. It's so like
speaking of a rabbiata, like his pasta is so good.
It gets me angry, you know, but he's you know,
he's the best. And also like when I have a
question about pasta, he answers it. Oh, this was crazy.
(22:48):
So I'm training everybody in the kitchen at the Mouthfia
were like weeks from opening weeks okay, and we've just
gotten used to the kitchen and for the and the
very first day, I start training people on making the
pasta dishes and finishing the pasta dishes. Mark vectually walks
into the kitchen to say, what's up. You know, we're
not open, and I'm thinking to myself, I I'm about
(23:09):
to cook like ten pastas that we really haven't done
before for the staff. Okay, and Mark Victory just walked
into the kitchen. I really want to leave. I'm not
gonna lie like I'm thinking myself, how am I going
to get this guy out of here? Because I don't
want him hanging around, watching, watching, making me watch my
(23:30):
pastas for the first time for the staff. Okay. He stays,
Oh God, eats every single pasta dish, and I'm like, God,
I'm dying. Okay, literally, there's not a single other person
in the United States that I don't want any kitchen
within him. And he's standing there with a fork in
his name. So he eats every single one of the pastas.
(23:53):
So he says to me, Hey, your pastas are really good,
like almost with a surprise, right. So I'm thinking to myself,
he's the nicest guy. Great, no problem. So then he
calls Michael signon the next day and he goes, I
gotta tell you, man, Bobby's pastas are good, and Michael's like,
come on, because Michael, Michael wants me to fail me.
(24:15):
Michael's don't tell him that, yeah, and so he's like.
The thing I like about Bobby's pastas is that he
doesn't put too many ingredients in them. A lot of
times people put too many ingredients in their posta. Just
like anything else, the less is better, simple is always
best if you're executing right. Do you feel like you're
a pasta making expert now that you've spent so much
(24:36):
time in Italy? Am i Aposta making expert? I wouldn't
say I'm Aposta making, but I mean I spent a
lot of time making pasta now. I mean, and it's
one of those things where, like people say to me,
you know you're opening an Italian restaurant. I've spent a
lot of time in Italy. I mean an inordinate amount
of time in Italy, probably a lot more time than
(24:57):
a lot of people cooking Italian food. I'm serious, Like,
I mean, I go there all the time. And when
I go, when I go to a place like that,
I'm cooking. I mean, I'm either going to the market
and cooking in a house that I've rented or um
staying in a hotel, and I'm cooking in restaurants sort
of you know, under the radar. Nobody has any idea
who I am there? So it's great. I think Michael
(25:17):
Simon was with us when we were in Pulia, right,
oh yeah, I remember him making sheets of pasta, like
but like hanging them all over the kitchen. Yeah, we Michael, well,
my so when we went to Pulia, this is this
is a good story. When we went to Pullia, Michael
and I cooked every meal. We were exhausted by the
end of it. It was just like it was painful
(25:37):
how many meals we had. But also we like we
had a clean too, so every time we cooked, like,
oh bro, we have to clean up. Yeah we made
a mess. Yeah we we you know, we made we
made We made tons of pasta. There absolutely when you're
in Italy making you're making pasta, well, I think you
should make mesa pasta. What would you like? Don't say
penny Alla vodka. That's not even Italian. No, I want
(26:00):
your your eggplant bolonets that's not Italian either, but I'll
make it okay. Thanks. Always Hungry is created by Bobby
Flay and Sophie Flay. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis.
Always Hungry is produced, edited, and mixed by Jonathan Hoss
Dresser Always Hungry is engineered by Sophie Flay. For more
podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
(26:23):
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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