1. Pasta Puttanesca
First thing we're going to make: pasta puttanesca. Perfect for next years Valentine's Day. Literally translated means prostitute pasta. So, pasta puttanesca can be a one-pot dish, most pastas can. What we're going to do is parcook the pasta to 60%. As soon as you add the pasta, agitate it, move it around a little bit, it will stick together in one giant evil clump if you don't get it moving. This has been about 6 minutes, this guy is still pretty crunchy, that's right where we want him to be, very flexible but crunchy. Now normally I'd want to drizzle this with olive oil to prevent the pasta from sticking, but what are we going to do? Anytime you want to use olive oil for anything, use this instead. So this is going to deeply flavor the pasta as well as prevent it from sticking, just like, you know, two tablespoons worth I'd say. We're going to cover it while it's still warm, then you can hold this for like an hour, uh, until you want to cook.Other thing we're going to do is grab a cup of this pasta cooking water. We're definitely not going to use the whole cup but it's just nice to have. So this sauce starts with olive oil, so guess where we're going to get that olive oil from? About 3 tbsp of our tomato confit oil in there. Start the garlic, which is three large cloves of thinly shaved garlic. Shave pole to pole because it's sexier—I think. I think it is. And I'm going to heat it gently so we don't burn it, we're just going to get it lightly blonde. Now I've got two cloves of our confit garlic, so we're going to get brighter, fresher garlic notes and we're going to get deep, roasty, chilled garlic notes.As soon as the fresh garlic starts to soften, we're going to add four roughly chopped anchovies. This is going to stink up the place a little bit but it will taste good. Three tablespoons of roughly chopped capers, half a cup of thinly sliced black olives, a good amount of pepper and peperoncino or red pepper flake, got to get it nice and spicy. Oh that smells objectionable but it'll taste good. Soon as we feel like, uh, everybody's gotten enough heat, little bit of lovin', a little bit of dry lovin', we're going to throw in the confit tomatoes. All this liquid, this beautiful tomato sort of juice, and there's a little bit more oil in there—gorgeous.
Before we lose too much liquid here, I'm going to add some of this pasta water cuz I think we're going to need some. And of course, the man of the hour: the pasta. You have to make that sound when you drop it in. Oh yeah. Now we're just going to finish cooking the pasta in the sauce. I'm also just rough chopping some parsley, let's say 1/4 cup, add it straight to the pasta, let that cook as the pasta finishes. Oh man, look at that.
This is going to have such a deeper flavor than a typical puttanesca would have and all it took was, you know, fresh ingredients that are expensive and like 2–4 hours. Let’s hit it with some salt, fresh ground pepper, flavor town—we've arrived. Now that the sizzling has stopped, I'm going to finish this guy with some butter, make things glossy and rich. This is the pasta your mom will warn you about. Pasta's done but it's feeling a little thick, a little gloopy, little splash of pasta water—it’s going to loosen it right up. Okay, we're ready. Pasta puttanesca done.
Here's some pasta puttanesca for my little puttanesca and if you're really feeling frisky—which you are—just a bit of freshly shaved Parmesan. So there you have it, quick and easy dish, you got to make the tomato confit ahead of time but it really deepens the flavors and makes them more complex and rich and a little less harsh and astringent. I love it, it just instantly upgrades this pasta. Really nice subtle flavor from the anchovies, little briny punch from those black olives, and then just the richest jammiest tomato flavor over top it all. It's a wonderful way to, um, eat pasta.
2. Pork Tenderloin with Romesco Sauce and Fennel Apple Salad
All right, next up we have a pork tenderloin. This is one of my more favorite pieces of meat to cook on a casual evening because it cooks quickly, it's delicious, it's relatively inexpensive, and it's not that unhealthy for you. It's very lean. General best practice when you're making meat of virtually any kind is to dry brine it even briefly, lightly seasoned with salt and pepper, let it sit at room temperature for anywhere from half hour to an hour or in the fridge for up to 4 hours or wrap in plastic wrap, keep it in there overnight.So now we're going to make a really quick, quick and easy delicious sauce called romesco. This is an amazing all-purpose sauce—you could use it for virtually any meat or fish. It has a very strong vibrant flavor that will stand up to and complement a number of different proteins. You can make it ahead of time, you could make this up to, you know, let's say 5 days ahead of time, keep it in the fridge. Do I need to give you more reasons to make it? That's enough, right? Is it sexy? Did I—and it's sexy. Sexy. Who cares about those other ones.
The base for romesco is roasted red peppers. You can definitely use the stuff from the jar, but they tend to have a little bit of a tang to them, like a pickly kind of vibe, and they're still good, they're plenty good, but it's really easy to make your own and they taste much better. All you do is cut them in half, pull out the seeds and stems and all that stuff, put them right over an open flame and char them until they're jet black, put them in a bowl, trap the heat in there, let them sit in that bowl for like 15 minutes, and then peel off the skins and this is what you're left with: freshly roasted red peppers which are going to taste fantastic.Normally you just throw a little bit of tomato paste in here, uh, or sundried tomatoes, both great options, but we got all these wonderful jammy tomatoes here—why not go super nuts with them? 2 to 1 pepper to tomato ratio, roughly. To this, I'm going to add half a cup of roasted unsalted almonds, 1 tbsp of sherry vinegar, half a teaspoon of smoked paprika, and 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne.
I'm also going to add three cloves of fresh garlic and a couple of these confit garlic cloves—let's do three of them, I don't give a sh—So now we're going to give this a rough chop, we want to get it down into not quite a paste but just like a pebble kind of mixture, more after this. That's a good stopping point, kind of pulpy, now we got this chunky texture. Now we need to slowly stream in some olive oil and why not use our delicious tomato confit oil—open up my feed hole and I'm going to slowly stream it in while the machine runs.
All right, let's give a taste for seasoning. Lord that's good. That's—that. Have this with virtually anything: lamb, fish, chicken, pork, beef—kaala.
So my pork tenderloin, uh, I'm going to pan roast it and my pan's not quite big enough so I'm going to cut this guy in half, no harm no foul. We want to get our pan nice and preheated, it's lightly lubricated with a little bit of vegetable oil, we're just going to lay our pork tenderloin pieces in there, I'm rubbing them around a little bit to coat them in oil, put them down there and let them sit for like two minutes over medium high heat until they get a nice brown crust.
Because we're cooking on non-stick with this one, don't be afraid to move them around, let them get different kinds of heat from different places—like traveling abroad when you're young—so that they get a nice golden brown crust like that one, beautiful. These are headed into a preheated 275 to 300°F oven where they're going to more slowly come up with the temp, finish roasting. Pork loin, 142 at its thickest point, it's going to come up 10° out of the oven, that's right where I like it, it's going to come up to 155 as it rests. All those muscle fibers are contracted, we need them to relax so they don't squeeze all the juice out of the meat, so let that rest for 10 minutes before carving and serving.
I'm going to throw down a fair amount of our romesco—you can't really have too much of this stuff. Then I've got a very simple fennel and apple salad with some dill, some fennel fronds, very nice light crisp offset to this rich pork. And that pork is cooked beautifully, just slightly rosy, exactly where you want to live. Little bit of parsley, maybe a little bit extra salt, ground pepper, a little bit more of our tomato oil and there you have it: pork tenderloin with romesco sauce, tomato oil, and a fennel apple salad. Pork is super juicy, simple but lots and lots of layers of flavor. You got richness, you've got some acidity, and then you've got the pork underneath just porking it up. You're not going to have any trouble getting up to some jumping jacks after this meal if you know what I mean. Do you know what I mean? Jumping jack. Jumping jacks. Yep.
3. Steak with Chimichurri and Arugula Salad
All right, it's time to raise the steaks. Just like with the pork, we're also going to salt the steaks. Also you might notice that I have a perfectly normal lovely looking, uh, filet here and this freak. At first we were like, let's just make the one, but I was like no, I'm making this one out of spite. I want to show the butcher that they can't get to me. We're at war, the butcher and I. Salting these guys lightly, letting them sit at room temp or in the fridge for a little while until they're sexy.So for the steak, we're going to make a simpler condiment, one that requires no machine at all—unless you have one you want to use it in, in which case it's way easier. We're going to make a simple chimichurri. Normally this involves cilantro—I don't like cilantro so I'm going to use parsley, perfectly fine. Oh, look at how finely chopped that is. We have our parsley, we have one clove finely chopped garlic because we've got it and because why not. I'm going to chop up a couple of our confit cloves of garlic, half a tablespoon of chopped fresh oregano, 2 tbsp of red wine vinegar.
I'm just going to top it up with a ton of my tomato oil. You generally want a pretty high ratio of oil to vinegar, that's like 2 tbsp of vinegar, you probably want 6 tbsp of oil. Oil. We need some salt and pepper as well and need a little bit of heat so I'm going to add some of this peperoncino or you could just use some crushed red pepper flake. Now we're just going to beat that with fork or tiny whisk into sort of like a—almost, it's almost like a dressing really if you think about it. Don't think about it too much. Do you like that sound Stephen, do you like this? There we have it, easy breezy chimichurri, tiny little bit of acidity from the vinegar, mostly just rich and garlicky and herby and oily. It's going to be a perfect topping for our steak.
Now to make our steaks, I'm just going to use nonstick again. Remember how the title of this video, if you look down at it, it says easy sexy recipes? Did you look? No, that's—no, that's my tenets. Obviously the right way to do this is with cast iron or stainless or whatever, but on the off chance all you have is a nonstick pan, you can still make—you can still make waves. Pretty much the same procedure as the pork: move it around, make sure you get some oil all over that first surface, kind of want to weigh those down to make sure they get good contact with the bottom of the pan, that's one reason that you tend not to use non-stick when you make steak because it's so non-stick you can't maintain contact with a flat side of the steak, so you're not going to get as good of a crust. But I just want to show you, you can do it. I just want you to believe in yourself.
Here's the—another thing, you also typically don't want to get most nonstick up past like 375–400°F. Babish nonstick pans, however, are oven safe to 450, so you can get this hotter, so you can get up to searing temperatures. Normally with, you know, cheaper, older nonstick, if you heat it that much it's going to start releasing chemicals that give you flu-like symptoms and have proven not to be fatal but that also doesn't sound great, you know. There we go, look, still got a nice, nice, nice crust on that, look at that, that's a decent crust off a non-stick.
All right, these guys are flipped, which means they're going in the oven. I have it preheated to 300 something. All right, steaks are out of the oven, immediately want to get them out of the pan so they can start resting. The crust is good—I mean, I know that, uh, it's said that you can't get a good crust with nonstick, here it is. Let that rest for 10 minutes, carve and serve. See if I did my job—I did. That does look quite good actually, shot. So to go with this steak we have a very simple light arugula salad. This is just arugula that's been tossed with our tomato oil, with a little bit of lemon and it's got some shaved Parmesan and of course some of our confit tomatoes.
Even though we let it rest we are experiencing some moisture loss which is fine, happens to lots of guys. So we're just going to drizzle some of this chimichurri red over top. There you have it—a beautiful steak dinner for, in this case, one. Tender as—because I know the tomato oil is in there and so will you. You can taste it, you can taste the tomato confit oil behind everything. This is a perfect example of layering flavors because you have these very subtle flavors that are really—I'm only consciously detecting cuz I know they're there, which means if I didn't know that they're there, I would be perceiving them but only subconsciously. I keep thinking I have a great point here—I don't. So we're laying flavors, we're doing it, you and me, keeping it sexy.
4. Shrimp Risotto with Tomato Confit
All right, now the shrimp, which I'm going to shell. I got these easy peel shrimp and that means that the shell has been split down the back and the shrimp has been deveined, so all you have to do is yank off the shell. Because the shells are full of shrimp flavor and we can make shrimp stock out of them. So just like most meats, we are going to dry brine these shrimp, but not just with salt, we're also going to use a little bit of baking soda, because that protects the shrimp from becoming slippery or bouncy, it also keeps them juicier and toss. Let these guys sit at room temperature for 15–20 minutes, ready to go.In the meantime, what we're going to do is make some shrimp stock out of—what, you ask? Well, these shrimp shells, I already said it, let's go. We're just going to toast these shrimp shells until they turn a nice shade of pink, then we're going to add water, some aromatics, you know, a little bit of parsley, a little bit of onion, and some white wine, and we're going to simmer that for—you really don't need to go much more than an hour. I carefully ladled most of the oil off of this tomato liquid that is sitting on the bottom of the confit tomato mixture, this is basically just all the liquid that the tomatoes bled out when they were cooking.
Remember that shrimp stock earlier? It was a rhetorical question, of course you did. So I added a little bit of tomato paste to this broth and now I just added those tomato drippings and now we have a really rich tomatoey shrimp stock that'll be perfect for making risotto, making mussels, or just drinking out of your lover's belly button—still hot, it's very sexy.
So to make our shrimp risotto, I'm going to start with some of our tomato oil, we're just going to get it nice and warm, we just want to, uh, sauté these shrimp a bit. Shrimp cooks so quickly that by the time I've put down all the shrimp I can start flipping the first ones that I put down. Very easy to overcook shrimp, pretty hard to undercook shrimp. If you undercook shrimp, you're in a rush. All right, that's it, they're done. I'm going to try to keep as much that oil as I can, cuz I want to keep cooking in it, it's now been impregnated with shrimpy flavor.
About a quarter of a small onion, very finely chopped, one clove of finely minced garlic, 30 seconds or until fragrant, half a cup of arborio rice, we're just going to toast that in the bottom of the pan, half a cup of dry white wine, deglazing the bottom of the pan, we're scraping up all that good stuff. We're going to cook that wine until it's almost completely evaporated and then we're going to start adding stock, two ladlefuls and then one ladleful at a time. You only add it when you're mixing it around. If you can pull your paddle through like this and leave a visible trail, that's when you add the next, and you want to keep it generally moving but if you just manage to stir it, you know, once every 30 seconds, it's probably going to be just fine.
So now if I run my spatula along the bottom you can see it's leaving a trail that stays for quite a bit, which means we're ready for the next single ladleful, which we are keeping in the saucepan over here, not quite simmering but keeping it hot. You want it hot when it's going in the pan so that way when you add it you're not slowing down the simmering too much.
Okay, this guy's been cooking for about 20 minutes, it's plopping real nice—hear that plop? That's the plop, that's the plop of my dreams. Risotto should have a little bit of bite to it, like an al dente pasta, that's right about where we want to live. I'm going to kill the heat, I'm going start with 1 tablespoon of butter and we're also going to add a healthy—or rather unhealthy—amount of grated Parmesan cheese. I'm going to go like a half to two cups worth. I'm going to add some of our nice jammy confit tomatoes, probably half cup's worth, add those right in. Oh, isn't that nice looking. I'm also going to add our shrimp in, I don't think it's going to be advantageous just to put them on top and I want to finish cooking them through. A quarter cup of basil, pinch of parsley, hit it with a little bit of seasoning, let's see where that takes it.
There you have it: seafood confit tomato risotto. By seafood, I mean shrimp only. Bit more Parmesan, let's get it nice, let's make it sexy—you have to make it sexy. Oh, so nice, so fresh, so clean, and more than anything else it's sexy. You know what I'm talking about, Steve. Sexy.
5. No-Knead Bread and Mussels in Tomato Broth
Nothing's sexier than bread, especially bread you made yourself. We're going to make the easiest bread in the world. This is a technique pioneered by Jim Lahey over at the New York Times. This is no-knead bread and it is exactly what it sounds like: bread that you do not need to knead. The only thing you need to do is make it the day before because this bread's, uh, flavor and more importantly its gluten development comes from time.So we're starting with 430 g of bread flour, 1 teaspoon of active dry yeast, so I'm going to do one teaspoon of kosher salt, you want to make sure that the yeast and the salt are evenly incorporated throughout the flour. Now all we got to do is add 345 g of room temperature, lukewarm—doesn't really matter—water, just not hot. This is a pretty high hydration dough, it's going to be sticky and gooey, fear not. Patron St. Valentine's got your back. If love be with us, who could be against us—actually it's if God be with us, which is really the essence of war crime throughout history is if God be with us, who could be against us—we got to kill those mother—anyway, we're mixing this together, we're mixing this until there's no dry flour, that's really it.
So here's our rough dough, this now just needs to be covered and sit for 12 to 24 hours. That's the easiest bread in the entire freaking world and nothing sexier than not as much effort. After that time you'll see that it has turned into an ectoplasmic goo and this is a good thing, believe it or not. Shaping is relatively simple, it can be a little scary if you're scared of gooey things, it's going to be real sticky, don't worry, you didn't screw up. We're going to just sort of pick it up at the edges and fold it towards the center, three, four, five times—I did a lot more than three or four times, so like a dozen times, just sort of keep picking it up and tucking it towards the center, pick it up, flip it over and drop it—oh, without it sticking too much, uh oh, that's where things can get a little hairy—drop it onto our floured parchment and dust it over top.
So we want to let this proof for 45 minutes to an hour, not quite double in size, grow by about 50%. So now at this point, while the loaf is rising, we're going to heat our oven to 450°F and place a Dutch oven with the lid on in that preheating oven, that's going to go for, you know, 45 minutes, an hour. We want it to be ripping hot, that way that's going to help oven spring the bread. In about 45 minutes, let's take a look—aha! I'm going to score it, you don't have to do this, but I'm going to score it just like so, pick up the bread, drop it in, and then I have a spray bottle full of plain old water, I'm just going to spritz the hell out of it. Now that's creating a steamy hot environment, the same that you'd get in a steam-injected oven in a bakery, so hopefully that's going to give us a better crust.
Now let's head it back into the oven for 30 minutes—oh man, look, look, don't look at me, look at this. Uncovered it after 30 minutes in the oven, then let it go for another 15–20, that's a good target temp, just take it out, you don't need to stand on ceremony. Oh, it feels fantastic, look at that, that was zero effort—how much effort did I put into that, Steve, you saw? Zero. Zero. I didn't do anything. So now we're going to let this cool completely, I'd say at least 2 hours, ideally four, because if you cut into it too early you're going to ruin the texture. Ha, look at that, look at that, BOO, you like that? Bool, look. Fresh homemade bits by you, the lucky recipient of sex. So I'm going to slice this up and we're going to serve it with our mussels—woo! Starting to lose it, luckily you're only going to have to do one of these five things, not all five, unless—I don't know, I don't know, it's—you're entertaining five lovers, this is 2025, it's year of the fipple.
To make this mussel—what do you call this? To make mussels, we've sautéed our shallots a little bit, don't want them to brown or get crispy or anything. Now I'm going to add these two cloves of garlic that's been thinly sliced, we're just going to sauté that for a little bit. We already made our broth pretty tomatoey but I want this to be a very tomatoey broth. Before we add any liquid, I'm going to add like about two tablespoons of tomato paste and that's going to get things really nice and tomatoey for us. Now I'm going to deglaze this pan with—that's about a half cup dry white wine, and I've got the rest of our tomato broth here. If you did the tomato paste trick, you can just use chicken broth if you want, but if you happen to have some of that shrimp stock that you made and put in the freezer, here into this broth I'm going to throw some chopped parsley, about a tablespoon of chopped fresh tarragon. Tomato, tarragon, and seafood—that's a thruple I want to be a part of.
So we're just going to simmer this, I just want to let the flavors get to know each other, bring down the harshness of the garlic and the shallots a little bit. So the mussels—you want to discard any mussels that are open, this could be just a mussel that's relaxed a little bit, let its guard down. To find out, give it a little knock and let it sit for a couple minutes and if it closes back up, it's alive—oh look at that, shutting like a door. Now I don't want to do it, sorry guys, luckily you don't have brains.
I'm going to add these to the boiling broth, give them a little shaky-poo to get them all down in there, make sure that everybody's evenly exposed. While these guys finish up cooking, I'm going to toss in the rest of our confit tomatoes—let's get those down into the broth, there we go. Now those will show up as delightful little surprises as we eat our mussels. Cover it up and these guys are going to simmer for three to seven minutes, I'm going to go for five.
Mussels are done, looking fun. Now scoop them out without a doubt and then we're going to eat them before we delete them out of our butts. Just a beautiful freaking pot of mussels. I'm going to grab all these lovely shallots and garlic and just kind of sprinkle those over top and lots and lots more broth, we're going to want plenty of broth because that's why we made bread—be sure to say that to your lover so they know. And then I'm going to garnish it with what is remaining of my parsley and tarragon and I have some chives here as well that I'm going to sprinkle over top. And there you have it—maybe the easiest dish of the day: beautiful steamed mussels in a confit tomato broth and homemade bread that was so easy to make that you practically forgot that you made it.
Let's see how it all works together as a unit. Few pleasures more powerful than dipping bread that you made into, like, sauce or butter or stock that you made like this. Delicious. So simple. This guy comes together in like 10 minutes if you make the bread dough beforehand, you're just baking it the next day, so this is one of the easiest meals ever made—that's not true, but every meal that we made today uses this tomato confit that you can make ahead of time and goes well with damn near anything that you can imagine. And then these meals, by virtue of that tomato confit, come together in a few minutes.
There you have it folks, my top five easy sexy meals. I hope that you have a very sexy day and next Valentines Day and I hope that you make some tomato confit, I hope that your lover eats it with you, and that you guys both just get down on it after or—and before, I like to before, then you just chill, you know. Can't think of a sign off one.