- A lot of people don't like rabbit.
- My grandfather's way,
only with Provencal elements I been thinking about.
(fire starts)
(oil sizzling)
(Arthur sniffs)
- [Babish] Hey, what's up, guys?
Welcome back to "Binging with Babish," where this week,
you might see that I look a little different,
and that's because this episode is a little different.
Today, we are taking a look at the rabbit
from "The Sopranos," my favorite TV show of all time.
And to join us is a very special guest.
He is none other than Michael Gandolfini,
portraying Tony Soprano in the upcoming
"Many Saints of Newark" movie.
Michael, come on out here!
- Ohhh!
Oh! (chuckles)
Do you say that in the movie at all?
- Yeah, yeah, we get a few good "Oh's," of course.
- Well, thank you for coming through, man.
- Absolutely, thank you for having me.
- First, you know, you and I have
kind of a weird history.
(laughs)
- Yeah, well it's definitely a little weird,
but no, I was filming Saints and you know,
when you're on set and kinda in the Soprano family,
tensions run high, and you get home,
and you're kinda buzzing,
and it's kinda tough to fall asleep.
So, I would put your show on and
it would just kinda soothe me to fall asleep.
So, I kind of decided, well, why don't I just DM this guy
and say basically "Thank you for helping me sleep!"
And we got into a conversation, and-
- And not like a week later
was I walking through Chelsea Market
and we locked eyes across the room, like,
- Oh! - Wait a minute.
(laughs)
- Yeah, wait, yeah.
And now we have a beautiful friendship.
- And now we're dear friends.
- Yes.
- And we play PS5 together.
- Yes. Absolutely.
- And we haven't played zombies mode.
- Not yet, not yet.
- But we'll get there. The friendship has to grow.
- Yeah, that takes- that's a new level.
- Jess and I haven't even played zombie modes yet
and we're engaged.
- Exactly, it's a commitment, yeah.
- Right, Jess? Yeah.
(both laugh)
So, we are making Artie Bucco's family rabbit,
or coniglio alla famiglia. As it's-
- Wow! Yeah? That's pretty good.
- I memorized the entire show.
- You practiced that?
- It's his family rabbit recipe
with some Provencal elements.
Most notably, he's cooking with one hand.
Because his hand was plunged into a vat of simmering sauce.
So, he is wrapped up in gauze,
so I thought it would be fitting if,
especially since you gave me
one of my most prized possessions,
which are Artie Bucco's actual chef whites
from seasons one through three of The Sopranos.
- Yes, sir.
- Look at that. Arthur. From Vesuvio Duo. Right?
(laughing) (talking over each other)
- Yeah, the first one explodes.
- Yeah, it explodes.
So, I'm gonna transform myself now into Artie Bucco
by putting on his actual chef's whites.
I haven't put 'em on yet. How did we do this?
Nobody's put a jacket on me in so long.
Feel like a young woman again. Oh, how small is this guy?
Does Artie Bucco show up in the movie?
'Cause he was Tony's childhood friend.
- I don't know, we'll have to see.
- You can't tell me. I'm sorry.
Come on, you can tell me, pretend the camera-
Okay.
Is that good enough? I don't know.
- You look great.
- It's okay, all right.
All right, I'm in Artie's chef whites, which-
smell faintly of cigars, which is pretty awesome.
- That's amazing.
- Yeah. And now, let's go ahead and pretend
like my arm was just plunged into a vat of hot sauce.
And let's bandage me up, shall we?
- All right, let's see.
- Make it as difficult as possible for me to-
- You're not going to be able to move.
- To cook. Like, at all, or?
- At all.
That's a threat, yeah.
(muffled Babish noises)
- All right, there's medical grade tape right here.
One of my favorite things about The Sopranos
is all the really over the top (bleep).
If you told me there was a mobster movie
where the chef friend of the main mobster
had his hand plunged into some boiling marinara sauce,
I'd laugh you out of the room.
- Totally.
- But they managed to do a really good job.
- It's sort of like a cartoon
combined with like a really dark drama,
but like their favorite, um...
(laughs)
- Is this your first time doing this?
This seems... very learned.
- I feel like that's pretty great, actually.
- Yeah, I'm unable to cook with this hand.
I think that's official.
I don't think I can- I can't grip anything with this hand.
- Good.
- All right, good stuff.
(Babish screams)
Well, now you're gonna play the role, I guess,
of the young couple that comes in
and opens up a bottle of wine.
- I love it.
- And I'm gonna make you dinner with the rabbit
that I shot in my backyard.
For the record, I did not shoot a rabbit.
Because I am a (bleep) wimp. And I'm not gonna do that.
All right. So, now, first thing I have to do- okay.
Not using this hand.
First thing I have to do
is butcher this rabbit a little bit.
- Mm, yummy.
- Yeah, it's a rabbit, oh, not using this hand.
Gotta get used to this.
I am right handed, this is not my lucky day.
There we go. Sorry, little friend.
(laughs)
How do you this with one hand?
- Yeah.
- All right, here we go.
- You can use it, I think we can agree that
you're allowed to use it to sort of,
- Stabilize things.
- In that case, I'll use um-
- I'll give you permission
- Thank you.
- If you get flagged for it, I'll take that.
- Gotta find the joint, which usually goes along
this little strip of fat here.
Or I'm just going to cut through. (knife bangs on table)
- Yeah, there you go!
- There we go, oh I actually kinda had it. Okay.
- You know, one of the funniest,
every time I think about Tony and Artie,
as me and you are Tony and Artie today-
- (laughs) That's really funny.
- The first line that Tony says to Artie is uh,
he goes, "Hey Artie, how's your rash?"
And Artie goes, "Oh well it, uh, it stings."
Or something like that and
that line was completely improvised.
- Your dad improvising that line was amazing
but also his reaction is also great, because he comes in,
you immediately see what a sad sack this man is.
(laughs)
Yeah I remember that line, where he comes in and
he's just like-
- Yeah, exactly.
- [Both, Together] Ooh, what is that?
- That's an organ. That's a kidney I think.
Just scrape that right out of there.
Here you go, a little souvenir.
- I'll take it, yeah.
(laughs)
- Thank you.
- You're welcome!
And now just kinda gonna- (bangs knife)
Ow. I need something to whack it with.
You got the meat mallet or something?
Cleaver!
You wanna try cleaving it? Hitting it right there?
With all your strength. Watch your fingers.
- Just up and down?
- Yeah, maybe even- (cleaver bangs) yeah.
Look at that! Clean as a daisy.
- There you go!
- All right so, rabbit's butchered.
And now I'm going to stew and uh stew it with- (chuckles)
we translated the recipe,
visible on the page of Artie Bucco's family cookbook,
and he said he was incorporating some Provencal elements
so I'm going to introduce some herbs that might not
otherwise have been there.
- And the ingredient that Artie,
you need to have in there too is Artie's like,
little bit of desperation,
- Little bit of desperation?
(both laugh)
- All right man, I'm going to make you a meal.
I don't know if it's going to be any good.
Thanks for coming- (Babish screams).
Thanks for coming through today.
And uh, don't forgot your kidney.
- I'll take it, thank you.
- Thank you.
First thing Artie does is sear the rabbit,
when he puts the rabbit pieces in the pan
they're very clearly seared.
So I'm going to start by searing the rabbit.
See the math I just did there?
How I got to A to B? Here we go.
So I got some light olive oil. Maybe a little bit more.
- [Camera Person] You can't use your hand!
- Oh yes, ah I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
No hand. One hand, one hand.
I'm also just gonna season these guys lightly,
a little bit of salt. Never hurts to season your meat
with salt separately, you want to build layers of flavor.
And also it helps meat retain juices, right? Yes.
Yes it does.
(meat sizzles in pan)
All right, lets throw down some rabbit shall we?
Get some color on these suckers.
Ow. Okay.
- [Michael] I'm gonna ask you some questions.
- Oh no.
- Question one, do you think Artie's a good cook?
- I think Artie is a good cook, absolutely.
Uh, some of the stuff that he's made,
when he gets excited about food, I get excited about food.
I got some nice fond on the bottom of the pot, that's great.
Okay, pancetta.
So none of this is seen in the show but uh,
I don't want this fond, I got this beautiful fond here,
I don't want it to burn.
And I want to render out the fat from this pancetta so
(pan sizzles)
Just got a little bit of water.
Do you think that Artie deserved the things
that happened to him in the show?
- Hmm.Hmm. I agree that he's sort of one of the uh
victims in Tony's sort of onslaught of tornado,
he's sort of a walking tornado.
But I also think that, and this is a big part of the movie
too, like you are what you came from, right?
Like Tony always says like,
"What do you think that I was go to sell pots in Peru?"
Like, my dad was in it, my uncle was in it
and I think that Artie's dad was a chef and you know,
he's kinda taken this life, in many ways,
he's sort of what Tony admires
because he opens his own restaurant, he works hard
and I think in some ways Tony kind of idolizes that
without too much, you know,
he doesn't really want to be Artie,
but I think he respects him for those things.
- So in the show he starts sauteing garlic
which I'm not going to do
just because I'm going to burn the garlic if I do that.
And I've got this beautiful fond on the bottom of the pot,
I don't want to waste that, that all flavor.
See all that brown (beep)? I just threw that onion in there,
it already brown. That's flavor.
All right so now I'm going to add some carrots
and some celery.
All right, this is starting to look nicey nice.
(spatula bangs on pan)
Everything I'm doing looks dumb because
I'm doing it with my left hand. Just so you know.
I don't look this stupid normally when I'm doing stuff.
- [Michael] Hey, you look good.
(laughs)
- You look good.
- [Babish] That's a really good impression.
- Yeah, exactly. (laughs)
- First up real quick,
I'm going to throw some garlic in here.
Minced, probably about, what two cloves of minced garlic.
Nailed it. Three? (beep)
So he says that he's adding some Provencal elements
so I'm adding chopped rosemary, thyme and sage.
Okay now were gonna deglaze the pan
with some (beep) tomatoes, there we go. Aye.
- If you could eat anywhere, out of all the locations
that they eat at in Sopranos,
where would you want to go eat?
- Oh, I mean just to say that I did,
veal parm from Satriale's.
- I would probably rather go to Vesuvio.
But I want Vesuvio, end of season one, like hurricane,
like candle stick lights.
Maybe we should eat this by candle light, just me and you
and (chuckles)
- We got candles? We got candles?
Okay, I'm gonna add like, um, quarter cup of wine.
About a half cup of chicken stock.
Now, I'm gonna shove the rabbit pieces in there.
Really get nestled in there. Nestled. Nestled!
I'm bringing this all the way, oop-
Bring this all the way down to low and simmer it.
Now we're going to,
actually going to hit it with a little bit of salt now
just so the salt like cooks into the nooks and crans.
How am I gonna grind pepper?
Oh, hey! Would you grind some pepper for me?
Here, come on over.
Nice, nice, nice. That's good.
All right, thank you.
Okay, that's covering up and getting stewed for 45 minutes,
during which time I'm gonna make a very simple risotto.
Squirt of oil, a glob of butter.
All right, onions nice and soft.
Garlic going in and,
also gonna add the arborio rice
to toast it a little bit before starting.
All right, in goes a little splash of white wine.
(pan sizzles)
Two tablespoons. Going to let that cook off.
You've become quite close with the cast
and I've seen some fun videos of you and your girlfriend
boxing with Jon Bernthal-
- [Michael] Yes!
- Which sounds like the scariest thing in the world to me.
(laughs)
- He's the best, he is like the best.
I mean they all are like, we became family really quick
which is like so cheesy and like cliche but like,
we really did for it to work like,
the best nights sitting around a table and just like,
you know, being these characters
and stepping into these rolls and eating,
food around the table and yeah.
- That's really great.
Now so, you have all these actors portraying
younger versions of these fully fleshed out
beloved characters, I don't want you to play favorites
or anything but who, when you watch them was like
"Holy (beep)!" That's them?
- I mean, the really annoying answer but is so true is like,
everyone. I mean, I think that, you don't want to do
an impersonation, you want to be able to do your own thing.
And I think what makes David so smart and brilliant
and the only way this is possible was to go back in time.
Everyone's at a different point in their lives,
the 60's, 70's, different you know.
There's a lot of incredible new characters too.
- So your father had one of my favorite,
one of my favorite aspects of his character
was the way he ate. Which was disgustingly.
- [Michael] Yes.
- And most notably, everything he would eat,
especially ice cream, he would stab and stir.
(laughs)
Just kind of like-
- 100 percent. And there was a reason he ate like that.
So he didn't have to eat as much.
If you move the pasta around you don't have to
be taking bites every five seconds,
you move it around, kinda look like you're eating
but you're not actually putting food into your mouth
as much, so you didn't get as full.
That's where it came from but it became a habit to him
and now I (beep) eat like that
because I grew up watching him so like I,
when I eat pasta that's just how I learned to eat it
by watching my dad, so I do that just cause I inherited it.
- I'm shying away from asking you too many questions
because I don't want to be like so,
"Wow, playing your father, that some big shoes to fill,
how does that feel?" (laughs)
- I think one of the things that was awesome was like,
I had never seen the show but I got to become a fan
of the show while watching it.
A lot of the cast The Deuce and Chris Bauer,
who played my dad, really helped my sort of navigate
a lot of the emotions that were sort of
coming up for the first time.
I needed an initial purge.
I mean look, I had 86 hours of a human being
in every which way, he goes to therapy,
I literally get the inside head of a character.
So I was able to sort of create that.
- The perspective that I have on you playing your father,
not that you asked-
(laughs)
but as somebody who's also lost a parent,
is that it's lovely that when what we do
echos what our parents did.
And what our parents do lives on in us.
I make a cooking show, I film and star in a cooking show.
My mother loved to cook and my dad is a photographer.
And it's really nice, I only realized like (beep)
last week that that is basically what my dad
and my mom did and I'm the amalgamation of that.
- I actually sat in the movie theater
after doing it for three years of filming, re-shoots,
of covid, a pandemic. Of like sitting in that theater
watching it being like,
"Wow. Me and my dad got to do this together."
And it was such a cool feeling that I didn't expect to have.
I think I pushed it away to be able to work
and it was so cool to have that actual feeling.
- That's really (beep) nice, I'm getting misty over here.
(sniffles)
For a very simple risotto this is quite good,
you want to try it?
Get some more salt in there.
And I made it with my left hand.
Which, frankly, I'm pretty proud of. (laughs)
My left hand
- My left hand.
(laughs)
So that's what we're going to serve the rabbit over top of.
- That's really good.
- You dig it?
(spatula bangs on pot)
- Really good.
- It's just as simple as risotto gets,
just chicken stock, little white wine, little garlic,
little onion.
- I can't believe you (beep) made that.
- Thanks man!
- I want to make that.
- Make it! I'll show you how to make it.
I should have showed you, I'm sorry.
- That's so good!
- All right so, risotto's done.
This guy's simmering, I just took off the lid.
It's up to temp but I want the liquid to be reduced
a little bit more and I want the rabbit to be like
fall off the bone tender. Tastes a little funny,
because I don't like rabbit that much. Ehh, that's life.
(glass clinks)
The (beep)?
(laughs)
Did you get that? Did you see that?
Michael, dinner is served. It's four o'clock.
I'll serve us up, here we go. So this is just as plain jane
as risotto can be. I'm gonna make a nice little bed,
for the rabbit to sleep on. Spoon some nice sauce over top.
Vegetables. Okay and a little bit of chopped parsley
on top just to wake things up a little bit.
- Pine nuts.
- Oh pine nuts! Thanks Michael. Thanks Tony.
(high pitched voice) "Damn it, Tony!"
That's my best Carmela impression. (laughs)
- You're spot on.
- I know.
I'm gonna go ahead and make things a little more
romantic here.
There we go. Is this romantic or am I like a ghost
from the 1800's?
And now we eat. (laughs) (beep)
I'm gonna eat with my left hand
for the first time in my life. See how this goes.
- This is great.
- Mmm.
- Right? This is really good.
(silverware clanking)
- That's not bad at all, I don't mind it at all.
So Michael, you're in this movie, The Many Saints of Newark,
a Sopranos story. When does it come out?
- It comes out on HBO Max October 1st, and in theaters.
I'm gonna go see it theaters.
- It's an old fashioned movie,
you go to the theaters to see the movie.
- You go, you buy a ticket, you-
- [Together] get popcorn. (laughs)
- I'm going to be seeing it in theaters,
I'll see you there, if you're going to see it in theaters,
I will be there. I'm gonna be at every show.
- There you go, you better be there. You know, or else.
- [Jess] Or else what?
- Or else we'll be dearly upset with you.
- Yeah, we'll be bummed.
(laughs)
- The modern mafia, "You better (beep) be there,
or I'm gonna be really hurt personally."
- Its gonna hurt my feelings.
- Thank you so much for coming by (screams)
I can't not do it, I can't not do it.
One more time, I won't do that.
Thank you so much for coming by man.
- Thank you.
- Thanks for wrapping up my arm, thanks for having lunch
slash dinner, "linner" with me.
- I love linner.
- I can't wait to see you in this movie man.
- I appreciate it.
- Woo. Come here.
(pats backs)
Good to see you man. Lets eat this rabbit,
stab at it and poke at it.
(upbeat jazz music)