Christina Cooks: Back to the Cutting Board

There are women in my life that shaped the woman I am.

They're forces of nature-- strong, loving, driven by their life's work in their families.

Like most women, we band together and get stuff done, and we do it with style.

Let's travel to Pompeii to cook with the coolest, strongest and finest cook I know.

Today, on Christina Cooks the Macroterranean Way.

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 handcrafted from cherry wood.

Each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding is also provided by.

Hi, I'm Christina Perillo 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?

Yes.

One of the things that I have found really is great in my life is I have this wonderful posse of women that work with me, hang with me.

It seems like I taught some of them how to cook and they've become like family.

My oldest and dearest friend is part of the crew.

And for me, that foundation of women creates so many queens of the table that you can't even imagine.

They're backstage, front of the house.

They're everywhere.

So, we're going to make some dishes today that are reflective of my relationship with women.

And one of the things we're going to do is create this wonderful summer dish that doesn't require any cooking except for the pasta.

And we're going to use a very special Italian pasta that's called conchigle.

Say it with me.

Conchigle.

They're shells.

So what we're going to do first is make the gravy because all it is is marinated or in Italian, we call it marinato.

So we're taking some cherry tomatoes and quartering them, throwing them into a mixing bowl.

This is a really totally simple, wonderful summer dish.

You could quarter or half.

I find that quartering them, makes them turn more into like a little bit of a gravy because they get to soak up more of the sauces.

We'll take a little red wine vinegar for some acidity, which is going to break down the tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil.

Be generous with the oil because this is your gravy.

So like that, some salt to help the tomatoes break down.

Just a pinch more.

And then we'll take some fresh basil and we're going to shred it and mix it in.

And this is going to marinate right in with the rest of it.

And we're just going to shred these by rolling them up and coarsely running our knife quickly along them into a coarse chop.

You don't have to be fancy.

It doesn't have to be a chiffonade.

It just has to be like that.

Just like that.

We're going to stir our pasta and now we'll go in and stir this.

Now, technically, for this dish to be at its best, you want to serve it with the pasta hot and the tomatoes marinated, and they're going to marinate....for this to really be great, they have to marinate for about 15 to 20 minutes.

So you see how this looks now.

In 15 minutes, it looks like this.

You see how the tomatoes have broken down.

Look at the difference here.

It's a very, very different looking texture and even color is darker, right?

So now we're going to let those marinate.

We'll use them later.

Now our shells are ready, our conchigle are ready.

So now we're going to take them and we're going to go right into the marinade like this.

And this is one time when you're cooking pasta that you don't want to take a lot of the pasta water with you.

So really drain them off.

I'm still not a big user of colanders, but if you want to do it that way, go ahead.

This is easier for me.

I like using fewer things.

It's less to wash and I'm lazy.

And if it's summer, I don't want to be washing a lot of dishes and colanders and whatever.

Okay, so now I come over here and give this a stir to coat.

It doesn't really coat.

This is almost like a pasta salad, but not an American style pasta salad with a mayonnaise dressing.

This is what's called pasta crudo because the veggies are raw and just marinated.

This dish is gorgeous.

It really only works when tomatoes are at their best.

So in the summer, or better yet, tomatoes at their best growing at the base of Mount Vesuvius, where the tomatoes turn from cherry tomatoes into almost like a candy when you marinate or cook them.

So if you can, we can't.

But why don't we go?

Let's go to Mount Vesuvius and hang out with my friend Antonella.

And you will meet the authentic queen of the table.

(Speaking Italian) I just said, we've been cooking together for six years in this kitchen.

And for me, she's like the queen of the Italian table.

So when I was a little girl, my nonna used to make puttanesca all the time because she was from Castellammare.

So we're going to make puttanesca, so, Okay.

Let's make it.

(Speaking Italian) So this is oil that Antonella produced on her farm.

Right.

You always want oil to cover the bottom of your pan when you make a gravy or a sauce for pasta.

Okay.

(Speaking Italian) So this is fresh garlic from Antonella's garden.

Okay.

You can see it still has the stalk.

(Speaking Italian) So this is her secret.

She just said you break a bit of the stalk off of the fresh garlic and put it into the oil to increase the flavor.

(Speaking Italian) Okay.

So all of it..

Okay.

(Speaking Italian) Okay.

(Speaking Italian) So in Italian cooking, we don't very often chop the garlic very small like we do in America.

Because the garlic flavor is too strong.

It'll be too bitter.

Okay.

Okay, so now you're going to take the pot off the heat and kind of roll the garlic around in the oil so it doesn't burn.

(Speaking Italian) So you can see that the oil is hot and the garlic is frying, so you want to keep it in the oil again so it doesn't burn and become bitter.

(Speaking Italian) So these are capers.

When you buy capers at home, you want to buy capers in salt.

Yes, you can buy them in brine, but they're a little more acidic.

This is the true way to use capers.

So she's going to rinse them really, really quickly.

The interesting story about puttanesca is puttanesca they say, the legend is that puttanesca was invented by ladies of the night because it's a quick gravy.

You make it in between clients to help to keep your energy high.

(Speaking Italian) Italy is filled with legends, but it's a really nice one.

I like that legend a lot.

So you want to make sure you rinse them like two or three times so that the salt isn't too much.

See how the garlic is a little bit blonde?

They're calling it just slightly colored.

So now we take it out.

It doesn't stay in the dish.

So now the capers go in.

Oh!

Nice sizzle!

Put the capers into the oil so that they fry.

So she drained her black olives off.

This is a dish with black olives, capers and tomatoes.

(Speaking Italian) So I have to take the seeds out of all these olives.

When you make puttanesca, you have to work for it.

But you want to make sure you take the, what they call it?

The new chole in Italian.

If you don't take that out, then somebody's going to break their teeth.

So the Sicilian olives are harder, so you actually have to carve them off the nut.

(Speaking Italian) So she just totally took away what I just said and said you take some of the seeds out and you put in with some of the seeds for a better flavor.

(Speaking Italian) So you stir, mescolare is, we stir.

(Speaking Italian) No salt, because you have olives and capers.

These are hot peppers that Antonella grew and conserved herself in oil.

So they will be hot.

(Speaking Italian) So you don't want to use too much, she's saying, you want the flavor to be nice.

Not crazy.

(Speaking Italian) Ah, this is called sainted oil, the oil of the hot pepper.

When you're cooking and you can smell the heat, that's good.

If you can't breathe, it's too much.

(Speaking Italian) So these are cherry tomatoes that have been preserved in cans.

Sometimes people rinse their, their can of tomato to get everything out, but you use very little water.

You don't want your sauce to become thin.

You want your sauce to have nice texture.

See how beautiful and silky this is?

It's only going become more so when it cooks.

(Speaking Italian) So you have to put some salt because the tomatoes are sweet and you don't want the gravy to be crazy.

(Speaking Italian) Okay, so now we cover it and it stays here for about 15 minutes.

This is a quick, quick sauce.

Usually sauces cook for a longer time, but this one's going to cook pretty quick.

Okay.

And so while that cooks and the water comes to the boil, we're going to prepare a caponata, for an appetizer, an antipasto.

So right now we're chopping cherry tomatoes from her garden.

Si.

Si.

So into the caponata goes chopped cherry tomatoes, basil, a little bit of oil.

(Speaking Italian) And then we mix it.

Then we're going to add to it her conserved eggplant that, from the garden.

For the non-vegans we add some mozzarella to it.

For the vegans, not so much.

Okay.

And what we did was we did three tomatoes per person so that you have enough caponata to go around.

Basil.

The basil is...ah (Speaking Italian) And we're just going to shred it, just because the basil is so fresh picked, like a couple of hours ago, you don't even have to worry about the stems.

They're so tender.

So that goes on top of our tomatoes.

(Speaking Italian) So in this dish, you put just a little bit of garlic because it's fresh, and fresh garlic can be very strong.

And even when it's fresh, fresh from the soil, you don't want so much garlic that you have a bitter taste.

(Speaking Italian) (Speaking Italian) (Speaking Italian) So I'm just mincing it.

You don't even smell this garlic because it's so fresh.

Okay.

Okay.

(Speaking Italian) A little bit of salt.

So you put, just put a little bit of oil in this case because what you're doing now is when we add the preserved eggplant, that will add more oil and you don't want it to be oily.

You want it to be rich, but not oily.

(Speaking Italian) So now she's just going to mix that gently together, just gently together.

Okay.

So this is going to sit and sort of not really marinate, but sort of mix a little bit.

And now we prepare the bread.

This bread is called crispelle and crispelle has a hole in the center because the story is that fishermen used to string them together, right?

So that they could carry them and put them together with capers and maybe some anchovies or other kinds of fish.

Okay.

One at a time.

(Speaking Italian) (Speaking Italian) (Speaking Italian) So what we're doing is just dipping these in cold water, because you can see they're hard.

So by doing this, what we do is they'll sit and soften because it's bread.

So the minute you add a little bit of water... We're doing one of these per person, if you don't soak the bread like this and you try to eat it, you'll be like an old person with no teeth because you'll break them.

And so to make the caponata Castellammare.style, we put the tomatoes, the chopped tomatoes and basil and olive oil and a little bit of salt on top.

And then, (Speaking Italian) Then we put some of the marinated eggplant that Antonella made right on top.

Okay.

And then for non-vegans, a bucachino, which is a form of mozzarella and that is caponata style from Castellammar (Speaking Italian) So what you do is you put salt in the water when you cook pasta to flavor the pasta.

So for 14 people, we're cooking a kilo and a half.

And don't break the pasta.

Don't break the spaghetti.

No.

No.

(Speaking Italian) And then the pasta is going to cook for about 12 minutes.

So after the pasta's drained, don't rinse it.

It goes directly on top of the gravy.

Oh.

Antonello!

(Speaking Italian) So, now Antonella is using a gigantic fork to stir the pasta into the gravy to create an amazing puttanesca spaghetti a la puttanesca.

(Speaking Italian) Okay.

So since we're taking this pan entirely to the table, instead of making each plate with garnish, we're going to stir all the parsley in.

Okay.

(Speaking Italian) (Speaking Italian) (Speaking Italian) (Speaking Italian) (cheers) (Speaking Italian) A little pasta (Speaking Italian) Grazie mille.

For having me in your kitchen.

Grazie, until next time, everyone enjoy.

So my life is filled with great women on friends' side and on family side.

On my side, of course, my mother, my nonna and her nine sisters.

On my husband's side is a huge Sicilian family.

And when we first got together, the first thing my husband's family said to him was, "She'll be okay for you.

She's at least half Italian," which was my, you know, checkmark to be okay.

Then it was Christmas Eve and his family's very traditional.

They do like seven fishes and the whole thing.

And so I'm in the kitchen with his Aunt Connie, and his Aunt Connie said to me, "Will you clean this 90 pound bag of shrimp?"

And I'm like, "Ooh, Aunt Connie, you know, I'm a vegan.

I don't really, I don't really want to do that."

She stuck her head out the kitchen door and said, "The TV chef doesn't cook shrimp."

So I cleaned the shrimp.

I didn't eat it, but I did clean it.

So then we move fast forward.

We go to Sicily to visit Robert's Aunt Pina, who I loved.

Auntie Pina was the most amazing woman, if for no other reason, that she made me fall in love with eggplant.

Because prior to Auntie Pina cooking for me, I never really fell in love with eggplant.

It was kind of like one of those veggies that was like, meh, okay, whatever.

So Auntie Pina taught me that eggplant was a lot more than I thought it was.

She cooked it in every different which way.

She would not, however, like the way in which I'm cooking it because she didn't know from miso.

So what I'm doing is taking a globe eggplant and we're going to score it so that when we put the marinade on it, it will soak in.

And all you do is take the tip of your knife like this.

And that's how you do it.

It goes on the baking sheet.

Now we're going to mix our marinade and the marinade's really simple.

It's white miso, which Auntie Pina would have used parmigiano, but you know...I don't.

Then we have some brown rice syrup to give it some sweetness because eggplant can be astringent and bitter, so we'll use some brown rice syrup.

Then we have a little soy sauce to give it umami.

And Auntie Pina would probably really strangle me if she heard the words soy sauce and eggplant together in one sentence.

And a little extra virgin olive oil, so we create a nice creamy liquid to go onto our eggplant.

And you just mix this together.

You can whisk it or just mix it.

And then we're going to take this simple marinade and we're going to put it onto our eggplant and then smear it on...so it goes into all these little crevices, right?

Doesn't matter if it rolls down the side or this is not a neat, precise dish.

This is very rustic.

Just spread that all in, and you can either take this right to the oven or you can let it marinate for a little while before.

But it doesn't really, it really doesn't matter.

You can do whatever you want.

We're going to take it to the oven at 375 for about 40 minutes until it's really soft and sort of almost looks like it's shrinking on itself.

You'll see.

So we let this cook and cool.

And after like 35 or 40 minutes, you can see the eggplant really just sort of, you know, shrunk down on itself.

And we're going to eat this right out of the skin.

It's really yummy.

So we're going to mix this with rice.

Auntie Pina would mix this with pasta.

Robert's Auntie Pina was like one of the funniest people that I ever met in my life.

She just had a way that she was like this tall and could intimidate you for days.

We were on our way there to meet her for the very first time.

She used to live upstairs from Robert when he was a kid and she moved back to Sicily and he hadn't seen her in 30 years.

So we arrive in Sicily and we get there and he walks into her apartment building and Auntie Pina comes downstairs.

Now, the whole way we've been driving, he's like, "Yeah, my Auntie Pina was quite a babe.

She was a babe when she was young.

She was this hot ticket."

So I'm expecting to meet like Brigitte Bardot, Italian style.

And this Nonna walks downstairs, introduces herself, and Robert says, after 30 years, 30, three-zero says to her, "Auntie Pina, you got old."

First of all, who says that to a woman and who says that to a Sicilian woman with a knife in her hand?

She says, without missing a beat, "So did you."

And I fell in love with her immediately.

And we became friends.

I loved her.

So, now we're going to take some fresh herbs.

I have a mixture of oregano, mint, parsley and basil, and we're going to coarsely chop it and mix it in with rice.

And what I've done is cooked basmati rice and wild rice.

And there's something about that combination.

This is basmati rice.

This is wild rice.

There's something about that combination of those two particular kinds of rice.

Although wild rice is actually a wild grass and not really a rice, it's just such a nice texture and mouthfeel that I use it a lot.

It's one the textures that I really love when I cook whole grains.

Right into our mixing bowl, then we're going to take our rice and then our cooked wild rice.

And you can see how the wild rice opens up.

Like it's, it's a beautiful grassy, very light texture.

We're going to add a little bit of extra virgin olive oil to kind of make it a little richer, mix this together, and then I serve this as a main course.

This is not a side dish.

This is like the whole meal.

And I know what you're thinking--wait, there's no protein, but there is.

There's protein in every single thing we eat except fruit.

So, now we're going to take a serving dish, take our eggplant.

I actually like to serve this dish chilled, so I let the eggplant cool.

Let's turn this.

Yeah, that's good.

Okay, so now we're going to take some rice, mound it right down the center.

And this dish has so many nice textures and such wonderful flavor that the first time you serve this, you, in fact, will be the queen of your table.

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.

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 handcrafted 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 Christina Cooks.com and by following Christina on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

The companion cookbook, The Macroterranean Way, Volume Two 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 $19.95 plus handling, call 800-266-5815.

Add Back to the Cutting Board and Christina's Iconic Glow, a prescription for radiant health and beauty and get all three books for $49.95, plus handling.

Call 800-266-5815.