From the telly to your belly, recreating recipes from television
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Hello Bite Clubbers! Welcome to our brand new series ‘Gobblebox’, where we show you how to recreate recipes from the small screen, so you can bring the telly to your belly, and indulge along with your favourite TV characters. Often cited as the best TV series of all time, THE SOPRANOS is the food diary of gluttonous Italian-American mobster Tony Soprano, patriarch of the Soprano Family (that’s family with a big F).
The Sopranos is the show which revolutionised television and paved the way for high budget, cinematic programming, and the trope of the antihero protagonist on the small screen. Without Tony Soprano, there would be no Walter White, nor anyone with the surname Roy. Fuggedaboudid.
Food is a character in its own right in the HBO classic, with cuisine centric dialogue in almost every scene and wiseguys constantly shown chowing down. The continual food references provide colour to the world of The Sopranos but the food focused symbolism pushes beyond window dressing. It’s escapism from the horrors of the waste management business. It’s gender and social politics through the depiction of those who cook and those who are served. It’s indulgence without fear of consequence, a philosophy the made man lives by. Hey, even wiseguys need therapy.
After gabagool, probably the most referenced food stuff in the show is ziti. Hard to come by in the UK, ziti is similar to our beloved penne, though it has flat rather than angled ends. Ziti is also usually 'lisce' meaning it is smooth. In this iteration however, I'm using penne and going with the 'rigate' version, meaning it has ridges. I prefer to use rigate pasta as the ridges allow the pasta to cling onto sauce better than their smooth cousins.
pictured: penne rigate, penne ziti lisce and a ziti lunghi
Baked ziti features in the first episode of The Sopranos, so it felt like the perfect dish for our first episode. You can find the written recipe below, but if you haven’t watched the episode yet, be sure to check it out.
Mangiamo.
GO TO:
BAKED ZITI
Features in The Sopranos, Series 1, Episode 1 “The Sopranos” at 17 mins 34 seconds.
INGREDIENTS
RAGU
1 carrot
2 celery stalks
1 medium onion
2 garlic cloves - minced
2 tbsps tomato puree
250g pork sausages
250g beef mince
1 bay leaf
1tsp fennel seeds
½ tsp dried basil
A glass of red wine (about 150 ml)
400g passata
500 ml beef stock
THE BAKE
500g ziti (can be substituted with penne or rigatoni)
100 g ricotta
250 g smoked scamorza - cubed
METHOD
Prepare a sofritto. Dice the carrot, celery and onion into small pieces of roughly equal size.
Add a good glug of olive oil to a large pot on medium heat, and add in the vegetables. Cook for around 20 mins until softened and lightly caramelised. Add a splash of water to the pan if it starts to catch.
Remove the sofritto and place aside. Add a little more olive oil to the pan and return to the heat, cranking up to a medium high heat. Remove the sausage meat from the skins and add to the pot, along with the beef mince. nb: the combination of pork and beef will ensure a moist and rich ragu.
Once browned, add the minced garlic, along with the tomato puree, bay leaf, fennel seeds and dried basil. Cook for a couple of minutes until the garlic is softened.
Add the cooked vegetables back into the pot, along with the wine. Bring to a simmer and reduce the wine by about half.
Once the wine has reduced, add the passata and the beef stock. Season generously with salt and pepper, cover the pot and reduce to a medium-low heat.
Simmer the ragu covered for 1.5 hrs - 2 hours checking and stirring regularly to avoid it catching. Uncover for the final 15 mins to reduce the sauce.
Season and cool the ragu before assembling the pasta bake.
ASSEMBLING THE BAKE
Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160°C fan.
Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and add the pasta. Cook the pasta for half the time indicated on the package instructions. nb: You want the pasta to be super al dente here as it will finish cooking in the oven.
Drain the half-cooked pasta, reserving some pasta water for later. Return the pasta to the pot and add the cooled ragu, mixing together. You want the sauce to get inside the tubes and coat and fill the pasta nicely.
Add a little reserved pasta water to loosen the sauce. The pasta will absorb a lot of liquid as it continues to cook in the oven so, the sauce should be loose at this stage.
Place a third of the pasta/ragu mix into the baking dish. Add a third of the ricotta in small dollops across the top, and scatter over a third of the cubed scamorza.
Repeat until you create three layers.
Bake uncovered for 30 mins until the cheese is crisp and golden on top.
Cool for 10 - 15 mins before serving.
