Make Italian Bistro Pasta Sauce From A Jar!

On this episode of “Mark Alyn’s Culinary Adventures” our guest chef David Feder, RDN and Food Journalist, shows us how to make a healthy pasta sauce (with vegan and GF options) fast and easy.

DAVID FEDER’S FAST TURKEY BOLOGNESE
Before you turn to plant-based ground beef, try this old-style Bolognese recipe using a surprising substitute for ground meat. This is a vegetarian, allyl-free/gluten-free recipe without onion or garlic, but you may add garlic, substitute ground meat for the Grape Nuts, and use plain pasta, if desired. Note: As with all pasta sauces, this will taste even better the next day!

Talking points for the show:
• the use of jarred sauce and dried herbs as the key to making this a fast, 30-min. dinner that seems as if the sauce had simmered all day. (It did, just over at Rao’s kitchens.)
• the allyl-free nature of the recipe
• the use of Barilla brand g.f. pasta
• the use of Marzano tomatoes (plug Melissa’s)
• the use of allulose or tagatose, with explanations of their benefits and flavor profiles

Ingredients:
2 Tbsp. oil from anchovies packed in olive oil (may substitute plain olive oil)
⅓ cup finely diced fennel bulb
1 tsp. whole fennel seeds
1 tsp. sea salt or kosher salt
½ tsp. slightly crushed peppercorns
1 lb. ground dark-meat turkey
2 cups sliced Baby Portabella mushrooms
2 tsp. dried Italian herbs
4 cloves fresh peeled garlic, minced (optional)
1 cup chopped Marzano or grape tomatoes
½ cup red wine (Chianti)
1 cup chicken broth
1½ cups Rao’s Sensitive Marinara sauce or other favored marinara
1 level Tbsp. sugar [NB: I use pure allulose or tagatose instead]
1 Tbsp. butter
12 oz. Barilla gluten-free Spaghetti or other favored pasta
Freshly grated Reggiano-Parmigiano cheese
Chiffonade of fresh basil leaves (optional)

Directions:
1. In a 3qt. stockpot bring 2½ qt. salted water to low boil.
2. Meanwhile, in a large, deep saucepan heat anchovy oil over medium-high heat; sauté fennel, fennel seed, salt, and peppercorns 1-2 minutes, then add turkey, cooking until browned and adding mushrooms and herbs (and garlic (if using) halfway through. (May add extra olive oil during cooking, if needed.)
3. Add tomatoes; sauté 3-5 minutes, stirring occasionally and adding herbs while stirring.
4. Add wine; reduce heat. Simmer 3-5 minutes until wine is reduced by about half, stirring occasionally. Add broth. Simmer several minutes more.
5. Stir in marinara sauce and sugar (or allulose or tagatose); reduce heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes, adjusting seasonings to taste. Before serving, stir in butter thoroughly.
6. Prepare pasta according to package directions while sauce is simmering.
7. Drain pasta; toss with a little Bolognese sauce and serve topped with remaining sauce, grated Parmigiano and fresh basil, if desired.
8. Drink remainder of Chianti with pasta.

welcome to Mark Allen’s culinary adventures uh ever buy a a jar of pasta sauce and go well what we’re going to do today is we’re going to take one of the better pasta sauces which is Rouse and they have all kinds of flavors and we’re going to make this an awardwinning sauce we’re going to make a bolognese uh for your pasta uh you can make it spaghetti bolognese we’re going to make it fetuccini because feta uh bolognese because that’s what they had at the market and uh it’s going to be an great show with David Federer who returns to Mark Allen’s culinary adventures so don’t go away because this is an exciting show and it’ll show you how to make a worldclass pasta sauce real fast and easy and we’re going to start by doing something right now that we haven’t done for a while we’re going to start with a little bit of wine uh this is a wine I have to tell you um let’s bring David in okay uh David you’re going to love this hello David who resides in Texas and I’m not sure if Texas is another state or another country but maybe it’s another country it is um so I went to Albertson’s which is uh Safeway in many parts of the country and they have a great wine selection and I found a Keianti that retails for $28 a bottle but this is Yeah I did not buy that be I did buy it actually because it was on sale for $740 get out that was It was waiting for you it and it was the last bottle um it’s a screw top if we have time we’ll talk about screw top versus uh uh corks i’m going to pour a little bit and then we should toast you have uh I have a beer beer you have a beer it’s Texas after all yeah I I had broccoli tea but I’m done with that it’s time for beer i’m done with I’m done with that too broccoli tea all right i will explain the broccoli tea a little later you got it all right here we go i was actually then Yes i was actually in um Italy and we toured a kosher winery that specializes in Keianti and in fact the owner of the vineyard and winery is the uh the president of the Keiante Association and uh it was really an interesting time so uh I’ll take another sip well I found out last spring that I’m Sphartic Jewish and we thought the family went from Portugal to Amsterdam to London to New York right but we found out that we spent nearly 200 years in Venice Italy so Oh that’s interesting turns out I got some Italian blood in me wow uh I found out that um uh our family started in Portugal and immigrated to Amsterdam and then eventually to Poland so I’m no longer Sphartic i’m Ashkanazi but that’s another story okay six degrees of separation here exactly we were probably cousins of some kind uh we’re going to make Yeah we are going to make a uh pasta sauce out of a jarred pasta sauce right right and we’re gonna Yeah i was going to say that’s considered a big no no among the culinarians of the world but hey sometimes you only got 30 minutes to get dinner to the table you know right so we’re gonna make this sauce as if it’s simmered for hours got it and it’ll only be 30 to 40 minutes all right we’re going to start i’m going to come over here i’m going to turn on my pan let that heat up a little bit and in the meantime I’ve got a can of anchovies here there we go yes um they used to s sell centro and which is an Italian olive oil uh uh anchovi and um I really like those i have not tasted these yet but we’ll try so let’s go over here we’re going to put about two tablespoons or all of the uh oil from the anchovies into the pan i am going to use the anchovies later and I’m going to make a Caesar salad dressing which will post uh under the u uh the bolognese that we’re making and you can do this bolognese several different ways and it occurred to me David that we’re going to be making it with some beef but you could if we had chopped the uh porttoella mushrooms even finer that and added more we could have used the mushrooms and made it vegan this This is true this is true and I typically use turkey this is a recipe that I make in some form or another roughly once a week for the family and we’ll use either turkey or um if we want to go plant-based we have some other ways to do it too yeah um grape nuts i don’t get that one i don’t get that one but all right let’s go back over here and I’m going to pour that in now if I need more olive oil I do have some olive oil that I can add i love the smell i love the smell of anchovies and I love the taste even more we We are big on anchovies in my family and that’s the brand we found that you know we like the best the brand you’re using and yes that’s right about all the olive oil that’s in those anchovies tins that I use when I make this at home got it all right so I have um some fennel uh fennel i love fennel i think it’s great it’s got a little licoricey flavor and it’s often used in many Italian dishes um both the seeds and the and the actual bulb right and we use both in this recipe yeah i’m curious is fennel related to onions and garlic it is not it It’s It’s um related to anise and the mosquite tree um but I I’m 99% certain it’s not an alil not an alen an alil or an aliium if we want to be really I’m going to add the uh fennel in there now I do know that fennel is also related distantly to dill oh but no onion no garlic got it i’ll let that simmer for a moment or two and then we’re going to add some whole fennel seeds right now do you have your water going for your pasta or have you already made that i’ve already made the pasta and Now when I cook and when you cook we don’t measure so I’m going to throw those two but I measured for the sake of this show um so we can say that we’re adding about um say a teaspoon of whole fennel seed a teaspoon of sea salt and then about a half a teaspoon A very coarsely ground black pepper do you have all that in there do you have salt in there i’ve got the black pepper okay throw that in and u the salt now I don’t cook with a lot of salt this is Melissa’s Himalayan uh pink salt that I’m going to use um I really like it and it’s easy to use by the way the the we should say that over here we have our uh Melissa cam and you can see that we’ve got tomatoes and shallots and garlic potatoes um some mini bell peppers that we were going to put into the into this uh but we decided not to and some red uh onions and red potatoes over there as well so thank you Carol for setting up our Melissa cam we really appreciate that all right I’m going to put in some salt i don’t use a lot of it just a couple of grinds and I’m going to add a little bit of little bit more olive oil okay now is a good time to add the meat and garlic if you’re using it i do not um but I’m going to use put the garlic in first then the meat yeah you want to you want to sweat that garlic a little bit so all right good so we like a lot of garlic good carol can you hand me either a wood a wood spoon please do you like to when you’re stirring do you like to use wood i I I talked to FA Levy about this she loves cooking with a wood spoon rather than a plastic or a metal spoon how about you i after more than 15 years in professional kitchens I’m afraid I use tongs for just about everything they are an extension of my hands got it i don’t know if the professional chefs still do that it’s been many years since I was in a professional kitchen but tongs tongs tongs okay I’m going to add the meat now i have a pound of meat and correct going to add this in uh I was lucky because I found some meat that was only 10% fat but that’s where the flavor is yeah I know but we try to be a little bit healthy that’s healthy we need fat yes uh we should mention that David is a registered dietician he has a a degree in that if I’m not mistaken yep and um all but dissertation for a nutrition biochemistry PhD didn’t write my dissertation bad boy yeah well it’s not too late David uh yes it is oh okay i’d have to start all over from scratch got it they give you five years 10 if you’re lucky but it’s been 30 oh well all right i’m gonna turn that up just a little bit i’m gonna you know it’s You know what time it is David um it is so while the beef is cooking I will tell you about the broccoli tea when when I steam broccoli I save the water i drink it i like it it’s very tasty um but why was I making broccoli uh I made tonight i’m sorry i was making faces broccoli i’m not a broccoli fan now Carol loves broccoli okay so we’ll have to try that we’ll save the the water the water is wonderful yeah it’s it’s great to if you want a nice little hot sip while you’re doing whatever you’re doing now what was I doing with the broccoli i was making because I had the bolognese last night that’s confessions here um so tonight I made stuffed mushrooms and stuffed baby porttoellas let’s see if we can get that up on the camera we have We have here I’ll show you um I have some baby porttoellas that I’ve sliced okay so yep those can go in um I think we were actually supposed to put those in a little earlier weren’t we oh well we can put them in now yep we were supposed to put those in before the beef but we can put those in now i will tell you a trick that I do um this the idea was to make this uh easy and fast when I have a little extra time I cook the mushrooms separately in butter and fold them into the sauce at the very last minute before serving and it’s uh just a variation on this recipe that y’all can do i like it but the stuffed mushrooms if you wish did you get a good look at them uh Mark did you see the stuffed porttoella baby bellas no go ahead i love stuffed mushrooms and if you wish I’ll come back hey we got to get Yeah you’ll come back and we’ll do those okay i I wrote down the recipe as I was making it which is a very rare thing for me but I figured you know I got to start doing that more often when you when you’re cooking we’ve already established that when you’re cooking for yourself or your family that you don’t don’t make um uh you you don’t measure it’s it’s by instinct right yep do you uh remember what you did last night so that next week or two weeks from now you can make the same thing uh usually uh because it’s the same instinct and I I’ve been in the food business for 52 years and I started out as which is pretty interesting because he’s only 48 years old I wish so um no I I started out at 15 in fast food joints and worked my way up by 19 I was running a five-star kitchen and uh just stayed in it for many years and then uh shifted into uh the nutrition science and while I was doing the nutrition science I had been as a chef I had been called upon to do a lot of um articles about food and travel and uh I kept up freelance journalism while I was you know going through school and then the reason I didn’t write my dissertation was because I had finished the research and the coursework and crunching the numbers and statistics and got right up to having to do the dissertation and I got a job offer as a full-time journalist for the food and nutrition department at Better Homes and Gardens magazine and like everybody who has you know dropped out everybody who’s an ABD said “Oh I I’ll tackle that as soon as I get resettled wherever I’m going.” And of course never did got it i get it i’ve been in food journalism ever since 30 years ago i’m trying to think the first time I did a restaurant review I was 21 years old wow and um so that was uh No it was one of the first things I did we didn’t Nobody knew what sushi was other than it was raw fish and I was invited in and I wrote this article and it was on it kept going on and on and on because the owner of the restaurant who is not Japanese would would uh um just kept bringing out different foods wanting me to taste it and it was very interesting the publicist was Dorothy Hunley and uh she’s in that big kitchen in the sky so we miss her everything is coming together the mushrooms are almost cooking down we have Now’s a good time to add the veno okay I’ve got veno to add let’s add tomatoes first oh and you know what we forgot to add i think No no no now’s the time to add them oh okay cuz I have some Italian seasoning yes i was going to say add the tomatoes and the herbs okay and then when the tomatoes start to get soft you can add the wine got it now we didn’t we added a about a cup of roughly chopped Roma tomatoes and these again are from Melissa’s and they’re red and beautiful and I was eating some of these earlier they’re very very good okay melissa’s also Melissa’s also has these um small thumbsiz Marzano uh tomatoes if you remember you and I used them in the Chile last time I visited you and those are the bomb uh they’re a beautiful dark red sweet tomato just gorgeous and that’s what I like to use in this recipe do you like uh some of the heirloom tomatoes uh uh I see them at in in various markets whole Foods has a variety yellow red even purple do you like to use those at all i love to and and they they just have a wonderful true tomato flavor that you you can usually not get unless you yank it off the vine um and it it does make a huge difference uh it it just it’s a it’s a a floral it’s a a tomato flavor punch these days i love we we’ve been you know Carol I don’t think we’ll be able to grow tomatoes this year it’s um we we tried last year was it last year or the year before the tomatoes just sat there they didn’t grow and we didn’t I think we had one tomato $35 worth of tomato plants right okay i’m going through the same thing we’re having an unusual it’s weird it’ll torrential rain for several day i’m in central Texas Austin torrential rain for one or two days and then hot and dry all of a sudden you know in the 90s and sunny right and humid and humid for you no not Well it is because of the rain but usually Austin’s not that humid but um yeah my tomatoes have just stayed green and hard they’re not getting enough sun to to turn um you can pickle them they’re delicious yes and and I do have some There’s one right now a second one that’s turning i I got these heirloom tomatoes they they are a nice dark orange color and I’ve got another one that could be ready but now that I’ve suffered through the the rain and the sun and the all that now I got bugs trying to eat them so I I I drop more than a hundred bucks on on seeds and soil and other garden stuff every year and I I growing some purple string beans beautiful oh flavor we’ve had five or six string beans so far so I think it’s like 20 bucks a bean how much wine should I put in um well put in a cup but you know that’s in the pan and you can put another cup in your glass oh okay got it uh by the way this is a Kandoni uh Keiante um it’s uh if you noticed here wait whoa do CG from Italy now what this does not have what it does not have is the rooster and that’s really required for it to be a true Keiante so but I for one and a half bucks I couldn’t resist don’t put in a cup i’m sorry i made a mistake put in half a cup gotcha all right half in the pan half in the glass you got it let’s stir this up a little bit oh smell good can you smell it from back there Carol you can get wonderful does it good i can smell it in Texas yes and I think that that not to be political but the climate change that we’ve been experiencing worldwide is really taking its toll uh today I thought it was going to be sunny here in Southern California at least where we are just outside of Los Angeles um it’s cold and uh it’s not cold oh I thought it was cold but at least it’s overcast i mean it it’s not sunny what is it that’s where we are that’s where we are and we’re we’re kind of close to the beach all right here’s another toast well I am again we um you know we have had unusual weather in Texas as well but you know the whole thing about you said not to get political the thing about climate change is it it you can’t be political about it whether it’s because it’s the 100,000 year cycle the 10,000year cycle whether human industry has done a little bit or a lot to me it’s as if you’re working in an emergency room and you got your three emergency doctors and the head of the emergency department and they bring in somebody who’s been you know battered run over in some kind of road accident and if the doctors start arguing oh it was a truck that hit him no it was a motorcycle no it was a car like no you fix it you do whatever it takes to heal the patient the patient is earth you do what it takes and it’s irrelevant got it what caused it so that’s we I got it uh we are about to put in I think the tomato sauce now um oh we’re back over here at um we we need to add a little chicken broth or vegetable broth chicken broth whatever you wish to use mushroom broth you can get mushroom broth at Whole Foods right um I don’t think we’re going to need it okay and mainly because I didn’t get any so I’m gonna make I’m gonna uh I think we need a cup and a half right cup and a half of the rouse of the cup right so I’m gonna put in a cup first oh this smells so good now I we should point out that you mentioned that you don’t use garlic you’re allergic i’m allergic i’m a Yeah a sphartic Jewish chef who’s allergic to garlic and onion i I can take onion I can take onion if it’s been cooked cooked cooked cooked cooked forever but uh you know like in a stew or in the chili we did but um garlic uh nope well I love garlic carol does too we have a lot of garlic in here um I love the flavor i mean that’s not you know the flavor was never a problem it’s just the the reaction got it all right i’m going to add some more of the Rouse and Rouse makes a number of different flavors including a sensitive flavor that doesn’t have garlic or onion and that’s for those of you they have a new one out for all of you a lot of people don’t know this there are at least five million Americans who have the same allergy wow and uh it’s uh it’s not as uncommon as people think but Rouse came out with a four cheese uh sauce that also is onion and garlic free so but I use the sensitive marinara for this recipe got it and what you said earlier Rouse makes an outstanding jarred sauce they do i agree really is impressive uh it’s our go-to jar and we also uh occasionally try turn that up just a bit um uh Trader Joe’s makes a number of sauces and they have small jars and it because it’s just Carol and me it works really well we we use we use a big jar there’s uh and there’s just me my wife and our seven-year-old who’s not but kneeh high to a grasshopper so he’s he’s a wee lad we lad yeah but yeah we have a a When we make this we also use gluten-free pasta and that’s my wife has the gluten sensitivity i’ve got the garlic allergy and our seven-year-old is uh allergic to peanuts cashews and pistachios so cooking shopping you know we don’t go outside very much there’s not a whole lot we can do in that department you know one of the things that I like to do in tomato sauce if I make my own marinara uh is to add a little bit of sugar you have a a sugar substitute that I I did not try so I’m going to add about a teaspoon of of sugar tell us about that uh well there are two that I use they they actually they are sugars they’re natural sugars um uh the one I usually use is alulose and it’s not commonly known because it they they couldn’t extracted it comes from corn uh even wheat tapioca jackf fruit raisins um and it can be extracted from that but they couldn’t extract it inexpensively until around the early 2000s and is you know so it’s not very well known and it was still expensive until about um seven or eight years ago and we finally got the price down to where it could be you know you can buy it in the store now uh unfortunately most of the people who who retail alulose cut it with arythrtol or stevia which is um abhorrent to me but that’s you know I agree but there’s yeah you know we met not long ago in um Anaheim uh along with the um Gilly and Christie from Christian company well if you remember we met years before and we forgot yes well you remembered and but um uh and we were at uh at an event and we we picked up but uh the the um uh I tried half a dozen stevas i cannot I don’t like them no the linger after taste the linger the after taste is just no good well that’s what’s beautiful about alulose and tagos um tagose does have calories it’s got about a third the calories of sucrose table sugar alulose has 120th the calories if that there are some researchers who think it’s a zerocalorie uh sugar and it’s uh very similar to fructose chemically it’s just a it’s what’s called an epiomer of fructose so because that chemical shape is bent a little bit in the wrong direction your body doesn’t recognize it but unlike you know the the some of the disasters they’ve had with things like fat you know that they’ve reconfigured there are no there are no side effects it functions and tastes just like table sugar it browns um it’s more hyroscopic hard to make it into a candy but for can you bake with it you bet you can and in fact it browns really nice and the interesting thing about it is that it elevates because I guess because it’s similar to fructose it elevates the flavor of fruits so if you’re making um like a banana bread it makes a gorgeous banana bread um tacatose like I said tacatose is is an even cleaner sweetness that’s closer to sucrose table sugar has a third of the calories but it also acts as a fiber so it’s a good prebiotic fiber and it’s a very clean sweet you can use that as you would any other sugar there’s our pasta there’s our pasta now I used fetuccini because I couldn’t find spaghetti this is um a Rana uh pasta it cooks in about 2 minutes uh it’s uh based in Italy though it is made here in the US and we find this to be inexpensive in fact the package I bought was $2 so you Right and I think it was 12 or 14 ounces nine nine ounces thank you um but that’s going to be enough for dinner tonight and possibly even tomorrow night um and it I’m going to show you that it it it pulls apart very easily okay and we cooked this in advance all right i’m going to put the sauce on I think now all right okay David it looks great so now we use Barilla but we use Barilla gluten-free and it’s the only gluten-free pasta we have found that has the flavor texture and the durability of a good semolina flour um pasta and the flavor is great and I have no connection to Barilla whatsoever but I got to tell you I was in their factory i’ve been their factory in Iowa twice and it is so it’s one one of the cleanest if not the cleanest uh food factories I’ve ever been in wow you know when they say you could eat off the floor you could eat off the floor it is spotless you’ve been to my house then because you can you can eat off of Carol’s floor at any time at any time carol are you busy every Wednesday all right i’ve got some grated um Parmesan Romano okay and um I’ll sprinkle that on and if you have a Chiffonado fresh basil laying around oh we forgot the basil well it goes on right now if you have it if you don’t have it go ahead wait a second we’re gonna go carol’s gonna go get it okay um and we’ll we’ll cut it up actually what I do with the the basil is I tear it rather than And I’m going to let this cool a little bit it’s heating the the pasta and I like the I like to have the pasta underneath the sauce that’s That’s a good way to do it right toss just be one second uh I paid uh under $3 for a whole bunch of basil and I pronounce it basil basil basil i’ I’ve got some in my garden which is great because it’s the first time in years I’ve been able to get basil to grow it is back here is some basil oh nice carol’s gonna wash it off for us okay go ahead yeah I I’m I’m I’m a stubborn gardener because I’m terrible at it um I my favorite thing to grow is potatoes and three years in a row no potatoes couldn’t get any um but I think it’s funny the potatoes in my garden did not do well but when I was planting potatoes I had some lefto i just cut up organic potatoes and throw them in the ground and I had some leftover and I just put them in a giant pot like a I’ve got like this 50gallon garden pot and I just threw them in there and those are the ones that are doing well that I didn’t I just threw them in threw the dirt in boom and they’re doing well so hopefully So I have a I have a question to you uh the chiponade is um thin sliced right shreds almost with a knife yeah so what you can do Well I was going to say what you can do is roll it and and then just Right i’m just going to take a little bit and throw it on top as I said I like to tear it yeah whatever whatever makes you happy and whatever is tastiest for you all right here we go that looks gorgeous it’s Here we go let me I’m going to show you this again there you go thanks Carol oh man that looks better than the one I got last night this is Here we go what’s the word fabulous and we forgot the part where you adjust the seasonings to taste but if you didn’t need to that’s good endorsement and we didn’t the chicken soup the chicken stock it’s got a little from the Italian um seasonings that I put in got a little bit of of a kick it was um I used leaf oregano dried basil and a little bit of um uh uh red peppers oh okay okay um I you know uh in my professional days and even most of the time at home would never use dry dried herbs never and um I just you know started just a little bit here and there as a timesaver you know and you know mostly when I was living up in Chicago it was hard to get fresh herbs during most of the year and now I’m just kind of you know there are things I use them for some things I would never use dried herbs for but something like this it works well it works great this is fabulous it’s easy relatively low calorie as well yeah brian um David thank you very much you’re going to come back you’re going to do stuffed mushrooms yes and they came out gorgeous they did they look great and um does your seven-year-old eat those stuffed mushrooms he did he did tonight um it’s u surprising because he likes to tell me he hates mushrooms so Oh okay you know but he ate those so yeah another we uh we make stuffed mushrooms on a regular fairly regular basis i can’t wait to get your recipe all right David thank you very much i appreciate it this is always come back yeah anytime anytime good all right hold on i’m going to put you in the uh green room and I thank you for watching if you have any comments about what we’ve done today let us know will you uh thank you very much we’ll see you soon bye-bye for now thanks Carol [Music]