[TV clip begins] Mark: Beans are not pasta sauce!
Jez: They're tomato-y...
Mark: Ketchup is tomato-y. That's not a pasta sauce!
Jez: It is when I make pasta.
What the hell are you doing?
Mark: I'm picking the beans out.
Jez: With your disgusting human fingers?
Mark: I'm just gonna mix it all together.
I need to go Nigella; I'm gonna be the hairy biker!
Jez: That's not Nigella. That's not even Ainsley, mate.
Mark: How about some lovely filling lettuce?
Jez: You know what, maybe it's fine. Is it...
Moroccan?
Mark: Maybe it is Moroccan!
Jez: Yeah Morocco. Anything goes in Morocco. [TV clip ends]
Hey guys, Happy New Year, and welcome back to Binging with Babish
where this week we're taking a look at Mark Corrigan's dish that begins and ends with lettuce.
But before it devolves into a lettuce casserole, it starts out as a respectable homemade pasta and alfredo sauce.
And since this is Peep Show, we gotta go point-of-view.
Try to avoid looking at the light stands, power cables, and Whole Foods bags as I pre-grate about three ounces
of parmesan cheese and bring a cup of heavy cream to a light simmer
along with two tablespoons of butter.
Grab a wooden spoon and stir that around until the butter is nicely melted, and gently simmer the mixture for about 15 minutes until it
has reduced by a third, before adding the entirety of your grated cheese,
along with a pinch of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
adding more cheese as necessary, until the desired thickness is achieved. Bear in mind if we were doing this for real
we want to finish cooking the pasta in the sauce so we'd want a little thinner than
what we'd expect to end up in our bowl. Now if you want to make your pasta from scratch
like Mark Corrigan does go check out
my pasta episode of Basics with Babish but you can just use some store-bought stuff if you
don't have the time or the romantic inclination. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes until al dente and cover with our alfredo sauce.
Maybe have a bite or two for posterity before we absolutely ruin it with some Heinz baked beans.
Now I know Mark crushed his up a little bit but I don't think it's going to make that much of a difference culinarily
so we're just gonna dump in about half a can, mix it up a little bit before adding
some lovely filling lettuce. And it frankly wouldn't be Moroccan if we didn't crack a few eggs in there so make a few
wells into which we'll dump four whole eggs.
Enjoy a slightly jarring point of view angle of our Moroccan pasta bake
before placing it in a 375-degree Fahrenheit oven for about 20 minutes.
but when you're baking lettuce
do time and temperature really matter? And admittedly this is not that bad, I actually had a few bites of it and
didn't hate it. It is after all just
alfredo pasta with tomato-ey beans and eggs until I got to a piece of baked lettuce, at
which point I actually had to do a
spit-take (sorry you had to see that). But I'm sure that we can pull something edible out of this monstrosity.
Let's start by replacing the beans with garbanzo beans, which isn't cheating that badly since Mark made homemade hummus earlier in the episode.
We're starting by rinsing and drying a whole can of garbanzo beans and tossing them with
olive oil and salt before spreading evenly on a non parchment lined baking sheet and
roasting at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 to 30 minutes until browned and crisp. At this point, while they're still hot, you can
toss them with any spice or seasoning that you want, but in this case I'm going to toss them with a
little bit of plain sweet paprika. So that's got our beans covered, now what about our tomato sauce element?
Let's make some Moroccan ragu starting by sautéeing a small diced onion, a small diced red pepper,
crushing a clove of garlic in there and letting these guys sweat it out until fragrant and translucent
at which point we're going to add a good pinch of cumin,
a good pinch of smoked paprika, a hefty shake of cayenne and a generous jostling of turmeric.
Let these flavors get to know each other just a little bit before adding
a 28oz can of whole San Marzano tomatoes.
Smash them up and stew them down for about 30 minutes until the harsh raw tomato flavor has abated.
We're now going to thoroughly
puree our tomato sauce in a high powered blender until extremely smooth, set aside about half in a small saucepan,
keep it warm, and in the remaining half we're going to add maybe a half cup of feta cheese. This is acting as both our
Alfredo stand-in, and what is eventually going to be the glue for our pasta. Process thoroughly and butter two ramekins enthusiastically.
Then we're going to cook and drain about half a pound of thin spaghetti, add our feta sauce, toss to combine
and twirl up some pasta nests into our buttered ramekins then, not with our
disgusting human fingers but with our carving fork and spoon, we want to press the
well into the center of our pasta nest. This is eventually where the eggs are going to go.
Now we're going to bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes during which time we're
going to make some simple sauteed spinach with garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. This is our lettuce stand-in because I'll
be damned if I'm eating hot lettuce again.
Now our pasta nests have come out of the oven and they're ready to receive their eggs.
First start by running a paring
knife around the outside of the pasta preemptively to loosen it and then gently crack an egg into each of your premeditated wells.
Return to the oven and bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until the whites are set but the yolks are still runny.
Gently invert onto a warm interim plate while
we get our main presentation going. Start by spooning some of our non-feta sauce into a pool on the bottom of the plate,
top with some of our sauteed spinach and into the center nestle our egg in its pasta nest.
Finish by scattering some of our crispy roasted garbanzo beans around the outside and dig in. Now I gotta say,
this dish tastes about as good as it looks, which is pretty darn good, but what it really needs is a cocktail.
How about Mark's signature Rum, Water, Lettuce, Vinegar and Salt cocktails? I think this is gonna be at the very least...
Oh God, no, there's no improving on that.