We’re actually making a Veal Involtini which is taken a veal scallopini pounding it, a little bit of salt and a little bit of a fresh black pepper, fresh basil, prosciutto and a little bit of julienne, fontina cheese, fresh asparagus. It has been blanch already and rolled in to a small bowl. The standard breading procedure, just egg wash, flour, bread crumb quick fry it and then we put in the oven. At the same time we’re also going to make a fresh tomato sauce with onions, garlic, olive oil and of course with some tomatoes.
We’re going to make some fresh pasta. So we start out by making a fresh tomato sauce. We’re going to add some onions and some extra virgin olive oil. I love to use the extra virgin olive oil because it has such a peppery aromatic flavor and aromas. So what we can do is just heat up the pan and we’re going to add some onions. All we have is a Spanish yellow onion. You can use a touch of sweet. You can use anything you want but a yellow onion is just perfect to make a tomato sauce.
All we’ve done we’ve just taken it. We’ve diced it a little bit. We’re going to put about one whole onion right into the pot and you just coat it with the extra virgin olive oil. Now we’re going to caramelize it and we’re going to extract some of the natural sugars and the flavor of the onion out.
At this point, we’re going to add a little bit of salt and black pepper. We’re going to help extract some of the natural liquid. Now, let’s talk about pepper. I always prefer to use a fresh brown black pepper because I know that it’s fresh and I’m grinding it at this moment so the more spice is available is at this second that I put it in.
We buy it at the store that’s already ground, it could be ten years old. So if you can, ground it off in the pepper mill and have a better flavor. Now if you love garlic, put a lot in the beginning, caramelize it and get the natural sugars that come out and eventually a little bit at the end say for less five minutes. So, if you have two layers of garlic in there and really cooked, very well flavored garlic in the beginning and a little bit freshness at the end, two layers of the same ingredient actually enhances the dish.
There is one thing about cooking, if you build layers of flavor the end result that you’re going to serve to your family or to your guests, they actually going to enjoy it further and a lot more. At this time, we’re going to put garlic in because we all love garlic and we’re going to put that much in.
Now, that’s about four or five cloves. Now four or five cloves in half a gallon of tomatoes, it’s got not to be a lot. Now, when you cook the garlic at this point, you want to cook it to the point that you smell the aromas, bring out the natural sugar and then put your tomato in. If you cooked further, it you actually going to caramelize and it take the bitterness out of the garlic, keep it fresh and it’s no more than about 30 seconds.
So at this moment, we’re going to add the tomato. So what we’re going to do is we keep an eye on that and we’re going to stir it periodically as we’re going to work on the veal involtini. So, what we’ll do is we take the veal. We’re going to season it with a bit of salt and pepper, then we’re going to add some fresh black pepper. Now, when you’re seasoning a product you always want to make sure you’re consistent in seasoning on the entire surface. So at this moment, we’re going to add some fontina cheese. Fontina cheese is an Italian cheese. It comes from Italy. It’s very creamy, very rich.
We’re going to add some prosciutto. Prosciutto is just a cured leg of ham and typically it’s about 18 months and we’re going to put in the middle, fresh asparagus is already blanched. Now, blanching asparagus or any type of green vegetable, a gallon of water, a cup of salt and bring it to a boil, cook until al dente. Take it out and pack it cold. It actually seals in all the measure of nutrients and keeps it vibrant in color. We’re going to take some and chiffonade out the fresh basil.
Now, at this point what we’re going to do we’re going to pick it up and we’re going to roll it. Now, its important about the rolling the involtini, take the four corners, pinch them all together and point it at the roll together you have to squeeze it with your hand. You want to extract most of the air that’s in the middle because at that moment when it’s ready we’re going to put it into season flour.
Season flour is one dish, one item and one component of a standing breading procedure as what it’s called. Think about building layers of flavor. If you take regular flour out of the cupboard, there’s no seasoning in it and there’s no flavor. You just have flour. Season with salt, you can put the garlic better in there, onion pepper is fine, black pepper we’re going to put it in. Now, if you take a look at it, it’s very tight.
On the bottom end, all the corners we’re all tap together. All the areas actually squeeze out of it. At this point, we’re just going to put it into the dry, wet dry and standard breading procedure because you want to put the dry first, coat. You want to re-wet it you want to add an egg wash which is a seasoned salt, white pepper and a little bit of parsley inside of egg wash. Put it into a season bread crumb.
Now, seasoning bread crumb if you say bread again, dry it down and make bread crumbs and you have no flavors. Fill each layer of flavor in the component that you want to actually enjoy. So as every bite that you enjoy whatever is on your palate is going to be seasoning, it’s going to taste good. Does it make sense?
Now, we’re going to put into a flour because I’m going to keep her hands dry and my hands wet because what’s going to happen if you go dry, wet, dry wet, dry, wet you know what happens you have a glove and at ages we got to peel it off and cook it. What I’m going to put in to the egg wash you can buy hands and it would be dry or a little bit wet.
At this point, we’re going to put in to the dry, now the bread crumbs are now seasoned. We just want to coat it very lightly then when you go back to the egg wash, back to the bread crumbs and then we’ll put it into the fryer. You know what’s great about frying, the temperature of the oil. If you cook it at the right temperature which is about 350 to 375 degrees it actually seals in and locks in the natural flavors of the component.
It doesn’t matter what it is. If your oil is too hot it burns too quick, if the oil is too cold it actually absorbs into the product. You don’t want to have greasy product. You want to have a nice crisp, crunchy outside that it tastes really good.
Now, at this point let’s just going to roll it again in the egg wash, now put it back into the bread crumb. Now, at this point we’re just going to roll it around again, create another layer and then we’re going to put in to the fryer. Now, they always are preheated at 350 degrees and we’re going to put it in, just going to drop it. As soon as you put it into the oil and leave it alone, you don’t have to consistently check it. Give it one shake and leave it alone because if you continue to shake it what’s going to happen? The bottom grate is going to grate off what you just did in putting the procedures together.
Let it do what it has got to do in there. Now, how long do you want to actually cook it for? You want to cook if for about I would say no more than a minute because think about this scallopini and it has mussel, fibers and what happens when you cook mussel? It shrinks so if you have a tight bowl and it shrinks the mussel fibers, it’s going to open up and you don’t want that.
So, we’re just going to leave it in there. I’m going to quickly wash my hands. Now, how good does that look? We’re going to take it. We’re going to put it onto the pan over here and we’re going to take this pan, we’re going to put it into the oven. The oven is already preheated. It’s about 325 degrees and we have to keep an eye on it.
Now, at this point what we’re going to do, we’re going to taste it because if you don’t taste your food as you’re making it, guess what? You don’t know how the outcome is going to be at the end. It could taste as good as this and you don’t want that. You know what I mean, right?
Nobody knows who is out there and who does that, if you taste it as you’re making it, you can adjust the flavor and make it taste better and enhance it for your guest. You taste the same amount of time to make a good tomato sauce as it doesn’t make a bad tomato sauce. Take this for a minute and put a love into it, control it, season it and then produce a great sauce.
Now, let’s talk about fresh pasta. We have regular all-purpose flour. All-purpose flour is 50/50. Then, you also have Semolina flour. Semolina flour is high gluten pasta, high quality. It has a lot of protein in it. If you’re going to make a fresh pasta at least use Semolina. If you want to use Semolina and durum and all-purpose it’s fine, at least have some Semolina. It gives it a structure and the texture of the fresh pasta.
This is very simple. You mix them together. When you mix the dry with the dry and the wet with the wet you can actually mix it very easily. It’s called the well method. Again, we’re going to use some salt. We’re just going to take our hands, we’re going to jelly mix it.
Now let’s talk about eggs, we’re going to use our chicken egg. There is a difference between the way you crack in and how it easy opens. You crack it on the table once, it actually opens a lot easier. No shells, we don’t want to shell this pasta, right? You want to have added extra crunch in there.
Crack it on the table, push down on it and actually cracks wide open. Now, extra virgin olive oil, we’re going to put it inside the pasta. We’re going to add about half an ounce. Now what we’re going to do is gently whisk it and we want to break up the egg yolk. You can use a spoon, you can use anything you want but you just want to break it because it would be easier to break.
Now, when you break up the yolks, just break them up loosely, you don’t have to beat all the year all day long and make foam like this high. Just beat it to break it apart. Now, well method is just very simple. You take all the dry ingredients and you bring it up but think about this, make the hole in the center of the well either you do it on the bowl or actually do it physically on the table. Make sure that that hole is big enough to incorporate all the wet.
Because you know what happens if you don’t, you’ll have a volcano especially if when we do it on here and they will go over the side and you try to pull it in and it gets kind of messy. Now, you put all the wet in the middle. Now, with two hands what we’re going to do, two hands in a jelly take all the dry little by little from the outer edge until the middle and just keep it incorporating the dry.
Now, once you understand how to do it as a well method you get the feel and texture of the flour and you can actually use the machine because if you’re using machine from the beginning and you only develop the gluten, it is very dough. If you’re going to use the machine and you over develop it, put it in the refrigerator for at least an hour. Let the protein of the flour relax because anybody who had ever make fresh pasta and you rolled it out and you want that this long and shrunk back because it developed the protein. It’s a starch in the pasta but if the restaurant hour the protein naturally relaxes so when you stretch it, it stays in the length that you wanted at.
Now, think about this, you just keep incorporating all that pasta until it looks like this. You put in your refrigerator and let it rest. But make sure when you put it in the refrigerator, make sure you make it real tight like this to make it difficult on the rock, you keep kneading and it looks like this.
Knead it into the point that the dough is tacky but it’s not dry. If it’s too dry it doesn’t go through the machine, if it’s too tacky, it’s too wet. Now, let’s think about this working with the dough. You’re going to put that on the table, use the palm of your hands. You have a lot of power in the palm and a lot of weight on your shoulder. So you use the shoulder and the palm of your hand. You can use one hand, you can use two hands. You want to work the dough from the middle out because you want to make it smaller, right?
Now, keep flipping it. Now, to put it to the machine, this is a great pasta machine right next to me. They have different settings on it and the setting number one which is the largest to about an eighth of inch thick.
You can take the bowl and just spray it over here and push it through because just grabs and tears it. So, you actually have to knead this dough to about a quarter of an inch. Then you go through the number one first and which is underneath and pull the dough through.
Number one, you’re going to change it to number two, click it through. You use the back of your hands, don’t grab it like this. Your fingers will through the dough eventually and make it too thin. Now, what’s great about making dough, remember this. When you make dough and you push it through the machine the higher the number the thinner the dough so what’s going to happen to the dough. It gets a little bit long. So it gets longer. Now, because you get the dough rest in your refrigerator for a period of time, the protein relaxes which is called gluten and if you notice I’ve rolled it and it stays it in the exact length as I wanted to.
It’s number five then we go to number six next. We’re getting there. Freeze it more overhead and you hold the end. Flip it around. You can do an exercise program with this if you want it to. Now, you have to decide on how long you want your pasta. If you want to have it in a 10 inch, 12 inch, 8 inch it’s up to you. Take a knife, this side, take your pasta. Now, on the other side of the machine you’ll have a fettuccini cutter and you’ll also have an Angel hair cutter. We’ll going to use the Angel hair cutter.
Now, take the dough put it on the side and just let it go through and that’s simple. Now, at this poin, your pasta is ready. You put a little bit of flour and I put in the refrigerator and you’re good to go. Tomato sauce is going. Veal Involtini is in the oven, fresh pasta.
Now, keep out making the fresh pasta, a large bowl, large pot salted and you don’t over crowd the pot. If you over crowd the pot with fresh pasta, there is so much starch in there and that’s going to be old gunk. You don’t want to have sticky pasta unless you want to play baseball outside. You want to have enough liquid in there for the pasta actually to be agitated and move comfortably through the water.
This is the pasta that we made before or we just make this morning, put a little bit in and shake it around. What’s crucial, just give it a quick stir. When the pasta is ready it will actually float and once the pasta floats it’s ready to go. You can take it out immediately and if you leave pasta in the water, it’s starch. What’s going to happen to starch in the liquid it keeps absorbing and keeps swelling, if you want to start with the thin Angel hair pasta or Capellini. You want to serve a Capellini and you want to serve a piece of Languine or a piece of thicker pasta. Serve it away just the way it is.
Tomato sauce is just about ready but, what we’re going to do we’re going to add a little bit of garlic. We have some in the beginning. We’re going to add a little bit more now. Fresh herbs, we have fresh basil, just took the basil and chiffonade it. We’re going to quick stir this, fresh basil and fresh oregano. Sprinkle it in at the very last minute. Let it cooked for about another minute and let it all natural oils and flavor of the herbs mix it with the freshness of the tomato.
With a bit of fresh of ground black pepper and we are good to go. So when you work with the pasta, just pick it up gently and put them in the middle like that and just twist it. You want to create a little bit of height. So now we’re going to take some fresh pasta and tomato sauce, put it on the plate, half on, half off and put one on top, take another one. Just take a knife, use a sharp knife. Use the length of the knife and let the knife do the slicing for you. It’s very simple. Look at that, you have basil, prosciutto, fontina cheese, asparagus with the veal, very simple dish and you’re going to put a little bit on.
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