This month our versatile chef Rocky Fino, author of “Will Cook for Sex” gives us a mouth watering Tomato Basil Pasta which is so simple that you can have it done in 15 minutes which leaves you plenty of time to enjoy the wine and music and the one you’re with.

This is Dr. Leticia Wright with IDC dating.com. IDC dating.com is where we’re creating multicultural relationships everyday. We’re on with the cooking podcast. We’re on with Rocky Fino. He’s our sex chef and he is the author of the book “Will Cook for Sex.” How’re you doing Rocky?

Doing great Dr. Wright.

Tell me about the book “Will Cook for Sex” for those who are joining us for the first time.

“Will Cook for Sex” is a fun approach to cooking I’ve put together to help guys entertain their woman with food and obviously give a good motivating reason to do so. I took the idea of putting together a set of recipes with step-by-step photography in order for guys to follow along that otherwise may be haven’t been in the kitchen before. So they can follow along and achieve the results for the first time and be able to entertain their women with it.

You also give some cool tips about how to do the presentation and other little fine touches that make it a really great cooking date.

Yeah. I try to help them out along the way. Dating is a challenging deal and we make a lot of mistakes along the way, but I try to give little pointers here and there that obviously can help out.

Well, today, you’re going to give us a great recipe. Something we can cook and really girls can use these techniques too for their guys.

Yeah. Now it’s a two-way street. There’s no doubt about that.

So what are we cooking up today?

Today, we’re going to do a pasta. We’re going to start with a tomato basil pasta.

Okay. What is the recipe called?

It is called the Tomato Basil Pasta.

Okay. You’re just playing, I thought it was going to be like Rocky’s Famous…

No. We’re going to keep this simple. We’re starting with the basics here with the tomato basil pasta because I think pastas are great place to start with any date or anybody trying to cook because so many people are used to eating pastas, yet I find that so many people rely to heavily on canned or jarred sauces.

Okay.

They’re greasy and heavy and they’re not the way to go.

So the pasta is fine, but really the homemade sauces, they outclass anything you can buy in the store.

Yeah. They’re fresh. They’re light. They’re better.

Okay. Great. Now let’s go down the ingredients line.

This is going to be simple. The key to this is going to be, again, fresh ingredients. Now the pasta we’re going to use is a penne.

Okay.

So, it’s a nice tubular-shaped pasta. Works really good. You could use a bowtie but get a box of penne. Then, on top of that, we’re going to get fresh roma tomatoes.

Okay. Fresh roma tomatoes. Now, if I’m just in a store and I’m looking at roma tomatoes, are they smaller? Are they bigger?

They look more like an egg. Most tomatoes are round. It can work with vine-ripened tomatoes. I’m just suggesting roma. That is my preference.

Do they have a richer flavor?

They are red. They are richer flavor. It works well with this particular recipe.

Okay. Great.

Now, we have one shallot. A shallot is a small onion.

Okay.

With a lot more horsepower.

Okay.

The French use it on just about every day. It is better to use the shallot than an actual onion. You could get away with an onion but we are going to a shallot.

Okay.

So one shallot, six roma tomatoes. The key here, fresh basil.

Fresh basil.

Yeah. We’re not dealing with some dried herb. We want fresh basil from the produce section.

Okay.

On top of that, you got to have some olive oil in the house, which you should have anyway.

Right.

You need a little bit of vegetable broth.

Can we use canned or we mix that?

Canned broth is fine. I don’t want you in the kitchen all afternoon trying to make up your own stock. We’re going to use canned vegetable broth and we will get a small container of half and half. We’re going to use a quarter cup of it.

Okay.

Some salt. Make sure you have some salt to taste.

Okay. So we’ve got all our ingredients assembled and what will we do first?

The sauce is rather quick, so the first thing is get the water boiling. Now one of the tricks to pasta, there is a lot of some misconception on pasta, what you want to do in a pasta is you want to add a sufficient amount of salt to the water, a couple of tablespoons to your water. You fill a pot with water about 6 inches, deep enough to handle your box of penne. The box of penne is I think 16 ounces typically. It will be plenty of pasta for the two of you.

Okay.

I recommend that you add about two tablespoons of olive oil to the water also.

Interesting. Olive oil to the water.

Olive oil to the water, you got a better chance the pasta not sticking.

Okay.

Now some say not necessary but they also recommend that you stir it constantly. If you have olive oil, you increase the probability of not having any pasta sticking together.

Okay.

You get that pot of water boiling. Now, as you begin to heat that pot and the water begins to boil, we can start on our sauce.

Okay.

One thing about pasta, you got to work two plates at one time.

Okay. Does it need to kind of all come together at the end at the same time? In other words, the pasta will be finished and the sauce will be finished and then you bring them together?

Ideal situation yes. If not, your sauce can remain. You can allow the sauce to simmer. Set it aside. Cover it. It’s the pasta that you don’t want to sit for a long time.

Okay. Great.

That is the key. As we got the water boiling, we should do a little prep. I did jump the gun here in our little prep. Best results are to get all your cutting and prep work done in advanced. What we want to do is we’re going to take those roma tomatoes and we’re going to dice them up in about 1-inch cubes and then we’re going to take the shallot and we’re going to mince the shallot up and chop it very fine.

All right.

Okay. Then the basil, you want to take the leaves of the basil off the stem. We are going to just slice the basil, kind of crunch up a set of leaves and then just slice it up.

Okay. So we’re not trying to make the basil chopped up and we don’t want the stem. We just want the leaves.

Just the leaves.

Okay.

Now what you do with that is you get about a palm worth of the basil for the two dishes. As we got our water boiling on in our pot, we’re going to have a medium-sized skillet for the sauce. What you do is heat the pan over medium heat.

Okay.

Add about two to three tablespoons of olive oil. Let that heat for a little bit to 30 seconds, and then come in with your chopped shallot.

Okay.

We go the shallot first and we let the shallot soften. It doesn’t take but about a minute or two for the shallot to soften and release its flavor. Be careful not to burn the shallot. Err on the side of don’t cook too long otherwise the shallot starts to get crispy brown and you end up burning the onion.

Okay.

So now that we softened the shallot, then we come in and add the chopped tomatoes.

We are stirring and…

The tomatoes are going to provide a juice to the sauce naturally so that you have a little broth beginning right there with the tomato.

Okay.

Now, as that simmers, let that simmer for about four minutes.

A couple of minutes. Yeah. Just simmer for a couple of minutes?

Yup. Three to four minutes.

Okay.

What we’ve done during those simmer of three to four minutes, we’re letting that tomato break down a bit.

Okay.

Now, we’re going to come in between a quarter and a half cup of broth.

Okay. We put in our vegetable broth.

You are putting the broth right on top of the tomato.

Okay.

Now, you stir it and mix it.

Okay.

This is just a constant simmer. We’re letting it simmer and add some salt to taste.

Okay.

Now the flavor of this pasta is the freshness of the tomatoes and the key is the basil sprinkled on top at the end. What people don’t realize, they want to do so much to a sauce, they rely so heavy on sauces of the pasta. They don’t realize that the pasta is part of the flavor.

Right. We basically use the pasta, I mean they basically use the sauces to cover up the pasta.

Yeah, whereas if you go to Italy, there is very little sauce on your pasta. There is very little. It is the accent to the pasta.

Right.

Plus if you drop some big canned heavy bolognaisse sauce with a lot of meat on your date first time, it is not that… We’re trying to show her a little nice light fare that can be enjoyed by both of you without being too heavy and greasy.

Right. So you can feel like you want to do something else after it.

You got it. That’s right. Let us not knock ourselves out before we get started.

Okay.

So now we’ve got our water boiling, once the water is to a rolling boil, a good boil, you can add the pasta. When you add your pasta to the water, what you want to do when you first put it in is to take a spoon, wood spoon or Teflon spoon, and give it a stir around. Basically getting the pasta coated with water so it is not plump and sticking.

Okay. We’re going to stir it and pour it in. Go ahead.

Basically if you follow directions in the box, it works fine. Once you’ve got that boiling water, the pasta will take between 7 to 10 minutes typically. What you want to do, my recommendation, you test it. You go in there with a slotted spoon and pull a noodle out and periodically test the noodle.

So we’re not going for al dente, we’re really going for something that is cooked the way most Americans expect it.

Yeah. You just want to cook it. You’re eating it there. If you’re going to save the pasta overnight, you wouldn’t want to go too far. You’d like to keep it a little underdone because it cooks in its own self after you pull it off.

Okay.

You’re looking to find the noodle to be not chewy.

Okay. So the noodle is not chewy but it is cooked.

It’s cooked and you can tell when you test them and that’s the best way to do it.

Okay.

Especially with penne. A spaghetti noodle is going to get droopy and you’re going to see that, but on a penne, it is a little tubular 1-inch long noodle, it’s not going to change its appearance any so you got to kind of do it by taste.

Right. Okay. But we can’t look at the penne pasta to if it’s done, we have to test it.

Yeah. Let’s test it. Whenever you cook, you talk to any of the masters, whatever you cook, the main way to find out if you’re doing right is test your guts. Take a tester, always tasting to see if you need to add or where you’re at with your recipe. It applies to pasta for certain.

Okay.

So now we’ve got the noodles boiling, and then back over on our pasta which has been simmering this time, and again a nice slow simmer. You don’t want to get it boiling over and reducing too much. You just got a nice slow simmer going and we’re making a thinner sauce. It’s not a real thick sauce so when we finish it and it goes on the pasta, it will really run through the pasta without having to sit heavy on top.

Okay.

Now the last item to add to our sauce in the pan is the half and half.

Okay.

So right at the end, we’re going to add a little quarter cup of half-and-half and then stir that in and you can see the change in color of the pasta. It is going to become obviously a creamier pinkish color from the red.

Wonderful.

Yeah. It makes a really nice texture to the sauce and the cream brings nice little flavor element too. Now, our sauce at that point as we let it simmer, we again test it after you put the cream in to see if you need to add any more salt, and then you just do it salt to taste and you’ve got that there waiting as your noodles finish. You can, at this point, and one of the things I like about this tomato basil pasta is the basis to where you start. If you do this often, at this point, you can decide if you want to get it a little spicier. You can add a little cheyenne pepper. You can take this pasta sauce anywhere from here. Down the road you can add meats, shrimps, vegetables, anything. You can create an experiment with, but today we are going with a nice basic. Just explain how the freshness works using raw vegetables.

Let’s talk about presentation and how we get it on the plate and what little tips you use to really make it look like a nice dish cause it sounds like a very simple dish.

It really is simple and what we do, you’re going to serve it in two individual either plates that got a little edge on them or a bowl, and we’re going to add the pasta. Now, when we drain the pasta, well another big mistake people make is they want to run water over the pasta. They put it in a colander and they want to run water over it. You’re removing a little bit of the flavor there.

Okay.

The water that is cooking in the pasta has a lot of flavor. So what you want to do is you want to drain it in the pot that you’ve got the pasta and this is a little tricky but you can tilt it over and hold a lid or something and just get the water up and leave a touch of the water in that pasta.

Okay.

Keep it moist and no need to run cold water over it. I don’t recommend that at all.

Okay.

Leave it in the pot and then throw a couple of spoonfuls, big serving spoonfuls, of the sauce in the pasta that’s in the pot and stir that around and what you’ve done now is you’ve coated your pasta. So your pasta is not going to sit and get sticky.

Sticky. Okay. Great. We started putting a little bit of the sauce.

Yeah. You put a little in the pasta and get it coated. So basically, we’ve got our base of sauce with the pasta. Now my recommendation when you’re serving it is when you put the pasta in the bowl and then you’re going to apply a little bit of the sauce straight from the pan, apply a little bit of the sauce in the center of the pasta, you have your chopped basil, now take a couple of sprigs of the basil that you haven’t chopped up and deleafed and use that as a garnish. It is a very pretty garnish. You just slide that anywhere on the plate. They are just right on the edge of the pasta and let the basil leaves provide a little ambiance and look.

Okay. Then do you recommend a certain kind of wine or what kind of goes with that? What do you drink with it?

I would go I mean typically at this point, I would enjoy a nice light red wine.

Okay.

You would do like a Pinot Noir. Even a good a Merlot could work here. It is very, very versatile flavor. It can work with a lot of different wines. That would be my recommendation, just like a Pinot would be very nice, elegant touch to this. So as you set, you’ve got your glass of wine and then of course you’re bringing over the two bowls of pasta, the last step is just to sprinkle the sliced basil, the fresh sliced basil right on top.

Okay.

So at no point are we cooking the basil.

Okay.

This is a raw herb that we’re adding right to the top and it really provides that wow factor. That’s the key ingredient to this dish is that flavor of that fresh basil tied in with a nice light tomato cream broth with the penne.

Sounds delicious. That is terrific.

From here, like I said, she’s going to enjoy that. It’s a meal, light salad to this or if you want to have some bread, a little garlic bread or just even some good fresh sour dough to dip the bread in the sauce. I was growing up Italian. You eat with one fork. You have a hand with one fork and the other one with a chunk of bread.

Okay.

You swab it. Now I don’t recommend doing that with your date. You want to be a little more gentlemanly at that time. You can do a lot of things with pasta which is a great starting point in your culinary efforts and I think doing it on a light fresh ingredient, she’s going to appreciate it a lot more than somebody just putting out a big can of ragout on a spaghetti bowl.

Awesome. That is terrific. Well that is our basil pasta dish.

Tomato basil penne.

Tomato basil penne, and we’re going to have all of the ingredients and actually the list printed up for you and available on the IDC dating.com website so that you can make this delicious-sounding dish. So this has been Dr. Leticia Wright for IDC dating.com with our sex chef, Rocky Fino, from “Will Cook for Sex.” Thank you for joining us and we’ll see you next time. IDC dating.com is creating multicultural relationships everyday. Remember, ignoring ones conscience is neither safe nor right, and I’ll see you next time. Bye.

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