00:00I'm Lucy Fink. I'm a video producer at Refinery29, but every so often I like to try other people's jobs.
00:06Today I'm at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan to see if I have what it takes to be a fresh
00:11pasta maker.
00:12This is Lucy for Hire.
00:15I have a little bit of Italian in my blood, so I've always wanted to try making my own pasta
00:19from scratch.
00:20Today I visited Itrulli, a restaurant in Manhattan owned by a family from Puglia, the southern region of Italy, forming
00:27the heel of the boot.
00:28The grandmother of this family, Dora, makes the restaurant's pasta every single day from scratch.
00:34Dora! Hi, how are you? Hello! Okay. So nice to meet you. Thank you.
00:39When Nicola decided to open the restaurant... That's your son?
00:44My son. I came with him. I started to make pasta.
00:48Because I know to make pasta for my mother, my sister, my mother-in-law.
00:53The ricchetta is the pasta from my town.
00:58I've never made pasta from scratch before, though.
01:00Okay, now you see me, I can teach you.
01:04Perfect.
01:05Okay.
01:05My first challenge was make the dough.
01:09After washing our hands, we mixed one cup of semolina flour with half a cup of water,
01:14and then added another cup of fine semolina flour, followed by a pinch of salt.
01:19We let the electric mixer do its work until the ingredients were fully combined.
01:24Looks like dough.
01:25Next, we took the dough out of the mixer and kneaded it by hand.
01:28I tried to copy Dora's exact technique.
01:32Am I doing it right?
01:33Yes, yes, you're doing it right.
01:34Okay.
01:35So we made the dough.
01:37My second challenge was shape the dough.
01:40So now what are we doing?
01:41Now you do orchiette.
01:43Orchiette is one of about 350 pasta shapes.
01:47In Italian, orechia means ear, and eta means small.
01:51So the literal meaning is little ears.
01:54Now, there's a right way to do this, and a wrong way to do this.
01:57Add a little piece, and do like this.
02:01From the knife, you can put finger over here in the middle.
02:05Turn it inside out.
02:06And you do like this.
02:08Beautiful.
02:09And I started out with the wrong way.
02:12And let's just say, Dora was not afraid to tell me so.
02:15Now move the knife, do like this.
02:18Oh, roll it.
02:19No, no, no, you need, you need the other end.
02:23This is hard.
02:24Okay, no, it's not hard.
02:25Okay.
02:26Wow.
02:26And like this, you, okay?
02:29I see.
02:30All right.
02:30All right, round three.
02:31Is this the right size?
02:32I'm going to do like this.
02:33No, that's okay, that's okay, that's okay.
02:35I'm learning.
02:36Yeah, yeah, you learn.
02:37So I tried again.
02:39Leave it where it is.
02:41Yeah.
02:41Pull back.
02:42Yeah.
02:42There we go.
02:44Turn, you pull the finger.
02:45Turn it inside out.
02:46Okay.
02:46First, orechiette.
02:47Okay, yeah.
02:49And from there on out, it was like riding a bike.
02:52So, in your lifetime, you have made millions of these.
02:57I don't know.
02:57I don't count.
02:58You didn't count?
02:59No.
02:59You lost count.
03:00I'm counting.
03:01I've done 12.
03:0212?
03:0312.
03:03No, you make more than 12.
03:08My third challenge was to make the sauce.
03:12We started out by preparing the washed broccoli rabe, breaking it into smaller pieces and ditching
03:17the stems so that we were left with the leaves and the florets.
03:20Then we dropped that into boiling water with a nice heaping spoonful of salt.
03:26Then in another pan on the side, we added olive oil, some smashed garlic, and crushed red
03:32pepper.
03:33I think it's good.
03:36It was time for my final challenge.
03:38Cook the pasta.
03:40Real Italian pasta is always cooked al dente, or firm to the bite.
03:44And since we were cooking fresh pasta, it doesn't take that long.
03:47If we want this pasta to be al dente, how long does it cook for?
03:51No, it's two minutes.
03:53Two minutes?
03:54Yeah.
03:54Look.
03:55That's okay.
03:57Mmm.
03:58It's almost ready.
04:00Once the pasta was ready, we transferred it into the pan.
04:03Be careful.
04:04Okay.
04:04It's going to splash up.
04:07Yeah, yeah.
04:07Alright, I'm going to move back.
04:09Yeah.
04:12Pull it, pull it.
04:13Pull it.
04:13Pull it.
04:14Pull it.
04:14Pull it.
04:14Take it.
04:15Take it.
04:15Ah!
04:18Take it.
04:19That was aggressive.
04:21Aggressive the biggest.
04:23We mixed it up, let it sit for a minute more, and then served it.
04:27Pull it.
04:28Pull it.
04:28Pull it.
04:30Pull it.
04:32I added some fresh olive oil and crushed almonds on top.
04:35And then I served it to a table of belle donne, beautiful women.
04:41All right.
04:43So.
04:46Let me rest this on the chair.
04:48Wow.
04:49I asked my friends to rate the pasta on a scale of one to ten, and the entire table was
04:54silent.
04:55But I took that as a good sign.
04:57You know when it's quiet on the table, that means you did a good job.
05:00Yeah, nobody's talking.
05:02After cooking with Dora, I gained a new appreciation for the Italian homemade cooking style.
05:08This orchiette recipe has been passed down from generation to generation,
05:12and it was incredibly special that Dora shared it with me today.
05:16As someone who does not cook as often as I would like to,
05:19it was clear to me how rewarding it is to eat food that you've created from scratch.
05:23Each and every piece was hand-shaped with love and personalized attention,
05:28and that made each bite all the more delicious.
05:31And as they say in Italy, saluti.
05:33Cheers.
05:35This is the best breakfast.
05:37Hey YouTube, thanks for watching.
05:39Give this video a thumbs up if you love pasta,
05:42and click here to watch another video on Refinery29,
05:45and right here to subscribe.
05:47See ya!
Comments