Christina Cooks: Back to the Cutting Board

In Northern Italy people are known as "mangia fagioli," or "bean eaters."

They should also be known as intelligente since eating beans is one of the healthiest habits we can develop.

Packed with protein, fiber, and complex carbs, beans satisfy like almost no other food.

Time to "mangia fagioli" today on Christina Cooks.

(upbeat music) (announcer) Underwriting for Christina Cooks is provided by Suzanne's Specialties, offering a full line of alternative vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne's Specialties, sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

Jonathan's Spoons, individually hand crafted from cherry wood.

Each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding is also provided by: Hi, I'm Christina Pirello and this is Christina Cooks where each week we take fresh seasonal ingredients and whip them into amazing dishes.

Will they all be plant based?

Yeah.

Will they all be delicious?

Yeah.

So as someone who eats a plant-based diet, everyone's always asking me where I get my protein.

I don't know, but I have pretty good biceps, so clearly I'm getting enough.

There's protein in every single thing you eat from the plant kingdom.

Remember, cows eat grass.

So we're gonna focus on plant proteins today, namely beans.

In Tuscany people who eat beans are known as "mangia fagioli," "bean eaters," and I'm proud to be one.

So we're gonna make a few simple dishes that showcase the use of beans.

And before you even ask, "How do you digest beans?"

There are several ways: You can use canned beans, which are really, really soft.

You can--you cook your beans with bay leaf which makes them really soft, or with kombu which is a sea vegetable which also makes them soft.

What makes you musical when you eat beans is the fiber.

So the best way to not become musical is to actually chew the beans when you eat them, or to cook them super, super soft and then chew them.

And it will take your digestive system a little bit of time to get used to beans.

Are they worth it?

Uh, yeah, otherwise we wouldn't be doing a whole show about beans.

So we're gonna start with a skillet pasta fagioli.

Pasta fagioli you may know.

If you live in New Jersey, New York, or Philadelphia, as "pasta fazul," which makes my ears bleed.

It's "pasta e fagioli," which is "pasta and beans."

So we're gonna start by taking a skillet.

This is a skillet pasta fagioli, not a big pot of soup.

This is gonna go right to the table.

It's kind of an interesting, easy take on the dish.

Take some extra virgin olive oil, about two tablespoons.

And because I don't want a really strong garlic taste, I'm gonna take the cloves whole and cook them in the oil.

Now you notice there was no sizzle.

Oops, no.

When you use really good olive oil-- which you should use.

If you're buying a vat of olive oil for $4.00 at a big-box store, it's not really olive oil.

If you're buying a slender bottle for about $17 to $20, that's good oil.

You wanna get an oil that's from the actual country where the olives were grown.

The region if you can.

Then you wanna take and add your first ingredient to the oil before you turn on the heat, not because you can't cook with olive oil, you can, but to preserve the flavor.

Right, so we're gonna add onion to our whole garlic cloves.

Now you can take the garlic cloves out or you can leave them in.

It's your call.

And then a teeny, tiny pinch of salt so that the onions become sweet, and we start to saut.

You can either saut by moving them around or you can do what's called letting the onions sweat.

I like to move onions when I make a bean soup because protein can be heavy in the body, and by sauting, you add this to the soup.

Soup is meant to relax the digestive system, but this will allow us to bring a little life into a soup that could be heavy.

Kay, so we're gonna let the onions sweat now that they're coated with oil and there's a tiny pinch of salt, and we're gonna dice some carrot.

I'm just gonna take a slice off the side of the carrot because it happens to be a rather large carrot.

Gonna cut the carrot into spears.

Whoops.

(slicing) And then we're gonna turn it.

Cut along the spears to create a dice.

When you're making soup, whatever size dice your first veggie is is kinda where you gotta stay.

You gotta get everything about that size so that your soup cooks evenly.

So now that my onions are sizzling, now we're gonna add some celery.

And this is sort of like, if you're French cooking, it's called mirepoix, if you're Italian or Latin cooking, it's called the soffritto.

This is the base of your soup.

It's always onion, carrot, celery.

You can add garlic, you can add herbs, whatever, but those three, the big three are always in there.

And once your veggies are shiny with oil, then you can add the next ingredient, which is cannellini beans.

Now cannellini beans are not just brilliant, but they also are heart healthy.

Clinically studied to help lower blood pressure and cholesterol numbers.

They go in.

Just kinda move 'em around in there.

And then we're gonna add-- this is tomato pure, because this is gonna give the soup a creamy body.

(sizzling) Little bit of water to just cover.

This is a thick, thick, thick soup.

(sloshing) Like that.

A tiny stir just to get the tomatoes moving around.

When you make soup, don't be in here stirring every two seconds, it's meant to relax us.

If you're always stirring, not so relaxing.

So we're gonna cover the soup.

Remember, when you cook soup, to cover it, even if you're cooking it in a skillet so you don't lose anything to steam.

Then we'll take a pot of boiling water.

This is gonna cook for about 15 minutes.

Take a pot of boiling water with some salt, and we're gonna cook tiny pasta.

And you may be thinking, "Why don't we just throw the pasta in the soup and be done?"

Because it'll become too starchy and your soup can become gummy.

Not exactly appetizing.

So we're gonna cook the little pasta, whatever you like, these are little Os that I bought in Italy.

We're gonna let this cook, and when these are about 80 percent done, they're gonna go into the soup, and the soup's gonna take about 15 minutes to cook, and then we'll season it and finish it up.

(uplifting music) Okay, so the soup has come to a boil and you can see everything has blended.

Right, it's nice and creamy.

Now we're gonna take our pasta.

At this point your pasta, depending on when you're serving the soup, can be either fully done or 80 percent done.

I usually go with about 80 percent.

And it's a lot of pasta.

You want a good cup of pasta in this.

(bubbling) (clattering) Then to season the soup I'm gonna use white miso to give it kind of a cheesy flavor.

Now most people when they season with miso, they take a little broth out, they dissolve the miso, very elegant.

I'm a little too lazy for that.

This is how I do it at home.

I take white miso, take the same strainer I had the pasta in, set it down in the broth, and use my little spoon to dissolve the miso so it melts right into the soup.

So however you wanna do it at home you can do it at home.

Then this is ready to go to the table, and I mean this skillet goes right to the table.

So we're just gonna take a little fresh basil so that when it goes to the table it looks beautiful.

Let the boil stop, garnish it, and you've got skillet pasta fagioli, a great main course.

(upbeat music) (indistinct remarks) So we get a ton of letters and emails to the office asking so many questions about various conditions of health, and how to get healthier, and how to live a better life, and I answer a lot of them.

But every now and then I like to bring in an expert to help me out and really give you, like, the down-low on what's going on with certain conditions, and so today I've invited Dr. Vicki Bralow from Philadelphia.

She has a boutique medical practice in the city, and, um, she's a dear friend.

And I wanted to ask you today, Vicki, about type 2 diabetes.

-Okay.

-Like, we all know that, you know--I know we have Type 2 Diabetes Awareness Month, -but, like, really?

-Right, right, right.

(Christina) So can you talk to me about, um, preventing and even managing this epidemic.

(Vicki) Okay, so, um, as we had earlier-- spoken earlier about, type 2 diabetes is an epidemic.

Okay, we're in the middle of a pandemic, but this is an epidemic, okay?

And more people are prediabetic or diabetic -than are not.

-Is that true, really?

-Yeah, it's kinda scary.

-Either pre- or diabetic, -more than are not?

-It's kinda scary, yeah.

-Wow.

-And even more scary is that when you're prediabetic, you still have all the risk-- risks and organ damage, like, you know-- you know, your blood vessels having issues, and you know, your kidneys having issues even when you're prediabetic, um, and then just to kind of accelerating when you get into the diabetic range, um, with your blood work.

So it really behooves people to, um, not become diabetic.

-Right.

-All right, and the way that that is gonna happen in America is to keep your weight normal.

-Okay.

-Not skinny, just normal, okay?

-Right.

-Um, and to be active.

-Okay.

-And to have a lot of clean eating, and not eating foods that have a lot of added high-fructose corn syrup and, um, extra sugar that's not needed.

Cook a lot of your foods.

Stay away from the processed foods.

-Right.

-And in general, if you are, um, Black, if you are Brown, if you're a Native American, and if you live in America, um, you are literally super at risk for developing diabetes, and sadly, you really have to talk to your doctor about things that you need to specifically be doing so that, um, you know, you stay healthy.

-And so you can prevent-- -Yeah, you wanna prevent becoming--yes, you do not want diabetes.

(Christina) So the statistics are terrifying.

Try not to become one.

(cheerful music) Okay, so now we're gonna make a very traditional meat sauce called Bolognese, and you're thinking, "Wait, what?"

We're gonna make it with lentils.

So the first thing I have is a pot of boiling water which I'm gonna salt-- when you cook your pasta, make sure you salt the water, because otherwise your pasta will taste like water instead of pasta.

Also, don't make a big pot of water to cook a little amount of pasta, because otherwise your pasta will taste like water, so you want it to taste like pasta.

So that's gonna cook for seven to eight minutes and we're gonna start the gravy.

So where you're from you may call it sauce.

Where we call it it's gravy, always.

Whether it's meat, not meat, it's gravy.

So what we're gonna do is take extra virgin olive oil, and then I'm gonna use garlic cloves whole.

But what I wanna do is split the garlic cloves down the center, because if you notice your garlic cloves have a little bit of a-- like a clove in the center, like a sprout, you wanna take that out.

If you take that out, you prevent your guests, or loved one, or person you're sleeping with, from getting garlic breath.

So you pull those out, and then we're gonna use these halved, not whole.

So they go in, I'm gonna turn on the heat.

(clicking) This is a very sort of coarse-textured sauce.

So right on top of the garlic we'll go red onions.

You can use whatever onions you like.

I really like red onions because they're a little more sweet and a little more satisfying to me.

Some hot spice.

You can use red chili flakes or-- Don't use cayenne, it's a little too sharp.

Move pasta around.

We're just gonna let these sweat for a second, but you don't have to take the onions down to, like, translucent or whatever because I really want the sharpness in them to give the sauce some sort of background flavor.

So that goes in.

And next go in the texture, which is red lentils.

Don't rinse them for this recipe because you need the texture, the starch, to create that texture.

Some crushed tomatoes.

(clanking) Some tomato paste.

I really like tubed tomato paste because it lasts longer in my fridge and I can actually regulate how much I use a little better with the tube, but you can use whatever you want.

We're gonna give it a stir.

And then because there are beans in here, a quarter cup of red lentils, we're gonna add three quarters of a cup of water so that the lentils can get soft and take on the texture of ground meat.

I know.

I hear ya.

(clinking) So this is gonna cook now for about 20 to 25 minutes before we add any salt or any seasoning and before it takes on the texture that we know as Bolognese.

(upbeat music) Any time, I can go now?

-Yeah, are we all happy?

-Yes.

Okay.

So the pasta is done.

Remember, don't overcook your pasta.

Right, by cooking pasta al dente, it doesn't become an insulin trigger, which is why Italians get to eat pasta as often as they do.

And then take a look real quick before we take the pasta out.

This is how the gravy should look.

This lovely texture that's not overly tomatoey, tomato-ish, whatever.

So we're gonna take the pasta, go right onto a serving plate.

Now in the north of Italy, they serve the gravy the way I'm gonna do it in this particular dish, which is not the way I do it at home because my family's from the south, but we're gonna do it because it looks really pretty.

So you take your pasta, then we're gonna take just a small amount of gravy.

(thudding) Right in the center.

Looks really beautiful.

Right, nice texture, lovely.

We take some parsley, give it a coarse chop.

(slicing) Don't--not too fine on this.

You really wanna add some lovely green.

Just dust the top, finish it with a little extra virgin olive oil so it looks shiny.

And there you have a red lentil Bolognese.

It's the perfect main course.

(cheerful music) Okay, so for our last bean dish we're gonna combine it again with pasta, and while I cook with a lot of dry pasta at home, for this one we're gonna make fresh pasta.

So it's so easy, wait till you see how easy.

You're gonna make these all the time.

But we're gonna put the gravy up first.

Take a little bit of olive oil.

About two tablespoons again.

This is a really garlicky gravy, so there's eight cloves of chopped garlic.

There's no onion, just garlic.

And we need this because the gnocchetti, which is the pasta we're gonna make, which is tiny gnocchis, are really sweet, and chickpeas are really sweet, so we kind of need that sharpness of the garlic.

Some cooked chickpeas so that they get nice and soft, and then some pured tomatoes.

Now if you like, you can make this gravy spicy by adding some red chili flakes, which I always do.

I always make my gravies spicy, almost always.

We're also gonna add some dried oregano, which is very typical in an Italian gravy.

Gonna give it a quick stir and we're just gonna let this simmer and thicken on its own.

The little bit of starch left over from the chickpeas will make the gravy thicker, but this should be kind of a soupy gravy.

Now we're gonna make the gnocchetti.

So we're gonna take-- this is a cornflour or polenta gnocchetti.

We're gonna take about... (clinking) ...three quarters of a cup of polenta.

Now you can use a fine polenta or a coarse polenta.

I really like the more coarse one in this recipe, although a lot of people like a finer one, but I like the texture it gives the gnocchetti.

We're gonna use the same amount of-- I'm using sprouted whole wheat flour.

(clinking) We'll add a pinch of salt, always, because that helps to make the gravy, uh-- the gravy sweet, it's also gonna help to make the dough sweet.

Then we're gonna mix this together a little bit to combine them.

Then we're gonna add a little olive oil and a little water.

You can do this without the olive oil.

You can do it just with water, but I find that the olive oil's gonna give me a little bit more elasticity to the pasta, so I'm gonna add a couple tablespoons.

Carefully measured, whatever.

When you cook you start to get a feel for how things should be.

And then we'll add a tiny bit of water and just enough to pull the dough together.

You wanna do this-- Sort of slowly add the water.

And when your gravy comes to the boil, as it is right over there, then you're gonna take-- You can either use a whole carrot or a great big chunk of a carrot.

And since this gravy's a quick cooking one, you wanna absorb any acidity that's released from the canned tomatoes.

So this is gonna go right in there.

It's gonna absorb all that acidity and make the gravy sweet, and that'll come out when we serve it.

So the dough has come together.

You can see I didn't add much water at all.

And once it starts to gather, you can get in here with your hands.

(rustling) If the dough is too soft, then your gnocchi will be-- they won't hold together.

If your dough's too dry, they'll crack.

So you have to get it just right like Goldilocks.

But once your dough gathers... (clinking) ...you're gonna wrap it in plastic and set it aside to rest so that the gluten from the flour doesn't become too active.

So, I made one earlier... ...that's rested.

(rustling) So now we can begin to roll gnocchi.

And they're called gnocchetti 'cause they're little.

Get it?

Gnocchetti.

Just cut a little piece of dough off.

(clanking) And we're gonna turn this into a log.

Now if you use this right on your cutting board, you wanna flour it.

If you do it on parchment, you don't have to.

The reason I do it on parchment is because I'm gonna take this and dump it right into my cooking water.

It's like I told you, I'm lazy.

This is the perfect illustration.

Even when I make pasta, I--a mess-- I don't like to make a big mess and I'm lazy.

(rustling) It is more challenging to roll on parchment, I will say, so let's do this.

(crumpling) Let's stick it to the cutting board with a little water.

See if that works, it doesn't, but sounded good, didn't it?

So we're gonna roll this into a log.

And since these are small, the log has to be about a quarter to a little less than a half inch in thickness so that the pasta is little, so it cooks quickly.

Okay, and then you're gonna go in with your knife and you're gonna cut these.

Now normally with gnocchi, right, you need a gnocchi comb or a floured fork that you're gonna, you know, run it to get a texture.

We're not doing that with these.

These are very simple, very quick gnocchi.

So you need boiling salted water.

Make sure that you salt your water so that the pasta tastes like pasta.

We're gonna salt the gravy since it's almost done.

And then-- (clinking) Take our gnocchi right into the water.

I told you I was lazy.

The ones that stick go in.

Now these are gonna cook just until they rise to the surface.

Maybe a minute or two, at the most three if you make 'em too big.

So they're gonna cook, and as soon as they rise we're gonna take them onto a tray.

(scraping) If you don't cook them enough, they'll be doughy.

If you cook them too much, they'll be mushy.

So you wanna cook your gnocchi so that they're digestible and easy on the body, but you also don't wanna cook them until they're like, "Ugh."

That's a technical kitchen term: "Ugh."

So you wanna make them just right.

So they look just right to me.

Gonna go here with our other finished ones.

(scraping) And then we're gonna plate this up.

The first thing you wanna do is take some tongs.

(clattering) And take the carrot out of your gravy.

Gonna go right in your pasta water, it doesn't matter, doesn't matter.

(thudding) Give it a stir.

(clanking) And we're gonna take the gnocchi right into our gravy.

And you can see there's a lot gravy and not a lot of pasta.

It's more beans and gravy than it is pasta.

So it's much more of a soupy, very digestible, easy-on-the-body dish.

Chickpeas come into play, and chickpeas help to balance the middle organs so that you digest better and you feel grounded and centered.

And if you don't feel grounded and centered by this gorgeous dish, I'm not really sure what will make you feel that way.

So... Now we take our lovely-- Oh my--I love this-- I love this dish.

When I tell you how much I love this dish, I love this dish.

And how easy was it to make the dough and put the gravy up?

And it's all ready in minutes.

And you made your pasta from scratch.

Garnish it with a little bit of panko... (mellow music) ...for crunch.

A basil sprig in the center for flavor and freshness.

And there you have it: Gnocchetti with chickpeas in a garlicky tomato sauce.

So what are you waiting for?

Let's get back to the cutting board and I'll see you next time on Christina Cooks, The Macroterranean Way.

(announcer) Underwriting for Christina Cooks is provided by Suzanne's Specialties, offering a full line of alternative vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne's Specialties, sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

Jonathan's Spoons, individually hand crafted from cherry wood.

Each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding is also provided by: You can find today's recipes and learn more by visiting our website at ChristinaCooks.com and by following Christina on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

The companion cookbook, The Macroterranean Way, combines the Mediterranean diet with the ancient wisdom of Chinese medicine, allowing us to understand how food affects us so we can cook deliciously while creating the wellness we want.

To order your copy for $14.95 plus handling, call 800-266-5815.

Add Back to the Cutting Board and Christina's iconic Cooking the Whole Foods Way and get all three books for $49.95 plus handling.

Call 800-266-5815.