Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

This week on Milk Street, we travel to Italy to do fast food Italian-style. We start with a three-ingredient pasta recipe called passatelli, which takes just five minutes. Then we move on to a pressure-cooker chicken stock-- you can serve the passatelli in chicken stock. And finally, we do one of my favorite recipes, a pasta cream sauce with just three ingredients.

So please stay tuned as we do fast food Italian-style.

Funding for this series was provided by the following

For 25 years, Consumer Cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect. We offer a variety of no-contract plans, and our U.S.-based customer service team can help find one that fits you. To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv. Christopher Kimball, Paolo.

Welcome to Paradiso. - Paradiso. Tell me about this place. You look very happy living here.

I noticed. - I'm very, I'm very happy. We have, in, in this small castle, we are 38 people. Uh, we are six families and the friars.

Christopher Kimball, Andrea Giuseppe. Andrea Giuseppe. - (greeting) So what they eat? They eat what the people here, they give to them.

Who's the chef, the cooker with the guy that it's cooking for... (speaking Italian) (laughter) (lawnmower starts) You are in the land of Pignoletto. Pignoletto is one typical white wine of this area. This is one cuve.

Uh, the maker, it's in front of you. Hm. - There! The word you can never say here is prosecco.

No. - Now, what happens when someone-- your, your blood pressure goes up. (laughs) - You get... So what-- is he gonna be okay?

We haven't prosecco here, okay? Prosecco for us, it... (laughs): Don't get too excited! Salut, grazie.

- Salut! (all toasting) Let's take one recipe, one dish from Bologna you also make here, like, how would it be different here? For me, it's only, um, ingredients. We are lucky, because here we have, um, flour, uh, made in this valley, or, uh, eggs, or parmigiano.

We're here to cook whatever you'd like, but something that represents the cooking of this area and your cooking. So what do you want to cook? Today, we cook passatelli. Now with this, is the machine.

Potato ricer. - Yup. We make passatelli. You put on...

- Mm-hmm. Inside... - Squish it? You squish.

So I have a question. So you said this is cucina povera. Yes, yes... No.

- What do you have in your left hand? - Yes, yes... A truffle. (laughter) That's not, that's cucina...

Cucina povera, but... With one, uh... - With one... Rich element.

- One... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you ready for one experience? Taste it, taste.

- Taste it. Oh, my God. This is going to have to be my new, new favorite Tuesday night meal. It's so-- I mean, the nutmeg, too, the nutmeg, surprisingly, is, is a big part of this.

Mmm...

It's easy because there are only three ingredients

cream of parmigiano, passatelli, and white truffle-- stop, nothing else. This is my kind of cooking. - It's good? We've now peaked here.

After all these meals, this, this is the best, best thing I've had. I'm very happy. - This is excellent. Thank you.

So just imagine you drive southwest of Bologna. You go to this little mountaintop town, all stone, stone buildings. There's the monastery, a little trattoria. Just a few families live there.

And then you have something to drink on the terrace and the sun starts to go down. - Of course. Then you go cook, and we made passatelli, which means a big bowl of bread crumbs, a big bowl of eggs, and a big bowl of parmesan. That was it, and it took about five minutes to make.

And then we had this wonderful soup, and this wonderful wine, and this wonderful sunset-- what's not to love? It sounds like a great scene. - Passatelli! I mean, this is so, so simple and so delicious.

It was my favorite recipe I brought back from the Bologna area, yeah. It's really great, because it's something I hadn't seen before. Um, it has so much flavor. Passatelli is sort of like a cross between a dumpling and a noodle, so it's sort of soft, like a dumpling, but kind of shaped like a fat spaghetti.

And you serve it in a broth, chicken broth, usually, so it's almost like soup. Better than chicken noodle soup. That's what I'd call it. - You're really into this, too.

I am! - And you weren't even there! I am, I love it. So we're going to start with the wet ingredients.

I've got a little bit of water, some eggs and yolks, and then some oil, and I'm going to ask you to step in and whisk those together for me. I think I can handle that. So I'm going to start by putting parm in a food processor. We're going to use the food processor to grate it.

You want to buy the good stuff for this. So few ingredients here, you really wanna get parmigiano reggiano. Domestic parm doesn't have enough flavor. Definitely don't want pre-grated parm here.

It lacks a lot of flavor, and it also lacks moisture, which we actually need in this. So I'm going to put this in the processor for about 20 seconds, just until it's finely ground. (processor whirring) (processor stops) Okay. I'll just...

- You can smell... Be busy with my little stirring... With your job? You're doing a great job, Chris.

- Well, thank you, thank you. So this is really nicely ground up, very fine. Smells amazing. So in Italy, when you make this, you would use the stale loaf of bread you always have around to make some really delicious bread crumbs.

We don't typically have loaves of bread. I mean, the loaf of bread I have around is, like, sliced sandwich bread. (chuckles): Not as great in this. So instead, we're going to use panko bread crumbs.

This will give us a lot of consistency here with the dough, and keep it the right texture. And then I'm going to add a little bit of pepper, some salt, and then a little bit of nutmeg. I do remember the nutmeg from the trip. That was a...

- It's kind of a... It's a nice little touch, yes. - It's a nice little touch. It doesn't taste spiced or anything.

It just adds a little bit something. And then we'll process this until it's powdery. That'll take about 30 seconds. (processor whirring) (processor stops) So you can see it's almost to a powder now.

Now we're ready to add the wet ingredients, but we're going to do that while the mixer is running. And then we'll process this for about a minute-- you want that to become really nice and smooth. Are you ready? - I'm ready.

For your big moment? (processor whirring) (processor stops) So that's pretty much it. We're going to let it sit in the food processor for about five minutes, so that it will thicken as it sits. So if you poke at this, you can see it's pretty stiff already.

We're going to give it another round in the food processor just for ten seconds, and you'll see, it's gonna change quite a bit. - Just for fun? Well, you'll see, in a minute, how it will change. - Okay, okay.

(processor whirring) (processor stops) So you can see it's almost like the texture of mashed potatoes at this point. So we're ready to take it out. I should say that in Italy, they just had three bowls and no food processor. - Mm-hmm.

But I think the trick is that he, he knows his bread-- he uses the same bread all the time. So the hydration with the cheese and the eggs and the bread was perfect. But if you're trying to substitute a bread here for there, it really doesn't work very well. That's exactly right.

We actually had a lot of trouble trying to use just, you know, bread crumbs from bread, because it was really inconsistent. So I'm just going to cover this and we'll actually let it sit for another 15 minutes. We want it really nice and thick before we put it through the passatelli maker, so those shapes will hold. So the dough is nice and thick.

Now it's ready for the fun part. We're going to make our passatelli with our "passatelli maker," which we don't have. But good news... - But we do have...

Good news, we have a potato ricer, which, it does a really great job of making passatelli. So you do want to make sure that your potato ricer has larger holes. It will still work on one with smaller holes. We like the larger shape a little bit better.

It's more like a noodle. So I'm going to put a third of this dough... Here, I'll hold this. Oh, it, we're helping each other.

Let's move this over-- okay. So now we're going to basically poach these in some chicken broth. Now, this is... - This is like sptzle.

Kind of, yeah. - Same concept. Yeah, just a little bit longer noodle, sort of. If you have homemade chicken broth, it's a good time to use it.

As we've said, there aren't a lot of ingredients here, so you want everything to be really high quality. You can quickly make a chicken broth at home in under an hour. If you don't make your own, that's fine. Just try to doctor up store-bought.

You can use the rind of the parm that we used earlier, or some red pepper flakes. Just give it a little jazz. So I'm just going to squeeze this into this pot of simmering broth. You want about three-inch lengths of this, but it's not really critical.

And then we just shake them in. (laughs) - Isn't this so fun? (chuckling): You're just having the best time with this, aren't you? - I am, it reminds me of a toy I had when I was a kid-- it was really fun.

I'm back there. So we're going to wait till this comes to the surface, it's going to float, and then we cook it for about a minute. So they've floated, they've cooked. Now it's time to take them out.

I'm using a spider, but you can use a slotted spoon. Wanna make sure they're really nicely drained. And then I'm putting them on a sheet tray that I prepped with a piece of parchment and some oil. That's so they won't stick.

And we're going to let these sit here for about 15 minutes. You really want them to firm up before we put them into the broth. So we'll let these cool on the sheet. I'm going to keep going with the rest of the dough.

So, are you ready for your new bowl of comfort food? I love this recipe, absolutely. Yeah. It was fun, right?

This is the most fun recipe you've ever done in Milk Street, isn't it? It really is, it is. - Well, it is fun. It's a good time.

Mmm. And we'll put in some broth. I did make my own broth, just so you know. Now we'll add a little garnish, shave a little bit of parm on here.

Now, I just want to point out that in late September, they're not shaving parmesan on it. They're shaving white truffles on it, which are abundant and cheap at that time. I mean, I'm happy for you to go out and get us some white truffles. Are you offering?

No, but it was interesting. They put it on everything, 'cause they... I mean, they really cost almost nothing at that time of year.

And they're not... - (whispers)

That's awesome. In the early part of the season, they're actually not great. I mean, they're good, but as the season progresses, they're better. But I think, actually, parmesan would have more flavor.

And some fresh-grated nutmeg. And if you would put a little drizzle of olive oil on our bowls. This is the dressed-up version. You could really...

I mean, the nutmeg... It smells great. It's also really an important part of this recipe, oddly enough. - Yeah.

It's tradition. - Mmm. We like tradition. Mmm.

This is so good. - It is. It's unlike pasta, which is more toothsome. Yeah.

- This is soft. It still has texture. - Right. It's not quite a noodle, and it's not quite a dumpling.

Oh, this is so good. I just want to hunker down on my couch with a book and drink the broth and eat these noodles. So my favorite recipe I brought back from Italy because it tastes so good. It only has three ingredients, really, and it takes ten minutes to make-- passatelli in brodo.

It's so, so delicious. And it's one of those things, by the way, if you have kids-- I know you say you make it with your daughter-- it's a great recipe to make with kids, as well, or big, grown-up kids like us. So, passatelli in brodo. Really, really simple and absolutely delicious.

You know, ever since I started cooking over 40 years ago, the question is how to make chicken stock at home without spending a ton of money on ingredients, a big shopping list, and a lot of work and time. Originally, of course, chicken stock was a way of using up leftovers and scraps and bits of things. In a Victorian kitchen, they had a coal stove, and they had the back burners, these two disks, very low heat. They'd have a big ten-gallon pot.

And they put everything in it, and it was frugal. It was a way of getting stock out of nothing. Fast forward to now, you don't have someone in the kitchen for a long time. You don't want to keep the stovetop on all day.

So we needed to come up with a way of doing this that was simple, a very short list of ingredients, and easy to do-- no sauting, not a lot of work on the stovetop. So we decided that we would investigate the multi-cooker as a way of solving all these problems. We discovered that the best cut is chicken wings. They have a lot of collagen in them, which gives you a lot of body and flavor to the stock.

So we start with four pounds, three-and-a-half to four pounds of chicken wings, and they go into the cooker. And then we have one large onion that we've peeled and sliced fairly thinly. You don't have to do it perfectly, of course. It's just going to make stock.

A couple of bay leaves. That's just to make everyone around here feel good about bay leaves. (laughs) And a teaspoon of kosher salt. You don't want to salt stock too much because you may end up reducing it later, become too salty.

So most of the, the seasoning is added later. And then a couple of quarts of water. Put the top on. (cooker chimes) Lock it.

Make sure this is not on venting, it's on sealing. We'll hit pressure cook, we'll adjust it to high pressure instead of low. We'll set the timer to one hour. That's going to extract all the flavor and body from the wings so you have a really rich, delicious stock.

So we've cooked the stock for an hour under high pressure. We let it sit for 20 minutes for natural venting. We'll finish off by just moving this to venting if there's any extra steam. We'll make sure we press cancel and then we'll unlock the top and remove the top.

And we're going to let this cool. And when it cools, we'll come back and we'll strain it out. So the stock has cooled in the pot for 30 minutes. We strained it out.

Let it cool to room temperature. Now you have two choices. What I would do is simply put this in the fridge and come back the next day or a couple of hours later. The fat will have risen to the top and solidified, so it comes right off.

I think that's the easiest way to defat stock. There isn't that much fat here, but you can see there's a little bit of a quarter-inch layer. So the other way to do this is to take a ladle, a big spoon like this or a ladle, and just skim off the fat off the top layer. Just to get the top layer of fat off.

Or, as I said, refrigerate it for a few hours. So, multi-cooker chicken stock. Four pounds of chicken wings, water, couple of bay leaves, salt, and an onion. Takes an hour under pressure, let it cool down.

Really, the easiest chicken stock recipe we know. I think also the best-- has a great body. You can tell from the color, this is really good stock. So multi-cooker chicken stock, the easiest chicken stock in the world.

When we traveled to Bologna, we thought we knew what to expect-- rich, meaty red sauces. But what we actually found was what I think is the simplest and easiest creamy pasta sauce. It's Bolognese pasta with parmesan cream. So because this is so simple and there so few ingredients, you really want to get the best stuff you can find-- really good imported parmigiano reggiano cheese.

Don't buy the domestic stuff. It doesn't have enough flavor. So by a good-size block and have the rind still attached. And that's because we're going to use this rind to flavor our cream.

So I'm going to go ahead and grate this on a wand-style grater. You want this really finely grated, again, so it will melt into the cream. So the cheese is really finely grated and I've got this rind here, which I'm going to set aside, because, again, we're going to add this to the cream. It's going to add really salty, savory flavors to the cream and really infuse that cream with flavor.

So I'm going to pour in the cream. We'll add that rind in, and then just a couple of bay leaves. Again, this is just going to add some background flavor to the cream. And we'll bring this up to a simmer.

And that cream is going to reduce. So this was two-and-a-half cups of cream. We want that to reduce by a half a cup. So our cream has been simmering for about seven minutes.

It's time to put in the pasta. So first, I'm going to add a couple of tablespoons of salt. You always want to salt your pasta water. And then the pasta-- here you want a long, thin pasta.

We have spaghetti. And we're going to cook this pasta until al dente. Sometimes we take our pasta out and finish it in a sauce. With a cream sauce, you don't want to do that because it will over-reduce the cream.

So we'll cook this all the way through to al dente. Drain the pasta and then reserve a little bit of the pasta cooking water, so that if we need to loosen our sauce later, we have that water to do so. So the sauce has been reducing for about 15 minutes. It's down to two cups, so I'm going to take it off the heat and then fish out that rind of parmesan we put in there for all of that flavor, and the bay leaves.

But we want to thicken this just a little bit more. Now, if we had reduced this more, we would not have enough cream to actually sauce our pasta. So we're using a little bit of lemon juice to thicken the cream. It's sort of like when you don't have enough buttermilk at home, and you try to make buttermilk by adding vinegar to milk, and it really thickens it to be more the texture of buttermilk.

That's kind of what we're doing here, and that happens pretty quickly. So I'm just going to whisk this together, and now we can add the cheese. Now, don't throw the entire pile of cheese into the pot, or you'll end up with a giant cheese ball at the bottom. Put a little bit in at a time.

Allow that to melt as you whisk it in before you add a little bit more. I'm just going to add a little bit of pepper. And then we can just pour it right over this pasta, already drained and it's in the pot. And I'm going to toss the pasta around in here so that not only does it get coated, but it's going to thicken a little bit as I toss.

And you can sort of decide at what level of thickness you like. If you find that you went a little too far and it's a little thicker than you'd like, that's what the extra pasta water is for. So this looks great. The sauce is really clinging to the pasta, but it's not thick at all.

A little extra black pepper on mine. So that's Bolognese pasta with parmesan cream-- really simple, quick, creamy pasta. All episodes and recipes from this season of Milk Street Television are available for free at our website, MilkStreetTV.com. Please access our content, including our step-by-step recipe videos, from your smartphone, your tablet, or your computer.

The new Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show, from authentic lasagna Bolognese and roasted cauliflower with tahini and lemon to Indian butter chicken and flourless French chocolate cake. The Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes. Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price, and receive a Milk Street tote with your order at no additional charge. Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

Funding for this series was provided by the following. For 25 years, Consumer Cellular has been offering no-contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like. Our U.S.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you. To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to be the first to welcome you to Tel Aviv... Welcome to Oaxaca's airport. Welcome to Beirut. (man speaking Hebrew) (speaking world language) - Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris.

We call it supa kanja. It's the word for gumbo. Christopher, you have to make the authentic, original cotoletta alla Bolognese for me. So this is the Eduardo Garca blender.

This is the no electricity. Next is dessert. That is really good. I notice when you cook sometimes, you add a little bit of something, and then you just put the whole bowl in.

I like to be generous with my food. Generosity is important in cooking. That's true. Can start building bridges, and food is definitely a perfect common ground.

This is a generational thing. It's, it's something that you inherit. Yeah, that was great. (woman speaking Mandarin) What was this for?

What did she say? - You get one more chance. Salute. - How is it?

He's speechless. - I'm speechless. That's so good.