Yes.

That's right.

Got it all prepared.

Let's finish.

It's stunning.

Yes.

It's great.

It's all so ready.

So just let it all begin.

Hi, I'm Chris Fennimore, and welcome to the QED Cooks Kitchen.

Over the course of the years, you've had to listen to all my stories about Sunday dinners with my grandma and almost all of the recipes I have ever contributed to the cookbooks or made on the shows came from my experience of growing up in a large household in Brooklyn.

Every night, my sainted mother would start around 330 to prepare the meal for the 5 to 8 of us that evening.

Dad got home around 530 and he was ready to eat.

He worked as a marine mechanic, straightening, soldering, grinding, and finishing boat propellers.

Many of them came from the tugboats in New York Harbor, and they were enormous.

He would have had a light breakfast with coffee in the morning and a snack at lunch.

So now he was ready to eat.

And I can't remember that he was ever what you would call a fussy eater.

He preferred quantity to elaborate preparation.

Food still plays an important part in our family.

And every summer, for the last few decades, my oldest sister, Pat, has been generous to arrange a beach house in North Carolina where we can have a family reunion with three brothers and two sisters.

And pretty much all we do for that week is cook and talk about the food we enjoyed as kids.

When we did a show called P is for Potato I couldn't help but think about one of our family favorites, Italian potatoes.

And as luck would have it, my sister Pat and my baby brother Chuck were in town.

And so we decided to make the dish together on air.

So tell us Chuck, what do we.

We actually had to get something started here to start the potatoes because they take a little while to cook.

Right.

So they're, they're fried up in some olive oil.

Yeah.

And I love to what mom would do was she would, make these really crisp, and that was that always made them best.

Because then they're going to bake later.

And, so the crispness added a nice flavor to it.

I'm going to get rid of them.

Get rid of them.

I'm going to put them in a bowl.

So that, we can saute off some onions and, green pepper.

So, Pat, this is a this is a dish.

I know, you know that, that you used to enjoy when mom would make it.

There were two baked potato dishes, right?

That mom would make.

Oh, that.

This one.

And the mashed potatoes.

Yeah.

Famous mashed potatoes with mozzarella melted in it.

Yeah.

And we've done that recipe on another show.

So, Pat, would you hand me the olive oil while Chuck does that.

I'm going to heat up some olive oil.

How many recipes did we do that started.

Start with the olive oil and onion and onion and garlic and garlic.

Right.

Is like you could put that if we did a family and we did a family cookbook.

But if you did a family cookbook, you could just put that like it in the head of a chapter.

And then just all the recipes after that start that way.

All right.

So there's a little bit of, olive oil question.

People always ask me, you know, what kind of oil do you use to fry?

You could use a lighter, oil, like a canola oil or, vegetable oil.

But it doesnt tastes the same, but it doesn't no.

And, and actually, when we were growing up, I don't know if that they, they probably did have extra virgin olive oil, but I think they used, pure olive oil, like, it wasn't extra virgin.

It was.

It was just plain olive oil.

And, but now, boy, the flavor on Extra Virgin is so much better and so much nicer.

Yeah, there's so much more variety now available.

Yeah.

So Pat if you want to get in here and get these into the pan, some of these stuff into the pan and start stirring that around because those have to wilt.

Don't get too near Chuck with that knife.

You know.

I'm dangerous.

Oh, I remember, mom making huge pans of this, and people would come over for Sunday dinner and join us and, totally unexpected.

Oh, yeah.

Sometimes.

Sometimes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, Chuck, you are now you're, smashing up a garlic.

Yep.

All ready to go.

Wow.

Hold it on there.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's.

Yeah.

That's the.

You don't want to put your garlic into the pan too early because, it will burn before the onion is soft and you don't want a burnt garlic flavor.

We were debating about whether or not mom actually ever put garlic in this.

Graham.

Graham was not a fan of garlic.

No.

And so.

Yeah.

Italian.

Yeah.

Well, it ended up, you know, that I yeah, we kind of, we kind of use garlic now.

Yeah.

You might say a little bit.

I mean, people ask me if I put garlic in my oatmeal, you know, and, and, and it's an idea I've been thinking about, actually.

So maybe, maybe some, you know, Parmigiano Reggiano.

But again, the joy of this dish was that it?

It made a lot.

So it was Abbondanza You could serve a lot of people.

And, and we did where our, our house was a gathering place on Sunday mornings, and Sunday through the day.

And we would start out with Graham making the sauce starting at 8:00 in the morning or whatever.

And, so you would smell those onions, and then she would put the, tomatoes and put them through the food mill into there.

And then we would all go up to church.

Right.

The 9:00 kid's mass at Saint Ephraim's and, and then we would come back and the meatballs would just.

Right?

Yes.

And we'd have a crisp at the sandwich, on, on some bread, you know, some Italian, Italian bread.

And, that was what I thought of as the perfect breakfast, a meatball sandwich on a Sunday morning.

It's just like you just didn't get any better than that.

No.

Yeah.

All right, let's let's make believe this is, has, wilted down and and whatnot.

So we'll add the garlic and just give that a. Yeah.

There you go.

Okay, then about 1:00 in the afternoon, people would start coming to the meal for the meal meal, meal part.

And sometimes they were family and sometimes they were friends, and sometimes they were both.

And sometimes they had to get extra chairs.

And Uncle Eddie Leoni would come by and and Amelia.

And it was it was really.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was family was fun.

Okay, let's let's, spice it up.

All right.

What do you got there?

Some oregano.

And basil.

Yeah.

Oh.

Basil.

Yeah.

Well the you know you can if you don't like any of those spices or if you like more, you know, put a, my brother Joe was, was just saying that he thought maybe mom put in some red pepper flakes.

Right.

And the reason why he said that is he said he always remembered that this dish had a, like, a little kick to it.

And that would be the only thing, unless you put a lot of black pepper on it or something, I don't know.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind putting some red pepper flakes, you know, that.

That wouldn't come out a little, and but let's put a little salt and pepper.

Pepper.

Salt.

Okay.

Yeah.

Oh, it smells good.

Yes.

Its starting to smell, starting to smell good.

All right.

I'm going to put the potatoes back.

Yeah.

And we'll get those right.

Be all together.

Now, you do a lot of cooking.

I know Chuck does a lot of cooking that you do.

Mostly baking.

You bake?

How many dozen muffins do you make every.

Is that every month?

Every month?

How many dozen?

I make, three batches.

Each batch makes a little more than six dozen.

So it's about 18, 18 dozen, 20 dozen muffins.

That's a lot of muffins.

That's that's a lot of muffins.

It's for the the shelter, the food shelter.

It's called SOME in Washington, DC.

And they serve about 600 people for every meal.

There's seven days a week operation.

And our church volunteers for the second Sunday of every month.

So nice.

I just make them muffins.

Other people make other things.

So I think that's the muffin lady.

Yeah, we can add the, just a little tomato sauce.

The whole thing.

Yeah, that's an eight ounces of, tomato sauce.

You can turn the heat off.

Now, it's important that when you when you make these, you could either pour this into a casserole, but that, you know, that's makes a mess.

I like to cook this in a pan that can go in the oven.

So an oven proof?

Yes.

Skillet casserole.

Thats what Mom did.

Yeah.

And, and that way you can just once you've done this.

Now, you want to put a lid on this and put it in the oven.

And bake it at about 350 degrees for about 20 or 30 minutes.

And then take the lid off of it and let it just dry out a little bit.

And chuck, if you, if you, if you would, I think it's in the I think it's in the upper oven.

Yeah.

Okay.

The temptation would be to eat it just like this.

It wouldn't be bad.

No, it wouldn't be bad.

Wait till you see, when it's baked.

Yeah.

So it's there's sort of twice baked potatoes and, what Chuck has there, I have to you put it.

Let's put it right on the center board.

Yeah.

Oh, look at that.

This is, this is a family heirloom, and and, this is the original pan that mom cooked in.

Yeah, I got this is that's the cover that that came with it.

These were really, sort of popular back in the 1950s.

It's a cast aluminum pan.

And, you know, mom must have made a thousand batches of potatoes in in this at least.

Yeah.

And so that's the one that I wanted to have here for us to have a look at and, and to cook in.

Brings back memories.

Yeah.

So many family memories.

And I, you know, fortunately we have a we have a bunch of plates.

So, you serve that, You want a spatula?

Oh, it's a yeah, it's a it's a revolving pan.

Okay.

At no extra cost.

This pan will revolve on your table a lot.

Okay, that's a lot for a serving.

Well, have you seen my brothers eat?

You know, there's.

It's been a while.

One of the one of the things that people always ask me is, when I, publish a recipe, I'll hold off and let you guys.

I'll eat off his plate.

But they always say to me, how many does that serve?

And the answer is, do you mean my brothers?

Yeah, because if that's what you mean, it always serves two.

Whatever, however much it is.

If it's my brother's, it only there's only two servings in there.

She could never just make 5 pounds of potatoes.

So let me have let's have a taste of this and see if it measures up to, the memory, probably a little hot right.

Oh it's delicious.

That's great.

This is the real thing.

As my sister Pat said this is the real thing.

Just a few ingredients some time and a lot of love.

We're still all getting together at the beach.

And this will have to be one of the recipes we bring back this summer.

Another family favorite was of course pasta in our house.

We enjoyed it every Sunday as the second course with meatballs and sausage, and sometimes even spare ribs in that rich tomato sauce that grandma would make.

The only pasta we made was manicotti and those shells were simply a light batter that was fried into crepes and then stuffed with the cheeses like ricotta and mozzarella.

Homemade noodles or filled fresh pasta well like ravioli, were not part of our tradition.

Partly because, there was a great store near us that sold terrific raviolis.

But when I got into cooking, I realized that there were only two basic ingredients.

And then a universe of opportunities to make fresh pasta.

And also making fresh pasta is a great way to involve kids in the kitchen.

There are simple ingredients, and they always love the outcome.

So here is a segment from one of our pasta shows where Nancy and I have a try at fresh Pasta.

When we decided to do a pasta show, I thought, you know, you can make pasta.

You don't have to just buy pasta.

And it's the simplest thing in the world.

Oh yeah?

And so we ought to take just a minute or two to show people how you can make your own pasta, especially if you have a few kitchen tools, which I, you know, you dont need them, but, you know, they would be looking at this tool.

I can't wait to find out what this is and how it works.

The big the most important part is to have a food processor, because making a dough with that, you know, you put the.

You ever seen those cooking shows?

They have.

They put the flour on the board.

They make a little nest in it.

Then they crack an egg.

Then they have to beat it real quick and it runs all over the table.

Right, then you decide you are just going to go buy it, right?

So, what you can do is the, the recipe, the formula for pasta is one cup of flour to one egg.

That's it.

Two cups of flour.

Guess how many eggs.

Two.

Two.

So that's what I'm going to make.

This is the normal batch that I make at home is two cups.

Thats it?

of flour.

Well, there's just a few little things.

Yeah.

Well then and that's arguable.

You know, actually, you have to add a little bit of water to come to it, the right consistency.

But so I put the two eggs in, I'm just going to put a spot of olive oil.

And there are, there are people who say you don't put olive oil in pasta.

That's terrible I like it.

It helps it be a little some more elastic and stretchy.

And I like to put a pinch of salt and I think everybody, agrees to that.

Just a pinch of salt.

And then you run this baby and you get some water.

This must be the tricky part.

Exactly how much water?

Well, you know, I can't tell you because it really depends upon the the weather that day.

How, The altitude?

how much water this will absorb.

But you put it in, you just drizzle it in very slowly and, what you're looking for is for this to come together as a dough and start circling the mixing bowl so you can see I'm really just putting a few drops in at a time.

A dribble.

Well, I have to ask I a rather obvious question if this is all there is to making dough, is there a an advantage in terms of taste to making it homemade versus buying it?

Undoubtedly.

Really?

Yeah.

I see you see.

Oh time.

There's the magic moment.

It's coming around.

But it's it is still dry enough that it's not gummy.

It's not forming a gummy bottom.

If that were the case, you'd have to add just a little more flour.

I mean, what difference does it make if a, if a factory is mixing the two cups of flour in the two eggs?

Well, this is and you're mixing them together.

This is a this is an egg dough.

So which is a little bit different from, you know, the pasta you get in a box of dried pasta which is just semolina flour and water.

So that is different.

Oh and I want to put just well, what I do is that I just hand kneed this now, just a few turns to get it smooth on the outside.

Okay, okay.

There it is.

Smooth as a baby's bottom, as they say.

And, and you need to refrigerate this or let it at least sit, if you.

And you should cover it with, with some, plastic plastic wrap or put it into a little baggie or whatever, so that it doesn't dry out.

And, this needs to rest while the gluten develops and it'll get, you know, nice and sticky, you know?

Yeah.

Well, you know, let's start with stretchy.

Stretchy.

Okay.

So now I have some that has been resting.

Glutenized and it's been sitting in the refrigerator.

I actually made this this morning.

So you don't have to make it like a day ahead.

Just a couple of an hour ahead.

How do you have time to get up and do all this before you get.

It's all I can do just here.

If I don't do it the night before, it doesn't get done.

All right, so now I'm just going to put a little flour on my board.

And literally you could just roll this out and cut it with a knife and put it in boiling water.

And you make the most delicious egg noodles you've ever eaten.

All right.

To make them thin, thick, wide.

You know, it really doesn't.

And actually, my nonna used to do that.

She had like, a was an old broomstick that they had, sanded.

Yeah.

And she used to roll her pasta out on the table, with this broomstick because she would make it wide big.

Shed roll this out into, tilll it covered a whole table and then just cut all the strips, and then she would roll it up, she would flour it, roll it up, and then just cut down on it and, she would do after hand mixing.

Oh yeah.

All this stuff right?

Right, right.

She there was no machine, to mix, no food processors back in the 1950.

But I remember seeing her and then she would lay that on more broom handles that were stretched between chairs, and she would lay it over to dry just a little bit before she boiled it.

But she had, you know, eight kids.

I can't imagine walking into a room where pastas are hanging up to dry.

I need a knife to cut this.

Oh, here we go.

She had eight.

That's right, eight children.

So.

And you know, when my uncle Frank and Uncle Charlie would sit down to a bowl of pasta, they didn't have, like, a little bit, they had, like, you know, a lot.

So she had to make a lot of this stuff.

And the whole dining room would be, filled with pasta.

Yeah, that sounds like a great memory Okay, now that this is.

What is this?

I have a KitchenAid.

I didn't know you could put anything else on it.

This is an attachment.

That is like a roller.

You can also buy those little hand rollers.

They're not that expensive.

And it's a great thing to do with kids.

They love to churn.

It just got a crank handle instead of the mechanized handle.

Okay.

And what you do is you get it going and you put it at a one width.

Yeah, put it at the single width.

And then you put the pasta through.

Yep.

I cut it into four pieces.

Oh how cool is that?

Yeah.

Now I always, got to keep a lot of flour on your board.

Okay.

That's one of the rules that that I have here.

It's like when you make a pie crust.

Yes.

So now the.

Why do you put it through again?

You flatten it, then you thickened it, then you flatten it.

Exactly.

This helps to, further knead the dough and create the nice texture for the pasta.

And I do that 2 or 3 times.

Seriously?

Yeah.

I would have never thought you had to do that.

Now, once I've done that a couple of times, I just get a little more flour on it.

And now we start moving it down.

Oh thinner.

Thinner.

So number two I have it at here.

Are you going to fold it again.

Do that whole thing?

Oh no no it's going to keep getting thinner.

Now we now we go to three three.

I did not know that a gizmo like this existed.

Oh yeah.

And four.

How many numbers are there?

There are eight numbers on here, folks.

You could make very, very thin.

Settle in.

Very, very thin pasta.

Okay.

Now okay.

So that's four.

That's four.

And every time I, you know, feel that it's starting to get a little, moist.

Yeah.

I just put a little more flour on there.

Okay.

I'm not going to hurt it.

This is, four was sort of like pie crust thickness.

If I'm looking at it right now, we're at five.

Oh, I'm starting to see the light through here.

And actually I can see your hand on the other side on this machine.

Five is what I like I because I like a little thicker pasta.

All right okay.

So now if you want to try one here.

Whoa.

I'm going to leave this out for a second.

I got one sheet.

Go back to one.

Just flatten it a little bit.

Just play with Play-Doh when you're a kid.

Oh, it's better than Play-Doh because you could eat this.

Well, you know, I was eating the Play-Doh.

All right, give it a try.

Fold.

And that's it through again.

You did this four times.

Yes.

Okay.

Can do.

And you're turning it each time I notice.

So, what happened?

That's me cooking.

Ladies and gentlemen, I do the same thing Chris does, and it comes out like lace.

We just need a little bit more flour.

In between your, And nothing is ruined about pasta.

I mean, that's the great thing.

And why it's great to make pasta with kids, but you would have felt that it needed more flour.

I had to actually see it disintegrate.

Okay, before I knew that.

Give it another fold.

There you go.

And you'll see.

It'll start to get really nice and smooth.

Put a little more flour on it on both sides.

Yeah.

Just roll it in there a little bit.

Now fold it again.

And then after this fold it should be ready to start thinning.

I sure hope so because this is getting a little boring to the viewers.

No, it's not a bit I don't know about that.

Yeah okay.

So go take your bathroom break if you need.

No, we're going to be done.

Number three.

This just really doesn't take long.

Now this fresh pasta, you can either, hand cut it.

You can make raviolis out of this.

You can make lasagna out of this.

And the thing about fresh pasta is that it doesn't take very long at all to cook.

So let me show you, we got you got yours.

There were there were there I lost count.

Were there.

All right, let's turn that off.

And actually, what I want to show is that this machine actually does come with another attachment.

Oh.

You're kidding.

Oh, I'm.

So I'm gonna go out and buy this.

I'll never use it.

I'm going to buy this thing.

Once you eat fresh pasta, it's hard to go back.

I can't wait to taste the difference.

Yeah, because right now I'm skeptical.

Like, is it really worth going through this?

How different kind of taste.

All right, so what what I have on here is one of the cutters that comes with the set.

And all you do is put the pasta, that sheet that you've made.

Oh, oh, my boys would go nuts over this.

Mom can I do that?

And then, And you know, what you want to do is just put this, make a little nest out of it.

What's going to keep them from sticking together?

Just a little flour that's on them.

Okay, okay.

So handle them too much, I'm assuming.

No, you don't want to do that.

So now, the other thing is you could cut your pasta into pieces.

Okay.

Like this.

Yeah.

And then into little oblongs like this.

Okay, I want to make a couple of these.

I love to make lasagna with these sheets, because then you don't have to pre boil.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're ready to go.

You know you just start layering okay.

Now did you ever have that, bow ties?

Oh yes.

Is that how it's made.

Well, you could cut the edges with a decorative, you know, squiggly thing.

Or do you know the Yiddish word patshke?

Yeah.

Who wants to patshke with all this stuff?

Or you could just make your own bow ties by just squeezing in the middle.

That's so cute.

Okay.

All right, if it's really, really, really different from the bow tie pasta you buy in the bag.

Yeah, I would go through this patshke but it is a it's a little labor intensive.

But again, if you do it again it's a little labor intensive.

But if you do this with some kids, you know they're going to love this and it, you know.

So the shape is not perfect.

They're not perfect when I make them okay.

Yeah.

But you know, kids are only kids for so long.

I've got one in college now, one in high school, he's not going to want to sit around and do this anymore.

Yeah, I don't know.

Those days are over.

Anyway, that's how you make your own pasta.

Nancy was a little skeptical, but after we boiled up some of the bow ties and the fettuccine, she was totally convinced.

We could have done this recipe in a show called B is for basics.

In any case, that's all for today, and we always hope you'll try these recipes in your kitchen.

And if you can involve some kids, that would be even better.

And as I always say, we do it for you, but we can't do it without you.

So keep watching and keep cooking.

Yes it's red.