Hello chefs?

Zuppa Toscana

Ingredients:

1 bunch Kale, picked over, cleaned, and torn into bite sized pieces
9 whole red potatoes, sliced thin
1 whole onion, chopped
2 pound ground Italian sausage (1 spicy, 1 mild)
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
4 tbsp bacon pieces
5 cups chicken broth
2 cup heavy cream
4 cups water
Oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
Touch of garlic



Sauté Italian sausage and crushed red pepper in a large pot. Drain excess fat, refrigerate.

In the same pan, sauté bacon, onions and garlic over low-medium heat for approximately 15 minutes or until the onions are soft.

Add chicken broth and water to the pot and heat until it starts to boil

Add the sliced potatoes and cook until soft, about half an hour

Add the heavy cream and just cook until thoroughly heated

Stir in the sausage and the kale, let all heat through, and serve..

All chefs in this forum, question:

Can a good chef turn something stale or average into something good?

Yes,
Stale rye bread, anchovies, eggs, olive oil and parmesean....
Romaine lettuce....

Caesars salad.....invented by Chef Caesar because it was all he had.

Creme Brule is rather simple and ordinary but elevated.
Same with bread pudding. It too can be elevated.

I've always specialized in taking the mundane and elevating them to a high level of deliciousness to where EVERYONE notices the difference and discovers WHY these things were made popular to begin with.

The obscure dishes with obscure ingredients you have never heard of? Nobody really likes them and causes all kinds of fear for diners.

But lasagne?
When the noodles are fresh and not store bought....
When you grab 10lbs of fresh tomatoes to make the sauce with fresh herbs....
When you grind your own Italian sausage and ground beef.
Fresh baked bread turned into garlic bread....(I love sourdough baguette)



That's when you figure it out....there's a lot of something more here. The frozen bricks at the store? Your mother-in-law's made from canned sauce and dried herbs? Yuck!

There's no comparison.

Thank you for confirming.
This is always a fun conversation when i try to tell people that the chef can turn something that's bad into something nice, but someone who doesn't know how to cook, it would be pretty hard to mess a fresh seafood dish or meat (steak or lamb).

This is a convo i usually have with people in Greece or Albania or Boston area. These are coastal areas.
So, near the coast, i can tell that even someone who doesn't know how to cook, the food is still pretty good because it's fresh.
Calamari, scallops or seabass etc, all taste pretty good despite someone not knowing the fine details of that dish.
But if you go inland, for example i went to Chicago once and oh man oh man, the fish there was horrible.
Not only they didn't know how to cook it, but it was also stale from a 2-5 day shipment from wherever it came from.
The steak was pretty good there though, being Chicago after all.
So a good chef can turn anything into something enjoyable, but a new chef cannot ruin a fresh produce despite trying

In New York pork was usually low quality and not as popular as here in the South. So it seldom sells well. They have lots of Asian and Italian foods. Also bakeries everywhere.
BUT
I took a loin and turned it into a sheet then filled with apple and ginger roasting it after rolling it up and served it with a type of caramel sauce.
Spicey. Sweet and the tang of apples....

These people in Georgia never had anything like it. And they have piles of pork in their stores. But they don't have the crossover cuisines. Or a lot of high end Chefs. (Like me)

Fresh ingredients definitely helps. But with shipping just about anything can be overcome. Just super expensive. Maine lobsters cost nothing up in NY....but $21/lb down here.
I can get mussels and clams here but not like I can there.
Gulf seafood is more common here. Meaning the paella looks a bit different.
Saffron from Afghanistan instead of Iran...(everyone has been suffering from that)
Local wines are trash. Local bourbon is good though.

Pecans and peanuts, peaches, plums are all locally produced. Milk comes from North Florida. Oranges and citrus are also staples here.
Sugar cane and syrups are also locally made. The coffee warehouses in New Orleans are gone. So it's difficult to get the good stuff roasted here. Chattanooga area has the Apples....but it's a day of traveling.

Yeah, stale bread would probably be good in stuffing or bread pudding.

The only way I made dressing (stuffing) is with stale cornbread. Very tasty. None of that store bought packaged stuff.

@JohnDB are you able to figure out the ingredients on how they make a dish by looking at a menu?
I'm interested to see how they make this pasta which i order at a place. It's spicy and kinda creamy/oily.
Here it is. Forget about the seafood. It's the pasta i'm interested in. How do they make this?
There's more ingredients that what's listed on the menu i think but let me know what you think.
Thank you.

Probably got some Harvy's cream sherry in it. (Great in seafood) or possibly some Annisette. (Licorice liquor)
The Calabrian Chilies give it the heat.
The butter sauce likely has a touch of heavy cream and the seasoned bread crumbs (parmesean or other dry, hard cheese) will toast up brown to hide the grease from the broken butter. (Nobody wants to see broken butter anymore....it's oil/fat and I can't have the calories" is the common complaint.

Spaghetti traditionally has no eggs and is just Semolina, salt, and water and made into a dough then extruded from a pasta press. Then hung out to dry. Literally....

Semolina flour has a similar protein content as All Purpose flour.
But the QUALITY of the gluten proteins is much more favorable to extensibility (stretchyness/chewyiness) than all purpose flour which is lower quality.

Semolina is made from Durham wheat....a specific wheat grain used for pasta and even bread.
It's grind can vary. 0-0 is very fine like a bread flour and is very expensive. Regular Semolina (which I buy regularly) is coarse ground like cornmeal. Semolina pasta doughs need 4 hours to rest and absorb moisture before extruding or shaping. 0-0 ground Durham wheat needs no time at all and is instantly ready to be extruded or shaped after kneading.

Where things get fun....water or liquids do not have to be pure. Spinach juice, carrot juice, tomato juice, beet juice, squid ink, or even pomegranate juice can be used instead of water to create color. Dont expect a lot of flavor....just barely a subtle hint.

Also when rolling out pasta you can get it rolled so thin it becomes transparent....

So herb leaves can be rolled in at the last minute for "pretty".

Wow, this seems very complicated ... to me at least.
Thank you for explaining all these fine details. Any way you can teach me how to make a simpler and possible more healthier version of this at home?
I use a cold pressed oil from Greece called 'Lakonikos'.
https://laconiko.com/


How can i make that pasta at home using this oil?
I appreciate it.

And for pasta i use this product from Trader Joe's:

https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/organic-spaghetti-alla-chitarra-pasta-075722

Uhhhh
Not much oil gets used in this dish. Certainly not something that nice.

High end olive oil is a finishing oil. Used for flavor after the dish is finished.

And this dish requires finess and timing. You have to be used to using and cooking these expensive ingredients....

The spaghetti you can fake just using some off the store shelf. (I'd use angel hair myself instead of spaghetti)

You are going to need the calabrian chilies and some limes to make the compound butter. Also some scallions.

And it's late....I'm going to finish this tomorrow.

Thanks John.
I don’t take any pictures of my food when I’m eating in restaurants but I found this pic on the web from the restaurant that I go to. This is what it looks like.


Also the name of the restaurant is called TheMooring in Newport, Rhode Island and they have two chefs in there.
One for food and one for desserts.
https://www.mooringrestaurant.com/

I really like that pasta and I’d like to make a simpler version of it at home if possible.
Thanks again and have a good one.

Eli,
I make sauces like this all the time. The base is either butter, oil, or cream: 1 stick butter, 1/2 cup cream, or 1/2 cup oil. Now, this sounds like a lot, but it's meant for 4, so it's 2 tbs per person. Then, you add seasoning to taste.

if its a white sauce the cream needs a bit of flour if you add lime.

I am looking to make a dish for 4 in this case.
John said that he’s going to come up with something tomorrow. But I’m looking to make something that closely resembles that dish.
John is also a chef by the way.
If you can tell me how to make that pasta with that type of spicy sauce I would appreciate it.
thank you.

Eli,
I can't compare to a real chef but I can tell you the secret of a good sauce. A good sauce need three elements (sweet, sour, and salty) if you add spice lessen the salt because salt makes things more spicy.

Ok....
Here we go.
With a hot pan and cold oil Sautee the seafood. Once the seafood is sautéed I would place some finely diced shallots in the remaining oil until done (couple seconds up to a minute and half) Then degaze the fond (remaining dried juices) with some chablis. (Dry white wine of generic label) and reduce to syrup. Then a dash of heavy cream but then hit it hard with a compound butter that has the zest and juice of a lime and some reconstituted dried chillies which have been finely diced. (Whisk it in hard and fast) Then throw some spaghetti that you have cooked to Al-Dente (barely cooked and could have used another minute boiling....because you are going to cook it more now)
Give the whole pan a couple of tosses of the spaghetti to mix it up and coat the pasta. Of course the butter is gonna break at this point because the pasta is gonna suck up the cream and butter solids. Now is the time to take a shot of Harvy's Bristol cream sherry or a licorice flavored liquor or both. and toss it in the pan.

Dish it up immediately after that raw sherry hits the pan and gets mixed in.

I use a long fork to twirl it up and make piles.

Then....now comes the scallions to garnish and a handful of breadcrumbs on top.
Throw it under the broiler till the crumbs are brown.

It's a fast paced dish requiring impeccable timing and EVERYTHING ready to use as you need it. Once started, no pauses until finished. Waiting 20 minutes until you find something in your cupboard, portion it, and then it to the pan....no...that's failure.

Since butter is the chief component of the sauce....you are going to literally drench the pasta in it. Meaning you will use at a minimum of a stick of butter to make a small amount of sauce for 1-2 people. And I do mean it's a small amount of sauce. You likely will want more.

Now the compound butter I'd make in the food processor by adding the soft butter, the soaked and diced chilies, some shallots, and the juice and zest from limes until its good. You need to be able to taste it and go "oh its good" but its a bit too spicey and sour to be awesome. Because when it hits the pasta it will calm all the way down. Too mild and it will dissappear completely.
Don't over puree it as it might break the butter. (Butter heats up and airs up as it is pureed) leave the broken butter for the rim soup dish bottom.

The breadcrumbs? A little real parmesean pureed or grated superfine and mixed in with the crumbs really help.

John thank you so much and i can see that this dish is all about timing but i wanted to just make the pasta at home, without any of the seafood. Because cooking the seafood for me at home like this restaurant did it, it'd be above my paygrade. lol
I was looking for just the pasta with that spicy taste to it. With some oil i was thinking.
If is possible you can tell me how to cook the pasta only with the spicy cream/oil?

We cook the fish separately at home covered in tinfoil and high heat while it's marinated with salt oregano and some other spices.
Thank you so much for your time and explanation.

I learned the secret to good pasta sauce is ........butter.... add ALOT of it and it makes everything taste better.

Oil as a base for the sauce in pasta is not really something most people enjoy. The closest that olive oil is used as a base is with pesto where the olive oil is used to help make the chopped herbs more liquid and lea the herb flavors onto the pasta. It requires a LOT of herbs. Chiefly basil.
There is of course the infamous pasta salad where oil is part of the vinaigrette that pasta is tossed in but again there's a LOT of vinegar, herbs, and spices to cover the oil. Oil tastes oily....it needs the acids or something to cut the "oily" taste and mouth feel.

Chilies and oil/fats combinations are somewhat tricky for first timers. You have to be very sparing with the chilies. Moreso than you would think because the oil will lea the heat and magnify it quite readily. You don't want it so hot that people won't enjoy the spice. And it takes a bit of time for the heat to work into the oil/butter....so at first taste there's not much heat....but it continues to gain heat as time goes by.

If you wish to try and make a "hot/warm vinagrette" type pasta dish. The ratio is one part lime juice/vinegar and 2½-3 parts oil. Of course season everything with S&P and in your case....use lime zest and washed, soaked, and finely chopped chilies to flavor it. Then use a hand, immersion blender to emulsify it. A bit of shallots will help it stay emulsified.

Something also to remember, extra virgin olive oil has a strong taste. Not everyone likes olives that much. So I'd cut the olive oil with salad oil. No more than half of the oil should be olive oil.

This is something of a finess, type dish. Getting the balance of the acids from the lime juice, the heat of the chillies, and the oil....not exactly easy. It can be done....

However, do not expect success the first time out. Even I will make a dish repeatedly before getting it right. Practice and experience goes a LONG way to making the number of repetitions fewer before getting it perfect.

Get this vinaigrette warm and not quite hot and then toss freshly cooked and hot spaghetti in the vinaigrette.
See if that works for you.