Binging with Babish: Ziti and Lasagna from The Sopranos

Is that sausage? My mom made it with hamburger. Look, the other night she made delicious

lasagna

with sweet sausage along with the meat. I thought Karen's was good, but sweet sausage in small pieces and a layer of basil leaves just under the cheese. That's right, it's Camilla's

lasagna

. you're talking about, hey, what's up guys, welcome back to Binging with Babish, where this week we'll finally take a look at some of the Sopranos' Kharam specialties, the secret ingredient of which appears to be a layer of basil under the cheese ? see how that works today we are going to make

ziti

and lasagna, so we need to make a lot of sauce.

I got this recipe straight from the Sopranos Cookbook, so it's pretty standard stuff. We need one large chopped onion and six crushed onion cloves. garlic and a pound of each, removed the ground beef casings and sweet Italian sausage and of course a bunch of tomatoes and since I need a lot of sauce, I'm going to quadruple all of this. I'm going to have to lose the usual dutch oven here because it's time to go out. the big boy we're going to deposit a few healthy shots of extra virgin olive oil, bring it to a simmer over medium heat, add our onion, sweat that guy until it's soft and translucent and then add our crushed garlic and sauté for a additional minute until fragrant, the recipe specifies adding the sausage and beef at this point with the onions, but that just doesn't make any sense to me, so I'll leave the onions and garlic aside and brown the sausage and beef in batches until they are very crumbly. and brown, then I'm going to drain off most of the fat, add the onions and garlic back to the pot and add our tomatoes 4 28 ounce cans of lightly crushed San Marzano tomatoes add our browned beef and sausage back to the party stir to combine and then we're also going to fill one of our tomato cans with water and pour it into the sauce.

This sauce can lose a lot of moisture during the hour and a half it is about to spend on the stove. to cover this guy and get him rolling, so boy, that's too much to simmer baby, once your sauce is a little calmer, let's partially cover, reduce the heat to as low as allow your stove. go and keep this just barely bubbling stirring occasionally to make sure no one burns on the bottom of the pot for an hour and a half until the flavors are deep, sweet, fused and complex. Make sure you scrape all this good stuff off the sides. of the pot is also essentially tomato paste and will help enhance the flavor of the sauce a bit.

Then, during the last five minutes of cooking, we add a bunch of chopped basil and season to taste with kosher and freshly ground salt. black pepper, in general, this is a totally useful Italian meat sauce. I can only think of a couple of things I would do differently: Add a few tablespoons of tomato paste to the onions and garlic before adding the tomatoes and letting the sauce simmer. both a crust of parmesan cheese and a whole stem of basil, either way we're going to transfer this to another container because this pot is perfect for boiling pasta and lasagna noodles, particularly since they can be a little tricky to cook, one of the central principles. of making lasagna is to make sure you don't overcook the pasta; you want it to be almost crispy, which means no more than four minutes in the boiling water and then immediately remove it to a pot or bowl of cold water to stop the cooking and then just like my mom used to do, we place them on a tea towel lint free and set them aside so we can start assembling, let's get our nice warm sauce off the stove and then I'll use aluminum foil. lasagna pan so Janice can steal it and pass it off as hers first we're going to start with a healthy layer of sauce, we don't want the noodles to stick to the bottom of the pan and then it's time to start mixing in our pasta, depending on the pasta size and pan size, some surgery may be required to fill in all the spaces, but it doesn't matter, just try to flip the pattern on each layer to maintain the structural integrity of the lasagna.

Next, the recipe calls for a generous amount. ricotta spread, a lasagna ingredient that I personally object to, but who am I with a shoe tradition followed by a healthy grating, maybe half an ounce of parmesan cheese and then here we go with the layer of basil leaves? I'm really curious to see how this is going to work because not only does it look like a lot of basil, I can also see it causing cutting problems in the future and then topping it off with a layer of thinly sliced ​​fresh mozzarella cheese, something I can't fully recommend. because there's a lot of moisture in this and it could give us a thick lasagna on top with another layer of sauce and then it's time to rinse and repeat until we can't rinse and repeat anymore, in total I have three full layers, which seems respectable and then, In the final layer, we will simply cover it with a generous layer of tomato sauce and a generous grating of Parmesan cheese.

This is something I never really understood about old school lasagna recipes that never seem to include mozzarella on top, which I think makes the lasagna easier to cut. I'm also going to give it some salt and freshly ground pepper. I don't think this is totally necessary, but I'll go ahead and pretend it's traditional. then we'll cover this guy tightly with aluminum foil and place him in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 30 minutes. This will give the lasagna noodles time to finish cooking and get everyone melted and happy, then let's uncover and place. Back in the oven for 15 to 30 minutes until golden and bubbly on top and I have to say this looks exactly how I always imagined Garfield's lasagna would look so what a wrong episode, either way I did it We will let it rest for at least 15 minutes before digging. and as predicted, we do get some interference from basil leaves here, but it doesn't matter because this is a pretty solidly stacked lasagna and it turns out there isn't too much basil, I just wish it was chopped and mixed in. with ricotta or something so it's a little more evenly dispersed and less intrusive on my lasagna consumption if you want to see Brad Leone and Babish style lasagna from scratch, check out my Garfield lasagna video in the top right corner right now. because otherwise, we're going to make

ziti

, Carmella's often unpleasant but rarely seen specialty.

First, we cook a pound of ziti until very al dente, about five minutes maximum, scoop it into a large bowl, and toss it with a cup or two of sauce. that's a good mix and then it's time to negotiate our cheese. Everyone who's anyone loves little pieces of mozzarella in their baked ziti, so for that we're going to make another aluminum casserole because this is all going to neighbors and friends, so I'm not. Spread half of the ziti sauce over the bottom of the casserole and then we're going to top it off with some pieces of ricotta again.

I must quibble, but we're going to be precise here, spread that as evenly as possible and then sprinkle our half. inch pieces of fresh mozzarella on top, then we'll top it off with a generous grating of Parmesan cheese, maybe an ounce and a half is worth the remaining half of our ziti, which we'll spread well and even make sure none of that cheese is exposed to the oxygen, then we're going to top it all off with another cup or two of sauce, nothing is sadder in this world than a fake ziti with sauce and lastly, another ounce of grated parmesan until it looks like a nice light snowfall and then it's exactly the same process as before: we cover tightly with aluminum foil and place it in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 30 minutes, remove and unwrap so we can expose all that cheese and pasta to the loving heat of the oven and put it back inside for 15 to 20 minutes until it looks this golden, bubbly, crispy, spicy and happy.

Now again, this recipe makes a perfectly serviceable baked ziti. I'm almost less opposed to the parmesan-only dressing because we're scooping rather than slicing it so the top is crispy it's really good and welcome the sauce is delicious the cheese is delicious the pasta is delicious the ricotta is good we have a winner and an obvious member of the clean plates club, but can we do better? The answer is yes. simply defying all tradition, my first atrocity was using rigatoni instead of ziti. I like the ridges that help grab the sauce and the little pieces of meat and help make each bite a little more inclusive, after the mozzarella instead of fresh.

Next we are going to use low moisture full fat, this melts beautifully without pissing a ton of extra liquid into our alforno pasta and this is the really crazy one here 16 ounces of cottage cheese the cottage cheese becomes super creamy instead of grainy when baked, so it's going to be really good, we're going to add two whole eggs and about two ounces of grated Parmesan cheese. I'll also add some optional freshly grated nutmeg. This will add some really beautiful old school Italian nuttiness. flavor, mix it briefly and then comes the basil cut into small pieces to maximize both the flavor and comfort in the mouth. add it to our cheese blender, give it a nice regular size and then the final element, which I think is the most amazing. a bechamel that I think you could add to any of today's recipes because it will make our final product super creamy and rich.

In a medium saucepan, place three tablespoons of melted butter followed by three tablespoons of flour, beat and cook for one minute beforehand. slowly pour in two cups of milk, whisk constantly and cook for another minute or two until a thick, creamy béchamel forms and then it's time to add it all to the pasta, a couple of cups of sauce, our beautiful béchamel sauce and our cottage cheese. The egg, parmesan and basil mixture gives it a good mix until they are all smooth and a little cooled so we can add eight ounces of low moisture cubed mozzarella, just mix a little until they are all evenly dispersed and then pour into our aluminum pan.

I've run out of things to call it, make sure they're all evenly distributed and top with a cup or two of extra sauce and then I'm going to top that with half a pound of shredded mozzarella that will hopefully melt into a nice combination. layer and then I'm going to top that with another ounce of grated parmesan. Did someone just say it's too much cheese? I'm going to go ahead and ask you to follow the exact same procedure as before, cover the oven at 350°C, 30 minutes, take out, unwrap, put back in the oven 15-20 minutes slightly golden bubbly around the edges and if you ask me , it looks absolutely perfect but you don't judge a ziti by its top layer or a rigatoni in this case either way this is the best alfono pasta I have ever had If at 32 years old the pasta was perfectly cooked with a creaminess almost similar to that of a vodka sauce, the flavors are complex and layered, it's a good thing Carmella didn't make this ziti because otherwise Father Phil might have been a lot harder to get rid of.

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