Rachael Ray In Tuscany Sardine Pasta EP119

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i’ve worked all of my life to live in Italy we found this place and now this is our place and it means everything to me i love that Tuscan food it’s about basic ingredients and the quality of them it can take a long time there’s brazed meats there’s slowcooked ragu and sauces and things we’re making pasta concard and we have spaghetti we also garnish with toasted pine nuts fat amount of salt this always freaks people out marry the pasta to the sauce this is the magic that makes everything glorious boom food is a conduit we make food to take us away to places we’ve never been and dream about going to you just need your imagination and a couple of bucks and you have a ticket to anywhere so come on over i love this place i hope you do too [Music] [Music] you know everyone asks me often “What is my favorite dish?” Cooks don’t have a favorite dish we will literally eat anything we’re not picky most chefs and cooks that I know they’ll go to any all night diner and fall in love with 10 different things on the menu we’re not picky if I had to choose a pasta my my my husband’s is of course carbonara anybody who’s watched me over the decades that I’ve been cooking on television knows that if I had to pick it would be the sardine pasta we’re making pasta kloade and uh I use both canned sardines and when I can get them really pretty fresh sardines to top the pasta now this is a gilding the lily you don’t need to go through this this is something you can make straight from your pantry at any time you can put a little toasted breadcrumb but it’s not necessary but you can adds a little extra texture and we have two cans of sardines for a pound and a half of the spaghetti i’m making a pound and a half cuz you can’t see it but there’s a whole bunch of people in this room [Music] we’re going to make enough for everybody to have a little family lunch we also garnish with toasted pine nuts or pistachio you can use either one this is a Sicilian classic my grandpa was from Sicily from Jella Sicily so for me it’s like a perfect thing the sardines already have red pepper in them if you’re using canned sardines that don’t have red pepper in them just add a little red pepper flake no big deal so you have a little bit of heat some salt we have some toasty nuts all these different textures going on we also have a little sweet these are just a handful of currants that I soaked you can also use chopped golden raisin and just let it plump a little bit in some warm water and then I stole one of John’s uh drink strainers i let them drain out here we save some of our fennel fronds that’s the fun tops on the bulb of fennel this guy when we use fennel we quarter the bulb cut out the core and then we thinly slice it that’s what we’ve got going on here and we also have an onion that now when we cut onions leave the toupe on leave the little fake hat of hair on one end cut it in half so it’s nice and flat and stable and then you thinly slice it see it’s like fanny out a deck of cards then the last smooth move is to cut off that little toupe top and chuck it in your old garbage bowl oop it’s time to empty that got a lot of stuff now okay so now we’re going to take our fennel and our onions and get them going i have four cloves of garlic ready to grate in and I have a little bit of saffron this is a very Sicilian kind of thing my grandpa always put a little bit of saffron in this so I’m going to do that too but again that’s an optional thing you don’t have to go that route these are the basic building blocks the fennel the onion the garlic and the sardines of course so we’re going to go down here and let these guys sweat how do we get our vegetables to sweat we add salt salt draws out liquid and [Applause] everything so that is that for the first part of the dish [Music] we have to let this get nice and tender and then we can move forward i am a ridiculous person i do odd things i’m just very specific i like things a certain way what I love about this spaghetti is that it takes forever to cook so it’s got a nice bite to it and it’s like 2 ft [Music] long i pay kind of a ridiculous amount of money this package of pasta i have to whisper that cuz I’m ashamed of it but it’s worth it i have to say it’s truly worth it and it really does feed a crowd and what you can’t see is there’s like 13 people in my house so I need to feed a [Music] crowd and so I’m gonna put in two pounds a kilo of spaghetti for this lunch which is ridiculous but fun and we’ll definitely have enough to feed a crowd bad amount of salt this always freaks people out look I’m sorry but you have to flavor the water itself when you’re cooking pasta it should taste kind of similar to seawater but the reason we do that is that in Italian cooking we marry all pasta with sauces and the extra ingredients for the pasta with the starchy cooking water and the water is an element of the recipe so you must season the water or it will have no flavor it will just have starch we always undercook pasta when we’re working with dried pasta by at least 1 minute from the package direction we don’t want it to be overcooked when we serve and it takes at least a minute to toss everything properly together so I’m closer to a twominut kind of a gal uh cuz I always give a lot of toss the pasta with the water time let’s go to break we’ll be right back so now we’re going to take our canned sardines and add them to our beautiful mixture of fennel and onions and we break this up that’s how we mellow their flavor [Music] [Music] [Music] so now we’re going to take our canned sardines two cans one for each pound and add them to our beautiful mixture of fennel and onions come on boys get out of there come on you’re free go hang out get mellow make people love you yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum and we break this up when we cook with anchovies or sardines the whole point is to get them to dissipate to break down in the oil that’s how we mellow their flavor and their texture becomes completely different these are gorgeous i could literally just sit down with a fork and eat this entire two cans of fish and so we work that for a while and just keep breaking it up and breaking it [Music] [Applause] down this is a a superhero of a superfood when we eat fish we’re getting all those great omegas and you’re also getting um protein from the little bones that kind of break down and mush into there it’s just good stuff it’s good for you it’s flavorful and it has a great texture to it once you work it long enough now what else do we do to help mellow this out most people just add uh little wine little white wine or white vermouth you know in our family grandpa often used uh vermouth which is just fortified wine fortified white wine wine with a little spirit in it i like to use a little bit of licorice flavored like a perno a little splash of a different type of spirit because we have fennel in here this tastes like fennel in a spirit so you don’t have to make the fun noises but they’re fun noises so why wouldn’t you do the And I’m going to use the white wine as well this is a very citrusy um it tastes like the region I live in because it’s from the region I live in this is a pecarino that’s this region sheep um are everywhere here and pecarino cheese of course is made of sheep’s milk so this has all the aroma and the fragrance of literally our backyard and the valley that we live in we’re going to add in our currants and let them continue to plump that’s our sweetness and you can use golden raisins chopped again to let it bleed out we’re going to add that little pinch of saffron it’s good and we’re going to grate in our garlic i didn’t put in the garlic too early because I was really trying to cook out the fennel and onions quite fast and I didn’t want the garlic to singe when people tell me they don’t like garlic well it’s because they’re cooking it wrong they burned it you can’t cook garlic too at too hot a temperature or too soon in a dish some juices have to be going on to protect it from getting that bitter taste and from browning hi Bella hi my baby you smell mama cooking bella already ate so she’s going into the other room for her nap on the sofa it’s very sweet i actually made the sofa i designed that sofa so it’s kind of charming that she really likes sleeping in it okay I’m going to watch the pasta and we’ll be back okay so now we’re going to take the pasta we’re going to marry the pasta to the sauce this is the magic that makes everything glorious [Music] okay so as I said I am an under cooker of pasta when we’re using dry pasta it’s especially important we seasoned our water liberally now we’re going to do the old still the starchy seasoned water turn the stove off before you drain the pasta um because well maybe a couple times in life it’s happened the dish towel or the mine in my case will catch fire if you don’t good not to set yourself on fire okay okay so now we’re going to take the pasta a mountain of pasta add it to our fennel onions garlic currants blah blah blah blah blah all of that great flavor the pernau the white wine add our starchy cooking water that’s the magic liquid and now we’re going to marry the pasta to the sauce this is the magic that makes everything glorious [Music] we use all of those flavors and the motion of stirring the starchy liquid into and around all of our pasta to make this extraordinary instead of it’s okay very few things annoy me in life because my grandpa helped raise me and he taught me all those lessons like the counter of 10 fingers and 10 toes and measure where you’re going to spend your tears and your heartache don’t cry over every little thing in life but one thing that really pisses me off is when you have a naked bowl of pasta and you plop sauce in the middle of it that is terrible don’t ever do that i can’t see you so you can do it but you shouldn’t this is what makes pasta great instead of good when you take the time to marry the ingredients to the pasta itself now we can let this kind of rest for a minute and just let it hang out and stay hot look what’s going on over here in this weird pan we’ve got a little olive oil we have a charred lemon which makes it sugary sweet and we’re going to add the fresh sardines to the charred lemon oil and just let these guys cook up for a minute or two they’ll cook very fast we cut them into small pieces so we’re going to take the charred lemon bloop gorgeous woo hot and gorgeous [Music] we’re getting there we’re almost there kids we’re almost there now optional topping toasted breadcrumb this is panko you can make homemade breadrumb i save all the ends of my bread so I always have a variety of stale bread in many different sizes in my home this is not necessary it is traditional they like the texture of it on top of the this particular pasta and then I’m going to take some flat leaf parsley and a little of those fennel frrawns the fluffy light tops from our bulb of fennel and work them together choo choo choo choo choo choo choo choo choo choo [Music] and then we’re going to add some to our pasta and save a little tiny bit for the ta [Music] a [Music] gorgeous these look pretty perfect so we’re going to take the charred lemon bloop right down over the top of all of our fish gorgeous woo hot and gorgeous [Music] so I have a special bowl it actually has sardines all over it so I’m going to take my portion first oh god just the smell of this is just insane okay then again gilding the lily you don’t have to but you can little breadcrumb little pine nut little extra herb and family bowl heat heat [Music]