- You bite into any one of these pastas, it bounces.
I love this word in reference to pasta, "buoyancy."
- What's up guys and gals?
I'm Nyesha.
And this is Bleu Ginger.
We're here in Venice Beach, California
at Chef Evan Funke's restaurant, Felix.
Chef Evan knows over 155 pasta shapes.
And today I'm gonna learn one of them, the tortellini.
(upbeat music)
- We're gonna make some handmade pasta.
- Lovely. - No machines.
- No machines.
- Sticks, hands and mind.
So let's start at the very beginning.
So we're at 61% hydration.
And whole eggs and double zero flour.
- [Nyesha] Double Zero.
And double zero essentially meaning a finer-
- [Evan] It's a finer cut.
Exactly, it's a soft wheat.
Okay, so we're gonna make some gluten.
So what we're gonna do is make a fountain into the center.
- [Nyesha] Into the center.
- [Evan] And then you wanna make your well.
Now the first time I made dough in Bologna.
- [Nyesha] Yes.
- The maestra Alessandra, who's up on the wall
and overlooks everything we do today.
Yeah.
She gave me 60 eggs.
Six kilos of flour.
- [Nyesha] Okay.
- And I didn't make the walls of my well-
- Yes. - Robust enough.
- Yes. - And I had
60 eggs on the ground.
- [Nyesha] Okay.
- [Evan] So we want very solid walls.
- Okay. - Okay?
Eggs straight in.
All we want to do is break the yolks.
- [Nyesha] Break the yolks. - With the fork.
And we're gonna make some scrambled eggs.
Now that we're scrambled, so what we want do
is start incorporating from the interior wall,
gradually incorporating the flour into the egg mixture.
Okay, so I'm at this point right here
where we built beautiful gluten.
You see that? - Yes.
- [Evan] Now what we're gonna do is cut and fold.
- Cut and fold. - Okay?
So it's almost like making biscuits a little bit.
- Okay.
- We cut into the center and then we start cutting
in the rest of the flour into the mix.
There you go.
(spatula thumping the table)
So both hands now. - Both hands.
- [Evan] Scrape up, fold over, and then press.
- [Nyesha] Okay.
- [Evan] So we want to get to about this point
where it's its own mass and we want to gather,
turn, gather, like a crashing wave towards you.
- [Nyesha] Okay.
- [Evan] And then press away both hands.
- [Nyesha] Okay.
- [Evan] Let's try this one more time.
- [Nyesha] Yep.
- [Evan] So front. - Front.
- Gather. - Gather.
- Towards you. - Towards me.
- Away. - Away.
- [Evan] The life happens when we fold air into the dough.
Okay, so speed it up now.
You see the rhythm?
- I'm trying. (chuckles)
- So all of that effort produces that.
Irregular bubbles, small bubbles, large bubbles.
So when you roll this you're displacing the bubbles.
They never pop.
They just get smaller and smaller and smaller.
And they're displaced throughout the entire sheet.
I think you're there.
So let me just give this a little zhuzh.
Cut that open.
That's your gift.
The most beautiful thing about pasta
is that pasta is a fingerprint.
We can never do this again.
- [Nyesha] Right?
- Every shape that you make, every fold,
it can never be reproduced.
And each one is an NFT.
(Nyesha laughing)
Let's wrap these up.
And then- - Wrap these up.
- We'll move on.
A couple of items over here.
So this is Santa Lucia, patron saint of flour millers
and pasta makers.
- [Nyesha] Wow!
- And this is kind of some very simple tools.
The most important one being the mattarello.
- [Nyesha] "Mattarello."
- Mattarello.
The mattarello is a faggio, ash wood or beech, very hard.
And typically we use a soft wood.
And the hard and the soft densities of the table
and the mattarello act as a balance to
the humidity of the dough.
So at the beginning when we're rolling,
flour is your friend.
So this was made yesterday.
It's been resting for more than 24 hours.
Our first movement is kind of to make a larger disc.
We're only gonna work forward at 10, 12, and two.
And then we're gonna turn the sfoglia
to always work at 10, 12, and two.
(mattarello rattling)
Using the mattarello is a little bit like a wheel
and a wheel well on a car.
The wheel well is your hand and your palm pressing forward,
and allowing the wheel to rotate within the wheel well.
And then drawing back with your finger.
We apply pressure.
We're pushing out.
We end.
Draw back.
Flip.
Tuck.
Roll.
Turn.
Uniformity is far more important than being round
because people can't taste round.
They can taste uniformity.
So the pasta's gonna tell you when it needs something.
So if the pasta starts to stick to the board.
- [Nyesha] Yes.
- Then it's gonna say,
"Hey, I need some extra flour."
- Yes. - Or, "I need less pressure."
We're done, okay?
So you can see beautiful uniformity.
And remember all the life that we folded in, you see that.
- Yes. - It didn't go away.
It just got displaced into smaller and smaller bubbles.
So we have a taglia pasta. - "Taglia."
- I think we're at just seven eighths of an inch.
Now that I've rolled this sfoglia, your turn.
So remember, wheel well and the wheel.
The mattarello is the wheel,
your hands are the wheel wells.
Do one more rep just like that.
There you go.
One more back.
There you go.
Beautiful.
And now we have a circle.
Now, three reps.
Good amount of pressure.
Push with the palms.
Guide back with the hands.
Give me one more all the way to the edge.
Flip. - Flip.
- Flip. - Flip.
- Tuck. - Tuck.
- Roll back.
Degas, palms on the table.
Fingers on the table.
Press, circles make circles.
You got it.
You're good.
We can make pappardelle if you want?
- [Nyesha] Yes.
- Let's shape some tortellini.
- Okay. - Okay?
And then I'm gonna give you some dough
and I'm gonna send you a mattarello
so you can practice at home.
- Excellent, perfect.
- Okay? - Yes.
- We'll just cut this half
and then we'll make tortellini so we can have some lunch.
- Okay. - Cool?
Okay. - Sounds good.
- [Evan] All right.
So we want to cut horizontal first.
- [Nyesha] Yes.
- And then we start here just at the edge.
And we're gonna go north.
So now we have our squares.
And then we have the traditional filling of Bologna.
This is essentially equal parts, prosciutto,
mortadella and pork shoulder.
And then one egg, 115 to 120 grams of Parmigiano Reggiano,
something young, 18, 24 months.
A little bit of salt and then the nutmeg.
- [Nyesha] So is this a traditional filling for tortellini?
- In my mind, this is the only filling for tortellini.
Again, it depends on whose grandmother you're talking to
and whether or not they're in Bologna,
or Modena, or in Reggio Emilia.
Now we're a little dry, so we're gonna use this spritz.
This is a salon spritzer. - Yeah, totally.
- [Evan] We just want a little bit of moisture.
So there's three movements.
We have a diamond shape.
We want to take the bottom of the diamond
and want to stretch to the top
and make a trianguli.
Like a gun, pull the trigger, over the top with the thumb,
bring it around and connect.
- [Nyesha] Okay.
- That is the tortellino.
Diamond.
Top.
Press.
Push up.
And then press together.
- No, that was my worst one.
- That's all right.
The worst that can happen is pasta.
We have single thickness pasta.
Now we have double thickness pasta.
So if you don't depress it back down to single thickness,
you have a touchpoint.
- [Nyesha] Yeah, the single thickness
should be uniform throughout, essentially.
- [Evan] Precisely.
- Chef, this is making me appreciate pasta so much more.
- That's the connection that we seek, right?
- Absolutely.
- [Evan] And pasta making, historically,
has always been a very social act.
- [Nyesha] Yes.
- Whether it's dumpling making or cutting noodles or-
- Yes. - Making tortellini.
It's a social act.
Because as you can see, it's laborious.
And this is not even an order.
- [Nyesha] Right.
- In Bologna, they would laugh at you.
- [Nyesha] Right.
- [Evan] So nice.
So nice.
We can sell those.
- Oh, lets do it, 1,000 more. (laughing)
- That's a portion. - Okay.
- [Evan] That's one portion.
We'll share that one for lunch.
- [Nyesha] Excellent.
- [Evan] We have brodo di carne.
So this is 24 hours chicken, beef, and mirepoix only.
- Okay, and so we're gonna cook the tortellini in the brodo?
- Yes. - Wow!
- We're not gonna really boil it, we're gonna simmer it.
So it's gonna cook the tortellini very gently.
And in we go.
- [Nyesha] And so this almost probably
takes no time at all really, to cook, huh?
- I would say in between, you know, 90 seconds.
- Yes. - Three minutes.
Depending on, you know, the dryness.
So in we go.
So the only question left is Parmigiano or no Parmigiano?
Try it first and then we can add Parmigiano.
- Geez, incredible.
And it's so beautiful how you get this, like,
saline quality on the foreground of your palate
that just elegantly hugs the broth in a non-intrusive way.
Like, everything is in and with.
- [Evan] So now with the Parmigiano.
A little different now.
With the Parmigiano it totally changes it.
Sweeter, creamier.
Parmigiano takes on a whole different life.
- Completely, completely different experience.
- What do you like best?
- I can appreciate the characteristics
of cleanliness, honestly,
in the first very, like, classic approach.
You know, there's a simplicity to it,
but a complexity in the filling ultimately.
This I kind of get this, like, echoing of flavors, right?
Because the Parmigiano comes back on the back end.
It's interesting how much more creamy
the broth gets when the cheese is introduced to that,
to the broth.
- [Evan] Shall we play which sfelino?
Okay, so I mean obviously, this guy's mine
'cause it's massive.
- [Nyesha] How about this one?
- [Evan] I may have eaten all of yours.
(Nyesha laughing)
That's yours.
- I wanna get back in that pasta room
and roll my dough out.
- You want this life?
(Nyesha laughing)
Make pasta
- Not with a machine.