Make Roasted Tomato and Garlic Rigatoni for Dinner!

Welcome to our kitchen. Great to have you tonight. We're going to cook a pasta dinner with some rigatoni, some roasted tomatoes, and garlic. It's going to be delicious. Let's start by slicing our cherry tomatoes. You can leave these whole, but I like to have them. All right, it's a little bit of prep for this, but not too bad. This whole thing should take you maybe about 45 minutes, so a quick dinner to prepare for your family. We love pasta night here. We make all kinds of different pastas, and pasta goes quick around here. Let's rinse our hands. Make sure you're clean as you go. We like to have what's called the mise en place, which means everything in place. We have our garlic shallot, we have our pasta and tomatoes, our seasonings, our wine. We have everything we're going to need, so we're not running around trying to grab stuff as we're cooking here. Let's go ahead and slice up some garlic. I'm just going to cut the tips off. I'm just going to give these a little whack here, just enough to take the skin off. Then it's easier to slice like that. All right, once you have the garlic peeled, sharp knife, keep your fingers curled in. We're just going to try to slice these as thin as we can. They'll sort of break down as we roast them in the tomatoes. All right, I have an oven safe pan here. My halved tomatoes, seasonings, salt, some black pepper. I'm going to put some olive oil in here. I have my tomatoes, salt, pepper, olive oil. I'm going to put in my sliced garlic. Put in as much garlic as you want. We like a lot of garlic, so don't be shy here. All right, this is optional. If you want to sprinkle some sugar on here just to kind of accelerate the caramelization process, sweeten up the tomatoes a little bit, you can go ahead and do that. I'm not going to do that this time. I am going to put this in a 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes. All right, while the tomatoes are roasting in the oven, we're going to chop up a shallot. That is one big shallot. I've been cooking for over 30 years. It's the biggest shallot I've ever seen. Have you ever seen a shallot this big Dave? No. You don't have to use the whole thing. Use as much as you want. You'll probably end up using, I don't know, maybe a quarter cup of chopped shallot. Now you see I'm putting some scraps into a bowl here. Try to do that. You can save these. They pile up. You can make some vegetable stock or you can put some chicken bones in there and make chicken stock. It doesn't have to be perfect. This is all going to break down in the pan when we cook pasta, so don't get overly concerned about it. All right, while I'm chopping up the shallots and just getting ready, I do have some salted water getting ready to boil for our rigatoni. There's really nothing else to prep, so we'll see you back in a few. Okay, we're back. We have about five minutes left on the tomatoes and garlic. I have a saute pan here on medium heat. I'm going to drop the rigatoni in the boiling water just so everything's done around the same time, and then we'll put the pasta dish together. So we have our pan here. We're going to add a little extra virgin olive oil. I'm going to cook my shallots. All right, I just want to cook these until they're translucent, just a couple minutes. All right, just keep stirring that. All right, so the tomatoes and garlic are finished roasting. These smell amazing. I love roasted garlic. I could live on roasted garlic. All right, stir that all around. We don't need to cook these anymore because we roasted them, so I'm going to go ahead and deglaze with some white wine. And we want to season this, so keep seasoning the layers. Okay, a little salt, pepper. I'm going to go ahead and add our heavy cream. I have to usually use a spatula for this, so make sure I get it all. Stir that all together. Your family's going to love this. I'm telling you, just the creaminess with the roasted garlic and tomatoes, it smells so nice. That smells great. All right, let that come off the temperature while we wait for our pasta to finish. All right, once this comes up to a simmer, let it simmer for two to three minutes. You want that cream to thicken, but as the cream thickens, the sauce really starts to develop, and those flavors all come together. So I'll let that simmer for another minute, and then we're going to put it down on low heat. Our pasta will be just before al dente, and we'll put it all together. All right, our pasta's done. I'm going to put it right next to our pot here. Get myself a pasta spider. This is great for scooping pasta directly into the pan. Sometimes when you're cooking fresh pasta, you really want to use these because if you pour this through a colander, all the flour from the fresh pasta goes down in with the dish. You don't want that. This is not fresh pasta, so I could drain it, but I want to use the pasta water, so I'm going to scoop it with the spider. Now a pro tip for you, this is before al dente. It's probably a minute before al dente. I do that because I want to let it cook in the sauce for a few minutes to get to al dente. Then it really picks up all the flavors of the sauce and coats the noodles. All right, just get all that pasta in there. There's always one, you know. You got to watch the pot. There's always that one guy that hangs around at the bottom. Stir that up. What do you think, hon? Looks amazing. Stir it around. Let the noodles get all coated with the cream sauce and tomatoes. We want to let that simmer in with that sauce for a couple minutes. All right, here's my second pro tip for you. Save the pasta water. In the restaurant business, we would always have these pots of vegetable stock sitting in every station, so we can thin sauces out or bake sauces and thicken a stock or whatever we were doing. Pasta water kind of replaces that. Pasta water is better because it's thickened with the starch from the pasta. You don't need a lot. Put a little bit of this salted pasta water in here, and I'm telling you, it makes a huge difference. You don't just want to throw it in and then serve it. Put it in, stir it around, and let everything come together. That pasta water will help thicken things and coat the noodles. It's an important step that you don't want to skip. There are some Italian dishes where they'll use pasta water and cheese, and that really is the sauce, so it's a great addition when you're cooking pasta. Okay, the pasta's been cooking in the sauce. We've got the pasta water. Everything's starting to come together. I think it's time for the fresh basil. Break it up by hand here. This gives it a nice bright green color, and just the aroma of the fresh basil as you stir this into the pasta really gives it a nice finish. I'm going to kill the heat, and now we're just going to finish it with some grated Pecorino Romano cheese. This is good to do with the heat off, right? Cheese is really delicate at higher temperatures, so with the heat off, put the cheese in, and then you stir it. You get more of that kind of gooey, thickened texture rather than like clumpy, broken cheese. So we put a good amount of that in. Gonna stir that around. I'm ready to eat. You ready to eat, baby? I'm not gonna plate this thing. This is like a giant soup spoon. It's really good for stirring, but I'm not gonna try to Alright, we got a bigger spoon. Yeah, I'm just gonna have a little plate of it. I mean, this is a half a pound of pasta, but what do you think, babe? That'll serve three, you know? Make sure I get a little bit of everything, right? Some pasta noodles, fresh basil, that roasted tomato and garlic, and just that luxurious sauce. Look at that. I'm gonna top this again with some Pecorino Romano cheese for each serving, and that's it, guys.