♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - What I love most about Italian food is, it's basic, it's simple, and it depends on a few high-quality ingredients.

Now, here are a few recipes that I think really make the most of Italian cooking.

One is a Tuscan beef and pepper stew.

You throw the ingredients in a pot, and it's just beef with its own juices and pepper.

A great combination.

Second, there's a pasta con fagioli, which is pasta and bean soup.

That's another classic.

And finally, we went south of Milan to find out how to make authentic and easy polenta.

So stay tuned to Milk Street as we discover three Italian classics.

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Only tomatoes.

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♪ ♪ - So let's talk about culinary history, the mysteries of culinary history.

This dish, which is a beef stew with pepper and wine, Peposo alla Fornacina, comes from Florence when they were building the Duomo.

And they took a terra-cotta pot and some beef, and salt, and olive oil and wine, and they cooked it in the kiln all day.

Now, the question is, why would you cook beef and wine all day?

Because we found, actually, that's not an ideal thing to do.

The only answer to that must be that wine was cheap, wine was available, and you probably couldn't drink the water, so it was the liquid of choice.

But here at Milk Street, we are going to come up with a slightly different take on that recipe we think's a little better.

- Chris, you're absolutely right.

Stewing meat in wine for that long really isn't the best way to cook it.

We found a better way.

So we're going to start with a six-to-seven-pound chuck roast.

We really recommend not buying precut stew meat, which is really a mix of stuff that the butchers have gathered through the day.

You never know how it's going to taste.

- Right.

- Probably not very good.

So we're going to break down our own chuck roast.

Chuck is a great cut here.

It's really richly marbled, as you can see.

- And that's the shoulder area, right?

- Yep.

- Forequarter.

- Yeah, it's a great cut.

Very well marbled, has good intramuscular fat, which is going to break down and really help keep it moist and juicy as it cooks.

First of all, what I'm going to do is take off some of that outer layer of fat.

So you can just use a thin boning knife to cut it away.

At this point, we're just going to cut it into two-inch slabs and then break each slab down into two-inch pieces.

I think all knife cuts are really about taking food which is usually sort of awkwardly shaped, and reducing it down to geometric pieces that you can easily cube.

- Now, that's well marbled.

- That is a beautiful piece of meat.

- Yeah.

- So really, it is the question, how much of that do you take off?

Now, I'm going to leave the intramuscular fat, but then take out these big pieces.

You want to leave some fat on, but if there's too much fat, it adds sort of a deadening quality, and sort of dulls the flavors.

Much less has this super-greasy texture that, well, nobody wants in their stew.

- You're a little fussier than I am.

- Fussier than you?

- No, no, you're very particular about butchering.

- Now we're going to season the meat.

Again, it was that six-to-seven-pound chuck roast.

This is what we end up with, these nice two-inch chunks.

Except we're going to add one tablespoon kosher sea salt.

And this is somewhat surprising.

We're going to add two tablespoons of coarsely ground black pepper.

Usually when you're seasoning, it's, you know, twice the salt to pepper, right?

But the pepper is such a dominant flavor in this dish that we're going to use the two tablespoons.

Make sure it's coarsely ground.

If you do really fine ground, it's going to get too overwhelming.

- Well, it's also...

The thing about this recipe that's so interesting is, the pepper is actually a spice in this recipe.

- Yeah, Chris, you know, the pepper really is one of the key seasonings in this dish.

And when you combine it with the wine, you get this really nice one-two punch, the bold pepper and sort of the sweeter, deeper wine.

So at this point, the meat's really well seasoned.

Let me go clean my hands, and we'll continue.

Okay, so let's go ahead and build this stew now.

Let's get our Dutch oven up to medium.

And we're going to add two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.

And we want to bring this up to shimmering, Chris, that oil is just starting to shimmer, so we're going to add one large thin-sliced onion, and 12 whole garlic cloves.

Yeah, it's a lot of garlic, but that flavor's going to soften and sweeten, and there's no prep work-- you just have to peel it and dump it in with the onions.

So we're going to cook the onions and garlic until it's beginning to lightly brown.

Usually takes about seven to nine minutes.

Those onions are looking great.

Now we're going to add what I think of as sort of a superpower ingredient-- tomato paste.

We don't give tomato paste much credit, but it's just a fantastic way to add really deep flavor to things.

We're going to use a French technique where they really brown the tomato paste.

So we're going to cook that about three to five minutes, we're going to mix it in, and it's going to darken, and you're going to get these really intense, deep flavors.

So at this point, I'm going to go ahead and add the beef in.

(sizzling) And we're going to add two whole rosemary sprigs.

We're just going to stir that in a little bit.

And now, at this point, we're going to cover it.

We're going to add the wine after we cook the meat.

But we're also not adding any liquid.

We're effectively roasting the meat in its own juices to get this really concentrated, intense flavor.

So we're going to transfer that to the lower middle rack of a 325-degree oven, covered, for two hours.

And we're going to pull the lid, give it a stir, and cook it for another hour, hour and a half, until the meat's really tender.

- So this is actually a really important point, because we do this in almost all our stews.

You don't have to sauté the meat as the first step.

When you take the cover off, the heat of the oven will brown the meat.

And the meat's not sitting in a liquid.

The top of the meat's above the liquid.

And so that really browns, you get a really rich browning in the oven for the next hour, hour and a half.

Let the oven do the work.

You don't have to do it.

And you get a much more flavorful broth, as well, because you're not adding a lot of liquid.

- Yep, it's perfect.

♪ ♪ Look at that meat.

I mean, it browned beautifully.

- The oven did this.

You didn't have to sauté it and the oven did it.

So the oven does a phenomenal job.

- It does the work for me.

So let's go ahead-- we're going to pull the meat out.

Try and leave the onions behind.

Those onions at this point aren't going to have much flavor left-- they're pretty spent.

So we're going to strain those out.

So let's put that meat aside for a second, and we're going to go ahead and pour these juices through a strainer.

So, Chris, before we deal with these juices and turning them into the sauce, let's get our wine going.

So we didn't put wine in the stew.

We're going to reduce it down now.

And cooking it without the meat and everything helps keep the flavor fresher and brighter.

So let's do that over medium-high heat.

And we're going to add two cups of dry red wine.

Something like a chianti would be perfect here, because that's from the region where peposo was developed.

We're going to simmer that down over medium-high heat to one cup, so cook it down by a half.

- Now, if we cooked this with the meat, you'd see, after a couple of hours, you know, the wine gets sort of that dull grayish color, almost.

Well, there's actually a chemical reaction with the proteins in the beef, the meat, reacting with the polyphenols in the wine, which give it a sort of bright acidity.

And that's what happens.

So you dull out the wine, and you also, I think, dull out the meat, and you get that incredibly, what I think is a one-note sauce.

It has no brightness to it, it has no big flavor.

It's just very dull.

- So you can babysit this, make sure it doesn't burn while I'm cooking the rest of this.

- I got it.

- So at this point, we're going to push out any of the liquids from the solids.

So when I'm straining sauces, I always push it through, and then I always check the bottom.

And I always scrape it with a spoon, because some of those little bits are really flavorful.

So, Chris, at this point, let's skim that fat off from the sauce.

So remember, all these liquids are only produced by the onion that was in there and the beef.

So it's going to be really concentrated flavor.

If you don't want to take the time to skim that fat, you could just refrigerate the stew overnight.

Stew always tastes better the next day.

- And the fat's a solid.

- And the fat's a solid, and you just peel it off.

Okay, Chris, we're going to go ahead and add the defatted beef juices to the wine.

And now we're going to reduce this by half again, which is about five minutes.

♪ ♪ Chris, this is looking great.

It's been about five minutes.

That sauce is reduced down.

It's got this really velvety, silky-looking texture.

We're going to add the beef back and then warm it back up.

So we're going to tilt that in.

With the beef, let's go ahead and add a tablespoon of chopped fresh rosemary to refresh that flavor.

We can just stir that in.

- The meat is tender.

- It is.

- It's falling-apart tender.

- That's looking great, though.

So we just want it to warm through, so about five minutes.

So, Chris, this is looking terrific.

I am certainly ready to eat at this point.

We're going to slide it off the heat, and we're going to add a final dose of black pepper.

We're going to add two teaspoons of black pepper, coarse-ground, off-heat, so it really retains all of that floral flavor and that really terrific aroma.

Really do use fresh-ground pepper for this.

This is fantastic over polenta.

I like it over mashed potatoes, over, well, pasta certainly works, egg noodles... - Now, I've made this recipe a few times, and did serve it with polenta.

There's lots of places that, where polenta's great, but this is the best.

- Mmm.

- What is it, loverly, is that right?

- Loverly?

- It's loverly.

- Mmm.

- Mmm.

Very often in beef stew, the beef itself is washed out, right?

It's sort of done, it's, like, been through the wringer.

It's kind of gray.

This is... it's like it's, the beef was intensified during the cooking.

- The way the wine's cooked, separately, it really comes through loud and clear.

It's not flattened out as if you had stewed it with the meat all day.

- So to make a Tuscan beef and pepper stew, we did a few things differently.

We did not sauté the meat to start-- we sautéed some onions and garlic with, then, some tomato paste.

It gets a deep foundation.

Threw everything in the oven for a couple of hours.

Took the top off, let the oven do the work for the sautéing.

And then we finished off by simmering some wine separately, adding that to the defatted sauce, and at the last minute, adding a little bit of additional rosemary and black pepper and salt to taste.

And that way, you get a really fabulous stew.

Tuscan beef and pepper stew.

♪ ♪ You know, one of those classic Italian dishes, pasta fagioli, is muddy, it's murky, all the ingredients go together, they're not really very distinctive.

So we went to Castelbuono, which is one of those 14th-century hilltop towns, of which Italy has many, and we cooked with Maria Enza Arena, and she showed us how to do it the right way, which means it's bright and with individual ingredients.

Right?

- Mm-hmm.

- Everybody loves pasta, Chris, but we love this pasta particularly because it's so light and bright.

We're going to start with eight ounces here of campanelle pasta.

And we've cooked this already super-super-al dente, because we're going to finish cooking it at the end.

So I've undercooked my pasta in two quarts of water with a tablespoon of salt.

And what I did is reserve two cups of that cooking water.

We're going to use that later, as well.

And we're going to start with tomatoes.

We have two pints of grape tomatoes here.

And I'm going to heat three tablespoons of olive oil, medium-high.

- Now, when I see a big pile of cherry tomatoes, I'm always waiting for that recipe instruction that says, "Halve the tomatoes."

- These are going to go straight in as is.

- Good.

- They're going to char in the oil.

(sizzling) That nice sound.

So just a quick stir, and I'm going to turn the heat down to medium, and then I'm going to cover these for five minutes and let them blister and char and cook.

(sizzling) Ooh, look at these.

- Mmm.

- So you see, they have some nice color on them, and there's, some of them have started to split down the middle, so we're ready to move on to our vegetables.

I have one chopped red onion.

And I have one fennel bulb, thinly sliced.

And a half-teaspoon of salt.

So we're going to give this five minutes on medium-high.

All right, Chris, our vegetables have started softening, and we're going to add four garlic cloves, minced.

I have some fresh rosemary, one tablespoon, also minced.

This is one teaspoon of fennel seeds.

People kind of have a love-hate relationship with fennel, but I think everyone should learn to love fennel.

- Not at Milk Street.

- (laughs) - Milk Street is, like, the first ingredient in every recipe is fennel.

- Fennel.

And that's three-quarters of a teaspoon of red pepper flakes, for a little bit of heat.

So this is just going to cook for 30 seconds until it's fragrant.

Mmm.

These are two cans of borlotti beans, or Roman beans, and they're drained but not rinsed.

We're going to add to that two cups of low-sodium chicken broth and a half-cup of our pasta cooking liquid that we saved from before.

Now, if you can't find these borlotti beans, then pinto beans is a fine substitute.

But what we don't want to use is cannellini beans.

They don't work quite as well in this recipe.

Okay, we're going to cook this for ten minutes until the fennel softens and is ready.

(bubbling) And add our pasta.

Now, remember we cooked this super-al dente, because it's going to finish cooking in the rest of the dish.

- Which is, like, three minutes before it's supposed to be done, something like that?

Okay.

- Mm-hmm.

- And then we're going to cook this for three to five minutes in the broth with the beans and the vegetables.

And if you can't find campanelle pasta, it's fine to use any other short, frilly pasta or one that will put, pick up the flavors nicely in the sauce.

Now it's looking great.

I'm going to cut the heat.

And off heat, we're going to add some last additions that are really going to amp up the flavor and brightness of this dish.

I have two teaspoons of grated lemon zest.

- The old lemon zest trick.

- The lemon zest trick-- when in doubt... - Add lemon zest.

- (laughs): That's right.

Two tablespoons of lemon juice.

When really in doubt, add lemon juice, as well.

And I have the remaining two tablespoons of olive oil.

- Which is my favorite last-minute addition to almost everything.

- And I'm going to finish it with a little bit of black pepper, and we can add more on top.

Here, let's serve this up.

So really, what this is is a very hearty and a rustic dish.

All right, we're just going to finish this with some pecorino romano.

Traditionally, ricotta salata is what's used, but we prefer the assertive flavor of pecorino romano.

- And we have some olive oil.

- A hearty drizzle of olive oil.

The old olive oil drizzle trick.

- Well, a nice olive oil at the end is great.

- It's very yummy.

- Now, this looks terrific.

- This is a great weeknight meal.

It's part of our Tuesday night series, or Wednesday, or Thursday.

- Mmm.

- Enjoy.

Clearly you are.

- It's bright-- each ingredient you can taste.

I like the tomatoes in it, which I know is not typical.

- And the fennel and rosemary combination is my favorite bit, with the lemon.

- So we took a classic Italian dish, pasta fagioli, and did it a little bit differently.

We started with tomatoes that are "fried" in oil.

Fennel, fennel seed, onion, of course, and then two cans of borlotti beans and some pasta that wasn't quite finished cooking.

Finish that off with some broth and pasta cooking water, and you have, you know, a Tuesday night supper.

So pasta fagioli for Tuesday night or any night during the week.

It's light and bright and easy to make.

I know I sound boring.

(both laugh) Don't laugh too hard.

Most of the time because I repeat myself.

But I'm now going to repeat myself.

You go to Italy and you think there's nothing new to learn.

In fact, there's a lot to learn, including how to make polenta.

Now, polenta is the name of a coarse-ground cornmeal.

It's also the name of this dish.

What we learned was that there's a whole different way of making it, which is easier-- you don't need to stir it all the time-- and polenta doesn't need to have cheese and butter and all sorts of stuff in it, just like, you know, mashed potatoes is a basic concept.

You can use it for breakfast, you can use it any time of the day.

So a different technique...

I mean, this should be in your repertoire as sort of a basic, fundamental recipe.

- That's right, Chris.

So there are actually four main points that really helped us get the creamy-- without any cream or cheese-- well-cooked polenta that we were looking for.

And the first, most important thing is to buy, as you said, the coarse-ground cornmeal, which is polenta.

It's sometimes known as grits.

If you can find something that says "stone-ground," that's great.

That's the most important thing, is that it's coarse-ground or stone-ground.

We did prefer the yellow, but if white is all that's available, that's fine.

What we want to avoid, here, Chris, is the finely ground cornmeal, because that gets really kind of gummy and gloppy, and it's... - Well, it turns into pudding in about five minutes.

- Yeah, it's not what we're looking for here.

And then the second piece of this is, traditionally, you might be looking at a two cups of polenta to six cups of water ratio.

- Right.

- We almost double that.

We use 11 cups of water.

The third piece is using a whisk, making sure that as it starts cooking, we whisk it really well so that the starch is released, and those granules gelatinize and break apart in the beginning of cooking.

That will keep us from having to stir the whole time.

The fourth point that we learned was, rather than sort of slave away over the stovetop for two hours stirring, you get a much better result by actually just stirring in the beginning, like I said, and then transferring it to an oven to finish.

The even heat of the oven is much more reliable than stovetops, which can be really finicky.

So to get started, it could not be easier.

We're going to add our two cups of that coarse-ground cornmeal or polenta in there.

We have a tablespoon of kosher salt.

And 11 cups of water.

And I'm going to be bringing this up to a gentle simmer to get started.

And we're going to stir it pretty constantly in the beginning.

By putting in the work now, we can be lazy later and just let it hang out in the oven.

- Now, in Italy, they actually do it on the stovetop in those clay pots.

But they are very good at keeping the heat sort of moderated, and they hold heat pretty well.

We found, in this country, oven actually was a better way of doing it, just because our cookware's different.

- So I'm going to stir this pretty vigorously until it comes up to a gentle simmer, and then we go into a 375-degree oven for an hour.

- And obviously, there's no stirring for an hour, obviously, since it's in the oven, which is a good thing.

- It can hang out.

So, Chris, you can see this is up to a gentle simmer.

And you can already kind of smell the corn.

I'm going to just transfer this into that 375-degree oven, and it'll stay there for an hour.

♪ ♪ Okay, Chris.

So this just came out of the oven after an hour, and I'm going to whisk it again.

But I'm also going to use a wooden spoon, because we want to make sure that any little bits that got stuck in the corner of the pot or to the side of the pot get loosened.

- Mmm.

- Right?

- Looks creamy.

- Couple of things about polenta.

First of all, there's always going to be some, you know, difference, depending on your oven, and then, of course, your personal preference.

You know, how loose or thick do you like your polenta?

So we're going to put this back in the oven for anywhere between ten to 30 minutes.

But we're going to check it every ten minutes, because we want to check for not only the consistency and how thick it is, but also, you want to taste it and make sure those granules are cooked all the way through.

- You know, I'm very suspicious.

This is too easy.

You're going to tell me there's something at the end that's really hard?

- Well, Chris, when it comes out again, it has to sit for five minutes.

- Okay, that was the trick, okay.

♪ ♪ - All right, Chris.

So this went back in the oven.

It only needed about ten minutes.

But again, if it didn't look quite done to you, or you wanted it a little bit thicker, you could put it back in the oven for up to 30.

We'll mix it up a little bit.

- Okay.

- And then we'll spoon it into bowls.

- Mmm, that looks good.

- Right?

- It is amazing to me that there's a little whisking at the beginning-- you know, for a few minutes-- but that's essentially it.

- It's very little work.

- Look at that.

- And it's kind of amazing to me that there's no dairy in here, because it looks so sunny and creamy and delicious.

- So this is a spicy tomato sauce with anchovies and garlic, but I want to hold on that.

- Mm-hmm.

- Because I think we should just taste the polenta, right?

- The true test.

- Mmm!

That is the creamiest polenta, and it had almost no whisking.

It's amazing that long, slow cooking in the oven, it gets really well-cooked, but it gets creamy.

You get the creaminess of it.

- It's true, and the coarse-ground, there's still texture, you know?

It's not just, like, mush.

You have, like, the nice texture of the individual granules.

- Well, it's also interesting that this is just a base.

I mean, the notion of adding something rich to it really takes away from the flavor of the corn.

I mean, this is ultimately about the flavor of corn.

And so many times when you have it-- let's say, at a restaurant-- it's got so much other stuff in it, you can't tell it was made from corn, right?

- Right, and if you want to serve it with something rich, like, you know, short ribs or a nice braise, this is such a nice foil.

- Mmm, that is good.

Okay.

So spicy tomato sauce with anchovies and garlic.

Now, that's another surprise for us, is, they put a lot of toppings on it.

It's sort of like a bowl of rice.

You could put a lot of things on it.

So this is something that I never had before.

But this would obviously not go as well if it was full of cheese and cream, right?

- Right.

- And butter.

- And it's really bright.

There's a little bit of vinegar in the sauce, and the acidity is really nice.

- Mmm.

Oh, this is so good.

Well, I love one-bowl dinners or suppers.

And that's what polenta is.

It's like rice, it's like potatoes, it's like grains.

You start with that, and you can put anything you want on top of it.

But you could make a thousand different dishes out of this, because it's just simple and creamy.

And corn, almost anything goes with it, right?

- It will always eat like a warm hug.

- (laughs) That's an analogy I've never used at Milk Street, but that's good.

This has to be one of my favorite all-time Milk Street recipes, because it's so simple.

Soft polenta is coarsely ground cornmeal, two cups, 11 cups of water, a little bit of salt.

Bring it up to a boil, stirring occasionally.

Throw in the oven for an hour-plus, let it sit for five minutes... (laughs): And then you're done.

No cheese, no cream, no butter.

It's a great base for almost anything, and it's the easiest recipe in the world to do.

You can get this recipe, all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

This is unbelievable.

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Order your copy of the Milk Street cookbook for $23.95, 40% less than the cover price, and receive a Milk Street tote with your order at no additional charge.

Call 855-MILK-177, or order online.

Funding for this series was provided by the following.

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For more information on our extensive collection of kitchen products, we're on the web at fergusonshowrooms.com.

- For 25 years, Consumer Cellular has been offering no-contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like.

Our U.S.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you.

To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

- Since 1899, my family has shared our passion for everything that goes into our Mutti 100% Italian tomatoes.

Only tomatoes.

Only Mutti.

- Designed by cooks for cooks for over 100 years.

Cookware collection by Regal Ware.

Handcrafted in Wisconsin.

- The AccuSharp knife and tool sharpener, designed to safely sharpen knives in seconds.

AccuSharp: Keep your edge.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪