- yesterday
Join Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli, chef-partners at Don Angie in NYC, as they make their signature tagliatelle and meatballs — a dish inspired by both their grandmas' recipes. While rolling meatballs, hand-cutting fresh pasta, and stewing red sauce, they share stories about growing up in Italian American homes, how they first met working in a restaurant, and how they balance life as co-chefs, business partners, and parents to a 4-year-old son.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00What's your partner's favorite food city?
00:02Like Tokyo or Kyoto or what'd you put?
00:05Put Osaka, Japan.
00:07Yeah, any place in Japan, honestly.
00:11Hi, I'm Scott Tassanelli.
00:13And I'm Angie Rito.
00:14We are chef partners at Don Angie in the West Village of New York City.
00:18Today we're going to be making tagliatelle and meatballs.
00:21I think the meatballs themselves are pretty special
00:23because the recipe is an amalgamation of Scott's grandma and my grandma's recipes.
00:28So Scott and I met because...
00:30We bonded over our Italian-American heritage and background and upbringing.
00:34I think just growing up in an Italian-American household,
00:37I don't know, it's like something that has kind of like defined me and my personality.
00:42And it's like something that I'm really just passionate about.
00:45We are going to mix our meatballs.
00:48This meatball recipe is very special.
00:50We're very proud of it because it's kind of like an amalgamation of our like family recipes.
00:55We use two types of meat, beef and veal.
00:58My grandma used to use pork as well in her mixture.
01:01Did your grandma? She just said beef, right?
01:02No, my grandma only did beef.
01:03So we'll start with pecorino cheese.
01:05We use a decent amount of cheese.
01:07Pecorino Toscano, onions that we basically just like processed in a food processor.
01:11So we add garlic to our meatballs, but we cook the garlic first.
01:15And we like this because you don't end up with meatballs that have raw garlic in the milk.
01:20So we're going to add an egg that's going to help bind it.
01:23This here is a panade, which is basically we take like the inside of bread and then we use the middle part here.
01:30We soak it in milk and then Scott's just kind of wringing it out to get rid of any excess moisture.
01:35And then that's going to like help bind the meatball, but also kind of add like, I don't know, some lightness to it, right?
01:41So here we have some fresh parsley.
01:43So now we're just going to roll.
01:45And honestly, you can roll any size you want.
01:47We like little meatballs for this.
01:49So the little meatballs are something that Scott's grandma used to make.
01:52And I feel like, I don't know, I don't know any like Italian American that wasn't like tasked by their grandma to roll meatballs.
01:58Yeah.
01:59Growing up, my grandma used to like just, you know, give my brother and I like a big bowl of meat mixture and we'd sit there and roll meatballs.
02:07I used to like eating them right out of the frying pan before they even had sauce and they were like really crispy and stuff.
02:12These we're going to bake in the oven.
02:14In order to make our pasta, we use three different types of flour, semolina.
02:19Then we use durum, which is finely ground semolina and double zero.
02:23The reason why we use three different types of flour is it really helps with the texture and the flavor of the dough.
02:27So the first step is to put all the flour in the mixer.
02:30And as it's going, we're going to use egg yolks and whole eggs.
02:33The first part is to just pour in the egg yolks slowly.
02:36Once the egg yolks get mixed in, it really won't look like dough yet.
02:40Then you're going to add whole eggs, but you're going to do it one by one.
02:44Broadly speaking, classic spaghetti and meatballs is my favorite dish ever.
02:49I mean, Scott always makes jokes about how we first started dating.
02:51I would come home at night and literally eat like a pound of spaghetti.
02:55True story.
02:56But for special occasions, my birthday, anniversaries, whatever, anytime Scott does cook me a special meal at home, it's always some version of spaghetti and meatballs.
03:06After mixing, this is what you're going to end up with.
03:08At this point, you'll just wrap it with plastic wrap and let it sit on the counter for about 30 minutes to an hour.
03:13What's your favorite color?
03:14I don't actually know your favorite color.
03:16Yeah, I don't know either.
03:17And Scott, what do you think?
03:18Orange.
03:19It's red.
03:20My favorite color is red?
03:21Or your favorite color is red?
03:22My favorite color is red.
03:23I don't know.
03:24I put green.
03:25What did you put?
03:26What's your favorite color?
03:27I said orange.
03:28Oh, oh.
03:29I put green.
03:30You guys are a perfect match.
03:33Okay, so after about 30 minutes to an hour, the pasta dough looks like this.
03:38I think the easiest way to use one of these hand cranked pasta machines is to slice this into a thin slice.
03:43And then you can kind of press it and shape it with your hands first.
03:47This is my grandmother's pasta maker that she gave me.
03:50I don't think she used it very often because it's in such a nice, pristine shape.
03:53We're going to start with it open, pass it through a few times, and then once we get it to the right shape, we will go down one by one until we get to the exact thickness that we're looking for.
04:01So Scott and I met 18 years ago working in a restaurant here in New York City.
04:06I had just moved here, and I was actually working in the front of the house, so I was working like as a server.
04:11Scott had just graduated from culinary school as a line cook.
04:14I don't know.
04:15Did you say it was like love at first sight?
04:17It was for me.
04:18I don't think it was for you.
04:19Scott, do you have any advice to our viewers out there like how to escape the front zone?
04:24Just don't give up.
04:25That was the whole thing.
04:26I just didn't give up.
04:27Persistence, you know?
04:28Yeah, took her to another country and that was it.
04:30Okay, so I've gotten this to the desired thickness that I prefer, and what you want to do at this point is you kind of want to cut it into whatever length pasta you would like.
04:40These machines have a cutter section, and it has two different cutters.
04:43It has a very, very thin cutter and almost like spaghetti cutter, and then it has a thicker like fettuccine tagliatelle size.
04:49We're going to do the thicker today.
04:50I'm just going to pass it through.
04:52It is helpful to have another person on this part, so you can have it come through all as one nice thing, and you can hold it all together.
05:01And then we can keep it in a little nest like this until we're ready to cook it.
05:05One of my best memories like in my life was when your parents came to Cleveland to celebrate the Feast of the Seven Fishes with my family, which is a tradition that my family does every year.
05:16My grandma would fit like 50 people into her basement at one big table, and we just like enjoy this really big meal together, and it was really special.
05:23What's each other's guilty pleasure food?
05:25Probably some sort of like Reuben from a diner.
05:30Mine's definitely, anybody that knows me, a tuna melt.
05:33Okay, so now we are going to be preparing our sauce.
05:38I'm starting here with guanciale, which is basically like cured pork jow, chopped garlic.
05:44Just want to kind of cook that out a little bit.
05:46I'm actually going to add some chili flake and fennel seed here just to kind of like pull out fennel flavor in the sausage itself.
05:52I'm going to add some red onions.
05:54Growing up, the typical sundae was someone, my mom or my grandparents, making sundae gravy.
06:01San Marzano DOP tomatoes.
06:03It's the type of tomato that we prefer.
06:05When they did make it, it was a big undertaking, and the house smelled wonderful all day.
06:10You kind of wake up in the morning to the house already smelling, you know?
06:13Yeah, you know what day of the week it is.
06:15Angie and I love on our days off to eat red sauce, and we've been taking our son, too, to try and go and eat red sauce.
06:21Some of our favorite places to go, I would say, would be Don Pepe, obviously, Michael's of Brooklyn.
06:28Balancing our life is, you know, is definitely a challenge at times because we have a four-year-old son.
06:34I think it works really well because much like in our work life, you know, we just like kind of switch off and fill in gaps and like work really well together.
06:43So I think that also like bleeds into our home life.
06:45You know, we really kind of like wearing different hats and, you know, do the same with our son.
06:49So now we are going to assemble our dish.
06:52So just for good measure, we start with a little extra garlic.
06:56I'm going to add a little oregano.
06:58This garlic has toasted.
07:00I'm going to add in some of my sundae sauce.
07:03These meatballs have roasted in the oven, so they kind of have like a nice browning on the outside.
07:11Just going to add those in now, and now I can go ahead and drop the pasta.
07:15The noodles only take about one minute to cook because they're fresh noodles.
07:20Now I'm going to finish this with a little bit of butter.
07:23Kind of smooth out the texture of it a little bit.
07:25I'm going to hit it with some lemon juice.
07:29Okay, so I'm going to finish this with a little fried bread crumb on top.
07:36I added a little more pecorino, and then I'm just going to garnish it with some basil as well as some fennel fronds.
07:45Just to kind of highlight the fennel sausage in there.
07:48And then just a little crack of pepper.
07:53And this is the meal that made us.
07:55I'm really excited to dig in.
07:57I mean, let's do it. Let's get in there.
07:59It's got a good sound.
08:00I could literally eat this like every day for the rest of my life. No problem.
08:04Yup.
08:05This dish is so reminiscent of like when we first met because it really is like the quintessential Italian-American dish.
08:13You know, our relationship was built off of like the quintessential Italian-American like conversations and talking about like how we grew up and our families and stuff.
08:23I don't know. I don't think there's anything more defining than spaghetti and meatballs or pasta and meatballs.
08:30It just like takes me back to, you know, like every red sauce joint we've been to.
08:36So it's very nostalgic for me. It's kind of taking me back to that.
08:39Last question. Who said I love you first?
08:42Mmm.
08:45Three, two, one.
08:48Oh.
08:49Wait.
08:50Who'd you put?
08:51Me.
08:52No, I mean, I meant me. Oh yeah.
08:55I meant me.
08:56I meant me.
08:57I don't know.
Recommended
1:15:36
|
Up next
3:43:12
0:50
47:07
1:24:18
1:25:56
2:29:04
41:31
1:26:02
1:31:18
16:12
2:24