How to Cook Delicious Italian Food

Fresh ingredients and simple recipes are the keys to the success of Italian cuisine. WatchMojo learns about mistakes people make while cooking pasta and tomato sauce.

How to Cook Delicious Italian Food Rebecca Brayton: Fresh ingredients and simple recipes are the key to Italian cooking. Hi, I’m Rebecca Brayton and welcome to watchmojo.com. And today, we’re going to get few tips on how to cook some key Italian dishes from Josee Di Stasio. Do you have any secrets to cooking the perfect tomato sauce? Josée di Stasio: If it’s in season, using Italian type of tomatoes. Peel the tomatoes and do the pasta sauce or keep the tomatoes in the freezer but if it’s not in season, you go for tomatoes you find in the can but you choose the right one, the Italian one and you will cook it. This is to start with if you have good tomatoes. And then after that, you add so little in it. A little bit of garlic if you feel like having garlic. A little bit of fresh basil at the end and then you have something. You don’t have to buy it already done because it’s so easy to do. Rebecca Brayton: And how long would you cook the tomatoes because you mentioned canned or fresh? Josée di Stasio:: If you freeze all Italian tomatoes, you will have more water so it has to cook a little bit if you use canned tomatoes but around 15 minutes would be fine and sometimes you just want to sauté and just infuse your oil and then you put it and you sauté the tomatoes and it’s enough and raw tomatoes. During the season like a raw tomatoes sauce is great too because you don’t want to change it. This beautiful taste, we have it for few weeks only you keep it raw. Rebecca Brayton: How do you make the pasta blend with the sauce batter? Josée di Stasio: You don’t put oil in the water. This is the first thing. You put oil in the water if you want to do some lasagna or bake pasta. You don’t have to rinse the pasta also because you want them to absorb a part of the sauce and you don’t put too much sauce. Italian don’t put like it is not the soup, it’s still a pasta. Rebecca Brayton: But I’ve always heard put olive oil or salt in the water. Josée di Stasio: No, you put a lot of salt because if you don’t cook your pasta in salted water, you cannot add salt after. It won’t absorb the taste. Rebecca Brayton: When do you use fresh versus dry herbs? Josée di Stasio: If you have fresh herb, you go first by the fresh herb, it is fresher. There is some fresh herb that you use at the beginning of the cooking process and the other one at the end. I would say basil, put it the end but if you have stronger herbs like rosemary or sage, you put it at the beginnings which can infuse and give the taste. Rebecca: Now, here’s something I’ve seen made and it looks very difficult. Do you have any secrets to making the perfect risotto? Josée di Stasio: Risotto is not difficult at all. You will coat your rice and you choose Vialone, Nano or you can use Arborio. Arborio is easy to find and then you coat it with oil or butter or mix of both and you can have onion also but depending because look you can have it sweet, you can have it salted, you can have it with mushroom, you can have it with meat, with sea food, whatever, so you decide after that. You decide what kind of broth you will take depending on what flavor do you want. Rebecca: Let’s finish off by talking about regional cuisine in Italy. Josée di Stasio: Certainly, it’s very rich. It’s so different from one region to another one and also in the region, it’s so different from one family and another one. Like they say in Italy, the keyword to do a good Italian cooking is prodotti, prodotti and prodotti so if you have a good product, it’s a good start.