>>I have a stockpot going on my cooktop, and you'll see that I have a lot of ingredients going, but I'm gonna tell you how to shorten this if you want to.

I just happen to have a whole lot of fresh Roma tomatoes and zucchini, and I wanted to share how to do this from scratch.

So in our stockpot, we have three tablespoons of olive oil and I'm going to add one large chopped onion.

(onion sizzling) You can hear that nice sizzle going, and I love it.

Let's give that a little stir so that olive oil coats all of those onions and they can cook a whole lot faster that way, and then you don't get as much burning either.

I want to add to that, some freshly minced garlic.

This is about three cloves.

They're pretty big ones, and I have lots of fresh herbs right now.

I love to use fresh herbs, but if you don't have fresh remember that when you're using something like an oregano or a basil fresh, you'll use one-third, the amount dried.

So anytime you don't have fresh, it's not a problem.

Just reduce that amount to one third.

So I have about a tablespoon of fresh oregano, and then I have about a quarter cup so four tablespoons of basil.

And you can also reduce this.

I particularly love basil, so you can reduce it to two teaspoons if you like, but for me the basil really enhances this pasta dish.

Now I'm gonna add two pounds of fresh zucchini so any kind of zucchini or squash works great in this.

I like it for the texture and I always like to put that extra nutrition in when I can.

So let's just give it a stir.

This doesn't have to cook down a lot at this point.

We're going to cook it once we add all the tomatoes.

And then I wanna add one six ounce can of tomato paste.

Now, a lot of people have said how do you get that tomato paste out of the can?

Super easy, cut off the top then cut off the bottom and just push it through.

It's almost like a little plunge works great and it cleans out the can.

Now, I want that tomato paste really hit the heat to get that my (indistinct) effect, that crystallization of the sugar in the tomatoes.

It gives such a depth of flavor to this dish.

And next the fun is really going to begin because I'm going to start processing those tomatoes.

Now, if you don't have fresh tomatoes, no problem use 2 28 ounce cans of just a San Marzano or a plum tomato with the juice.

Now I have four pounds of these tiny Romas.

These are called Juliet tomatoes and I love to grow them because they're more like cherry tomatoes, but wow, are they intense?

And they're just a mini Roma.

So I like to use these, and a lot of times the grocery store will have Roma tomatoes on sale.

I like to buy those then and make sauce and stick it in my freezer.

So all of this can actually be made ahead of time (blending) and it takes no time.

We're just grinding.

We're not completely pureeing to get the hard parts of the tomato, those little stem pieces so that they're ground up and you're not getting chunks of that in your sauce.

All right, now we've got all of our tomatoes, our zucchini our herbs are in there.

Now we just need to add a little bit of salt and pepper.

So what I want is about a tablespoon of salt.

Remember, you've got a lot of vegetables in there.

They need to be seasoned well and then we'll take some freshly ground pepper.

Let's stir it in and we're gonna simmer this about 25 minutes on the cooktop and then I'll be back to add a few more ingredients.

Okay, so first I'm going to add some butter.

Now about half cup of butter.

Now let's just stir that until the butter is melted melting right away in that nice hot sauce.

And now we want to add some heavy whipping cream.

So a little bit of whipping cream about a cup you can add up to a cup and a quarter, but about a cup.

And then two cups of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

Now this just starts that richness in this wonderful pasta dish.

This is filled with delicious cheeses, pasta, of course all of that wonderful zucchini and tomato.

So delicious, all right, and now I have some more cheese.

Wow, more cheese.

I have some provolone here about half a cup, and that's just chopped.

I had provolone slices, so I just chopped up about eight slices to give me half cup.

If you don't have sliced provolone cheese and you've got a hunk of provolone cheese by all means grate it because that distributes even better in this pasta.

I have two cups of mozzarella cheese.

You can use these little pearls that I happen to have.

You can use a marinated mozzarella cheese just a grated mozzarella cheese or a chunk of mozzarella cheese that you grate.

Any mozzarella cheese is fine whether it's fresh or it's packaged.

I love to use these little pearls because they just distribute so well in the pasta but you can still see them sometimes as you cut in.

And then I wanna add some me ricotta, half cup.

Just look at how rich this looks, it's amazing.

Now this is enough sauce for up to a pound of pasta in a casserole.

So what we're gonna do now is take our pound of pasta and we'll use as much as we want to use.

What I like to do is put in about three quarters of this and then stir it through and see then if it's too dry or if I think it's going to be too dry with more pasta.

So about three quarters of it.

And of course, you also don't wanna overflow your pan.

You want to use a tubular pasta for this because that way the tubes fill with the sauce and it enables the sauce to just be distributed even more fully.

You're not ending up with chunky pasta.

Anytime you're choosing a pasta, make sure you get the right pasta that's recommended for your dish.

That's also why macaroni and cheese is just so darn good.

The cheese gets into everything.

So let's just fill up this pan and I love this with Cab Franc.

Cab Franc goes so well with meat, but it also goes really really well with tomato dishes and with vegetarian things.

So if you have a good vegetarian sauce or you have a tomato-based sauce try it with a little Cab Franc.

It's just delicious.

Now let's make a little crumb to go on the top.

That will really enhance that crunch as you get into it I have a half cup of panko crumbs and a half cup of Parmesan cheese, and I'm just gonna pour those together and add three more cloves of garlic, because that crunch on the top is so good with the garlic flavor.

And then about a tablespoon to two tablespoons depending on how wet you need it to be to crumble up and go on top, just right in there.

Then just mix through.

Mm, this is so delicious.

Now let's take about half of that because that's about how much I took outta my pan and I just wanna crumble that on the top.

I'm gonna stick this in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes and we'll be back to plate up something so delicious to serve with that Cab Franc.

So good enough to eat right.

Oh my goodness, this looks amazing.

Can't wait to dig into it.

Just let it sit.

Maybe 10 minutes after you take it out so you have the chance for all those cheeses to just kind of come to a rest.

It's sort of like meat, and that first piece is always a doozy to get out, right?

There we go.

Oh man, that just smells so amazing.

And it looks so good.

Gotta get that little jumper zucchini there.

Mm, let's give it a taste.

Oh, just the way I remember it.

It's so good.

Now let's just try that with the wine.

(gentle music) The thing that I love about Cab Franc is the way that it all just kind of comes together in the bottle.

You know, a lot of wines they're very fruity or they're very vegetal, with Cab Franc, it just is a beautiful blend of both.

(gentle music)