Salt Fat Acid Heat (2018–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Episode #1.1 - full transcript
[upbeat music playing]
[Samin Nosrat] Fat.
It's nothing short of a miracle.
Fat is flavor.
Fat is texture.
Fat adds its own unique flavor to a dish.
And it can amplify the other flavors
-in a recipe.
-[fireworks crackle]
Simply put...
fat makes food delicious.
And one of the most important things
any cook can learn
-is how to harness its magic.
-[sizzling]
[waves crashing loudly]
[calming instrumental music playing]
I've spent my entire life
in pursuit of flavor.
[bird calling]
[Samin] Starting
at the legendary Chez Panisse,
I've been cooking, teaching,
and writing about food for 18 years.
You have to taste
what you're about to cook with.
You have to look at it, smell it,
touch it.
I've traveled the world...
[camera shutter clicking]
...tasting everything.
And what I've discovered
is that the secret to good cooking
is hiding in plain sight.
Just four basic elements
can make or break a dish.
[gull cries]
[Samin] Salt.
-Fat.
-[oinks]
[Samin] Acid.
-And heat.
-[sizzling]
Commit to mastering them,
and you can become not only a good cook,
but a great one.
[birds chirping]
["Primavera" by Daniele Benati playing]
[Samin] A few years
after I started cooking, I moved to Italy.
I wanted to learn more about,
and eat, all of my favorite dishes.
Right at the source.
And as I cooked and ate my way
throughout the country,
one thing became clear:
from cheese to salami,
ragù to gelato,
Italians are masters at using fat
to make their food
absolutely, fantastically,
almost impossibly delicious.
[slow piano music playing]
And for me,
the fat that defines the flavor
of Italian food
more than any other is olive oil.
-[harvester whirring]
-[leaves rustling]
[man, in Italian]
This area is called Gaaci,
which means "protected lands."
On one side is the sea,
and on the other are the highest mountains
in Liguria.
This mix of sea, mountains, and woods
gives us flavors that are very delicate,
but also very intense.
[Samin] I'm very interested in the idea
that the fat of a place
is the starting point
for the flavor of its cuisine.
[man 2] You can taste different flavors
-that tell you about the land.
-Yeah.
Each oil in Italy manages to contain,
one by one, its own land's history.
[man] Taggiasca olives are grown
only in this part of Liguria.
Because the terrain is very difficult,
very steep.
There isn't any soil,
and right underneath it, there's rock.
So Taggiasca is only a very small part
of all Italian olive oil.
But, since it's so sweet, so delicate,
it's somewhat considered
like champagne among wines.
[birds chirping]
When you cook,
it's very important to know
what kind of oil you're adding.
Oil should never cover up the flavor
of your dish,
but it should accompany and enhance it.
-[harvester whirring]
-["Santa Lucia" playing]
[Samin] How old are these trees?
-[man 2] About 200 or 250 years old.
-[Samin] Two hundred fifty years? Really?
[man 2] We sew a net
inside the whole olive grove.
Starting our work at the top of the grove,
and then working our way down
and further down,
we're able to keep all the olives
on the nets.
Show her how it's done.
[Samin laughs]
Don't we have any glasses?
How do we know when we're done?
[man 2] When there aren't any more olives
on the tree.
[Samin] It's like going
to the hairdresser.
-[man 2] Exactly.
-[man 2 and Samin laugh]
[Samin] Wow! It's so heavy!
[both laugh]
[leaves rustling]
[man 2] At the end of the day,
-we'll have a truckload of olives.
-[Samin] Wow.
[clattering]
[man 2] This is the mill
where we produce the oil.
The paste is ready,
so they'll unload it now.
[Samin, in English] Extra virgin olive oil
is basically fresh-pressed juice
made without heat or chemicals.
[man 2] A good olive oil
must have three parameters.
It's fruity, spicy, and bitter.
In your mouth, you must feel
at least a bit of spiciness.
-[Samin] Uh-uh.
-[man 2] If it's spicy, it's alive.
It's a flavor that remain in your mouth.
So if you drink and that's all,
it's not a good olive oil.
But if you drink and, after a minute,
you still feel the oily sensation
in the mouth, that's a good olive oil.
[Samin] Oh.
[Samin] It's so good.
The essential flavor of any dish starts
with the fat it's cooked in.
[piano music playing]
Entire cuisines are defined by their fats.
Think of southern cooking.
It relies heavily on bacon fat and lard.
And French cuisine is defined
by the rich taste of butter.
[TV host] If you're gonna make
a great soufflé...
-[gulls calling]
-[Samin] Before I even turn on the stove,
I know that one of the most important
decisions I can make
is to choose the right cooking fat.
-[Samin, in Italian] Good morning!
-[Lidia] Hi! Welcome!
[Samin] Thank you so much!
-[birds chirping]
-[Italian music playing]
[Samin] Nice to meet you.
-[Lidia] It's my pleasure.
-Can I give you a big hug?
-[Lidia] Of course.
-[laughs] Thank you.
Thank you for being here.
This question, this request you've made,
it's really very interesting.
[Samin] What a beautiful place!
[Lidia] We used to live in the country,
then moved here...
-[Samin] It's so beautiful!
-...and haven't left since.
-[Samin] Wow.
-Here we are.
-See, this is my father.
-Ah.
-[Lidia] The one with the straw hat.
-That one?
[Lidia] The others are townspeople
who worked removing rocks
for the train tunnels.
When the work was done,
they made a giant bowl of pasta
for everyone.
Obviously,
they celebrated the end of the work.
[accordion music playing]
[birds chirping]
-[Samin] Hi, Diego!
-[Diego] Hi.
-[Lidia] Diego is our focaccia expert.
-[Samin] Wow!
-[Diego] The breakfast of Ligurians.
-[laughs] Yes, and also of Samin.
With lots of oil.
Believe me,
the secret is it has to be a Ligurian oil.
[Lidia] It has to be Ligurian.
[Diego] Focaccia was born
to suppress the hunger of dockworkers.
If they stopped to have a full lunch,
they wouldn't have enough time
to finish unloading the ships' containers.
So, they'd have some focaccia,
a little white wine,
and then go on working all day.
-Okay. I'll leave you with Diego.
-Right. Thank you.
-Okay. Bye.
-Great.
[Diego] The ingredients are flour, yeast,
malt extract, oil.
[Samin] For me,
the oil here is the sweetest.
-[Diego] Lovable.
-Buttery.
Yes, lovable. Exactly.
It's a question of the olive's acidity.
Even the air, I think. Because...
the air is salty. I don't know.
But the oil in Liguria,
-I think it's really the best in Italy.
-I agree.
-Of course, I'm biased, but...
-[laughs]
We have oil rivalries here,
just like with wine.
[laughs]
[Diego] The dough
should start to feel soft.
[Samin] How do you know
you've worked it long enough?
[Diego] When there are no bumps.
It's completely smooth.
[Samin] Okay.
Now you can add the salt.
-If you're going to flavor it...
-[Samin] Uh-huh?
...at this point,
you can add rosemary, sage...
-[Samin] Olive paste.
-...olive.
If you crumble it up inside,
you can make rosemary focaccia.
But keep that to yourself.
-Don't tell anyone.
-[laughs]
That goes for sage, too.
-Or any other aromatic herb you add.
-That's beautiful. That's beautiful.
-[Diego] You rest it here...
-Uh-uh.
...for 15 minutes,
covered with a dish towel.
Now we transfer the dough
to a baking pan.
And now, the secret to Ligurian focaccia.
You roll out the dough.
The perfume from the oil... Wow!
[Diego] And now, see how smooth it is?
[Samin, in English] Olive oil does
two important things for focaccia:
it lends a rich fruity flavor,
and it creates a tender crumb
and crisp crust.
[in Italian] Wow, how beautiful,
bathed in oil like this.
[Diego] We take the oil...
and spread it out.
-[Samin] Okay.
-Let's start with the brine,
typical of the salty flavor
that goes into the focaccia's holes.
Salt, oil. We mix them.
-[Samin] Wow.
-[grunts softly]
-Which fingers?
-The first fingers: one, two, and three.
[Samin] Okay.
-[Diego] There you go.
-Oh! Oh, oh, oh!
-Don't worry about it.
-I made a mistake.
[Diego] The important thing is to press.
Don't be afraid.
Okay. Now's the time for our brine,
the water and salt we made.
Just pour it over, don't be afraid.
[Samin] When we take it from the oven,
it will be obvious
which ones are my fingers
and which are yours.
[Diego] We wait another 40 minutes.
Otherwise, the holes won't stay
in the focaccia.
-[Samin laughs]
-It develops this color while it cooks.
When we take it out of the oven,
we add more oil.
Oh, more? Okay!
-More oil.
-Always more oil.
[Diego] Pour all over it.
Always a good oil.
Ligurian focaccia is only
two centimeters high, tops.
-Higher, it's not really Ligurian.
-[Samin] Oh!
How light, how beautiful.
-Crunchy on the bottom and soft inside.
-And soft inside.
[Diego] The holes taste like salt.
You can taste it.
[Samin] Mm.
-[laughs] It's truly...
-[chuckles]
Mm.
It's a focaccia that's very easy
to make at home for breakfast.
With a cafe latte, right?
[crunches]
And feel how crunchy the crust is.
Thanks.
-Thank you... with a handful of oil!
-With a handful of oil!
[Samin laughs] Now I'm gonna keep eating
for a bit.
When I understood
that we were coming to Liguria,
I wanted to make pesto right away.
Because it's a beautiful lesson
about fat's importance.
We have cheese.
We have creamy pine nuts.
And we have this beautiful oil
from right here.
All three fats work together
to make this marvelous thing.
[Lidia] We're making pesto
the traditional way, using a mortar.
[Samin] Where do we begin?
The process always starts
with the pine nuts.
Let's start by grinding the pine nuts
on their own
so they come apart more easily.
Otherwise, everything would form a paste
too quickly.
How do you know when it's ready?
When it starts to form a kind of paste.
Not yet. I'll tell you when.
Very good.
Now we add the basil.
A little more,
and we add some coarse salt, a pinch.
I say a pinch of salt
because the cheese's flavors tend to--
[Samin] They're also salty.
At the end, we taste to see
what the flavor is like.
And if it's missing salt, we add a little.
The coarse salt helps
to break apart the leaves.
What a nice, sweet smell.
See how the natural oils are coming out
as we pound it?
So here, it's only a matter of patience.
No one makes it like this anymore.
[Samin] Do your kids make pesto
with the mortar, too?
[Lidia] No, I've never seen them do that.
We'll see, maybe they'll become passionate
about it after this.
Maybe they'll try to compete
with their mother.
Now it's starting to look good.
It's starting to give me satisfaction.
-[squishing]
-What a sound, right?
[Lidia] Mm.
So, let's prepare the cheese.
[Samin] Okay. Equal parts?
[Lidia] No, no, no. Two thirds of Parmesan
and one third of pecorino.
[Samin] Here we are.
-[Lidia] Here's the Parmesan.
-Parmesan and pecorino.
[Lidia] Now let me do this by eye,
without weighing.
I'm not in the habit of weighing anything.
So, we've reached the point for the oil.
You see the sauce starting to look right?
More like how a sauce
for pasta should look.
What a beautiful green color.
In America, we haven't really understood
-that oil is something fresh.
-Yes, fresh.
It has an expiration date.
It's not like wine.
One of my friends received
a bottle of olive oil for her wedding,
but 30 years ago. Thirty years ago.
And today,
she still uses it little by little.
She hasn't learned yet
that it's turned rancid.
She wasted it. It was a real waste.
-It's just gross.
-Now she can use it to turn the lamps on.
Right!
-[Lidia] See how soft it is?
-Beautiful.
[Samin] You can smell
all the different flavors.
The oil is like a medium for all of them.
[Lidia] Tell me how it tastes.
-So good.
-Great. Now...
-It's not missing anything.
-Perfect.
[indistinct dialogue]
[Lidia] We can add a drop of oil.
There.
There. A handful of Parmesan.
Always very good.
[both laugh]
[crunches]
[Samin] Wow! [laughs] Delicious.
[horn honks in distance]
[Samin, in English] Fat can also be
a powerful source of flavor
from within food.
Most of the flavor in meat is in its fat,
which means that a fatty cut of pork
tastes porkier than a lean one.
Italian butchers prefer to use animals
with lots of fat,
and that means one thing: more flavor.
[in Italian] Ah! Hi, piggies!
-We've brought them some candy.
-Oh!
-Let's give them some acorns.
-[Samin laughs]
[Samin] Me too, me too!
[Lorenzo] They really like these.
[Samin] It's like... a dessert.
-[Lorenzo] Yes, yes, yes, yes!
-[pigs munching]
[Lorenzo] Beautiful, shiny.
You see how they reflect the light?
-You can tell that these are healthy pigs.
-[pig oinks]
-[Lorenzo] You can't smell anything.
-Nothing. Yeah.
[Samin] They seem pretty happy, no?
Yes, they're in paradise!
The Cinta Senese is a breed
of domesticated pig.
It has a very slow metabolism,
especially compared to more modern breeds.
If they don't get exercise,
they get really fat.
And they don't reproduce as much
as the others.
In the '70s,
new breeds started coming over
from northern Europe and America.
They were all very skinny,
so they had more piglets.
[in English] And by the '80s,
there were only a few left.
In 1983, since I was 20 years old,
I started to do...
-To bring back this breed. Yes.
-Yes, yes.
[Lorenzo, in Italian]
A lot of sommeliers hang around here,
-people who look for the scent in things.
-Mm-hmm.
In our ham, they've smelled egg yolk,
they've smelled chocolate,
they've smelled walnuts,
they've smelled acorns, too.
How does that scent get there?
I don't know! Maybe it sets in the fat.
[pigs oinking]
[Lorenzo] In ancient times,
all these woods belonged to my family.
But it seems that one of my ancestors
spent all the family money on women.
-[Samin laughs]
-[chuckles]
I don't know if that's a good
or bad thing...
[both laugh]
-[Samin] Okay.
-But it's what happened.
[Samin, in English] For centuries,
it was common for rural Italian families
to raise two or three pigs each year.
Expert traveling butchers called norcini
would wander from town to town,
slaughtering the pigs and turning them
into salumi.
They were so skillful
that they were considered mystics.
[Lorenzo, in Italian] It's stiff.
[Samin, in English] Lorenzo is
the descendant of a long line of norcini.
[Lorenzo, in Italian]
We put only the head on a basin.
-Just like with people--
-[Samin, in English] A lot of meat.
Maybe almost 400 pounds?
-The prosciutto comes from the ham.
-Yes.
And then, what's this? This beautiful fat
that is on the back--
[Lorenzo] This is the noble part
of the fat.
-The noble part?
-[Lorenzo] Yes.
The noble fat. I love that.
In English, we have this saying,
"high on the hog."
So when you are wealthy
or you just got a big paycheck,
it's the same, the idea of the noble fat,
or the noble cuts of the highest parts
of the pig. Literally.
So, these parts here
are food for the rich people.
-What's this?
-The shoulder, the pancetta--
The pancetta, or the bacon.
The tenderloin here,
it's under all this fat.
[Lorenzo] So, we start from the head.
[thuds loudly]
I'm already thinking
about the salami that will come later.
[Samin] So, this is the shoulder,
and this is the beautiful fat.
Now he's gonna break the middle part.
So this is all those tender cuts.
The belly,
which here they turn into pancetta
and we can turn into bacon.
Okay. Let's go. [in Italian] Stay away.
[both speak indistinctly]
So we have the two ends,
the parts that have worked really hard:
the front end and the back end.
And then, the beautiful middle,
the high-on-the-hog part.
This is all the steaks
and the tender cuts.
[Lorenzo, in Italian] Uh, what we have now
is a diamond in the rough.
We have to decide what kind of diamond
this should be.
[Samin] I'll translate
all of your poetry...
-while you work.
-Okay. But I have more poems.
Poetry helps here
because we're constantly surrounded
by the noise
of breaking joints.
-Eh?
-[clacks]
[Samin chuckles]
[in English]
That's what I was told to you.
[Samin] So, now we're gonna decide
do we want to turn this
into a beautiful piece of lardo
or do we leave that fat on this meat
and make it something
that we're gonna cook and eat for dinner?
This is a particularly fatty pig,
and it would be a shame
to not turn that into lardo
that we can use for many months,
so he made the decision
to go ahead and save this.
[thuds]
-[Lorenzo] It's a... a good kind of meat.
-Yeah.
Simply well-treated and well-breeded.
It's a happy animal.
-Not so happy now, but, uh... it was.
-[chuckles] Was. Yeah.
[accordion music playing]
[Samin] Twenty minutes have passed,
and that big animal
has become these big parts.
And all of these different kinds of fat
are gonna become different things.
So really, out of this whole animal,
there's no waste.
Everything has a use,
and it's really quite beautiful,
when you know what you're doing,
that there's a rule for everything.
So this, this,
and this become soppressata.
This is the guancia, the cheek.
And this becomes guanciale.
-[Lorenzo] For making spaghetti.
-Spaghetti carbonara.
Then we have the beautiful the spalla,
the beautiful shoulder.
And then, here's
the beautiful prized prosciut.
Again, with this incredible amount of fat.
[Samin] Okay.
-[in Italian] A little more, please.
-More?
[laughs] Thank you.
[in English]
So, this beautiful, perfect piece of fat.
I'm sorry, Grandma.
It's like butter. It's so sweet.
Together, fat, salt, and time transform
this exceptional meat into prosciutto,
salami, and all of the other cured meats
that are a hallmark of Italian cuisine.
-[Samin, in Italian] What is that?
-[Lorenzo] This is a finocchiona.
[in English] And this specifically
is called sbriciolona,
-Sbriciolona.
-A big sausage that breaks apart.
[Lorenzo, in Italian and English]
"Sbriciolarsi" means "to crumble."
[in English]
This is a soppressata, made with the head.
Super salty, super chewy.
Very flavorful.
These are the things
it would never occur to you to eat
if you were just looking
at that pig's head.
[chewing] There's fat, there's meat.
I don't even know what that is.
Maybe it was a jowl,
but when they've cooked,
it's a very soft texture.
Salami is made with cut-up meat.
The meat has to be ground up and flavored.
The prosciutto,
these are the most precious in a way,
because they take the most time
and they're made out of whole cuts.
[in Italian] Cheers.
[in English]
These cured meats are the basis
for all sorts of amazing dishes.
But fat can be just as powerful
when used as a seasoning.
Added just before serving to enrich
the flavor or texture of a dish.
A few drops of toasted sesame oil
can transform a plain bowl of rice.
A dollop of sour cream will lend
silky richness to a baked potato.
But there's one ingredient I use more
than any other
to turn an ordinary dish
into something extraordinary...
-[triumphant orchestra music playing]
-[cows moo]
[Samin] Red cow Parmesan.
-[Samin sniffs, in Italian] Cow smell.
-[woman] Yeah.
[Samin, in English] So who are these?
Who do we have here?
[woman] So, here we have the red cows.
-[Samin] The vacche rosse.
-Vacche rosse.
[Samin] Can you tell me
about the history of these cows?
[woman] Yeah.
This is a very ancient breed,
uh, coming from the north of Europe
-with the Barbaric invasions in 1200.
-Wow.
-So, a thousand years ago.
-Yes.
[Samin] Is the milk they produce special?
[woman] Yes, it's very special.
[Samin] The milk from red cows
is sweeter and far richer in fat
than the milk from other cows.
That's what makes this
the queen of Parmesans.
Che bello. Wow.
So now, what he's doing
is breaking up the curds and the whey.
The curds are these solid bits,
and the whey is the liquid.
[in Italian] You have to break
the milk apart delicately and uniformly.
That means there, there, there,
there, there.
Slow and steady.
Because the milk must be respected.
[Samin, in English]
Just like Lorenzo's prosciutto,
the recipe for this cheese is simple.
It involves little more than salt, time,
and, of course, fat.
[man, in Italian]
Now it settles on the bottom.
The paddle shapes the cheese
and detaches it from the wall.
-[Samin] Can I pull it? Okay.
-Yes.
[laughs]
Okay.
[in English] I'm trying to peel
the cheese off the bottom of the pot.
Okay. Good.
[Samin speaking Italian]
[Samin] Wow!
Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.
-[in Italian] It's like a ballet.
-[man mutters]
[Samin] Ah!
-[man] Now we tie it.
-[Samin] Uh-uh.
[Samin] So now we wait more.
[man] With its weight, attached here,
it loses all its humidity.
It's still soft.
-[man] Okay.
-[Samin] So these are the twins.
You gotta check it.
[in English] Oh. Okay,
now he's double-checking
-to make sure we're doing it really--
-[in Italian] This one is bigger.
[stammers] Okay. This is bigger.
-Yeah.
-How can you tell?
-With my eyes!
-[laughs]
[Samin, in English] So this
is a thousand liters of milk.
Becomes two wheels of cheese.
And each one is 500 liters.
-[woman] The salatura, our salting room.
-[Samin] Perfect!
[woman, in Italian] Lights!
[Samin, in English] Wow! Whoa!
[woman] Newborn wheels stay here
about 22 days
so that they can absorb better the salt.
[man, in Italian] It's a great sign
when we see in the cheeses,
which are in these traditional
salt baths...
You can tell by the form, which is low.
-That's a good sign.
-Oh. And why is that?
If the form is floating and tends to rise,
it means there are air pockets inside.
So this one is the driest, let's say.
[Samin] How many months old?
[woman] Twenty-four months.
[soft thudding]
[man] Hear that?
Now this form is very fresh.
-[woman, in English] This is very fresh.
-A fresh one.
-This has--
-[man, in Italian] Hear the difference?
-[in English] Yeah.
-[thudding]
[man, in Italian] I do this test
occasionally as the form is aging
-to make sure it's aging in the right way.
-[in English] Yes.
He makes this test sometimes.
-[speaking Italian] Uh-huh.
-And the official test is at 12 months.
[in Italian] You must hear this sound
in your dreams. [laughs]
[woman, in English] When you dream.
[Samin] Yeah. [continues laughing]
[Samin] Okay, so you've brought me
everything for tasting.
So, we have the two years,
-24 months, at least.
-Yeah. Mm-hmm.
-Thirty months.
-Yeah.
-Forty months.
-Yes.
Okay, can you tell me a little bit
about how to taste?
-[woman] Mm-hmm.
-What am I tasting for?
You have to start from the youngest age.
-So you have to begin with 24.
-[Samin] Okay.
[woman] When you taste the first aging,
you taste the milk.
[Samin] Okay.
-It's sweet. [in Italian] It's sweet.
-[in English] Yes.
-It's rich in flavor.
-[woman] Yeah.
It's so good. It's so good.
-I... It's bringing tears to my eyes.
-[woman] Thank you.
It's-- It's so good.
I don't know how it could get better,
but let's try. [laughs]
[woman] And this wheel is
-about 36 months.
-[Samin] Wow.
You are starting to feel in your mouth
the crystals of tyrosine.
Yes, the tyrosine,
-which is an amino acid.
-Yes.
You can hear it crunching.
You crunch on it.
And so, the 40 month,
it's like a fireworks parade
of all these tyrosine crystals.
This is dessert.
This is what you eat for dessert.
-This is a candy of Parmesan.
-[woman] Yeah.
-[Samin, in Italian] Pure flavor.
-Right.
-[in English] It's still sweet.
-It's so sweet.
It just hits every taste bud
in your mouth.
-[woman] Yeah.
-It hits salty, sweet...
There's a little bit of bitter,
but a nice bitterness.
There's umami, which is the crystals,
the beautiful flavor.
-I think I'm just gonna live here now.
-[both chuckle]
Just eat cheese and butter...
-for... until I die.
-Yeah.
-And ricotta.
-[woman chuckles]
[Samin] Fat determines flavor.
But it also creates
five distinct textures:
creamy, flaky, crisp, tender, and light.
Combining a variety of textures
in one dish
can make a meal much more delightful...
and surprising.
[no audible dialogue]
-[relaxed instrumental music playing]
-[bell tolls]
[indistinct chatter]
-[Samin, in Italian] Hi, good morning.
-[man] Good morning.
-[Samin] The artichokes are beautiful.
-[Emanuela] The artichokes.
They make you fall in love, really.
[man 2] You can eat these raw.
[Samin] Peel it first. [in English]
I've never done this before. [laughs]
[in Italian]
It's almost like eating chocolate.
[man 3] The best cheese
in the world is here.
[Samin] Here?
-It's here.
-[Samin] But have you tasted them all?
-I've tasted everything.
-[Samin] Okay.
I came to Tuscany
12 years ago, 13 years ago,
and I really miss
all of the fresh pecorino.
That one.
Because we don't have them in America.
-This one.
-[Samin] Yes. Can I taste some?
-[man 4] Of course!
-[Samin] Thanks!
How many months old is this one?
One month old.
One month?
I'd also like to try one that
has been aged for a really long time.
[in English] Oh, my God. So good.
[in Italian] Thank you, sir. How nice.
Beautiful work.
And this porchetta.
[in English] Do you
want to eat some porchetta for breakfast?
-Yes.
-[both laugh]
[Samin, in Italian] We'll have a sandwich.
How long does it take to cook?
For a pig this size,
it takes about six hours.
[Samin] Six hours?
[man 5] You use garlic, salt, pepper,
uh...
-Fennel, no?
-[man 5] Fennel.
-Sage and rosemary?
-No.
-[Samin] No? Okay.
-[man 5] Only fennel.
[Emanuela] They each have their own flavor
so you don't mix them together.
Tuscan cuisine is Tuscan cuisine.
Okay, let's have a taste.
[in English] When you get the crispy skin
and then the tender center, it's so good.
Traditional Tuscan bread has no salt.
Because the porchetta is very fatty,
very salty.
So they're kind of the perfect match
for each other.
[in Italian] Really, really good.
Look. Nice and...
Nice and fatty, huh? [laughs]
[in English] Food doesn't have
to be complicated to be delicious.
Over the centuries,
Italians have perfected the art
of using fat
to transform the simplest ingredients
into a great meal.
[bird chirping]
[Samin, in English]
I have to tell you the story.
I don't know if you remember
about the first time that we met.
You were visiting Chez Panisse.
You were chopping vegetables.
You were just using your knife
and cutting it up
-into whatever pieces--
-A mountain of--
A mountain of...
A mountain of onions, yes.
And Chez Panisse were very strict
about doing everything the French way.
So it was all about perfectly cutting
everything into little squares.
And you were standing there at the end
of the kitchen, just chopping like this.
I just assumed you were, like, a volunteer
or something.
And only later did I realize
that you were actually
the Saint of Sofrito.
La Santa del Sofrito.
-[laughs]
-This really lies
at the base of Tuscan cooking.
This incredible thing that disappears.
It turns into almost, um...
a paste at the base of the food
that disappears and creates flavor.
But the amazing thing about this ragù
is we are layering
so many different kinds of fat into it.
So we start with the olive oil
in the sofrito,
pork that has fat in it, beef fat...
beef fat...
and the milk.
[laughing, sniffling]
-[Benedetta] You're laughing and crying--
-Laughing and crying.
That's pretty much the story of my life.
[inhales sharply, laughs]
This is one of those important things
that I think home cooks always forget,
is how important it is to preheat the pan.
You have to heat the pan
before you heat the oil.
And you taught me that it takes
a lot of olive oil to make sofrito.
The fat that you choose
sets the dish off on a path.
If you cook the sofrito in butter,
it's not sofrito.
And when you hear the sizzle,
you can add it all.
[sizzling]
We're gonna keep cooking this.
It probably takes almost 45 minutes,
right?
[Benedetta] For the vegetables
and the beef?
-Yes, it takes, like, 45.
-For everything.
[continues sizzling]
[swishing]
[sizzling]
Before I came to you,
my job at Chez Panisse
was to make the pasta every day.
And they taught me this crazy method
that involved
so many different calculations.
It was so complicated,
with all these different kinds of flours
and different measurements of eggs
and egg yolks.
And then when I came to you,
you taught me the simplest way.
It's just flour and eggs
to make handmade pasta, right?
-Yes.
-And the eggs give the richness
the incredible fat.
And you used more eggs
than I had ever seen.
This is why, in Italy,
we call it "pasta all'uovo."
-[Samin] Pasta all'uovo, yes!
-Meaning that it's flour and eggs
and a little, little water in case...
-you need it.
-To help bring it together.
Exactly.
And to give a little bit of flexibility.
This flour here, I learned from you,
is so special.
Here you call it grano tenero
and grano duro.
-Soft flour and hard flour.
-Exactly.
And so, the hard flour
gives it a little bit of extra, um,
-texture, right? Chewiness?
-That's... That's...
What I-- I always explain
to people that comes here:
-in Italy, we love pasta al dente.
-[chortles]
[in Italian] All right.
[in English] Six full eggs plus two yolks.
-For extra richness, for extra fat.
-Yes. Yes.
Start to whisk it with the fork.
Add a little bit more flour.
[in Italian] Softly, softly.
[soft whisking]
-[in English] It's like music.
-[Samin] It is just like music.
[Benedetta] Okay.
[Samin] Everybody thinks
making pasta is so difficult.
-It's not difficult.
-[Benedetta] No, no.
[Samin] It's just about going slowly
and using the senses.
-[in Italian] It's escaping. [laughs]
-No, no, no, no.
-[Benedetta] It's chemistry.
-It is.
Starch and gluten,
they have to get together
with the fat that is the egg yolk.
[Samin] And so...
And it's starting to sort of, um...
resist the touch.
And this resistance to my thumb
is gonna be mirrored when I eat it
to the resistance in my mouth,
the chewiness of the pasta.
Sometimes for a lasagna,
I make it only with a soft flour,
because I want a really silky,
soft noodle.
But this we're gonna eat with ragù,
which is a really dense and meaty sauce.
So we want something to stand up to it.
[birds chirping]
[wood crackling]
[Samin] So, let's see what it's like
after resting.
-[in Italian] Wow. It has changed so much.
-[Benedetta laughs]
[Samin, in English] It's--
The flour has absorbed all of the egg.
It's just much, much more pliable.
So we're gonna use the soft flour
just to help us, uh, keep the pasta
from sticking.
Basically, you want to work it evenly
-in all directions.
-[Benedetta] Yes.
So I'm using my body weight.
It's coming from my legs
and my... haunches,
where I have all my power.
But as this pasta
grows thinner,
the action changes,
and this is one of those incredible things
that I never understood
until I had to do this by hand.
In order to just get the work done
without breaking your body,
a kind of beautiful efficiency
has always had to evolve.
If you are forced to make pasta
for 20 people,
you're not gonna make it
through the day
because you also have to make
ten other courses,
and there's all this work to do.
So, women have really invented
these amazing maneuvers
to preserve energy.
[flour gently rustling]
-[rustling continues]
-[Benedetta] This is a...
There is a sort of noise that you... Huh?
[rustling continues]
[Samin, in Italian]
Wow. What a beautiful job.
[Benedetta] It's almost transparent.
[hums]
[Samin, in English] Flour here.
I like to make wet pasta,
but I don't want it ever to stick,
so I just use obscene amounts of this.
[in Italian] That's it.
-[in English] This way, they don't stick.
-[in Italian] Bravo!
-No!
-Bravo!
[both laugh]
[Samin, in English]
I've just made something quite imperfectly
that there have been people making
for thousands of years.
-[sizzling]
-[instrumental music playing]
[fire crackling]
-Ciao, Samin! How are you?
-Ah, ciao, Lorenzo!
-I-- Wow! [laughs]
-I have something for you.
-[Lorenzo] Eh?
-What is that?
-[Lorenzo screams]
-[Samin laughs]
Ciao. What have you brought?
-The porchetta.
-Poor little piglet.
Oh, it's beautiful!
[in Italian] Okay, show me all the salumi.
-And does this capocollo come from...
-Capocollo.
-...the neck?
-[Lorenzo] Yes.
[Samin] What's the percentage of fat here?
It's a pretty high percentage.
-Around 45%.
-Indeed!
Beautiful.
That's why it's so good. [laughs]
-Is there liver in here, too?
-[Lorenzo] Yes, we put the liver in.
-We have to use everything.
-[Samin] Yes.
-See, it's cooked nicely inside.
-Mm-hmm.
[Lorenzo] This is the part here
that's really full of fat.
The prosciutto side has less fat.
-That's for those who want to diet.
-[laughs]
["Quando Penso Al Tuo Sorriso"
by Daniele Benati playing]
[all cheering and clapping]
[Samin] We have some fried artichokes.
This beautiful sage is from our garden.
-[indistinct chatter]
-[crunches]
-[Samin, in English] Man, they're so good.
-Buonissimo.
[Lorenzo speaking Italian]
[indistinct chatter continues]
[guests clapping]
[Emanuela] And now, a toast.
Thank you, Samin! Cheers to you.
-Grazie!
-[in English] Thank you so much!
[guests] Thank you!
[Samin, in Italian] I'm the one
to thank you guys. Lorenzo--
-[glasses clink]
-[woman] Thanks, Lorenzo.
-Thanks, Patrizia.
-[Samin] Oh, Patrizia...
[accordion music playing]
[Samin Nosrat] Fat.
It's nothing short of a miracle.
Fat is flavor.
Fat is texture.
Fat adds its own unique flavor to a dish.
And it can amplify the other flavors
-in a recipe.
-[fireworks crackle]
Simply put...
fat makes food delicious.
And one of the most important things
any cook can learn
-is how to harness its magic.
-[sizzling]
[waves crashing loudly]
[calming instrumental music playing]
I've spent my entire life
in pursuit of flavor.
[bird calling]
[Samin] Starting
at the legendary Chez Panisse,
I've been cooking, teaching,
and writing about food for 18 years.
You have to taste
what you're about to cook with.
You have to look at it, smell it,
touch it.
I've traveled the world...
[camera shutter clicking]
...tasting everything.
And what I've discovered
is that the secret to good cooking
is hiding in plain sight.
Just four basic elements
can make or break a dish.
[gull cries]
[Samin] Salt.
-Fat.
-[oinks]
[Samin] Acid.
-And heat.
-[sizzling]
Commit to mastering them,
and you can become not only a good cook,
but a great one.
[birds chirping]
["Primavera" by Daniele Benati playing]
[Samin] A few years
after I started cooking, I moved to Italy.
I wanted to learn more about,
and eat, all of my favorite dishes.
Right at the source.
And as I cooked and ate my way
throughout the country,
one thing became clear:
from cheese to salami,
ragù to gelato,
Italians are masters at using fat
to make their food
absolutely, fantastically,
almost impossibly delicious.
[slow piano music playing]
And for me,
the fat that defines the flavor
of Italian food
more than any other is olive oil.
-[harvester whirring]
-[leaves rustling]
[man, in Italian]
This area is called Gaaci,
which means "protected lands."
On one side is the sea,
and on the other are the highest mountains
in Liguria.
This mix of sea, mountains, and woods
gives us flavors that are very delicate,
but also very intense.
[Samin] I'm very interested in the idea
that the fat of a place
is the starting point
for the flavor of its cuisine.
[man 2] You can taste different flavors
-that tell you about the land.
-Yeah.
Each oil in Italy manages to contain,
one by one, its own land's history.
[man] Taggiasca olives are grown
only in this part of Liguria.
Because the terrain is very difficult,
very steep.
There isn't any soil,
and right underneath it, there's rock.
So Taggiasca is only a very small part
of all Italian olive oil.
But, since it's so sweet, so delicate,
it's somewhat considered
like champagne among wines.
[birds chirping]
When you cook,
it's very important to know
what kind of oil you're adding.
Oil should never cover up the flavor
of your dish,
but it should accompany and enhance it.
-[harvester whirring]
-["Santa Lucia" playing]
[Samin] How old are these trees?
-[man 2] About 200 or 250 years old.
-[Samin] Two hundred fifty years? Really?
[man 2] We sew a net
inside the whole olive grove.
Starting our work at the top of the grove,
and then working our way down
and further down,
we're able to keep all the olives
on the nets.
Show her how it's done.
[Samin laughs]
Don't we have any glasses?
How do we know when we're done?
[man 2] When there aren't any more olives
on the tree.
[Samin] It's like going
to the hairdresser.
-[man 2] Exactly.
-[man 2 and Samin laugh]
[Samin] Wow! It's so heavy!
[both laugh]
[leaves rustling]
[man 2] At the end of the day,
-we'll have a truckload of olives.
-[Samin] Wow.
[clattering]
[man 2] This is the mill
where we produce the oil.
The paste is ready,
so they'll unload it now.
[Samin, in English] Extra virgin olive oil
is basically fresh-pressed juice
made without heat or chemicals.
[man 2] A good olive oil
must have three parameters.
It's fruity, spicy, and bitter.
In your mouth, you must feel
at least a bit of spiciness.
-[Samin] Uh-uh.
-[man 2] If it's spicy, it's alive.
It's a flavor that remain in your mouth.
So if you drink and that's all,
it's not a good olive oil.
But if you drink and, after a minute,
you still feel the oily sensation
in the mouth, that's a good olive oil.
[Samin] Oh.
[Samin] It's so good.
The essential flavor of any dish starts
with the fat it's cooked in.
[piano music playing]
Entire cuisines are defined by their fats.
Think of southern cooking.
It relies heavily on bacon fat and lard.
And French cuisine is defined
by the rich taste of butter.
[TV host] If you're gonna make
a great soufflé...
-[gulls calling]
-[Samin] Before I even turn on the stove,
I know that one of the most important
decisions I can make
is to choose the right cooking fat.
-[Samin, in Italian] Good morning!
-[Lidia] Hi! Welcome!
[Samin] Thank you so much!
-[birds chirping]
-[Italian music playing]
[Samin] Nice to meet you.
-[Lidia] It's my pleasure.
-Can I give you a big hug?
-[Lidia] Of course.
-[laughs] Thank you.
Thank you for being here.
This question, this request you've made,
it's really very interesting.
[Samin] What a beautiful place!
[Lidia] We used to live in the country,
then moved here...
-[Samin] It's so beautiful!
-...and haven't left since.
-[Samin] Wow.
-Here we are.
-See, this is my father.
-Ah.
-[Lidia] The one with the straw hat.
-That one?
[Lidia] The others are townspeople
who worked removing rocks
for the train tunnels.
When the work was done,
they made a giant bowl of pasta
for everyone.
Obviously,
they celebrated the end of the work.
[accordion music playing]
[birds chirping]
-[Samin] Hi, Diego!
-[Diego] Hi.
-[Lidia] Diego is our focaccia expert.
-[Samin] Wow!
-[Diego] The breakfast of Ligurians.
-[laughs] Yes, and also of Samin.
With lots of oil.
Believe me,
the secret is it has to be a Ligurian oil.
[Lidia] It has to be Ligurian.
[Diego] Focaccia was born
to suppress the hunger of dockworkers.
If they stopped to have a full lunch,
they wouldn't have enough time
to finish unloading the ships' containers.
So, they'd have some focaccia,
a little white wine,
and then go on working all day.
-Okay. I'll leave you with Diego.
-Right. Thank you.
-Okay. Bye.
-Great.
[Diego] The ingredients are flour, yeast,
malt extract, oil.
[Samin] For me,
the oil here is the sweetest.
-[Diego] Lovable.
-Buttery.
Yes, lovable. Exactly.
It's a question of the olive's acidity.
Even the air, I think. Because...
the air is salty. I don't know.
But the oil in Liguria,
-I think it's really the best in Italy.
-I agree.
-Of course, I'm biased, but...
-[laughs]
We have oil rivalries here,
just like with wine.
[laughs]
[Diego] The dough
should start to feel soft.
[Samin] How do you know
you've worked it long enough?
[Diego] When there are no bumps.
It's completely smooth.
[Samin] Okay.
Now you can add the salt.
-If you're going to flavor it...
-[Samin] Uh-huh?
...at this point,
you can add rosemary, sage...
-[Samin] Olive paste.
-...olive.
If you crumble it up inside,
you can make rosemary focaccia.
But keep that to yourself.
-Don't tell anyone.
-[laughs]
That goes for sage, too.
-Or any other aromatic herb you add.
-That's beautiful. That's beautiful.
-[Diego] You rest it here...
-Uh-uh.
...for 15 minutes,
covered with a dish towel.
Now we transfer the dough
to a baking pan.
And now, the secret to Ligurian focaccia.
You roll out the dough.
The perfume from the oil... Wow!
[Diego] And now, see how smooth it is?
[Samin, in English] Olive oil does
two important things for focaccia:
it lends a rich fruity flavor,
and it creates a tender crumb
and crisp crust.
[in Italian] Wow, how beautiful,
bathed in oil like this.
[Diego] We take the oil...
and spread it out.
-[Samin] Okay.
-Let's start with the brine,
typical of the salty flavor
that goes into the focaccia's holes.
Salt, oil. We mix them.
-[Samin] Wow.
-[grunts softly]
-Which fingers?
-The first fingers: one, two, and three.
[Samin] Okay.
-[Diego] There you go.
-Oh! Oh, oh, oh!
-Don't worry about it.
-I made a mistake.
[Diego] The important thing is to press.
Don't be afraid.
Okay. Now's the time for our brine,
the water and salt we made.
Just pour it over, don't be afraid.
[Samin] When we take it from the oven,
it will be obvious
which ones are my fingers
and which are yours.
[Diego] We wait another 40 minutes.
Otherwise, the holes won't stay
in the focaccia.
-[Samin laughs]
-It develops this color while it cooks.
When we take it out of the oven,
we add more oil.
Oh, more? Okay!
-More oil.
-Always more oil.
[Diego] Pour all over it.
Always a good oil.
Ligurian focaccia is only
two centimeters high, tops.
-Higher, it's not really Ligurian.
-[Samin] Oh!
How light, how beautiful.
-Crunchy on the bottom and soft inside.
-And soft inside.
[Diego] The holes taste like salt.
You can taste it.
[Samin] Mm.
-[laughs] It's truly...
-[chuckles]
Mm.
It's a focaccia that's very easy
to make at home for breakfast.
With a cafe latte, right?
[crunches]
And feel how crunchy the crust is.
Thanks.
-Thank you... with a handful of oil!
-With a handful of oil!
[Samin laughs] Now I'm gonna keep eating
for a bit.
When I understood
that we were coming to Liguria,
I wanted to make pesto right away.
Because it's a beautiful lesson
about fat's importance.
We have cheese.
We have creamy pine nuts.
And we have this beautiful oil
from right here.
All three fats work together
to make this marvelous thing.
[Lidia] We're making pesto
the traditional way, using a mortar.
[Samin] Where do we begin?
The process always starts
with the pine nuts.
Let's start by grinding the pine nuts
on their own
so they come apart more easily.
Otherwise, everything would form a paste
too quickly.
How do you know when it's ready?
When it starts to form a kind of paste.
Not yet. I'll tell you when.
Very good.
Now we add the basil.
A little more,
and we add some coarse salt, a pinch.
I say a pinch of salt
because the cheese's flavors tend to--
[Samin] They're also salty.
At the end, we taste to see
what the flavor is like.
And if it's missing salt, we add a little.
The coarse salt helps
to break apart the leaves.
What a nice, sweet smell.
See how the natural oils are coming out
as we pound it?
So here, it's only a matter of patience.
No one makes it like this anymore.
[Samin] Do your kids make pesto
with the mortar, too?
[Lidia] No, I've never seen them do that.
We'll see, maybe they'll become passionate
about it after this.
Maybe they'll try to compete
with their mother.
Now it's starting to look good.
It's starting to give me satisfaction.
-[squishing]
-What a sound, right?
[Lidia] Mm.
So, let's prepare the cheese.
[Samin] Okay. Equal parts?
[Lidia] No, no, no. Two thirds of Parmesan
and one third of pecorino.
[Samin] Here we are.
-[Lidia] Here's the Parmesan.
-Parmesan and pecorino.
[Lidia] Now let me do this by eye,
without weighing.
I'm not in the habit of weighing anything.
So, we've reached the point for the oil.
You see the sauce starting to look right?
More like how a sauce
for pasta should look.
What a beautiful green color.
In America, we haven't really understood
-that oil is something fresh.
-Yes, fresh.
It has an expiration date.
It's not like wine.
One of my friends received
a bottle of olive oil for her wedding,
but 30 years ago. Thirty years ago.
And today,
she still uses it little by little.
She hasn't learned yet
that it's turned rancid.
She wasted it. It was a real waste.
-It's just gross.
-Now she can use it to turn the lamps on.
Right!
-[Lidia] See how soft it is?
-Beautiful.
[Samin] You can smell
all the different flavors.
The oil is like a medium for all of them.
[Lidia] Tell me how it tastes.
-So good.
-Great. Now...
-It's not missing anything.
-Perfect.
[indistinct dialogue]
[Lidia] We can add a drop of oil.
There.
There. A handful of Parmesan.
Always very good.
[both laugh]
[crunches]
[Samin] Wow! [laughs] Delicious.
[horn honks in distance]
[Samin, in English] Fat can also be
a powerful source of flavor
from within food.
Most of the flavor in meat is in its fat,
which means that a fatty cut of pork
tastes porkier than a lean one.
Italian butchers prefer to use animals
with lots of fat,
and that means one thing: more flavor.
[in Italian] Ah! Hi, piggies!
-We've brought them some candy.
-Oh!
-Let's give them some acorns.
-[Samin laughs]
[Samin] Me too, me too!
[Lorenzo] They really like these.
[Samin] It's like... a dessert.
-[Lorenzo] Yes, yes, yes, yes!
-[pigs munching]
[Lorenzo] Beautiful, shiny.
You see how they reflect the light?
-You can tell that these are healthy pigs.
-[pig oinks]
-[Lorenzo] You can't smell anything.
-Nothing. Yeah.
[Samin] They seem pretty happy, no?
Yes, they're in paradise!
The Cinta Senese is a breed
of domesticated pig.
It has a very slow metabolism,
especially compared to more modern breeds.
If they don't get exercise,
they get really fat.
And they don't reproduce as much
as the others.
In the '70s,
new breeds started coming over
from northern Europe and America.
They were all very skinny,
so they had more piglets.
[in English] And by the '80s,
there were only a few left.
In 1983, since I was 20 years old,
I started to do...
-To bring back this breed. Yes.
-Yes, yes.
[Lorenzo, in Italian]
A lot of sommeliers hang around here,
-people who look for the scent in things.
-Mm-hmm.
In our ham, they've smelled egg yolk,
they've smelled chocolate,
they've smelled walnuts,
they've smelled acorns, too.
How does that scent get there?
I don't know! Maybe it sets in the fat.
[pigs oinking]
[Lorenzo] In ancient times,
all these woods belonged to my family.
But it seems that one of my ancestors
spent all the family money on women.
-[Samin laughs]
-[chuckles]
I don't know if that's a good
or bad thing...
[both laugh]
-[Samin] Okay.
-But it's what happened.
[Samin, in English] For centuries,
it was common for rural Italian families
to raise two or three pigs each year.
Expert traveling butchers called norcini
would wander from town to town,
slaughtering the pigs and turning them
into salumi.
They were so skillful
that they were considered mystics.
[Lorenzo, in Italian] It's stiff.
[Samin, in English] Lorenzo is
the descendant of a long line of norcini.
[Lorenzo, in Italian]
We put only the head on a basin.
-Just like with people--
-[Samin, in English] A lot of meat.
Maybe almost 400 pounds?
-The prosciutto comes from the ham.
-Yes.
And then, what's this? This beautiful fat
that is on the back--
[Lorenzo] This is the noble part
of the fat.
-The noble part?
-[Lorenzo] Yes.
The noble fat. I love that.
In English, we have this saying,
"high on the hog."
So when you are wealthy
or you just got a big paycheck,
it's the same, the idea of the noble fat,
or the noble cuts of the highest parts
of the pig. Literally.
So, these parts here
are food for the rich people.
-What's this?
-The shoulder, the pancetta--
The pancetta, or the bacon.
The tenderloin here,
it's under all this fat.
[Lorenzo] So, we start from the head.
[thuds loudly]
I'm already thinking
about the salami that will come later.
[Samin] So, this is the shoulder,
and this is the beautiful fat.
Now he's gonna break the middle part.
So this is all those tender cuts.
The belly,
which here they turn into pancetta
and we can turn into bacon.
Okay. Let's go. [in Italian] Stay away.
[both speak indistinctly]
So we have the two ends,
the parts that have worked really hard:
the front end and the back end.
And then, the beautiful middle,
the high-on-the-hog part.
This is all the steaks
and the tender cuts.
[Lorenzo, in Italian] Uh, what we have now
is a diamond in the rough.
We have to decide what kind of diamond
this should be.
[Samin] I'll translate
all of your poetry...
-while you work.
-Okay. But I have more poems.
Poetry helps here
because we're constantly surrounded
by the noise
of breaking joints.
-Eh?
-[clacks]
[Samin chuckles]
[in English]
That's what I was told to you.
[Samin] So, now we're gonna decide
do we want to turn this
into a beautiful piece of lardo
or do we leave that fat on this meat
and make it something
that we're gonna cook and eat for dinner?
This is a particularly fatty pig,
and it would be a shame
to not turn that into lardo
that we can use for many months,
so he made the decision
to go ahead and save this.
[thuds]
-[Lorenzo] It's a... a good kind of meat.
-Yeah.
Simply well-treated and well-breeded.
It's a happy animal.
-Not so happy now, but, uh... it was.
-[chuckles] Was. Yeah.
[accordion music playing]
[Samin] Twenty minutes have passed,
and that big animal
has become these big parts.
And all of these different kinds of fat
are gonna become different things.
So really, out of this whole animal,
there's no waste.
Everything has a use,
and it's really quite beautiful,
when you know what you're doing,
that there's a rule for everything.
So this, this,
and this become soppressata.
This is the guancia, the cheek.
And this becomes guanciale.
-[Lorenzo] For making spaghetti.
-Spaghetti carbonara.
Then we have the beautiful the spalla,
the beautiful shoulder.
And then, here's
the beautiful prized prosciut.
Again, with this incredible amount of fat.
[Samin] Okay.
-[in Italian] A little more, please.
-More?
[laughs] Thank you.
[in English]
So, this beautiful, perfect piece of fat.
I'm sorry, Grandma.
It's like butter. It's so sweet.
Together, fat, salt, and time transform
this exceptional meat into prosciutto,
salami, and all of the other cured meats
that are a hallmark of Italian cuisine.
-[Samin, in Italian] What is that?
-[Lorenzo] This is a finocchiona.
[in English] And this specifically
is called sbriciolona,
-Sbriciolona.
-A big sausage that breaks apart.
[Lorenzo, in Italian and English]
"Sbriciolarsi" means "to crumble."
[in English]
This is a soppressata, made with the head.
Super salty, super chewy.
Very flavorful.
These are the things
it would never occur to you to eat
if you were just looking
at that pig's head.
[chewing] There's fat, there's meat.
I don't even know what that is.
Maybe it was a jowl,
but when they've cooked,
it's a very soft texture.
Salami is made with cut-up meat.
The meat has to be ground up and flavored.
The prosciutto,
these are the most precious in a way,
because they take the most time
and they're made out of whole cuts.
[in Italian] Cheers.
[in English]
These cured meats are the basis
for all sorts of amazing dishes.
But fat can be just as powerful
when used as a seasoning.
Added just before serving to enrich
the flavor or texture of a dish.
A few drops of toasted sesame oil
can transform a plain bowl of rice.
A dollop of sour cream will lend
silky richness to a baked potato.
But there's one ingredient I use more
than any other
to turn an ordinary dish
into something extraordinary...
-[triumphant orchestra music playing]
-[cows moo]
[Samin] Red cow Parmesan.
-[Samin sniffs, in Italian] Cow smell.
-[woman] Yeah.
[Samin, in English] So who are these?
Who do we have here?
[woman] So, here we have the red cows.
-[Samin] The vacche rosse.
-Vacche rosse.
[Samin] Can you tell me
about the history of these cows?
[woman] Yeah.
This is a very ancient breed,
uh, coming from the north of Europe
-with the Barbaric invasions in 1200.
-Wow.
-So, a thousand years ago.
-Yes.
[Samin] Is the milk they produce special?
[woman] Yes, it's very special.
[Samin] The milk from red cows
is sweeter and far richer in fat
than the milk from other cows.
That's what makes this
the queen of Parmesans.
Che bello. Wow.
So now, what he's doing
is breaking up the curds and the whey.
The curds are these solid bits,
and the whey is the liquid.
[in Italian] You have to break
the milk apart delicately and uniformly.
That means there, there, there,
there, there.
Slow and steady.
Because the milk must be respected.
[Samin, in English]
Just like Lorenzo's prosciutto,
the recipe for this cheese is simple.
It involves little more than salt, time,
and, of course, fat.
[man, in Italian]
Now it settles on the bottom.
The paddle shapes the cheese
and detaches it from the wall.
-[Samin] Can I pull it? Okay.
-Yes.
[laughs]
Okay.
[in English] I'm trying to peel
the cheese off the bottom of the pot.
Okay. Good.
[Samin speaking Italian]
[Samin] Wow!
Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.
-[in Italian] It's like a ballet.
-[man mutters]
[Samin] Ah!
-[man] Now we tie it.
-[Samin] Uh-uh.
[Samin] So now we wait more.
[man] With its weight, attached here,
it loses all its humidity.
It's still soft.
-[man] Okay.
-[Samin] So these are the twins.
You gotta check it.
[in English] Oh. Okay,
now he's double-checking
-to make sure we're doing it really--
-[in Italian] This one is bigger.
[stammers] Okay. This is bigger.
-Yeah.
-How can you tell?
-With my eyes!
-[laughs]
[Samin, in English] So this
is a thousand liters of milk.
Becomes two wheels of cheese.
And each one is 500 liters.
-[woman] The salatura, our salting room.
-[Samin] Perfect!
[woman, in Italian] Lights!
[Samin, in English] Wow! Whoa!
[woman] Newborn wheels stay here
about 22 days
so that they can absorb better the salt.
[man, in Italian] It's a great sign
when we see in the cheeses,
which are in these traditional
salt baths...
You can tell by the form, which is low.
-That's a good sign.
-Oh. And why is that?
If the form is floating and tends to rise,
it means there are air pockets inside.
So this one is the driest, let's say.
[Samin] How many months old?
[woman] Twenty-four months.
[soft thudding]
[man] Hear that?
Now this form is very fresh.
-[woman, in English] This is very fresh.
-A fresh one.
-This has--
-[man, in Italian] Hear the difference?
-[in English] Yeah.
-[thudding]
[man, in Italian] I do this test
occasionally as the form is aging
-to make sure it's aging in the right way.
-[in English] Yes.
He makes this test sometimes.
-[speaking Italian] Uh-huh.
-And the official test is at 12 months.
[in Italian] You must hear this sound
in your dreams. [laughs]
[woman, in English] When you dream.
[Samin] Yeah. [continues laughing]
[Samin] Okay, so you've brought me
everything for tasting.
So, we have the two years,
-24 months, at least.
-Yeah. Mm-hmm.
-Thirty months.
-Yeah.
-Forty months.
-Yes.
Okay, can you tell me a little bit
about how to taste?
-[woman] Mm-hmm.
-What am I tasting for?
You have to start from the youngest age.
-So you have to begin with 24.
-[Samin] Okay.
[woman] When you taste the first aging,
you taste the milk.
[Samin] Okay.
-It's sweet. [in Italian] It's sweet.
-[in English] Yes.
-It's rich in flavor.
-[woman] Yeah.
It's so good. It's so good.
-I... It's bringing tears to my eyes.
-[woman] Thank you.
It's-- It's so good.
I don't know how it could get better,
but let's try. [laughs]
[woman] And this wheel is
-about 36 months.
-[Samin] Wow.
You are starting to feel in your mouth
the crystals of tyrosine.
Yes, the tyrosine,
-which is an amino acid.
-Yes.
You can hear it crunching.
You crunch on it.
And so, the 40 month,
it's like a fireworks parade
of all these tyrosine crystals.
This is dessert.
This is what you eat for dessert.
-This is a candy of Parmesan.
-[woman] Yeah.
-[Samin, in Italian] Pure flavor.
-Right.
-[in English] It's still sweet.
-It's so sweet.
It just hits every taste bud
in your mouth.
-[woman] Yeah.
-It hits salty, sweet...
There's a little bit of bitter,
but a nice bitterness.
There's umami, which is the crystals,
the beautiful flavor.
-I think I'm just gonna live here now.
-[both chuckle]
Just eat cheese and butter...
-for... until I die.
-Yeah.
-And ricotta.
-[woman chuckles]
[Samin] Fat determines flavor.
But it also creates
five distinct textures:
creamy, flaky, crisp, tender, and light.
Combining a variety of textures
in one dish
can make a meal much more delightful...
and surprising.
[no audible dialogue]
-[relaxed instrumental music playing]
-[bell tolls]
[indistinct chatter]
-[Samin, in Italian] Hi, good morning.
-[man] Good morning.
-[Samin] The artichokes are beautiful.
-[Emanuela] The artichokes.
They make you fall in love, really.
[man 2] You can eat these raw.
[Samin] Peel it first. [in English]
I've never done this before. [laughs]
[in Italian]
It's almost like eating chocolate.
[man 3] The best cheese
in the world is here.
[Samin] Here?
-It's here.
-[Samin] But have you tasted them all?
-I've tasted everything.
-[Samin] Okay.
I came to Tuscany
12 years ago, 13 years ago,
and I really miss
all of the fresh pecorino.
That one.
Because we don't have them in America.
-This one.
-[Samin] Yes. Can I taste some?
-[man 4] Of course!
-[Samin] Thanks!
How many months old is this one?
One month old.
One month?
I'd also like to try one that
has been aged for a really long time.
[in English] Oh, my God. So good.
[in Italian] Thank you, sir. How nice.
Beautiful work.
And this porchetta.
[in English] Do you
want to eat some porchetta for breakfast?
-Yes.
-[both laugh]
[Samin, in Italian] We'll have a sandwich.
How long does it take to cook?
For a pig this size,
it takes about six hours.
[Samin] Six hours?
[man 5] You use garlic, salt, pepper,
uh...
-Fennel, no?
-[man 5] Fennel.
-Sage and rosemary?
-No.
-[Samin] No? Okay.
-[man 5] Only fennel.
[Emanuela] They each have their own flavor
so you don't mix them together.
Tuscan cuisine is Tuscan cuisine.
Okay, let's have a taste.
[in English] When you get the crispy skin
and then the tender center, it's so good.
Traditional Tuscan bread has no salt.
Because the porchetta is very fatty,
very salty.
So they're kind of the perfect match
for each other.
[in Italian] Really, really good.
Look. Nice and...
Nice and fatty, huh? [laughs]
[in English] Food doesn't have
to be complicated to be delicious.
Over the centuries,
Italians have perfected the art
of using fat
to transform the simplest ingredients
into a great meal.
[bird chirping]
[Samin, in English]
I have to tell you the story.
I don't know if you remember
about the first time that we met.
You were visiting Chez Panisse.
You were chopping vegetables.
You were just using your knife
and cutting it up
-into whatever pieces--
-A mountain of--
A mountain of...
A mountain of onions, yes.
And Chez Panisse were very strict
about doing everything the French way.
So it was all about perfectly cutting
everything into little squares.
And you were standing there at the end
of the kitchen, just chopping like this.
I just assumed you were, like, a volunteer
or something.
And only later did I realize
that you were actually
the Saint of Sofrito.
La Santa del Sofrito.
-[laughs]
-This really lies
at the base of Tuscan cooking.
This incredible thing that disappears.
It turns into almost, um...
a paste at the base of the food
that disappears and creates flavor.
But the amazing thing about this ragù
is we are layering
so many different kinds of fat into it.
So we start with the olive oil
in the sofrito,
pork that has fat in it, beef fat...
beef fat...
and the milk.
[laughing, sniffling]
-[Benedetta] You're laughing and crying--
-Laughing and crying.
That's pretty much the story of my life.
[inhales sharply, laughs]
This is one of those important things
that I think home cooks always forget,
is how important it is to preheat the pan.
You have to heat the pan
before you heat the oil.
And you taught me that it takes
a lot of olive oil to make sofrito.
The fat that you choose
sets the dish off on a path.
If you cook the sofrito in butter,
it's not sofrito.
And when you hear the sizzle,
you can add it all.
[sizzling]
We're gonna keep cooking this.
It probably takes almost 45 minutes,
right?
[Benedetta] For the vegetables
and the beef?
-Yes, it takes, like, 45.
-For everything.
[continues sizzling]
[swishing]
[sizzling]
Before I came to you,
my job at Chez Panisse
was to make the pasta every day.
And they taught me this crazy method
that involved
so many different calculations.
It was so complicated,
with all these different kinds of flours
and different measurements of eggs
and egg yolks.
And then when I came to you,
you taught me the simplest way.
It's just flour and eggs
to make handmade pasta, right?
-Yes.
-And the eggs give the richness
the incredible fat.
And you used more eggs
than I had ever seen.
This is why, in Italy,
we call it "pasta all'uovo."
-[Samin] Pasta all'uovo, yes!
-Meaning that it's flour and eggs
and a little, little water in case...
-you need it.
-To help bring it together.
Exactly.
And to give a little bit of flexibility.
This flour here, I learned from you,
is so special.
Here you call it grano tenero
and grano duro.
-Soft flour and hard flour.
-Exactly.
And so, the hard flour
gives it a little bit of extra, um,
-texture, right? Chewiness?
-That's... That's...
What I-- I always explain
to people that comes here:
-in Italy, we love pasta al dente.
-[chortles]
[in Italian] All right.
[in English] Six full eggs plus two yolks.
-For extra richness, for extra fat.
-Yes. Yes.
Start to whisk it with the fork.
Add a little bit more flour.
[in Italian] Softly, softly.
[soft whisking]
-[in English] It's like music.
-[Samin] It is just like music.
[Benedetta] Okay.
[Samin] Everybody thinks
making pasta is so difficult.
-It's not difficult.
-[Benedetta] No, no.
[Samin] It's just about going slowly
and using the senses.
-[in Italian] It's escaping. [laughs]
-No, no, no, no.
-[Benedetta] It's chemistry.
-It is.
Starch and gluten,
they have to get together
with the fat that is the egg yolk.
[Samin] And so...
And it's starting to sort of, um...
resist the touch.
And this resistance to my thumb
is gonna be mirrored when I eat it
to the resistance in my mouth,
the chewiness of the pasta.
Sometimes for a lasagna,
I make it only with a soft flour,
because I want a really silky,
soft noodle.
But this we're gonna eat with ragù,
which is a really dense and meaty sauce.
So we want something to stand up to it.
[birds chirping]
[wood crackling]
[Samin] So, let's see what it's like
after resting.
-[in Italian] Wow. It has changed so much.
-[Benedetta laughs]
[Samin, in English] It's--
The flour has absorbed all of the egg.
It's just much, much more pliable.
So we're gonna use the soft flour
just to help us, uh, keep the pasta
from sticking.
Basically, you want to work it evenly
-in all directions.
-[Benedetta] Yes.
So I'm using my body weight.
It's coming from my legs
and my... haunches,
where I have all my power.
But as this pasta
grows thinner,
the action changes,
and this is one of those incredible things
that I never understood
until I had to do this by hand.
In order to just get the work done
without breaking your body,
a kind of beautiful efficiency
has always had to evolve.
If you are forced to make pasta
for 20 people,
you're not gonna make it
through the day
because you also have to make
ten other courses,
and there's all this work to do.
So, women have really invented
these amazing maneuvers
to preserve energy.
[flour gently rustling]
-[rustling continues]
-[Benedetta] This is a...
There is a sort of noise that you... Huh?
[rustling continues]
[Samin, in Italian]
Wow. What a beautiful job.
[Benedetta] It's almost transparent.
[hums]
[Samin, in English] Flour here.
I like to make wet pasta,
but I don't want it ever to stick,
so I just use obscene amounts of this.
[in Italian] That's it.
-[in English] This way, they don't stick.
-[in Italian] Bravo!
-No!
-Bravo!
[both laugh]
[Samin, in English]
I've just made something quite imperfectly
that there have been people making
for thousands of years.
-[sizzling]
-[instrumental music playing]
[fire crackling]
-Ciao, Samin! How are you?
-Ah, ciao, Lorenzo!
-I-- Wow! [laughs]
-I have something for you.
-[Lorenzo] Eh?
-What is that?
-[Lorenzo screams]
-[Samin laughs]
Ciao. What have you brought?
-The porchetta.
-Poor little piglet.
Oh, it's beautiful!
[in Italian] Okay, show me all the salumi.
-And does this capocollo come from...
-Capocollo.
-...the neck?
-[Lorenzo] Yes.
[Samin] What's the percentage of fat here?
It's a pretty high percentage.
-Around 45%.
-Indeed!
Beautiful.
That's why it's so good. [laughs]
-Is there liver in here, too?
-[Lorenzo] Yes, we put the liver in.
-We have to use everything.
-[Samin] Yes.
-See, it's cooked nicely inside.
-Mm-hmm.
[Lorenzo] This is the part here
that's really full of fat.
The prosciutto side has less fat.
-That's for those who want to diet.
-[laughs]
["Quando Penso Al Tuo Sorriso"
by Daniele Benati playing]
[all cheering and clapping]
[Samin] We have some fried artichokes.
This beautiful sage is from our garden.
-[indistinct chatter]
-[crunches]
-[Samin, in English] Man, they're so good.
-Buonissimo.
[Lorenzo speaking Italian]
[indistinct chatter continues]
[guests clapping]
[Emanuela] And now, a toast.
Thank you, Samin! Cheers to you.
-Grazie!
-[in English] Thank you so much!
[guests] Thank you!
[Samin, in Italian] I'm the one
to thank you guys. Lorenzo--
-[glasses clink]
-[woman] Thanks, Lorenzo.
-Thanks, Patrizia.
-[Samin] Oh, Patrizia...
[accordion music playing]