Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 28 - Matteo Lane

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

Welcome the great Matteo Lane! If you want to speak Italian, make spaghetti carbonara like a master chef and enjoy your life then listen to this one.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Insurance isn't one-size-fits-all, and shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit. That's why drivers have enjoyed progressives' name-your-price tool for years. With the name-your-price tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they show you options that fit your budget. Enough hunting for discounts, trying to calculate rates, and tinkering with coverages. Maybe you're picking out your very first policy. Or maybe you're just looking for something that works better for you and your family. Either way, they make it simple to see your options. No guesswork, no surprises.

Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be? Visit progressive.com and give the name your price tool a try. Take the stress out of shopping and find coverage that fits your life on your terms. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. It's time for breaking bread with Papa. Hey! Don't you know?

Hey! sourdough. Hey, it's time for Breaking Bread with Papa. Hey, don't you know, it's also a show. Hey! Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. I am Tom Papa. Thank you so much for coming along. Glad you made some time and accepted my invitation. Thank you all for listening. It's been really great. We keep expanding our audience and our family, and I really appreciate it. If you don't

subscribe. Make sure you subscribe, either on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like it so much that you're moved to leave us a review, that is always a treat, especially if it involves lots of stars and lots of nice things that you like to say. Always important. I thank you so much. We have a great show today with Mateo Lane, who is just an amazing, amazing stand-up comedian. I've been saying for the last couple of years, whenever I'm on other people's shows and doing interviews and they ask, who should we be looking out for anybody funny that you recommend that maybe we don't know about? And I always say, Mateo Lane.

He is so funny. He's got such a great voice, not only just a comedic voice. He also has an amazing voice. He can sing like Mariah Carey. I know. It sounds weird. but we did a thing on live from here, which was the Prairie Home Companion show on NPR that I was doing for a couple of years. And we had Mateo come on in front of a huge crowd at Town Hall.

It was the holiday edition, the Christmas Celebration Show. And he came out and did Mariah Carey and he hits the high note, the legendary high note that she hits. It just tore the roof off of the theater. It was so insanely good. but his stand-up, man, you just got to look him up. Look him up on YouTube, wherever you can find stuff. He is a great podcast out with Emma Wilman, and he mentions it at the end. I think it's in the closet, out of the closet, around the closet, something closet.

He's hilarious. I really love him. And he's a great artist, too. He's a visual artist. And more than anything, those things are nice. great he's got some talents but he speaks fluent Italian he was raised in an Italian household that taught him how to make all these amazing dishes and he is a real connoisseur and a real has a real knowledge of great Italian foods that's what we're

going to get into today with Mateo Lane show a new segment of the show which I like I love this I actually look forward to it all week I actually think what am I going to tell my friends about what I'm cooking now or what I found or what I ate. And I hope you like it as much as I do. We just started it last week. But this is the portion of the show before we bring our guest on, where I let you know exactly what I am into. So I have been on a quest for a great tomato sauce for my whole life. My mother makes an amazing bolognese, amazing sauce. It's very similar to the one that my grandmother made,

which was the grandmother on my, her mother-in-law, basically. But they also had a very similar sauce. I wonder if it cross-pollinated. Anyway, there's a lot of great red sauces out there, 100%. They're all so different. you can do just these little different basic ways of making it changes the whole the whole end result so i have been just on this quest of like why instead of just blindly using tomatoes think for a minute i always the most important thing i think with all of this is being a little more thoughtful

about what you eat what you buy what the ingredients are it makes such a difference if you just stop take a breath and say, well, wait, why am I always just buying a random can of tomatoes and not thinking about it, which I've done for years? And why do I just do it this way and just throw garlic and oil in and then just throw the tomatoes on top? Like what, why am I just doing it this way? There's got to be some other subtle ways. Again, thoughtfulness. So I decided, let's just take some time and do some research and kind of explore. Last time I was talking about facacia bread and I know it's redundant but fakasha and I explained that I've been diving deep into Marcella Hazan's cookbooks the essentials of Italian cooking and she I started like looking up in this book and she has

all these different sauces in it and some I haven't even tried yet because I'm now I'm just basing it on tomato sauce she she has you know, been such an influence on so many people that the New York Times, after I've discovered this sauce that I'm about to tell you about, the New York Times did this animated little comic book section showing her different sauces. And I was so proud of myself that I had found my way through the cooking world and was digesting and making all of the stuff. And then it came out in the New York Times. It was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm kind of on the inside of this. I'm not, I know what's going on. I don't need you in New York Times, but it's nice of you to tell the rest of the world what I already

know. It made me feel good. All right. So I'm going to tell you right now a very specific little sauce. It is so easy that I can literally tell you now without even posting the ingredients. This is just a fun. If you need a quick sauce in like 45 minutes, 50 minutes, this is, it's light, it's sweet, and it doesn't have that heaviness to it. It's not a real thick sauce. I know my buddy Joe loves a thick sauce.

There's time for that. We'll discuss that next time. But this one is tomato, onion, and butter. That's it. That's actually the name of the sauce. Tomato butter and onion. And all you do, take a little sauce pan, get whole tomatoes. I know we had Chris Bianca on the other, in an episode a little earlier in the month.

He makes great tomatoes. We went through a whole thing about tomatoes. The whole peeled tomatoes are the best tomatoes. And then they'll crush up the ones. Not that the other ones are bad, but they all have their different uses. For this, you want whole tomatoes. Look, if you live on a farm, you can get the actual plum tomatoes and skip the can, fine. But if you live most places in America where you just have to go to a grocery store,

just get whole peeled tomatoes. One can. Put them in your little saucepan. Take an onion, peel it, cut it in half. Half of an onion. That's it. Half an onion. Don't chop it up.

Just throw it in there in the sauce. And about three quarters of a stick of butter, five tablespoons of butter. It's a lot of butter. But just put it in there. Put it on medium heat. Let it all melt down. Let the butter melt down. As you're stirring it, use your spoon to break apart the whole tomatoes along the side of your little sauce pan.

And just let it go. And just be careful not to like mull. the onion and have that all break up because it's going to be a little annoying at the end because you're going to discard the onion. So just break it up, break up the tomatoes along the side as the butter slowly going. This is like on a medium to medium low heat. Then you, it'll start bubbling a little bit. You don't want it to like really scorch up and start boiling, but it will become active. And then you lower the heat down to like medium low after the butter's melted, stir it every once in a while, over 45 minutes,

and you just want to keep cooking it down until the oil starts to separate from the tomato. And that's it. Add a little salt, maybe a pinch of pepper, and that is it after 45 minutes. You take that. Fusili, rigatoni. For spaghetti,

they say you could, you, I like a thing. I like a thicker sauce. I'm with Joe, with the spaghetti. I always like it to be a little thicker sauce. A nice rigatoni, a nice fusili. It's that kind of a thing. Penae, if you like it, I grew up in New York in the 80s,

and I'm so done with Penae. It just showed up in so many places. I know you can use it for, it's nice with vegetables and that kind of, eh. No, let's just fusili. rigatoni for this sauce. And that's it, my friends, tomato, onion, and butter. It will, you'll be so proud of yourself when you make this sauce. You will be so proud. You'll feel like you are somewhat of an Italian chef. You somehow figured out how to have a little bit of a wrinkle, a little more authentic, a little sweeter, just not your run of the mill, but yet super, super simple. That's my

little tip for you today. Oh, you're going to be so happy. Next time we'll talk about other sauces, but this is a sofrito is a sauce where you start off with onions, olive oil, onions, chopped up onions, and you get that going until they're golden, and then you throw in chopped up carrots and celery, salt and pepper. That's sofrito, it's your base, and then that's only for like another minute, when you had those final two ingredients. And then you go into this other sauce, which you'll add tomatoes and it'll cook down and it'll be a little thicker.

But we'll spend a little more time with that and we'll learn what Sofrito is and all that other stuff. Look, kids, I'm learning as you're learning. I'm not an expert in this stuff, but I'll tell you the things that I really like and I've been working on for years. And you're going to really, really love this one.

Okay, so we're going to talk to Mateo Lane, hilarious comedian, as I said, and we're going to pick his brain on what his favorite dishes are. Every time I'm making something and I feel like I've nailed it, I'll take a picture and I'll send it to Mateo because I know he won't just compliment it. If it looks so off, he'll tell me why. If he's impressed, he'll still say so. But he's tough to impress.

And after this conversation, you'll see why. All right. Here is Mateo Lane. How are you, Matteo? I'm doing well. I just, I had a photo shoot today. day. Wow. Why? Just because I'm gay and I want better Instagram pictures. So shirtless? Yeah, the whole nine yards. Yeah, I did with some photographer and Chelsea. He was really good.

But yeah, I just don't eat a lot before. So like right after I ran and ate everything. Kind of a mess. I mean, I don't understand. I'm like I could never be a model for a thousand reasons. But just real models. I'm like, how do they do it without eating? I know. I know. I literally, it is kind of an amazing thing being a guy in that you can literally just don't eat for a couple days and drop like five pounds.

Yeah. My wife is like, she does not have that ability. So every once in a while, I'll be like, I'm just going to not eat for like a day and a half and correct what the abuse I've done over the last couple of weeks. and it does but man then I just explode out the other side and eat twice as much I know that's how I am right now so I'm like I got to eat something and I'm going to get dinner with Keith and Liz and everybody on Thursday so I'm like and I have another photo shoot the next day so I'm like all right let me just figure out how I'm going to eat before that meal then that meal I'm a mess

well it's so funny because you you are definitely you're one of the people who uh who I think about a lot when I'm ever I'm cooking Italian food, which is the thing that I always cooking. So that means I think about you a lot. Good. But you also, I also don't go too completely insane and try and work out and whatever. But you, you are dialed in and your health in a whole other level. But then the stuff that you'll show me that you're making is completely decadent. Well, I think for, okay, So a couple, are we recording by the way? Have we started by the way?

Yeah, we started a while ago. All right. Let me quickly get on. No. I, so I started to diet and exercise probably four years ago. My sister is like an international fitness bodybuilder. She's a nutritionist and she knows everything about just weightlifting and diet and what you need to do if you want to achieve a certain look. So I've figured out through her how often I have to eat when I have to eat.

And then also lifting a lot of weights. I mean, I'm not huge. I photograph much larger than I am in real life. But when you lift a lot of weights, you're kind of allowed to, you know, I can have pasta every other day or I can have carbonata or spaghetti al-Matrician or whatever because it's like, oh, I know tomorrow I'm doing legs and I'm on my diet. So wait a minute. So whenever I made, I made baked Ziti yesterday.

My wife wanted baked Ziti, which is, it's really an Italian-American dish. Well, no, they have baked Zidi. They have like pasta, like, you know, oven pasta. It exists in Italy. It does? Okay. I always picture it. It's just straight out of New Jersey.

But some New Jersey dishes, like a lot of. lot of Italian-American dishes stem from something from the old country, right? So you'll find, it just changed because ingredients change. Yeah, but there's also, there's, but there's always that, there's always that, uh, New Jersey, I wouldn't say guilt, but humility where it's kind of like, yeah, so the, the statue of David, uh, comes from Italy. All this great artwork and sculpture comes. And then, uh, as Colin Quinn says in his act, and then some guys in New Jersey just take all of copies of all of it and put it in their front lawn around within a fence.

So there's like the jersey of jerseyification. Of Italian. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So we'll get into dishes and all that stuff in a second. But sticking with the, we made this giant big ziti. I also had sausages on the side.

It was bread, a whole thing. So my thinking today is, oh, then I should get on the bike and just go for an hour on the Peloton. but you're saying the weights is the way to go well so will that burn more well weight and cardio is a good combo diet's the key if you're trying to find success not like if you want to lose weight gain muscle whatever however i am trying to gain muscle and i'm lifting a lot of weights and i'm lifting a lot of heavy weights and i focus and isolate muscle groups so you know i separate my weight muscles and it varies, but like, for example, like today I did arms, which is biceps and triceps, tomorrow,

I'll do chest, and, you know, I'll do abs. And then the next day, I'll do legs. And, you know, so you kind of isolate your muscle groups. And when you lift weights, you're sort of tearing your muscle fibers apart and then they rebuild. And that rebuilding is what's using burning more fat, because it's using your body's fat to, like, build up new muscles. So I believe I'm not an expert, but I believe that running, for example, or riding the bike, you're losing weight in that moment. Like, you're losing calories in that moment, but when you stop, it's done. Right. So, lifting weights is a good way of balancing that.

So, like, that's why you'll see a lot of people at the gym doing 20 minutes of cardio and then 20 minutes of weights because it's a nice balance for your body. It's so funny that my, like, your goal is so you can get amazing pictures for your Instagram. Laid. great and I get late and I'm just I just want to pretty much all that working out is just so I could stay the same while stuffing my face with big ziti I know I do my aunt city makes a great big ziti I'm in my aunt cindy's red sauce yeah um I love big ziti I'm gonna well sorry go ahead so tell it tell our tell our listeners uh what your Italian heritage is so my heritage

Okay, so, well, there's a bit of, there's a, can I tell you, there's a strange story to this, right? So I grew up culturally Italian. My mother is culturally 100% Italian, Italian, mother with a Sicilian father. However, my real grandfather is Mexican. So my mother's actually Italian and Mexican. And my mom, I think until she was like probably 12, grew up half Italian culture, half Mexican culture, right? Just like either they're speaking Spanish or they're speaking Italian, whatever. My grandpa, my original grandfather, who's Mexican, had five kids with my grandma.

And I don't know how many kids with the other woman, but he did name most of them the same name so he didn't confuse them. So my grandma divorced him. And then when she remarried, she remarried a Sicilian. So my mom was like 12. So by the time I was born, I just had an Italian life. I grew up in the same block because all my cousin stuff. My grandpa's Sicilian, our family is from Montevago, which is a province of Agrigento in southwestern Sicily.

And then my grandma's family is Nabolitan. They're all Naples. Right. So Campania region of Italy. So what age did you find out there was some Mexican in there? I knew because my mom was pretty, she was honest all the time, because my dad's 100% Irish, but not like the fun Irish. Like he's like, oh, Tati Tatar.

Like, they've been here forever with their families. They're just like white people. Like they don't talk to the, like I saw my cousins once. Just like complete opposite my mom's family. I lived with my cousins, you know. And we, I knew since I can remember because my mom didn't talk to her dad when she was from 12 until she was 30. Whoa. And then her and her sisters wanted answers and found their father and actually kind of.

got close to him again and against the wishes of my grandmother. And before he died, he would send me letters on my birthday or on my Christmas. And so I would get, his name is Joaquin Maldonado, but I would get a letter from Jack Maldonado. And he didn't know me at all. He would send me big league chew gum. If he knew me, he'd put in ruby red slippers. But so, but I didn't know most of my life that I'm Mexican. And it wasn't until the past five years that I've really been more invested.

in trying to figure out like, well, where are we from in Mexico and more about our family? And so my mom's, my, my grandpa, my Mexican grandpa gave my mom photo albums of all of our family in Mexico, all our cousins, our aunts, our uncles and stuff. Wow. We did 23 and me. And so it did specify we're from Juana Hwato and we're, you know, so I'm getting closer to finding, you know, more about my Mexican heritage. But my Italian heritage, I speak Italian.

my family in Italy. Like, that's a whole different thing. How did you, okay, so you, but where were you born? Chicago, Arlington Heights, the suburb, northwest side of Chicago. So how come you get to speak Italian and go to Italy all the time? And all I have is gratis. First of all, it's grazie. See? I started going to Sicily. I have, we have family friends in Sicily in Messina. And because my family in Sicily is like all in their early hundreds. And all they do is talk about the earthquake that happened 60 years ago. That's it. When you visit them. And they're so Sicilian and true Sicilian form. When you, the town is like a hundred people. But when you visit them, they don't have, they didn't, they didn't rebuild the town over the ruins. They left all the ruins.

and then just rebuilt a town next to it so that when you go, they just bring you right to the old town to be like, this is where everyone died. Oh, God. My uncle Kalodjerro, who just passed a couple of years ago, I visited him and, I love my family, but that's just they're old and they just talk, you know.

So I would go to Messina where everyone's young, and they're basically my cousins, everyone's my age, and go to the beach and hang out and dance and stuff. So I started going around 15 or 16 when I was, some time around that age. Yeah. And I would just stay all summer and you just have to learn Italian.

So it's really that your parents, your mom gave you better vacations. Yeah, she was like, oh, you want to go to Italy? Okay. Bye. Did she speak Italian in the house? No, she doesn't really even speak Italian. my grandparents, they grew up speaking different dialects. So, like, Sicilian and Napolitan, you can't communicate with each other.

Like, those languages are that far apart. Oh, it's like, it's literally like saying one is Greek and one's Mandarin. I mean, they're, so if you're interested, if your listeners are interested, Italy is actually has, I believe, 54 official languages, which are considered, quote, unquote, dialects. However, those dialects are not all, um, Italo Dalmatian, whatever that means, like Italian-based languages. So, like, Sicilian dialects, which are all different based off where you live, are more influenced by Greek, Arab, Spanish, you know, there's other languages in there.

So, like, everyone in Italy speaks to languages, their dialect and then Italian. And, like, for example, in Italian, if you say, like, a really beautiful, like, if you refer, like, my goddaughter, my grandpa always calls my god. daughter, una, una bea picchota, which is not Italian. That's,

he's trying to say, una bella jovanota, but in Italian, Sicilian, it's Beida Picota. I'm like, I don't, like,

in Sicily, we don't say any idea. It makes, yeah, and Sicily, sort of, for him and her is Louis and Leigh,

right? So Louis means him. Well, Sicily, they say, I do. Edo. Yeah,

so it's like, it's another language. So my grandparents, my grandma, I think her first, her first language, which obviously was Italian. But then you just stop speaking it after a while

because it's like, well, I have to communicate with my husband. Well, I always fantasize about being able to speak Italian and learn Italian. And I always say to you and Liz, and I'll text a word that I find on Google Translate once in a while. But it's almost like, where do you even start? I guess maybe I should just take like the Roman dialect. So I could hang out in Rome. So the Tuscan dialect, Rome, they speak Italian.

I mean, Romanochi would be like, you'd be hard pressed to see people in the center of Rome speaking Romanochi at you. They'll just speak Italian. But the Tuscan dialect is, quote unquote, the true Italian. Because Dante was the originator of the Italian language, and he based it off the Tuscan dialect, which was a dirty form of Latin, blah, blah, blah. So if you want to learn it, if you learn Italian, like in a schooling or with a tutor, or whatever, or like Italian TV, they are speaking the Tuscan Italian. Okay. Grazie.

Grazie. Grazie. There you go. She's. I know. Such a slow start. You should take lessons or get a tutor or something. Yeah, I know.

And my daughter's in college now, and she's taking Italian. And, but I thought that was going to be a help. But I think she might just be smoking weed because she doesn't seem to know any more than I do after a full semester. It's just the problem with languages, because I, in theory, speak almost four, five. Like, I'm a, just, I can communicate in a good amount of languages. But the trick is to, you really just have to all the time be listening and speaking it. I mean, that's the only way you can do it.

I don't, you know, people like try and buy a book or trying to, it's like, like, I lived with a Mexican girl for two years. Felicia and her. And I just said to him, like, just speak Spanish to me. Don't speak any English. Just speak Spanish. So every day I came home, your brain is like, okay, you're just going to start speaking Spanish.

Right. Spanish TV. And now I'm, okay, I'm fluent in Spanish. Thank God, because you found out you were Mexican. Yeah, thank God. Thank God. So was your mom, was your mom cooking a lot of Italian? Or did you learn that from going to Sicily?

Oh, no. My mother is a very good cook. And her sisters, my aunts are all good cooks. I grew up in the kind of house. Now, I love to cook. And my sister's a brilliant cook. Like homemade butter and ricotta and bread and cake. She does everything. But growing up, I mean, I think it depends on how you're raised. Like, I'm dating this guy right now who, when he looks at a kitchen, I just see fear in his eyes. Like he has, you know, he looks, it's almost like he's, almost like he's. He's looking at like a sex dungeon for the first time. It's like, what is, you know. I've never been in there. You know, well, you've not, you've not lived. No, I'm saying that's him looking at the kitchen. It's like, why is this even a part of the apartment? Like, yeah, the other day he was like, you can make pasta in my house.

Does he have a strainer? Yeah, yeah. And then he, it was one of those like small like mesh strainers. I was like, it's just, anyways. But growing up, I'm 34, my sister's 35, my brother is 36. And we were all like little ducklings in a row. And every single night, my mother would line us up, no matter what she was making, we made it with her.

So, and things like pizza, like it was, she made it fun. She made it so fun. Like, we'd put the dough in the yeast and you'd watch it rise. And then she'd let us, you know, decorate the pizza however we wanted. And I'm sure they all were shit. We have to, you know. But, you know, making meatballs. and making brajol and making red sauce and you know and made food something that wasn't like fuel

she made food that was not comforting but like it and same with my aunt cindy because every sunday we go to my aunt cindy's house for red sauce it was like there's tradition and and there's uh it's family oriented it's fun oriented it's it's where we communicate it's where we joke it's where we talk it's where it really that i think is the most italian thing that's been passed down from Italy to my family is food is the center of the home and you should care for it. Right. Yeah. And it's how you communicate. It's everything. I mean, that's really when I had, after school, I went around and I was playing around and I stopped eating meat. And I just had a couple run-ins with meat. They were kind of gross. And I was like, you know, and I'm just, I'm going to be a

vegetarian. I'm going to stop this for a while. And I was about like a year, year and a half living in New York. I walked into an Italian deli and my whole life just came roaring back. And that life is filled with prosciutto and salami and pepperoni and cheeses and all the, and I was like, this is greater than whatever I'm trying to do with trying to clean up and be a vegetarian. But it was, it was so connected. It was much, it wasn't a dietary thing. It was, this is my life. And it had so much love and joy from all of that. How can you deny that? Well, there's something about like, there's something in cooking that is more meaningful and sentimental than a photo, right? So if I'm making red sauce, I know that every hand movement that I'm making and the smells that I'm smelling were passed

down from generation to generation generation. So it's almost like when I'm making that and putting the pasta in and I'm getting ready to eat it, that's closer to being with a dead relative or my bees. No, no. Or like, it's a closer connection to your heritage, which actually, you know, certain cultures that remind me of Italian culture in that sense, Greeks, obviously, Greeks are super close to Italians, but Mexicans, living with Felicia for so long and being with her. family. Everyone's Mexican and they're all from Mexico. It's very similar. Cousins coming over.

Siblings also in age. Cooking is central to home. Tradition. You know, it's like, oh, God, yeah. Like, I, there's so much similarity between, and then Italian's a Latin culture, obviously, but like those cultures have a lot of blending to me. Yeah. When you, when you go to make a red sauce. This has been my quest for the year because I've always been making it. I was taught from my grandmother and mother and like it's always been part of the thing. And then, but now I've been like, this year have been dialing in why whole tomatoes, why crushed tomatoes? Why do you need paste? Do you start with a sofrito? Do you start what, what's the, the basis for it? And I've kind of like boiled it down.

What is your go-to red sauce? So there's, so for those listening who are American and might need to know the difference, right? So typical American sauce is usually referred to what the Italians call a ragu. So like a ragu, like a long-cooked sauce that cooks for all day, usually meat-based with a sofrito, with tomato paste. You know, it's kind of a layered sauce that you allow to cook. When I'm cooking like a quick red sauce, which is a pomodoro, which just means tomato,

I do really, really simple ingredients. I mean, I usually only make pasta pomodoro because it's just too long with the red sauce and there's one person living here. So I use, it's a, I go to Italy and I get what's called Muti Pasata, which is just pured tomato, but it's from the company Muti, which is the most popular brand in It's literally just pureed tomato. And I saute in olive oil for garlic cloves just lightly smashed. I don't chop them, just smash them full garlic cloves.

Yeah. Cook that with a little pepperoncino, which is red pepper flakes. And then basil. Cook that together for like two minutes. Put in my muti, salt, pepper, and then a little bit of the pasta water. And then let that boil with the lid on for 15 minutes. Then put it on simmer. and then just take my pasta directly from the water into the sauce,

really, really al dente, like with a bite, and let that cook for two more minutes, and then I put a little pecorino Romano on top. Perfect. Perfect. I've been really excited by this Marcella Hazan. She's this great Italian cookbook writer, and she had this sauce.

Plum tomatoes, whole tomatoes, about a three-quarters a stick of five tablespoons of butter and half of an onion. And just put that in together and just break up the tomatoes with your spoon as you're cooking it over 45 minutes. Just a little salt, maybe a little pepper, and that's it. It's this totally transformative light, sweet because it has that onion. And of course you take the big onion out. You don't even chop it up, but just half of an onion. Yeah. And I was so blown away that after all these years of like thinking you know what sauce is and then just this simple, just putting these three things together, I was like, oh my God, this is endless. This is literally endless. Like what you described is like, that's just a little wrinkle in how you do it. And I know it would be great and still kind of different. Yeah. I think to, you know, you have to remember that a lot of these American Italian dishes, we're dealing with. In Italy, everyone does things a little differently based off where they're from

in Italy. And everything's regional, right? So the way they make red sauce in Naples is completely different than they make it in Milan versus Sicily. And even like lasagna. Like lasagna in Naples is a completely different dish than lasagna from bologna. You know, bologna with the bechamel and with the spinach pasta sometimes and fresh pasta. And then Naples is more what we're familiar with with like ricotta cheese and red sauce and hard pasta. And one thing that's hard to stress too to people that don't understand pasta is they think it's just cook the pasta and pour a sauce on top. And it's like, no, you have to like dry pasta and fresh pasta, neither one's better than the other. They're just for different sauces.

So a paradele or talia tele would go with a bolognese, not. like a pesto. You know, you would use a specific pasta for pesto. Like, carbonata can only be used with dry pasta

and it has to be spaghetti or rigatoni or sometimes Bucatini. That's it. You know, you could never use a fresh pasta with carbonata. You can only use guanchali.

You can only use pecorino Romano. You can only, you know, it's, there's like, they have all these rules and I think that all became messed up

when it got to America where people thought just like, I'll have Fettuccini Alfredo with and it's like oh okay I know it really really just gets pretty awful the uh you always say carbonara is that your one of your is that your favorite thing to make carbonara would be my favorite dish in the world yeah and it's specifically from this place in room called la fresquette

of francesco de san anjolo i forget the castello di castell de san angelo whatever um Frasquetti di Castel de St. Angelo, I think, is the name of it. But they make this Carbonaro. I follow them on Instagram. I'm obsessed. Really? Oh, my God. It's like, I mean, it's like that I literally, when I go to Italy, I pay $1,200

bucks to just eat that fucking stuff. I get an Airbnb. I get a fucking plane ticket. I pack. I'm sleep deprived for that bowl of pasta. And I get it every day. If I'm in Rome for, every day. Every day.

If I'm in Rome for a week, I eat at that restaurant. every single day because I know that I can't get it here in America. It's impossible. Why? Why can't you? There's all these great places in New York? Not a single place in Manhattan has been able to replicate Carbonara the same way they make it in Rome. Not a single place.

I've yet, and I've scoured the internet. What about when you make it? Oh, it's amazing. You must be trying to get close to what you're eating over there. I learned from these group of Italians, called Carbo Gang. They're like three guys. They live in Milan and they only make Carbonara.

Their whole Instagram is Carbonara. And they have like a Carvonara kit, Carvogang. And when I was in, and I followed them, of course. So when I was in Italy two years ago, I was doing a tour, a comedy tour with Francesco di Carlo from Milan, Florence, and Rome. When I was in Milan, I messaged them and said, I'm in Milan. I said, where can you recommend great Carbonara? And they said, come to our house.

I said, okay, so me and my boyfriend at the time showed up at their apartment is these three super hot young Italian guys are like 25, you know, and they brought us in and they just made this, they don't know who the fuck I am, and they've made us this giant carbunara, all of us. And I got to say, do you want regatoni or do you want spaghetti? And I said, I want spaghetti. And they showed me everything. They said, this is how you do it, step by step by step, by step. Of course, we ate it.

it was amazing. So now I make it the way the Cardoble Gang makes their carbonata. Wow. And how, how, how is it? So carbonata is a dish that has like five ingredients. That's it. And it's just your dry pasta, right? So Spaghetti or Rigatoni, guanchale, which is from the cheek of the pig.

And it has to be guanchale. It cannot be bacon. It cannot be pancetta. It specifically has to be guanchali. If you can't get it, order it. It's interesting because a lot of times, maybe because it's difficult to find, I'll see Panchetta is like the, they'll recommend Panchetta sometimes. If you're in a huge pinch, again, I'm just going to say, if you want the real carburetara, you need to get Guanchali. I'm not questioning you.

Yeah. I'm blaming them when I say it. Well, I get it because it is hard to find. Like this woman once I messaged me, she's like, I live in Minnesota. We don't have Guanchali. And I was like, Google, bitch, Amazon that shit. So pasta guanchale, pecorino romano. That's the type of cheese.

Not parmesan. Not pecorino romano. Can't be pecorino that toskano. Pecorino de, be pecorino romano. Then pepper and then egg yolk. That's it. That's it. No cream, no milk, no garlic.

No olive oil, no peas, no onion, no nothing. Ew. Interesting. And what you do is you saute, you take your guantale like thick bacon strips, and I cut them up small, so they're like thin, like small little like rectangles. I don't even know how you would describe it. Yeah. And then saute, if there's so much fat in guantanchali, you do not need to saute them in oil.

Just on a very, very, very low heat. Right. Saute the guanchale. And while that's sauteing, because it's going to really close. crisp up. Yeah. You're going to take, for two people, I would use four egg yolks, and then mix it with, I don't even know, I don't measure anything.

I'm guessing a half a cup of pecorino romano. And then mix that together and create a paste, pepper. And then as your pasta is boiling, once it releases that starch, yeah. Take a little bit of that pasta water, bring it into your cream mix, and start to mix it quickly so it creates a creamy texture. Right. That way you don't have scrambled eggs when you bring your pasta in. Right.

The pasta water. That's another thing. Everything. Cooking my whole life. Yeah, exactly. Only in the last couple of years have I been like, oh, this is a valuable tool. I was usually used to just dumping it down the drain. No, gold.

It's gold. It's gold. The pasta is the main part of the meal. The sauce is to complement the pasta. And Americans confuse that by drowning, overcame. cooked pasta in sauce. And what you're supposed to do is have that sauce just perfectly coat the pasta. Pasta is more like a steak.

It's like you want to, you know, al dente obviously means to the tooth, but you want to bite it to really have a great, great firm texture to it. That's what the pasta is. It is a, I think it was like a filet mignon more than anything. Right. So even with catabonata, like bring in that pasta water. So that pasta water, you know, that starch helps the pasta and the, the sauce come together.

Right. Oh, man. There's got to be so many recipes that add all the stuff that you were saying it doesn't need. The garlic, the olive oil. Americans, there's a great, you have to watch this. It's on YouTube. Just type in chefs watching Carbonara. It's all in Italian.

You can, I'm sure you can do captions, but it's these three Roman chefs watching different YouTube videos of people making Carbonara. who were just royally fucking it up. And they just pause and they look at each other. Man, Lord, I'm going to say, but I'm going to say, but they're just screaming at each other. And then some recipes are kind of going okay. And then you'll see them add in peas and all the chefs are like, you know, like in a town.

Like he was so close. Why are they ruining it? It's so funny. Oh, man. Where are you going to go with? with Keith and Liz this week. So I, so we've been doing these like weekly dinners, which of course you're more than welcome to come.

But you're, you're in L.A., right? I'm in L.A. Yeah. But we've been doing me, Keith, Dante, Liz, Joe de Rosa, poor Joe, just getting eaten alive. Everywhere it goes. We'll just pick random places.

Usually Italian. Keith likes Italian. But I went finally last week, I took him to this place called Picola Cucina, which is I think my favorite Italian restaurant in New York. Oh, and so, on the way of Soho. Yeah.

And it's so fucking good. And everyone's so good. So good. So Keith was furious because it was so good. He's like, you're fucking motherfuckers. You've been keeping this a secret from me. Fuck you. And then he would eat something else.

He was like, God damn it. This shit's so good. I'm so fucking pissed at you. You don't fucking. And then so we're going to go back this week to pick a luck with you. Oh, that's amazing. You know, at a certain point, they, before COVID, they would, it gets like 10, 11 o'clock, they, they pump up the music.

Have you ever been there when they like all of a sudden becomes like a thing? Yeah, it becomes this whole thing. My wife came in once and she flew in. She had a horrible flight. I'd been in New York for a bit and she flies in. It's all turbulent. She's a little nauseous. She's not feeling great. I'm like, let's just go to Piccolo. We'll just have a nice dinner. She's like, okay, let's go. And she's getting over her nausea and we're eating. We got there kind of late. And all of a sudden, they close the open windows. They close all that. They crank up the music. And there's this Italian music just going, the place turns into a party. And our waiter, this like good looking waiter comes over. And my wife, you know, she was a dancer. And I know he could tell, you know,

a dancer's always a dancer. He comes over, she's nauseous, takes her hand. Next thing I I'm taking a video of her spinning like a top in front of the fire pit in front of the kitchen. And she's like really kicking ass. And she's like high kicks in this tool. And she sat back down. Her nausea was gone. We had a second course. That's so funny.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Italians are so wild. I was with my friend Shrey. We were having dinner at this pizza place called Napule. And they're all from Naples. And it was so funny. like just speaking Italian to somebody, like the waiters and stuff.

Yeah. Like you are instantly connected to somebody like instantly. Yes. He said, he was like, oh, it's so cool to think that like you're like in this like club. Like the fact that you just speak, obviously I look super Italian too, but he was like the fact that you just say something in Italian, it's like boom, doors open to you. Exactly. Never been opened otherwise. I know.

And I'm outside that door. Trying to say, grazie. Grazie. I think yay, yay. Yeah, like, grazie. Grazie, grazie, grazie, grace, grace, mele. Yeah, si. See.

There was a little like, yeah, you're trying. Yeah, no, grazie mire. A million thanks. Or a thousand thanks or whatever, yeah. Right, right. Well, man, well, this was great. This was the most informative Italian thing that I've had on the show so far. Yeah, 100%.

I want to do a show in the Food Network called Your Pasta Sucks, and we just travel around and learn how to actually make pasta. That would be amazing. You ever make Nyoki? Nyaki I've only made once, and it was a Roman yonaki, so it was not like the traditional yonokey. Okay. That's going to be my next thing, I think.

I love yonokey, but they're a bitch to make. They're hard. This is going to sound so highfalutin. I was in Tuscany with Aziz. and he had this villa and he has this woman come in. Her name was Graciella and she was like this old school Italian like Nona and she made us all of our meals. And so she was making Noki.

So I said to her as like, can I come in the kitchen and watch you? I want to watch you make yonoki. And this fucking old million years, she's like in our early hundreds. She started making yoki and it was so quick and fast and natural as she was doing it. I was like, how is this happening? It was so good.

Oh, my God. Butter sage sauce. Ooh. Oh, forget it. Oh, my God. All right. Well, we're going to wrap up right now. This was perfect.

This was absolutely perfect. I'm going to have you on again because I'm going to go find Guantali here in Los Angeles. Go to Italy. And then I think there's an Osteria, Angelica, Angelina. There's some Italian restaurant that they make a great Carbonara in L.A. I only eat there. Oh. All right.

Text me that. Yeah, I have to, I have to text my manager. She remembers the name of it. It's really good. All right, cool. Do you want to plug anything? Anything going on? You can listen to me on my podcast with Emma Willman called Inside the Closet.

And, yeah, catch me on Instagram naked. All right. I can't wait to see the new shots. Yeah. They're coming. All right. Thank you, Mattel. You're the best.

Sure, no big deal. All right. See ya. Bye.