Signature Dish
Incredible Italian
Season 3 Episode 6 | 28m 57sVideo has Closed Captions
Mezzi Rigatoni at Red Hen; Coniglio at Ama; Lobster risotto at Al Tiramisu
Italian classics – D.C. style – abound in this episode, which begins with the mezzi rigatoni from the Bloomingdale favorite, Red Hen. Next up, Navy Yard’s Ama offers up a tasty coniglio (rabbit stew), showcasing the flavors of Northern Italy. The episode wraps up at the stalwart Al Tiramisu in Dupont Circle, where Seth indulges in the visually stunning lobster risotto.
Signature Dish
Incredible Italian
Season 3 Episode 6 | 28m 57sVideo has Closed Captions
Italian classics – D.C. style – abound in this episode, which begins with the mezzi rigatoni from the Bloomingdale favorite, Red Hen. Next up, Navy Yard’s Ama offers up a tasty coniglio (rabbit stew), showcasing the flavors of Northern Italy. The episode wraps up at the stalwart Al Tiramisu in Dupont Circle, where Seth indulges in the visually stunning lobster risotto.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipANNOUNCER: And now "Signature Dish," a WETA original series.
SETH: Today on "Signature Dish," it's time for incredible Italian.
Wow.
After learning some tricks of the pasta trade... MIKE: Nice.
Wow, you looking for a gig?
SETH: Just next level, chef.
We'll get adventurous.
JOHANNA: I'm making coniglio.
Do you know what that is?
SETH: Uh, I'm a little worried to find out.
JOHANNA: The meat falls right off the bone.
SETH: Oh, it certainly does.
LUIGI: Hello, fire.
SETH: And finish with a seafood showstopper.
LUIGI: One last try.
It's perfect.
SETH: Molto Bene.
I'm Seth Tillman, WETA producer and DC native, and I love good food.
That's why I'm traveling to restaurants across the DMV, at each stop looking for the one thing you just gotta try... That Signature Dish.
First up, a visit to DC's Bloomingdale neighborhood to check out The Red Hen.
MIKE: So, I grew up in Westfield, New Jersey.
I grew up within a Jewish household but within an Italian community.
All my friends had Italian grandmothers, so Italian food kind of became my comfort area.
When I was 15 years old, I worked in an Italian deli, and I really fell in love with just that fast-paced, exciting nature of a restaurant.
When I was young enough and dumb enough to sign my own lease, I knew that I wanted to do Italian.
If you look at Italy as a boot from north to south, there's an amazing amount of regional culture, regional dishes, and temperature and climate.
So in the summertime, I can cook food from Sicily because it's an island region and it's hot and they've got all those wonderful tomatoes, citrus, olive oil, but then in the winter, I can go up to Piedmont and cook with braised meats, polenta, richer dishes with butter and Parmigiano Reggiano.
We actually travel the seasons through those regions.
Pasta is, is obviously one of my favorite things, so much so that I do it for a living.
My kids love pasta.
My wife loves pasta.
People seem to love pasta.
So when we opened up Red Hen, at the time, everybody was doing fresh pastas, right?
Fresh tagliatelle, pappardelle.
I wanted to bring DC something different.
So we started extruding our own pasta, and that's a dry product.
It's fairly simple and the excitement is that you can get all these different shapes.
So we've run 30, 40 different shapes over the last 12 years at Red Hen.
What I'm most excited about coming in every day and experiencing is the people that work with us and the guests that come here for the first time that are experiencing it, or the guests I've seen for the last decade.
I think that's something that continues to kind of fuel me.
The same feeling I had when I was 15 years old slinging sandwiches in an Italian deli, I still get those butterflies in the stomach when we start a service here at The Red Hen.
SETH: Chef.
MIKE: Seth.
SETH: Good to meet you.
MIKE: Nice to see you.
How are you?
Welcome to The Red Hen.
SETH: I am excited to be here because it looks like it's pasta time.
MIKE: It is.
Every day is pasta time here at The Red Hen so you came at the perfect time.
SETH: I know there's like 200, 300 different types of pasta.
Which one are you making today?
MIKE: So we are making the pasta for a signature dish, our mezzi rigatoni, really lovely tubular shape with ridges on the outside, helps to catch all that lovely sauce.
So this is Stella and she extrudes all our pasta for us.
SETH: Right, because we're not starting with a big well of flour here and cracking some eggs.
MIKE: Right.
That's a fresh pasta.
What we're making today is a fresh dry pasta.
So basically what happens is we add semolina flour to durum wheat flour from Puglia and water, and that's really it.
And then once it's mixed, all we have to do is turn this on and it's going to start extruding the pasta through the dye and just give a little slice like that.
And so mezzi means half.
So in this case, we're not doing a full rigatoni, some of those little microscopic pieces that are going to melt into the sauce and thicken it up and make it super velvety, but this is not for the faint of heart.
You got to be careful.
So what we're going to do is we're going to stop it.
Do you want to give it a try?
SETH: Let's do it.
MIKE: Let's do it.
Here you go.
I'm going to back away just in case I get hurt, okay?
SETH: All right, I don't want to slice your hand off, chef.
MIKE: Here we go.
Ready, set, and ride it up.
Nice.
SETH: Not so nice.
MIKE: There you go.
Good, good, good.
SETH: Now we're making some mezzi.
I love it.
MIKE: Wow, you looking for a gig?
Because I've got some space.
It takes a little bit of time to really feel it out.
It's one of those things that even though it's coming through a machine, there is some technique behind it.
And hand-cutting for us is super fun.
It gives us the ability to control the shape.
SETH: All right, I'm just going to stand here all day until my crew tells me I got to actually get to the kitchen.
MIKE: Yeah, I'm gonna go on break if that's cool.
SETH: Works for me, chef.
A lefty, no less.
MIKE: Before you get carried away, let's turn this off, and let's really take a look at the pasta itself.
SETH: As I'm letting some hang off the side.
MIKE: They look great, they look great.
Look, everybody makes some mistakes, but what's really unique about this pasta is that it's still warm, but it's holding its shape.
SETH: It's warm and it actually smells really, really good.
MIKE: Smells amazing, doesn't it?
SETH: Oh, it has that nice toothsome bite.
I can only imagine how good that's going to taste when it's got a great sauce clinging to it.
MIKE: For sure.
How about this?
You did a great job on the pasta.
Why don't we take this in the back and we'll cook up the final dish?
SETH: Sounds good to me, chef.
MIKE: Great.
All right, Seth, we're in The Red Hen kitchen.
Let's get this dish fired up.
SETH: All right, well sir, here's your mezzi rigatoni.
MIKE: Grazie.
SETH: Prego.
MIKE: So first thing we need to do is we'll get some pasta in the water, so rolling boil.
From here, we'll take a hot pan, we're going to add a little bit of olive oil.
SETH: Of course.
MIKE: And I always use good extra virgin olive oil, a little bit of slivered garlic.
Once it starts to caramelize on the outside, we know we're ready to add the sauce and the sauce is going to start to simmer immediately.
And so we're going to add our fennel sausage.
What's really exciting about this sausage is that we've got a lot of toasted fennel seed, coriander, but then that fennel pollen is our magic secret ingredient.
SETH: Just takes it to the next level.
MIKE: Takes it to the next level.
When you taste it, you don't really know what you're tasting, but it's this amazing floral note.
So we're going to add a little bit of salt.
Okay?
And the big thing, too, is when we're cooking this, we consistently want to taste.
Something I teach all of our cooks at all the restaurants is if you don't taste, you don't really know.
At this point, my salt level's really nice.
I'm going to guild the lily and we're going to add a little bit of butter.
So that butter's going to help to really make it that nice velvety nature along with the pasta.
Let's talk a little bit about the cheese we're about to add.
Parmigiano Reggiano is the king of Italian cheeses, really nutty, really milky.
That's going to soften the sauce a little bit.
And to combat that, we're also going to add Pecorino Romano, a little bit saltier, funkier, made from sheep's milk cheese.
And we'll start to mix that up a little bit.
Don't try that at home, folks.
SETH: All right, I got one wardrobe here.
MIKE: You're looking good, you're looking good.
Another thing, how do we know if the pasta's cooked?
There's no box here, so we got to taste it ourselves.
Perfectly al dente.
Look at that pasta you made.
How beautiful is that?
SETH: Wow.
I did that all myself.
MIKE: You did it.
A little bit of pasta water, and we'll give it a toss.
SETH: And I can just see that sauce is just clinging to the side of that pasta.
It's not sliding off.
MIKE: It's slicking.
SETH: Slicking.
MIKE: I'm going to give it one last taste here.
You know what?
For me, maybe just a tiny bit of salt never hurts.
Just grab a couple plates.
There we have it.
Our mezzi rigatoni with fennel sausage ragu, tomato, fennel pollen.
Now we just need to give it a little dusting of Pecorino Romano.
Here you have it, Seth, the mezzi rigatoni.
SETH: Wow.
Let's go eat.
Chef, again with this aroma.
MIKE: Thank you.
SETH: I want to dig in, but what wine pairs nicely with this rigatoni?
MIKE: So we've got a great Chianti Classico.
Really works well, super fruit-forward, jammy, from Tuscany, can't go wrong.
SETH: Chin-chin.
MIKE: Chin-chin to you, sir.
SETH: Perfect.
Let's give this a shot.
MIKE: Let's dig in.
SETH: Just next level, chef.
MIKE: Thank you.
SETH: Sauce just oozing out as I push my fork down.
And that pasta that we made with all that love and care, it really does have a firmness to it that you're just not going to get with something coming out of the box.
MIKE: Yeah, I think there's a real bounce to it.
You know, because it's that fresh dried pasta, we're not completely drying it out.
There's still that suppleness that really is unique to The Red Hen.
SETH: And the fennel pollen.
MIKE: It just makes it so floral, just brings around all the flavors.
SETH: And on top of that, just garlic, tomato sauce can never really go wrong.
MIKE: How can you?
Especially the Pecorino Romano on top, a little bit of that saltiness just to finish the pasta.
SETH: So as a chef, how do you even begin to put a dish like this together?
MIKE: In many ways it's just mechanics, right?
So you think about salt, fat, acid, and flavor.
And this was one of the first dishes that I created for the restaurant.
And I remember making it for my business partner and we ate it and we were like, "Oh man, this is going to be a hit."
And people just went right for it.
And it hasn't stopped since 2012.
SETH: And as a chef too, aren't you always trying to reinvent yourself?
Does it go against your instincts to keep something on the menu that just stays the same year after year?
MIKE: I would say five or six years ago, maybe.
But I've also realized that there are things that have to stay on the menu.
There are things that have to bring people back.
I think it's really important to create nostalgia even for The Red Hen, right?
So we definitely are never taking this off the menu.
I feel like people would riot.
It is the town to riot.
So I think we're just going to keep it on and see how many more we can sell.
SETH: Well, I don't have an Italian grandma.
I didn't grow up with... MIKE: Me neither.
SETH: No pot of red sauce on the stove every Sunday.
But you're right, it fills something.
It takes you back to somewhere.
MIKE: Well, I hope it takes you back to The Red Hen.
SETH: I'll certainly be back.
Thanks, chef.
MIKE: Thank you.
SETH: A few miles due south in the bustling Navy Yard is Ama, a casual cafe and coffee bar by day and fine dining destination by night.
JOHANNA: I grew up back and forth between the US and Italy.
My dad was a chef and had a restaurant in New York City, but also in Italy.
And I think growing up in the restaurant, it's actually why I wanted nothing to do with it.
Went to GW and studied at the Elliott School and really wanted to save the world when it came to women and politics.
And as I traveled the world and really started immersing myself in different cultures and cuisines did I start to fall in love with beautiful food, beautiful flavors, and how it brought people together.
SETH: Chef Johanna opened Ama, which means love in Italian, with her husband, the beverage expert, Michael Wilder.
The restaurant honors her Northern Italian heritage.
JOHANNA: My mom is from Liguria and my father is from Alto Adige.
That's primarily where I was raised and grew up and really understood those flavors but also is very important to bring the more unknown regions of Italy.
Italian food is one of those cuisines that everyone kind of has an opinion on.
When you come to Ama, I hope you'll come in with an open mind to trying different ways that these things are prepared because each in their own right are special.
And this is really what's special to me.
SETH: Chef.
JOHANNA: Hey.
SETH: Good to meet you.
JOHANNA: Welcome to Ama.
SETH: Oh, boy am I excited to be here.
But what are we making today?
JOHANNA: I'm making coniglio.
Do you know what that is?
SETH: I'm a little worried to find out.
JOHANNA: So we're actually going to be butchering some rabbit and making a traditional style of Ligurian stew with a little twist of mine.
SETH: All right, well, I guess this is kind of the other, other white meat.
JOHANNA: Listen, I know rabbit can seem daunting.
Everybody thinks of the cute part of what they think of with rabbits, but... SETH: Little bunny foo foo.
JOHANNA: I didn't want to say it, but what you've got here is a very sustainable source of protein, as well as something that's very lean, very tender.
We're going to start over here.
SETH: With the good sharp knives, obviously.
JOHANNA: Very good, sharp knife.
Everything should come off pretty easily.
We work with a couple of local farms that have wild free-range rabbits.
SETH: This is some real butchery we're doing here today.
JOHANNA: This is some real butchery.
There are a couple of... SETH: Hey, this is where food comes from.
JOHANNA: Butchery makes you appreciate the quality of the ingredients and also appreciate the animal and its life and everything that it gave to be able to nourish and nurture other people.
So you've got essentially your dark meat and that is what I'm cutting off right now, which are your legs and thighs.
And then you get the tenderloin part of it, which is essentially like having your chicken breast.
And then the remaining part of the carcass is actually going to be made into a stock that we use in the stew.
SETH: So nothing goes to waste here.
JOHANNA: Nothing goes to waste.
SETH: I love that.
JOHANNA: Yeah.
SETH: All right, well how does this rabbit become a stew?
JOHANNA: Well, let me show you.
All right, so this is where we're going to actually be braising the rabbit.
SETH: Ooh, okay.
JOHANNA: And I'm going to put the white meat with the white meat and the dark meat with the dark meat.
SETH: We already have quite a few rabbits that have been butchered.
JOHANNA: Yes, we're ready.
And then the carcass is actually going to go into the stock.
I'm going to put in some extra virgin olive oil from Liguria and we are going to start searing off our dark meat.
So at Ama, we don't believe in using any industrial seed oils and it was really important to me not to have an actual fryer.
This machine allows me to sear, braise, and shallow fry, which means that I'm only using really good oils or tallow or clarified butter.
It means that everything we're doing in here stays as fresh as possible.
What I think is really important for a home cook is they have to salt along the way.
Then we use Celtic sea salt.
I want to get as much color as possible on the meat.
My God, I'm getting steamed.
This is what we're looking for, just a little bit of color.
It helps bring out the flavors.
And then I'm going to start taking everything out.
So now we're going to get the white meat with a nice quick sear so it has some beautiful color on it.
And then it's really important to get it out.
The white meat is kind of similar to a chicken breast.
If you overcook it, it gets a little dry.
So now I'm going to add a little bit more olive oil.
And then we actually add in some beautiful anchovies.
SETH: Oh, man.
You must've known that I just love anchovies.
JOHANNA: I had a little inclination.
These anchovies are really, really special.
They're from Nettuno from the south.
And I really wanted to figure out how do I take some of my favorite flavors and put it in this dish.
This isn't necessarily the most traditional way that my grandmother or my mother would prepare rabbit, but I felt like these flavors really do complement what Liguria is all about.
SETH: And I love how the anchovies are just melting away.
JOHANNA: Exactly.
And then we use a lot of produce from Lancaster Farm Cooperative.
And so these are sweet onions coming together with some anchovies.
SETH: I could just stand here all day long getting some of those aromas.
JOHANNA: What we're looking for here is a softening of these onions and now we're actually going to add the fennel.
When I deglaze, I'm going to deglaze with some Sambuca.
SETH: Ooh.
JOHANNA: It has a little bit of a sweetness to it.
It just brings out the flavor of the fennel.
I'm going to turn up the heat just a little bit.
SETH: And all that beautiful brown caramelized bits, those are all coming up now and joining our stew party.
JOHANNA: Everything is coming together.
Right now, we're going to focus on braising the dark meat, just mixing everything together.
So now I'm going to add these beautiful tomatoes.
Now these are the olives.
SETH: Don't love olives as much as anchovies, but I know they're going to be delicious in this dish.
JOHANNA: It somehow brings it together.
I've tried this dish without olives, it's just not as good.
All right, so we strained some rabbit stock.
I'm just going to put enough stock in to cover.
So the next step... to be able to cover this up and let it braise.
So, Seth, this is now going to braise for about an hour or so until the dark meat is tender.
Then we'll add in the white meat.
After we ladle it into the plate, we put a little bit of fresh chervil and some toasted ancient grain sourdough that we make in-house.
And then the coniglio will be ready.
SETH: All right, chef, I am game to try this dish.
JOHANNA: Had to throw that one in there.
SETH: Had to get that in there.
What are we drinking with it?
JOHANNA: I actually wanted to bring you this martini.
In Liguria, whenever somebody's house has extra olive branches, people will burn them and it has this amazing scent.
So my husband and I we're like, "How do we capture that into a martini?"
So we make this a dirty martini and then we smoke it with olive branches to get that.
SETH: Oh, there we go.
So this is perfuming the air here in the Navy Yard, just as it does back home in Liguria.
All right, well cheers to that, chef.
JOHANNA: Cheers.
SETH: Unique, flavorful, and very, very smoky.
I like that.
All right, well it's rabbit time now.
JOHANNA: Coniglio time.
SETH: Coniglio.
JOHANNA: Very excited for you to try it.
So use your spoon, try a little bit of the broth, but, yeah, dive in.
SETH: Mmm.
JOHANNA: The flavor is a little sweet, a little salty, has all these really nice notes to it.
But you can see the meat just falls right off the bone.
SETH: Oh, it certainly does.
That is outstanding.
JOHANNA: Thank you.
The bread is, in Italy, you always have a little bread for Scarpetta.
So there is a little bit of our ancient grain sourdough, so you can just use that to enjoy the sauce.
SETH: Do you have a lot of rabbit-skeptical folks who you've converted with this dish?
JOHANNA: Yes.
And they're like, "I don't know about this, but I'm in the mood for stew."
And we're like, "Just give it a try."
And I think 10 out of 10, we've never had somebody send back the dish.
SETH: And we're here in an Italian restaurant and it looks like maybe the flag of Italy over here.
JOHANNA: Oh, yeah.
Yes, the little coloring does do that.
I couldn't have you come and just try a Ligurian dish.
I had to make sure you tried something from Alto Adige, which is where my dad is from.
So these are actually knödel.
We have three different varieties here.
We have a beet, a porcini, and a spinach one.
Then that's the beet one that you tried.
I want you to try the porcini one.
SETH: Oh, the porcini one next, all right.
JOHANNA: That one is absolutely to die for.
And it's really, really just... Have you had anything like this before?
SETH: Those earthy flavors, the porcinis, similar to the rabbit stew, it's got that heartiness, but it doesn't feel heavy.
These flavors, I guess we're getting far enough up in Italy, it's almost not even feeling Italian at this point.
JOHANNA: I know.
They speak a Austrian-German dialect called Tyrolean there.
It is an autonomous region, so it definitely has its own vibe, but I just find the flavors are really comforting.
I'm excited to have it here in DC as well.
SETH: Well, what a beautiful love letter to a region of Italy that I knew very little about.
Thank you, chef.
JOHANNA: Thank you for trying something new.
Chin-chin.
SETH: Chin-chin.
It is time to wrap up this Italian journey and where better than DuPont Circle, home to the neighborhood mainstay Al Tiramisu.
LUIGI: I'm from Lagonegro, Basilicata, Italy, which is south of Italy, and grew up in a farm, but with an average of 150 cows, 250 goats.
Food was a way of living every single day, always working.
And that's what made who I am today.
Food in Italy, it's our national anthem.
Look at myself.
I like to say that I have pasta on my skin.
You are among the Italian and you always end up to talk about food, how your mother makes this, how we do this for Christmas.
So food has been in our culture, in our DNA since the beginning of the creation.
Tiramisu opened in '96 on Dupont Circle.
Tiramisu plays an important role for the community and the community supports us.
And the beautiful thing is that people who met here or have the first date here, now I see their children who bring their first date over here.
For these people at Tiramisu, it's a part of their life so it belongs to them and not to me anymore.
SETH: Chef.
LUIGI: Buongiorno, welcome to my kitchen.
SETH: Oh, I am honored to be here and I see lobster.
What are you cooking today?
LUIGI: I'm going to make a signature dish, lobster risotto, which for 28 years that we've been open, never was in the menu and yet it's the most popular dish and everybody order.
SETH: So it sounds like this is a not-so-secret, secret menu item?
LUIGI: Correct, yes.
SETH: At least for me, risotto, the thought of making it, it's a little bit intimidating.
LUIGI: Yes, it is.
At the end, it's a really simple dish that takes a little bit of time, but when you've done it well, the result is fantastic.
It's like someone hug you when you have a great risotto.
Before you arrived, I took to the lobster, we're not brutal.
We talk with them, mostly in Italian, and then I blanch it for four minutes and then I clean it.
And now I'm going to sauté the lobster for one or two minutes.
We need a little bit of olive oil over here.
SETH: Of course.
LUIGI: A little bit of garlic.
We allow it to get gold a little bit.
SETH: Smelling great.
LUIGI: Yes.
Then we add a little bit of a cherry tomato, now the lobster.
Hello, fire.
SETH: You didn't want to cook it all the way at first because you certainly not want to overcook lobster.
LUIGI: Absolutely not.
We do a little bit of tomato, so a little bit of parsley, salt and now we all mix.
And this one we can put on the side.
SETH: Chef, if you told me the dish was done right now, I'd be ready to eat it.
LUIGI: Oh, no.
We have to make the risotto.
SETH: Of course.
LUIGI: So we need a little bit of olive oil over here again.
Now we have a little bit of onions.
We're going to wait for this one to golden a little bit.
And then we have the rice.
So arborio rice, you can see that they're all perfect.
They're all the same.
That's how you see when it's a good quality of rice.
SETH: And so why does arborio rice work so well for risotto?
LUIGI: The arborio rice, it will cook, but it's not going to boil it.
It's going to keep its form as it is.
SETH: It's not going to break.
LUIGI: Exactly.
Look at this right now, it's going to double, but it's still intact.
We put our rice and then we toast just a little bit and we put the wine.
But usually I do quality control.
That's good.
We want to see that all the wine is evaporated.
So at this point we add the broth, of course, fish broth that we do with the remain of the lobster.
So you have to boil it and absorb, but not too much broth.
So that's why you had to make sure to feed all the time.
You need to stir it or you need to feed it.
What we need to do right now is add some of this because to give it the flavor, also for the color.
See?
Now time to feed again because he absorbed already this.
So at this point I'm going to be feeding approximately once every minute.
♪ ♪ So we are at a turning point, eh?
And you can see also the volume of the rice is almost double right now.
SETH: Oh, yeah.
Those grains are getting nice and plump down there.
LUIGI: Oh, yeah.
I can see.
Yes.
SETH: You're starting to feel good here?
LUIGI: See?
I can feel good, yes.
(bubbling) If you get it closer, it actually sounds different.
SETH: I don't want to make a peep.
LUIGI: I think we are there.
See?
Before it was like every grain will go on a different direction.
So now there're more united.
SETH: There's a lot of happiness in that pot.
LUIGI: Yes, we reduce a little bit the fire.
I'm going to add just a little bit of butter.
And so now we stir a little bit, mantecato.
That's what we say in Italian.
So you're stirring fast and you see it's going to be creamy.
The starch is coming up.
SETH: And the starchiness is what's really going to give you that creamy texture?
LUIGI: Correct, yes.
The butter is just to get things together.
SETH: What a show.
LUIGI: I love it.
See?
One last try.
No, I'm not going to put any.
It's perfect.
You see?
Now they're all together.
SETH: I was intimidated to make risotto before and watching you, I'm still just as intimidated.
LUIGI: No, no, no.
Okay, now we are ready to plate.
First, I'm going to lay the risotto on the plate.
Then I put the meat on top, the claw right in the front.
And then I will add the tail and the head.
And that's the lobster risotto, the Al Tiramisu signature dish.
SETH: All right, chef, can't wait to dig in.
LUIGI: Please, by all means.
SETH: All right, get some of that lobster meat right on top.
Here we go.
LUIGI: The moment of the truth over here, yeah?
SETH: Molto bene.
LUIGI: Buonissimo.
SETH: I just had that rice.
I haven't even had a bite of the lobster meat yet, but it is so creamy.
I mean, you would think that there's a pint of cream or... LUIGI: And we didn't put any.
SETH: Or a pound of butter.
LUIGI: We just like sauté at the end, stirring fast that all the starch came up.
SETH: Oh, and having a bite of the lobster meat, so perfectly cooked.
LUIGI: Thank you.
SETH: And the grains of rice, every time you take a bite, you just get that little burst of lobster flavor just exploding into your mouth.
LUIGI: And that happened because you feed a little bit, a little bit rather than boil the rice.
And that's the technique for risotto to have this kind of result.
SETH: Time well spent.
LUIGI: Thank you.
SETH: Chef.
I love this space.
It's so warm and inviting and almost 30 years.
What's the secret to having stayed open for so long?
LUIGI: Well, I don't think that there is a secret.
People when they walk in they feel cozy, warm, welcoming.
We say hello to everyone.
Tiramisu means actually cheer me up, pick me up.
So if you have a bad day, if you're sad or you're tired, Tiramisu is to cheer you up, which we all need, particularly this time.
We all need that kind of human touch.
SETH: Well, I needed some lobster touch.
LUIGI: Please.
SETH: This is an absolute mood booster, but, of course, it's Al Tiramisu.
We got a classic Italian dessert here.
LUIGI: His majesty's right there.
I like to call him his majesty.
All those years, I never changed the recipe.
It's been always the same.
SETH: Well, I can understand why.
Both knockouts.
LUIGI: We use a good quality of espresso and mascarpone cheese.
That's basically what makes a good tiramisu.
I need to double-check, if it's okay with you.
SETH: Oh, yeah, yeah.
LUIGI: Not that I want, it's just a quality control.
SETH: You have to do it.
I understand.
Thank you for making the sacrifice.
LUIGI: I do all the time, this kind of sacrifice.
SETH: Well, I'm going to go home, try my hand at making risotto, but I know I'm not going to be able to match this.
LUIGI: As long as you don't open an Italian restaurant across the street, you can make anything you want at home.
SETH: You're in no danger from me.
Thank you so much, chef.
Cheers.
LUIGI: Thank you.
Salute.
SETH: Salute.
ANNOUNCER: To find out more about great food in the Washington Metro area, visit weta.org/signaturedish.
See How Navy Yard's Ama Restaurant Makes Coniglio
Video has Closed Captions
Navy Yard’s Ama offers up a tasty coniglio (rabbit stew), showcasing the flavors of Northern Italy. (6m 48s)
Watch Al Tiramisu's Chef Make a Creamy Lobster Risotto — With No Cream!
Video has Closed Captions
Seth visits Al Tiramisu to try their beloved off-menu favorite, lobster risotto. (5m 47s)
Watch Red Hen Restaurant Make Its Signature Mezzi Rigatoni Pasta from Scratch
Video has Closed Captions
Seth samples the mezzi rigatoni from the Bloomingdale D.C. favorite, Red Hen. (5m 27s)
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