$265 vs $18 Spaghetti & Meatballs - Pro Chef & Home Cook Swap Ingredients _ Epicurious

I like to be a butcher .

I like the way the butch does it .

Hi , I'm Frank .

I'm a professional chef and this is a $265 spaghetti and meatball dinner .

Hi , I'm Beth .

I'm a home cook and these are my $18 spaghetti and meatball ingredients .

Oh , I'm not sure what this is .

I think I could work with this so I can see that .

This is Frank's recipe book , which actually is not a recipe book .

It's just a list of ingredients .

Well , Frank , this is quite a day .

You've got set up for me today .

So I was planning on making homemade peachy pasta with iberico pork meatballs and ramp .

Pesto .

I had some really beautiful ingredients to work with for my meatballs .

I had a really nice cut of Iberico pork .

I had Calabrian chilies , parsley , garlic and a loaf of artisan bread to make my own breadcrumbs artisan bread .

Of course , for the Pesto , I was able to get my hands on some fresh ramps which are only available this time of year .

Oh , those are Ramps .

Wow .

I've never seen Ramps before .

I also had some Sicilian pistachios .

A pistachio oil and a really nice extra virgin olive oil .

I had pecorino , toscano cheese , parsley and sea salt .

I want to do this .

This is gonna be good .

And finally I had everything I needed for some fresh hand rolled peachy pasta .

Organic heirloom eggs .

Look at these eggs .

They're great .

An Italian double zero flower .

Beth .

I know .

You know your way around an Italian kitchen .

So I had to throw you a bit of a curveball .

I can do this with Beth's recipe .

I have some simple ingredients .

Things you're more likely to find in the supermarket or in your home pantry , boxed spaghetti , ground pork , sweet Italian sausage eggs , grated Parmesan fennel seeds , parsley breadcrumbs , whole milk , crushed tomatoes , garlic and onion .

These ingredients may be simple , but I'm gonna use my chef magic to make them better if I had to guess this probably cost about $15 .

$18 .

I was close .

If I had to guess this is , this has to be about 100 and $75 265 dollars for meatballs .

Anything I don't use is going home .

What I'm concerned about to the best of my knowledge , I've never tasted a barrio pork .

It may have been in some of the food that I've eaten in restaurants , but I don't know it .

I sent Beth some fresh Iberico meat .

Most people relate Ibero with ham .

But what they don't realize is that there's other cuts of meat on that pig that we can use .

And fresh Iberico is delicious .

This pork has to be a fortune .

I could definitely use a little help with these ingredients .

Hi , Rhoda .

Hi , Beth .

It's so nice to see you .

It's been a long time .

It's very nice to see you .

How do I use Iberico pork ?

This has got to be really , really expensive .

Well , Iberico pork comes from special pigs grown in Spain and Portugal and they have a diet of acorns which gives them like a really rich and nutty flavor .

The plume cut comes from near the shoulder and that's gonna have a really nice balance of lean meat and fat .

So you're gonna want to make sure it's really cold .

You also want all of your equipment to be really cold and it's helpful if you can cut the pork into strips and then you're gonna feed it into your grinder .

I think that'll be great for your meatballs .

Yeah , I think so too .

This is gonna be good .

They're gonna be amazing .

Yeah , they're gonna be really great with the ramps .

I think .

Very cold , ice cold .

The grinder is cold just like Rhoda said , I'm a big fan of grinding my own meat .

This way , I get to pick the piece of meat that I grind , make sure it has enough fat and that it looks really good .

And with the Ibero it's a great lean to fat ratio .

Ok , Frank , if this makes you happy .

I ground the pork .

It's time to make the meatballs .

So , what I'm gonna do is take the spaghetti meatball kind of model and make it into a , which is the close cousin of with pasta .

So you may notice that I don't have a saute pan or a sauce pan in front of me .

I have a pan .

Now , I've been asking the people here at fe to do for a long time and they keep denying me .

I don't know why .

So I'm kind of going around the edges here and getting in and making a , I have ground pork here .

Nice fatty ground pork .

So let me put that aside for a sec and we're gonna grab ourselves some garlic .

I don't know how much Beth said to put in this , but I'm gonna put a fair amount of garlic in this .

I might as well put my gloves on now .

Right .

I'm gonna be working with raw meat .

I like to wear gloves .

OK ?

With the garlic .

I'm just gonna give it a whack .

Make sure that we get off all that skin .

I'm just gonna rough chop our garlic , the more you process garlic , the stronger it gets .

And I just want it to be a nice like background flavor in our meatballs and that's gonna go into our bowl .

All meatballs need to have a little bit of a binder .

Otherwise it's just sausage .

So I'm gonna take a couple of eggs .

I'm gonna hit it with a bunch of bread crumbs .

The bread crumbs is gonna help make these tender .

So Beth sent me Italian style .

I tend to go with plain bread crumbs .

Right .

I like to control the seasonings .

I don't know what they put in here .

I tend to use those plain bread crumbs I season .

However , I want , I make my own bread crumbs , Frank .

So this is easy for me , It's easy to go to the store and buy bread crumbs .

But making your own is actually something that a lot of old Italians would do .

It's wonderful to take a nice loaf of bread , put it into the oven 250 degrees .

Grind it up in a food processor and it's wonderful .

A lot of times in Southern Italy , they just didn't have money for cheese .

So they would just toast some bread crumbs and Sprinkle them on top .

So it was kind of like the cheese .

It was uh like a poor man's cheese or garnish to your pasta .

I know that story too , Frank .

We use grated the Romano cheese and toasted bread crumbs which kind of defeats the purpose of it , but it just tastes so great .

All right .

Now we go in the oven after the bread crumbs are toasted , we're gonna buzz it up in the food processor just to get a nice kind of fine powder .

And what I'm gonna do is have her like strain them through a calendar so that the small pieces can be used in the meatballs and the pieces that are a little larger we can use as a garnish on top of the pasta .

Later on is our bread crumbs for the top and to go inside our pork meatballs , we wanna season this up really well .

Lots of black pepper .

We're gonna put a little milk in there .

The milk is just gonna be there to soften our bread crumbs a little and a fair amount of salt .

Don't be afraid of a little bit of salt and then you gotta get in there with your hands .

Right ?

And I want to really mix this .

Well , I'm not a chef .

No gloves necessary .

So I'm gonna start with the eggs , finely diced garlic or chili peppers .

Little zing parsley cheese bread crumbs generous amount of salt and black pepper .

I need to get the eggs and the salt , the pepper , all of the seasonings mixed in together .

I'm actually gonna flatten this one out just so that it'll cook faster .

I can taste it for seasoning .

I always cook a test piece and taste it to make sure my seasoning is right .

Maybe I need more cheese .

Maybe I need more flavor in there .

The seasoning is tricky unless I actually test it .

I don't know of any way to figure that out .

Let it cook through and give it a taste and then I can adjust .

That's really good .

Little more black pepper and this , a touch , more salt .

Get in there with the glove .

I kind of found out what it needed .

I'm gonna mix it up and then we're gonna make our meatballs for a $265 meatball .

There's no way that this meatball couldn't be fabulous .

And just for you , Frank , I'm gonna use a scoop .

Whenever I do meatballs .

I always use an ice cream scoop that's basically portions my meatballs out perfectly .

This method with the ice cream scoop is basically just something from restaurants .

We wanna go quick right in restaurants .

Time is of the essence .

So we go quicker and not only is it made it fast , it's porting it out perfectly .

Scoop's not working for me .

Frank , efficient and cost saving these all look pretty close in size to me , Frank .

All right , let's wash my hands and fry them up .

We're gonna go over medium heat .

I'm not gonna go over really high heat and I'm just gonna take these meatballs and I'm gonna brown them off in our oil .

Ok .

And again , like I said , if they're a little rustic , it's OK .

We don't want to crowd our pan .

That's what I wanted to hear .

So as they get light brown , we can turn them , just get them all evenly browned and cooked through .

Ok .

And I'm not worried right now about my meatballs being cooked all the way through because these are gonna go back in the pan and back in the sauce .

When we actually finish the dish , these are gonna go onto a tray with a red sauce .

You would leave the meatballs in the sauce and they would cook some more .

But because I'm putting Pesto over this , it's not gonna cook .

So the sausage is up next and I'm going to cook the sausage whole and then slice it afterwards .

You could take the casing off of this .

But I didn't wanna do that because I want it to look different than the meatballs .

Our pan is nice and hot .

I have the oil in there from the meatballs .

So we're just gonna drop these in and we're just gonna let them get brown on all sides and cook them through .

So I'm gonna shut my heat off .

I'm gonna put the sausage on my cutting board .

I'm not worried if these are necessarily cooked all the way through at this point .

So there's still a little pink in the middle , but that's not a big deal .

I'm actually gonna take one out and just see if it's cooked through .

Perfect .

OK .

The sausage is done plu a Rio pork meatballs for Frank for me because I'm gonna eat them .

Ok .

It's pasta time .

All right .

So this is about a pound .

Hopefully all of those cooking shows are going to uh help me out .

Peachy pasta is kind of like a long fixed spaghetti .

I really like making handmade pastas .

You know , they're a little more rustic .

They hold on to the sauce .

Rota said five eggs , you're gonna roll them out by hand and you want them to be a little smaller than a pencil .

As far as the thickness goes , they will expand a little bit when they cook .

Look at the yolk be sent me a spaghetti , uh which is just a normal spaghetti .

You can use a thin spaghetti for this .

Uh We're making a and we're gonna break these pasta noodles up and make .

I am trying to incorporate the egg yolks and the egg whites .

Bring a little bit of the flour in at a time .

I don't wanna put all the flour in just in case I don't need , it feels sticky and smooth .

I know you're gonna say Chef Frank , you're not supposed to break pasta , right ?

But this is not an Italian dish .

So I'm breaking the rules and I'm breaking the pasta .

The cooking shows are so fabulous .

Just from watching , I was able to do this .

I wanna coat the pasta really good in the oil .

Uh And I'm gonna just toast this right .

So we wanna try and get evenly toasted and putting oil in the pan is gonna help us with that and I'm just gonna keep on stirring this right .

I'm gonna coat all my pasta .

We wanna keep moving it around .

So it doesn't get burnt in any specific place .

I think we got this smooth out the baby's bottom , gonna wrap this in plastic and let it rest for a while .

You might ask Chef Frank , why are we toasting the pasta ?

Toasting ?

It gives it a little more depth of flavor .

I'm gonna take this and get all the pasta lay down on a tray and let it cool for a second or two .

Here's my pasta .

It's still brilliantly orange .

Time to make the peachy pasta .

We want our finished pasta to kind of be the thickness of a straw or a pencil .

So Beth has to roll it out a little thinner than that because when she puts it in the pasta , water , it's going to expand .

I think this is gonna be a lot more manageable if I cut it into pieces , just a little flower for insurance so that it doesn't stick to the board , it rolls out nicely .

So maybe having less gluten in the flour helps .

All right , Roda said not too thin , not too thick .

I think this is gonna be ok .

I'm gonna cut this into strips and then roll out the strips .

This would be fun to do with my grandsons .

I'm trying to get this so that the width is a little less than a pencil .

How about this ?

Let's see how this works .

Stretchy .

All right .

I'm gonna put these two here once the pasta's all rolled out .

I want her to make sure she dusts it really well with flour so they don't stick together .

I also like to keep it in one layer on a tray .

If you start to stack the pasta up after a while , it gives off a little more moisture and they start to stick together so thin layer , dusted with flour .

I'm really , really impressed .

And now it's time to make the pesto .

Pesto's easy and it's delicious .

I like it with a lot of garlic , but that's not what Frank has in store for me today , we're gonna use the ramps .

We're in the northeast of the United States .

And in the spring time people go out and forge for ramps .

Ramps are basically like a wild garlic slash onion .

Uh And they're absolutely delicious .

You really can't cultivate them .

So you have to go into the woods and find them and dig them up .

I cleaned these ramps really , really thoroughly .

They were filthy .

Ramps always come dirty because people go into the woods pull them out and they drop them off at your doorstep .

So Beth to clean them really well , take off the root end , make sure that the tops are bright green and they're not beat up and then she's gonna chop them up before she purees them .

I don't have to really worry about cutting anything small because it's all gonna go into the food processor .

Some people use the bottom of the parsley .

I don't , I usually just chop the tapa ordinarily , I would use Pecorino Romano , but Frank has ordered a very costly pecorino .

Toscano for us to use .

Let's see .

Oh , that's nice .

Pesto is a really easy sauce .

It's basically put everything into the food processor and buzz it up just pure until it's a paste .

Pesto means paste .

These pistachios are great .

Sicilian pistachios are probably like the best pistachios out there .

No one goes to the cook some olive oil .

This is pistachio oil .

We're gonna use the pistachio in the pesto and as a garnish later on and it's just gonna kind of give us a little boost of that pistachio flavor and give us a really nice deep creek color as well .

Lots of salt for you .

Frank freshly ground pepper blends before I add more oil .

I wanna get every last bit beautiful ramp Pesto .

I'm gonna cover this with plastic wrap until I'm ready to put it over my meatballs and spaghetti .

I can't wait to taste this .

All that's left is to cook the pasta and put this whole Frank's dish together .

When you're cooking the peachy , it needs to go a little longer than most fresh pastas because it's so thick .

So we're gonna put it in a rapidly boiling salted water for about 5 to 7 minutes .

Once you put the pasta in the water , we stir it , it's time to prepare our sauce .

Beth sent me some fennel seeds and I like fennel seeds .

I think a little bit of fennel in the background will be a really nice flavor .

Here's a few ways that we can grind these seeds .

You can do it in a modern and pest .

This is the old school way .

I'm gonna use a coffee grinder and in the restaurant industry and in professional kitchens we use coffee grinders pretty much exclusively for spices .

I'm gonna take my fennel seeds and I'm not gonna put a lot in there .

The top goes on , You just press it down .

I give it a tap .

Beautiful .

It's nice powder and I don't think I'm gonna need any more than that .

Basically , the sauce is just onions , garlic , tomatoes and fennel and we're gonna just chop everything up and I'm just gonna cut the onion and into like a small dice and this is a good size .

We're gonna use all of this .

Ok .

So our veggies are chopped .

Let me turn this pan on and we're gonna start the sauce .

I guess it's been about three minutes .

I'm gonna put some of my pesto in the pan .

Get some nice pasta water .

I put the onions in first .

I'm gonna hit them with a little salt now to draw out some of that moisture .

Now I'm gonna add the garlic and I just wanna cook these until they're basically light golden brown and fragrant .

Just going to move the pasta to the pan with the meatballs and the sauce that looks fabulous doesn't , it might as well use some of Frank's pistachio oil .

Before I add my meat in my pasta , I'm gonna add a light pinch of my fennel seed and now I'm gonna add my meat .

I'm gonna add it all in .

Remember we didn't cook this fully ?

It's gonna finish cooking with our pasta and our stock and now we're gonna add our pasta everything into the pool .

I'm gonna add some of our tomatoes and they're just , uh , crushed tomatoes .

I'm not gonna use the whole can probably use about half of the can and I'm gonna add water .

Give it a shake .

Make sure I have enough liquid and I'm pretty sure I have enough liquid .

I just wanna mix that up .

I'm gonna hit it with some salt and pepper .

It looks like a lot of salt .

I know .

But trust me , it's gonna be perfect before I let this finish cooking .

I wanna give it a taste and make sure I have my seasoning right .

So I'm gonna taste the sauce basically because that sauce is gonna get absorbed into the pasta and it's good .

Now we've ate here are the larger chunks of bread crumbs that I ground up before .

And what we're gonna do now is to these up with some olive oil and some salt as a nice garnish to go on top of the pasta .

Wanna coat all of the breadcrumbs in the after I kind of settle everything in the pan .

I will turn the pan around on the burner just so it stays nice .

And even , you can still see there's a fair amount of moisture and you can see it's kind of sloshing around a bit .

I'm going to wait until it kind of sticks to the bottom a little more .

We're right at that point where it's gonna go from golden to burn .

So I'm going to move it nice and golden brown salt immediately , that's gonna be delicious on top of the pasta .

So I'll give it a little shake .

You can see that it's not sloshing around as much .

I'm gonna shut the heat off and we're gonna play it .

I think what Frank would do is exactly the same thing I would do .

First put down the phi pasta , go with some nice meatballs before we plate this up .

I'm gonna garnish it in the pan .

Normally , if I was serving this for a group of people , I'd put all the garnishes on and we'd just serve from the table .

So I'm gonna do it that way .

I have some uh parsley and I'm just gonna tear it up .

I'm not gonna be too particular .

I want a little bit of that freshness on there .

A little more of the extra virgin olive oil , nice kind of grassy flavor and then a little bit of grated Parmesan cheese , Pecorino , toscano cheese .

This feels like butter .

It's so soft , this cheese .

So I'm gonna serve myself up a little plate of this .

Make sure you get a little bit of everything .

We want a little bit of the meatball .

We want some of the sausage , I think .

I'd want another meatball in there .

Right .

Look at that .

Oh , my goodness .

Just a few more parsley leaves in there again .

We're going rustic .

This is family style .

Just a touch more of the olive oil and then , uh , just a little more Parmesan cheese .

We don't wanna go too crazy .

And that is it .

Look at that .

Some toasted bread crumbs , maybe just a little drizzle of pistachio oil .

Just to give it a little shine .

I can't wait to eat this spaghetti and meatballs .

I know there's gonna be a lot of people .

I think what I did was wrong here , but I think it looks good .

All right .

Let's give it a try .

I'm gonna go in with a meatball to start and uh the meatballs are super tender .

Remember earlier , I added a little more bread crumbs to make them tender .

We're really good .

It's not super tomatoey .

The tomato is cooked down really well , the fennel kind of shines just a little .

It's just enough to make you think .

I'm not sure what that is , but I've tasted it before .

It's delicious .

I'm really looking forward to seeing what Beth did with my dish .

I want to try the meatballs first .

It's really good .

This is fabulous .

You definitely can taste the pistachio and the ramp .

Pesto .

It's not like any other Pesto I've ever eaten Frank .

You have to open a restaurant .

You have to open a restaurant .

I'll come and cook with you .

Your recipes are fabulous .

Shut up with this meal .

Frank .

Oh , Frank , how are you ?

Good .

How are you doing ?

I wish you , I wish I could give you a hug .

It's so great to finally see you in person .

This is stupid .

Good , Mike .

I heard that you did spectacular .

I don't know if I did as good as you .

But I have never made pasta .

Really ?

I have never used any of these ingredients .

I've never eaten ramps .

Oh , really ?

I'm so glad that you , uh , you did .

You enjoyed this process ?

I am like , so happy to see you in person and genuinely just like excited .

I wish we could cook together one of these days .

That's really what I want to do .

I want to cook together and just , you know , I'd love to share a meal with you one of these days .

Absolutely .

I , I may take one of your courses .

Oh , really ?

I think that would be fun .

Take my hand rolled pasta .

Course I will do that .