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Learn how to make mouthwatering, restaurant-quality pasta in less than 15 minutes with a culinary chef extraordinaire, in our first episode of "Cooking with Trevor". The best part of this recipe? It's completely gluten-free. Check out the website here: https://www.weinkeller.ca/!
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We are here at Wine Keller Restaurant
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It has been a unique dining experience in the Niagara region for the past five years
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It's an exciting work environment for young chefs or professionals like myself
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who want to keep their culinary skills sharp. Hey. Hey, everybody
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Trevor here. I'm at Wine Keller Restaurant in Niagara Falls. Today, I'm going to teach you some quick, easy pasta
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dishes to make at home. And the first one we're going to start with is one of my favorites with a little bit of a dirty history
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It's called pasta puttanesca. And the reason we call it puttanesca is because the ladies of the evening of Naples in Italy
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used to have to make something really quick so they could get back out to their jobs
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As well, the strong aroma attracted men from the streets into the women's kitchens
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So today, we're going to make that dish super easy, super quick, and you'll be eating
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in less than 15 minutes. So we're going to start today with some garlic
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All right. Now, a lot of times we chop up garlic really small
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But today, we want the flavor of the garlic to flavor our oil
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So what we're going to do is make thin slices of that garlic clove
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And we're going to make what's almost like a garlic chip. OK
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There's no race here. You want them all to be the same thickness. So take your time
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We're going to use about a half a clove of garlic for our pasta. Another ingredient that adds to the puttanesca is olives
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Olives offer a very salty characteristic flavor, and they're what help make the intense aroma of this dish
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So today, I've got two different kinds. You've got black ones here called Kalamata olives
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So they're brined differently. Their characteristic green color turns brown over time with the liquid
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And then, because I can and I absolutely love garlic, I have garlic-stuffed olives as well that
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are going to go into our pasta. You're going to need about six to eight olives
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And all we want to do is just slice them into little round circles
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And the thing with olives that I really, really enjoy is they're very underrated
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A lot of people go, ew, olives. But the best part about olives in this dish
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is they add to the very intense aroma that we're looking for to attract those men
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off the street, if you will. Here's what you're going to need to make your puttanesca
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First, we're going to need some extra virgin olive oil. OK? I have that in my squeeze bottle here
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We're going to use about a tablespoon of olive oil. Next, we have the garlic that we're going to chop
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It's going to go into the frying pan, and it's going to saute quickly. Then our olives, which are going to add
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our intense salty flavor, which will be paired with capers, which will also lend an intense salty flavor to our dish
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and really increase that aroma. Next, because it is tomato season, we'll be using some cherry tomatoes in our dish today
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And because it's a superfood, and it's green, and we love it, we're going to add some spinach into our pasta as well
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Just to finish off, to coat those noodles, I've just got one cup of tomato sauce
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This is plain, straight tomato sauce. You can make this yourself. You can buy it in a jar
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What we're doing here is using the tomato sauce as a base flavor
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We are enhancing it with all of our other ingredients. So at this point, it's OK to use a jarred product
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For our pasta today, we're using a product I like to use called GoGo Quinoa
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It's a quinoa-based product that is GMO-free, gluten-free, and corn-free, and it's also vegan
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So it doesn't contain any egg products. It's a really good pasta. It offers the same flavor and texture
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you would get from a durum wheat pasta, but without all the gluten. And the best part about this pasta
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is you don't have to change your pasta method. We can cook it exactly the same way to al dente
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and we get the same texture and results. So a little trick I'm going to offer you today is to use your index finger and thumb and make a circle
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Now, the circle you're going to make depends on the size of portion you want
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I use currency. So if I want one portion for just myself
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I'm going to use a hole through my finger the size of a dime. I'm just going to put that pasta into my finger
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until I have enough pasta there that it looks just like a dime
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Now, before we put our pasta into our boiling water, there's something we need to discuss
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You only have one chance to season this pasta, and that's when we're boiling it
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And a general rule of thumb when you're seasoning pasta water, you want to season it as if you would season a soup
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It's got to have that salty flavor to it, but it doesn't have to be overly salty, OK
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And for that, I'm going to use natural sea salt, OK? I love using sea salt because it lends a better
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flavor to our dishes, and it also is a lot more intensely salty without having
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to use lots and lots of salt. So all we're going to do is put a couple of pinches of that salt in our water
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We can be generous because we really want to make sure that water is seasoned
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We always want to drop pasta into boiling water. If we drop our pasta into water that is not boiling
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what we're going to do is start drawing out the starch in the pasta before the pasta itself
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starts to cook, and we're going to end up with soggy, broken noodles. So in goes our pasta
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And just with a pair of tongs, you want to gently massage that pasta into the water
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and work it for a couple of minutes just until it lightly bends into the water
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without breaking the noodles. What we're looking for here is a term we call al dente
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which means to the bite. So when we take this pasta out of the water
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it should still have a little bit of a rigid bite to it in the center
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That way, it allows us to finish cooking the pasta in our sauce without it overcooking
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And after about 13 to 15 minutes, we will have beautifully cooked pasta
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So what we're doing right now is we're just testing our pasta for doneness
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So very bravely and very carefully, you're just going to take a noodle out of that hot water
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And you're just going to taste it and make sure we have that to the bite texture
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But when we're at that stage, it's time to take that pasta out of the water
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And the biggest mistake that people make is they spend all this time to cook perfect pasta
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and then they rinse all that starch off the outside with cold water
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You want to keep the starch on those noodles. So all we're going to do is turn it off the heat
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We're going to take a cloth and grab the handle. And we're just going to drain that water off
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And the little chef secret that we always do is we don't drain it fully
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We leave just a little touch of pasta water in there because all the residual starch in that water
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is now going to help thicken our finished sauce. The pasta was the hardest part of this dish
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It's all going to come together really fast now. Olive oil, one tablespoon into a hot pan
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Olive oil has a very low smoke point. So we do not want this oil to smoke
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We just want it to get hot. So as soon as you start to smell that smoke
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it's going to be hot. So as soon as you start hearing a crackle or the oil itself starts to get shiny
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and coat the side of the pan, we know we're hot enough. Then in goes our garlic
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We just want to kind of separate all those garlic cloves because we almost want to toast them like chips
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And what that's going to do is it's going to extract the oil from the garlic clove itself
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and it's going to flavor that oil. And you'll start to see a little browning happen
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in that garlic there. That's when we're ready to add our olives, our capers
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our lovely tomatoes grown right here in the Niagara region in the middle of tomato season
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Now, if your pan starts to get too hot at this point, we're done frying the garlic. We can turn it down to low and just
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let all that kind of simmer. Next, we're going to add in our spinach, and we're just going to let that wilt for a couple seconds
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And to help that wilting out, we're just going to add a little salt. Once we get to a stage
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where it's nice and wilted, we see our tomatoes are starting to get a little bit of color
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and our garlic is nicely browned. We know we've got a really intense flavor going on
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in there that's only going to enhance the flavor of our tomato sauce
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In goes our cup of tomato sauce. I wish you could smell it in here right now
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Then finally, with that little bit of excess pasta water we have in there and our beautiful, perfectly
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cooked al dente spaghetti, we're going to get that right inside that pan
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and we're just going to work that pasta together, fold in those ingredients, and just
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let that residual starch thicken that sauce. You're just going to let that simmer for about three
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to four minutes until the noodles grab all that excess tomato sauce and start
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to coat everything nicely. Another big mistake we make when we cook pasta
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is we think we need tons of sauce on it. The reality is, if you've done your job right
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and you've cooked the pasta properly, that's the star of the dish
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All the sauce does is enhance the delicious cook on that pasta
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So once you get to this stage and you see very thick bubbles going on here
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the sauce is nicely coating, we can go to the plate. And now we're just going to take our pasta
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transfer it to a workable surface, and we just want to kind of spin all that sauce
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into our noodles. Grab all those lovely noodles. You can see the sauce is just coating the noodles
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We're not swimming in sauce here. What we're looking for is all of the goodness in this pan
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to become part of this dish. We don't want anything left behind. And as you can see, we've got all this beautiful goodness
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here that we're just going to top our pasta. And there you have it
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Pasta puttanesca my way. Perfect if you need a meal in a hurry or if you need to attract that new man off the street
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See ya
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