Food and drink writer Holly Allton knows her stuff - but not her way around a kitchen. Yet! Join Holly as she attempts to make a family favourite, lasagne, for the first time, visits Stuzzi in Leeds to speak to an expert, and tests her knowledge with a quick quiz.
00:03I think with Italian food, you only need three components per dish, really, or four components.
00:09I think this could have done with more mints.
00:11Hi, my name's Holly Alton, and I'm a food and drink writer for National World.
00:15I do plenty of reviews, and I know what I'm talking about when it comes to good quality
00:20food.
00:21However, I actually cannot cook myself.
00:23Come with me on my journey as I discover my way around a kitchen.
00:30In this episode, we are trying to create Italian food, and the Italian dish we have chosen
00:36is lasagna.
00:37I am joined by Graham, who is behind the camera, who is giving me guidance on sort of the best
00:43things to do when cooking.
00:44Really, to be honest, Graham is just here to make sure I don't burn down the kitchen.
00:48I absolutely love a lasagna.
00:50I think it's really filling meal and absolutely delicious.
00:54My sister actually makes this, and I say to her speciality dish, when we go to her house
00:59as a big family with everybody else, my mom, my dad, my other siblings, it's again something
01:05that you can make in bulk to feed everyone.
01:07I have found a recipe online for this, which I'm going to be following, and the reason I've
01:12chosen an online recipe rather than a cookbook is because this one is incorporating the fact
01:16that I have the pre-prepared sauces and lasagna sheets.
01:19I'm going to need a jar of tomato sauce, which I have, a jar of white sauce, which I have.
01:30I love that I've said tomato and white.
01:32Is this bechamel or is it just a creamy sauce?
01:35It says sauce for lasagna, so am I going to need both?
01:37Yeah, it doesn't say.
01:38We'll just see what happens then.
01:40200 grams of minced beef and some grated cheese.
01:44I've decided to get pre-grated to save myself a job.
01:47Oh, and pasta sheets.
01:50I don't know many people that make their pasta sheets by hand.
01:53I think you'd have to be, like, a really, really authentic sort of chef to do this.
01:57So don't feel like this one is too much of a cheat.
02:00So the recipe says that the first thing I'm going to do is add vegetable oil to a large
02:06frying pan and brown the minced beef.
02:08So the next step is to add in the red sauce while it's cooking and cook it for a bit longer.
02:14This recipe says about 15 to 20 minutes.
02:16So I've got my lasagna dish out.
02:18I already had these.
02:19I've got a big and a little one, and I went with the little one, because when I moved into
02:23my new house, I bought them with the intention of cooking lasagna every night.
02:28I'd have to learn how to make it first, and so far I have not done that.
02:32These have never, ever been used.
02:35So I was going to leave it a little bit longer, but had a look, and to be honest, it's starting
02:41to look a little bit black, so I'm worried that it might be a bit burnt.
02:45So I took it off a little bit earlier than I was supposed to, but I definitely think it
02:49was the right call to make.
02:51Having a look into this as well, I'm a little bit concerned.
02:54It's not as red as I thought it would be, so I definitely feel like I could have used
02:58more sauce, and also maybe even more mince, because I feel like it might go beyond what
03:06it looks like, but at the moment, I don't feel like I've got enough for each layer, so
03:10it might be a very thin lasagna.
03:11This way?
03:12I don't think it'll matter, actually, will it?
03:15I think this could have done with more mince.
03:17However, like, does it expand when you cook it?
03:21Probably not.
03:22Oh, my God.
03:25I love mozzarella.
03:27I absolutely love any cheese, to be honest.
03:30I'm a cheese girl.
03:31This is my favourite bit.
03:32Mind it, Susan, again.
03:33Oh, not again.
03:35Oh, no.
03:37Oh, God's sake.
03:39I will say, it looks a little bit burnt, so I might have left it a bit too long.
03:43But it still looks nice, it certainly smells nice, and I'm going to cut into it and see
03:49if it's cooked, and also, of course, give it a taste, to see if it tastes nice.
04:00Oh, dear, it's quite hard to cut into that, you know.
04:02It's a bit hard.
04:03Should I be making that noise?
04:09It's a bit chewy.
04:13It is a bit burnt.
04:20It's not horrible, but it's not amazing.
04:26So I definitely think that I know how to cook lasagna now, 100%.
04:31I actually found it not too bad, like, it wasn't too hard of a recipe to follow.
04:36I feel like once you've done it once, you can definitely do it again.
04:39Not only that, but I think I could do it again completely, like, with my own guidelines.
04:43I would know that I would cook a lot more mints.
04:45I'll definitely, like, maybe two jars of sauce rather than one.
04:50In regards to, like, the betimel, I think that was fine.
04:52You can use more if you like, but I think that was enough.
04:55But in regards to, like, the mints, I think that, yeah, it's a case of trusting your judgement.
05:00I knew it wouldn't be enough when I was dishing it out.
05:02But instead, I even thought when I put it in the pan that it wasn't going to be enough, but I just followed the rules.
05:07And I think that's one of the things as well that people who do cook say it is about kind of trusting your judgement rather than following something.
05:14And I can see now why that is true.
05:16But, yeah, I think I know how to cook a lasagna now.
05:19And I think that with each time knowing sort of how much to put in and how long to cook it for, my next lasagna will be an absolute winner.
05:28But do you want to try it?
05:30Well, I can cut through it.
05:32Just.
05:33So, that's something.
05:46That's not bad.
05:47Really?
05:49Is it chewy?
05:51I think it's slightly chewy.
05:53Yeah.
05:54So, you've seen me try and make an Italian dish, but now we have come to Stutze to speak with an expert on how Italian food should really be cooked and what are the most popular dishes in the UK.
06:06I think with Italian food, you only need three components per dish, really, or four components per dish, what we do in the restaurant.
06:13Because it's just all about the produce and champion that produce.
06:16If you start playing around with it too much, then you just, you don't create anything, right?
06:20That's the beauty about Italian food.
06:21If you go to Italy, you will always get a dish or two dishes that just might be just like artichokes dressed in a dressing or, you know, fresh tomatoes dressed in a dressing.
06:31And it's just two, three components that.
06:33But it all tastes amazing because it comes from, you know, it's all grown there.
06:37It's excellent where as you go into supermarkets and stuff like that, when you're buying veg that's been flowing halfway across the world, you just don't have that same flavour.
06:45The most popular Italian dishes are the likes of pasta and pizzas.
06:49But obviously you do things a little bit different here.
06:52What do you think is the most popular sort of dishes with customers?
06:55I think for us, because we have a lot of customers that come and let us order for them.
07:01So they don't really look at the menu because I think some of our dishes can be quite intimidating because we use different ingredients.
07:07But I'd say most popular dishes are our arancini, which is obviously world famous.
07:13And then the fresh pasta that we make on site as well.
07:17They're our most popular dishes by far where we make a lot of different meat ragus or, you know, vegetarian pastas.
07:24And then we change the flavours of our arancini quite regular as well.
07:27You get a lot of restaurants that are run by Italian families and, you know, run from certain regions and, you know, are really proud of where they come from.
07:35But with us, we're four English guys that own an Italian restaurant.
07:39So we have to go out there and basically find and travel Italy to bring back different aspects of Italy.
07:46So the restaurants themselves champion all different regions rather than it being specifically one region of Italy.
07:53So we try and bring as much different bits of Italian food that you just don't see in, say, the tourist trap areas or, you know, the more famous dishes, let's say.
08:03We try and find the hidden gems and bring them back and put them through our restaurant.
08:07But I think for us the response is great because they get to try different things.
08:11There's four of us. We've been open for around ten years.
08:16We started in Harrogate and then we opened Leeds four years after that.
08:21And we've just opened Ilkley last year because we've all worked through the industry from the bottom up.
08:28So we all started as kitchen porters or worked from, you know, very young ages.
08:33And I think it's always been one of our goals and certainly my goal to have my own restaurant.
08:38Italian food was just part of the journey, really, from working in, you know, restaurants around Leeds
08:45and discovering, you know, my love for Italian food by travelling to Italy as well.
08:50So the combination of working in Italian restaurants and then spending a lot of time in Italy just basically brought the passion to open the doors of Stuxi.
08:59What would your advice be to people who, like me, have no idea how to cook at all, especially when it comes to Italian food?
09:06I think, for me, you have to look past what's on, like, the supermarket shelves.
09:12I feel like if you was going in, you know, you have to utilise the finest of ingredients rather than just buying really poor pasta off the shelves or, you know, poor sauces really.
09:25It's better to keep everything simplistic and fresh, you know, if you was cooking a basic sauce, you know, buy all your ingredients rather than buy it.
09:32And then with the pasta, just, it's always, you can get fresh pasta in places, which will definitely be a lot better than the supermarket stuff.
09:42You can make a really simple sauce, but as long as the quality is there for the ingredient, it's much better than buying your packeted sauces from the supermarket.
09:49Right, I feel confident with this one. What is the correct Italian term for bolognese sauce?
09:57Oh, why did I say I felt confident? I don't, and I don't think I can even pronounce these.
10:00Ragout alla bolognese, ragout al dente bolognese, ragout siamo bolognese.
10:05Al dente, that means something. I know what that means. Cold. So it's not going to be that, I don't think.
10:12I think that means cold. I'm going to go with alla, ragout alla.
10:17Yay. According to Statista.com in 2024, what percentage of Britons have a positive opinion of garlic bread?
10:27I don't know anyone that doesn't like garlic bread. I don't really, actually.
10:3158%, 60%, not 84%. I'm going to go with 84.
10:38Wow. What percentage of the population of the United States eats pizza on any given day?
10:45I would love to say 97, though. It's so huge. But like, it's pizza.
10:51I'm going to make, I'm going to say it. I'm going to say 97.
10:55Wow, 13. I really wasn't expecting that. I thought it would be a lot more.
10:59A scandal involving the discovery of up to 100% horse meat and ready-meal lasagna sold across Europe happened in which year?
11:0795, 2002 or 2013?
11:09I think I know this. And I could be wrong. But I feel like it happened in 2013 because I remember it happening.
11:16Yay. I was right.
11:19Pizza Margarita was created in 1889 to honour who?
11:23Oh, I didn't know this. Queen Margarita of Savoy. Princess Margarita of Milan.
11:27Opera singer Placido Margarita of Margarita.
11:31Eee, well.
11:33Why would they make it for the opera singer? But why do I think that's right?
11:37I'm going to go for the opera singer.
11:40Oh, it wasn't.
11:43What colour is bechamel sauce? Red, white or green? It is white. I love bechamel sauce.
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