- I can usually handle a lot of meat but--
That was really dirty,
I'm not gonna say that.
I'm gonna stop, this is a
family-friendly program!
[light music]
- Hi I'm Frank, I'm a professional chef
and this is a 250 dollar bolognese.
[light music]
- Hi, I'm John, I'm a home
chef, and this is gonna be
a 25 dollar bolognese.
[light music]
- Again?
[light music]
- Oh my God!
- Let me just stroke the celery.
- Okay, I got really nervous [laughs].
This is like something
from the Flintstones.
[light music]
I have Frank's recipe book here.
- The bolognese that I
had planned on making
you'd probably see in a more
expensive Italian restaurant.
It's better ingredients, higher quality
and because of the high quality,
you're gonna pay a little more,
it's gonna be expensive.
- This is a lot of ingredients
to make a bolognese.
- For my bolognese, I was
planning on using short ribs.
- Eh, this is meat.
What the hell do you do with this?
- I was gonna use guanciale.
- Guanciale,
oh it's not panchetta!
- [Frank] Red wine, good olive oil.
- This looks like just
some really fancy olive oil
and wine, if I'm allowed
to I'm definitely gonna
take this bad boy home.
- [Frank] Lots of basil,
little bit of orange rind.
- I don't know why we have an orange,
I don't think it belongs in ragu sauce.
- [Frank] Calabrian Chilies.
- Can heat that there's
the little seeds in there,
I'm guessing that's what I'm working with.
- These are the things that
I believe make the foundation
of a good meat sauce or a bolognese.
For my fresh made pasta,
I was gonna use duck eggs.
- Oh Lordy.
- Duck eggs are gonna
be a little bit richer than chicken eggs.
- Very surprised about the
pasta, makin' homemade pasta
for the first time, I'm
gonna make grandma proud.
- I was gonna use OO Italian flour.
- Double zero, like James Bond.
Turns out this is lamented pasta,
I don't know what that means.
- I had everything together
to make a fresh dough
for some homemade garlic knots.
- Like what, that's insane!
By my count, I'm making
not one, but two doughs.
We shall overcome!
- So for John's recipe, we
have simpler ingredients.
Ground beef and ground pork.
Some Pecorino Romano,
some butter, tomato paste,
instead of guanciale
we're gonna use bacon,
dry pasta, parsley,
garlic, carrots, onions,
and some white wine.
John's ingredients might
be simpler than mine,
but I think with good technique,
we can elevate them and make them better.
If I had to guess, this would
probably cost about 25 bucks.
[bell chiming] On the money, huh?
Okay, oh!
- If I had to guess, three,
maybe 400 dollar recipe?
[bell ringing] That is too
much money for pasta sauce!
- The sauce I had planned
to make sounds really fancy,
but at the end of the day,
it's a fairly simple sauce.
- I don't see the actual
instructions and it doesn't look
like he left me any, this is
gonna be a challenge for sure
like there's really no directions.
- And everything is
gonna be braised together
and it's gonna kinda take this
really tough piece of meat
and make it super super soft and tender.
- Could I actually get
Rose on the phone now?
I have some questions.
Hey Rose, it's John, how are you?
- Good, how are you John?
It's nice to see you!
- You too, I'm freaking out a little bit.
So first up for his meat sauce,
Frank has short ribs which
I've never worked with before.
- With short ribs, I think
the best way to go is to sear
them a little bit first,
and get some nice browning
going on and then cook them
low and slow in a sauce.
You're not gonna wanna cook
them all the way through,
just by searing them.
After you sear it and you
really finish cooking it
in the sauce, you're gonna wanna shred it
because you don't want a big hunk of meat.
Two forks should do the trick,
just kind of pull it apart
and then mix it together.
It's gonna be so good,
you're gonna be great!
- You wanna come here and help me make it?
- I do!
I'll come and help you eat it.
- Oh there ya go!
Thank you so much, really appreciate it.
- All right, thank you, have fun!
We'll see you soon.
- Bye Rose!
Not vastly different from
my recipe, just again,
a few new ingredients.
Olive oil in there, so
let's throw in our beautiful
short rib, look how nice
these hunks of meat are!
Sorry, was that sexual again, I'm sorry--
I didn't mean for it to be!
Well she called it a hunk
of meat too on the phone,
so it's not just me.
So while that's cooking, I'm
gonna cut up my guanciale.
Again, this is the gel,
it's fatty as we know, just like bacon.
I know Frank likes these
fancy cuts of meat.
Looks like it's gonna be nice
and brown on that one side.
Again, I know RoseMary said
I don't wanna fully cook it
in here so I'm just looking
to get it nice and brown
on all the sides and
then I'll take it out.
- John gave me some simple ingredients,
but the way I'm gonna tackle
this is I'm gonna try and build
layers of flavor in my pot.
Just a little bit of
oil, bacon you stack up,
and we're gonna just
cut it into nice strips
and it goes right into the pot.
Bacons gonna get brown, it's
gonna render off some of its
fat and we're gonna take it
out and leave the fat in there
to brown up our vegetables.
- I think this is ready to come out,
it looks braised on all
sides, nice and brown.
Now that the meats resting,
and braised on all of the sides,
I'm gonna start the sauce.
Our onions, garlic,
carrots, and the guanciale.
- This bacon fat is kind of
liquid gold at this point.
So once the bacon starts to get brown,
I'm gonna take it out!
Next thing we're gonna
do is brown out meats,
we got beef and the pork.
And I'm doing all this
over a fairly high heat
'cause I wanna get some browning,
browning equals flavor.
And this is kind of our
second layer of flavor.
I'm gonna strain off some of
the fat, not all of the fat,
you want some of the fat in there,
and then add it back to the pan,
not all of it, and then
I'm gonna start adding
my aromatic vegetables.
Onions, I have a clove of
garlic I'm just gonna wack up,
carrots, and I have some celery.
All of these ingredients right
not are kind of fundamentals
to a good ragu or a good bolognese.
Originally John had butter at this stage,
I'd much rather add the butter
at the end of the sauce,
I think adding the butter
at the end when we actually
toss the pasta is gonna
give us a better flavor.
So I'm guessing I take
the orange as well as
the basil and parsley and do a
little Frank bouquet with it.
Figure out how Frank does this.
- I find that orange rind
bumps up that tomato flavor.
It has a little bit of
sharpness to kind of cut
some of that fat.
- Ahh, hold on!
- [Frank] Now that the vegetables,
you can see on the bottom
of the pot, we're getting a little brown,
I'm gonna add my bacon back.
- Hold on!
- [Frank] And I'm gonna
add all of my meat back.
- Now, wait maybe!
- [Frank] Then we give it a stir.
I'm gonna add my tomato paste,
when I do this sauce,
I always add a little more tomato.
Tomato paste is super concentrated,
has a nice, rich flavor,
this doesn't need red wine,
there's a lot of flavors
going on so I'm gonna just a
nice couple glubs of white wine
and I truly believe that you
don't need to use great wine
for this I think boxed wine is okay,
give me the box, I'll make it work,
it'll still taste great.
If I smell it, I'm gonna
smell the alcohol boiling out
and that's basically
what I wanna do wit this.
- Little for the sauce,
and a little for me.
Oh, it's a nice vintage.
I don't cook with red wine too much
but when I do, you gotta drink it.
So my red wines cooked down,
now I'm gonna go ahead
and add my veal stock.
I have never worked with veal stock before
and turns out that this
is homemade from Frank,
thank you Frank!
Little handy dandy bouquet,
with the orange peel and the basil--
- And we're just gonna
add enough chicken broth
to basically cover the meat.
One thing home cooks don't
do, is he should be tasting.
And I think I'm good
with seasoning right now.
You can see it right now
that it's really liquidy.
I want some of that liquid to cook out,
I'm gonna lower the heat just a little
and just let it simmer away happily
and what I'm looking for is that
this is gonna coat our pasta.
- Could just buy crushed tomatoes, but no,
I get to get my hands dirty.
So, whoa!
My tomatoes got a little over excited.
You just wanna get it
to a nice consistency
where I don't feel any giant clumps.
It smells so good, I actually
smell the orange zest,
this is the beautiful braised short rib,
a nice dash of salt, black pepper,
I have these beautiful
Calabrian Chili flakes,
this will give the sauce
a nice little kick to it.
I don't know how spicy these are,
so I'm only gonna add, let's
say like half a teaspoon.
And I'm gonna let it simmer
for a few hours, covered.
I'm feeling pretty good, this
was challenging but not as
hard as I expected, after
that, I think everyone
deserves one of these, thanks Frank.
- So what I did a little
different than what a normal
home cook might do, I didn't
just dump everything to the pot
What I did was I built layers of flavor.
Bacon, bacon fat, those
roasty flavors come through
in the sauce, we want our
food to have layers of flavor
and that's what we did,
we built layers of flavor.
Now the garlic bread, John
gave me kind of a soft,
kind of deli loaf, it's not a bad thing,
I like something a little sturdier.
So I've never done this before,
but Rose gave me a lot of great tips.
Frank also has me making pizza dough
for his garlic knots.
- If you have access to a standing mixer,
that's gonna make your life a lot easier.
And you can pinch off a little bit,
and stretch it, it's called
the window pane test.
And if you can see through the dough,
that means you've got really
nice gluten development.
- Thank you!
- The garlic knots
are gonna be, I think they're
gonna be your easiest part.
- Oh good, I was actually
worried about that.
So good to hear.
Gonna use a pizza hook, which is there,
and get that dough to a nice consistency
where I can almost stretch
it and look through it
like a window she said?
We'll see, OO Flour.
Salt, sugar, the dry yeast,
olive oil, and some water.
Please let this work.
Ingredients are combining,
looking good so far.
Turn it up a little more, okay too much,
gonna go back down!
This is kind of silly to do all this work
when I can just go
downstairs to the pizzeria,
get some garlic knots but
in true Frank fashion,
we're gonna do it the fancy way.
- First thing I'm gonna
do is cut it in half.
So I'm gonna use unsalted butter,
and it's room temperature,
always fresh cracked black pepper.
I control the salt now.
I like Pecorino cheese, a
lot better than Parmesan
and I'll probably get
some hate mail about that.
I just think it has a lot
more flavor than Parmesan.
So I'm really happy
that John has Pecorino.
Some garlic, that's a lot of garlic,
I don't need this much garlic.
I would also put a little
chopped parsley in there,
little bit of olive oil,
and then bring it all together.
- I mean, that looks like dough to me,
I think this is good.
I feel like this is good to go.
That looks pretty smooth to me, I think.
Yeah, let's try it, confidence!
So now to check if my dough is ready.
Gonna take a note from Rose,
and see if it looks like a window pane.
Thanks for the tip, Rose!
So I'm gonna transfer this
dough into a bowl with olive oil
and just let it rise and
really activate that yeast.
Gonna cover up the dough
with some plastic wrap
and just let this rise up.
My dough is resting, now I'm
gonna make the compound butter
for my garlic bread, fancy Italian butter,
raw garlic, roasted garlic,
fresh parsley and basil here.
Salt, pepper, olive
oil, and then of course,
Parmsano, this is the good stuff.
These are gonna be some
really tasty garlic knots.
All right!
Just gonna give it a little
taste to make sure it's all good
Mmm, this some fancy-ass butter.
- Nice generous amount of the butter,
don't leave anything naked.
Last, I'll take some more
of that sharp Pecorino
and go over the top with it.
I probably used a lot
less garlic than John.
I don't want this to kind of
be offensive and overpowering.
If you add mozzarella to
this, it might bump it up
a couple of notches.
- The dough has risen quite
a bit as you can tell.
Oh my God, it's so nice!
Maybe I just play with this
and we call it a day, you know?
Garlic knot isn't that
difficult of a shape.
Kind of like a pretzel,
but more clumped together.
I really have no idea what I'm doing.
Okay, I'm just gonna try, we'll see.
This is what I was thinking,
I don't know if it makes sense.
Maybe it's like a cinnamon bun!
Garlic knot?
You know, I would love
to bother RoseMary again
but gonna figure this out on my own.
We're gonna leave this as test subject A.
That was more of a swirl
option than a knot.
This one, gonna roll it out and actually
tie it like a true knot.
And there's a garlic knot.
God, I'm so smart!
Ah-ha, this is actually really fun!
Been to so many pizzerias
in my lifetime growing up
here in New York and I feel
like I've seen different
iterations of garlic knots,
some fat, some small,
some really garlicy, some not.
I hope these make Frank proud.
I'm gonna keep the test one there,
as a reminder than you can achieve better.
Just gonna finish this off
with a little flaky sea salt.
Now, these puppies are ready for the oven,
let's try to make some pasta.
And then I've seen Frank do this before.
A little nest for the eggs if you will.
Maybe should've made a
deeper well in there.
Let's try three, woop!
Oh no, my little lava didn't
work out, but we'll fix it.
- So John gave me fettuccine,
it's a dry pasta product,
fresh pastas kind of a
special occasion thing.
If you add the pasta to the
pot when it's not boiling,
it's gonna start clumping together.
Most people think that it clumps together,
they need to add oil to the water,
not necessary, no oil in the water.
So we're waiting for the water to boil,
and normally I just have a
beer, not the option here.
I want a beer, it's never too early,
it's 5:00 somewhere, that's
what they always say.
- Salt, textures really
weird, really sticky.
My grandma would be so proud of me,
God rest her soul, if
she saw me making dough
for homemade pasta like
this is pretty cool.
Still a little sticky so gonna
add just a little more flour.
This is a lot of work, workin' up a sweat!
If you are not a fan of mess,
I do not recommend making
this because as you can see,
pretty messy.
The dough is wrapped so
I'm gonna let it rest
for about an hour.
- We are boiling!
I'm gonna add a fair amount of salt.
If you don't have high blood pressure,
don't worry about it, it's gonna be fine!
I'm gonna drop my pasta
in, at this point you don't
wanna leave it alone, right?
You wanna continue to stir
so that it doesn't stick
together right, so I'm gonna
just let it cook a little,
I'm gonna come back to it.
Traditionally I like
to use a thicker pasta
or a pasta that has some
sort of shape to it,
so that it holds the sauce.
Fettuccine is not horrible
but a wider pasta like
the paperdell that I wanted to do,
has more surface area for
the pasta sauce to cling to.
I wonder how Johns doing right now.
- Laminated pasta, talked
to RoseMary about it,
yeah so what is laminated pasta,
I've never heard of that term.
- You're gonna make sheets of pasta,
with the herbs, you're not
gonna mix them into the pasta
dough while you're making the pasta,
you're gonna lay them onto the sheet
and then fold it over
or cover it with another
sheet of pasta so you're
gonna have this really pretty
almost stained glass effect.
Dust our dough, little for good luck.
Take a chunk of dough like that,
I want it to get super thin.
Okay, not that difficult, yet.
Roll out this other, woop--
So now to get that stained glass effect.
Just gonna lay out some leaves
of fresh parsley and basil,
so now I'm gonna take
my other piece of pasta,
cover it, and then put it
through the roller again
to make it that nice laminated pasta
that Frank so very much wants.
It kinda does look like stained glass!
Gonna make nice, thick strips of pasta.
I think the nice
thickness in these noodles
will compliment the meat.
Now we're gonna finish up
our beautiful laminated pasta
with some flour, I think this
will make for some really
nice pasta to compliment our ragu.
Now the test will come when we cook it.
- I'm just gonna cook it
three quarters of the way,
gonna finish cooking it in the pot.
This way the pasta finishes
cooking in the sauce,
it's gonna soak up some of the sauce,
it's gonna, the starch
from the pasta is actually
gonna thicken the sauce a little.
Tasting the pasta and
testing it using your teeth
is the best way to do it.
Throwing it on the wall, I
don't know what kinda walls
you have at home but I don't
want pasta sticking on my wall.
I'm gonna take my pasta
out and I'm gonna add it
to my sauce, I'm not too
worried about having some extra
water on there, it's not a big deal,
'cause we're gonna finish
cooking the pasta in the pot.
I know it's probably much
easier to use a colander
over the sink, but this
I promise you is gonna
yield a better product at the end.
- Now, let's finish off our bolognese.
Oh yeah, this meat is super tender,
it's really just coming apart,
I'm pulling it apart lightly with a fork.
What I wanna do is get an even
consistency of the short rib
throughout the dish,
you know I imagine Frank
is doing something really phenomenal
with my bolognese recipe.
- I'm gonna take a
little bit of that butter
that I talked about that
I saved from the beginning
and I'm gonna add it to the sauce
and this is where John's
sauce differs from mine.
My sauce is a little more tomato forward.
You can see that we put
tomato paste in this sauce,
but it's not really a tomato sauce,
it's more of a meat sauce with a little
bit of tomato product in it.
- Gonna do a little taste
test to make sure it's cooked
all the way through, oh
my God, this is so good.
- [Frank] Gonna add a little
more of this pasta water.
Right, 'cause again, I want
my pasta to finish cooking
in the sauce, once I start
to see the sauce thicken
a little more and stick to the pasta,
I'm gonna test it with this spoon
and I'll show you what I'm looking for.
I dip it in, you can actually see,
the sauce has some weight to it,
and it's coating the back of the spoon,
it's not as watery you can actually see
that it's fairly thick.
You can see that the
sauce is starting to stick
to the pasta, and I think I'm done here.
Now all I gotta do is plate it up.
- Because it's fresh pasta,
it's actually gonna cook
really quickly in about
two to three minutes.
Olive oil, brown some
garlic, wow that's beautiful.
Turn up the heat a little bit,
I'm just gonna transfer
right from the boiling water
into our sauce, this
feels like how they do it
in the restaurants, I've
seen it, but never actually
did it myself this is pretty cool.
Don't wanna get too much water in there,
but a little pasta water
is actually quite tasty
so I don't mind if--
Pasta bolognese!
So all that's left to
do is toss these knots
with the compound butter,
and they'll be ready to eat!
Just gonna use all of it, it
looks so delicious, come on!
My God it smells so good,
you can really smell
all the flavors in the compound
butter, these look awesome.
This is a lot of work for garlic knots,
I think it was worth it.
I mean, look how awesome these look!
Come on!
- Gonna grab my bread and cut it,
I'm gonna kind of make
a little fancy, okay?
I'm gonna cut it on a nice, steep angle.
- My God it looks so good!
And I'm gonna try to be
fancy like restaurant fancy
like Frank does!
- [Frank] Use my tongs
to twirl it up together
and I'm gonna carry that over to my plate.
I dripped a little.
I'm gonna spoon a little
of my sauce on top.
I like a little more sauce
than the Italians would.
- I like a nice saucy
past, and I wanna make sure
there's a lot of meat,
so I'm gonna go in there
and grab some of the good bits.
Every so lightly throw a
little olive oil on there.
Oh, that's good stuff.
- [Frank] Just a nice little shaving,
you don't want to overdo
it with the Pecorino,
it's a strong cheese,
so it might over power,
so just go nice and easy.
Little bit of black pepper,
and then just a touch,
a touch of extra virgin olive oil.
Gives it a little shine, take your bread,
put it on the plate, so
it stands up a little,
little bunny ears, pasta bolognese!
With garlic bread!
- I love this stuff and at the restaurant,
I just have them keep
going and going and going,
so I'm gonna do the same!
Then the final piece of resistance,
two of our homemade garlic knots,
and there you have it,
some expensive bolognese!
- And this is just a
simple, comforting dish,
there's nothing complicated about it,
we used simple ingredients
and made something
beautiful with it, I really really hope
John likes my pasta.
- This was a lot of work,
but honestly, it looks like
it was worth all the effort.
- Hey John, nice to meet you!
- Hi Frank!
- Finally get to meet you!
- Really excited about this.
- Really excited,
I can't wait to see how you did.
- I hope I made you proud.
- Ahh, that looks really good.
So with your dish, I
didn't really change much,
I kinda focused on like
the layers of flavor
that were goin' on, you had
some really great ingredients.
- Mhm
- And all I did
was focus on good technique.
- These were a lot of first
time techniques for me,
but I think I did you justice.
- Good, the flavor is great.
The meat is amazing,
and I love the chew of this.
It takes that meaty sauce
and it like stands up to it.
I'm gonna have another bite.
- That's what I expected!
Does it taste like yours?
- It's pretty close.
- Okay, I'll take pretty close
- I am a heavy seasoner.
- Sure!
- [Frank] We're gonna crack
that open and get a view of it,
but look at that, see how your
crumb is really nice in there
Some great garlic flavor.
The dough is like perfect,
it's not like--
You can easily make this
super chewy and gross,
but it's light and fluffy
and it's really garlicy and delicious.
And considering you've never
made any of this before,
like I'm blown away.
- I did feel like your
presence was with me throughout
the way, I had your recipes.
I wanna see how I did,
because again, first time.
Mmm!
Oh my God.
This blows away any pizzeria
garlic knot I've had.
- Exactly, so you gonna try mine?
Now I'm a little nervous.
- Mmm, oh my God.
It almost has, correct me if I'm wrong,
a slight carbonara ring to it.
- 'Cause I put a little
butter in towards the end too,
and the butter in the end
really kinda puts that dairy
component in without having to put milk.
- Mmm
- Did I do okay?
- Absolutely, did you do okay.
- The guanciale doesn't
have that kind of smokiness,
the bacon is really strong there.
- Yeah
- Again, that brings me
back to my childhood too
like garlic bread?
- It's a staple!
Awesome, this is exactly what I wanted!
- I think that we killed
it, we crushed it.
It kind of proves to me that like
you know, if you just jump
into it, you can do it,
you know, and you
shouldn't be afraid of it.
I wish the first time
I made pasta and bread
it was that good.
- Well I had a good teacher!
Aw, get over here!
- Great to finally meet you!
- You too and your eyes really
are as blue as the ocean,
like I can get lost in them.
- Oh thank you.
