Pasta Al Forno, My Italian Grandma’s Family Recipe | Nonna Knows Ep. 2

RECIPE BELOW!
Today I’m making my Nonna’s Pasta Al Forno recipe and having her rate how well I pulled it off from 1-10! Wish me buona fortuna as I try to make Nonna proud with some good old fashioned Italian cooking… and let me know what recipe you want from Nonna next!

NONNA’S INSTRUCTIONS
0:00 – Meet my Nonna (If you love Nonna, you won’t skip!).

1:01 – Prep your ingredients & equipment.

1:32 – Start a Pomodoro sauce (aka Sugo) by dicing ½ of a small onion and adding it to a large pot along with a generous drizzle of olive oil. Cook on medium heat for at least 5 minutes.

2:44 – Add 28 oz crushed tomatoes, 1 pinch of salt & 1/2 tsp of sugar to the same pot. Stir. Nonna note: Cook for at least 15 minutes. There must be very little liquid. And don’t add pepper yet!

3:24 – Start a Bechamel by melting 3 tbsp butter in a small pot then whisking in 3 tbsp flour and 1 ½ cups milk. Nonna note: Add a little bit of milk at a time until the sauce thickens.

4:50 – Reduce the heat to low and continue to whisk your Bechamel for an additional 2 minutes then remove from heat and add 1 generous pinch of salt plus a “little bitta” freshly grated nutmeg (about ⅛ tbsp).

5:09 – Prep your pasta water in a large pot by adding 2 generous pinches of salt to water and bringing it to a boil, then add 8 oz of dry Penne. Nonna note: Cook Penne for 2 minutes less than the packaging says to!

5:37 – Prep your baking dish by covering the inside of a large rectangular, oven-safe dish with room temperature butter.

6:19 – To your Sugo, add pepper to taste. Nonna note: Add an extra little knob of butter to your Sugo as well!

6:51 – Add a few fresh basil leaves to your Sugo if you have them! Nonna note: Remove basil leaves before serving.

7:07 – Strain pasta.

7:36 – Coat the bottom of your baking dish with Bechamel then add all of your Penne.

7:50 – Add your Sugo on top of the Penne then top everything with the rest of the Bechamel. Finish with a BOATLOAD of freshly grated Parmesan.

9:00 – Cook for 30 minutes uncovered at 180 degrees Celsius, then broil for an additional 10 minutes.

9:30 – Remove from the oven and let cool for at least 10 minutes.

9:49 – Plate your dish.

11:01 – Await the final verdict of Nonna’s rating!

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wow wow wow I’m ow Han this is Nana nose and today we’re making pasta alno CIA nana I used to spend all my Summers as a kid in Tuscany watching my nana cook learning from her eating some of the best food I’m going to be recreating some of those recipes she’s in Italy but luckily due to modern technology she’s just one phone call away everyone’s got a grandma I have a n they make the best food Nana’s recipes are very specific which is what makes them so special I’m on a mission to recreate them using her techniques and when I’m done I’m going to give her a call show her the results and she’ll give me a rating on a scale from 1 to 10 wish me luck K all right we’ve got all the ingredients here for her pasta Forno recipe crushed tomatoes this is for the base of the tomato sauce as well as onion a little Pinch of Sugar salt olive oil pepper simple tomato sauce don’t over complicated for the bamel we got milk butter flour we basically create a little Rue mix in a little nutmeg cannot have pasta fno without pasta she recommended penate just cuz that’s what she likes so that’s what we’re going to use we’re going to top everything off with some Pano all right so first step the pomodoro sauce the only thing we’re cutting today is this onion so when I was talking to Nana she mentioned how this typically is done with a Ragu bolog Sauce but I remember eating this many times with a tomato sauce as well [Music] it’s a lot less work than a meat sauce and it’s going to taste just as good so a little bit of oil enough to really coat the bottom of a pot it could probably let the oil heat up but just add a Sizzle sound It’s cool cuz everyone really makes their sauce a very different way so my dad he uses garlic [Music] see it’s just so different how these come out so his is more rich and just very flavorful whereas this is super light now for tomatoes that is the next step and now this is where she Seasons so we go in with a nice pinch of salt and the key ingredient here to counteract that acidity of the tomatoes one thing we’re trying to do is really reduce the liquid nna made a point about making sure your sauce is relatively thick because we’re adding another sauce so you don’t want everything to be like swimming in sauce and being too liquidy so we’ll let this go for 15 minutes we’ll Now work on the bamel for bashel super simple it’s just equal parts flour butter and then we streamline milk milk until we get the consistency we like maybe 2 tablespoons I’ll go one more so 3 tbspoon of butter we’ll let that melt and then we’re going to add 3 tspoons of flour that’s how equal parts work I think the thing with bamel I remember eating it all the time as a kid I would say this is Italy’s closest thing to like white sauce alfredo sauce isn’t a real thing we have our flour here now obviously you could measure this to make sure you’re getting the equal parts but when I asked her I was like are you measuring this she’s like come on what kind of question is that she uh kept referencing we’re making Donna’s recipe we’re going to cook it how she does it so one tablespoon is two three give or take and once that’s in we just you’re creating that sort of paste R here and now we’ll just add a little bit of milk with 3 tbspoon of butter I’m probably going for 1 and 1/2 cups of milk alter sight baby let’s go maybe another half2 cup I me you can see though it’s thickening up very quickly a little bit more Let it cook n the said salt and then a little bit of fresh grated nutmeg as well yeah so that’s the consistency you’re kind of looking for is kind of like a thick gravy and once we cut the heat as well it’ll cool down a little bit thicken up so there we go our two sauces bamel tomato sauce while those two sauces heat up and warm we can get our pasta water ready one important note she made is the packaging says Cooks in 11 minutes we are baking this dish so obviously it’s going to be cooking even more and uh non this tip was we got 11 we’re going to be cooking this in 9 minutes and now we’re just chilling well not really we can actually prep our baking dish so n no’s mentioning we’re going to opt for the butter method it’s a lot tastier than parchment paper this is not a technique that Nana told me she does but I’m just going to use my fingers here because I can and I think it’s just an easy way to spread room temp butter okay see we probably could have used a bigger one but the one I had literally broke as I was trying to get it out of the cabinet so we’re going to use this smaller size but this is a great dish for feeding a bunch of people it really reminds me of just my childhood we ate this all the time now add the pepper and a little not a secret not a tip she adds a little knob of butter no my there’s very little things that adding butter to that will not make it taste good Nana knows what she’s doing with that uh one thing I think I forgot to ask her and I’m questioning no basil I don’t know if that’s cuz she doesn’t do it or she forgot let’s see if she answers [Music] okayi pasta’s done let’s assemble boom boom so these tools are very dear and near to my heart both of these are from my great grandma and these are both gifts from Nana herself she gave me this last year on my birthday and engraved my name on it they’re super old that’s all I know so we’re going to going to use this the layering this is very critical and getting this dish to come out great after a lot of back and forth bana we have Bal as the first layer get a spoonful in there coat the entire bottom next up add the penni wow this dish actually worked perfectly ah don’t use your hand now we layer in our beautiful sauce I think this sauce would make n proud she said make sure it’s not liquidy AF she didn’t phrase it like that but pretty thick I’m not going to lie I’m a little skeptical because every time I eat this I feel like the pasta is just mixed in with the sauce logically that would make a lot of sense cuz I feel like underneath that top layer you have noodles that are not saued but maybe when this Cooks It kind of seeps through we’ll find out this never works this perfectly I usually have extra noodles or extra sauce we’ve got nna on our side so everything is going to work perfectly cover the entire top with this bad boy no wasting every little bit now we’ll just go edge to edge here I feel like a lot of recipes people see online add mozzarella with each layer but we’re not making a lasagna here this is pasta alno this looks beautiful now the final step very very important we haven’t added an ounce of cheese to anything so we’re going to make up for that with a batlo of Parmesan all over there we go this looks pretty awesome to me going into the oven at 180° C for 30 minutes and then we’re going to broil for the last 10 oh goodbye wow wow wow so this is literally with just the bamal and Parmesan we’ve gotten this crazy crust seeing this is just Peak childhood typically I would say let this cool for like at least 10 minutes I’m so impatient so we’re going to call n up and see what the inside of this bad boy looks like [Music] [Music] ciao [Music] for okay [Music] [Music] B okay okay well that was great we’re getting there we’re still making Nana proud but just goes to the show Nana knows [Music]