They say that variety is the spice of life.

But what does that really mean?

It means that stimulation is key to vitality and wellness.

And for me, it begins with food.

From ginger to chilis.

Let's venture to Puglia and discover the world of spicy cooking, today on Christina Cooks: The Macroterranean Way.

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, simple ingredients and whip them into amazing dishes.

Will they all be plant based?

Yeah!

Will they all be delicious?

You bet.

And we're starting right here in Puglia with a classic dish called Pasta Assassina.

And you're thinking, wait, what?

Is the pasta going to kill me?

No, but the pasta comes from a story of a chef creating a dish.

Always cooking pasta, always cooking pasta and wondering what could he do that was different?

So he took this pasta and cooked it the way I'm going to show you.

And one of his guests said, you are like an assassin.

And it became Spaghetti al Assassina.

So we're going to start with a generous amount of olive oil in a skillet.

Good olive oil.

Some tomato paste about... 2 or 3 tablespoons.

Okay.

And we're going to put this on a medium heat and start to cook the tomato paste in the oil.

And the goal here is to scorch the tomato paste just a little bit.

And then we'll add to it a smashed bit of garlic while the tomato paste starts to move around in the oil and begin to cook.

In this pan we have a tomato broth.

So this needs to be a broth.

It's not a sauce.

See how it seems a little bit thick?

You need to keep adding water.

When you start this tomato broth.

You want to make sure that whatever tomato puree or passata you're using, you use the same amount of water as you do the tomato puree or paste.

Passata as it's known here.

So I'm adding water because it's thickening as it cooks.

And this is what's going to cook the pasta.

That's the point.

So it needs to be thin.

And once you add it you may still have to add a little bit of water.

But you'll see.

So now we have our tomato paste and it's really looking yummy.

Okay.

Now we'll take a smashed clove of garlic and throw that in.

Now I smashed it because I want it to fall apart in here and stay.

For once, the garlic gets to stay.

Now, if you really want this to be assassina, it has to be hot.

I have had it made not hot and just scorch it, but it should be hot.

If it's going to be easy enough, come on.

So we're going to take three of these peppers.

Chop them finely, these very hot little peppers.

Or you can use chili flakes.

You can use whatever hot spice you have.

Not cayenne.

It's not smooth enough.

Pop these into the tomato paste not the broth.

And as the broth cooks now, we'll add a little bit of salt to season the whole dish.

Maybe a little more as though you were seasoning pasta water.

Because that's in essence what this is.

Now you want to use vermicelli.

It goes into the pan.

It doesn't fit right away.

You kind of have to force it and break it.

It may break.

It may fall apart.

This could be the one time where you're allowed to break your spaghetti.

So you push it down.

Just keep pushing, pushing, pushing the moisture will eventually help it to wilt.

Come on, you can do it.

If you get frustrated, you can take it out and break it with your hands.

But that's kind of sacrilegious.

But you can see the paste is beginning to scorch.

So I'm going to have to commit sacrilege.

Sorry, pasta gods.

In it goes.

And now your job here is to move the pasta around, back and forth in the pan, constantly moving until it starts to blacken just a little bit.

Just a little bit.

Just keep moving it and moving it.

It gets coated with, the tomato paste.

You can see it's beginning to get little black char here and there.

Once this happens to your liking, you may like it really charred.

You may like it not charred.

And so now it's... it's charred the way I like it, which is not super charred.

I just like to see a little bit of black.

So now you take your broth.

And pour it over top.

To cover the spaghetti.

And you let it cook in this broth until the spaghetti is tender.

It will take about seven minutes.

And then dish will be perfection.

So after seven, eight minutes, you'll have to test your spaghetti to the al dente-n Al dente-ness?

Anyway, that you like, but it should look like this.

It should look like spaghetti cooking in tomato broth or tomato sauce.

So now we can serve our assassina.

And one last one.

Garnish with a little fresh basil.

And you have spaghetti al assassina.

And now we're off to make taralli.

(Italian music plays) Taralli, taralli... We see them everywhere: in bars, in pizzarias, on the table, with olives.

But what are taralli?

And what's the big deal?

Well, their history dates back to the eighth century, when they took little scraps of bread dough and rolled them into taralli to prevent famine when they were so poor.

Here in Puglia and in the 17th century they became part of Neapolitan cuisine.

Now taralli have become trendy and cool and everyone loves them.

We're actually at a small factory that makes taralli.

We're at Zio Pasquale in Puglia to show you how to make taralli, because they're such an important part of Pugliese cuisine.

Let's go!

So I'm here at Zio Pasquale.

We're going to learn how to make taralli.

And I█m with Concetta, who is going to show me how to make Integrale, which is the whole grain version of taralli.

So easy to digest, more fiber, healthier for you.

What are we doing?

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) Okay, this is just plain, whole wheat flour and you'll be able to see.

You can actually see the grain still in here.

It's so nice.

The flour is so nice.

And then?

(speaking Italian) Okay, so now we have white wine.

(speaking Italian) So in the wine, they've already dissolved the salt that's going into the dough.

And that's sort of the water.

These are very simple.

Taralli have three - four ingredients If you include the salt.

And so slowly, slowly, slowly.

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) So they, they mix.

And then as she swirling the wine in the container, it's to make sure that all the salt is dissolved.

Okay.

And next, the magical ingredient of Puglia, extra virgin olive oil.

And again slowly slowly slowly.

(speaking Italian) Oh, no.

No.

So no water.

No water.

Wow.

And you can see the dough coming together.

It's it's amazing how like, precise for this little sort of snack of the poor.

How precise and beautiful this dough is coming together.

It's amazing.

Okay, so we have made the dough, added the crusco peppers.

They came through the rolling machine, and now we have these little shapes.

Like little logs that we will hand-shape.

(speaking Italian) So now we close the taralli.

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) So then the way of making them here is directly into the oven after shaping them, which is great.

-What temperature?

-(speaking Italian) So they get baked at 175 which is about 350-400 in the States.

(speaking Italian) For 45 minutes to get this lovely crunchy taralli.

Concetta is much faster than me at doing this.

Even though I used to do this as a child.

So what we've done here is we mix together sort of modern machinery with big mixers and rollers, but then everything else is done by hand.

There are five people who make all of these taralli together, so it's quite amazing.

And then after they're baked, you can see the difference.

They come out of the oven, they look like this beautiful and crunchy and, Are just delicious.

And crusco peppers originate in Basilicata, but we have found a lovely little place in Alberobello that sells these peppers.

So let's go get some concerto.

Concetta, grazie mille.

Prego.

It might seem on the surface that the charming little town of Alberobello is magical, with these lovely rooves and these tiny little streets.

And it has a quaint quality to it that we love.

But the truth is, there's a story to those little rooves.

In the 14th century, the people were oppressed by heavy taxes.

So they built houses with roofs that could be disassembled so that when the tax collector arrived, he couldn't collect taxes because the houses weren't finished.

And when he left, they reassembled their homes.

So the heart of rebellion beats strong in the little town of Alberobello.

And that's one of the reasons I love it so much.

I'm here in Alberobello in a lovely little shop with the owner, Rosanna, and I noticed as I was looking at various things that she had these gorgeous crusco peppers.

And while I'm in Puglia, (speaking Italian) These originated in Basilicata, but they are the King and Queen (speaking Italian) Tell me some things about crusco peppers.

(speaking Italian) So they pick them when they're fresh and they dry them.

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) So they don't dry them in heat.

They dry them in a natural temperature.

(speaking Italian) So this way they can save them from one season to the next without losing the peppers.

Okay.

(speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) (speaking Italian) So these are fried dried peppers.

(speaking Italian) So these are used almost like a condiment on pizza, on vegetables, on soups.

Okay.

(speaking Italian) Ah, so this is used like you would use ketchup, it█s great.

(speaking Italian) It█s just puree of peppers, there█s nothing - and a little sugar.

And lemon.

Okay.

(speaking Italian) This is my favorite.

(speaking Italian) So this is, dried peppers, powdered, pulverized.

And this is used in risotto.

And on pasta.

So to make everything have, like, pepperoncino.

kind of flavor.

Rosanna.

(speaking Italian) It was so nice to visit your store.

Let's take some of these gorgeous peppers and head back to the villa and make cavatelli con crusco peppers.

(Italian music concludes) So now that I have these gorgeous crusco peppers that are actually sweet, not hot, we're going to make this lovely dish with cavatelli.

It's a very traditional Pugliese dish.

Cavatelli look like little orecchiette.

that haven't quite opened all the way, but they are absolutely amazing.

And they're going to cook in salted water.

Well salted water.

I know everyone panics when they see how much salt I add to pasta water, but you have to cook pasta in salted water so that it actually tastes like pasta.

And not just, you know, water.

And also remember, you don't cook your pasta in so much water that it's drowning.

You want the water to just cover the pasta.

Okay, so that part's done.

Now we're going to take some extra virgin olive oil quite a bit into a skillet because this is the base for our sauce, if you will.

Into it goes three cloves of garlic in there, dressed, still wrapped.

That translates in from Italian to in its dress.

This is going to give us some mild garlic flavor, because there's a lot going on in this very simple dish.

Peppers and parsley and breadcrumbs and pasta and peppers.

So you... hot peppers.

So you kind of just want a mild garlic flavor.

I say it a lot when I'm cooking at home in America, will use so much garlic that you don't taste anything but garlic.

In Italy, the dishes, while simple, have more complex flavors.

So I want to taste everything, not just garlic.

If you want stronger garlic flavor, you could take the peel off, put the garlic in, and either leave it or take it out, or you can thinly slice it for stronger taste.

And finally, if you, you know, mince it really fine.

The strongest garlic taste.

I don't want that.

I don't want that.

This is a crusco pepper.

I'm going to thinly slice it into bite sized pieces.

And because it's not hot I could do seeds and all.

Doesn't matter.

That's going to go into the oil with the garlic.

You have these lovely little rings of pepper.

You put the seeds in, too.

We're going to stir this around.

Give that nice sizzle.

Now the sizzle has built underneath the garlic and the peppers.

And I'm thinking maybe a little hot spice too.

So I'm going to take two of these tiny tiny tiny peppers.

Don't let them fool you.

They are really hot.

And that's going to go in to give us a little bit of heat, which is great for circulation.

And that's always a good idea.

Now we clean our knife and you want to clean your cutting board too, so that everything doesn't taste like hot pepper.

Okay.

Next goes in, I'm going to say, a couple tablespoons of breadcrumbs to toast.

And this is going to give like a crunchy texture to the dish.

So it's not just soft pasta.

I'm going to stir that around.

Now you notice what I have not added to the dish yet.

Salt.

And I haven't added salt because I won't do that and it'll be just a pinch.

Once I take the garlic out.

Now take the whole cloves of garlic out.

And you can see they've colored just a little bit.

The skin has become like a little tan.

And that's how you know it's ready to come out of the oil.

Move our peppers around.

And now stir the cabbage.

Totally.

Let's see if it's tender.

Yeah.

This is nice.

This is so nice.

It needs about another 30 seconds.

So while that cooks we'll slice our parsley.

Now, if you have really fresh parsley, don't take the stem and toss it.

This has intense flavor and concentrated nutrients from the soil.

The parsley, the nutrients went up the stem of the parsley into the leaf.

So don't throw these out.

Tip the bottom off.

Cut this because this is going to give you amazing flavor of parsley.

I don't █ I'm not a big fan of really finely sliced parsley in a dish like this, because I want the parsley to not seem like a garnish.

I want the parsley to seem like an ingredient.

So now our cavatelli with a little bit of the cooking water.

Yeah, there's that sound - goes right into the oil and that little bit of starchy pasta water is going to give us a really lovely sort of gravy.

That we wouldn't get if we drained it.

And heaven forbid, don't rinse your pasta.

Take it from the water into the pan.

Oh, I wish, I wish you all were here to smell this.

It smells so good.

Parsley goes in.

A stir.

And you can see the breadcrumbs are coating the pasta.

The parsley is perfectly green.

It's created like a little bit of, coating on the cavatelle.

It's just astonishing.

From the pan into the bowl.

I don't know what you guys are having for dinner, but I certainly know what I'm having.

Into the dish.

Make it pretty.

And you have in my world, the perfect pasta main course.

So, what are you waiting for?

Let's get 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.