Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I'm an Italian American,
and I was lucky enough to be married in beautiful Tuscany,
so this week, I'm sharing with you guys
five meals of what I call Tuscan-American food.
Up first, I'm making an American favorite, Tuscan style --
beef and pork Italian chilli.
Then I'm gonna turn your typical weeknight chicken
into something special with lemon and lots of rosemary.
For our midweek meal, hearty enough to please everyone --
zucchini-tomato sauce with fat spaghetti.
Then it's one for the meat lovers --
slow-simmered beef with potatoes.
And to wrap up the week,
another rich and satisfying pasta supper --
my baked pumpkin and cream pasta.
Five great Tuscan-American meals,
up to a week's worth of food, done in just a day.
-- Captions by VITAC --
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.
Hey, guys. Welcome to "Week in a Day."
So, this "Week in a Day,"
you know how much everybody loves Italian-American food?
Well, this is Tuscan-American food.
And what that means,
there's some of my favorite flavors from Tuscany --
lots of rosemary, lots of garlic,
and very few basic ingredients.
They're gonna keep rotating into five decidedly different meals.
On the American side of things,
I'm starting with an American classic --
a big ol' pot of chilli.
So we're gonna turn this into a Tuscan-American chilli
in a few different ways.
I started out with a mix of beef and pork, a pound of each.
I've crumbled up and browned up in olive oil
because I wanted the chilli to taste like cinghiale --
wild boar.
You don't see a lot of cinghiale here in America,
so I think the closest flavor for me
is to combine beef and pork.
So, two pounds of beef and pork
I've crumbled up and browned up in olive oil in my chilli pot.
Over here -- rosemary and garlic.
We're gonna use them over and over again.
You know, what I love about Tuscan cooking
is that it's largely peasant food,
so it's affordable to make.
Lots of beans, use of stale bread,
but when it comes to flavors, they like big and bold.
Like, rosemary is a strong,
you know, almost piney, very, very fragrant herb to use.
And they use it over and over and over.
Grilled meats --
they're always just garlic, olive oil, rosemary, done.
So it's very simple cuisine to learn
because there's not a lot going on.
And if you're gonna cook for the entire week in one day,
pick meals that will overlap a lot of the same ingredients
while still providing meals that are very different
from night to night.
Throw the rosemary down in there.
I'm gonna spice up the chilli
with a couple of palmfuls of chilli powder.
And always, in cinghiale sauce, they use a little bit of clove,
so I'm gonna put in a couple of pinches of ground clove.
Don't go too overboard with the cloves.
A little salt and pepper.
Stir that.
And now we're just gonna chop and drop...
...the big ol' onion.
Chop it and drop it.
Now a couple of ribs of celery.
Chop and drop.
Carrot.
Gonna throw in a large, fresh bay leaf.
I love fresh laurel.
And then we'll just grate in that garlic.
Four large cloves.
Lots of garlic, lots of rosemary.
Gonna see that over and over again in these five meals.
Now, give this a good stir.
And then, to help the vegs sweat out a little faster,
I'm gonna let this cook partially covered,
stirring occasionally until the veggies get nice and tender.
I think the reason everybody loves Italian food so much
is that it sort of brings everybody to the table faster.
If they know they're gonna get pasta
and they're gonna eat big, everybody is, like, there.
Okay, once your veggies are sweat out, guys,
stir in a couple of squirts of tomato paste --
a few tablespoons.
Give that a stir.
You got to kind of wake it up.
Your nose will know when you've incorporated it.
[ Sniffs ] Mmm. Can smell it.
Now we're gonna add a couple of cups of beef stock.
There we go.
One can, 15 ounces, of diced or crushed tomato.
And one cup of passata or tomato sauce.
Passata is a tomato puree
made with really ripe tomatoes that haven't been cooked.
If they don't have it in your store,
you can certainly substitute tomato sauce,
which would be a little bit sweeter.
So, now this is basically done, you guys.
You just cool this down completely.
The night you want to serve, if it's a little tight,
add a little more stock to it,
bring it up to a bubble over moderate heat,
stirring occasionally.
At the same time, in another pot,
heat up three cups of chicken stock
for some quick-cooking polenta.
Polenta is such a nice balance to something spicy and hearty
like a chilli.
And it's another food you get a lot of, of course, in Tuscany.
So, it's a three-to-one ratio for the quick-cooking polenta.
Grab a whisk.
The polenta will mass in about two to three minutes.
You know, just like people get bored
of the same ol' chicken dishes,
people get bored of the same ol' side dishes
like, you know, plain rice or mashed potatoes again.
Polenta's a great go-to.
You can cook it as quickly as three minutes,
and it's creamy and delicious and very satisfying.
Now, this is just about there.
When it starts to mass and gets really thick,
then you stir in a little bit of butter and some grated cheese.
I love sharp, tangy pecorino cheese with the spicy chilli.
Little pepper.
And some pecorino.
Perfect.
And you take this delicious,
creamy, cheesy polenta.
Let me find a little spoonula to help me here.
Pour it into the bowl.
Oh, heaven.
And then I just sort of spin the bowl a bit
to kind of make a well of that polenta.
And then we're gonna fill it up
with our Tuscan-style chilli.
And this, guys, is our first
of five Tuscan-American meals.
Up next, chicken breast with lemon,
and rosemary's back, right after this.
Welcome back, guys.
I'm working on what I call Tuscan-American foods this week.
Five of them.
Now, what I said to you about Tuscan food is so true.
You see a lot of the same ingredients used in many dishes,
like garlic, rosemary, red wine,
carrots, celery, onion -- you know, root vegetable.
Now, we've already made a very different dish --
a Tuscan-American-style chilli with polenta.
Now we're moving on to a dish
that has totally different flavor to it.
Lemon -- lots of lemon.
The zest and juice of a lemon, some dry red wine.
So, we're using the same ingredients over and over --
easy shopping list --
yet each meal is decidedly different from night to night.
I'm just running my knife
through a few ribs of celery here.
Now, this is a very unusual cooking method
from Tuscany from back in the day.
We're going to take raw chicken -- bone in, skin on.
I have six bone in, skin on ***,
or I would buy six legs and thighs attached.
So I've got the meat sitting in a cold pan,
and we're going to add raw vegetable --
the onion, carrot, celery, garlic,
rosemary, lemon zest and juice,
olive oil, salt, pepper --
and then we're gonna let that hang out in the fridge
for three to four hours.
Then we're gonna bring it back to room temperature
before we start browning it on the stove.
Very unusual, but it sure is simple.
I collected this set of cookbooks from Tuscany,
and I love to buy them from several decades back
so I can learn how things were done back in the day.
And there's a couple of really unusual cooking methods.
This is one of them.
Four cloves of garlic, sliced.
I find in Tuscan cooking, it's very rustic,
very few ingredients,
and they don't mince up the garlic.
They usually -- slices or crushed garlic --
big chunks of things.
Flavorful, basic, stick-to-your-ribs.
It's very unpretentious food.
Several sprigs of rosemary.
Good three or four tablespoons, at least.
Rosemary goes so beautifully with lemon.
You've probably made one type of roast chicken or another
with rosemary and with lemon.
If you use wine in that recipe, use a white wine.
Well, most all of the recipes I've read of Tuscan cuisine
are dry red wines,
so just because you're using lemon
doesn't mean you have to use white wine.
Big ol' carrot.
Looking good.
Let's peel him up.
Okay. Need my zester for the lemon.
Lemon zest.
Just take the color off,
and if I know I'm gonna be zesting a lemon,
I spend an extra few pennies
and I buy a good-quality organic lemon
'cause I'm, you know, I'm eating the skin.
Now, before you juice the lemon,
press down on it and roll it on the counter a bit
so you can get the juices flowing.
And then squeeze the lemon cut-side up
so that the seeds stay with the lemon.
Of course, the lemon will start breaking the chicken down.
Let's get all of our veg in there.
Kind of mix it up.
And then a liberal douse of e.v.o.o.
Salt and pepper.
Now we're gonna give this a turn...
to coat and combine.
And then settle the chicken in there skin-side down.
Now, when you take it out of the refrigerator,
you're going to bring the chicken
back to room temperature,
then place it over medium-high heat,
again, skin-side down.
Lid.
Refrigerator.
See you in a few hours.
When you start your Tuscan chicken,
start it earlier in the day
'cause you got a big pocket of time --
three or four hours --
while the chicken starts to break down in some lemon juice
with the veg you're gonna cook it with.
So I'm gonna add about a cup of dry wine to the pan.
The chicken's been browning for about 20 minutes.
Again, bring it back to room temperature first,
then put it over medium-high heat.
Once I add the wine, I'm gonna flip the chicken over.
We started him skin-side down.
And now we're gonna add a little tomato paste into this,
but the pan is so tight, the pan is so crowded,
I can't really get the paste in there
to work it out and into the sauce,
so I'm just gonna take a few tablespoons of paste
and add a little boiling water to it
to bring it back to life,
and then we'll just pour that in.
You don't need a ton.
Maybe a quarter to a third of a cup.
Just to loosen him up and wake him up.
There we go.
A little bit of tomato.
And then you just serve this with some good, crusty bread.
I just add a little cup of stock
to make sure there's a lot of great flavor
and juice to mop up.
Now, you're gonna put a lid on the pan,
and you're gonna let this simmer for another 25 to 30 minutes
to cook the chicken all the way through
and for the sauce to combine.
You know, when I was a kid,
we always had a little tiny glass of red wine with dinner
with the whole family.
I guess that's why I love Tuscan food so much --
they use so much red wine in their cooking.
Look at how beautiful this dish is, guys.
And it's literally one pot.
Like, we marinated it in the same pot we cooked it in.
So we're gonna bring this big beauty right to the table.
Let me find some tongs.
And we'll fish out a chicken breast.
Gosh, this is such beautiful food.
So easy. Effortless, really.
Look at that.
There's our extra juice.
You know, in our family, it was the knife,
the fork, the spoon, and the bread.
It was considered a utensil at dinner time.
'Cause you need it for mopping at the end.
Now, got a nice crusty ciabatta here.
We fight over this in my family, too --
the heels or the elbows of the bread.
Extra crunchy.
I like to do this.
I like to set it down in the juice
and just let it work like a little sponge,
and it is the big prize
for finishing all of your meat and vegetables.
So, up next, another delicious and simple dinner --
zucchini-tomato sauce with fat spaghetti,
right after this.
Welcome back, guys.
We are all the way up to our third
Tuscan-American-style dish,
and again, you're gonna see rosemary and garlic going on.
You're gonna see red wine, tomato paste, the passata --
a lot of the same ingredients we've already used
in a chicken meal and a beef-and-pork chilli,
but each meal is so decidedly different.
This one is a super-hearty vegetarian meal
which features zucchini.
I've got three firm zucchini,
and I buy them on the small side
because then they're nice and firm
and you don't have to seed them before you chop them.
And I chop the zucchini head to tail.
I don't trim him up at all. It's delicious.
I've got a quarter cup of olive oil
getting nice and hot over medium-high heat.
When the oil ripples and begins to smoke,
add the zucchini and let it brown.
That gives it a wonderful, wonderful flavor.
It actually develops the flavor
of an otherwise sort of bland-tasting squash.
Now, while that's browning,
I'm gonna slice up some garlic
and a fresh chilli pepper.
If the fresh chillies don't look great,
just substitute about a teaspoon of crushed red pepper flake.
I love the heat in the chilli, so I just slice it up,
seeds, ribs and all, to get the most out of it.
One onion.
Again, such a simple grocery list for this "Week in a Day."
Don't fuss with the zucchini too much
when you first put it down in the pot, guys.
You really want it to start to caramelize.
You want the sugars in the zucchini to come out.
Buy a couple of bundles of rosemary
in the produce department 'cause it goes into so much.
Got about three or four tablespoons of rosemary,
one onion, four cloves of garlic, one chilli pepper.
Get that ready to go in,
but let's check our zucchini first.
Nice.
We're getting a nice brown on it.
Season them up with salt and pepper.
Let's get these fellas in there.
It'll continue to brown up a little bit more
as the onions are cooking down, as well.
There. Let those work another few minutes.
You know, when you're cooking with zucchini,
don't be afraid to brown it up a little.
That actually helps develop its flavor.
It doesn't have a lot of personality
till you do something to it.
You got to spice it up or brown it up.
Just gonna open a large can of Italian plum tomato.
So, we're ready to get our tomato paste in there.
Couple of tablespoons of tomato paste, guys, to your zucchini.
Stir to sweat that out.
Look at that great color on the bottom of the pot.
We're gonna lift up all that flavor now
with another cup of our dry Tuscan red.
Just work the sides and the bottom of the pot.
Then we're going to add in our tomatoes.
Gonna grab my potato masher and just break those up a bit.
Just gently press down on them to get them going,
and then they'll continue to cook down as the sauce simmers.
Another cup of our tomato puree, or passata,
or you could substitute tomato sauce.
Stir.
Drop the heat way down,
and then just let this simmer until the tomatoes break down.
About 20 minutes or so.
Now, I'm gonna throw in just a couple leaves of basil
for sweetness and partially cover the pot.
Now, once the tomatoes break down, the sauce is done.
Cool it completely and store until the night you serve.
Then you just heat it back up
while you're bringing up to a boil a big pot of pasta water.
Now, this pasta is called pici -- p-i-c-i --
and it is very traditional in Tuscany
to find pici on the menus.
What it is is fat spaghetti.
It's very dense and it's lots of fun to eat.
If you can't find pici,
which you would look for in little Italian markets,
you can substitute bucatini.
That's hollow spaghetti.
Super fun to slurp up. Delicious.
Wow, this is one big, beautiful pot of pici!
Great.
Reserve some of that starchy cooking water
to help the sauce
and the butter and the cheese marry to the pasta.
So, in here -- a couple of dabs of butter.
Helps the sauce linger on your tongue a little longer.
Splash of that really starchy cooking water --
about a half a cup or so.
We're gonna take our zucchini sauce
and pop about half of it into the pot with the pici.
You know, it used to really bother me,
even when I was a little kid,
I can literally remember going to the grocery store
with my mother and being really confused
by all of the jarred sauces,
'cause they had pictures of spaghetti
sitting in a bowl
naked with just a little blob of sauce in the middle of the dish.
I never understood that.
My family, we always tossed the pasta with the sauce,
a little butter and cheese,
and then top it with the rest of the sauce.
You want all of it to taste good, right?
Not just the stuff in the middle of the bowl.
[ Chuckles ]
My mom is Sicilian.
She's not from Tuscany, but boy, she's just like me.
She loves Tuscan food. So good.
Mix some of that pecorino in.
Gorgeous. Just beautiful.
Okay, family style.
Big platter.
Your extra zucchini and sauce.
A little extra pecorino.
What a beautiful plate of pasta,
and this dish is so hearty and yet there's no meat in it.
So it's a great one if you have some friends
that are vegetarian -- invite them over.
Another thing about Tuscan food --
it feeds as many people as come to the table.
Weird.
Up next, another one
with a really interesting cooking method
from back in the day.
It's a very slow-simmered beef.
Cooks for like five, six hours.
And the night you serve,
you cook up a few potatoes to go along with it.
It's simple and simply delicious.
I'll meet you right back here in a couple.
Welcome back to "Week in a Day," guys,
and I'm celebrating the entire week
by cooking up what I call Tuscan-American food.
For me, few ingredients, big flavor,
easy cooking methods, rustic food.
This is a slow-cooked dish
that workmen used to make back in the day
'cause it would take pretty much all day to cook.
We're gonna start with room temperature,
three pounds of beef chuck, or stew meat.
Big beautiful cubes. I'd say 2.5 inches.
You're gonna season the meat just with salt for now.
Later in the cooking process,
we're gonna add a tablespoon of coarse, black pepper
and more wine and more rosemary.
Now we're gonna add onion and garlic.
So you see, again, the same ingredients dish to dish,
but they're all so very different.
So now we're gonna take the meat.
We're not gonna brown it.
We're gonna drop it into a big Dutch oven.
To that, I'm gonna add one onion, quartered.
Three large cloves of garlic, crushed.
Two fresh bay leaf.
And then we're gonna put in a combination
of one quart of beef stock...
...and then just enough water to bring it up to the top
of where the meat is in the pot.
You won't need much -- another cup or two.
It's good.
Nestle that guy down in there.
Perfect.
Now we're gonna bring this up to a low boil.
As soon as it comes up to a boil,
we're gonna turn it down to a simmer,
and you're gonna cook it partially covered --
leave the lid a little bit ajar -- for two hours.
I love reading the really back-in-the-day,
like, the old-school Italian cookbooks.
I find as many of them that have been translated as possible,
and this dish -- I couldn't believe how much flavor it had.
And it was very interesting --
workmen used to start a pot of meat in water,
let it cook for several hours,
then they added wine and the other ingredients,
let it cook for several hours more,
and at the end of their work day,
they had this delicious, flavorful meal.
So I thought, "I'm gonna bring that dish back."
Once the beef has been simmering for two hours,
you're gonna add a couple tablespoons of tomato paste
to a mug or a small bowl.
Take some of those bubbly liquids and thin out the paste.
Pour that back in.
Then we're gonna add one tablespoon
of coarse black pepper -- big flavor.
And about two cups of dry red wine.
Now, you can transfer this to a 325 oven, covered,
or you could cook it on the stovetop --
again, over a low, gentle simmer --
for about three hours.
Then you cool the meat, of course, store.
The night you serve, reheat it in a moderate oven
or over moderate heat on the stovetop,
then your gonna peel up some potatoes.
I've got a couple of pounds of starchy potatoes,
and what I do is, while the meat is heating up, I peel them up.
I thick-slice them --
about quarter to a half an inch thick.
Hard boil them for five minutes in salted water,
then drain them.
And I use a pan that I can both boil the potatoes in
and then put them back in to brown.
Then you heat up some olive oil, throw some crushed garlic in,
brown them in the garlic oil, and then right before you serve,
toss them with tons of rosemary again, salt and pepper.
Braising is so fantastic
if you're gonna cook for a whole week
because you got a long time there that you got to wait,
so you can get a whole bunch of other stuff done.
Okay, guys.
When your potatoes are getting nice and crispy in olive oil
the night you want to serve,
take a few more sprigs of rosemary,
chop them up, throw them down in there.
I started browning the potatoes
in olive oil flavored with crushed garlic.
When the garlic starts to turn golden,
pull the garlic out,
let the potatoes brown evenly on both sides,
and then throw in lots of rosemary.
It's a really quick method
to get some very flavorful potatoes.
You know, roasting them in the oven, take you like 40 minutes
to get them nice and brown, right?
This way -- hard boil them a few minutes.
They'll brown up in a few minutes in olive oil,
and you're good to go.
Give these guys a toss.
Nice and crispy and delicious.
All right, let's serve her up.
Whoo!
I had that on simmer, but that stove is so strong.
Bubbly beef falling apart in a red wine
and black pepper sauce.
Gonna put the chunks of beef into the dish first,
and then arrange the potatoes alongside in the juice
so they stay crispy on top.
Beautiful.
So few ingredients, so much flavor,
such great plate presentation,
and smells so wonderful.
Yum.
Up next, we're gonna finish big --
a rich and hearty baked pumpkin and cream pasta.
A pasta al forno, right after this.
Welcome back, guys.
We are all the way up to our fifth meal
of Tuscan-American food.
I sort of made up that twist to Italian-American food
because all of these meals repeat the flavors
of Tuscan cooking over and over.
We've used tons of rosemary and garlic and root vegetable.
This dish, which is a pumpkin cream pasta,
is also going to feature beautiful Tuscan kale.
It's called lacinato
when you're looking for it in the produce department.
It's earthy, it's tender,
and it's a wonderful combination with nice, sweet pumpkin,
or in this case, butternut squash.
Now, when sugar pumpkins are in season,
I'd make this with sugar pumpkin.
When they're not looking so great at the store,
I bring home a butternut squash.
Now, if you're just roasting a butternut squash,
I always leave the skin on.
It's very tasty and I eat it
right along with the squash itself.
But in this case,
we're gonna roast the squash and then puree it.
So I'm gonna take that skin off
so it purees up a little easier for us.
Scoop your seeds out.
Just stand it upright, cut away the skin,
and then chop it up.
You can thinly slice it, or you can dice it.
The oven is nice and hot at 400 degrees,
and it'll roast depending on
how thick or thin you make your slices
or how small you make your dice.
Be in there 25 to 30 minutes
until it starts to brown at the edges
and it's nice and tender.
Throw these guys on a baking sheet.
Okay.
Spray it down with a little olive oil.
Season it up with salt and pepper.
And of course, nutmeg --
always with squash and always with dark greens.
Pop this guy in the oven. See you soon.
You know, I roast the squash for this dish,
but I can't think of a vegetable,
including, like, asparagus, green beans,
broccoli, cauliflower --
I cannot think of a vegetable
that isn't made more delicious by roasting.
So, guys, I'm gonna take this squash
and just scoot it down into the food processor.
Gonna add about a cup to a cup and a half of stock.
And just puree this guy.
I find that pulsing it helps get the bits down into the blades
rather than just turning it on.
That looks pretty good.
Now, let's get our pumpkin sauce into a little pot.
Moderate heat.
And then we're gonna whisk in a little cream
and let that simmer.
You're basically making a pumpkin soup, really.
Half to 3/4 of a cup. Whisk him in.
Then we're just gonna let this bubble away
and thicken up a bit with half of our grated parmigiano cheese.
You're gonna need about a cup to a cup and a half all day,
so you're gonna add about half of that to the sauce.
Let that bubble away.
And you can cook off the pasta anytime.
Remember, you're gonna undercook it
'cause the night you serve,
you're gonna pop it into the oven,
and it'll continue to cook
as the casserole cooks up in the oven.
It's a pasta al forno -- pasta from the oven.
So...
Salt the water.
Got some penne rigate here.
One pound, or half a kilo,
if you were buying it in an Italian market.
Get an extra ounce.
And there you go. I'm gonna babysit this guy.
We're gonna take a quick break.
When we come back, we're gonna deal with that Tuscan kale.
Welcome back, guys.
I can't believe we've cooked ourselves
all the way through four meals already,
and we're well on our way with our fifth
in what I call Tuscan-American food.
Speaking of Tuscan, I'm stemming up some Tuscan kale
to wilt down and add to a pumpkin cream pasta.
This is such a rich, flavorful dish.
We've got a roasted squash
pureed and then combined with cream.
That's bubbling away
and thickening up with a little parmigiano-reggiano cheese.
Meanwhile, I'm stemming up one bundle of black kale,
Tuscan kale, or lacinato.
The sign can say any of those things
in the produce department.
Very tender, and yet sturdy in soups and stews.
Wilts up very quickly, very flavorful.
You can even eat it raw.
I make Caesar salad with it all the time
in the summer months when we have more kale
than we know what to do with.
There.
A little garlic to some olive oil over medium heat.
Three cloves.
Our penne, we're gonna drain a little shy of al dente,
so as soon as I get the kale in here to wilt.
This guy can go about wilting.
Beautiful.
Let's drain our pasta.
And then, before all that starchy liquid drains away,
I'm gonna pop it right back into the hot pot
so we've got a little of that starch left in there.
I'm gonna turn the greens up now,
now that I can babysit them.
Give them a turn.
Season the greens up with a little salt and pepper.
Now, I always add nutmeg to dark greens,
but remember, we put nutmeg on the squash --
the butternut squash or the pumpkin --
before we put it into the oven to roast,
so that flavor's already over here
in our pumpkin cream sauce.
Give that a nice whisk. It's thickening up beautifully.
That makes a wonderful sauce for this easy pasta,
and a nice change-up
to, like, macaroni and cheese night, you know?
It's still a baked pasta,
but it's got a really deep layer of flavor to it --
the earthy kale, the garlic...
...our pumpkin cream.
Stir to combine.
Delicious, nutritious, earthy,
and yet sweet and creamy all at the same time.
A fantastic make-ahead meal.
Let's bring our casserole over here.
Now, this is done.
We're gonna top it with a little more cheese,
then you pop it -- you'll cool it completely, of course --
then pop it into the fridge.
The night you serve,
pop it into a 400-degree oven and cook it 30, 40 minutes
from cold until it's brown and bubbly and hot through.
This guy I'm gonna throw in the oven right now
so you can see what he looks like when he comes out.
You know, I think I love Tuscan food
because it has so many of my favorite ingredients
and all the dishes have very few ingredients.
In Tuscany, you eat a lot of cinghiale, or boar.
You eat a lot of rosemary as a flavor.
The meats are all simple and grilled,
and man, do they love their pumpkin.
Looking good!
Pumpkin cream pasta bake with Tuscan kale.
Mm! You know, all these meals,
they're so simple, they're so delicious and nutritious,
and they're all so decidedly different in flavor,
and yet we're using the same ingredients over and over.
Easy shopping list, easy clean up,
and definitely easy to eat.
So, let's recap the whole week of Tuscan-American food.
We started out with the beef and pork Italian chilli
that we served up with the creamy polenta.
Then we moved into something special, and it's so easy --
the chicken with the lemon and rosemary and wine.
Then that beautiful meat-free
but really hearty zucchini-tomato sauce
with the fat spaghetti.
Then the slow-simmered beef
that we served up with those crispy potatoes
like big, fat, Tuscan potato chips.
And finally, the hearty and delicious and textured,
layered with flavor, baked pumpkin and cream pasta.
I'm Rachael Ray.
Thanks for spending the day with me, guys.
Now get cooking so you can get eating.