(relaxed guitar music) - [Frank] As a chef and restaurateur, I know what a happy dining room feels like, (upbeat rock music) and it's gotta feel the same when I'm cooking for friends and family at home.

Lots of garlic, seafood, cheese and pasta will do the trick tonight.

My wife Jacqueline is here, and I'm re-creating a dish that won her over, and we're sharing it with our good friend and marketing director, Olivia Moffett.

We're using fresh ingredients to create a perfect date night meal where everyone leaves my home full of life and buzzed on happiness.

- [Jacqueline] Put a Manhattan.

(graphic whooshes) - The perfect way to start every meal, in my opinion, is Jacqueline's Manhattan.

- Hey, I'm gonna be honest, I always thought it was bad to be a third wheel, but this is like, (laughs) this is pretty good.

(Jacqueline laughs) You get to cook, I get to drink with your wife.

This is... - It's perfect.

- Cheers.

- Cheers.

- The one thing I love to make, and which I've made for Jacqueline numerous times, it's her Mother's Day and birthday treat, is a frutti di mare salad.

It's the quintessential Italian seafood salad.

It's made all over Italy, especially Sicily.

Anywhere there's a coastline in Italy and seafood, this is a dish they make.

You can make it any way, million ways to put in.

You put scallops, mussels, scungilli.

I'm using squid, octopus and shrimp because they're three of Jacqueline's favorite things.

And it's a chilled seafood salad, so it's really great.

You can make it the day before.

You can make it two days before.

Just important to serve it kind of room temperature, not ice cold.

So I just have some big jumbo shrimp.

I'm gonna get those going in a pot of water.

I have a little bit of just lemon juice and white wine in here.

Just a splash, nothing too big.

While my shrimp are going, I'm gonna just give those a quick head start, and then I'll add my calamari.

So I just have some calamari, they're tentacles.

They've just been cut up into rings.

And then what we wanna do while that shrimp is going, I want to dice up some onions, so.

(knife thumps) - [Olivia] Jacqueline, this is the dish you were telling me about, right?

This is the one?

- Frank won me with this.

- Okay.

- This is amazing.

- No pressure, this is... - No, this is a dish I've made a million times.

It was my father's favorite dish.

I still eat it all the time.

My favorite ingredient in is fennel.

Fennel is a unsung hero of Italian salads.

But I think, like the flavor of fennel, the licorice flavor goes really well with the olive oil and you just wanna do a rough chop of it.

You don't need much.

If you don't like fennel, you can certainly substitute.

Celery works really well in this, if you're a little scared of the whole fennel aspect of it.

But I've got that going, so that's really it.

I'm gonna now, my shrimp has started to kind of turn pink.

- [Olivia] Those are huge.

- They're huge shrimp.

I'm gonna go ahead and add some of my calamari.

The calamari only takes like one minute to cook.

You guys all like, you both like garlic.

So I'm gonna go pretty heavy on the garlic that almost gives it this spice for this dish.

And I'm just gonna smash this up.

- [Olivia] Why?

- I'm trying to release as much of the garlic flavor and the oils in it.

- Does it not do that when you chop it?

- No, not as much as smashing it.

Smashing really gets all the oils in it.

When you cut through it, you don't really release the oils, you're just cutting through it.

So, smashing helps.

If you have one of those garlic presses.

I know you love to use the garlic press at home- - I do.

- Because it's easy.

So just gonna do, now I'm gonna do a nice rough chop of it and I'm not too worried 'cause I think a nice big piece of garlic, when you get that like burn from it is really fun.

- So you're leaving it raw?

- Oh yeah.

So the more you put in the spicier it will be when you get a bite of it.

So I've got this diced up pretty nicely.

I'm just gonna add this to my bowl 'cause I'm gonna make kind of a vinaigrette to dress this in.

So I'm gonna take my nice garlic, I'm gonna give my...

So this is it, like, my calamari is done.

So the old adage, you can either cook it for one minute or an hour to make it tender.

So I just want to drain this.

(water sloshes) (pan clatters) So I have a little ice bath here.

I'm just gonna pour these over the ice bath.

A little bit of cold water.

(ice clatters) And we're just gonna let that sit for one minute, let it chill out and then make our vinegarette.

So I have my garlic in here.

I'm gonna put a little bit of Dijon mustard in 'cause I want some spice.

(gentle music) (bowl thunks) (spoon clatters) Lemon juice, just like a tablespoon, Red wine vinegar.

You can use any vinegar you have.

I love red wine vinegar in this.

And then I'm just gonna put a lot of extra virgin olive oil in it.

So use a really quality olive oil.

- I can smell the garlic.

- I know.

- [Jacqueline] So good.

- [Frank] That's gonna make the burn.

- [Olivia] When we say good olive oil, what does that mean?

Like, what am I looking for?

- So, when I'm making a salad dressing or something, I'm looking for extra virgin olive oil, preferably cold press.

That means those olives went in, they were pressed just very lightly to get the extrude, the first olive oil out, that's a cold press extra virgin.

What they then do is take that pumice and repress it again to give you olive oil.

So cold press extra virgin olive oil is really sweet.

Got a lot of viscosity, lot of acidity, and it's just a great way to really enjoy the olives and really have that fruity flavor from them and not have them be too unadulterated.

Right?

They're just clean olive oil, pure.

I have to put a little pinch of chili in here for Jacqueline 'cause she likes it sweet.

- [Jacqueline] Just for me.

- [Frank] And then we just mix this up.

- Put that on anything already.

- Right.

Right.

(both laugh) - Yeah, no, this would be great.

You could dip bread in this and it would be delicious.

- That's how you won him.

- (laughs) Right.

- So I'm gonna take my octopus.

This is my favorite ingredient in it.

So I just have some cooked octopus.

This was boiled for just a few minutes.

- [Jacqueline] It's so perfect, it doesn't look real.

- [Olivia] I know.

- And then I like to just slice this really thin right on the cross width of it.

And so you're looking for nice pieces.

This is gonna be a little chewier than, like, when you have it grilled or fried when you get it in restaurants.

This preparation is a little more light.

It's just barely cooked.

I think this is almost like a ceviche.

This is more of what you would get in a sushi restaurant.

So it's a little more chewy.

But you kind of want that 'cause you have the crunch from the onions and I think it looks cool.

(knife thunks) And the shrimp and the calamari should be pretty tender.

So we'll have, I'll do two pieces of this 'cause I know it's not gonna go to waste in our house.

- Now this is truly one of the dishes that makes me fall in love with Frank all over again.

- Should I go?

- Every time.

(both laugh) Later.

- It's the only reason I make the dish, quite honestly.

It's really not my favorite.

(ice sloshes) Okay, so I have my shrimp.

- Olivia, those smells, like, that seduce you before you even see the food, are amazing.

- Right.

It's part of the whole thing, right?

- So I've got all my seafood in here and my vinegarette's done.

I'm gonna add the fennel.

- [Jacqueline] So do you ever sometimes use celery?

I felt like there's celery sometimes.

- I like celery a lot and I usually use celery 'cause you don't love red onions.

So I'm gonna go a little light on the red onions.

But now we just give this a nice bath in here.

(ice sloshes) - [Jacqueline] And this is also better tomorrow.

- Yeah.

- And the next day.

- This sits and marinates really well.

So we'll put it in here.

- This bowl is great.

- This is my grandmother's bowl.

So you always have some little nostalgic thing that you have from your grandparents or your family.

And this is a little easier to mix.

This is ready.

This is super simple frutti di mare salad.

The dish that won my wife.

- [Jacqueline] I'm so excited.

(laughs) - [Olivia] I feel so special that I get to try.

I've heard you tell this story.

(both laugh) - So, to garnish, just a little bit of chive.

(knife thunks) I always put a little bit more extra virgin olive oil so you can really get just the pure olive oil taste from it.

And this is the frutti di mare salad.

What I love to serve with this, this is a Sicilian wine.

It's Frappato, is the grape.

- [Olivia] Oh.

- It's really crisp, drinks light.

You have to have more drinks.

- [Olivia] Need to finish the Manhattans and the Prosecco.

- But I think the wine really will cut through some of the acidity from it.

It's a little bit rich.

It's a Sicilian wine.

It goes really well with seafood and I think it's just something fun to always try and pair your wine.

I know we've had bubbles, we've had Manhattan, but a little splash of wine while you're eating something like this is super fun.

- If you can, you can smell that they go together.

- Yeah.

- I'm trying to remember, do you remember when the first time was that you made this for me?

(intense music) I wanna say it was New Year's Eve at your parents' house.

- Yeah, probably.

I mean, this is a very traditional Christmas Eve dish.

This dish usually starts out the feast of the seven fishes.

So that's where you eat it a lot, except in my house, when we grew up, we ate it every Sunday because it's just such a fun thing to have.

This was like our tailgate salad that we brought to the Giants football games.

- No, I love it.

It's like all the textures are so good and it's so bright, you know, and it doesn't feel heavy at all.

It's not something that's gonna weigh you down.

It's just so...

Which I guess is good if you're on a date, you don't want it to weigh you down, right?

(laughs) - Lot of garlic.

(laughs) - Yeah, but you know, there's mutual garlic.

That's good.

- We're all eating it, right.

- Mm-hmm.

- Don't trust anyone who doesn't eat garlic.

- That's right.

(gentle music) - One of our favorite things to have on Sunday, is just simple pasta, right?

I worked in a place in Montforte d'Alba, Italy, Northern Italy.

I love the food there.

I like something so simple where it's just a couple of ingredients are really the star.

And you've already had garlic so I'm not that worried about that.

So this is a really rustic pasta.

This is like our Sunday night pasta.

And I like to just slice the garlic so that it's just slivered, right?

It's like the "Goodfellas" movie where Paulie does that with the razor.

But I find like this is the best way to do it.

That way, if you don't want the garlic, you can see it and kind of pick it out.

Although I'm gonna put so much in, you're probably not gonna be able to pick it out.

- We're eating the garlic.

- We're eating the garlic.

So really, olive oil, we're gonna start with olive oil and I'm gonna use like a half a cup of olive oil 'cause this is the base of our sauce.

And then I'm gonna just get my garlic going.

(gentle music) And I'm gonna let this get just like golden brown.

I'm not looking for it to get... Light, you can, the more you take it to a golden brown, the more nutty it gets.

The other thing, that's one of my favorite things to eat with pasta.

One of my favorite vegetables to eat, of all time, is broccoli rabe, rapini.

So you see broccoli rabe is not like the broccoli we eat normally growing up.

This has very little floret and a lot more stem and leaf and that's what I love about it.

It's almost like a really hardy spinach and I'm just going to kind of rough chop this.

And I'm gonna use a lot.

It'll wilt down just like spinach does and I'm just not gonna use the little base of it 'cause that's not really... it's a little bit chewy and a little bitter.

This is totally a bitter green, but goes really well with pasta.

And when I blanch it, it kind of takes away some of that bitterness.

So anything you blanch in boiling water takes away the bitterness.

So I've got my garlic and really you can see how it's starting to get, like, golden brown.

It's bubbling, it's super nice.

And so I know that that's just about ready.

I'm gonna drop my broccoli rabe into the same water I'm gonna cook my pasta in.

And all I'm trying to do is, I want this to be crunchy.

I want it to be vibrant, want it to be a little bit bitter.

So that's just gonna take a minute.

So now I can see my garlic, for the most part, has gotten, you can see it's like golden brown.

It's firm.

It's almost like I'm making garlic chips.

So I'm going to add just a splash of white wine to this.

I want to have a little acidity to it.

So this is gonna be a little bit of fire.

(pot sizzles) Or not.

(slow trumpet music) So you're gonna add your white wine.

That kind of stops the garlic from continuing to cook and now starts to mellow it out.

It'll also soften it up so it doesn't feel like you're eating a potato chip or a garlic chip.

So we're gonna add, (pot sizzles) a touch of butter.

- Just a little.

(both laugh) - This will also start it, stop it from cooking.

(stirrer clatters) A nice pinch of chili flakes 'cause we want it to be, have a little bit of spice to it and a lot of black pepper.

So I'm kind of making a cacio e pepe, right, a base of the classic Italian pasta that everybody loves.

I mean, that's one of my favorite things.

And I think when you're cooking pasta like this, you want it super simple.

I've got my broccoli rabe or rapini as it's called.

And I'm gonna go ahead and add this in.

If a little bit of the water goes in, that's good.

Then we just want to toss this around, get it nice and coated.

Like, can you smell that garlic- - So good.

- And everything.

So I'm gonna drop my pasta.

This is fresh tagliatelle I'm using.

If you don't have fresh tagliatelle, linguini, spaghetti, any pasta that you like, if you have a dried pasta, it works.

Just you'd have to add about 10 minutes to your cooking time, which is probably the whole time it takes to make this dish.

(food sizzles) (stirrer clatters) So we're just gonna let this simmer.

So I'm kind of finishing that rapini in this with a little bit of water and the butter that came from it.

And then our pasta is super close.

(bowls clatter) - [Olivia] We don't rinse the pasta, right?

- I'm not gonna rinse the pasta.

I'm actually gonna drag some of this water into this pan to help make the sauce that I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna add just another little bit of butter right after I toss the pasta in it and that will kind of thicken it and I'll put a little bit of Parmesan cheese in it and toss it.

And then I just wanna check.

I would say we've reached nirvana there.

(both laugh) So, super simple and I'm gonna cook this a little bit less than all the way because I'm gonna finish it in this sauce.

I want the last 30 seconds or so of the pasta, I want to finish cooking in my pan.

So you wanna pull it always a little bit beforehand.

(food sizzles) (stirrer clatters) And so that last little bit, 'cause it's so hot, now it's really absorbing all that garlic and the butter and the white wine that we have in there.

And we'll just give it a little bit, let it finish off in here.

Just wanna see.

It still needs some salt.

You don't want it to be too salty 'cause I am gonna add a ton of Parmigiano Reggiano to it.

So this is finished, I mean super simple.

- [Olivia] Yeah, it's so quick.

- Yeah, it needs just a little bit more butter.

(spoon clatters) And I can turn the heat off.

And when I put the butter in, I'm gonna also add a nice handful of Parmesan cheese and stir this in and that butter will melt in and create like a nice creamy sauce.

So once again, back to that cacio e pepe, which is such a simple dish to make but also one of the hardest 'cause you're only using three ingredients.

So you can see how shiny and coated, it's not like soupy at all.

- The smell is unreal.

- [Jacqueline] Yeah.

- And if we were fancy in the restaurants, I'd like twirl it up and make it pretty.

But we're rustic at home and you're using such great ingredients, there's no point in like trying to overdo it.

I think the key when you're cooking at home is just make great food and don't worry so much about the presentation.

To finish it off, I'm gonna use a different olive oil.

This is a Tuscan extra virgin olive oil.

So it's a little bit richer.

While I was cooking, I didn't really want something that the heat would kind of knock the flavor out of this.

And I think we're looking for just that vibrant.

This is like my lemon juice too, which I'm going to add just a squeeze of lemon over it 'cause it is so rich and I want something to cut through that richness.

And then... As if I don't have enough butter and cheese in it.

But I have 24 month age Reggiano Parmigiano and I think that this really finishes the dish 'cause it's fresh.

- Real Parmesan makes such a difference.

- Yeah, I mean if you're only gonna use a few ingredients when you're cooking, really try and buy the best.

Like, you don't want to skimp on something like that.

Like this whole dish, this big block was the most expensive thing I used, right.

I used really good olive oil and really good cheese.

And so even if I bought store-bought dried pasta, the dish is still about the cheese and the olive oil.

So this is my perfect pasta for a Sunday night.

Jacqueline knows this dish all too well.

- (laughs) It's so good.

- Never get sick of it, I'm sure.

Right?

- I never get sick of it, never.

It's so good.

- And if you're gonna have, like, a simple Tuscan dish like this, this is where you might wanna spend the buck.

So I have a Chianti Reserva Classico.

I think this goes really well with it.

It's 100% Sangiovese.

It's a beautiful red wine.

It's really pretty big and bold to cut through all that cheese.

- Oh, that's good.

- Mm-hmm.

- But I'm excited about this.

- I know.

(laughs) - Everything, this is not going to be a delicate bite.

- There's no way to look delicate when you're eating this.

Come on, (speaks Italian), get in there.

Let's go.

- I love you so much.

(laughs) This is so good.

- That's why I do this.

(gentle music) (tinkly music)