Chef Nicholas James has been cooking French and Italian food for a long time. He says the key to fresh pasta is, "As soon as it starts to float, you're just about there." During First Bite, you can try some of that fresh pasta from La Corte in Cape Coral.
James says, "I cut this with a knife. I don't use a machine. I don't use a mixer. I do everything by hand. So every single noodle that comes out of this kitchen has my, sounds gross, has my fingerprint on it. So it's a little more personalized." Chef Nick says it's also important to make sure the pasta water is nice and salty. "From there, we're going to move onto our bolognese sauce. This is a meat sauce, combined with filet, NY, pork, lamb scraps, veal, anything we can grind up. We cook it down with red wine, pomodoro, veal stock, for about eight hours."
James says, "The big thing with pasta, you always finish cooking your pasta in sauce. A lot of people make a pasta and they put the sauce on top and then you're done eating the pasta, and you eat the sauce and it's like you have sauce on the bottom, the noodles are dry. If you cook everything together, everything is going to coincide. Everything is going to be emulsified. Every single bit is going to have flavor in it."
