♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know, one would think by this time, we'd know how to make the Italian classics.

After all, food writers have been going over to Italy for half a century to every possible region, every possible town.

Well, it turns out, that's not true.

We just went to Milan and found out risotto can be made in under 15 minutes.

We discovered that pasta all'amatriciana is not a long-simmered tomato sauce.

It's made quickly with a concentrate of tomatoes and meat.

And finally, what's one of the great pairings with pasta, with spaghetti?

It turns out to be lemon, not tomato.

So stay right here on Milk Street as we explore Italian classics, the right way.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

Ferguson's proud to support Milk Street and culinary crusaders everywhere.

For more information on our extensive collection of kitchen products, we're on the web at fergusonshowrooms.com.

- For 25 years, Consumer Cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect.

We offer a variety of no-contract plans, and our U.S.-based customer service team can help find one that fits you.

To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

- Since 1899, my family has shared our passion for everything that goes into our Mutti 100% Italian tomatoes.

Only tomatoes.

Only Mutti.

- Designed by cooks for cooks for over 100 years.

Cookware Collection by Regal Ware.

Handcrafted in Wisconsin.

- The AccuSharp knife and tool sharpener, designed to safely sharpen knives in seconds.

AccuSharp: Keep your edge.

- If you're anything like me, you make risotto once or twice a year, and the reason is, it takes half an hour, you have to add the broth in four or five increments, you have to stir constantly-- it's pretty much a big production.

So we went to Milan, sort of the home of risotto, to find out if, in fact, that's how they make it in Italy.

It turns out that's not how they make it.

We went to two places, we went to Trattoria Masuelli San Marco, with a father and son team, and then we went to another place called Trippa with Diego Rossi, and he made a Milanese risotto, which is with saffron.

Now here's what we learned: It's a skillet dish, it's made in 15 minutes, most of the liquid is added at once, and you can make hundreds of variations.

So, let's go make risotto the Italian way.

♪ ♪ You know, one of the great surprises here at Milk Street is when we go to Italy, and we assume that by this time, people would know exactly how to make those classic recipes, right?

Well, we went to Milan for risotto, and it turns out they don't prepare it anything like the 5,000 articles that have been printed about risotto since 1980.

It's easy, and there isn't as much stirring as you think.

- That's right, Chris, this is not Nonna's risotto, done on a Sunday afternoon really slowly.

This is trattoria on a busy Saturday night-- risotto comes together really quickly.

There's not all of that constant stirring, so we want to forget about a few things we know about risotto already, so we're not going to stir it constantly, we're not going to use sautéed onions to start, we're not going to use wine, and we're not going to use chicken broth.

Instead, we're going to make our... - And we're not going to use any rice at all.

- (laughs): We're not doing risotto.

- (laughing) - We are going to do risotto, but we're going to make our own quick vegetable broth.

This is a really easy and quick broth you can do for this recipe, or actually use it for anything.

So to start, we're going to add five cups of water to our saucepan.

I'll try not to spill this.

- We should say, one of the things we found, at a couple of places we went to, was that they use vegetable broth, which was surprising to us.

But that added a tremendous amount of flavor.

- It does, and one of those ways we're going to add that flavor is with a piece of parmesan.

So this is a parmesan rind, one ounce.

And then we have one onion-- this is just chopped.

All of these vegetables are just roughly chopped.

Three smashed garlic cloves, two celery stalks, one tomato, and then a cup of parsley, and that's leaves and stems.

Just going to stir this together, and we're going to heat this up over a high heat, bring it to a boil, and then we'll reduce the heat to medium and partially cover it, and we want to partially cover it because we're only going to cook this for 20 minutes.

So it's a really quick vegetable broth, but we're going to cover it a little bit because we want to concentrate some of the flavor, but we don't want too much evaporation.

♪ ♪ All right, Chris, so we've been simmering this broth for 20 minutes.

It's ready to strain.

We've got about a quart of broth, I'm going to take three-and-a-half cups of that and put it in this small saucepan.

And we'll bring this to a boil.

Once it comes to a boil, you want to turn it down to low and cover it because we don't want any of that liquid to evaporate.

We just want to keep it warm while we make the risotto.

So we can't make risotto without rice.

In Milan, they're going to use carnaroli rice, which has a little bit more firm texture.

- More toothsome.

- Exactly.

- Yes.

- It's also a little bit hard to find here, so we're going to use arborio rice.

But if you can find carnaroli, definitely use it.

So first, we're going to toast the rice.

This is a typical step when you make a risotto.

So this is two tablespoons of salted butter, and we're going to heat this over medium-high.

Again, we're going to make this really fast, so we're going to have a much higher heat than you would typically have when you make risotto.

It's usually pretty low and very slow.

We're going to go kind of quickly.

(sizzling) All right, so we're going to toast the rice, and you really want to stir this pretty vigorously.

We really give this a lot of attention here on the front end.

A lot of the starch in the rice comes out at the beginning of cooking, and this just goes a couple of minutes at this stage.

We're just getting the rice so that the edges are translucent.

While I'm doing that, if you would scoop out two-and-a-half cups of that broth.

All right.

And now we're just going to add all of this broth at one time.

(sizzling) So I'm going to reduce this to medium heat.

When you stir it, you want to be kind of aggressive.

That's going to splash around a little bit.

But if you do sort of quick movements, it won't splash as much.

So I'm just going to keep stirring this every few minutes or so really vigorously, and that's only going to be for about eight to ten minutes.

- So most of the starch is actually on the exterior of the rice, so when you stir it quickly at the beginning, that starch comes off quickly.

So it's not like you have to stir for half an hour.

- Exactly.

- Because it comes off fast, and you're done, as you said.

- That's right.

♪ ♪ So, Chris, I've let this go for about ten minutes.

The rice is kind of tender around the edges, but still pretty firm in the center, so we've got to finish cooking that rice.

Can you add another half-cup of that vegetable broth?

So this is going to cook for another three to five minutes.

We want to get the rice so it's just shy of al dente, so we're going to start this every now and again.

Most of that starch has released at this point.

We just want to get the rice tender.

Now, if you find that it's starting to get a little dry, you can continue to add more broth by quarter-cup measures just until your rice is cooked.

But you still have a pretty soupy texture.

You can see it's still pretty soupy-- that's what we want.

We want to kind of drag a spoon through-- you're barely seeing a trail here, it fills right back in-- but the rice should be tender.

So I'm going to taste a little bit.

That's the only way to know.

Excellent-- just shy of al dente.

So I'm going to turn the heat off to add the rest of our ingredients.

And we're going to add four tablespoons of salted butter, one tablespoon at a time.

And so, while I'm adding these other ingredients, the rice is continuing to cook, and so it's going to be the perfect al dente texture.

- Now, traditionally in Milan, this would be a saffron risotto, right?

That would be their specialty.

- Right.

- Which we did have when we were there.

- Right, we're going to do an herb version.

So to that, I'm going to add a half a cup of grated parm, a third of a cup of sliced scallions, a quarter-cup of parsley, two teaspoons of minced fresh thyme, a half a teaspoon of grated lemon zest-- that's going to give a really nice bright flavor to this-- and then a half a teaspoon of salt.

At this point, I kind of like to almost fold this stuff in so that we keep that really nice texture.

- A lot of that liquid, the broth, has now been absorbed just in the last two or three minutes.

- Right, but when we get to this point, you can see, like, it's still filling back in pretty quickly.

So our final ingredient is four teaspoons of white balsamic vinegar.

We like the brightness of wine, but sometimes it has a little bit of a boozy aftertaste.

So instead, we're going to use this vinegar, and that's going to give that bright, acidic element.

All right.

- Boy, that does look good.

- It does.

So...

This is one of those times where you want to do what the chefs do and warm your serving bowls.

Risotto has a tendency to get kind of gloppy if it hits a cold or room-temperature bowl.

- You should always warm plates and bowls before serving.

- That's very chef-y.

- Well... Not everything chef-y's stupid, you know.

Once in a while... - I suppose.

- ...they have a good idea, you know?

Now, that does look fabulous.

- All right, let's... - You get an A on appearance.

- Thank you.

- Not that you're being judged.

- So the rice still has some texture to it.

It's not mushy.

- This may be the best risotto I've ever had.

- Hm!

- And I don't want to get you too excited, so I won't say it is the best.

- I'm very excited.

- But it may be the best.

So we went to Milan to find out how they make risotto, and this is very different than what I learned many years ago.

It's not stirred all the time.

There is a lot of stirring in the beginning to release the starch, which is on the outside of the rice, and it's really a much simpler process.

You end up with great flavor, a nice sauce, and toothsome rice, right?

- Toothsome?

Is that right?

- Right, toothsome... - And delicious flavor in this recipe.

♪ ♪ About 20 years ago, I had lemon with pasta, actually in Boston, and I thought, "Well, it's, kind of strange combination."

And it turns out, lemon's been around in Italy for 1,500 years.

It came by way of the Middle East and the Far East.

And if you think about it, lemon and tomatoes are very similar-- they're acidic.

And so it's a natural pairing, it's one I hadn't had before, so today we'll do a lemon pasta dish oddly enough called spaghetti al limone, right?

- That's right, Chris.

This is one of my favorite pasta dishes.

It's actually one of our Tuesday night dinners, which means it just comes together really quickly, it doesn't have more than ten ingredients, and uses a lot of pantry staples.

So this is a little bit rich because there's a nice amount of butter in it, but it's balanced with lemon and a little bit of pepper flakes, and you'll see, we can make it really quick.

So I'm just going to, over medium heat here, heat up three tablespoons of butter.

And traditionally, Chris, a lot of these spaghetti lemon pastas you were talking about, they have cream in them, but we actually found that cream kind of overwhelmed the citrus.

So we just used the butter, and that's plenty of dairy and plenty of nice richness without overwhelming that bright lemon flavor.

Okay, so I have eight cloves of garlic here.

Again, there's not a lot of ingredients, so we want to really pack a punch, but you'll see, it really mellows out in the butter.

And I'm just going to let this go for about 30 seconds.

Okay, I'm going to add a teaspoon of red pepper flakes, and we'll let this cook about one more minute, Chris, and as soon as you smell the garlic getting really fragrant and see it just a little bit golden, then we'll add our white wine.

I'm going to add three quarters of a cup of a dry white wine.

You want to make sure it's something that you'd like to drink with dinner, and then we're going to let this reduce to about a half a cup, and that's going to take about three minutes.

Okay, Chris, we've got a half a cup, and I'm actually going to shut this off and just set it aside.

So now we can cook our pasta.

So we have two quarts of water, and I'm going to add a tablespoon of kosher salt and then 12 ounces of our pasta.

Now, we're going to actually cook this not just al dente-- like, shy of al dente, because the pasta is going to finish cooking in the sauce, with that salty, starchy cooking water.

So I'm going to let this cook, and then before I drain it, Chris, I'm actually going to set aside two cups of that cooking water, and we'll use it to finish the whole dish.

- And that's a classic technique in Italy and also Milk Street, which is to save some of the pasta cooking water, which is starchy, and you finish the pasta in the sauce, adding some of that water back, and that starch helps the sauce cling to the pasta.

- All right, Chris, so we drained our pasta.

Now I'm going to add a cup and a half of this pasta water.

We'll save a half a cup, just in case we need it down the road.

Now we're going to bring this up to a simmer-- thank you-- over medium-high heat.

And now I'm going to add the pasta, and you can actually see, Chris, that it's not fully cooked.

It's only going to take another couple of minutes, two to three minutes, for it to absorb a good amount of this liquid and finish cooking.

So you can see that the sauce has reduced down.

It's really sort of coating and clinging to those strands of pasta.

So now off heat, I'm going to add three quarters of a cup of fresh parsley.

We have two more tablespoons of butter... - Of course.

- For just a little more richness, a teaspoon of black pepper.

So this does have some bite, between the red pepper flakes and the black pepper.

I have two tablespoons of lemon zest and then three tablespoons of fresh lemon juice.

All right, Chris, that looks beautiful and smells so fresh, like... - Kind of looks good enough to eat, wouldn't you say?

- It does-- all right.

And now I'm going to add just some fresh parmesan cheese, and that, you know, adds a little nuttiness.

You can see why we skipped the cream, and I'll leave a little extra in case you want to top your bowl.

All right, let's eat while it's hot.

- Mmm.

I don't mind if I put a little extra parmesan on this, please.

- No.

- This looks magnificent, mm?

It's light and lemony, and now you and I have to figure out how to eat this on camera.

- (laughs) - Mm.

You know what the big surprise is?

The garlic is not overpowering at all.

You had eight cloves of garlic.

And the butter, also, it's nice, but it doesn't feel heavy.

- And I love that this is all stuff that I probably have in my pantry and fridge at home.

- So, instead of using tomatoes with your pasta, we used a 1,500-year-old tradition of using lemons and a little bit of hot red pepper flakes, quite a lot of garlic, some white wine, parsley, lemon juice, and zest to finish.

Cooks in about as much time as it takes to make the pasta.

So it's definitely a Tuesday night supper.

Spaghetti al limone.

♪ ♪ You know, if you go to Rome, you discover that a lot of things are related.

The people are related, but so are some of the classic pasta dishes.

Cacio e pepe, you probably all had that.

We've done that here at Milk Street, uses a pecorino cheese, pepper, pasta, and the cooking water from the pasta.

That's all it is.

Now, if you add some guanciale, which is cured pork jowl, to it, you get gricia, which is similar, except that it has a little bit of the meat in it.

And finally, if you add tomatoes-- I didn't know this-- you get amatriciana, which is what we're going to do now.

- Right, it's still simple, even though we've added a few more ingredients.

So the first thing we're going to do is start by heating our pan, over medium heat.

We're going to be using today pancetta, instead of the guanciale, because it's a little bit easier to find.

So we're using one tablespoon of olive oil, and once that gets that shimmery heat on it, we can start crisping the pancetta.

I tend to be the kind of cook that preps as I go, but this is one of those recipes, it's beneficial to have everything done... - Oh, you're one of those people, at home, it's complete chaos.

- Yes, exactly.

(chuckles) The oil's getting shimmery there.

I think we're about ready.

And then we have three ounces of pancetta here, which we found was plenty to give a lot of flavor to this dish.

(pan sizzling) That's what you want to hear.

So we're going to let this cook until it's brown and crispy, about five to seven minutes.

(sizzling) Isn't that amazing, how it changes?

How it's, like, dark, and the crispy, and how much less it looks like there is of it?

- You know what this is great for?

- What?

- Fried rice.

- Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Okay, I'm gathering it to the edge of the pan so we can use a slotted spoon to remove it.

We want to leave the fat in there because that's a lot of flavor in that fat.

- You know, there's a lot of back-and-forth between Spain and Italy about cured meats.

You know, Matt Goulding, who is the author of Grape, Olive, Pig, and we talked to him on the radio show recently, he said that when he talked to someone in Italy about pancetta, he said, "You know, it tastes like bologna."

Because he thought the Ibérico ham, where the pigs are fed acorns the last couple of months, is so much better.

So on one hand, you have the Italians who love pancetta, and then the Spanish are going, like, "Well, it tastes like bologna."

(laughing): Which I would agree with.

But there's a lot of, there's a lot of cultural back-and-forth.

- All right, while this is hot, we're adding ten cloves of sliced garlic.

This is a lot of garlic.

(laughs) But it's, it's so delicious in this.

So we want to let the garlic get light brown.

It'll take about two minutes.

- So one of the things we found traveling in Italy is, the sauces tend to be a little drier and more intense than we think here.

- Yeah.

- It's not like this big watery marinara sauce, and there's less of it, but it's so intensely flavored, you don't need as much, right?

- Exactly.

All right, this is about ready.

It's very lightly golden, which is where you want it.

Now we're going to add a little bit of spicy heat, with a half a teaspoon of red pepper flakes.

I'm going to give that about 30 seconds until you can start smelling it.

You see all that yummy darkness in the bottom of the pan?

That is going to add a lot of flavor.

Can you smell it?

- Mm-hmm.

- All right, now, to stop this cooking-- we don't want to let the garlic go too long-- we're going to add three-quarters-cup of white wine, and I love this.

(sizzling) Yeah, look at the bottom of the pan already, how clear it is.

The white wine does is pick up all that delicious browning.

We're going to turn this up to medium-high and let this simmer until almost all the liquid's reduced.

You know, you might say, "Why are we adding liquid and then reducing down?"

It's because of the flavor.

That flavor will intensify, and the wine is going to add a lot to the sauce.

That will need about five to seven minutes.

Chris, you can see the wine has almost practically disappeared, just a little bit left.

Look how much darker it got from all those good pan juices.

- That's what happens at home, we open a bottle, and then it's practically disappeared.

It's just incredible, it's magic.

- And we're using canned tomatoes, and I'm going to go ahead and add them in because this is ready.

We used one 14-and-a-half-ounce can, which we drained, whole tomatoes, and then we crushed them with our hands.

Now, we reserved a little bit of the liquid, as well, because we're going to add that in later.

But we wanted to control how much liquid went in, so we drained them first.

As you know, even the Italians used canned tomatoes.

Their flavor's so much more intense, and they're much more consistent.

So now that the tomatoes are heated through, only a couple of minutes, we're going to add the three tablespoons of reserved tomato liquids.

And then we are going to turn this off and set this aside until the pasta is ready.

Going to take this off the burner.

Okay, time to talk about pasta water, because we went as minimal with this recipe as you saw in Italy, and what we did was, we reduced the pasta water by half.

Normally, we'd use four quarts, but we used two quarts here, so we could intensify the starch from the pasta.

And also, we did something very special.

We added a chunk of pecorino romano cheese.

- Hmm.

- You know, we used fresh-grated pecorino on top of the pasta, but this actually helps to flavor the pasta water, which then goes into the spaghetti.

12 ounces of spaghetti there, and two teaspoons of salt.

You know, normally, when you're cooking pasta, you would just dump salt in the water until it has a salinity like the ocean.

But by adding a controlled amount of salt, we control the flavor of the liquid in the pasta water that then goes into the sauce.

- So you're seasoning the pasta and the pasta water.

- Yes, we are.

- In other words.

Pasta cooking water has starch in it, so the less water you use, the more starch there is, and that is helpful, because you often add some of the cooking water, which contains starch.

The starch helps bind the sauce to the pasta, so less water, more starch.

- Pretty simple.

So the next thing to note about this recipe is, we're not going to cook the pasta to al dente in the water.

We're going to stop just shy of al dente, because then the pasta will continue cooking in the sauce and will absorb even more of that flavor.

I'm thinking this looks good, just shy of al dente.

You see what you think.

Mm, yep.

- It's definitely done.

- Okay, let's turn it off.

Going to take the cheese out.

We don't need it, it's very gloppy.

We don't need that anymore.

Now, we're going to drain the pasta, but we're reserving the pasta water for all that starch we just talked about.

Going to set this aside here.

Now, we're going to measure out one-and-a-half cups of the pasta water.

The beautiful thing is, we're going to finish this pasta in the same pan that we started the sauce in.

Well, it's only one of the beautiful things in it.

(laughs): Okay.

Hot, starchy pasta water.

A cup and a half.

It seems like a lot, but remember, our pasta is slightly undercooked and is going to need to absorb that liquid.

Soon as we're at a simmer, we'll be ready to add the spaghetti.

Okay, here we go, very carefully.

Ah, beautiful.

Okay, would you just give that a good stir?

Now that the spaghetti's in, it's going to continue to absorb that extra liquid and it should be done in about three to six minutes.

All right, see that?

Look, hardly any liquid left at all, it's thickened up on the bottom.

The pasta has a slight pinkish tint to it.

So we're, now we're going to turn this off, remove it from the heat, and do the finishing part.

Couple of tablespoons of olive oil, which is going to stay really nice and fruity, since we're adding it at the end.

Two teaspoons of ground black pepper.

This seems like a lot, but this is part of the... - (laughs): There we go!

- Yeah.

This is part of the flavor of the dish.

It's the, you know, the cacio and pepe that you mentioned earlier.

Okay, and then all that pancetta that we cooked earlier, too, gets to go in.

Good-- this is intensely flavorful.

- Mm, that looks good.

- Yeah, you can smell it, right?

- That's my favorite word in Milk Street, by the way.

- "The pepper"?

- "Ready?"

- No, "ready?"

- (laughs): "Ready?"

- Yeah, I'm ready.

- Followed by "to eat."

- Ready?

Yes, I'm ready.

- Ready... - Great.

Want a little top dressing.

Some cheese?

I'll let you... - Yes, yes, please.

Yeah.

- And the number-one rule of doing food television is, never eat spaghetti, right?

- (laughs): That's right.

- This is going to be... - I'm glad I don't have to talk.

- ...a challenge.

- Mm.

- Mmm.

That is so... - That's incredibly flavorful.

- Well, the black pepper is really interesting, because it actually provides some real heat here, along with the red pepper.

- For all that garlic we put in, it doesn't dominate at all.

- It depends on how you treat the garlic at the beginning, depending how pungent it is at the end.

If you just use a whole clove or slices, it won't have that really strong garlic flavor when you finish cooking it.

But obviously, if you crush it, or if you mince it or whatever, grate it, when you break it down, it's going to be much more garlicky.

So it turns out there is a right way and a wrong way to make a pasta sauce.

The version with a big plate of pasta and that red marinara all over it, just bathed in it, is wrong.

In Italy, the right way is to have some subtlety and everything has got balance.

You have the cheese, you have the white wine, you have red pepper, you have black pepper, and you have a nice balance of flavor.

The pasta and the sauce are married together, one's not dumped all over the other.

So you can get this recipe for amatriciana, and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street, at MilkStreetTV.com.

All episodes and recipes from this season of Milk Street Television are available for free at our website, MilkStreetTV.com.

Please access our content, including our step-by-step recipe videos, from your smart phone, your tablet, or your computer.

- The new Milk Street cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show, from Greek white bean soup and Tuscan beef stew to Mexican grilled cheese and Spanish almond cake.

The Milk Street cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street cookbook for $23.95, 40% less than the cover price, and receive a Milk Street tote with your order at no additional charge.

Call 855-MILK-177, or order online.

Funding for this series was provided by the following.

Ferguson's proud to support Milk Street and culinary crusaders everywhere.

For more information on our extensive collection of kitchen products, we're on the web at fergusonshowrooms.com.

- For 25 years, Consumer Cellular has been offering no-contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like.

Our U.S.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you.

To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

- Since 1899, my family has shared our passion for everything that goes into our Mutti 100% Italian tomatoes.

Only tomatoes.

Only Mutti.

- Designed by cooks for cooks for over 100 years.

Cookware collection by Regal Ware.

Handcrafted in Wisconsin.

- The AccuSharp knife and tool sharpener, designed to safely sharpen knives in seconds.

AccuSharp: Keep your edge.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪