- What's up everyone, I'm chef Joe Sasto.
And today I'm gonna show you
how I use this 500 year old torchio
to make a delicious bowl of pasta, and as a bonus,
I'm gonna give you a Madeira cream sauce recipe
that you can use on anything, now let's get to it.
I got my bag of tricks here, so we have here a torchio.
This is a solid bronze piece of machinery used
to make pasta, 16th century.
This is over hundreds of years old and how they used
to make all of those extruded shapes of pasta
that you're used to eating every single day.
And we also have our handle.
This is going to allow us to clamp onto the top
and apply pressure, and our dye,
these come in all different shapes and sizes
and they're interchangeable.
So depending on which one you have in there,
will determine what shape of pasta that you end up making.
I'm excited to show you how to use this thing.
But before we get into that,
I got to show you how to make some pasta dough.
We have a finely ground rimacinata semolina durum flour.
We're using all egg yolks for this one.
I have a finely ground double zero white flour,
and then I have a coarsely ground semolina flour.
A little bit of salt, and then we'll just start
by doing this all in the stand mixer.
You could do this all by hand,
but I do like taking some shortcuts when I can.
We're gonna get all of our flowers into the mixer first,
our durum flour, then our double zero, finally,
our semolina and a little bit of salt.
We're going to give this a quick mix
and we can go with all of our egg yolks at once.
And we're just gonna let this rip.
Now you'll notice this dough is gonna be a little different
than some other pasta doughs you made up there.
It's gonna be harder, a little more dense,
and we're gonna add just enough water to allow it
to come together.
So just a few sprays at a time, I'm using a very old piece
of equipment to make the pasta,
but I'm using a very modern piece
of equipment to make the dough.
I like just combining those two different worlds together.
We're getting very close here.
We can see that it's gotten a little more sticky here.
I'm able to squeeze it into my hands
and it holds together.
This is exactly where I want it to be.
We're going to leave it just like this.
And we're gonna bring it together right on the counter,
squeezing this altogether.
Now, if you didn't have a machine,
this is what the entire process would look like.
And I'm purposely forming this into a cylinder.
So that way it's easier to load into our machine.
This hard dough is ready to go, this just needs to rest.
I like to do that in a vacuum sealed bag.
A lot of pasta chefs look down on using a vacuum sealer
with their pasta dough, I do not.
I like taking this extra step here.
It force hydrates the dough
and speeds up the resting process.
So we're just gonna take our dough log.
We will slide it into our bag and then right
into our vacuum machine.
(machine whirs)
Like magic.
So we have our dough here, force hydrating, resting.
We're just gonna set this aside to rest
and set up our ancient pasta gadget, you ready for this?
So we have all of our pieces here to our pasta gadget,
our torchio, starting with our main frame here.
So what we want to do first is put on our dye, in this case,
I always like to leave my dye submerged in water,
especially when I had used them before.
So that way the pasta doesn't dry on the inside.
Today, I'm gonna show you how to make Gargati.
Think of it almost as like a thicker spaghetti
or a thinner penne
We'll drop that here into our screw,
attach that to the bottom.
And then we just want to clamp this onto our table.
Sometimes you need to get a little creative figuring out how
and where are you're going to clamp it.
I like to use the C clamps that I have here.
And we'll just go under the table,
and the other one, all right, we are secure.
Last thing here, we have our handle.
This'll go right on top and we can open it up.
And the dough's gonna go right into that too.
So we have our gadget assembled,
time to load it with our dough.
This has been resting only about 20, 30 minutes.
Not very long at all.
If you didn't have a vacuum bag,
you probably want to let this rest one to two hours or so.
So it really makes a big difference
and speeds up the entire process.
I'm probably going to split this up into two batches,
down into here, we'll just slide that in.
We'll throw this on top, attach our handle,
and then you just want to get it started up.
(imitates engine)
No, I'm kidding, it's not electric.
We're going to go right down, starting to turn this end.
This is your workout for the day.
So you can tell right, when you get to the end,
it's not going to turn anymore.
And the moment of truth, you can take all
of your pasta ribbons, bring them right up, line them up
and lay them onto your work surface.
Now I just open it back up
and we can load in our second piece of dough.
Slide that down.
So what I really like about this particular shape,
the gargati, is that there is actually a small hole forming
through the center of each of these noodles.
And it has this super unique mouthfeel when you bite into it
that I absolutely love.
All right, so that's done, look at that, beautiful.
We'll come in with a little bit of semolina flour here
so they don't stick together.
Now they have beautiful texture on the exterior here.
That's gonna help grip our sauce,
provide wonderful mouthfeel.
So we'll allow it to dry for just a few minutes
before cutting them.
And that's going to keep that hole right through the center
of the pasta, I usually go about an inch and a half.
I feel like that gives you real nice texture
and length all the way across, not too long, not too short.
But at the same time,
you can cut these into small little macaroni
or you can leave them in really long noodles.
So just depending on how you're feeling,
you can have a whole variety of pasta
just from this one dye, I got a tray here,
dusted with just a little bit of semolina.
I'm gonna keep them separated.
Now we'll get started on our Madeira cream sauce.
So we have some cream, we have thyme, peppercorns,
some slice shallots and Madeira,
which is a fortified wine and kind of tastes like Sherry
or port, and then a little bit of vegetable oil
to get us started.
So in my sauce pot here to get things going,
we're just going to start heating up our induction burner,
a little bit of vegetable oil down on the bottom.
Then we'll come in with our slice shallots.
We want a little bit of sweating.
We want a little bit of sautéing.
So we got a little bit of action going on here in our pan,
shallots are sweating down.
We're not really looking for color here in this case.
I really liked some black peppercorns.
And then as much or as little thyme as you have.
Today, I have a lot of thyme.
You know, if you're short on thyme, don't be afraid.
You can put a little bit of thyme.
We're just going to let that soften.
The peppercorns just toast up.
Oh, it starts to get very fragrant, aromatic.
Our Madeira de glazed with our wine.
And we don't need to worry
about cooking off that alcohol immediately,
because we're gonna add our cream and let that reduce.
Stir in the thyme, our thyme is going to infuse.
You'd always de glaze with a little bit of lemon juice
works very well.
So our sauce base has reduced by about half here.
We'll just come in here and strain this.
We have our infused cream here
and it's gonna be our sauce base, let's cook some pasta.
We're gonna go a little bit of salt in our pasta water.
I'm gonna take a moment here,
just to let everyone know your pasta water should never be
as salty as the sea.
It should taste like water soup, a well-seasoned stock.
We're gonna take all of our pasta now,
go down into our water, bring this back up to a boil,
throw the lid on for that.
So it's been about two minutes, do a little taste test here.
Careful it's hot, don't burn yourself.
One color all the way through.
You can still see that hole right in the center.
Let's bring these guys out.
I like using a spider, we'll go into a saute pan,
bringing a little bit of that pasta water with us.
Noodles back on the heat here.
Now we can come in with our Madeira cream sauce.
So what we want to do here is marry the noodle
and the sauce together.
We're gonna go, a little bit of butter here.
We just want to emulsify that butter in.
I always like to come in with another splash of raw Madeira.
So that way you have a little bit
of that cooked off Madeira flavor,
a little bit of that raw Madeira flavor coming through,
some fresh cracked black pepper.
And then we're just gonna swirl this together
to emulsify, we'll see this start to thicken up,
reach into your pocket and find yourself a tasting spoon.
Don't burn your mouth, love that, I'm gonna kill the heat.
Let that carry over, have a nice big chunk
of parmigiano Reggiano cheese I'm going to grate on top.
This is going to add a nice bit of saltiness.
It's delicious, nice big spoonful of our pasta.
Look at that.
We have some black truffle we're gonna grade on top.
Of course if you don't have truffle
or you're not into truffle,
you can skip this step, but I happen to love it.
Truffle, Madeira cream, gargati, baby, my friends.
Look at that, time for a taste test,
reach into your other pocket, find yourself a golden fork.
Come in, a little bit of everything.
Mm, rich, creamy, satisfying.
You would call it old reliable.
And even if you don't have this gadget,
you could still use the sauce on any type of pasta
that you have.
Don't forget to tag me when you make it at chef.joe.sasto.
Thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)