Is there anything better than a steaming bowl of pasta?

I think not.

But wait.

Isn't pasta made up of evil, fat-producing carbs?

Oh, honey, you don't know what you're missing if you've taken pasta off your plate.

Let's get back to the cutting board and the pasta pot today on Christina Cooks.

(cheerful music) ♪ (announcer) Underwriting for Christina Cooks is provided by Suzanne's Specialties, offering a full line of alternative vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne's Specialties, sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

Additional funding is also provided by Old Yankee Cutting Boards, designed for durability and custom crafted by hand with Yankee pride and craftsmanship.

Jonathan's Spoons, individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

♪ Additional funding is also provided by: ♪ Hi, I'm Christina Pirello, and this is Christina Cooks, where each week we will make fabulous dishes from the most wonderful seasonal, whole ingredients.

Will it all be plant-based?

Yup.

Will it all be yummy?

Uh, yup.

So, we're gonna talk today about pasta, which is one of the great loves of my life.

I can't imagine a week without pasta.

And I know there's a lot of people who consider pasta to be one of the evil carbs, but we're gonna talk about ways to make it a healthy addition to any table.

And we're gonna start by making a soup, which is known in Italy as pasta e fagioli.

Or if you're from South Philly, the Bronx, or New Jersey, where I'm from, pasta fazool, which makes my ears bleed.

So, let's call it pasta e fagioli, shall we?

Okay.

So, we're gonna start with extra virgin olive oil into a pan that has not been heated.

Right?

You've all heard me say this a million times, put your oil in the pan and then turn on the flame.

Olive oil can be cooked to high heat, but if you want the flavor of olive oil, you start with it cold and then bring your heat in.

We're gonna add to that some red onion... ...and some garlic.

The minute you turn that oil on, you have to get your first vegetables in there pretty quick so it doesn't become too hot.

So, we're gonna add our onion.

So, you need to be quick with your knife.

You know what I mean?

Quick with your knife.

If you're not quick with your knife, don't turn the oil on until you're ready.

Then, we're gonna take garlic and smash it to release the essential oils and the flavors.

Now, garlic is more than just the dramatic herb that gives us high opera.

It's antifungal, antibacterial, it boosts immune function, it's delicious, it waxes your car.

Paying attention?

Okay.

So, in goes the garlic.

You hear that lovely sizzle building now.

Now this is gonna be a bean soup, right?

It's pasta e fagioli.

Fagioli is beans.

So, just a tiny pinch of salt to sweeten the onions.

What you don't want to do is put a ton of salt in when you're making a bean soup, otherwise, the beans won't get soft, or they'll get kind of partly soft, partly hard, and the soup is moderately gruesome.

Okay.

So, we're gonna sauté these just until they're translucent and you don't smell a really strong onion smell.

You want to make sure that your onions are sweet.

If you cheat yourself at this point when you're making soup, what happens is your soup tastes only like onions.

What you want to do is make sure that your soup has a sweet taste.

The job of soup is to relax the middle organs, spleen, pancreas, and stomach, so that you can receive the rest of the meal and digest it.

So, you want to make sure your onions are sweet.

Once they're translucent, we'll add some diced celery... ...and some diced carrot.

Now, you can, at this point, add another little pinch of salt, but I tend to err to the side of maybe I shouldn't so my beans get soft.

And once they're shiny with oil which takes, I don't know, 30 seconds, then we'll add in our dried herbs.

So, we have some dried basil and some dried rosemary.

And now, suddenly, your sauté smells like an Italian garden in July.

It's magnificent.

When I was a kid, my mother made this soup for my father every Friday night, and I would sit at the table and pick out every single bean so that I just had pasta and veggies.

It didn't matter that the soup was cold and oily when I was done.

I was not eating those beans.

If my mother was alive, she'd be like, "Really?

Really with the beans?"

Okay.

So, now, we're gonna add a diced zucchini.

And with zucchini, I tend to take the little top and bottom off just to give myself some sweetness and so it doesn't have a tough ending on it.

So, we're gonna take the zucchini, cut it into spears, and then because soup is meant to be sweet, you want to cut the spears in half again.

The smaller your dice, the sweeter your soup.

It's just one of those little tricks that people who make great soup know.

And if your soup doesn't have little tiny pieces, it won't be quite as satisfying.

It's not a deal-breaker, but it's just another good excuse to get good with your knife.

In goes our zucchini.

One little stir.

A bit of canned diced tomatoes.

If tomatoes are in season, you can use them fresh, dice 'em, and throw them in.

Or you can just use canned tomatoes.

(sizzling) You want to get the lycopene and the vitamin C that come from tomatoes.

And because these were canned, you don't get any of the alkaloids that cause arthritis to become worse.

So, you get all the benefit of lycopene because there's olive oil in the soup so you digest it better and assimilate it better, but you don't get any of the downside of what we know as nightshades, okay?

The next thing to go in are cannellini beans.

These are white Italian kidney beans and they cook up so creamy and rich and lovely that you just want to turn them into gelato if you possibly could.

So, those are gonna go into our soup.

You can use canned ones to make this process faster.

Your soup is ready in 20 minutes.

And then we'll add water.

(sizzling) And the soup will cook covered for about 30 minutes.

So, once you add your beans, then you're gonna cover it.

If the beans are dry, this'll cook for about an hour.

If the beans are canned, you'll have soup in about 15 minutes.

So, we're gonna let this cook and then boil the pasta and stir that in.

♪ So, the soup is ready.

It's fully cooked.

And in this pan I have pasta cooking.

When we made pasta e fagioli at home with my mother when we were kids, she always cooked the pasta separately so it didn't overcook and become starchy.

It's genius.

Italians cook pasta super al dente.

You would eat it in America and go, "I don't think Italians know how to cook pasta," but the truth is they do know how to cook it and by cooking it super al dente, it's not an insulin trigger.

That's why Italians eat pasta morning, noon, and night and look like, oh, I don't know, Sophia Loren.

So, the pasta is gonna cook for maybe six minutes.

You're gonna take it out of the salted water right into the soup.

You want that little bit of starch to help your soup have some body.

So, we're gonna scoop it out.

You can see it's not quite finished and that's good.

Scoop it right out.

Take starch and everything right into your soup.

And, now, we're just about ready to finish it off.

I'm gonna come over here.

This is broccoli rabe.

Broccoli rabe is the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th wonder of the world.

It's a bitter green.

It's supposed to be bitter.

Please don't boil it before you cook it, please.

You sauté it.

It's supposed to be bitter.

If you get your broccoli rabe from the store and you notice there's little splits on the ends, please cut those stems off because they'll be a little bit too bitter.

Then, we're gonna chop it into bite-size pieces.

It's gonna go right into the soup with the pasta.

A tiny bit of salt.

We're gonna give it a stir.

And, now, you have what we call in South Philly pasta fazool, but that we know in the real world is known as... (everyone) Pasta e fagioli.

Bravo.

Okay.

(soft music) ♪ ♪ -Can a vegetable be a fruit?

-A fruit can be a vegetable.

What?

It can be both?

What happens if you swallow the seeds?

(unintelligible) -I don't get it.

-I am so confused.

♪ (Christina) So, in our office, we get phone calls, letters, e-mails, whatever, all with people sort of struggling or having questions as they transition to a healthier life.

So, I'm honored that people feel like they can trust me with those answers, and I'm happy to share whatever it is that I know.

So, we thought we'd have people in this series to address their questions and see if I can't help them move more smoothly toward the path of healthy living.

So, I'm here today with Louis Remoulde who is a fitness trainer and a wonderful cook.

(Louis) Hi, how are ya?

Thanks for having me.

So, I am seeing a lot lately the use of nutritional yeast.

I've used it a few times.

I'm confused by it, and... -Do you like it?

-I do like it, but I don't know if I'm using it the right way, or I don't know if it's just the flavor of it.

I don't know, there's something about it and I wanted to know why.

So, nutritional yeast is used a lot in vegan cooking to simulate the flavor and texture of cheese.

It's used in macaroni-and-cheese recipes, it's used in...

They say that it has analogue B12 which is not the same as B12, but, you know, it does contain some B vitamins.

Um, I don't care for it because having eaten a vegan diet for 35 years, I don't miss things like the flavor of cheese, and I get that with miso if I want it.

My concern, that's a strong word, but my concern with nutritional yeast is it's yeast based.

So, it's--I think it's gonna cause people to struggle with bacteria in the intestines and excess yeast and bloating if they use too much of it.

Like, I see people who use it all the time, every day.

Occasionally, you want to use it because you like the flavor in your chili recipe or, you know, a pizza.

I think you're fine, but I don't think it's something that should have a regular place on the shelf in your pantry.

Now, would you thicken things with it?

Mm, not often, but you could.

It's gonna give you a flavor and you got to make sure you want that.

-Great.

-Cool?

-Yeah, thanks.

-You're welcome!

(cheerful music) ♪ So, when you think of pesto, you think of what's known as Genovese pesto.

It's made with basil, and Parmigiano cheese, and pine nuts, and garlic, right?

We're gonna make one that's a little bit different.

We're gonna make it with our green being broccoli.

Now, we all know of broccoli as the vegetable your mother tells you you should eat, but it actually has proven scientifically to be a cancer fighter, not just because it has antioxidants, which we all love, we think.

At least, it's in our skincare, right?

But it actually contains an antioxidant known as sulforaphane which has been shown to break down the RNA of cancer cells, preventing them from clustering which is what causes metastatic cancer.

So, broccoli should be on your table.

We are going to grind it in a bowl that's known as a suribachi.

It's a little bit different than a mortar and pestle because the bowl is grooved, so it allows grinding to be done a little more easily.

So, we're just gonna grind the broccoli down.

If my grandmother was here, my nonna would say, "Ooh, you're using modern technology."

When she made pesto, everything was chopped by hand to the most miniscule of pieces.

So, she would be like, "Ooh, we got all modern.

Now we have a bowl."

Right?

So, you just want to partially begin the smashing process.

Then, we're gonna take and add to this skillet pine nuts... ...and walnuts.

This little nut is much more powerful than you would imagine.

They did a 15-year study on people who ate 15% of their diet as walnuts.

They cut their serum cholesterol in half, as in half of a whole.

Half.

So, you should eat walnuts.

We're gonna lightly pan toast them so that they take on a stronger flavor and the oils and the nuts begin to soften, so to speak, so you can digest them more easily.

When you're sautéing nuts or dry roasting nuts like this, particularly if you're using pine nuts, you don't get to walk away.

You don't get to go have a coffee, walk the dog, right?

You got to finish them right here because they quickly go from one shade golden and delicious to burnt.

And it's right up there with garlic is burnt pine nuts.

Terrible flavor.

So, as soon as they turn maybe a shade darker, they go right in on top of your broccoli.

Now, we'll add to it some extra virgin olive oil.

Be generous here, you're making pesto.

And I like to add a little bit of brown rice syrup.

It just makes it a little bit richer and sweeter.

It's just me.

Then, we're gonna take some garlic, smash it... ...coarsely chop it.

You want to coarsely chop it because if you put the whole clove in the suribachi, you're gonna be here making pesto for about a week.

So, you want to give yourself a little bit of a head start.

And, then, the Parmigiano flavor comes from white miso.

So, we're gonna take about two tablespoons.

It's gonna go right in there.

Then, we take the surikogi which is the pestle, and now we're gonna smash this.

Now, my grandmother would make a very coarse pesto so that you could still recognize the broccoli.

You can stay here doing this or use a food processor and create a smooth, creamy pesto.

It's not what I'm used to, so I tend to make one where you can still recognize the broccoli.

So, we'll just keep smashing this around a little bit to make sure that the miso is well-blended.

And, then, as soon as it's the texture that I like, you'll know, your pesto will tell you.

It'll be like, "Yes, I'm ready."

The oil is emulsified in there, it's well-blended, you don't see miso, you can still see the nuts a little bit.

Beautiful.

So, then, over here, we have our fettuccine cooking.

Now, the fettuccine is not cooking in a gigantic pot of water running around, right?

In Naples, where my family is from, they cook pasta in less water.

Go ahead, ask me why.

-Why?

-Because you... Because you want to taste the pasta, not the water.

If you cook it in too much water, as we're used to in America, you taste water.

You want to taste pasta.

And you salt your pasta water generously so that you taste the pasta.

Once you have it beautifully in your bowl like this... ...you're gonna come over here, take your pesto.

Now, if this was the northern part of Italy, where pesto was born, they serve their pasta with pesto just like this.

Right on top, in the center.

No stirring it in.

In the south, we're a little more robust.

We stir everything in.

But we're gonna do this northern style to give it its due.

So, you put your broccoli and your pine nuts and your walnuts on top.

Then, you take some roasted red peppers for garnish.

It's not only beautiful, but it's the colors of the Italian flag.

Get it?

So, you have a perfect, cancer-fighting, completely yummy pasta with pesto.

It's the best.

♪ So, when you make a stew or you're gonna oven-roast vegetables, you need them to be in a little bit bigger pieces.

So, this is called a "roll cut" or chunk-style cutting.

The roll cut is easy.

So, you hold your carrot on the big end, put your knife down, and then you roll the carrot toward you 90 degrees or 180 to make bigger pieces.

So, 90 will give you these nice, small pieces.

One-eighty gives you these great big pieces that are great for roasting in the oven.

So, depending on the size of your veggie and your cooking style, this is how you cut for a longer-cooking carrot dish.

And there's your roll cut.

♪ So, I think now what we'll do is make a super-fast pasta dish as though the others were not super fast.

Well, the soup took some time, but this one is super fast.

When people think of couscous, they don't think of it as pasta but, in fact, it is.

It's pasta dough that's just been rolled into tiny little pieces.

And talk about quick.

You don't even actually cook couscous.

You boil water.

(kettle whistling) Pour the boiling water into a measuring cup 'cause you want to cook couscous one to one.

You don't want to float it, right?

So, you take boiling water... You're gonna love this, you guys are gonna love this.

Pour it in over the couscous.

Take a spoon and just sort of stir it around a little bit so that all the couscous has water on it.

Right?

I'm telling ya, talk about easy.

If you're a beginning cook, couscous is for you.

Then, you're gonna take either a plate or a cover, put it on here and leave it for five minutes.

That's it.

You are currently cooking couscous.

So, now we're gonna take some extra virgin olive oil.

You got to be generous here because we kind of need the oil to soak something up.

You'll see.

Now we're gonna take some tempeh.

Tempeh comes to us from Indonesia.

It's a fermented soybean product, and what they do is they take the soybeans, they partially crack them and then they cook them, and they inoculate them with the same starter that they use to make Brie.

And what happens over a fermentation period is the soybeans are held together and you see a white mycelium just like you see on Brie.

And what that does is create a fermented product that gives you a hearty texture and is easy to digest because it's fermented but gives you protein.

So, what we're gonna do is take a little bit of salt and we're gonna go light with salt on this recipe, and you'll see why, and we're gonna lightly brown this in olive oil just like you would if you were browning pretty much anything.

So, you're just gonna stir it around in the oil.

It's gonna come to a nice, golden color.

It doesn't really brown.

I probably should use a better word than that.

It's gonna turn golden.

So, it's gonna darken in color and be golden.

And what you're trying to create is a texture that's gonna mix in with the couscous and give you some chewiness, so it's just not like pasta with something else soft.

So, it's really a lovely idea and it's gonna turn this dish into a complete protein, right?

Because you've got grain and beans together.

Not that you need them that way in every meal, but it kind of boosts your energy level with this.

So, once your tempeh becomes golden and you can really hear that beautiful sizzle, we're gonna add to it some red onions, diced red onions.

You may use any onions that you like.

You can use shallots, you can use leeks.

I love red onions.

I think they are sweet and delicious, and they're full of magnesium which helps to calm your nerves.

Some diced garlic.

Give it a little bit of a stir.

And you don't want to cook the onions too much here.

You want them to just lose that raw onion flavor.

You want them to still have a little bit of tooth, right?

Then, we'll add some capers.

And, then, we're gonna very quickly... ...cut some oil-cured olives in half and these will also get stirred in.

And this will give us not only richness but pantothenic acid.

And pantothenic acid is said to be the compound that caused the ancient Romans to believe that eating olives would make them live forever.

Now, they didn't know to call it pantothenic acid, but modern science tells us that pantothenic acid is linked to longevity.

So, they were on the right path.

They just didn't know what to call it.

Some of these olives are slippery little suckers too.

So, we're just gonna chop those.

We're gonna throw those in.

Now you can see why I said go really light with salt at the beginning 'cause you've got capers and olives.

If you add a lot of salt here, you'll just have a dish that's moderately inedible.

So, the olives go in.

Give it a nice little stir.

You have to be attentive to this.

You can't walk away too much.

And, now, we have sun-dried tomatoes.

Now, all tomatoes are rich in a compound called lycopene, also vitamin C, but lycopene is an antioxidant that helps us to have reproductive wellness, particularly men.

It's linked to a healthy prostate.

Sun-dried tomatoes have 20% more lycopene, and because we're cooking them in olive oil, they're really, really, really, really, really potent in the body because the olive oil makes the lycopene even more digestible.

So, you're not just making couscous here.

You're making a dish.

So, once this is stirred in, you're done.

Turn it off so it doesn't burn.

Now we're gonna go back to our couscous.

Take a fork.

And you're just gonna go in here and sort of move the couscous around and loosen it.

And you can see, it's gotten sort of fluffy and loose, and this is what you want.

It took less than five minutes.

You can leave it as long as you need to but, you know, five minutes will do the trick.

We add our sautéed bits into here, tempeh, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, capers, onions, and garlic.

Yum.

And, then, the last thing is we'll take some fresh basil and a bitter green.

Now, you can use arugula, you can use escarole, you can use dandelion, but you want a nice bitter green because it's going to help you to digest the oil in the olives and in the olive oil more efficiently.

So, not only do you have a complete protein, you have a dish that you can digest so, so easily.

And we made this dish start to finish, no problem, in about six minutes.

So, what are you waiting for?

Get back to the cutting board, and I'll see you next time on Christina Cooks.

(uplifting music) ♪ ♪ ♪ (announcer) Underwriting for Christina Cooks is provided by Suzanne's Specialties, offering a full line of alternative vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne's Specialties, sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

Additional funding is also provided by Old Yankee Cutting Boards, designed for durability and custom crafted by hand with Yankee pride and craftsmanship.

Jonathan's Spoons, individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

♪ Additional funding is also provided by: ♪ You can find today's recipes and learn more by visiting our website at: And by following Christina on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

The companion cookbook, "Back to the Cutting Board," takes you on a journey to re-engage with the soul of cooking.

With more than 100 plant-based recipes, finding the joy in cooking has never been simpler.

To order your copy for $20 plus handling, call: Add Christina's iconic book, "Cooking the Whole Foods Way," with 500 delicious plant-based recipes.

To order both books for $39.95 plus handling, call: ♪