Paula Goes Italian

Hey, y'all, come on in the kitchen today

I want you to look up here on my cutting board, y'all. I got more dough than an armored car

Today's show is all about Italian cooking. I called in my favorite Savannah pizza maker, Patrick

to come in and help me with a baked and fried calzone

That is one fat calzone. It sure is. He also is going to chip in to help with a cioppino seafood stew

Ooh, that smells delicious. And then we top it all off with an Italian dessert staple, chocolate dipped cannolis

Cheers. Cheers. Patrick is from Vinnie Van Gogh's, one of the local favorite pizza parlors here in town

Absolutely. You may know Southern cooking, but, you know, we're going to show you a little bit of the Italian today

I think that's great. I can't wait. Grab a little piece of dough here. Get it all good and covered in flour so it doesn't stick to your hands

Just beat right into it there. With your knuckles? Yep. We're going to be making some calzones with this

You could also do this to make dough for the pizza pies

And so once you got that slapped out into a nice little circle there, and just pick it up, put it in the palm of your hand there

And basically what we're going to do is just slap it out so we can get it nice and thin

And so, a little quarter turns every time you go back and forth here

Make sure your fingers stay together. That way you won't rip the dough. Oh. Yours is getting real much bigger than mine

And then once you get really good. Oh, my rings are tearing up. We'll just use mine

How about that? Oh, see? There you go. So, we've got a nice circle of dough here

Now, is that just for one calzone? That's for two calzones, actually. Okay. I was going to say, that's a lot of dough

Yeah, we're going to need a few things to put inside of it, though. So we'll make a little ricotta cheese mixture to put in there first

All that is is about a pound of ricotta, three tablespoons of basil, and three tablespoons of oregano

And what we've got here is a little concoction that we call duck butter, a mixture of garlic and olive oil

And we'll take a tablespoon of that. Why don't you mix this up? And then we'll start over here on some pesto to dip your calzone in it as you're eating it

And the pesto is just a couple of cloves of garlic, and then a third of a pound of fresh basil

two cups of pine nuts, one and three quarter cups of shredded Parmesan

and then a cup and a half of olive oil. So we're just gonna start that to blend in. Okay

And we're gonna slowly add our olive oil. See that sort to start to firm up

Uh huh. There we go. It's knocking around now, isn't it? So now that we've got our ricotta and our pesto all finished up

we're just going to take them back over here. We're going to spread on a decent amount onto our dough here

How about my side? Oh, I'm sorry. A gentleman should always spread ricotta for a lady

So I've been told. Yeah, don't forget my ricotta. What are you going to put on your side

I think I know what I'm going to put on mine. Well, one of my favorites, and this is one of the most popular ones at the restaurant, is a little sausage, a little mushroom, and some onions in my calzone

And what kind of sausage is that? It's just some spicy Italian sausage. And you want to cook it before you put it in

Yeah. That's crucial. This has been cooked. It's been cooked and drained

So we're just going to grab a nice handful of that. And some mushrooms

I don't know what you want to put in yours. Okay. That's about what I'd like

I love spinach, believe it or not. Some onions. Oh, you... Yes

I love fresh spinach. So I think I'm going to bed mine down, and that can kind of act as a grease absorber

Absolutely. For my sausage. I think that's the way I'm going to go

And our cheeses are... We've got some shredded Parmesan and some shredded mozzarella here. Uh-huh

And we're just going to grab a little bit, a little bit of the parm. and you know i like the same thing that you did i just you know like the spinach too and i like the

onions am i too close to the edge over here patrick uh you want to leave a little bit of room we're

just going to stretch it all out and then a uh a big handful of mozzarella okay i really like the

mozzarella we've got our toppings down we just want to take the back edge stretch it out we're

to fold that over a little half moon and then we're just going to press down the edges there

so we get a nice seal and you want to make sure you've got it good and good and sealed up because

you don't have to wet it nope you don't have to wet it you just got to press it down that is one

fat calzone it sure is that's going to be good so we might be on the other side you want to make

sure you got a uh a good seal because once it once it heats up the the air that left inside of there We stretch at the dough and blow it up a little bit The cheese will all leak out before you head in It all leak out and I would be so unhappy I know it If my calzone came to the table and the cheese was gone

It's a crime. So we're just going to follow that seam that we made with our pizza cutter

Y'all always make two at the time. Well, we try to get two out of each dough

but, I mean, sometimes if people only order one, then, you know, we only make them one

That is ever more beautiful piece of dough, Patrick. Absolutely. Good enough to eat

Good enough to eat. And so once we've got that, we just want to pick it up by the edge there

Give it a little shake so that there's some air in there. And then we'll take it

That is a beauty. We're just going to take this. We're going to throw it right onto the stone in there

We have our oven set at 550 degrees. It'll just bake right up, nice and brown

and then you want to throw yours in the fryer? Ha ha

I would love to throw mine in the fryer. Well, then let's give that a try

If you're going to deep fry it, you want to have a little bit of an egg wash on there

So we'll brush that on. Okay, go. Get it nice and coated there

And then we will scoop that up into this guy. That's a big, handsome Patrick

It sure is. Ease that into the deep fryer. I had the peanut oil preheated at 350 degrees

Okay, that's looking mighty fine. That is going to be all right. There's no way I can eat that whole thing by myself, or can I

Come back and find out. Coming up, Patrick and I are going to dig in to both the baked and fried calzones

Oh, that's good. Then we get started on the vegetables for the cioppino stew

Oh, no, no, baby, I'm going to do this. Oh, you tell me what to do, and I'm more than happy to do it

And later, y'all, an Italian dessert nobody can resist. Hey, y'all, we're back, and I'm in here in the kitchen today with a guest chef from one of the local favorite pizza parlors

This is Patrick, y'all, and he works at Vinnie Van Gogh's. Well, we have made two different calzones

One we baked in the oven. One we deep fried. We've just pulled him out

So you ready to get our other calzone out? Let's see if this baked one is all finished up

Oh, it's perfect. Oh, he looks delicious. And you can see we baked him on a pizza stone

I'll let you use my granny's spatula. Oh, yeah. Look at the date on that

Patrick, 1945. Wow. My grandmother used that in her restaurant. Oh, that's great

Yeah. So scoop this up. Oh, yeah. And let me get this stone out of your way

And you can pull that over. And we're going to taste. Look at the difference now, y'all, between the deep fried and the baked

These look fabulous. Oh, they do. I'm ready to eat. I think I'm just going to use my pizza wheel on this and cut us off a piece

Fork a knife. Is that knife going to work for you? Oh, yeah. Look in there, y'all

Give you a piece of mine. Okay. Oh, these are perfect. Okay. Give you a piece of mine

All right, let's dig in. I'm ready. We've got a little bit of pesto here and a little bit of marinara if you want to try to dip some

Oh, that's good. I think the baked, Patrick, I'm just going to pick up and eat it like I would a sandwich. Yeah

Mmm. Oh, gosh, they're both really, really good, Patrick. Well, come on down here with me because I've got a recipe that I want to share with you, and it's called cioppino

It started in San Francisco. Great place for food. Yes. and as the fishermen would get in, they'd say

well, let's get together and cook up something. And they'd say, you chip in this and I'll chip in that

So everyone just threw something into the pot. You chipped it in. Yeah. So it's called chipino

Sounds Italian. It does sound Italian, doesn't it? All right, now I'm going to put you to work

We need this one onion diced. We've got a rib of celery and a little bit of fresh garlic

So I'm going to get another knife. Oh, no, no, baby, I'm going to do this one

Oh, you're going to do that one? You get the onion. Oh, thank you

Just because I'm the boss of this kitchen? You tell me what to do, and I'm more than happy to do it

Because they burn my eyes. Oh, but you're not going to have to worry about it

Because guess what? These are onion goggles. Really? You see the foam around there, so they seal off your eyes

Oh, where have these been all my life? All right, there you go

All right. Does these look good on me? You're right ready to chop those onions

No tears this time. I'm going to get me a cutting board and a knife

and I be working on the celery and the garlic while you taking care of that onion okay All right now I about got my celery done over here

So let's put a few tablespoons of olive oil, slice up a couple of cloves of garlic

and then we can just toss our vegetables in and our garlic. This is gonna be like, almost like a... a..

Hard to take you seriously, Patrick. Anyway, this is going to be almost like a vegetable soup stock or base

It's starting to smell good. Oh, yeah. You know, there is nothing like the smell of onions and peppers

All right, so I've got some ingredients over here that we're going to add to that

I'm going to put in about a half a cup roasted red peppers

I've got four cups of canned diced tomatoes with the juices. And I'm going to add a teaspoon of thyme, a teaspoon of oregano, about a third of a teaspoon of red pepper flakes

And I'm only adding a tablespoon of salt now because later on I'm going to be adding some clam juice

And, you know, that can be really, really salty. A little black pepper

My hand has definitely gotten heavier. Looking good. Yeah, it is. and I'm going to measure up about a half a cup of white wine

So let's see if I got that salty enough. Oh, yeah, I think so

All right, so in with the wine. In with our two cups of beef stock

And if you'll just stir that up, we're going to just let that simmer

And when we come back, we're gonna start adding all those wonderful seafoods

So we'll see y'all back here in just a minute. Coming up, y'all, we prepare some crostinis for cioppino

Got a lot of tinis going on. Then we add all the seafood for our stew

Doesn't that look delicious? And later, we top off our cannolis. So we're in here in the kitchen now, y'all

We've got our cioppini going, and now we're going to make some crostini

We just got a lot of tinis going on in here. So as I cut this, if you would, Patrick

just take some of that fresh garlic and rub our bread with it

Sort of infuse the bread with the flavor there? Yes, yes. You could chop it up and mix it in with the olive oil if you wanted to

it'd just be a little stronger. This is just going to give you a hint

All right, so you do that. I said this wasn't an Italian dish

It didn't start in Italy. But the story goes that the fishermen

that started this dish in San Francisco were indeed Italian. Italian-American dish

Yes. All right, now we're going to bake these off after we oil them and salt and pepper them

for about 10 minutes in the oven. And we're going to use these to sop up that wonderful broth

that's in our cioppino. If it tastes as good as it smells, we won't want to waste any of it

Yeah, I'm hungry. I'm getting hungry. I'm ready to eat. Now you want to just brush those with olive oil

Then add a little kosher salt and a little pepper. All right, so you got a good hold on that, don't you, Patrick

Yep. So I'm going to be moving on down here. And ooh, I got the seafood smells

You want to go ahead and pop that in the oven, sweetie? I'll pop that right in the oven for you. And that's going to take about 10 minutes

And look at this. Look at that. Doesn't that look delicious? I told you earlier that I was going to watch out for our salt because I'm using clam juice

This is just about a cup. Eight ounces of clam juice. And you want to give that a stir

And over here I have some wonderfully fresh sea scallops. I have a nice white fish

And you'll want to be careful that you use a white fish that will hold up for you, that it won't come apart

So I chose to go with halibut. And I also have a pound of shrimp and about 24 little clams that we're going to throw in

You can certainly, you know, play around with this pot. Because remember, everybody was just chipping in whatever they had

So let's see what I want to put in first. The fish is not going to take long

Well, actually, nothing is gonna take long. I'm gonna throw in a half a pound of scallops first

And you can give those a stir. And then I'm gonna go ahead and drop in our fish

It be a pound of fat Our shrimps and clams are gonna take about three minutes I put them in last so they won overcook Stir that in

It's a beautiful, beautiful dish, isn't it? It sure is. All the colors in there

And look at all that garlic. You can see the fish is already starting to lose its transparent look

So let's go ahead now and toss in our shrimp. Now we have peeled and deveined our shrimp

These are 21-26s. They're nice large shrimp. They'll cook about the same time that our clams take to cook

Let's just give that a little shake, Patrick. I'm worried about our fish tearing up

Now let's just cover that up. We're going to let it cook for about five minutes

And when we come back, our toast should be ready. This will be ready to bowl up and eat

Coming up, it's dessert Italian style. Cheers. Cheers. Patrick and I have got our cioppino ready

How about the crostini? Let me just pull them out of the oven. Yeah, take a look at that

Oh, they look perfect. Oh, and look over here. Great time of day

Bring that over here, baby. We need that bread. Smell that. Ooh, that smells delicious

Smells like heavenly. And look, our seafoods are cooked perfectly. And look at our little clams

They're opened up and just beautiful. I'm going to put just a little parsley on them

And I'm going to squeeze just a little fresh lemon juice on them

Let's taste. Do you want to? Oh, yeah. I'm ready. To the Italians

To the Italians. God love them, honey. The seafood flavor is just... Outstanding

Incredible, isn't it? Whoa! Oh, those crostinies just do a great job of soaking up all those flavors, too

Perfect, aren't they? I love this. Oh, this is great. You can't have an Italian meal without a cannoli

So to make a cannoli, we have bought our shell just from the grocery store

That makes everything so, so simple. Now, I've got two-thirds of a cup of fresh whipping cream

a third of a cup of confectionate sugar, and three tablespoons of amirata

And I've just whipped those together. And I'm gonna add a little bit of cinnamon to this

Can I help you with that? Yes. Toss in about a teaspoon of cinnamon

We don't want to overbeat it. That's great. All right, now we've got a cup of ricotta cheese right here

Oh, let's toss in our pistachios. Fourth of a cup unsalted pistachio nuts

All right, stir that in, then fold in about half of our whipping cream

And, you know, I'm going to be kind of gentle. Don't want it to deflate on us

All right, then we're going to take the other half, fold it in

All right, so we're just going to fold that in. So we've got everything mixed together

Now let's take our pastry bags. We're not going to have to put a tip in it or anything

We just want to stuff our shells. All right, so there you go

There's your bag. Thank you. I'll load me up a bag. All right, so pick you up a shell

and we're just going to squirt that filling right on into our shell

Pretty easy, isn't it? Absolutely. The first time I've ever made a cannoli

Really? Well, I bet it won't be the last. Not now that I know how to do it

All right, so we've got all those stuffed. So we're just going to take our cannolis

and we're just going to dip them down in our chocolate. If they weren't going to be good before

they're going to be even better now. Look at that. Let's just sprinkle that in that has the chocolate

with some more pistachio nuts. After a couple of hours in the refrigerator, they've gotten firm

Okay, well, I'll try the one with the goopy chocolate. Uh-oh. Some nuts fell off of that one

Missed a spot. Cheers. Cheers. You gonna like it? Mm. Well, that's a good way to end a good meal right there

From Patrick, me, and Savannah. See y'all next time. Bye