Shallot Pasta (Alison's Version) | Home Movies with Alison Roman

You guys have never seen this video?

How is it?

I already want to die.

That's the funniest joke I made.

Well now I feel like I'm going to make all these same jokes.

No, no you're not.

We won't let you.

I can't watch this anymore.

Um yeah, that was hard.

That was tough to watch.

Are you okay?

Yeah I'm fine.

So what are we doing today.

You might be like why would you do that to yourself?

Why would you make yourself rewatch a video?

I thought it would be a funny bit before we cooked the shallot pasta.

Again, you might be like, why are you making the shallot pasta again?

And that's because, I am gonna cry, I'm really sad!

Yeah.

It's an emotional day.

My freezer won't shut!

And that is why I'm moving apartments.

Because my refrigerator is too small, and the stove is too tiny, and there's no dishwasher

here.

Take your phone back.

And we thought it would be funny as like the last video we did, you guys, you knew this

was going to happen, as like the last video to do an iconic dish and I feel like none

more iconic than the shallot pasta.

So we're gonna redo it.

We're gonna just do it one last time for old time's sake.

It's gonna be an absolute blast.

Taylor Swift if you're watching, you inspire me.

We will now call it "Shallot Pasta (Alison's Version)."

Hello, I'm Alison Roman.

Welcome to Home Movies.

And today as my last day in this apartment, I am going to be making shallot pasta.

Shallot pasta as the name indicates is a pasta made with shallots, um as the bulk of the

ingredients.

It's a really simple dish.

There are very few ingredients.

It's basically shallots, garlic, tomato paste, and anchovies.

It is like a pasta dish very near and dear to me.

And this was cooked so often and so frequently that I feel very touched that something I

cook here in this kitchen that barely functions could reach so many people in so many different

ways.

And I feel like in order to say a proper goodbye to this place, we have to make it one last

time.

So let's get started shall we?

Shallot we?

That joke was in the original.

Weird.

So I had asked you to slice six shallots.

You can't really use too many shallots but sometimes this is as big as your shallot is

so like this is obviously twice the size of this.

If you want a weight measurement, because we have fun?

Is weighing things fun?

Weighing things is fun because you know what's fun?

Accuracy.

That's a pound.

Whatever let's call it about a pound of shallots.

So whether that's five or seven.

Will you put those, put those behind you like we're putting this apartment behind us.

Thanks.

If you do not wear contact lenses.

You will cry.

Do contacts really help?

Yeah.

Yeah they create a barrier on your eyeball.

This is boring.

I know I always say we have fun.

This is not that fun.

What will you miss about this apartment?

Umm, I'll miss, you know how when you drink wine and they say you can taste the terroir

and that like grapes historically when they're growing thrive in a challenging environment,

and you can taste that in the wine.

Cooking in this kitchen has made me a better cook because it has been really challenging

to cook in and I feel like a tiny little grape.

I mean the fact that my refrigerator fits one mango is really tough but it made me more

thoughtful about how many ingredients I buy, how I store them, and just like no dishwasher,

so thinking about when I am developing things or cooking for friends even, how many bowls

am I using?

How many skillets am I using?

Am I using as many as I want because I can just throw them in the dishwasher or am I

being really considerate about what I am using.

How many cloves of garlic?

Five.

This is the only sweatshirt that exists of this and if I stain it while cooking, I will

never forgive myself.

So I am going to do my absolute best.

I mean, I should be wearing an apron.

You can put one on, I mean.

Honestly, an apron, whatever.

Aprons don't do anything.

Aprons are a lie.

So five garlic cloves are going to go in with our shallots when we caramelize them and one

is going to go on top raw with the parsley.

Do not sleep on the topping with this pasta.

Garlic parsley mixture on top is an absolute game-changer.

And then I'm gonna slice the shallots.

How long have you lived here?

Umm, three and a half years.

Do you want to tell us like ... how you ended up in this apartment?

I wanted to find an apartment and my number one qualification was something that I could

shoot in because I kinda determined that that was something I wanted to do.

You know do like cooking videos in the kitchen.

I came across this place on StreetEasy and I fell in love with it immediately.

I had always maintained that I would rather live in an older, let's call it charming and

or quirky apartment and this place has so much charm.

The floors are incredible and original.

I love this weird little gate that I've never used.

And the ceilings are tin.

And like this amazing closet which I've used all the time for really important things.

I love this place, it's great.

Have you ever been like, oh my god I need a haircut and you make an appointment for

a haircut and the day you wake up for your haircut, you're like damn my hair looks good

today.

Literally every time I get a haircut.

Literally every time.

The day I'm going, I'm like.

You're like, damn I look good?

What am I doing?

Yeah, why, am I about to make a huge mistake?

But you have to remember that the day after it'll look the way it did before that, when

you were like I hate this.

Well yeah that's why I'm moving.

I'm gonna sauté the shallots and garlic in a good amount of olive oil.

I'm using a twelve inch All-Clad because it's big enough to hold all these shallots and

because of the wide surface area, things are gonna happen a lot faster.

It's a strong skillet and that means there's gonna be no weird hot spots and things are

a lot less likely to burn.

I trust this skillet to get me where I need to go.

While that's happening I'm gonna just go ahead and prepare the like garlic parsley topping

for our pasta.

And again, this is like a very simple but easy upgrade to kind of like any pasta dish

but I find it really benefits this one specifically because it's so simple.

It's kind of like a good hoop.

You know, you can kind of like leave the house with no makeup and a white t-shirt but throw

on a gold hoop and all of a sudden you're wearing an outfit.

It's the key to my success.

How're you doing that garlic.

I'm gonna finely chop it.

To the video, not me.

I'm finely chopping this garlic, you might wonder why I'm not micro-planing it, which

I often do when I want really tiny pieces of garlic and that's because I actually want

the texture.

In case you're only here to see if this recipe has changed, you're gonna have to wait to

the end to find out.

I'm just kidding it doesn't change at all.

Really it was just like a final salute.

A wink, a nod, a playful goodbye.

I also just wanted to wear this shirt in public, so here we are.

We're not looking for tender, jammy, caramelized onions, we're looking for like a crisper,

frizzled, fried.

I'm gonna add more olive oil to that, it needs it, it's thirsty.

It's funny that this is kind of a bookend to the first video you shot in this apartment.

You broke up with the dude in "Goodbye Meatballs" and now you're like, you know.

Well it's like in all in our lives we, there's people we meet and things that happen that

lead us to one place or another, maybe it's a job, maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's

a friendship, maybe it's a baby, maybe it's like a million things where it's like oh I

did this because of that.

I ended up in this apartment because of that relationship ending for better or for worse.

And I am so grateful to like have my own space and have that be this space, it was really,

really special to me.

I had some sick parties here.

Nice.

Sick.

I did.

I'm gonna chop this parsley.

And I'm just gonna like get rid of any egregiously thick stems but you know me, I like to keep

it leafy, spriggy, coarse.

Maybe you don't know me actually.

I assume that everyone who's watching this like is my friend or my dad.

And this, I really like to season with flaky salt because it adds a lot more texture than

kosher salt.

If you're making this pasta in advance, don't do this part until you're ready to serve.

The garlic will intensify in a way that might not be pleasant.

This goes here like this.

I gotta get out of this apartment.

So these shallots are, they're there.

Getting that colour on them is what translates to flavor and that's exactly why it's called

shallot pasta.

The toastiness of it is really what is so special about it I think.

And the entire tin of anchovies we're about to add.

You don't need to chop them because they are going to dissolve on their own.

That is the beauty of cooking with anchovies.

I'm gonna add some chili flake.

You can leave this out if you don't want your thing spicy.

Your thing.

Your shallot paste spicy but I do.

I'm adding the tomato paste now.

And this is a whole can.

And I know I've said this before but you know, part of the reason this shallot paste makes

so much is because I didn't want you using any less than a can.

Opening a can of tomato paste and then having a little bit left over is so stupid.

Cooking the tomato paste makes a huge difference.

That's like salting your pasta water.

It's like a thing that I'll say every time and I don't have a new spin on that information

but it bears repeating like let's say this is the only video you've ever watched.

How would you know if I didn't say it now?

Every week you make a new friend.

Every week I make a new friend.

There's 100,000 of you.

That's nice.

And this paste should be like thick and concentrated and salty and savory.

It should feel like "a lot."

This is not a pasta sauce.

Make no mistake.

This is like a thick and intense paste.

We wanna like cook out as much moisture as humanly possible.

All right, I'm gonna let this sizzle another minute or two and then it's done.

It's called shallot pasta not shallot bucatini, but bucatini is the pasta of choice for most

shallot pasta connoisseurs.

I don't know if it's just how we photographed it originally or what, but to me it is the

best noodle shape for this pasta dish.

What did you say Brian?

What about the favourite dish she's made in this apartment?

This one Brian!

I don't think there's one like better tasting than the next.

I think it depends on what you're in the mood for, what time of year it is, like the purpose

of what it is that you're cooking, who are you cooking for, what are you cooking for.

So for me how I answer that question is I quantify like the emotional impact of a dish

on my life.

That's how I define my favorite or like the most special and this one I think was like

really special to me.

It really like, I dunno, to have so many people cook a thing felt very important to me.

Like it became a part of people's lives.

It became a part of people's homes.

It became a part of people's like, their own traditions.

I feel like this was born here but it has gone off to college.

It's like the season in Homeward Bound where it's like "go on" and you tell them to go

but you really want them to stay.

I don't know.

I've never seen it.

No I have but it's been years though.

The final stage of this pasta is to basically reconstitute, rehydrate the shallot paste

we've made with the pasta water with the pasta.

I've described this pasta before as a sticky pasta rather than a saucy pasta and I stand

by that.

Each pasta strand should be like vaguely coated in this sweet, salty, savory sauce.

This is ready to go.

See, see how it's like vaguely saucy.

It's almost like spaghetti-o-y?

Would you look at that?

It really is great pasta, what can I say.

How long's it been since you've had it?

A long time.

Now would be a good time for me to run through frequently asked questions on this dish while

I eat it.

Some people have asked why don't you top this with cheese?

Well I don't think that every pasta needs cheese.

And I know that's probably like a pretty controversial statement.

And as a person who is obsessed with cheese, I can honestly tell you that this doesn't

need it.

That said, would it be good with cheese on it?

Of course it would be.

Everything is.

So don't let me stop you, I just don't think you need it.

What other shape pasta can you use?

Any shape pasta.

What else.

If you don't like anchovies, people say that you can put capers in.

I would honestly just leave them out altogether.

I feel like if you add capers to this, it becomes putanesca-y, which is delicious but

it's just not this.

So I would just leave the anchovies out altogether if that's not something that you are eating

at this time.

What else can you use the shallot paste on?

Roast vegetables.

You can smother it on a chicken and roast that.

Add a dollop of it to steamed, fluffy rice.

Jumpstart a stew or a soup.

Sauté shrimp.

You can use it stirred into scrambled eggs.

You can put it on a fried egg.

You can put it on toast.

You can put it on avocado toast.

You can just put it on an avocado.

This paste really knows no bounds.

It is an excellent condiment to have on hand and you will find a million uses for it and

be delighted each time.

Thank you so much to All-Clad for sponsoring this video.

And that's the Shallot Pasta (Alison's Version).

Thank you so much for watching our Home Movies in this apartment.

I'm gonna miss it dearly and I feel really grateful that we have a permanent record of

what it was like to cook in this place.

Just like anything that ends, of course it's sad but I think that really wonderful things

are gonna happen when I move so queue goodbye montage.

I've brought back beans from most countries that I've visited.

At least nineteen different types of beans?

Oop that's popcorn.

Popcorn.

It looks like a muppet.

Like... we wanted to sort of like thank you, the viewer for sticking with us during this

I guess like first season of Home Movies, not that I'm going to move apartments every

season but this feels like a definitive bookend to something.

Umm, we're gonna show you what's in that closet, so come look.