Okay, a huge round of applause, thank you very much. Chef Live at Las Vegas thanks for being here. Today, I'm going to work on the dish, two dishes actually that involve ingredients that practically every household in America has on hand. So when you're come at home at night and you see when out, saw movie this and that had a few drinks you come, “Oh, I got to have something to eat” this is the perfect dish for that.
Let's say you're getting home from work you're coming in and you don’t have anything left in the house but I've got these ingredients I can make this for the family. Let's say you wake up in the morning and you have these ingredients basically for breakfast. So today we’re going to do Spaghetti Carbonara, which is everybody knows carbonara generally for most Italian restaurants, it’s a egg and panchetto or bacon dish on spaghetti pasta.
Also, I'm going to be doing a frittata. Frittata basically as you will, poor men’s soufflé/omelet. So, it’s very easy to prepare. All you need are few pots and pans and an oven, and we’re set to go.
So starting out I'm going to start with the frittata and while we were working on that, then we’ll be able to go with the carbonara, because this needs to be popped in the oven and raise just a little bit. So basically what we’re going to do is we’re going to take a little bowl here. And we’re going to whip up some eggs and heavy whipping cream. I'm going to do today we’re do a frittata that basically would serve about three to four people and I basically taken an egg and half an egg per person. Okay?
And we’re just going to crack these throw these in here and I'm looking for a bowl I'm going to throw the egg into egg shells into here that up there, another one. As you can see there's no finesse in cracking eggs. Crack them, make sure you don’t get any shells in the dish on your set. I know a lot of people do that fancy one hand little thing that just you know, thing on each other pop them open.
And add to this a little bit of heavy whipping cream which I'm going to get out the refrigerator. The dishes that I'm going to use are exact same ingredients for both dishes so you can switch it around. Okay, we’re just going to take this whisk it up and I added about that six eggs and I added about less than a half of cup just about a half of cup of heavy whip cream to that maybe a quarter cup of heavy whipping cream to that. You jut want to get a nice consistency going.
If that too much heavy cream for you, you can have a little less but you definitely do not want to add for every six eggs less than a quarter cup. Okay? And I added a quarter cup of Parmigiano or Grana, grated Grana, grated Parmigiano. Maybe to take a little pepper put that in there and I want to take a little salt not too much because a Parmigiano has a little salt content to it so naturally to it and whip that up.
Now, we’re going to come to our pan, if possible use nonstick to help out because at the end of this you're going to have to take this out of the dish turn it over on to a plate and you don’t want to stick. If not just make sure that it's covered well with the next ingredients we’re going to put on which is butter and a little bit of olive oil. We’re going to put a medium heat here and let the pan heat up first and in the meantime, for my second dish I want to have and I'm going to start some boiling water for the pasta.
Now, when you're doing your pasta water, key ingredient in pasta water is salt, okay. You must have salt in your pasta water to in order to get some flavor out of the pasta itself. And while this come up to boil you want to bring it to a boil nice, vivacious rapid boil on that you're going to take your pasta.
Now, just on general terms if you take a little handful of pasta and I'm using spaghetti today. Okay, that’s been a serve probably about four people right there. I'm going to take it, I'm going to drop into the pasta dish and let is spread out. Do not break your pasta. Now, you’ve got little kids I understand that you want to break it and break it down, okay I understand that but generally do not break your pasta to fit in to a pan just let it absorb in the water little by little it’s going to start to bend down and take the spoon slowly and just work it around and work it into the water and get the water upon it and it will absorb and will become a little bit softer each time and it will absorb into the water into itself and slowly starts to bend into the pan then no need to break it. Bad, bad breaking habits on the pasta, okay.
We’ll let that come down for a second we’re going to obviously and quick that about seven minutes, eight minutes going into that—ten minutes. You can test it as we go along. So now we've got the pan nice and warm we’re going to take a little olive oil probably less than – just right about the teaspoon we’re going to take a little butter that’s not true we’re going to take a lot of butter and we’re going to take about a tablespoon of butter maybe tablespoon and half of butter. I used unsalted when I added to the pan. Butter is good in this dish you want it on the bottom.
If you gotten and you too much like maybe I did right then and take a little and I want to bring it back out. The olive oil helps the butter not burn and you wanted to go and just nice and melt really well into that. Once you’ve added the butter you might want to bring the heat up to about just above medium right between medium, medium high. We’re going to go back to our pasta. We’re going to slowly lower that into the pan as we go bending that to go into the pan.
And I'm just folding it. It will all kind of ease itself around. You can use—put them in the pasta you might want to use just a slightly bigger pan if you want that helps to be able to get the pasta down into it. I'm showing you exactly what could happen at home if you don’t have the right pan. So we like to do that here we like to show you the worst possible scenario, so you know what to do but you can see it’s not going to ruin it, it’s slowly bending down I just working with the pasta itself, get a little water over every piece and that was slowly, slowly comes softy afterwards soak down.
Okay, we’re going to comeback over to our pan here, nice little sizzle to that, we’re going to add our egg and cream mixture right directly to that pan. Keep that bowl because we’re going to use that later for our carbonara. We all know that we don’t want to use too many bowls when you're in the house, okay. That’s more clean up and if you're doing this dish at 3 o’clock in the morning you definitely to use more bowls.
Pasta is down it’s in the water and a lot of people will add the touch of olive oil to the top of this that will help the starch relax in the water, so that when you pour it out, hopefully it wont stick. Now, there's few mistakes and a lot of people make on their pasta, one is once they take it out of the water, they're going to rinse it. Now, that what you’ve just done is you’ve cool down the pasta, you’ve allow the starch to congeal and you’ve taken any of the salt and the flavor that you had and you wash it backup. So the best thing to do and what we’re going to do at the end of this is basic and we’re going to strain it. We’re actually going to just strain it out of the water and you're ready to go to into pan.
Now, comeback over to our frittata, I'm letting slightly cook around the edges and you watch from the outside of the pan to the inner as the out starts to cook it’s going to cook towards the inner what you wanted to do is get just a little bit of firmness to it on the outside but you still want the center parts soft maybe an inch to three quarter of an inch coming from the outside to the center of the pan to get firm so that that’s ready to go.
Now, what we’re going to do is we’re going to take our frittata and we’re going to add it to the oven, just like —we’re going to let that rise in there. So we got just that top part nice and soft and we have bottom part firm we going to add it to them, we’re going to let that rise.
I got the oven set at just above 375 to 400. Be careful every oven does not have the same temperature, so you got to play with the oven, you got to know your oven and make sure it’s at the right temperature. So we got our pasta cooking. Okay in the meantime, we’re going to heat up our pan here, we going to make the carbonara.
What I have here is salted pork you can use bacon, what Italian would used generally is pancetta which is basically bacon cured with salt pepper and white wine cut it up into just small little stripes there. Go back decide whatever size of pieces that you want and we’re going to add that directly to the dish let it sauté up. Now, I don’t recommend adding too much olive oil in the beginning because you don’t want your dish to be too saturated with oil that around. I do add just maybe just a drop to get that back pork going, okay.
We’re going to spread that around bottom of the pan. And we’re going to do another piece real quick. This dish here, this is made, but there's nothing in this dish that generally anybody doesn’t like other than the pork possibly, and this is made for your teenage kids. You definitely, definitely want this to brown up. You want you’re whatever pork that you're using bacon, pancetta you can find chick chives, one chive that would be great. I'm using salt pork here and you want that to brown up you want the fat content to cook off the dish.
I'm going to take a whole piece of garlic glove and I'm going to smash it. I'm going to smash it and add it as a whole smash piece to the dish because later you're going to pull that out because you don’t want somebody actually biting on to that and mistake. Actually I'm going to add two because the garlic there's a kind of sweetness if the garlic adds to the dish which really is integral to the flavors.
Just comeback over let's take a look at our frittata just because you don’t want to lose the oven heat just make sure it’s rising is going to cook from the outside to the center this way to see you it’s done. Let's just give it a little juggle if that’s center doesn’t move it’s probably right about done. Okay, we’re going to comeback to our pasta. Look at I can tell by the color by the way it sit on the spoon that is not ready, definitely not ready. We got it another five minutes on that so we’re going to comeback over here and to this preparation we going to add some white wine because you do not want to it burn you want to heat it with the white wine before it burns, okay. But it will smoke and it will create kind of a nice little—I'm going to lower that to a medium and bring it back down and it will create kind of a nice little brownish to our cooking oil for the fat of the bacon.
Now, this is ready to go that’s basically all you have to do to this dish, okay. I'm going to go, I'm going to pull the garlic back out so that we don’t forget about it. And it doesn’t burn. I'm going to lower the heat all the way down to just very, very low. I think there's a little juice left in there from the white wine now we’ll cook that and if you’d like if you're not ready to make your dish yet go ahead and turn it off.
We can heat it back up later in fact let's turn that off and you'll bring it down and touch. You want it warm though and slightly hot when we’re going to add the rest of the ingredients, okay. That’s almost ready just cooking up, it’s becoming a little softer. There we go.
Now, to our same dish here we’re going to take—we’re going to add for the amount of pasta that it is we’re going to add four eggs to that. Cracking that and open up still I got my preparation from the four that’s fine because it’s exact same preparation you're going to use. Not that should you do both dishes but if you want it to you could remember I say that little trouble of mixing them up. And actually we’re going to use that’s three there let's add one more egg to that.
Now, I was using brown range free eggs on that but you can certainly use your regular farm raise fresh white eggs on that, cage free however you would like to do whatever your preferences is. I'm going to take the eggs and we go ahead and blend those up because we have our preparation from before and you need much less cream in this than the other dish. I want to see where we’re at with this actual preparation before I add anything else to it since I'm using the same dish. If you're using the brand new dish you don’t have to whip this up until you add the cream.
Let's go back, let gets our cream out of the refrigerator here and I'm going to add about two tablespoons to this. As you can see it’s not as dense mixture as it was before, okay. Pasta coming in then—I'm going to take out the way I like to taste. It test is actually tasting and take out a piece of pasta if I can get one of the spoon here. Okay, I'm going to pull it out and bite into it. This is ready to go.
Let's go back to this make sure we’re not burning this so we want to lower the oven down just a touch. It’s still little loose some on the top we got the butter I'm going to give it one more second, okay. Pasta is then I'm going to get our little colander strainer. We’re here and I'm going to back over. I'm going to do that directly out. It’s ready to go.
So, we’re going to over our pan which is being cooling down and we’re going to add our pasta directly to it. It’s still warm. It still has a nice touch heat to it. Now, I'm going to add some more Parmigiano to out mixture here. Okay, about a half of cup and a lot of pepper, hence the carbonara, okay. Now, it can be to your taste but traditionally it’s going to have a good amount of pepper in it.
I'm going to blend that up. Now, let's say you're doing both of these and you're little worried about the other dish, let's go over here and we’re just going to open the oven and let's some of the heat out without—we hopefully before we get to it. Okay, as you can see it’s got a nice rise to it that’s why it called the poor man’s soufflé, it's got a nice rise to it. We don’t want to lose that just yet. The minute you play that you will lose it but we’re going to have our dressing here to the pasta which is our eggs, parmigiano, pepper and cream.
Now, the pan may not be hot enough right now to cook that all up but your pasta will start to cook, okay and we’re just going to turn that around onto the pasta let it cook in the actual egg mixture into the dishes and I'm just going to keep turn this over keep turning this over and let the heat of the pasta actually cook up that egg mixture, okay. Now, we’re going to go over to our frittata, we’re going to bring that out of the oven. As you can see it just nicely risen and floats all the way around the pan, we know that’s going to come off, so we can cut into it, okay.
Now, let's come back to this. If it’s not cooked enough for you and you want a little more—if you want to cook just a little bit more of course you go back to your stove raise it up to about low, let's start in low and slowly turn it around again, just keep turning it until it gets the texture and the level of temperature cooked on that egg that you like.
You just keep turning it. If you like it cooks a lot, a lot, a lot that’s fine. Now, to put on top of this simple, simple, simple frittata Parmigiano which is this frittata with Parmesan you can take one of your tomatoes and we’re just going to cut this up. Just dice it up into a little pieces, just to a couple more cuts on that make it smaller, and you can take any tomato you have in the house really. You just have a tomato on hand and we’re going to dice that up, cut in a smaller pieces, bigger pieces, smaller piece, however you would like it there is no rule book to that it should be to your taste on this. Okay?
Let's go back to our pasta and make sure it’s not over cooking. It just rising up just can do. This is how I would actually cook the pasta. You get the nice cover to the actual noodle but it’s not overcook. But just for purposes is most people would like and I'm going to cook it at slight more so you can see the finish product to it.
We’re going to take this add it to a bowl. We’re going to add a little bit of olive. I love olive oil, a little bit of salt. Now you see salt on this and we’re just going to stir it up. So it just kind go glistens, it's a nice flavorful color to it.
Now, we’re going to go back to our frittata. You can either take this put a plate on top of your pan turn it over and platted exactly that way for people let them cut into it or you can serve piece to piece. I'm going to do piece for piece on this just to show you that it comes out of the pan really easily if I cut, it does. I'm going to put that there, I'm going to take a little bit our tomato preparation and we’re going to put that on top right in the center there, let it fall over.
And then we’re going to go—if you have a little parsley in the house—let see our pasta is cooking just right at the temperature. I like it right now just above that I think everybody will love it at this. This is just about perfect or leave it there. For as you can see once is in this position you really can't ruin it. We’re going to take this a little parsley and put that on the side, you can chop the parsley if you’d like, put a little bit of pepper on the outside, if you’d like take a little drizzle of olive oil put it over the top and Frittata Parmigiano, okay. Beautiful little egg omelet to that.
Now, let's go back to our pasta, I'm going to take this and put it into another bowl. Now, pasta should sit up nice and high on the plate, it shouldn’t be flat, so that’s why people give it that a little turn as they doing the long noodles into it. So you got a nice high amount to it. Okay, take that off to heat, take a little parsley, thyme parsley, regular parsley that’s fine just not cilantro because of the spiciness that cilantro adds to it. Fresh thyme parsley do the best, I'm just going to sprinkle that around, give it another little bit of pepper and Spaghetti ala Carbonara done for everybody who doesn’t have time to cook, who doesn’t have time to go out and shop but has these ingredients in their household and that’s generally probably about 70% of America would assume has eggs and bacon for the many dishes and breakfast all we’re going to do.
So thank you very much for tuning in to Chef Live and we’ll see you very soon.
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