Taking care of your liver can be delicious.

What, you say?

What if I told you there was a pasta dish designed to do exactly that?

Let's head to Bari and learn how to make a pasta dish that will help you live your healthiest life.

Today, on Christina Cooks.

Funding for Christina Cooks is provided by: GreenOnyx, producers of Wanna Greens A tiny but nutrient dense fresh green vegetable.

Wanna Greens can be added to any meal, snack or dessert.

Fresh greens.

Wanna Greens.

Additional funding provided by Finamill.

The flavor of freshly ground spices and dried herbs with refillable, swappable pods.

Finamill.

And by Mauviel, creators of copper, stainless and steel carbon cookware for professional and home cooks.

A story of passion since 1830.

And by Suzanne█s Specialties Offering a full line of alternative, vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne█s Specialties.

Sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

And by Jonathan█s Spoons.

Individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding provided by: Hi, I'm Christina Pirello, and this is Christina Cooks, where each week we take fresh, seasonal ingredients and whip them into amazing dishes.

Will they all be plant-based?

Yeah.

Will they all be delicious?

Yes.

And now for something completely different.

We are going to Puglia each and every week.

You will love these segments.

It's so much fun.

And what's so special about Puglia?

Just about everything.

Starting with the pasta cut they are most famous for, which is called orecchiette.

Orecchiette, meaning little ears.

And they use orecchiette because it's a very specific pasta used for two very specific dishes that we will be making.

So - orecchiette takes a while to cook.

So it's going to go into the boiling salted water first.

We'll give it a stir.

Make sure when you cook pasta please make sure when you cook pasta that you salt the water.

I don't care if you don't salt the rest of it, but salt the water so the pasta tastes like pasta and not nothing because pasta is simply flour and water, particularly in the south of Italy.

It's not a big deal.

There's no eggs, there's no... right?

So it's just very plain.

So you have to be able to, you know, flavor it.

Okay.

So now take some extra virgin olive oil.

Remember I've said this at least a million times.

When you cook with extra virgin olive oil, use the best that you can, get real extra virgin olive oil, but don't heat it until your first ingredient is in the pan, which in this case is two whole cloves of garlic, And you're thinking, “Two whole cloves?

That█s it?” Two whole cloves?

Yeah.

In Italian cooking, they don't slice the garlic or mince it into a million fine pieces like we do.

I mean, sometimes they do, but mostly they take the garlic, put it in the oil and let it flavor the oil.

And then they take it out because they want the dishes to have their more complex flavors, not just garlic.

So that's the way I do it.

You can slice the garlic if you want.

Remember, the more finely you slice garlic or diced garlic, the stronger the flavor.

So keep that in mind.

All right.

So while we let that happen we're going to get everything else ready.

We have tempeh.

We have diced canned tomatoes and we have hot spice.

And the hot spice is going to go in while the garlic is still in there.

Now if you're feeling particularly generous with whoever you're cooking for, you can leave these whole cloves in and somebody gets a prize at the end of the pasta dish, or you can leave them in while the dish cooks and then take them out.

What we're going to do is add the tempeh, because I want to brown it just a little bit.

And that will happen in the oil, because the oil is very hot and as the tempeh browns, just colors, a little bit golden from the olive oil, we can then either decide whether we're going to leave the garlic in or take the garlic out.

And so once the tempeh is all shiny with oil, you're not frying it until it's golden brown here.

You're just coloring it and making it have a richer flavor.

And it's getting flavored with chili peppers.

And you notice there's been no salt added green.

Add a touch when the tomatoes go in because we need a little bit of flavor.

But remember the salt's there, okay.

And since we don't rinse our pasta, we don't rinse our pasta.

That'll happen like this.

So in Puglia, Naples are known mostly for being what they call leaf eaters - mangia foglie.

But they've taken it to a whole new level.

In Puglia.

They cultivate greens, they forage for wild greens.

Sometimes I think that my Neapolitan grandmother, my nonna, was in fact Pugliese because when I was a kid, in the spring, we would get all piled into the car, drive off into the countryside outside of the city where we lived, and pick wild arugula.

I would pull my hat way down in case my friends saw me, so that no one would think I was poor and had to forage for wheat.

Now it turns out that my grandmother was way smarter than I was, and that arugula was great for us because in Chinese medicine, bitter greens help to nourish the liver and tonify the liver so that it does its job better.

Now, while the liver has 120 different jobs, the most important job it does is to help to metabolize your macronutrients fat, protein, and carbs.

So if your liver is not working well and you have two little frown lines between your eyebrows, you probably aren't metabolizing your food efficiently, so you end up underweight or overweight and you can't kind of find your balance.

You're also cranky most of the time.

In Chinese medicine, the liver governs the emotion of irritability and impatience and anger.

So you try to avoid that by eating things like bitter greens.

Now in Italy, bitter greens are, I'm going to say, revered.

And that's an understatement.

In America, we boil them before we sauté them and take all the bitterness out, which defeats the purpose.

And the big question is, do you like bitter greens?

If you don't, you probably need them.

So this is a quick, quick, quick gravy.

I know, I know, some of you were going to write to me and say, it's not a gravy, it's a sauce in our house, it's a gravy.

So you're thinking, well, where are the greens coming in?

This is wild mint, which is insanely popular in Puglia and often cooked with orecchiette.

we're going to cut it really finely.

The smell is just oh my goodness, heavenly.

It smells like spring.

This is going to go right on top of our tomatoes.

Finally, one little pull of salt.

And now the pasta without being rinsed goes right on top.

You can see how the orecchiette it got big and puffy, and you'll also see how it's going to like, absorb the tomatoes and each little orecchiette the each little ear will grab some sauce and tempeh and tomatoes and mint.

Okay.

Now we give this a stir...

It's just gorgeous.

And you've got protein for tempeh.

You've got bitter greens to help your liver and you've got pasta to make you happy.

Honestly, in my house, that's how that goes.

So.

From the skillet right into the bowl.

Last touch a bit of fresh Wolffia to give us some nutrient dense greens as just the final touch.

And now once we enjoy this gorgeous dish it's off to Bari to learn how to make orecchiette from scratch in the street.

(Italian music plays) I'm here in the city of Bari, the capital of Puglia, which is divided into two parts.

There's Barivecchia and there's Bari Modern.

This historic city has everything from incredible architecture to the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas.

Yes, that one █ Santa Claus.

But the thing that has overshadowed all the history of this city is one simple food: orecchiette.

Let's go make some.

(Italian music continues) (Christina): Buongiorno Donna?

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) This is fine as is.

(speaking Italian) Okay.

(speaking Italian) Okay, so the dough is made simply from semola and warm water.

No sale?

No salt?

No salt.

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) I have to make my dough smaller.

I have to make my little log of dough smaller.

Okay, cosi?

(speaking Italian) Ah, okay.

So when I make a mistake, I just turn it inside out, and then I have one.

- Okay.

(speaking Italian) - How long?

How many years?

- Venti anni.

For over twenty years, - Anna has made... - (speaking Italian) - Has made orechiette.

- (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) Ah, yours are smaller... un po piccolo.

So her ██Anna█s are a little smaller.

These are dried orecchiette.

I did it, I did it, I did it, I did it.

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) My orecchiette look like I'm the remedial orecchiette maker.

I'm, not nearly as good as Anna.

Mamma mia!

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) Ah!

She does five kilos each day (speaking Italian) So what Anna's doing that I'm not doing correctly yet is she's really pulling the dough to get the orecchiette shape.

The little ear shape, which is so beautiful.

And see the rough edges here?

These rough edges are what catch whatever sauce, vegetable, verdura, whatever you're doing that have that beautiful ██ that's what it does.

It catches all the sauce.

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) She said, they're not ugly.

You're learning.

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) She said, it's a beautiful thing, orecchiette, and she's right.

I have to stand up, to roll my dough.

How do you roll your dough down there?

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) - Okay.

- (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) So she said the dough is too hard or dry.

So she's adding a tiny bit of warm water to sort of soften it.

And because the wheat in Italy is a little bit lower gluten, she's not over activating it.

So it's really interesting that the pasta won't be tough.

It'll just be the dough is a little █ she's just softening the dough, so that I can so that I can try once again to make orecchiette.

(speaking Italian) She says she just made the dough a little softer.

I think it's because she knows I'm remedial.

(speaking Italian) You notice - Anna█s making orecchiette.

She moved mine out of the bunch!

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) She said I'm making them too big.

But that's okay, she said, but stay calm.

█ It's okay.

█ Right.

I'm getting better.

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) She said it's not a problem.

(speaking Italian) She said every time you make them, they're good.

It doesn't matter.

Wow wow wow wow.

I make one orecchiette to Anna█s twenty orecchiette.

And mine still look.

(speaking Italian) She asked if I like orecchiette.

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) So they dry very, very quickly because they're fresh.

So she just puts them out on a screen for a little while.

So... il vado, Anna.

Vado a villa, I█m going to my villa.

(speaking Italian) but I don't think I was going to hire me any time soon to come back and make get with her.

Grazie mille!

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) Grazie mille!

- Ciao.

Ciao!

Ciao.

(Italian music continues) I'm here in Bari, which is the home of orecchiette pasta, Enterale, and every othre kind of flour product you can think of.

And you're thinking, “Wait,” “doesn't that contain evil gluten?” Yes it does, but listen to this: People who struggle with gluten intolerance not diagnosed celiac or a diagnosed intolerance, but a sensitivity.

They struggle because in America our wheat is made from hard red wheat with more gluten.

In Europe, it's a soft wheat, the gluten is lower and also the compounds that allow you to digest gluten are more prominent in European wheat, so you don't struggle as much.

You can come to Italy without celiac and eat as much pasta and bread as you like.

And now you know.

(Italian music fades) (gentle music plays) I am so excited to finally cook with Anna's beautiful, fresh orecchiette.

I loved how she made them with just semola, warm water.

And that's it.

No salt, nothing.

So we are going to cook them, and since there's no salt in them, we're going to add some salt to the pasta water because you need to flavor the pasta.

So it looks like a lot of salt.

But we're cooking a good bit of pasta.

So now the orecchiette goes in.

Now this orechiette will cook not as long as it takes when you buy dried Orecchiette because that ██because it's dried, it takes longer to cook.

This will cook pretty quickly.

All right.

So we're going to give those a stir.

And they'll start to rise to the top because they're fresh.

In the meantime we take some extra virgin olive oil about four tablespoons I'm going to say turn on the heat.

We're going to add some pieces.

Thin thin thin slices of onion half moon slices.

They're going to go in.

Now you notice what you didn't hear.

What didn't you hear.

Now sizzle because we used really good extra virgin pugliese oil.

And while you can cook extra virgin olive oil to 375 to 404 Fahrenheit degrees, it doesn't matter.

You can compromise the flavor or if you heat the oil first.

So we want to keep that.

And now we're putting in garlic as we say in its dress meaning the peel is still on.

So I get some garlic flavor.

But I don't overwhelm the dish with garlic.

In Italian American cooking, we tend to chop the garlic really fine, put it in and all you taste is garlic.

I want to taste the pasta, the onion...

The orecchiette, the peppers that I'm going to put in, the rabe...

So now we're going to add some hot pepper.

Now these peppers look tiny but good things come in small packages.

You want to chop these very finely and maybe use two in about a half pound of pasta.

So be careful with these because they are hot and they're going to go in with the onion.

And we're going to wait for the sizzle to build.

While that's going, you want to make sure you clean your knife and clean your cutting board.

When you use hot pepper so that everything doesn't taste like hot peppers, you want a difference of flavors.

Sizzle starting to slowly, slowly build.

Now the garlic if you want to leave it in the pasta dish, even as big pieces just peel it, put it in hole.

Sometimes I do that and leave it in.

This time I think I've left it in the peel, so we'll probably take it out.

But we're going to let these onions sweat, stir the orecchiette.

And while the sizzle is building.

We're chop our broccoli rabe.

This is broccoli rabe.

You can see it has little florets of broccoli here.

It's sort of a cousin to broccoli, but it belongs to the family of bitter greens meaning things like escarole, arugula, dandelion, broccoli rabe, endive.

These are greens that are very good for nourishing the energy of the liver, and the liver, While we think it just detoxifies the blood, certainly does that, among a million other jobs.

But its big job is to help us metabolize macronutrients protein, fat and carbs.

So if your liver is not working well, you kind of can't find your balance and you become irritable and cranky.

Eating these greens I know you find them bitter.

Please don't boil them before you saute them.

The bitter is the point.

If you eat these greens, you will be a happier camper and honestly, everybody around you will be too.

So let's check our onions.

So now I take the garlic out because I have my oil flavored enough.

And now my pasta is ready.

So we're going to take the pasta from the water.

You can see how it rose to the top.

And it goes right in.

To our dish.

Okay.

So now we get our broccoli rabe ready.

So now we're going to take the broccoli rabe and just take the bottom off and cut it into small pieces keeping the stems.

Do you want the stems for that lovely delicate bitter taste.

And just into bite sized pieces.

Now the stems go in first because they're going to take a few seconds longer to cook.

And then the greens go in.

We'll take a little bit more salt.

Just a pinch at this point because we've salted the pasta water remember.

And now we saute just until the greens wilt.

You don't want your pasta to become overcooked.

You don't want the greens to be raw.

You're just going to cook these till they wilt down and become shiny with oil and a deeper green.

Okay.

And you just stir.

The beauty of broccoli rabe is that it doesn't need a lot of cooking.

When I was a kid, I was a kid.

My nonna used to cook broccoli rabe until it was practically black and a puree on the dish.

We hated it.

Since then, we discovered that not only did she kill our taste buds, but she killed all the nutrition in the broccoli rabe.

But I think what they were doing was trying to cook the bitterness out.

But instead, we've discovered to enjoy, to learn, to enjoy that bitterness.

And this is about how cooked you want your broccoli rabe.

Barely, barely wilted.

This dish is perfection.

So now we're going to take it right from pan into a serving bowl.

And by serving bowl, I mean A serving for me.

I love this dish.

And when I make it, there's usually more greens than pasta.

Although I love pasta, I must say.

There's always a debate in our house whether we would give up pasta or pizza, and we never can decide what that is.

So there you have broccoli rabe and orecchiette, or as it's known in Puglia, orecchiette con cime di rapa, the most famous dish in all of Puglia.

So what are you waiting for?

Let's go back to the cutting board and I'll see you next time on Christina Cooks.

The Macroterranean Way.

Funding for Christina Cooks is provided by: GreenOnyx, producers of Wanna Greens Organic and sustainable, Wanna Greens are grown in a completely closed, indoor environment.

At Wanna Greens, we believe in the benefits of fresh greens for people and the planet.

Additional funding provided by Finamill.

The flavor of freshly ground spices and dried herbs with refillable, swappable pods.

Finamill.

And by Mauviel, creators of copper, stainless and steel carbon cookware for professional and home cooks.

A story of passion since 1830.

And by Suzanne█s Specialties Offering a full line of alternative, vegan and organic sweeteners and toppings.

Suzanne█s Specialties.

Sweetness the way Mother Nature intended.

And by Jonathan█s Spoons.

Individually handcrafted from cherry wood, each designed with your hand and purpose in mind.

Additional funding provided by: You can find today's recipes and learn more by visiting our website at christinacooks.com and by following Christina on social media.

Learn how to add delicious plant based dishes to your daily diet with the companion cookbook VegEdibles.

Featuring more than 80 easy-to-make recipes To order your copy for $32.95 plus handling, call 800-266-5815 or visit christinacooks.com.

Add “Back to the Cutting Board” and get both books for $55.95 plus handling.