Tomato Basil Rigatoni Recipe

Cook on Sunday, eat until Thursday. I'm Allie and you're watching Economy Bites.

This recipe is based on a recipe from a famous chef and he cooks at his restaurant. He
had a class where he told everybody how to make the recipe. But for you, you don’t have
to pay the $70.00 to take the class because I'm going to show you my version of the
recipe which is really just as good, I think. Hi, grandma, good morning. We’re actually
filming today, so we’re just leaving the grocery store. It’s like tomato, basil, spaghetti
with mozzarella.

Bowwow. Bowwow. This is pouring. Today we’re making tomato, basil, rigatoni with
mozzarella. Right now it’s just not really tomato season, these were about $3.50 per can
as opposed to ones that at the very low end or about a $1.50 but I’ve made this recipe
with those before and they're not -- they really don’t taste as good. Why is the can opener
-- oh, I'm sorry. The can opener is like hardest thing to use. We’re just separating the
tomato from the seeds and the juice.

What we’re actually going to reuse the juice but we don’t want the seeds in the recipe.
And this is kind of messy but it's fun. It feels like you’re like an Old Italian grandma in
the kitchen in Sicily. You're getting your hands in the food when--grandma, --

We’re going to reserve that sauce. We’re just going to let that get hot and then I’m going
to put in a little bit of olive oil and then our tomatoes. And now I'm going to use a potato
masher and I'm just going to mash these guys up. Okay, and now I'm going to add a cup
of red wine so let's open this. Don’t show me doing this. We’re going to be making pasta
in really salty water. And later on, we’re going to add a little bit of that salty water to our
sauce. So, do not salt the pasta marinara sauce right now.

Now we’re going to let that cook for about 30 to 45 minutes. Every couple of minutes
we’re just going to go around and mash. We’re going to make a whole box and a half of
pastas and now we’re going to salt it, really salty. And I'm going to add a little bit olive
oil so that they don’t stick.

Now I'm going to make some garlic-basil oil. So this is like the key special part that this
one particular chef does. Turn the heat on underneath this little cast iron skillet I have
here by the lowest it can get. Go one or twice around with some olive oil. And now I'm
going to put in there eight to 10 garlic cloves and we’re going to leave them whole. It was
only three bucks for this huge thing, the fresh basil. Put in a really big generous handful
of these basil leaves.

Let that cook really slowly until the garlic has a little bit of brown. I'm going to add to it
just a pinch of salt and some crushed red pepper. See how it's starting to get a little
thicker. And what we’re going to do is just wait. We’re letting this cook for about half an
hour, 45 minutes, just so that I keep it from not getting so, so thick that I don’t have
enough sauce for my pasta.

I'm going to strain into here a good amount of this leftover juice. Now I'm straining it so
that the seeds don’t go in. Later on, if I need to add more, I’ll add more. And now I’m
going to just turn the heat down a little. Do you see the basil has cooked down quite a bit,
so I'm just going to add more because I want to make sure this has a lot of basil flavor.
And now it looks like our water is boiling. This is a one pound box. I'm going to use a
pound and a half of pasta.

You could use anything you wanted, you could use spaghetti or penne or shells. And
we’re going to let that cook about 10 minutes until it's good and al dente. Al dante is what
Grandma Hilda says. This is the most expensive thing we bought for this recipe. It's a
little $6.00 a ball of belgioioso, fresh mozzarella. I love fresh mozzarella. It makes
everything taste just a little bit fresher and lighter, and more delicioso.

See it's gotten a little thick again. I kind of like this consistency. See how our garlic is
starting to get brown here? Let me give it another minute or two and then we’re going to
take it off the heat and let it sit for a couple of minutes before we drain it into our pasta
sauce.

We’re kind about our ending stage to this sauce. I'm going to add half a cup of this water
here. Now that it has the pasta in it, it’s really starchy. So it’s going to help our sauce
stick to the noodles and we’re just going to pour it in here. I'm using my spatula to get the
oil that’s stuck to the pan. Now I’m just going to mash this down.

Okay, so let’s just be adult about this and say I didn’t use enough olive oil. That’s okay.
People make mistakes. You got--on not getting more olive oil than what we’ve got out of
here. So, instead of the two to three tablespoons that I said, maybe you want to use like
four to six tablespoons. So, I’m just going to add this tiny little bit to our sauce here. I'm
going to cut up some of this basil to put on top of the pasta. This is an easy little
technique that it is like a chef technique. So, you just line them up on top of each other
like this and then you roll like you're rolling a sleeping bag.

I used to be afraid to go to camp when I was a kid because I was afraid that I would have
to roll my own sleeping bag and I wasn’t good at it. So you look, I’m not good at this. I'm
going to move my pasta sauce off now because I think it’s about ready, delicioso. So our
pasta is done. So now we’re going to start to put it all together process which is the best
part to the bowl. We are going to add our fresh mozzarella which is going to melt. We’re
going to add our sauce and I'm going to mix.

When you feel like you’ve made this delicious Italian dinner, you didn’t use like any
store bought products. I mean they're all store bought but you know what I mean. You
didn’t use -- if you wanted to like some more spaghetti sauce, remember we only use half
of those reserved juices. So, you could have used the rest of them but I kind of like it like
this. And now, we’re going to top it with a little bit of basil. Let's take a bite just to make
sure it tastes good. So, you can see the expression on my face when I get a delicious bite
of this. Oh, my God it’s so good.

See it’s really, really filling so you don’t have to eat that much of it which is really nice.
This is restaurant quality Italian food that you made in your kitchen using ingredients you
could buy at any grocery store for $25.00 or less. Can you believe that? Look what we’re
doing for you here America.

Cook on Sunday, eat until Thursday. I'm Allie and I’ll see you next.