Lauren> Welcome to my kitchen.

I'm Lauren Furey, I'm a private chef in Charleston.

And though I've cooked all over the country, my soul is rooted in Charleston, where the air is salty and the sunshine brings me joy each and every day.

When I'm not working as a chef, I love to go surfing with my friends and get a good bite to eat around town.

So let's celebrate Charleston food and southern living together.

You're watching Now We're Cookin'.

Lauren> Today we're making acqua pazza.

It's an Italian dish, which translates to "crazy water" in English.

It features local fish poached in tomatoes, white wine, and all types of spices.

An important part of this dish is the crispy caper and sizzled shallot topping.

The first thing we want to do, is turn our stove on to medium high heat.

We're going to add about three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and get that nice and hot.

At that point we're going to add our capers, get them all nice and crispy.

That'll be a few minutes.

We're going to set that aside on a towel lined bowl to make sure that the olive oil drains off.

If you're having company over and you're trying to make your house smell good, if you fry some capers, that's the perfect way to get everyone hungry and excited for dinner.

There will still be some olive oil left in the pan.

After that olive oil is hot, we're going to add in our shallots.

We want them to get caramelized, slightly golden, but not burnt.

And we're going to let those shallots melt away in the olive oil.

We're then going to add our thinly cut and peeled garlic cloves.

(sizzling) ♪ We're going to add our gorgeous garlic and our shallots, the salt and pepper.

♪ Chop, chop, chop.

And it doesn't need to be super fine, it's actually better if you keep it rustic.

I don't think the fishermen in Italy were busy finely chopping their parsley, when they were hungry.

Now we're going to add the zest of one lemon, and then we're going to add a pinch of red chili flakes.

Want to give this a little stir, and you'll see all the flavors combine.

We've got red, yellow, green, and try your best not to eat it all as you're stirring it.

Our topping is finished, that was easy-breezy.

Now it's time to make our crazy water.

So growing up cooking with my Nana, we used a lot of cherry tomatoes, and we're Sicilian.

We used to make a cherry tomato pesto with roasted cherry tomatoes, lemon zest, herbs, parmesan, all the good stuff.

And this dish is totally inspired by that Sicilian pesto.

So we're going to add our tomatoes, and we're going to let them cook until they're jammy.

♪ I'm going to drop in some pasta here.

This is about a half a pound of pasta, maybe a little more.

Since the pasta is going to finish cooking in the finished crazy water, we want to cook it just shy of "al dente."

(sizzling) ♪ And let me tell you, the freshly cracked pepper makes all the difference.

As you can see, the tomatoes are really starting to get jammy.

Their skins are coming off slightly, they even smell sweet, and they're very soft.

The second I put the spoon on the tomatoes, they just melt together, and that's exactly what you should look for.

In your tube, you can just kind of measure out two tablespoons of tomato paste, more or less as you please.

It's really important that you cook your tomato paste, or else it's going to have kind of a metallic taste, since it was in the tube.

It's been a couple of minutes, and the tomato paste is caramelizing, so it's time to add our white wine.

It's important to cook with wine that you would be okay with drinking.

It doesn't need to be anything fancy, as long as it's pretty good, you'll be all set.

♪ So now we're going to add our water, our bay leaf, and parmesan.

Depending on how brothy you like this dish, you can add up to two cups or as little as one cup.

I would rather start with one cup and see if it needs more, because you can't take it away, once you add it.

Our parmesan rind, parmesan rind is a great way to use up the rest of your parmesan cheese.

We're going to add a bay leaf, you can use fresh bay leaves or dry bay leaves.

So we're going to let that parmesan rind just melt into our crazy water.

We want to be sure to remove that, as well as the bay leaf, before we eat this dish.

Our pasta is about finished, and right about now, I'm going to take it out of the boiling water and add it to our crazy water.

♪ Now we're getting to the best part, the fish.

And here in Charleston, there is a lot of really yummy fish around us.

For this acqua pazza dish, you really want to get a white mild fish.

And today I'm using an American red snapper.

So when you go to the fish purveyor, you want to ask for the fillets with the skin off and the bones out.

Or if you want to do it yourself at home, that's great.

You want to cut your acqua pazza into an inch big chunks.

This fish will take only a few minutes to cook, and if you want it to cook extra fast, you'll just cut it smaller.

Sometimes I call my fish purveyor and I say, "hey, what's the freshest you have today?"

And they say, "oh, a boat just came in this morning, we've got a whole bunch," but sometimes they only have a few.

It all depends on the day.

You kind of just want to roll with whatever is the freshest.

♪ This is about a pound of American red snapper after it's been skinned, boned, and cut.

And always remember to season your fish with a little bit of salt and pepper.

Let's take this fish over there.

We're going to dump our fish right into the pot.

♪ And I'm going to add a little bit more water, to be sure, that this acqua pazza has enough liquid.

♪ Our acqua pazza is finally finished and it is ready to serve.

I can smell the tomatoes and all the red snapper, and I even have some fresh focaccia that I just made, that we can serve with it.

Here we have it, acqua pazza, we have the rigatoni, all the snapper.

Boy this smells so good.

So when you serve this into your bowls, you want to be sure that you get a little bit of everything, some pasta, some fish, tomatoes.

I have a sweet friend coming over for dinner later.

We had a long day of surfing, and this dish will be the perfect way to relax and maybe talk about some waves.

A little bit of our crispy caper and sweet shallot topping, right in the middle.

Fresh parsley leaves will be the finishing touch.

♪ And here is our homemade rosemary focaccia, just enough to soak up some of that sauce.

(ocean waves crashing) ♪ Focaccia is one of my all time favorite dishes to make.

This focaccia bread recipe is super quick.

It's a lot of fun.

And let me tell you, it gets your whole kitchen smelling so good.

♪ So first thing we're going to do is get all of our dry ingredients together in the super handy dandy bowl.

I love how it has a spout so you can pour it as needed.

And you can also see the measurements to be sure that it doubles in size.

Let's get into it.

This is our all purpose flour.

So we're going to add about three cups of flour.

If it's blowing all over you know you're doing something right.

This instant yeast is where the magic happens.

So a teaspoon and a half of this per recipe will allow the bread to rise.

And you can't make this bread without it.

This is kosher salt.

It adds flavor.

And you want to add about a teaspoon and a quarter.

Now we're going to take our whisk and whisk it right up.

When you buy flour in a bag naturally it'll create clumps.

And that's okay.

That's why we want to whisk it all together.

You don't want to bite into a big clump of flour.

Now our water here is really warm.

So you're looking for water that is warm enough that it'll activate the yeast, but not too hot that it'll kill it.

That's the trick to homemade bread.

And we're going to start with two cups.

And we can add more as needed.

♪ The consistency we're looking for is similar to a pancake batter.

And you can always add more as needed.

The same with flour.

We're going to take a damp dish towel.

And we're going to, let the dough rise for about an hour and a half until it's double in volume.

I love to use these towels.

They actually have my Nana's recipes on them, so just nice to keep on hand.

We'll see you in an hour and a half.

We're going to see how this dough bubbled up and, see you later.

(ocean waves crashing) Oh, yeah.

The dough has doubled in size so we can see right here.

It's about eight cups right now.

And without disturbing it too much, we want to slightly just stir the dough.

And how we want to do that is take the outside of it and just bring it all to the center with a big wooden spoon.

So now we're going to wrap it back up.

We're going to let it rest for a little bit longer and then, it's go time.

So now we have our oven preheated to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, and we're going to dress up our pan with some olive oil to make sure it doesn't stick.

But also add so much good flavor.

You want to be sure to thoroughly coat your pan with olive oil.

Now our pan's ready to go.

Let's add our dough.

Oh yeah.

So we're going to dump that right in our pan.

And that is exactly what we're looking for.

If you add too much dough into your pan it'll overflow.

However you want to make sure you spread it out evenly in the pan and make sure each part of it gets crispy.

And make sure you just kind of press it into the shape of the pan.

So we're going to let our focaccia sit for 30 minutes.

Let the air bubbles form and then it'll be ready to go in the oven.

I love using fresh rosemary.

As soon as you start cutting it the whole kitchen smells good.

So rosemary is super easy to grow in any season.

So you want to take it down.

Go like that.

On our focaccia bread, we'll keep the rosemary pretty rustic.

Not every piece is the same, but it adds some charm.

So here's our focaccia dough.

It's doubled in size.

It's fluffy.

It's got our olive oil in there.

And now we're going to put it all together.

And you'll see just how nicely they play together.

All these ingredients.

♪ Now this is a really fun ingredient.

Flaky sea salt.

It's pretty.

It looks nice when you're serving it and it tastes really good.

Most importantly, so you wanna make it rain.

Measure very carefully.

(laughs) Now we want to take our olive oil and drizzle it, just a little bit at a time.

You can always add more.

We have salt, rosemary and olive oil all over our hands.

We might as well put it to good use.

♪ And that's it.

It's ready for our oven, 425 degrees.

While our focaccia is in the oven, we have plenty of time to make the Sicilian pistachio pesto.

It has a base of capers, pistachios, garlic, all the citrus, and plenty of olive oil.

Here we go.

Half a cup of pistachios, two peeled garlic cloves.

Right in there.

Capers.

Capers are very briny.

They're a little bit salty.

And you can buy capers in the brine, which is what I do.

We have our pistachios, garlic, capers ready to blend up.

(blender whirs) Looking good.

So you'll see the pistachios are ground up here.

I'll give you guys a look.

Just so you can see what we're looking for.

It's not quite fine.

It's a little bit coarse, and that's good.

We like some texture.

An important trick to know is to keep a rubber spatula nearby at all times.

It allows you to scrape down the bowl.

Make sure everything is well incorporated.

♪ Now, basil is traditionally in pesto, and mint is a new addition.

We're putting our own spin on it today.

And that's why I love to cook.

You can really make things your own.

Use what you have around.

If you didn't have some of these ingredients, you could even add another green like arugula.

But this is, definitely a good base to use.

(ocean waves crashing) You want to take your lemon and angle it up as the zest comes off.

♪ Now that our lemon is zest, and now we can get to the juicy part.

Oh yeah, that's a good one.

When life gives you lemons, you make Sicilian pistachio pesto.

It's a great arm exercise.

♪ (blender whirs) ♪ The last step is adding our Parmigiano Reggiano an Italian salty cheese to the pesto.

♪ And before you add any salt or pepper, you want to try it just how it is.

And I promise you, you'll love it.

♪ Our focaccia is hot out of the oven.

And my goodness, it looks delicious.

And I can already imagine what I'm going to use it for.

Acqua pazza for dinner, or if there's any leftover, I'll serve it for lunch with some pistachio pesto, some creamy burrata, and some mortadella.

(ocean waves crashing) ♪ Olive oil is often associated with savory dishes, but I'll let you in on a little secret.

Olive oil helps the cake stay moist longer than butter ever could.

Let's get started.

It's time to make our olive oil cake.

Before we do any mixing, we got to get our pan ready for the cake.

First thing you want to do, always is take a baking sheet and line it with foil.

When you're using a springform pan, there's always a chance that some batter could escape out of the edges and the foil will catch it and make your life a whole lot easier.

So we want to take our spray here, at a distance and make sure you get all the sides, the bottom of our springform pan.

(spraying sound) Rotate it as you spray.

(spraying sound) As y'all can see, all the edges, the bottom, everything is well sprayed.

It'll be easier to take the cake out when it's time to eat it.

In this olive oil cake, we're going to start off measuring out our dry ingredients.

And there's not a whole lot of them, so, this cake is easy-breezy.

It'll be ready in no time.

First, two cups of all purpose flour, a cup and three quarters of granulated sugar.

A teaspoon and a half of freshly chopped rosemary right from my garden.

That's the good stuff.

A half a teaspoon of baking soda.

Half a teaspoon of baking powder, and a teaspoon and a half of salt.

You don't need to add the salt; It's optional, but I highly recommend it.

♪ The sugar and the flour, it all clumps together so you want to use a whisk to be sure everything is evenly incorporated.

Now it's time to mix up our wet ingredients, but first, let's get our zest in the bowl.

So we have our lemon zest and orange zest.

When you combine the two, it's magic.

And the zest has a oil that really creates a whole other level of flavor outside of the juice.

We're looking for a teaspoon and a half each, one orange and one lemon.

I'm going to take our zest and put it into the bowl.

You can use your hands.

That's just fine.

I'll walk you through the wet ingredients here.

We have three eggs, two tablespoons of orange juice, fresh orange juice, that is.

Two tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, (juice pouring) a quarter cup of orange liqueur, a little bit of vanilla extract, (liquid pouring) a teaspoon and a half.

And since this is an olive oil cake, we're going to add a whole lot of olive oil.

An important thing to know is that olive oil, depending on which type you use, I use an extra virgin olive oil, it has a strong flavor and I like to balance it out with some vegetable oil.

So, equal parts vegetable oil and olive oil create a well balanced cake.

So, we have two thirds cup of extra virgin olive oil (oil pouring) every last drop, and two thirds cup of vegetable oil.

Last but not least, whole milk.

(milk pouring) A lot of cakes use butter, however, olive oil cake helps ensure that this cake stays moist for a long enough time to share it with some friends.

The fun part, we're going to whisk it up.

(stirring sound) The vegetable oil in the milk are separate at first, but the more you keep whisking it, it all comes together.

So now we're going to pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and whisk it up once again.

This is where the whisk is really helpful because we're incorporating everything all together.

If you were to use a spoon, it'd be a little bit harder to do.

Now this cake, while it does take an hour to cook.

That's because it's very thick.

It has a lot of olive oil, all types of liquid in there, but you can also use two smaller pans.

Just adjust your cooking time accordingly.

You can see all the speckles of rosemary, orange zest, lemon zest.

Oh yeah.

This is a springform pan if you remember.

We want to take our spatula.

Be sure we got every last bit of dry ingredients out of here.

I've served this cake with ice cream before, but honestly, this cake is sweet enough on its own and we just want to let it be in the spotlight.

All right, so our olive oil cake is ready for the oven, but first, I'll show you a trick.

Since we have the foil on the bottom of the pan, that's great, but to ensure that it's definitely not going to spill everywhere.

It's good to lift up the foil around the sides of the cake to keep everything nice and cozy.

You're kind of tucking it in before you go ahead and bake it.

That's that.

Time to stick it in the oven.

(ocean waves crashing) One of my all time favorite dessert toppings is an almond sugar crumble.

Whether you're using it on olive oil cake or atop ice cream, it's a really versatile dessert topping that I know you'll love.

The ingredients are very simple, and there's only a few of them.

(ocean waves crashing) ♪ The first one is dry roasted almonds.

They have a lot of flavor.

Sometimes raw almonds are hard to blend.

The dry roasted almonds are just what we need for this recipe.

Granulated sugar, orange zest and rosemary.

The rosemary really takes this dish home.

So let's get into it.

First thing we're going to do is finely chop our rosemary.

It doesn't need to be perfect because we're putting it in the food processor anyway.

So right in there we're going to add half a cup of granulated sugar.

♪ We're going to add a quarter cup of our almonds... to add the zest of one orange.

Guess what.

That's that.

(blending sound) As you cook, it's important to really look at what you're doing, what it smells like, and what it sounds like even, because it will teach you a lot more about cooking and the ingredients.

So this is a fine sand-like consistency, meaning it's easy to sprinkle.

It's easy to eat right off the spoon if you would like.

Use a rubber spatula to get the almond sugar out of the food processor.

It may look like a lot, but I'll promise you it doesn't last too long.

And that's that.

Almond sugar, good to go.

Here's how to make our syrup.

♪ The first ingredient is a third of a cup of granulated sugar.

Right in our pot.

Three tablespoons of water.

(water pouring sound) A tablespoon of local honey right from South Carolina.

The juice of half an orange.

(squeeze sound) A sprig of fresh rosemary from the garden.

And lastly, two strips of orange peel that you can peel with a vegetable peeler.

By adding in fresh orange peel, it also serves as a beautiful garnish for the top of our olive oil cake.

Now I'm going to take this mixture over to the stove.

We're going to cook it over medium high heat until the sugar and honey dissolve, and the mixture reduces into a syrupy consistency.

The cake is fresh out the oven and it looks beautiful.

First thing we're going to do is poke the cake so all the syrup soaks in to this cake.

You want to evenly distribute these little holes here so that the syrup gets all over the cake.

Now, we're going to pour our syrup over the cake, and you don't need to use all of it... Just enough, you feel like the cake soaks it in.

A little bit of syrup goes a very long way.

Every bite of the cake matters and by adding the crumble, it ensures that we have a little bit of crunch, as well as the luscious cake.

One of my favorite things that I had in Sicily was almond granita, and it almost reminded me of water ice, a little bit creamier, but it was a few simple ingredients, almost like this crumble.

So now at this point, we're going to add on a little bit more crumble than we would think is enough.

And we're going to push it right into the top to make an even layer.

I made this with my mom once, and she wouldn't stop eating the crumble off the cake.

Thankfully, we made double.

♪ Now, we're taking our caramelized orange slices and putting them right on top.

(ocean waves crashing) There you have it.

Our Sicilian olive oil cake is ready.

My friends are on their way over and they have been asking me about this olive oil cake all day.

Thanks for watching.

I'm Lauren Furey, and see you next time on Now We're Cookin'.

♪ ♪