5 Pasta Recipes w/ Giada De Laurentiis That Will Change Your Life | Everyday Italian

I'm going to take a pound of ground beef and add a little bit of olive oil, a little bit of salt. This is going to take about four to five minutes to cook. That looks ready. I'm going to set it in my bowl and let it cool off. I'm going to lower the heat to make my bechamel sauce. We need five tablespoons of butter. I'm going to melt my butter before I add my flour. Ready to add our flour. I'm going to add half a cup. I like whole milk for this dish. And then I'm going to let it thicken. A little bit of salt and some ground white pepper. So just a couple pinches of that and some wonderful nutmeg. So I'm going to stir it every once in a while and keep a close eye on it. But in the meantime, I'm going to get my bowl ready and add my tomato sauce to it. We're going to need about one and a half cups. I'm going to measure it out. Let's check on our bechamel. You just want to stick your finger, ooh that's hot, in the back and see how it stays separated. It doesn't come back together so you know it's thick enough. I'm using some frozen chopped spinach. I don't want a lot of extra water because it's going to make my lasagna soggy and drown out all those flavors. Add a third of a cup of this creamy pink bechamel. Our layers of pasta. Our ricotta cheese mixed with egg. Now we're going to add our chopped spinach. A little bit of salt because our frozen spinach doesn't really have any seasoning on it. And next layer of lasagna pasta. Next, our ground beef. A little bit of mozzarella cheese. A little bit of our bechamel sauce. And for our last layer of lasagna, the rest of our sauce. Grated parmigiano cheese. A little bit of butter. It's ready to go in the oven. So I've preheated my oven to 375 degrees. And it's going to bake for 45 minutes. So I'm going to start with my infused oil. And I'm just going to add half a cup of extra virgin olive oil. So I'm just going to zest one lemon in this olive oil. Now, I want to cook my pasta. And season the pasta water with lots of salt. So we're going to add some linguine. Give that a quick little turn here. And that's going to take about 8 to 10 minutes. So in the meantime, I'm going to cook the shrimp and make a little sauce for it. A couple of shallots and a couple of garlic cloves. So I just want to peel the shallot. And I'll just give it a little bit of a rough chop. And again, they just give the pasta sauce a little bit of a base flavor. And add a little bit of olive oil. Just like that. We're going to add the shallots. Just want to sweat them a little bit. It gives them lots of flavor and it makes them nice and tender. And I'm also going to just mince my garlic. There we go. With that, we're going to add a little bit of salt too. Just because the salt helps to sweat the shallots and the garlic. But these cook pretty quick, so you've got to keep an eye on them. The minute they're defrosted and they turn slightly pink, you know they're done. I'm going to chop some flat leaf Italian parsley. I'm going to zest another lemon in with my shrimp. I'm also going to add the juice. These are juicy lemons. I'm going to add a little more salt. Really flavor this. And some freshly ground black pepper. You want to turn each and every shrimp so that it cooks evenly on both sides. Time to check the pasta. Perfect. Let's go right into the shrimp. I'm going to turn the heat off. Add the parsley. A little bit of arugula. Now we need lemon oil. Mmm. You can smell that lemon. Oh boy, that smells good. So I've got some boiling water here. I'm going to add a little salt. There we go. We're going to cook them for about six minutes so they're still al dente. We are going to add ricotta cheese. And about one and a half to two cups of mozzarella cheese. And of course some parmesan. We're actually going to use parsley. Works perfectly in the stuffing. Alright, mix these all together. Two cloves of minced garlic. A little bit of salt. And a little bit of ground black pepper. Mixing it all up. You can use your favorite jarred tomato sauce. My meat's cooled and I've added it to my ricotta, parmesan, and mozzarella. And we're ready to stuff our manicotti. So we're just going to take the cooled manicotti and we're going to stuff them. A little bit at a time. There we go. And I've only cooked them part way. They're going to finish in the oven. Some more mozzarella. More parmesan cheese. And now I'm adding butter because it'll help give it a nice light brown color. And it'll keep the topping nice and moist. This is going to cook about 30 minutes. The oven's been heated to 350. So I'm finished peeling five garlic cloves for my parmesan pomodoro. One of my favorite tomato sauces ever, growing up and still today. I'm going to add about a third of a cup of olive oil. Cut the carrot in half and then put the carrot in the oil as well. Here in Italy we have these tomatoes known as pomodori. You could definitely just use whatever kind of canned tomatoes you like. Just make sure the butter's all melted. Now, let's grab our little spider. Let's add the pasta directly into the sauce. Here we go. Before I toss it, I'm going to grate a bunch of parmesan cheese right over the top. Turn off the pasta water. And one more scoop and I think we'll be good. There we go. Half a cup or so of grated fresh parmigiano reggiano. Add a little bit of olive oil. And now for the moment of truth. I'm going to try the pasta. It's almost sweet, the pomodorini, you know? They're mild and sweet and creamy and cheesy. All the best flavors of a tomato sauce all in one. I'm going to start with the pancetta. I'm just chopping up the pancetta. And we're going to fry it up. Put it in my pan with a little bit of oil. Put it in here. We're going to add two cloves of garlic. While the pancetta cooks, let's get the spaghetti in the pot. And for this recipe, I'm going to use a whole box of spaghetti. Great. That's going to take between eight and ten minutes to cook. And in the meantime, I'm going to make the sauce, the base. We're going to use eight egg yolks. And I want to beat the eggs, the egg yolks. Two and a half cups of heavy cream. There we go. Perfect. And now the parmesan cheese. We have one cup of grated, fantastic parmigiano-reggiano. So mix that all together here. I like to add fresh herbs to my carbonara. So we'll add the parsley in there and, of course, some basil. So chop that up and throw that in the mixture. Look how good that looks. Oh. Okay, now I'm going to add the chicken. The chicken's already cooked, and you can find them in most grocery stores these days. They have those nice roasted chickens. Let me get the topping ready. So I toast the walnuts, and then we'll just sprinkle them right on top of the spaghetti. Now I'm ready to add the pasta directly into my pan here with the pancetta, the garlic, and the chicken. Wow. That looks so good. Make sure you get all the parmesan cheese off the bottom. I've got the pan on a very low heat because I don't want to curdle the egg yolks. I want to heat them through and cook them, but very slowly. Now the walnuts that we chopped earlier. And a little bit of lemon zest right over the top. It's everything I love and more. The freshness from the herbs and the meatiness from the chicken and the pancetta.