Nick DiGiovanni - I Cooked Against My Cameraman

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

So many of you have asked me to cook with Manny. So, I surprised him and cooked against him.

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The conditions is applicable. Bejewen aboard via Rai. Embarked and profite. Embarked and relax. Ciroat, bookine. Oh, so, and profite. Via Rai, the voice that we love. I haven't done a cooking competition since Master Chef.

Hurry up, Nick. Hazel. Yeah, come on. Are you kidding me? Run, come on. But today, I'm feeling competitive. Mani, get over here. Huh?

For those of you that don't know, Mani is my trustee cameraman. Mani drove separately and gotten a small car Mani don't miss it. Mani, what's blanching? You're fired. Mani, you're fired. You're fired.

I'm not kidding this time. Why his hair cut like this? It's like the hair on side of his head run away and meeting on his chin. He's all right to rest to envoyed. I think he's very good. Today, Mani will be cooking against me. What? Mani, grab that cutting board under the table because you're gonna need it.

Now how tomorrow we make two completely random mystery boxes and neither of us has any idea what's inside. What the fuck? I'm gonna let Manny take his pick because I've had plenty of mystery box challenges. in the past from Gordon Ramsey himself. It is a little hard to concentrate cooking in front of Alessandra. It's hard to focus on a radish when there's a supermodel standing there. So I'm not feeling too nervous right now. Alright, I'm gonna go with this one.

Can I open it? Not yet. For the record, we've had tens of thousands of requests for many to be in one of the videos, particularly cooking with me after he's learned and watched so much. And before we open the boxes, one last thing. For those of you that don't know, we're trying to catch up to Gora Ramsey's subscriber count right now. And we have a long road ahead.

So go smack that like button and make sure you don't forget to subscribe either. Don't forget to subscribe. You're fire. Alright, here we go. I really have no idea what the fuck is in here. Okay, let's see that oh. All right? We got it. We got another one actually There's two of them. We got some garlic Osmo and some actual real garlic right here. It's a nice pair. I don't know what I'm gonna do with this. We got a ball of red wine right here and then Mani's favorite we got a big nice piece of this is a I don't know this is a color should know this Wait, maybe there's a hint on here. Maybe that's a Chateaubriand we've cooked one of these like 50 times

Apparently this is called a Chateau Breon. I should have known that all right. There's one more thing in here I don't I don't know if this is. I think I would have to wear this while I cooked today. You're doing it the wrong way, man. Are you serious? I look ripped in this. Alright, I'm actually really excited here because I miss mystery box challenge. What the heck?

My first ingredient is cooked salted duck eggs. Where the fuck do we even find these? Second, I have a nice block of cream cheese. It looks kind of beat up. More duck eggs. There's so many duck eggs, many. We've never even had duck eggs in the kitchen here. And then just this big thing of flour.

I got kind of a boring box. Check into the table. Is this part of a little? my box. What is this? It's really cold. I still see nothing. What the hell is this? It's king crab. Where did we even get a king crab right now? He's moving. I'm so glad I didn't pick this box. I have no idea I cook that thing. That's all you. This is like a full on lively, lively king. Clearly the main ingredient in my box is this king crab. Many word for a challenge. We are. So there you have. Today we'll have an intense showdown between me and man

with surf versus turp. To begin, I had to square up against mani and things got a little bit heated. Hey guys guys guys guys guys guys let's get our 60 minute timer started and our time starts Yeah, first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna open this up I'm not gonna cook this entire thing that wouldn't make sense obviously just cut into the meat like immediately. What are you doing? Oh turn it over now. All right I'm not gonna cut a nice piece out of this nice little piece of flame and yon. I'm gonna use this red wine in here and make a red wine reduction with a little bit of garlic then I'm gonna take these potatoes and make a little potato puree and put that under the steak and then finish it obviously with some osmo garlic salt that's a plan I hope it worked out today I'll be making king crab raviolo's with a beautiful fresh king crab leg right next to it

I've never used a duck egg before for a pasta but we're gonna find out how it is I always feel so bad killing the king crabs but I'm sorry mr. crabs I'm just kind of prepping the meat here before I cut into it there's a lot of silver skin you can see it like right here and I'm just gonna trim this as much as I can It's so mangled. It looks like you killed someone. Mani, it seems kind of unfair that I have a king crab. And man, it just has to sear off one piece of beef. I'm gonna cut in, I'm gonna get my flay out of this pretty soon. I just wanna make sure that it's as good as I can get it.

I picked a really good section of it. There's not too much fat. You took off all the silver skin. He gashed the whole center of it. Ruined the fillet immediately. Whoa, man. So at this point, I'm gonna be taking off all of my crab's legs. There's gonna be water and juice everywhere.

At a full eight pounds, hence why this costs $800. This crab is way too big to fit into a pot. Alright, mani, I've already broken down my king crappers. I'm moving kind of quick, man. We only have 45 minutes left, so you might want to be quick. I've got my boiling water. Time to cook that king crab. I'm gonna steam these legs.

Beautiful. All right, so I'm thinking about actually just cutting this piece off. I'm not gonna have as big of the piece, but I think it's a more perfect piece. This might be found upon in the wagging community or Nick, but I'm just- All right. I'm gonna cut through.

I think my perfect piece is gonna be right here. There you go. Now this is gonna our nice filet mignon. No, it's not. Please tell me you're joking. Please tell me you're joking. And you're messing with you or no. No, not. This is the steak that you just cut out of this. Yeah. Do you know how tall a filaminia is? This is probably one house

What are you doing? You need a big tall piece. What are you doing? Sorry chef. I should have let him use that. It's ridiculous My crab is going in. I need to start working on my pasta or I am not going to make the cut. We're less than 40 minutes left here. So I really have to move quick. This is gonna take a while to cook as well. So I'm feeling kind of stressed right now. All right. All right. We're going for a second try here. This wasn't good enough. So I'm gonna go for this entire trunk right here. I kind of cleaned it off. I kind of cleaned it off. I think it's good enough, so I'm gonna go in. This is our new piece. Pretty substantially bigger than the first one. And now I'm gonna move on to the red wine sauce.

Now I'm gonna come back and cook this later. So I don't wanna hurt Mani's feelings, but look what he's doing here. He has first made one that's way too short. Now he's made one that's far too tall. I'd cut off probably about this amount off of there and have a really, really nice steak. But I'm gonna let him do his thing.

This is his dish. So the king crab has this crazy amount of liquid. I have to start getting working on my posture. I'm gonna run out of time. All right, so I'm gonna get started on the red wine reduction sauce. So I found some extra stuff the fridge I found some shallots some butter and some rosemary I'm gonna start by

playing up some shallots kind of finely and mani this is the last hint I think I'm gonna give you today you need to de-glaze your pan with the red wine that's all I'm gonna say and I think when I de-glaze I'm gonna do that after I I tosses and some butter nice man I am getting to work on my pasta to keep things fair I'm not gonna measure out anything I mean I typically don't anyways but I want to level the playing field here a little bit so I'm gonna go on with some flour I'm gonna dump this onto the center of my cutting board make my nice little well in the middle and then into that well I'll crack a few of my nice duck eggs I've got a couple cuts from the king crab but I made it out alive

I'm gonna heat up a little bit this up a little bit of a little bit I'm gonna a little bit of a little bit I'm gonna a little bit of a little bit of a little bit I'm gonna add the f***in now I'm gonna get the knob with this butter off this much don't need a ton I'm gonna let this melt in the pan a little bit before I toss my shallots in and I'm gonna turn the heat down a little bit I don't want to brown the butter but actually it might be kind of nice now I'm gonna add the shallotton and you clearly have not paid any attention All the many times that we've made steak. He could not be doing things more backwards. My pasta is coming together. I think the duck yolk Pasta dough might actually work out. I really do Alright my pasta was finished. I'm gonna go and rest this in the fridge about 15 minutes and in the meantime my king crab is complete I don't want to overcook it because I'm gonna continue cooking it when I make the pasta and we want it to be perfect

I'm gonna add red wine to the glaze and then I'm gonna let it reduce into like a nice thick red wine sauce that I'm gonna use later What are you doing? So we haven't been able to find a wine opener so forcing me to try other methods I might honestly just have to push the cork in. Alright, this seems to be working. It's not the ideal method, but we wanna go with it. I wanna wanna take a quick look at the stations here. I have my neatly wrapped pasta dough, my king crab is cooked, then look what's happening over here.

So I haven't even really started my sauce yet because I've been trying to find a wine open for like 20 minutes. And we only have about 25, 30 minutes flat. I'm gonna keep this up, I'm gonna kinda get this the temperature again, and then I'm gonna flambay the sauce with the red wine. Bombay, give me some, let's go.

It's kind of bubbling. Cooked a little more than I would like to, but we're just gonna cut. kind of go with it. It's not hot enough I don't think for Flambay yet. Flambay is almost done. So a little bit of filling on the way till this kind of burns off. I think that was my first successful Bombay. Alright, now I'm just gonna let this reduce.

Alright, so I'm gonna chop a few chives up. This was actually something that I learned in my first restaurant job. You have to be nice and quick with them. And these don't have to be too fine. So I'm kinda whipping right through it here just because I'm gonna put these into the overall mix of the king crab. I'm almost going for a crab rangoon type raviolo. So into my bowl of cream cheese.

And then I'm gonna have that nice Duck egg in the middle just the yolk and it's gonna pop open and still across the plate as a sauce as you come into the raviola All right, they've kind of been roasted me about how messy my cooking station is So I'm gonna take the pieces of meat that I'm not using and tossing behind me clean this up a little bit and then we get started with potatoes I am beginning to cut into my beautiful king crab leg key here with king crab is trying to really carefully open it up and keep it nice and clean It's a really kind of delicate art many should feel lucky that he didn't get the king crab because to break open and cook a king crab with fresh pasta and all that kind of stuff within an hour is no easy feet So as you can see that came out nice and clean and I actually want to lay a full king crab leg on my final dish right next to the eggo raviolo All right now that I've kind of cleaned off my cooking station here. I'm gonna take both of my potatoes raw with the skins on and toss them in the boiling water behind

Here we're here. Here's two Alright I've cooked potatoes before but I honestly I don't remember how long I'm supposed to cook them so don't tell like I'm gonna I'm gonna googly it So I'll chop this up nice and fine just into small little pieces where you can still get that nice texture from the crab But where it's not gonna kind of overpower the raviolo and be too much. I'll toss that into my bowl here Perfect. It's okay if I bring a little crab juice with me. That's what I want here. So I've had this on a very very low simmer because I don't want to burn this the sauce is really starting to thicken. It's a lot thicker than we started. I'm gonna keep on going so it's a little bit thicker and then I'm gonna purify it with this chin-law right here and put this in here now I'm gonna use a spatula and just kind of press it through here I have to say it makes me proud to cook with Manny after all the things that I've tried to teach him I hope easily soaked a few things up but so far honestly I don't I don't I mean this this reduction smells and looks okay but if you move it You can see it's not properly emulsified. It would be what we call a broken sauce. I guess it's broken

So it's on so we currently have 23 minutes left on the clock. I'm gonna add just a few seasonings into this but I want to keep it nice and simple All these flavors should speak for themselves. I want to let the king crab do the talk now Now I'm gonna start prepping the steak here I'm gonna keep the seasoning simple I'm gonna use some freshly ground black pepper some flaky white some roasted garlic Osmo salt as well Then I'm gonna take some of this garlic. I'm gonna put on the steak seasoning properly I like that something to roll this up And then pick up the rest of the salt on the board and then we go on with some pepper you need about five times more seasoning on the piece of meat there

Alright, so my pasta dough is done. I'm gonna go ahead and begin rolling it out but here's the thing I want to keep this competition fair so I'm gonna be using a rolling pin to hand roll all my pasta as well No machines today. I just check this number. We only have 18 minutes left. I'm gonna try to get this potatoes done in time and then move on cooking my steak into my state Let's we have some moldy garlic definitely not gonna use that well use some of this nothing's in my favorite today really kind of unfair to be honest Please follow you back to take a look at mannie steaming his potatoes no lid the The water's only about halfway up. We have no idea what's going on in here. The potatoes are probably more confused than many. All right, I've gone on a lid.

I'm gonna add it to the pot. Nick told me that it's gonna help a lot, so. Alright, if you kinda see this, it's separated. Since we waited so long too, I also burn the shallas, everything about the sauce is pretty fun. So I'm gonna redo this. Hopefully the second time is better than this. It's not that hard to be it.

It is extremely hard to roll out fresh pasta. It has to be nice and clear and thin through the center, and I'm doing this all by hand. So I'm gonna take my ring mold and cut out a nice ring of my pasta dough. We need two of these to make the perfect raviolo. So for my raviolo, I'm gonna go on with a nice big scoop

of that delicious filling that I made. Put that right in the middle. Then using a duck egg, I'll make a nice little well in the center and then I'll go right in with my duck egg to the center, paint all the edges of my raviola just so that I can seal it all up. And then on goes my lid. Maybe you have 15 minutes left.

The potatoes should be done in theory. I hope not f*** up. There's one potato. Poke it looks good. I think it's okay. There's my timer. I put it in for 25 minutes, but it also wasn't steaming correctly

for like a good 18 minutes of that. I don't know if it's gonna be okay. Alright, now we're gonna see if this actually cooked totally through. After 25 minutes, this life, what is you wrong with that? I wanna get another potato. All right, so this has been like, I don't know, in here for another two minutes longer than another one.

So maybe we'll have a little bit better luck. Oh, fuck. Oh, this is a little bit softer. We'll take off the parts of the potato that are cooked here, because I don't have a lot of time left and we'll leave the inner part of the potato that's not cooked. It's out of this.

You guys got 13 minutes left. How you feeling with only 13 minutes left me? I'm making extra ones. I'm literally having so much fun over here. This to me is one of the most exciting videos We've ever done. All right, I just added some butter in here. Should melt because it's still really hot.

Alright, so you stick of butter. Try number two. Hopefully don't fuck it up this time. A little bit of oil in. The butter doesn't burn. Shouts in here. I'm not gonna bombay at this time. Just don't have time for that.

I'm gonna try to get the sauce right. Okay, now I'm on the red wine in. Here we go. Let's way. I'm just hoping I can get it to emulsify correctly. It's finally time to start cooking my raviolos. I'm gonna go in with some of that crabby water. I'm not losing any of this flavor with my bitch.

That is what I'm just. The pasta is gonna cook in. I'm gonna pour this sauce in this bowl. Try not to spill because I've been spilling all day long. Alright, before I took the steak, I'm gonna get a couple of things. Now I'm gonna use the base of steak. I have some brogolic here, rosemary. Got my steak all season.

Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add some oil. I'm gonna add like half an inch of oil in here. And wait till it's really hot. What Nick's pop me. No, not half an inch. More like two centimeters. We only have six minutes left. He has not even started a steak.

I can tell you right now, I'm going to have to give me any extra time. All right, I think the oil is hot enough. I really want this to be really hot to get a nice sear on both sides so wish me luck here we go Actually really proud of you name that was good now let's see if you pay attention I'm just gonna let this sit for like two minutes on each side and let it cook all the way through I'm just honestly worried about either cooking it too much Or not cooking it enough as you see that's a really nice crust You can see one of the steps he missed he didn't push the steak down so it's not fully crisp and brown everything bubbled up here and it essentially steamed this section of the beef He didn't pay attention maybe I can get that right on this side so I'm gonna start

I'm gonna start pushing it down now. For the record, what you're looking at there is probably a $50 to $75 filet mignon. So if Manny messes that up, that's just throwing money right out the window. Alright, let's check out this other side. I think we can safely say that this side is way better than our first attempt here. It's fantastic. I'm gonna flip it over and try to improve this side a little bit. Happy future.

If you're doing anything? I'm still waiting. We are past the time of the hour block. We have three judges that are coming. I don't want to finish my dish and have my egg yolk raviola not work, so I have to wait. I would have been done 15, 20 minutes ago. Look at this. He started cooking his steak, the main element in his dish, after the time ran out.

Mani, what is this? What is this? I'm not using it. We've fucking wasted the most expensive half. As you remember, like the first time we did this, the other side was bad. I think this is a much better improvement. Look at that. That's a crispy steak. So that is now what a lot of people would call burnt. All I know is this.

If the judges cut Mady steak open and it's not a perfect done-ness level, that's it for Manny. What are you doing? You're gonna know. Too much. The trash gets smoking in. Now I'm gonna base the steak I got some butter in some garlic and some time about that. It smells really good. Alright now I'm just gonna continue to base this. Alright to finish off my dish I'm gonna go in with my in yolk raviolo's which have to be cooked perfectly

For this to work these are some of the hardest things to make in cooking I'll put my plate right in the center and I'm gonna keep this simple in the back I have some brown butter going This is perfect brown butter which is gonna help to finish off my raviolo if these are not cooked perfectly My dish will have no sauce and be a complete failure and I can't lose to many today once my brown butter is hot I'm gonna take that raviolo Place it right into that brown butter and let it fits. Give that thing a whole bath of brown butter. And after this, we sit it down for a second to rest.

Mani, the judges are waiting outside. We have to finish our dishes right now. We have to clean our workstations because they have no idea who made what dish, except for Marwell who set up the mystery boxes. And then it'll be time to taste. Mani, officially, I'm giving us three minutes each to finish everything. We'll say, in the phone, that, all the world can be a guy of the finance.

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to you need to now. I've 15 seconds left. Looks like an ice cream. And with that,

our dishes are complete. And they both look pretty I am good. Manny, I'm really proud of you for the look of the steak right now. Thank you. I'm really proud of you.

Time to bring the judges. Are you? So here we have our three judges right here on this side. We have a filaminon with mashed potatoes and a red wine reduction. And over here, we have a king crab egg yolk raviolo with a piece of king crab leg right next to it. At this time, Manny and I are going to walk out. Let the judges discuss and we'll come back to find out who's the winner. All right, what we're doing first?

We're going to go for this one, I think. We're going to see if the egg yolk flows. Woo! It's a pretty decent flow. All right time for the steak moment of truth super easy to cut through who who's looking good now we have to see if taste it got to find that a well-rounded bite here not really good the yolk there's so creamy the crab's like super fresh oh it's so tender and the the crust it gets like a nice thick crust you can help from the side

it's like almost crispy that's music my ear that is really good way though you'll notice the crust they didn't steer the edges cheers cheers okay yeah yeah it's gonna be tough It goes so well seasoned. Like melts in your mouth. Definitely the steak is the stand-up. Mashed potatoes. Definitely like kind of like a hardier mashed potatoes. The mashed potatoes don't do it for me.

No, I don't really like them at all. This mashed potatoes for like five people right now. The rowel layers together, I feel like it was a much more cooked for a dish. But man, that like, like, filet really stood out just on its own. Should you get final votes? Yeah. You ready? All right.

All right. Anyone can. That doesn't mean that it's right. It's okay. It's fine, man. Five hot, man. I was extremely proud of how Mani did today and frankly I actually thought I lost. Who voted for my dish?

I thought this is anonymous. I did. You too. Benji, why did you like Mani's steak better? I'm actually curious because it looked fantastic. I got you. That steak was just unbelievable. So it sounds like in addition to this dish here being really a strong dish, the mashed potatoes

put Mani under. As a punishment, Manny has to clean all the dishes. But Manny, it's been a pleasure. Thank you, Nick. Tell us all below if you liked having Manny cooking today instead of filming. Mani was far better at cooking than I thought he would be given that he never cooked and he had to be nervous at the end One last time make sure to subscribe so we can catch up to Gordon smack a like on the video if not for me for manny's cooking today and happy cooking