- [Announcer] This is a production of PBS, Charlotte.

- [Narrator] The following episode of Charlotte Cooks is brought to you by Central Piedmont Community College, and viewers like you, thank you.

- Next on Charlotte Cooks, we're making easy ricotta gnocchi, fresh pasta, and two sauces.

(upbeat music) Welcome to this edition of Charlotte Cooks.

I'm Chef Pamela Roberts, and I'm very glad you're here with us today.

Joining me in the kitchen is Chef Mara Norris from the Foodie School in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

What are we making today, Mara?

- We're making some of our favorites.

We're making some ricotta gnocchi we're making a fresh pasta, we're making a marinara, and then a basil pesto.

- Awesome.

So, let's start with our marinara, cause that's going to have to simmer a little bit, isn't it?

- [Chef Mara] It does.

- So we're just sauteing some onions in a little bit of olive oil.

Okay.

So I just put that on about medium heat here.

We're not looking to really heat those onions too, too high.

So, nice, good amount of olive oil.

You really want a nice amount of fat in here.

Anytime we start anything in the onion family cooking, we want to hit it with just a little bit of salt.

We're gonna let those go for just a little bit.

The next ingredient that we're gonna add after that will be some fresh garlic and we've minced that up as well.

We always want to add anything in the garlic family way after we cook our onions, and get them really to the point that we want, because garlic cooks very, very quickly.

The liquid that we're gonna add after our garlic is some white wine.

I think we're looking nice and translucent.

We're starting to color just a little bit.

So I think let's go ahead and add our garlic in.

- Mm, that smells fantastic.

Yeah.

- All right.

So, we are ready now to add our liquid.

- All right, so add in our wine.

- So once we add our wine, if you have any brown spots on the pan, which is the caramelization from where our onions were cooking, we want to scrape, scrape, scrape.

- [Chef Pamela] And get that into our sauce.

- Pick it all up, add it into the flavor, and then we're going to crank the heat up.

All right, so we're trying to reduce down the volume of the wine.

So we're evaporating out a lot of just the pure water out of the wine.

- I just got the waft of the wine, and the garlic, and the onions, and it's dreamy.

- [Chef Mara] So we want to look at our wine and just make sure that it almost looks like a syrupy consistency.

Okay.

- So it's going to get nice and reduced.

- Yes.

And if we're taking out the ingredient that doesn't have any flavor, what are we left with?

Flavor.

- [Chef Pamela] Lots of flavor.

Yes.

- These are San Marzano tomatoes.

- San Marzano's make a difference, don't they.

Tell us about San Marzano tomatoes.

- So, these are grown specifically in Italy in a region.

So, if we're going to use canned tomatoes, we definitely want to use a nicer canned tomato.

- [Chef Pamela] A nice quality.

- So always look for the San Marzanos.

And I get the whole San Marzanos, instead of ones that are already chopped up.

You can either just squish them with your hands, really get in there and feel them, or take the shortcut, which we typically do, cause we have a lot of work to do, is just put it in the food processor, just whiz it up real quick.

Now, obviously, you can use fresh tomatoes for this as well.

- [Chef Pamela] but if you use fresh tomatoes, you'd want to take the peel and seeds out.

- [Chef Mara] You do.

If we have our canned tomatoes all ready, I kind of hold them back just a little bit as I'm pouring them, and that way they don't splatter everywhere.

- You can make a mess with tomato sauce, can't you?

- You sure can.

- You sure can.

- So we just want to stir in all the ingredients that we already cooked into the tomatoes, and now this is going to simmer.

Okay, I do like to bring it up to a boil first, so that way it really heats up.

And then, we want to see that the color of this changes from that sort of bright red to a really nice muted, brick red.

- Okay.

- And that's how we know we've cooked out enough moisture.

And it's almost going to look like a paste by the time that we're finished cooking this.

And so we don't really want to eat it on the spoon like that.

So, later on, we're going to come in and correct the consistency with a little bit of pasta water.

- [Chef Pamela] We're going to make the next sauce, which is our lovely, fresh basil pesto.

- [Chef Mara] We want to start with a ton of fresh basil.

You start off with this much and you end up with about this much.

All right, so I've already picked all the leaves off of the stems of our basil.

Basil stems are pretty kind of hefty and sturdy.

So it's not like a cilantro stem that you really want to kind of chop up and eat.

I'm going to start this processing down a little bit with our lemon juice.

Okay, we found that when we're doing this in classes, it helps the basil to not turn that kind of muddy brown color, because we're adding that nice kind of lift from the acid in there.

I'm also going to add some lemon zest.

So I have my zester, my fine plated zester here, and I'm just going to move my fruit and not my zester, okay?

Just one or two swipes per area.

So we're just getting that very outer, colored part of the fruit.

And we're releasing all the essential oils that lie within the skin of the lemon.

- And there's a lot of essential oils in citrus fruit.

- We never use a piece of citrus without first zesting it.

- Isn't that the truth.

Cause it's like part of an ingredient, it's like you're throwing away half your flavor.

- Let's just kind of pulse that, break down those basil leaves, and get all that lemon juice incorporated in with the basil.

Looking pretty well pulverized there.

So, let's add our other ingredients.

Nice, good amount of fresh garlic.

All right.

So those were our fresh pine nuts, and we just toasted those in a dry saute pan until we start to see little brown specks appear on them.

The only thing with our pine nuts is you gotta watch them really closely cause they can go from nice and toasty to burnt... - [Chef Pamela] In a heartbeat.

- [Chef Mara] ...about a second.

- Also, It's a good idea to keep them in the freezer because they go rancid pretty quickly too.

- Yes.

- And they're pretty pricey.

- Just toasting them, brings out again, we're enhancing the flavor of the essential oils inside, and making them taste a little bit more nutty.

And again, just going to kind of pulse that up, and then we're going to go in with our oil.

So I have some nice extra virgin olive oil.

This is not the time that we want to skimp.

We really want that great flavor from the extra virgin.

So I'm going to pour this into the food processor as it's running.

- Okay.

- And we're gonna help to form a good emulsion between the liquid that's in there and the oil.

Very slowly drizzle.

And if you don't trust yourself to drizzle it like this, putting it in a squeeze bottle is a great way to... - [Chef Pamela] Oh, that is a good idea, yeah.

- [Chef Mara] ... moderate how much you're adding at a time, and we'll see that it's gonna to slowly start to thicken up, and to really look like pesto.

All right.

So, let's take a peek here.

All right.

Looking nice.

- [Chef Pamela] Oh yes, looks lovely.

- When we use the food processor the bowl is kind of wider, so sometimes we need to just scrape down the sides.

And now the last, kind of big ingredient, that we want to add is our Parmesan cheese.

And that's, what's going to kind of bring everything together.

We're gonna add a nice decent amount of salt.

Okay.

We always say, a chef's pinch of salt is all five fingers.

Okay.

So we're going to add two of those.

We're gonna start with that and see where it gets us.

And then, we have some freshly cracked, black pepper.

- There's nothing like fresh black pepper is there?

- Absolutely not.

We're releasing those, again, essential oils, by cracking those peppercorns.

It's going to kind of pulse that cheese in now, and now it's time to taste.

- [Chef Pamela] Well use a tasting spoon.

I would love to have a taste of this.

- All right.

- Oh my goodness, look at how nice that is.

- Let's dip in, get a little taste.

- That's lovely.

- See if we need any more salt, pepper.

Wow!

- That's great.

- Very bright, very flavorful.

- You can taste everything in there, and there's that lemon.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- It's great.

Delicious.

- There's a couple of little things that I like to add.

- Okay.

- Just to kind of give it a little something extra.

Now, even though we had the lift from the lemon, I like to add just a few dashes of hot sauce to kind of give a little bit more acid to brighten everything up.

And then I just throw in a few drops of honey.

It's not enough to make it sweet.

It just kind of smoothes out all the edges.

We want pesto to be a little more highly seasoned than we want to taste it on a spoon.

Tastes good, but it's a little bit whoa, smack you in the face.

Okay, but because it's going to coat other things and it's going to be like a flavor bomb in other things, that we want it to be a little bit more highly seasoned, than we would, again, just want to eat it on a spoon.

- [Chef Pamela] That's a beautiful pesto.

That's gorgeous.

- [Chef Mara] And this is so great to make in the summertime.

However, it freezes really well.

- Oh, good to know.

- So if you make it in the summertime, then you can have that kind of flavor of summer all year long.

- I would imagine you'd put it in like ice cube trays and things like that.

So you have it portioned out already.

- Right.

- So you don't have to thaw out all of your pesto.

Now we're going to make some ricotta gnocchi, and some fettuccine.

So tell us about the dough that you've made.

- [Chef Mara] This is a semolina pasta, so we make the dough from a type of flour that's called semolina flour, which is known as a very strong flour, meaning it has a very high gluten content.

Okay.

So unless you're allergic to gluten, it's a very good thing for things like pastries for breads, but especially pasta because it's an elastic network.

It allows that dough to really stretch out.

And that's how we're able to roll it out into our sheets.

Here's where we are at this point.

So I'm going to use my handy-dandy bench scraper and that's gonna be super helpful when we're making our pasta.

- Mm hmm.

- All right, so I'm going to start this dough out by just pressing it out by hand a little bit until it's thin enough to fit inside the roller.

So we have a roller attachment here.

Okay.

So we're starting on the lowest number, which is the widest setting.

- The whole reason for doing it through the pasta roller is so we can get it nice and even, and really thin, as thin as we want it.

We can get it really thin on the pasta roller can't we.ú - Really, really thin.

And especially with this semolina pasta, because it is kind of like a foolproof pasta.

It is so sturdy that you really can't do much to mess it up.

So I'm just kind of pinching the end a little bit.

So again, it's thin enough to fit inside the roller.

I'm going to feed it in the top, and then catch it out the bottom.

When we first start this out, we want to be at a lower speed here, or else it can start warping the dough just a little bit.

Okay.

Now here's the fun thing that we're going to do.

We're going to laminate this with just a few little pieces of some basil.

- So, you don't have to chop it.

You just take it and break it and put it on there.

- Nice big pieces.

- Nice.

- And we'll see what happens when we start rolling it out.

- Yes.

- It's a really, really cool effect.

Now that we have put our basil on there, we're going to finish the kneading process by folding our dough into thirds.

Okay.

So it's like a letter, if anybody remembers what those are.

- (laughing) All right.

So we're just going to press it out again by hand.

And now the open end is gonna go back in the roller and that just kind of straightens out our sides.

So after we do our letter fold, we're gonna go through two times and look, you can already start to see that basil popping through.

- And you're still on the first, the widest part, right?

- Yep.

- And our first time through is the only time we do that letter fold.

After that, we never need to do that fold again.

- And now we're just going to make it thinner, and thinner, and thinner.

And the dough is going to get longer and longer and longer.

- We're gonna go up incrementally.

We cannot skip numbers unfortunately to speed the process along.

- If you tried you'd end up with a mess, because the dough won't fit.

- It won't.

- So this is the last pass through.

Okay.

Look at how the herbs have broken up.

- It's really neat, it almost looks like a stained glass window.

- It really does.

You know, I didn't expect the machine to break up those basil leaves like that, but look at how they're just spreading throughout all of that pasta.

That is beautiful.

So pretty.

- Looks gorgeous.

- Really does.

- All right.

Now that was number five.

You can go all the way to number eight, which is going to be super, super thin, - But we're going to do a fettuccine out of this.

So we don't want it to be super thin, do we?

- No, we want it to have that nice, good bite.

Unfortunately, these attachments are not transformers, so we have to take the roller out and then we're going to add in our fettuccine cutter.

Just use our bench scraper.

Cut that in half.

Okay.

So roughly about, a foot.

Think about the size of a piece of pasta.

All right.

So turn it back on.

We're going to feed it through exactly the same way as we just did.

The only difference, is that it's going to come out cut on the other side.

- Look at that.

Isn't that beautiful.

Look at that.

That's beautiful.

- Alright, so we let it go about halfway down, and then we catch it from the side, and then we have our fun little pasta tree here.

Can hang a little bit on each side, and that way the noodles don't clump together.

- Mm hmm.

- If they're still pretty moist.

- We're gonna let this pasta sit here and dry.

Now, would we leave it there and let it get nice and dry all the way?

- Only if you want dried pasta.

But to me, that's kind of taking away the magic of this.

- Of making fresh pasta.

- Fresh pasta.

Honestly, we could go right from here, right into the water.

- [Chef Pamela] And now we're gonna make a quick, ricotta, gnocchi.

Now typically, gnocchi are made with potatoes.

- Yes.

- So tell us the difference between this, and the traditional potato gnocchi.

- Well, the difference is that sort of the moist ingredient that we're using is ricotta, as opposed to processed potato.

So the only thing that we do have to do to the ricotta, is either strain out the whey of our ricotta because we have the curds and whey, so we don't want it to be too, too moist.

- Right.

- So we can just put it over a strainer.

You can line that with a coffee filter and let the waste drain down below.

Or, we buy, this is called a ricotta impastata.

- Okay.

- So, we get this at one of the restaurant stores, and just anyone can go in there and buy this as well.

So it's very, very thick, and it's already had most of the whey removed from it so we can even skip that process.

- That's awesome.

So how are we going to make this gnocchi?

- Chef's best tools, clean hands.

They won't be clean for long though.

- Okay.

- All right.

So we're gonna start out with some all purpose flour.

This has a little less gluten in it than the semolina that we were talking about earlier, because with that pasta, we want that really nice, good chew to it.

- Yes.

- Okay.

So these are nice, tender little dumplings.

So we don't want too too much of that chew, we want to have that nice moist texture.

- So this is really similar to the process you would use for making the semolina dough, except instead of the ricotta, you would use your eggs in here.

- Exactly.

- Now you're just gonna start incorporating.

- So I'm just making kind of layers here.

So we started with our flour, ricotta next, and I'm making a well in each one of those.

Okay, that was some nice grated Parmesan cheese, again, a nice little well, in the center.

I already added a little bit of salt into our flour.

I'm going to add some nice, fresh, cracked pepper.

Okay.

And then I always love adding fresh herbs in just about every single thing I do.

- Yeah.

- So this is something that we make.

This is a homemade poultry seasoning.

- Okay.

- So everything that you would find in that jar of poultry seasoning, we get fresh herbs, and we whiz it up in the blender and then we freeze it.

Last thing, it's going to go in, is one egg.

And I'm gonna get in there with my hands.

I'm gonna get underneath all my ingredients.

Use my hands almost like paddles.

- And gush it together.

- Yeah.

Okay.

So you're gonna get messy.

That's okay.

It is not going to take long for this to start picking up and forming a ball of dough.

So we want to get underneath, pull towards ourselves, and then push out.

- So it doesn't take long to work it all together.

- It really doesn't.

- Now, do you knead this for awhile after it comes together like you do the regular semolina pasta?

- You do not, cause you don't want it to develop the gluten, is that right?

- Exactly.

That's what kneading does is develop gluten, make it stretchier and stretchier.

But again, in this case, we want a nice tender little dumpling.

So we only want to develop just enough gluten to the point where it sticks together and it holds its shape.

Once we have our nice ball of dough, we want to wrap it up with some plastic wrap, and we want to let those cheeses kind of firm back up just a little bit.

So we pop that in the refrigerator for about a half an hour to let the cheeses firm back up, but also, to rest that gluten that we have developed.

Lots of times when we roll things out, we flour our surface.

We don't wanna do that here, because it's going to make our surface too slippery, and then the dough just gonna kind of slide back and forth instead of actually sticking to our surface, which is what we need.

- Okay.

- So I'm going to flower my hands.

So just get a little bit of flour on my hands, and I'm going to clap off the excess.

I just want them lightly coated.

I'm gonna cut off a piece of dough, probably a little bit smaller than say a baseball.

- Okay.

- Okay.

So I'm going to start with my one hand, back and forth, back and forth.

- And that's why you don't want it to be too slick.

- Right.

Or else it would just kind of slide back and forth.

We need to actually have a little bit of grip to our surface and that way we can allow that dough to stretch out into this nice long log.

Okay.

So it's just like going back to kindergarten and - Making snakes.

- Working with Play-doh.

We want our diameter to be about half an inch.

And now I'm going to get a little bit of flour on my bench scraper.

If you don't have one of these at home, you can just use a knife.

We do a method that I call the hit and flick.

Okay.

So I'm going to use this knuckle to kind of guide where my cuts are gonna go.

So I hit and flip.

All right.

So that way, when you kind of flick it away, it's not going to stick to the next gonococci.

- Got it.

- That way you're not gonna wind up with a pile that you have to break apart later on.

Now, if you don't wanna go and form the classic shape with a fork, you can just leave them in the little pillows, like they are, and you can even freeze them this way, or they can go right into the water, ready to cook.

- They can go just like this.

- Absolutely.

So I'm gonna form the kind of classic shape that has the little ridges on them, just with a fork.

So I'm gonna start at the base of the fork on the cut side of the gonococci, and then roll straight, and then kind of up at the end.

- Well, isn't that cute?

- Beautiful little ridges.

- Isn't that cute?

Isn't it cute.

And this is another reason why you need your table to stick just a little bit.

- Yes, no flour necessary here.

- So now are we ready to cook our pasta?

- Yeah, let's do it.

- So we have got these units to cook our pasta in, right?

- This makes it so easy, just to not only drop them down into the pasta water, but also to retrieve them.

- Absolutely, because you don't have to get an extra strainer, do you?

- You do not.

And that way, also you're left with that beautiful pasta water.

The only thing about this tree, is that we want to remove the pasta from the rungs on either side or else it can get really heavy on one side and topple over.

That almost happened to us one day.

Into our baskets.

Now, the semolina pasta is going to take a little bit longer.

We typically let that cook for roughly six to seven minutes, even though it's a fresh pasta, at the end, it's still going to have that nice, good al dente texture.

Just a little chew to it.

Okay.

The dumplings are not a timed thing.

- Okay.

- Okay, so what we're looking for is for them to float to the surface, and once they float to the surface, we wanna let them cook for about one more minute after that, and then they're ready to come out of the water.

- So those are floating now, and they'd simmered for another what, minute or so?

- About a minute, yup.

- And they're ready to go, aren't they?

- Again, nice and easy to pull them out with these lovely baskets.

- Those are really cute.

Just let that pasta water drain down so we don't add too much more liquid to our pasta.

- Oh, look at the little pillows, they're adorable.

- Aren't they cute.

- All right.

Now, if we're gonna serve them immediately, we don't need to do this extra step, but typically when we're making them, we're waiting until everything is ready before we serve.

So we just toss it in just a little bit of olive oil.

- To keep them from sticking.

- They won't stick.

And if you wanna make them and keep them in your fridge for a few days, that's a great way again, to not have them stick as well.

- Good, good.

Now, could you freeze that like that?

- You can, you can freeze them already cooked or you can freeze them uncooked.

- Okay.

- And just put them out onto a sheet pan, so they don't, again, all clump together.

Once they're frozen, then you can turn them out into a zip top bag and you're good to go.

You just pop them out and cook them as you normally would.

- And so now, do we need to get the other pasta out?

Is that ready yet?

- It looks like it's ready - Ooh, look at that.

- Looks so good.

Now, this is, one of those things, you gotta have fingers of fire like me.

- You gotta test it.

- All right.

So here you go.

You want to test a little bit?

- Sure.

Oh, it's, you could, yes, yes.

- Okay, it still has that nice, good, al dente texture.

- Yes.

Oh boy.

Is that flavor ever so nice.

- Not too soft.

So I think we're good to go.

Let that water drain down.

We'll pour it out into our bowl, and let's throw a little bit of olive oil on there.

Let's give it a quick little toss.

Okay.

Looking fabulous.

We can see that basil popping through, - And then we're gonna need a little bit of that pasta water to finish off our sauce with, Aren't we?

- We sure are.

Put a little bit of that in there right now.

- How much?

I've got a small ladle.

- I'd say, well, we have definitely reduced out quite a bit of the moisture.

So again, we're looking pretty thick here.

So I'd say maybe two to three, at least, we'll start there, and we'll see where we get to with that.

- There's two.

- So, yep.

I think so.

- There you go.

- You want to be nice and saucy, a little bit looser than that?

- Now, Mara, why do we add pasta water instead of just regular water?

- Well, it has a little bit of the starch.

So our starch from our pastas have leached out into the water.

And so that's going to help thicken up any juices.

We don't want our sauce to be too liquidy.

- Right.

- Okay.

And then it's again, going to coat the pasta, and we're not going to have that kind of separation that we really don't want.

So last couple of things that we need to do, is add our fresh herbs.

So we have our basil, we have flat leaf Italian parsley, and fresh oregano.

We wanna add it last moment.

Essentially, we're just heating these up.

Just warming them up, activating all the essential oils.

Salt and pepper, as always.

- Always salt and pepper.

- Now there's a lot of material to cover here.

So, don't be afraid of seasoning your food.

It's definitely one of the things that we teach all the time is we salt, and we taste.

So start with some, give it a taste, and see what we think we need.

If we need more salt, add a little bit more salt but to taste as we go.

Let's plate.

- We're ready to go.

Let's do our fettuccine first.

- We can get kind of fancy here.

- Oh, look at that.

Beautiful.

- Oh look at that.

Okay, so put it on the plate and then we'll kind of do a little bit of a twist and build it up just a little bit.

So we have some height.

Big scoop of marinara on top of that.

- Yum.

- Oh yeah.

And of course, we need some fresh Parmesan cheese.

- Beautiful, fresh grated, Parmesan cheese.

Don't skimp on this.

Oh my goodness.

Oh, that looks fantastic.

Look at how beautiful.

This is our fresh, basil fettuccine with our marinara.

And now we've got to do the gonococci.

- So not obviously as quick as your, you know, box of pasta, and jar of sauce.

However, you can make these elements little by little.

- You can put them in the freezer, and you could pop them out on a busy week night, and have a wonderful freshly made pasta dinner.

You need pesto for that.

Don't you?

- Yeah.

Now I'm going to put it just right on top.

Typically, we would want to work it through, and we want to be able to kind of see those cute little gnocchi.

- Because they're so adorable.

Little more cheese - I mean a little more cheese never hurt anybody, right?

- Nope.

- And you could throw a little bit more basil on top.

Just for garnish.

You could throw a couple of cherry tomatoes on here.

- That'd be nice too.

- The other day, I just added a little splash of cream to it made a delicious sauce.

So, super versatile.

- It's beautiful.

And look at here, guys.

Here is our ricotta gnocchi with our basil pesto that has pine nuts and Parmesan cheese.

Thank you for joining me today.

This has been really, I loved all the little things of the pasta tree and your little tricks with the gonococci was fabulous.

Just really fabulous.

- Thank You.

- So if you guys want to grab Mara's recipes, you can get them on our website at pbscharlotte.org, or you can send me an email at Pamela P A M E L A dot Roberts, R O B E R T S @cpcc.edu, and I'll be happy to pop them in the mail for you.

So thank you for watching and we'll catch you next time on Charlotte Cooks.

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