[00:00] This is not the best pasta in the world. This is just a tribute to my favorite restaurant in the city of Boston. It's called the Daily Catch, and their thing is they serve your food in the pan.
[00:12] Not a Tweet little decorative cast iron they slid your dish into at the very end. No, I'm talking about the actual pan that the big sweaty Latin guy fired your food in. This is the first of many things that I love about the Daily Catch that I will elucidate as I recreate this dish at home.
[00:29] First I'll make fresh egg pasta, one egg per person, or if you want to be fancy you can sneak in an extra yoke. It makes the pasta more golden and luscious. So Lauren and I lived in Boston years ago. We came back last week. We had to hit the Daily Catch, which is in the old Italian immigrant ghetto called the North End.
[00:48] It's very touristy now, but there's still lots of super old Italians with possible mob connections, drinking tiny cups of coffee on tiny tables, and tiny little alleyways or courtyards. I like to use my pizza flour for pasta dough. It's super high protein, so you get really chewy noodles,
[01:05] and I think the double zero grind gets you a finer, smoother texture. Start working that in there. The Daily Catch is about the size of a large parking space. There's Lauren. You eat cheek to cheek with the strangers next to you.
[01:18] There's one server, one dishwasher, and one cook, burning it up in the corner where you can watch. Once I've done all I can do with the fork, I'll start kneading in about as much flour as the dough will absorb with my hand there.
[01:30] Anyways, the menu is similarly tiny. You pick what fish you want on your pasta, I got the muscles, and you pick red sauce or white wine sauce. I love the focus. They're like, this is what we do well. You can have it, or you can go somewhere else.
[01:45] I stopped using my pasta machine years ago. I just make it with a rolling pin now, and if you do that, it helps to have a slightly soft dough. I'm a stop kneading, even though I could probably get a little more flour into this. It's still a little sticky, and that's just fine.
[01:59] You can see how it isn't smooth enough to roll out yet, but it will be after we just cover this with a damp towel and let the particles hydrate for about 15 minutes. All I need to recreate their white wine sauce is a couple of garlic cloves. I love how fine they get their garlic at the restaurant.
[02:14] It just melts into the dish. To recreate that, I will chop it as fine as I can get it, and then I will grind it down using coarse salt as an edible abrasive. Grind with a side of the knife. Anyway, I love restaurants with incredibly simple menus. A simple menu tells you that they know who they are.
[02:31] I love simple procedures. Daily catch does no reservations. It's first come first serve, and they're still cash-only. I love that flex. They just don't need your business that bad, so why modernize?
[02:44] Okay, nice and fine. Then I think they just do fresh flat leaf parsley. Chop that up fine. To recreate the shaky cheese, they have it at the table. I'll need to get up my box grater to convert my pecorino into a powder.
[02:57] That's probably way too much cheese for someone who's not me. Okay, dough has rested, not in the fridge. I want it soft to roll with the rolling pin. You can see how stretchy it is. The gluten develops itself if you just let it sit.
[03:11] Use that towel to clean the counter. Flour the counter, and we're ready to roll. I just roll it as thin as I can possibly get it with a rolling pin. Flip it frequently to keep it floured and not sticking to the counter. That's as thin as I can get it. Folder up, bring back the board, and just cut that into linguine.
[03:28] Keep every surface of the pasta well floured at all times, or else it will stick to itself. As some of these noodles did, but I eventually just flopped them apart. I have some water boiling, and now I need a pan that is both functional and pretty enough to serve in.
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[04:38] We're going to serve it in just a sec. Check out the stainless collection and made in's other cookware with my link in the description. You'll save on your order. Thank you made in. So, crack open some white wine and put it straight into the pan.
[04:51] This is what happens when I preheat my pan while filming. It always gets crazy hot, but that's fine. I can add more wine if this evaporates. Garlic in, I want it to boil, not fry. Just simmer it in the wine. It gets you this real nice soft, almost melted garlic effect.
[05:06] Here's a pound of mussels. I always buy live shellfish from a human behind a counter who will check if they're still alive, if they're closed. That's a good sign. Here's one that's open, and it does not close when I squeeze it. He dead. Get rid of him.
[05:20] We are getting quite late in the season. They go straight into the garlicky wine. They will release lots more liquid into the pan. And to steam them, you can just turn the bowl around and plop it on. They'll take a couple of minutes, same as the fresh pasta. Got to salt the water. I forgot about that.
[05:36] Pasta will be super bland otherwise. Stir to keep them separate and cover so I can get my boil back. Let's check on the mussels when they're open, they're done, or at least they will be done by the time you actually eat them.
[05:48] In goes some of my parsley, and then a lot of these red pepper flakes. My god, look at that pot liquor. A little shaky shake. I can tell that I'm going to need more wine. There's going to be a lot more evaporation and absorption before we're all done here.
[06:01] And I want to see extra sauce in the pan. Finish with a tablespoon of butter, or two, but it's your choice if you want to acknowledge the second one. The pasta is floating. It cooked two minutes. That's enough for fresh pasta. I'll just let some of the starchy water get in the pan naturally because I want it there anyway. It's good for the sauce.
[06:20] I'm sure the badass I saw cooking it daily catch the other night just tossed this all in the air, but I don't pretend to be that cool and I don't like cleaning. To serve in the pan, just put down a towel or a trivet or something and the pan keeps everything hot. It's logical.
[06:35] More parsley and red pepper on top. I love how daily catch is confident enough to under flavor this dish a little bit and just give you the seasonings at the table to make it how you like it. I like it spicy. A ton of cheese because I am Italian American and not Italian and I know that the universe will not collapse if I combine fish and cheese.
[06:54] Indeed, it expands. Okay, now here's the bite of food that I want before I die. Crack a muscle, make sure it is full of seasonings and scoop up some of that white sauce from the bottom. That, my friends, I'm pretty sure, is as good as anything gets in this life and I've had some good times, including the delicious meal that we had at daily catch on Hanover Street in the north end of Boston, Hashtag Not an Add.
[07:17] This is, I think, basically what I had there the other night. My quick linguine is admittedly crude, but I honestly like how much bite the noodles have when they are that thick with two seas. And it's still hot because I left it in the pan where it belongs. No room for plates in a restaurant, the size of a minivan.