Around the Kitchen Table - How to make Ravioli with Shrimp Scampi

Hi, I'm Chef Dennis Littley, and welcome to Around the Kitchen Table with myself and Susan Sarah. And today we're going to be making ravioli with shrimp scampi for you. But before we do that, we're going to just chit-chat a little bit, and I'm going to turn this over to Susan, and we'll see how things are going today. So how you doing, Susan?

I'm great, I'm doing great. It's Monday, the beginning of a new week. You know, I'm okay with Mondays. I'm really okay with Mondays. I Didn't used to be, but, you know, working from home every day— well, I wouldn't say every day is a Monday, but— well, actually, that's true. Every day is a Monday. But it's good, and good to see you, Chef. And I'm Susan Sarah, President of Susan Sarah Associates, which is a kitchen design firm, and happy to be here with everyone. We have a great show for you today. And so, you know, Chef, I woke up this morning and There was a snowstorm at my window.

You gotta be kidding me.

No, no, we got about an inch of snow this morning. I couldn't believe it. And it was, it was a thick snow, and then it went to the tiniest flakes. I couldn't believe it. So I don't know.

Winter is never ending.

Yeah.

Well, you know, not to put light of it, but we did have a cold front. The weather reported this morning we had a cold front in Orlando. It dropped down to 67.

Yeah, I really love your humor. I really appreciate that.

That is how the news people refer to it and it cracks us up every time they tell us we're having a cold front. It's always in the 60s. It's ridiculous.

I bet. Well, I'm lucky because next week I'll be in the 70s. I'll be in the low 70s because I'll be in Milan. I'll be in Milan, Italy and, you know, just enjoying that. So, I mean, I need a little break. What did you do this weekend, Chef?

Not a whole lot. We went out and picked oranges on Sunday, but Saturday I was kind of a little tired, so I slept most of the day. I hate to say I haven't done that in a long time. But Sunday we got out, and Saturday it poured in biblical proportions. I love Florida, but when it rains here, I feel like I need to go out and start building an ark. It's that kind of rain.

You know, it's funny. I'm captivated by rain. I love rain. I always feel like if it's If it's going to rain, then rain. You know, none of this little misty stuff, you know, so I don't mind rain. I mean, actually we had rain for 2 days straight, I think Friday and Saturday, so that was good enough, but I think you have killer rain.

Yeah, it's kind of new to us, and every time we think it can't rain any harder, we've been surprised, so I'm hoping that pretty soon, you know, the winds— I'm almost thinking like a typhoon is coming through at some point, but we get some serious rain. You know, if animals start lining up 2 by 2 outside the house, I'll take that as a sign.

I believe it, I believe it. So did you eat anything great this weekend? I know it was a slow weekend for you.

Yeah, no, not a whole lot. We went out, or I went out Friday night and I met up with Tina Willis who's in Orlando.

Oh yes, nice.

Also a Pluser, and Greg Capernaum, I mean Greg Trulio and Carolyn Capernaum were there. I got them mixed up for a minute. I see them always together so I think of them as one. Also we met up with Jason Weiser came over and Mark Ensign came over, so we had a pretty good hurl there going on.

Oh, good, good.

That was fun.

That's good. Yeah, I didn't do much cooking this weekend. In fact, I would say it was the weekend of takeout, and it was, let's see, it was Mexican takeout, it was sushi, it was Italian, and I think that was it. We're really lucky we have a lot of great takeout places in my town, which is truthfully, it's the reason that we moved here. We lived two towns over for about 20-something years, and then when we want to downsize the house, I said, there's no question, I want to move here because of the restaurant scene. So we take it out, they all know us.

Well, that's a good reason. I mean, things aren't bad here. We have a lot of different restaurants. The one thing we suffer for is pizza. Which I'm probably just going to end up making myself from now on, and bread. That'll go hand in hand. I have a pizza stone for my grill, so I'll probably be trying out some baking techniques out there as well. I don't want to be having the oven on when it's like, you know, over the temperature of the sun here in the summer, which is the one good thing about it. The winters have been nice and mild, but the summer is going to— I found out last year when I was here one time that Advil melted.

Oh geez, wow.

I had it in my car and I went to take the liquid gels and they had formed into like a block. So it's a kind of a different kind of heat.

Yeah, yeah, wow, that's something. So we have a great dish today.

Yep, very easy. It was one of my specials when I worked at the restaurant and it was shrimp, shrimp scampi, which I love. And I would go from serving it over pasta most of the time and it would be a larger portion. But you know, when you're in a restaurant, you try to make things, change them up a little bit, and you also try to make things more, not inexpensive, but priced at a price point where people think they're getting something special. You know, it is a special, and they're not paying quite as much as some of the other dishes. So serving it over ravioli kind of kicked it up a notch and made it a little different and made it special. It was really pretty, allowed me to use less shrimp than I would if it was a straight scampi because the ravioli were a little bit bulkier than just plain spaghetti. This is a dish you can make at home and pretty much you can make it in the time it takes you to boil the water for the pasta.

Wow, that's terrific. You know, Chef, as you're speaking, it's so interesting the commonalities I'm finding as we're talking more and more because in my business You know, people can't always afford the high-end kitchen. Of course, they have a different— there are different budget levels. But you know what? I've always enjoyed being creative on a budget. So you can be creative on a budget. You could do amazing things on a budget. And I see— I really get that from you, that you're essentially saying the same thing.

Absolutely. And I'm going to have to leave you for a minute. I forgot to bring my dog in. She's on the porch. And of course, because I'm talking she knows I'm busy, she wants some attention.

Go, go, go.

If you can give me a minute, I'll be right back.

Yes, sure. Oh boy, so I guess that's live, that's live Google+ and we can just kind of gaze at the ingredients here and there's not that many of them, so it looks to me like it should be, you know, pretty quick, pretty quick and easy. And if you're like me, I mean, shrimp, you know, you can do so much with shrimp.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I'm back. Okay. I'm back. I should have brought her in before it started, and she let me know that she wanted to come in, and she won't come in on her own.

I think she wants to be part of it.

Well, you know, she's a little over 12, and she's probably the most headstrong dog I've ever had the pleasure of having in our household. And she's sweet as can be, but she wants her way. She kind of rules the roost. And she's standing at the door now like she wants to go back out there. And as soon as I put her out, she'll start barking again.

Yeah. Yeah, well, I have a cat. And we all know that cats own their owners. So I know about headstrong. I just kind of follow, do what she wants.

Yeah, now she's going in a room she never goes in just to see if I'll follow her. She knows. She knows what's going on. Alright, but let's get to this. One thing I want to talk about shrimp, and you know, people think, you know, it is too expensive for them to use. It's just be careful about where you buy your shrimp. A lot of times we see them at supermarkets and you don't know how long they've been defrosted, how long they've been sitting out. All shrimp you're just about going to get always are frozen. You know, finding fresh shrimp unless you're down in the Gulf is not something you're gonna do because the shrimp are caught on boats, they're processed on the boats, and they're frozen on the boats. Lots of times, and everything we get in the restaurant is always frozen and it's defrosted. Same thing in the supermarket, they're coming in frozen and they're defrosting them. But the one thing you want to think about when you're getting shrimp is to make sure that they're wild-caught. Gulf shrimp, Pacific shrimp, you know, those are what you're looking for. A lot of times you look for domestic, you know, that doesn't mean that they're farmed. What it means is they're coming from the Gulf waters. You know, Mexican shrimp are always a great choice if you can find them. They do a do a really good job with their shrimp. Either coming from the Pacific side or the Gulf side, they're good to go. You want to be careful about buying farm shrimp and where they're coming from. They've come a long way with farm shrimp, but still, the waters are not as trustworthy as you might think they are if they're coming from Asian waters or off the Indian waters. You just don't know. I would always urge you to look for domestic shrimp.

Hey, Chef. Quick thing. When I was You're down in New Orleans. I'm up here on Long Island, and certainly, you know, we eat at very nice restaurants, and I mean, for me, if the shrimp is tender, you know, that's a bonus. But when I went to New Orleans last year, I couldn't believe— I just couldn't believe the dramatic difference in taste of the shrimp. I couldn't believe it. And you can't get— I can't get that up where I am?

Well, sure you can. I'll tell you where I buy my shrimp. I buy my shrimp at either Sam's Club, Costco, or BJ's.

Really?

And I get them in 2-pound bags. They're IQF frozen, and they're domestic wild-caught. I mean, I think places like Trader Joe's might have them as well, and you might be able to find them in other supermarkets. I know Wegmans used to carry them, but they were always less expensive at one of the big box stores and more reliable. Depending upon what they had, I was at their mercy. Sometimes there were U15s, which are really big. Most of the time there were 16/20s, and you know, they were— that's where I bought lobster most of the time too, or scallops, because, you know, I knew they were reliable and they were not— I didn't have to worry about the waters they came out of. It'll say domestic on it, so that's a good place to get them. You know, you get a 2-pound bag, it's gonna cost you It'll set you back $25, which if you go out to dinner and you get something with shrimp in it, you know, it's gonna cost you pretty close to that.

Yeah.

So, you know, with one bag of shrimp, you've got enough shrimp to make probably half a dozen dinners, you know, 4 to 6 dinners easy, depending on what you're using them with.

Yeah. Do you think the restaurants up here will have fresh? Off the boat shrimp? I mean, you mentioned that they're frozen on the boat, which I never realized. Oh, they won't?

No, you don't get fresh. No matter where you see them, I mean, if you're going to get fresh, you're going to get prawns from the Gulf waters, and they'll come with the heads on and everything intact. For the most part, I mean, I've been in this business a long time. You can special order them, yeah, you can, but they're going to cost you, and they're going to be flying them into you. You can get anything that you want fresh. There's good shrimp shrimp in other parts of the world too. I'm not saying there aren't. I'm just saying availability of what we usually see in this country, you know, if they're not domestic, for the most part they're coming from, you know, the Asian areas of water because, you know, that's where they learned to first start farming them. And they were freshwater shrimp. They used to call them tigers because they had a black stripe and they were kind of orangish. A little bit just from the shell, but they were always tougher. So, you know, it's again, they're not bad shrimp, it's just if I have my choice, I want domestic shrimp. You know, it's just I know I can trust them a little bit more, and they're more flavorful. You know, they really are.

Yeah.

And a lot of it comes down to cooking them and how you cook them. You know, you talked about them being tender. Well, shrimp are the easiest thing you can do to overcook, so you just have to be careful.

Yes. Yes, yeah.

Well, let's get on to making this. I'm going to fire up my induction burner. We talked about this last week, and it's a really nice thing to have. Pick it up on Amazon for about $80, and you know, it's great to have an extra burner to cook where you want to cook. Right now I don't have to use my stove. I do have water back there for the ravioli, but I mean, for cooking the shrimp here, I can put it here, I can take it with me. It's not heavy. I can throw it in a bag, and if I want to go to someone's house and set something up to dazzle them with my culinary expertise, I can do that pretty easy. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to get a real hot pan, and while that pan is getting hot, I'm going to chop up some garlic. I have 2 pieces of garlic here, and you can flatten them out if you want to first.

Hey, Chef, I have another little question about shrimp. You know, the deveining the shrimp, I mean, it's a pain. And you know, there's kind of a gross factor to not doing it. But I mean, does it really matter? Will you taste? You know, it's this little tiny black thing. What do you— you know, can you just— is it aesthetics or is it taste or is it the gross factor that you have to devein it?

I think a lot of it might be the gross factor. You're eating an intestinal tract there, whatever it is. If it doesn't bother you, go for it. Pretty much if I do a big batch of shrimp cocktail, I may not clean them all. It depends what they are. If you're doing upeels, you almost never clean them, so you don't worry about it. I think just aesthetics for this size shrimp, the last thing you want is to have it sautéed and have it cooked nice and pink and look pretty and then have a little line of black gook running down the side of it.

I know, I know. Okay, got it.

Just like this bit here. You don't want it showing up, so it's always a good idea to rinse them, to devein them and rinse them a little bit. But as for getting you sick or anything, I won't say it will, I won't say it won't. Yeah. I'm going to let the pan get hot, and like I said, this is really a dish it's going to cook up about as fast as it will to put your pasta to cook. So if your pasta takes 10 or 11 minutes to cook and you want it al dente, by the time you start sautéing this, it's going to be done with the pasta.

Wow. So you have to watch, you have to watch that garlic too. Garlic is always tricky when you're sautéing it.

Yeah, you don't want it to burn.

Yeah.

So I want this pan hot. I'm going to hit it with a little oil, and it might be a little too hot actually, so I'm just going to turn it down.

Some.

Hit the garlic. Get a little smell. As soon as I get a little smell from it— now this is just for one because we're not going to eat this early, so I'll make more later for Lisa.

Mm-hmm.

And so you have one clove of garlic, right?

Yeah, and I saved another one for later. I cut them up. You can cut up a couple at a time.

Yes, I was wondering.

And then put a little oil in them and store it. It's gonna last a while. You can do them in the food processor if you want to clean up a bunch of them.

Yeah.

I've also gotten to buy— there's a product out there called Garden— I'm trying to remember the name of them now, but they sell tubes of chopped garlic, and they're really pretty good.

Oh, I haven't— I don't think I've seen that. Maybe I have. I mean, I have a few different food processors, sizes of food processors. I love those little mini ones, and you know, they're so versatile, and you put in garlic, parsley, whatever. So I really, I like using those.

All right, so one thing I'm going to tell you about this is, now, if I was making it and I wasn't describing it, I might leave everything in here, but I don't want these shrimp to get tough.

Right.

So I'm going to pull them out. All right.

Okay.

And I'm just going to set them aside. They're almost done. They're not quite done. They're almost done. Now I'm going to put in my mushrooms. And I'm going to put in— I have some half grape tomatoes. And you know, you can leave them out. I put them in for color. It's going to add a little bit of flavor to it, but mostly It's really just for color.

So, Chef, this is a dish that you created— you created yourself, because it's interesting. I don't think I usually see mushrooms paired with shrimp. I don't know if that's so common. So that's interesting.

Well, one of the restaurants I worked at for a long time, you know, it's funny, I'm doing a show for the Mushroom Council this Wednesday, and one of the things that I love about mushrooms is their versatility. Versatility, how they really don't add a lot of flavor to a dish, but they take on the different flavors from different dishes. They're adaptable and they're a filler. It adds so much to it that, you know, it's going to make the dish look bigger. So, I mean, if I didn't have the mushrooms in it, it wouldn't have the same appearance of looking quite as large. So by putting, you know, as much food in it The mushrooms help build the dish.

So it's sort of body, it's sort of adding body to it?

Sure.

Okay.

Alright, so this is pretty much going to be done. I'm going to put some chicken stock in. You can use vegetable stock if you like, but this isn't something that's really going to be offensive. You're not really going to taste chicken in it as long as it's not really, really heavy stock, but most of them aren't. So, I mean, the chicken stock actually adds a nice little bite to the dish where it's not as soft if you were using a seafood stock. I mean, I used to have shrimp stocks and lobster stocks, but I liked just the way this tasted. And I'm going to put a little cracked black pepper in.

Okay.

I'm going to add some grated Romano cheese.

Okay, now I have a question about that.

Yeah, I know.

I mean, is that going to get— is that going to get gooey?

No, no, as long as I control it, it's not going to get gooey. Okay, I'm actually going to turn this off. Just let this reduce a little. Now remember when I dug into the butter last week? Oh yeah, well, I'm going back into the butter again.

I'm going into—

oh wow, okay, to make a little beurre meunier.

Wow, okay, but listen, I have a big issue with that. My question is, what about lumps, Chef? Are you— I mean, this flour, you're just—

you're not going to see them. You're really not. The cheese is going to disguise it. It's not going to be— if anything, you're going to see little lumps of cheese. And if you think it's going to be— the cheese is going to be too lumpy, you can always sprinkle it on, you know, right before you serve it too.

Okay, so that's sort of a classic technique that you just do and it all just kind of blends, melts together. Okay.

So here's the sauce. It's getting a little bit thick.

Okay. See, I was brought up— I was brought up by a hardcore European woman who cooked everything from scratch, and butter— she lived with butter, and she made gravy. Oh my goodness, this— my mother could make gravy. And so it was always an issue for me, you know, lumps of gravy.

Yeah, this is just for pan sauces.

Okay.

Now, if I was going to make a soup or a gravy, I would make a roux. That's just cooking the flour and the butter together and getting cooked a little.

I'd love to do that. Yeah.

You can also just make a slurry. If you don't want it to mix, you can mix the butter and flour together and let it— because it's a little bit runny, and add that in as well. Then you don't have as much chance of lumps. I've been doing this so long, you're going to see so very few. If it does happen, it's not really that drastic.

Okay, I would love to do that roux, get that roux basics down one day.

Roux is pretty easy, you just have to watch it doesn't burn. Now, I need a little parsley for this. What I'm going to do with my parsley is I'm just going to chop it up a little bit. This is Italian parsley. The way I chop is, you see, I'm keeping the tip of the knife down. I'm just going over the same area again. I'm going to be bringing it together and just keep pulling it together.

I never knew that about the tip of the knife. I never knew that.

I don't want to be lifting because that's going to tire you out. Yeah, anytime you cut, I mean, if I'm not holding it down, I'm still cutting with the tip down. Okay, so I'm just, I'm holding it down so I can go faster. And the more you chop it and pull it together Mm-hmm.

So you're not going to— are you? So this is really the end of that dish. So, Don, so you're putting that in at the end?

Yeah, I'm just going to put it in and I want to put it in at the end so it doesn't lose color, so it doesn't fade on me and get ugly.

Right, right.

So it doesn't have to be super fine. You don't have to squeeze it out. Yeah, you do it in a food processor, it's going to get too wet.

You know, I'll tell you something, I think parsley is underrated. It has such a fresh taste to it. Mm-hmm. Don't you think? And sometimes it's used so sparingly, and I like the amount of parsley. I really like that amount of parsley you're using.

Well, you know, it's Italian parsley, so it is going to have a little bit more flavor than just curly parsley. And if you're cutting it up, it's not going to make a big difference.. I just have always, again, grown up cooking Italian parsley, so I use it. Let's see, I think our ravioli is done. Ravioli doesn't take too long. I'm going to turn this back on. It's going. And again, if you're not fond of mushrooms, you know, by all means leave them out.

Now, any particular type of mushrooms or whatever?

I just use plain old white mushrooms. But I mean, if you want to use portobellos, anything that you like.

Okay.

We did get a little bit of clumping with the cheese because I let it sit for too long. But I'm going to put the shrimp back in. And you could add a little wine to it as well if you wanted to add a little white wine.

Oh, so you could put that in at the end, or do you need to boil that down a little?

You can— it's not gonna— it's gonna cook the alcohol off right here if you wanted to add it in here. I would have put it in when I was taking the shrimp out to deglaze the pan.

Right.

Next time I will think of having that for you. I'm gonna hit it with just a little bit more stock because it's getting a little thick. And now the shrimp are done. Okay, we're gonna turn this off.

That is looking good. I bet it smells great.

Oh, garlic smells wonderful.

I know, the garlic.

And you can use whatever kind of ravioli you like. Well, I wouldn't use meat. I mean, you can use sun-dried tomato ravioli, you could use mushroom ravioli. This is just plain cheese, and it's always better to get the bigger ravioli. We use this because it's going to make a better appearance.

Now, are those fresh or are they frozen? Do you have a— well, I mean, I would imagine you would have a preference for, you know, to find a local area that sells fresh. What do you think?

If you can find fresh, that's wonderful. It's a matter of finding it and finding something that's reliable. In the Philadelphia area, I had a lot of wonderful options. Fresh ravioli. I haven't found too many around here yet. I'm sure they're there, but it's a matter of locating them. So we have my ravioli plated, and if I was doing 2, I would have done all the shrimp, all the mushrooms. I would have doubled up everything like the recipe. Plate 2 out, and they can go in a little bowl, go on a little plate.

I like that plate. It's cute.

It's not real big.

Yeah.

And my rule generally is like 5 ravioli and 5 shrimp, but again, it's up to you.

But you know what, when you put it on a plate like that, to me it looks like comfort food. It just, you know, that kind of bowl, you know, with everything blended together. I love it.

Mm-hmm. And then you can hit it with a little bit more cheese, a little bit more parsley. You can go around the edge of the plate if you want.

Nice, good touch, nice touch.

And then you serve this and we're done.

Beautiful, beautiful. We'll be right over. We'll all be right over.

Well, hopefully when we get the kitchen done, we can start having guests in here and I'll feed them as we go along. So, you know, that's a That's a long-term plan for us. Yeah, in the kitchen with us. So that's a good thing to look forward to. But, you know, you saw how fast it was. What time is it? It's 3:27. We've been talking for a long time. We talked a lot through this. Shrimp cook very fast, you know, in the matter of cooking. Like I said, the pasta, it's done. You've got a restaurant-style meal here that you made in minutes in your own home. Have a bottle of wine, rent a movie, have this for dinner, enjoy the evening, and put half that money back in your pocket that it would have cost for going out. Get yourself a nice loaf of bread, have a salad with this, and just really love life.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So we're waiting for Lori. We have Lori Laser who's going to be joining us any moment. And I think Maybe before she— she'll jump in on her own, but before then, why don't we take a few comments, Jeff? Sure. A few questions and comments.

Sounds good to me.

Okay, so let me— let's see, I think I do the I. I keep forgetting, I click on the I. Is that correct? Yes.

Yeah, yeah. Bring them up.

Okay, so, uh, yeah, so can you see it? No. Yes. Okay, so Jeff says, the best shrimp I ever had I bought off a shrimp boat in Galveston. Incredible. I mean, it's like where you go, you know, I go to Cape Cod, so the lobster rolls and the clam chowder, it's, you know, these regional foods are unbelievable.

Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, shrimp I forget who I was telling, but my father was stationed in Louisiana. I was actually born at an Army base in Louisiana, and when we ate shrimp around the house— shrimp were a poor man's food. I mean, they were throwaway food, and this was before they were fashionable or people really found out how good they were. We would eat a 5-pound block of shrimp. I mean, half of it would get fried, half of it would get made into shrimp cocktail.. The 4 of us in the family would just eat shrimp until they were gone. It wasn't like you got 5 or 6 shrimp on your plate and that was it. When I eat fried shrimp out, I almost want to order 2 dinners because I really want to enjoy them.

My son used to go clamming locally. Linguine with clam sauce, just so many things. Hi, Lori. Lori's with us. Chef, we'll get to a few of the other questions and comments in a little bit.

Okay? Sounds good.

Okay. Lori Lazer is here. Lori is just, you know, she's a Google+ guru. She is the owner and founder of Customize Walls, which is a company that makes beautiful murals, which I have used in my last kitchen that I designed, which I'll show you guys sometime. And of course, the owner of the Interior Design Community, in which I'm the kitchen and bath moderator. So hi, Lori, thanks for joining us.

Hi, nice to be here.

Yeah, so there's a side of Lori that, that, you know, not many people know. So Lori, tell us about your, you know, your family's business when you were growing up.

Well, we have, for a time, did a wine shop with my family, and it was an interesting time. I grew up with wine. My parents always loved wine and loved like the whole food-wine pairing and, you know, talking about wine and where it was from and the history and all of that. So I kind of grew up in that household definitely, you know, liked wine more than beer. I started to get into drinking. So I've hosted wine tastings, done that whole thing.

Did you drink— did they serve you wine as a young person?

Oh yeah, absolutely.

From what age?

I don't remember not being allowed to try it.

Wow.

I'm actually the same way with my kids. Good, that's amazing. So then you, from what I know, you also traveled with your family. Yes, yes. And for what reason, in pursuit of wine, finding, discovering new wines?

My parents love to travel anyway. They love history, they loved art, culture, and that was definitely part of every family vacation, you know. To have a little bit of culture. Absolutely, history. I remember going, you know, my parents even couldn't afford it when I was younger, they would drive us to Washington, D.C. or to New York City so we could go to some museum. It was really something that they enjoyed giving to us.

Yeah, that's really terrific. And, you know, I mean, I like wine, I drink wine, I drink, you know, I had a wine club that the wine was sent to my home. I know the basics, well, I know the basics for the American wines, the US wines, but how can you avoid being intimidated when you see all these amazing wines from all over the world, and particularly of course France and Italy and other countries? Any guidelines, any tips?

Actually, talk a lot to the wine shop owner. Honestly, wine shop owners love wine. That's why they do it. And so, you know, there's always going to be some new vintage that's in or something that they're really excited about. And chances are their excitement and knowing a little bit about the wine will make you appreciate it more anyway. So I always say that But when I used to have a customer come in to the shop, the first thing I would ask them was what do they like to drink. Do they like soda? Do they like tea? What do they normally like to drink? And based on that, you could get an idea of what their palate was like, what they like in a beverage. Do they like coffee? Then they want something maybe a little bit— that has a little bit of bitterness to it, maybe a little bit fuller-bodied wine, veer them to the reds. You know, do they like soda, where they might want something a little sweeter, something, you know, that has that sugar content in it?

I think that's absolutely fascinating because again, I draw a parallel to, in my work, kitchen design, people may have a particular style that I work to help them uncover. I'm sure Chef was saying— Chef, jump in whenever you want. I'm sure you have seen so many people you know that have— obviously they like Italian food, they like this, so you sort of work on uncovering what they may enjoy.

Well, I like to find out what kind of food they enjoy in terms of give me the protein and then let me run with it. If there's something you're allergic to or something you absolutely hate, tell me. If you want to dish in chicken, you want to dish in beef, or you want to dish in pork, let me know. I've always enjoyed blending foods together, and I think that's where my talent was really apparent was when I would mix different proteins together in different dishes. I was always mixing seafood with chicken or sausage, coming up with different things, finding different sauces for beef, and trying to just think a little out of the box. Out of their comfort zone for what most people would want and then get them to try it. There was never, like I said, any better reaction than you going into the dining room just getting completely quiet because they're too busy eating. That's always a good sign for me that they were enjoying things. Gloria, you were talking about wines and going in and asking the wine store. I crack up in Florida. I don't know if I could go into CVS and ask them what kind of wine they enjoyed because They sell wine everywhere here.

They do.

Yeah, it's in our local Wawas, we have them in the drugstores, you know, they sell beer and wine just everywhere.

You know, my grandparents have a condo in Venice, Florida, and I spent a lot of time there. It now belongs to my mom and our family, but even there I found a local wine shop I go to when I'm in town, and they now know that I know what I'm talking about, so they bring out things and just, you know, they're excited about you coming in. They definitely talk to you and ask you questions and give— they're excited to show you what new is in the wine world, what new might have come into the shop. So I think building those relationships is a great way to get better wine.

Oh, absolutely, and you get to know more about them. We had a wine shop in Jersey, where we lived before we moved, and it was called Moore Brothers. And I mean, you would miss it if you went to look for it, because it was in an industrial park, and you just— if you weren't looking for the store, you wouldn't know it was there. But you go in and they had jackets in there because the room was always kept at 65 degrees. They had— they got wines from small vineyards all over Europe, and they had relationships with these vineyards. And in fact, if you were going, they Well, where are you going? You can stop by, say hello. You know, he'll give you a tour. You know, some of them even put you up. I mean, they were just really interesting.

It's true. I mean, the same thing happened to us. We got to know so many of the winemakers in Europe, and my favorites were the Italians, so I got to know a lot of them, and I was always invited. I'm always invited, even still, if I wanted to, to go and do a tour where I get to stay at these different vineyards, I know I could do it if I wanted to because they're so friendly and open.

That's so nice. What a nice experience.

Yeah, I always tell people, you know, it was like a big investment, you know, but they— but they— it was a fun experience.

It was—

the experience was amazing. I actually thought of a few wines that for the dinner that you guys are making right now. Oh, you did?

Yes, I did.

What would you suggest?

What would I suggest if I were having that? Because I was thinking about the acid and the fatty content with the ravioli, and of course a seafood. And my favorite would be Lacrima Cristi, which is out of Italy, and it's called Lacrima Cristi because it's the tears of Christ. But it has like this really cool creamy quality that I think with the fish and with the shrimp and with the the ravioli just would be such a neat experience with the wine. That would be my favorite, but I also thought a Big Fire Pinot Gris from Oregon, that has like a little bit of sweetness to it, so I think that it might bring out some of the acidity of the tomato. It might be a good pairing with that. And then Macon Village, which is a chardonnay from France, which is awesome. Just a good solid table wine.

Lori, you are just an encyclopedia of information. And this is so nice to show this side of you.

I love it. I always loved it. It was such a fun thing. In fact, a friend of mine who works with a writer from the Huffington Post they were doing this article about wines that would go with, like, if you were a zombie, wines that would go with people. So I actually was featured on that article, which is strange, but it was just because I have a lot of wine knowledge.

Well, that's Chianti, isn't it? I'm going to serve you up with some fava beans and Chianti.

I know, I thought the same thing. I was like, this is too crazy that I'm writing interview about that.

That's funny. Let me ask you this. A lot of times I sort of bailed on, you know, well, not that I bailed, but it's hard to know what to do. So a lot of times I just go on ratings. I go, baby, you know, in the store, some they have ratings, and, you know, I think it's like 90 and above. I usually shoot for 90 and above if it's in a price range that I can afford, you know. So is that a Is that an OK idea to do?

It definitely gets you in the ballpark of good wines, but there's a lot of politics being played in the wine world. I mean, a lot of ratings come from magazines. The magazines, of course, favor advertisers in their magazine. So there's definitely some politics at play. Plus, there are smaller family-owned vineyards, single vineyards, that probably wouldn't even have their product shown in a an event like that because they're just too small. So you'd be missing out on quite a few wines just to stick to, you know, to the numbers game. I mean, it's going to give you a predictable wine, but not that special experience from like this really fantastic boutique vineyard, really. So the key is always, I really think, is is letting your wine shop owner know that you're looking for these things. I'm really looking for those boutique vineyards. Most of them are actually organic even though they're not labeled as organic because they've just been doing it without sulfites for years. That's just how they do it. And so they're not, you might go to these little vineyards in Italy and they don't know what a big deal in the United States we make of organic. They just have been doing this for years, and it's always been organic. Sulfites are basically a powder that you put over the grapes to preserve the grapes. If they have small vineyards and they have control over that, they don't need to do that.

I like that. That's sort of like when you shop at a farmer's market or the boutique. In my business, these small little companies that make handcrafted, amazing handcrafted items. So it's like handcrafted wine as well. So can you go to a wine store and say, you know, I'm interested in these very small, good, you know, handcrafted wines? Can you—

You know how you're going to make their eyes completely light up? You're going to be their best friend because they love that. They love people who get it and who aren't just there to buy. The, you know, top-selling wine, the well-known wine that everybody knows of. They love someone who gets it as much as they do, and price really doesn't matter. There are some really fantastic $10 wines, there are some really crappy $100 wines, so it's across the board. Yeah, your wine shop owner usually really just loves wine, and they're not going to push you to the price. I mean, the right one isn't going to push you on a price point like what they're trying to get rid of, especially if they get that you like it and you're really into it. And the stories that come from it, I mean, we had this guy who was one of our wine distributors, his name was Rufus, an older gentleman, he's British, and he would spend time with my family. I mean, he was like Uncle Rufus.

Dennis Littley.

He was pretty fantastic, great stories, but he would always tell us these little things about the vineyard that you wouldn't pick up on. Over time, you'd start to sense things or taste things you wouldn't have normally tasted before. I remember I had a glass of wine. I was doing a little tasting with him, and I tried it, and I was like, "This tastes like like the ocean, because it just had this saltiness in it. And he shows me the vineyard, and it's like right on the ocean in southern Italy. So there's definitely— it's picking up, you know, what was grown locally right there. There's a wine I had from a South American vineyard that you could really taste jalapeño in the wine. It just had this like little— touch of jalapeño, and that was because they had a vineyard— it was grown right next to a jalapeño farm.

That's interesting. Now, Lori, what wines do you particularly— what are some of your favorite wines?

My absolute favorite is Amarone. I just—

could you, in the comments section, can you write a few of your favorite wines? I will.

Amarone is an Italian wine. It's a red wine. And when you try it, it's like a religious experience. It's fantastic.

Wow.

And it's actually made from— Amarone is basically— you probably have had red Zinfandel before. And then red Zinfandel Ripasso is when they actually take the Zinfandel and they run it through Amarone. But Amarone was— invented during the war when the Germans came into the Italian villages. They took all the wine, and so apparently there were grapes in the rafters still, and they just decided to press the grapes even though they were a little bit past, they shriveled up a little bit, almost to a grape, and they wanted to make that still a big robust wine, so they open fermented it, and they had this wine that was, I guess, just Everyone freaked out about it. It was just such a rich, bold wine. I mean, it has like this— it's not sweet, but it has this just big everything in your mouth. I mean, it's just a full, full experience.

It's fantastic. I mean, you're going into a zone when you're speaking. You're going into a whole other zone. When you and I We go out for dinner, I will never order the wine. I will just leave it to you and you take care of it.

My friends do the same thing, actually. I think people get intimidated to order wine around someone who knows a little bit about wine.

Yeah, what do you think, Chef?

I don't feel like that. I always like, everybody just, you know, it's not that big a thing. It's a drink. At the end of the day, it's a beverage.

It's easy to be intimidated, right, Chef?

Absolutely. You know, I don't know that much about wines, so, you know, I always defer to whoever really knows what they're doing. When we were in Europe, I think the best thing about the wines were we would just order table wines, and they were always cheaper than getting bottled water. And the table wines for us were the best part of any wine we had had. You know, our palates probably aren't that discerning, but the table wines were nice and smooth and fruity and weren't hard to drink at all. You could have just kept them coming at that point, and very inexpensive.

Yeah, and you know, Laurie, we have a couple of comments. Nazim Beltran says, Amarone is the tops! With 6 exclamation marks. Girl, you know you're right!

Wine. I'm telling you, once you try it, you will, it'll become, almost everyone that has, that I know that has tried it says it's their favorite. Although we actually had an employee, she was from an Italian family and they were not wine drinkers, but she worked for the shop for a while and she was from a very big Italian family and they did the the Christmas dinner with the 7 fishes sort of dinner. And they had— we gave them bottled Amaroni, because she's just such a great girl. And they hated it. They mixed it with Sprite or something.

No!

And we were like, oh my goodness, you mixed Amaroni with Sprite? That's a travesty. You're fired. Wow.

Oh man, well, I know I'm going I mean, does a local wine shop have it?

Yeah, I mean, there are a few that are better than others. I love Cesare Amarone, it's one of my favorites, but definitely ask for, you know, a smaller vineyard Amarone, you'll be like in heaven.

Wow, that sounds good. Anything else for Lori, Chef?

No, that was great. I mean, I got a nice wine lesson here. It was wonderful to listen to someone with that kind of passion.

Yeah, ingrained in me.

My drinking is limited. I think I said last week my favorite is Prosecco. You have to fight me for the bottle when I open that.

You should try a little bit of limoncello in your Prosecco. It is to die for.

We do make Bellinis. I make peach and strawberry. My wife loves those.— but I will try that. I always have limoncello in the house. There's two things in my freezer that you can always find.

I know you said—

Yeah, limoncello, and the other is tequila. I don't know if you ever had tequila.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, love that. I mean, more people try that. They've never heard of it, and now it's actually trendy. Kids are drinking it. They're making different drinks with tequila.

Wow. Well, Laurie, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

Thank you, Laurie.

And we'll see you around G+.

Absolutely. See you on the Plus. Bye-bye.

Thanks a bunch. Okay, so wasn't that fantastic? That was great. Oh my goodness. I mean, I had no idea. You could just see it oozing out of her.

Yep. Never would have known that about her. So that's another good thing about these kinds of shows. You get to find out more about your friends.

Yeah, it really is great. For the next part of our show, I'd like to— let's go through a few of the comments.

Sounds good.

Okay, I have— there's been a few from earlier in the show. Let's see. Okay, our friend David Leopold says, my first wife's favorite wine was— where are we going for dinner? Nice, David. Nice, nice, David. So let's see, we have a few. Okay, there's one from Adrienne Urban. She says, I love the talk about working with budgets. We've had to work on very tight budgets at various times in our life, and we've done it by being creative. And I'm so glad you brought that up, Chef.

Well, you know, It's not always about— you know, in a restaurant it's the same way. I've got a restaurant back here and I've got a menu. Now I have got to try and get creative with what I have on hand already. What else can I make out of this to try and stretch it or to move my inventory? So, you know, I'm not buying things just specifically for one thing. So you think about what you have on hand. You know, we always had ravioli, we always had shrimp. That's where this came from. That was part of the thinking. You have items in your refrigerator that if you're used to making one thing, if you just think a little bit outside the box a little bit, or what else they might go with, you can turn an average boring dinner or something you— not necessarily boring, but something you have all the time into something different and making it more of an experience than just dinner. That's the whole idea behind it. You don't have to spend a lot of money to do that. You go to the grocery store. You see what's on sale. You pick that up if you don't have stuff at home. There were always certain things I keep in my pantry, and I'm still replenishing that from the move. There's things that you always have—tomatoes, you always have capers. There's things that I'll buy when they're on sale or keep them in there, and then when I go to make something, something, roasted peppers, olives, different things that you can add to a dish just to change it up a little bit. Even some basic Italian lunch meats, changing up chicken, putting some prosciutto on it. Put some salami on it and some provolone when you finish it. There's a lot of things. Now, this dish here, I would also do a chicken and shrimp scampi. It's very simple, and then you're cutting down on the cost of the shrimp. You're making the dish larger so it fills you more. Because the one thing you don't ever want someone going away from a table, at least me, you know, Italian cooking, not Nouveau cooking, is I don't want anybody ever pushing away from the table that I've just served them at and go, "I'm still hungry." Oh, no, no. To me, that is the biggest, biggest— you know, I'm not saying that you should be like uncomfortable and having to undo your belt. You know, I like that too, but that's It's not necessarily the way we need to start eating as a people because we do tend to overeat. The worst thing for me is when I've gone out, and I don't mind what I pay as long as the food's hot, the service is good, and I'm not hungry at the end of it. It's not about that to me. When I'm cooking at home, my wife has seen these things so many times. When I hear her go, "Oh, my God." "Well, you never made that for me." Well, then, okay, then I did a good job. Either she doesn't remember or I never did. It was the first time I made stuffed lobster tails. You would think this is— it was New Year's Eve, but I mean, I got a good deal on crab meat. The lobster tails I bought at Sam's Club, so they weren't that expensive. You want to do these special occasions, you just have to know where to shop to get these ingredients. Instead of going out, save your money. I'm not telling you not to ever go out again, but make them really special events when you go out. When you go out, look at the menu and think, "Boy, I could make that at home. Dennis was saying to do this and to do this or to add this. I can make that at home if I really tried." Next time you try another restaurant and you splurge on that, or maybe you splurge on a bed and breakfast instead.

You know, it's really— again, it's so fascinating you're saying that, because when I go out to a restaurant, I order, you know, these things that look wonderful time after time after time, and they usually are terrific, but I never look at them and think, oh, let me try to do something like that at home. I just— it's like the restaurant stays in the restaurant It's fascinating to me that you're saying that. Kind of study the dish that you're eating. Sure. How you can make it your own.

Yeah, and it doesn't have to be exact, but you might make it better than what you had. A lot of times, I've taught people to make dishes, and then they can't eat them out anymore because it's not as good as what they make in their own homes. It's not rocket science. Science. It's just about enjoying food and finding dishes. You saw how fast we made this. You're tired. You just worked all day. What would be better than whipping something together that took you all of 15 minutes to cook, sit down, enjoy dinner, and then have the rest of the night? You don't even have that much to clean, really.

That's tasty. That's really tasty. That's the thing. Thanks for that. I want to talk a little bit about— a little segment here, a short little segment of the show on my notes, kitchen notes, Susan's Kitchen Notes, just a couple of things. The first thing is, and you've been there, Chef, I'm going to Milan next week. It's the— oh, I don't know how to say it. Oh no, I do. Eurocucina, but in the larger scope of the Italian Furniture Fair. So that's all next week, and it's my first time in Milan. I have wanted to go to the show for over 20 years, and this year I'm finally doing it. And I'm renting an apartment and, you know, studying the metro. And you've been there, Chef, haven't you?

I only flew out of Milan one time. I have I have never been in Milan. We were leaving Venice and landed there briefly, and I remember looking out at the Alps going, "Oh, they're mountains. They're not that big," because you can see them from the airport. Yeah. We got the Rockies. What's so hot about it? Then we flew over them, and I went, "Oh my God, they go on forever." Wow. I mean, the Alps are pretty amazing.

Oh, I think I'll change my seat then from an aisle to a window.

There you go. At least on the way back or something. But yeah, they were pretty impressive, I'll have to say. But yeah, you'll get to eat some really good food, and hopefully you'll get to meet up with Nazim Beltran. He's going to be there. That's where he lives, and he's dying for me to come out, and I am too. So hopefully I'll get to make that happen this year.

Yeah, I look forward to it. And I go to a lot of design shows for the purpose of just seeing what's there and being current. I like to be current. I I like to be inspired. I'm also a photographer, an amateur photographer since forever. So I go crazy, and I'll be there 5 nights, and my guess is I'll come home with 5,000 or 6,000 pictures. So I get obsessive. I am totally obsessive, and I can't wait to see the Italian design. And there's also a section— the whole city has events going on, and there's a whole section for Scandinavian design, and I'm all about Scandinavian design, and I'm actually meeting a friend of mine from Denmark there, and I have her bringing me Scandinavian design magazines. Oh, great. I said, whatever you can hold, I'll take. And I don't know if you know this, Chef, I don't know if I told you, I have a collection of about probably close to 350 Scandinavian design magazines.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah, I have about 350, and they go back to the late '90s. And yes, so when I say I'm obsessive, pretty much about whatever I do, I have some kind of obsessive thing going on. So that's a little bit about me and my kitchen story, which I'll share a little bit with you every week. Mm-hmm. So it was a great show, Chef.

Thank you. I had a good time. I hope everyone enjoyed the dish. And again, you know, just get in there and start having fun. You see how fast and easy some of the things we make are. You know, most of the time that's what I'm going to show you, and it's— part of it is the art of sauté. And, you know, last week we sautéed up some chicken. This week we sautéed some shrimp. So, you know, that is the fastest method for putting food on plate. You know, there's other things we'll go over as time goes on— roasting techniques. You know, they're going to take a little bit longer, but I know you don't have any more time than I do, and I actually should have more time now being sort of retired. But you know, it shouldn't be about laboring in the kitchen. It should be about— you know, there's times you want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, but for the most part, you want to have good food that you can you can enjoy and you can have some good conversation with while you're having dinner and that just makes you feel good inside. And you know, these are the kind of meals that we're teaching.

Yep, you sure are. And it's easy, it's affordable, it's, you know, it's everything good. So, and it's all fresh ingredients. So it's all good. So, so until next week, you got it.

See you later. Yep.