New York Weekend - Eataly

Walking into Eataly last weekend is how I imagine my 10-year-old self would have felt walking into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, if it really existed. I always compare Italian import markets to BuonItalia in Chelsea Market, but Eataly is like BuonItalia x 1000. No offense B.I., I still love you.



Eataly is the brainchild of Mario Batali, Joe Bastianich, Lidia Bastianich, and Oscar Farinetti. The 50,000 square foot Italian food emporium is across the street from Madison Square Park, and just opened last week.

Upon entering on 23rd street, we first walked through the produce section.



As we were slowing walking through and taking everything in, a guy from Baldor cut open a fresh fava bean pod and gave me one. Yum! And take a look at these mushrooms:



Next we came upon a big open area with tall tables to stand at, and waiters/waitresses serving meat and cheese plates, raw bar items, and wine. Right by the tables were the fresh mozzarella counter, and this:



I think next year for my birthday I just want a wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. There's nothing better than eating a fresh piece just cut from the wheel...and did that guy give us samples? Of course! Soft and crumbly with little crunchy spots of salt...mmmm.

We then took a right past the tall tables and came upon a couple aisles of meat and cheese. So many wonderful kinds of cheese. I must have been walking through there with a huge grin on my face, looking like a fool. Cheese makes me so happy. Not to mention these guys:



Past the meat and cheese are the coffee and sweets. A tiny little espresso bar with room for a few people to stand, rows and rows of chocolates and candy and jams, a pastry counter, a gelato counter, and past that a bigger coffee bar with some tables.



Making a u-turn, we walked back past the tall tables to take a look at the butcher and seafood counters.



It was a really beautiful display - Manila clams, langoustines, in-shell scallops, huge shrimp...not to mention all the filets of fish in the other counter.

Near the fish and meat was the pasta department. Rows upon rows of dried pasta, an unbelievable variety of types and shapes I had never seen before.



There was also a counter with fresh pasta and ravioli priced by the pound. There were a couple guys working with this big, crazy ravioli maker that had huge rolls of pasta dough being cranked through a machine and little raviolis popping out the bottom on a mini conveyor belt.




And of course, there's a bakery too.



I didn't even get pictures of the Italian craft beer section, the kitchen supplies and dishes, or the Kartell chairs and lamps they also sell - the same chairs used in the restaurants. Oh yeah, did I mention there are restaurants inside? 7 of them! And a rooftop beer garden opening in November.

Ok, time to eat! We went back to the tall tables. It was a little busy. Just a little.



After some stalking and careful maneuvering, we got a table. We ordered a meat and cheese plate, as well as a separate order of housemade mozzarella and prosciutto.




You can barely see it in the picture, but the meat and cheese spread comes with another little plate of honey, figs, and candied orange peel. Pecorino + honey = perfection. The mozzarella was amazing, drizzled with a little extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and pepper.

Our trip to Eataly was a really amazing experience. Except, ughhh...why does this place have to open when I don't live in New York anymore? All the grocery items, except for some of the beers, are imported from Italy. It's as authentic as you can get. Eataly really lived up to all the hype...actually it more than lived up, it totally exceeded any expectations I had walking in. Just when I thought it couldn't possibly get any better...look who showed up!



WHAT?! Anthony Bourdain?! We had perfect seats to see Bourdain waiting in line to buy some cheese with his wife and daughter. I kind of felt like a stalker taking pictures, so I snapped just a couple. But then...Mario Batali came over too. Worlds were colliding. And we were all legitimately freaking out. So Peter grabbed my camera and got a couple more shots.



Batali left for a minute, and came back to present Bourdain with a meat and cheese plate.



Does it get any better than that? Well done, Eataly, well done.

Eataly
200 5th Avenue, New York NY (between 23rd and 24th Streets)

Cacio e Pepe

My inspiration for this one comes from this week's episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. He went to Rome for the first time (?!#$&*#%&) and made a beeline for one of the most classic Italian dishes - cacio e pepe (spaghetti with cheese and pepper). Do yourself a favor and DVR this episode if you didn't see it - it's on again Monday at 7/6 central on the Travel Channel. You'll find yourself looking up how many frequent flyer miles you need to fly to Rome before the episode is even over.

This dish is as basic as you can get. However, never having made it, I did need a little guidance. I looked up several recipes and they all called for olive oil, butter, cheese, salt, and pepper. Hmm...isn't it called "cacio e pepe"? Not "cacio, pepe, olio, burro, sale". Just sayin'. One even said to add arugula. Arugula?! I looked up recipes in Italian, and through the very little bit of the Italian language I know I gathered that the recipes were all calling for cheese, pepper, and bit of pasta water. That sounds more like the real deal.



Cacio e pepe is traditionally made with tagliolini, spaghetti or bucatini. I couldn't find fresh versions of any of those (and didn't have it in me to make homemade pasta that night) so I went with this imported tagliatelle because it was a very thin egg pasta which would be soft, and perfect for absorbing the cheese sauce.

Here's all you need:

about 9 oz. of pasta (I used half of that package which was 500 grams total)
1 cup freshly grated pecorino romano
1 teaspoon pepper



Boil a pot of well-salted water. For the pepper - I did 1/2 tsp. ground, and the other 1/2 tsp. I put whole peppercorns into a ziploc bag and crushed them so I had some bigger pieces.

Cook the pasta, drain (but save about 1 cup of the water!!), and add the pasta back to the pot with just a touch of olive oil to keep it from sticking together or the pan. Add the cheese, pepper, and roughly 1/4 cup of the water. Mix to combine.



The cheese and water should meld to form a nice, cheesy sauce. If it's too pasty add a bit more water - I think I ended up using 1/3 cup.



Ahh, just like Roma! Ok, let's not get carried away here. Just like...Little Italy. One point made in the show was about how incredibly important fresh, seasonal, high-quality ingredients are to Italian cooking. If something's not in season, it's simply not used. Pasta and cheese don't go out of season, obviously...but I think the reason many of the American recipes for this dish called for oil, butter, and salt is to make up for the possibility of lower quality ingredients being used. As long as you use good quality pasta (fresh if possible), and freshly grated cheese and cracked pepper you can't go wrong.

Scarpetta's Spaghetti

I was thinking of calling this post "Pasta Disaster 2.0" but it wasn't a total disaster - the dish turned out really well. But again, it was a battle between me and the pasta dough, and the pasta dough nearly won. Let me start from the beginning.

This week's new episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations was simply called "Techniques" - instead of traveling to an exotic international location and eating the local cuisine, Tony (and some other chefs) gave lessons on the basics of cooking. Tony made a beef bourguignon, Jacques Pepin made an omelet, Thomas Keller made a roast chicken (the same recipe I use!), and Scott Conant of Scarpetta made spaghetti with tomato sauce and basil. There were also a couple other chefs/dishes. If I were going on the Food Network show The Best Thing I Ever Ate, I would talk about Scarpetta's spaghetti with tomato and basil. It's such a simple dish but done so perfectly. Fresh pasta, just enough sauce to coat the spaghetti, fresh basil, and a little parmesan cheese.

Naturally, I was really excited to see the dish prepared on tv. Peter was watching me watch this, and he said "you're going to try to make this, aren't you..." Yup. I wish there was video of Scott Conant making the dish, but there's no clip on the Travel Channel website. There is a written recipe, but it differs slightly from how he made it on the show. I decided to follow his instructions from the demonstration rather than the recipe. He didn't talk at all about the pasta, just the sauce. So I consulted my dad on homemade pasta, again, and tried to make it, again. Disaster. Enough explanation, here goes.

Sauce:
20 plum or roma tomatoes
1/2 cup olive oil, plus a few tablespoons
salt
10-12 basil leaves, half of cut into a chiffonade
8-10 cloves garlic
1-2 Tbl. unsalted butter
freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
crushed red pepper

Bring a large pot of water to boil, and add salt. Cut a small, not very deep X into the bottom of the each tomato. Prepare a bowl of ice water. Cook the tomatoes in the boiling water for about 30 seconds to a minute. Watch for the X on the bottom to start to separate and the skin to start to peel away a little. Transfer the tomatoes to the ice water to stop the cooking. I did the tomatoes about 2 or 3 at a time.



Peel the skin off all the tomatoes. You may have to use a small knife to get some of it off. Cut two small incisions in each side of each tomato and scoop out the seeds and guts with your finger. You don't have to get every last bit out, but most of it. Use the same big pot that had water in it, and heat up a few tablespoons of olive oil. Add the tomatoes and a big pinch of salt. Let the tomatoes cook for about 10 minutes or so, then start to mash them up with a potato masher. The tomatoes should cook for about 40 minutes total, and should have a smooth consistency.

About halfway through the tomato cooking, heat a small saucepan with about 1/2 cup of olive oil. Add half the basil leaves (you can put the whole stem in), a big pinch of crushed red pepper, and the garlic cloves. Let everything infuse into the oil, cooking for about 10 minutes. Strain the olive oil into the tomato mixture.




Pasta:
2 cups flour
4 eggs

Combine ingredients in a bowl with a fork, or in a mixer with the hook attachment. Add a little more flour if the dough is too sticky, or a bit of water if it's dry. Form the dough into a ball.




My pasta machine is a hand crank, not the kind you attach on a mixer. I think this kind is the best, and they are inexpensive. There's a lot of different ones on Amazon.



I started rolling out the dough...



And that's where I'm going to stop. I guess my dough was still too sticky and I should have added more flour, because once I flattened it enough and started to put it through the spaghetti cutting crank, things took a turn for the worse. It got all stuck in there wouldn't cut. I tried sticking the dough in the freezer for a couple minutes to firm it up. Still wouldn't work. Just like last time I tried to make pasta, I considered throwing all the dough and the machine off the balcony.

So I don't really feel qualified to give any instructions on how to do this. I ended up cutting the spaghetti by hand, which was a HUGE pain. It was actually fettucine because I did not have the patience to cut the noodles any smaller. In the end it was totally fine and tasted great, but was way too time consuming since I couldn't get it through the crank. Anyway, if you decide to give this process a try, you only have to cook the pasta for a minute or two. Barely.

As the pasta cooks, heat up a medium skillet with a little olive oil. Cook the pasta about 75% and put one serving in the skillet with some sauce, a little less than a tablespoon of unsalted butter, a small pinch of crushed red pepper, some grated cheese, and some of the chopped basil (for a chiffonade stack the leaves up, roll them up, and cut slices so you have long strips). Toss everything gently in the pan to combine all the ingredients. Scott Conant described it by saying the sauce should be like it's part of the pasta. And that's it!



Other than the pasta dough problems, the dish was easy. But I really think that the two things that make this dish are the homemade pasta, and the butter. If you don't want to make homemade pasta (and I don't blame you), definitely buy fresh pasta. It makes a world of difference. And the butter - I had never put butter into a pasta and tomato sauce dish, but it really made everything adhere and added just a little bit of creaminess. The other key is getting the tomato sauce to be a smooth consistency. If I had an immersion blender I would have used it, but just make sure you keep mashing the tomatoes to get all the big pieces broken up. I will definitely do the skillet/butter method again, that's where the dish really came together.

So...did it taste like the Scarpetta dish? I think in general, it was similar. It certainly didn't look as pretty. It did taste really good. But who was I kidding..did I really think I would be able to replicate the best thing I ever ate?