Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

- So, why do I love southern Italy so much, especially Calabria?

Well, it's all about cucina povera.

They have all local ingredients, very simple, but they transform it into amazing food.

Now, my favorite recipe from that trip is spaghetti with breadcrumbs and walnuts.

Takes about 15 minutes to make, and it's basically pantry ingredients.

Another recipe I love is a pesto made from Calabrian chilies.

There's also onions agrodolce-- this was amazing.

You take chunks of red onion, cook them with some sugar and vinegar for about ten minutes.

They're still crunchy and they have this great sweet-sour flavor.

And one of the most amazing magic trick recipes I've ever seen in my life is called sugo finto.

It's fake sauce.

So it tastes like a meat ragu, but in fact it has no meat in it, it's great.

So, please stay tuned for the cooking of Calabria.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- (speaking Italian): (music playing in background) - (speaking Italian): - (speaking Italian): - SURIANO: - (speaking Italian): - (speaking Italian): - You know, I've been asked a million times, at least, "How can I be a better cook?"

And my answer is, come up with 20 or 25 recipes you make all the time.

You get to the point you can make them without looking at the recipe.

If you do that, you'll be the best cook you know.

So, this is one of those 25 recipes, at least in my repertoire.

It's pasta with breadcrumbs and some parsley and a few other things.

And it's one of my favorite pasta dishes of all time.

Now, I was in Calabria, and I met a guy called Giancarlo Suriano, and he made a bunch of recipes for me in his kitchen, one of which was this, and it was my favorite recipe of the day.

So, he started by taking torn pieces of leftover stale bread, which is important, 'cause if you just put fresh bread in the food processor, you're not gonna get dry breadcrumbs, you're gonna get a mess.

By the way, don't buy store-bought breadcrumbs for this recipe.

Because the breadcrumbs are really an essential part of what we're doing.

Okay, step two, walnuts.

We like walnuts.

They have a slightly bitter flavor to them, which we like, but we've gotta grind them up first in the food processor.

(whirring) So, I'll put this on the skillet.

You want the breadcrumbs to cool, because if they're warm, you put them in a food processor again, it's going to sort of create a dough.

So, I'm going to give it just a couple more pulses.

It's okay if you have some slightly bigger pieces, that's fine, but I'll just pulse it a couple times more.

Now, the rest of the ingredients go in.

Quarter teaspoon each salt and pepper, a little bit of olive oil.

Chilies.

Calabrian chilies, if you've ever had them in this country, they tend to be super hot.

The ones I had in Calabria actually are kind of super fruity.

What you want is a fruity chili that's not too hot.

Fresno is what we just added.

But you want a mild chili, you don't want a super-hot chili.

A little oregano and a little bit of parsley.

(whirring) So now we're going to cook that just for a few minutes.

Get that nice and toasty.

You know, I've talked a lot about cucina povera on the show.

I love it because it shows you how home cooks who didn't have a lot to work with make really great food.

Pasta in Italy was a way of filling your stomach.

It was very cheap.

Some of the pastas in the early days were basically floor sweepings.

Like they made it into some really gnarly flours.

But it was just a way to fill you up.

Classic pasta cooking: two quarts of water, a tablespoon of salt, using a pound of pasta.

And we're not going to cook the pasta all the way through.

It'll be... I hate to use the word al dente, because it's really annoying.

But it's going to be about a couple minutes shy of being fully cooked.

We're going to finish it in the skillet.

So we're going to start out with olive oil.

Now, when I started learning to cook-- I went to cooking classes a long time ago-- I was the most annoying person in the class, which may not surprise you.

I'd always ask exactly how much oil are you using, or how much salt.

So, in Italy, they use a lot of olive oil.

The dishes taste so much better.

I think here in the States, we're afraid of olive oil.

Don't worry about it.

Anchovies is also an ingredient in this recipe.

So, when you think of anchovies, just think flavor, don't think fishy.

So, what we're looking for here is for those anchovies to dissolve into the oil.

And you can see it's already starting to happen.

Now, I've already turned the heat down a little bit, 'cause it was starting to get too hot.

There is garlic in here, so you want to be careful not to burn it.

So, the pasta has been undercooked a little bit.

And, when you're cooking pasta, you always want to reserve some of the cooking water.

You can see it's a little cloudy, which means it's got starch in it.

So we're going to add about a cup or so.

Now the sauce, because the pasta is not fully cooked, is going to start to get absorbed into the pasta.

You do want to toss a lot.

It's sort of like tossing a salad over all the lettuce, all the greens.

Same thing here.

Now you can see here, and the sauce still to be absorbed.

It's okay, by the way, at the end, if there's a little bit of liquid in the pan, that's fine.

You're going to say, "Hey, there is hardly any sauce here."

Yeah, well, we have the breadcrumbs to finish.

Again, this is... Italian cooking tends to be more subtle than our version of Italian cooking.

So you're not going to see, you know, cupfuls of sauce on the pasta.

By the way, during the week, if someone in your household says, "Hey, there's nothing for dinner," there's always this, right?

I mean, you probably have everything sitting around, so, that answers that question.

So I noticed in Italy, when people serve pasta dishes, they almost always add a little extra olive oil at the end.

Get good olive oil.

It's drizzling oil, it's fruity.

It's one of the great secrets of pasta.

I also like some coarse salt on top.

Makes it a little punchy.

And now we have these fabulous seasoned breadcrumbs.

That is crazy delicious.

The chilies add a little punch to it.

Anchovies, a nice base.

The garlic's there, but it's not overpowering.

And the breadcrumbs have real crunch to them, so you get a lot of texture, too.

Next time there's nothing for dinner, make spaghetti with garlic and walnut breadcrumbs.

Super simple, just takes a few minutes, and it's packed with flavor.

- (speaking Italian): - (speaking Italian): - (speaking Italian): - (speaking Italian): - (speaking Italian): (whirring) - (speaking Italian): - (speaking Italian): - Mm.

It has spice and heat in it, but not overpowering, and the sun-dried tomatoes really make it a little sweet.

Now I'm getting the heat.

This'd be great on pasta, be great on meat.

Mm.

- (speaking Italian): - This is very good.

- Thank you.

- Mm.

- Now, when we traveled to Calabria, we realized there are many, many different heat levels and flavors of the Calabrian chili.

Calabrian chilies look very much like a chile de rbol when they're dried.

They can get anywhere from medium spicy to super-hot, blow-your-head-off spicy.

You can find them in a lot of different ways.

You can find jarred, like a relish here.

This particular relish is really, really spicy.

You find them marinated in olive oil, sometimes with vinegar.

And then, of course, the flakes themselves, you can find them finely ground to season sauces and pestos, like we're going to make today.

So when Chris visited Calabria, he learned how to make a salsa piccante with "Papa" Mario Conforti.

And he found that nice, sweet flavor in the pesto also had a little smokiness, which is a telltale flavor of the Calabrian chili.

So, in order to replicate that flavor, we had to combine a few different types of chili peppers and ingredients to get a nice smokiness, a little bit of heat, but that really rich red pepper pesto flavor.

So, to start, we have New Mexico chilies.

These are really delicious, very mild, fruity chilies.

And in this case, we're going to use them as the base for our pesto calabrese.

I'm going to rip off the ends here, drop out the seeds... And then drop them in a dry skillet.

I'm going to toast these briefly, because this will bring out a lot of nice smoky fruitiness that the chili inherently has.

But toasting chilies is always a really good idea because even though we're soaking them, then they will really pure nicely when we want to make a sauce or salsa with them.

So we're just beginning to see these... a little bit of toasting, a little bit of char.

You don't want to burn them.

They can get more bitter if you over-toast them.

So these are looking good.

Just a couple minutes in a hot, dry skillet.

And then I'm going to transfer them to a bowl here.

So, along with the chilies, I'm going to soak some sun-dried tomatoes.

We have some oil packed that we drained and rinsed, and I'm going to soak those in some hot water, and that will soften those toasted chilies and also the sun-dried tomatoes so they will blend up beautifully and smooth.

I've soaked the chilies and the dried tomatoes.

You just want to give those a good drain, all that excess water.

Right into a food processor.

And now we will construct the pesto.

Now, for another hit of sweet pepper flavor, we're using roasted, jarred red peppers.

Along with that, we're putting capers-- these are brined capers-- into the pesto along with a tiny bit of the brine.

One small little garlic clove, some dried oregano, and salt and pepper, of course.

Chop it down till it's mostly smooth.

So the chili has mostly broken down.

And then with the motor running, I will drizzle in extra virgin olive oil.

So, that's it.

This is really simple.

So now, I'm just going to transfer that to a little bowl.

And because I worked so hard to keep this from getting too spicy, I'm going to stir in some red chili flakes.

I want a little bit of heat here, but I don't want it to be overwhelming when I mix it with the pasta.

This is probably about a quarter teaspoon.

That's enough heat for me.

If you want it hotter, by all means, add a little bit more.

Now I'm going to boil pasta.

I have four quarts of water here.

Be sure to salt very well.

About a tablespoon of salt.

I'm going to drop in a pound of short-cut pasta.

In this case, penne rigate.

You could use fusilli, you could use rotini.

Anything that's short and is going to hold on to that nice, rich pesto.

So cook this till it's about al dente, eight to ten minutes.

We're going to slightly, slightly undercook it because we're going to finish it in the pot with the pesto, so it's nice and hot when we bring it to the table.

So I drained my pasta, pulled out about three-quarters of a cup of the cooking water.

Get in the habit of pulling out the cooking water whenever you cook pasta.

If my pesto is a little too dry, it's the best way to finish the sauce.

Drained pasta goes back in the pot, in goes the pesto.

And about half a cup of the pasta cooking water.

And I'm going to slowly heat this, just stirring gently, until the pasta is very hot and well-coated with the pesto.

It smells incredible.

This does not smell spicy.

Sometimes, you know, when you can smell red pepper flakes or a really spicy sauce bubbling on the stove?

This does not smell like that.

It just smells rich and sweet and peppery, like roasted peppers.

So my pesto is a little bit thick.

I want to add just a touch more of the water.

This looks beautiful.

Smells incredible.

So to serve, just right into a nice bowl, and then I'll dollop a little bit of fresh ricotta right on top.

A little bit of black pepper.

I like to have a little seasoning in the ricotta, and then we'll stir it together, mix it all in.

And finally, garnish with some torn fresh basil.

It's really rich.

If I didn't know better, I'd think there was a stick of butter in that sauce.

So that is our pestosino calabrese, or sun-dried tomato and red pepper pesto pasta.

This is very delicious, rich and satisfying without being too spicy, and takes us right back to Italy.

- We ate a lot of pasta in Calabria, but we did not only eat pasta.

We also ate onions, specifically agrodolce onions, which we are now universally addicted to at Milk Street.

These sweet and sour red onions are a faster version of the more widely known caramelized onion, and we think a little better.

- (speaking Italian): (sizzling) - They have a specific type of onion in Calabria called tropea, but we adjusted this back at Milk Street for a regular supermarket red onion.

So caramelized onions, you want to become very jammy.

You want the onion slices to almost disintegrate.

These are going to retain a little bit more of their original onion texture and onion bite, because we are cutting them across the grain.

So you put everything in the pan together and you cook them for about 15 minutes.

It's another reason that we like these a little more than caramelized onions, which take at least 45 to get to the appropriate jammy consistency.

So this is what they should look like after about 15 minutes.

Then they should be collapsed and softened, but still have some of their structural integrity, so to speak.

So, how do we serve these onions?

I eat them straight out of the jar.

But besides that, remember, they're sweet and sour and sweet and sour cut fat and salt.

So anything fatty and salty, from a grilled cheese sandwich to a charcuterie plate to a beautiful porchetta.

This really is cucina povera at its finest, like all the pasta recipes in this episode.

You take the humblest of ingredients, a red onion, and you turn it into something luxurious.

- Sugo finto, a fake sauce that's made by cooking down sofrito so it resembles a meat sauce.

It starts with onion, carrot, and celery.

We actually added a portobello mushroom to ours to give it a little more meaty, savory flavor.

When you're using a portobello mushroom, you always want to clean out these gills, because they make everything a little bit muddy.

So you just use a spoon for that.

Take those gills off.

First I tried cutting the sofrito down into small pieces, but it really didn't break down very well.

So we found the best way to do this and to save a little bit of that knife work was to use the large holes of a box grater.

So, I'm just going to grate my vegetables.

I have an onion.

For the celery, you want to make sure you get rid of those strings, it makes it a lot easier to grate.

There is a little bit of string usually on the inside, too, so I'll just get rid of that as well.

And then we have a carrot.

And then I'm going to grate our portobello mushroom.

Vegetables are ready to saut, so on medium heat, I'm going to bring this to a simmer and cover it.

I'm going to let this cook for about 20 minutes, until the vegetables have softened.

While our vegetables cook down, I'm going to cook our pasta.

We really liked using spaghetti or bucatini for this, so I'm using bucatini today.

So, we have four quarts of water.

I'm going to add a tablespoon of salt, and we'll get that going while our vegetables cook.

So our vegetables have cooked down for about 20 minutes.

They smell amazing, and I can see that they're nice and soft.

They're cooked all the way down.

I'm going to add a little bit of white wine, and I'm going to cook that down until it's almost evaporated.

This looks great, we're building lots of flavor.

I can really smell that wine and all those vegetables.

So we're just adding some tomato paste.

This is going to add a lot of richness to our sauce, but it's not a super tomatoey sauce.

And I'm also going to add some pepper.

So, I'm gonna cook this down till it sticks to the bottom of the pot.

So that really helps to thicken the sauce a little bit.

Then I'm going to add our final ingredient, which is some pasta water.

So I'm going to drain my pasta now.

So our sauce is cooked down, our pasta is ready.

I'm going to use some of our pasta water, about a cup and a quarter.

So I'm going to add that to our bucatini.

I'm going to toss it until it's nicely coated in our sauce.

And if it looks like it's a little bit too thick.

You've got a little bit of that pasta water left.

Just add it a tablespoon at a time until the sauce is the consistency that you want.

I think we're ready, this looks beautiful.

So, to finish, we're going to add a drizzle of a really good quality olive oil.

You can garnish it with pecorino cheese, parmesan cheese, basil, anything that you like.

So this is our recipe for pasta with fake sauce.

It's just as hearty and meaty as something that you would serve with meat in it.

It's great for vegetarians or even if you're not a vegetarian.

You can find the recipe for this and all the recipes for this season at MilkStreetTV.com.

- (speaking Italian): (all toasting) - Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

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Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $29.95, 40% less than the cover price.

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- Funding for this series was provided by the following.