Mo Rocca Likes Big Ravioli, And He Cannot Lie (Reheat)

Sirius XM podcasts. [MUSIC] Hey everyone, Dan here with a Reheat for you with really just one of my very favorite people. I really feel like he's one of a kind. There are certain types of jokes, certain delivery, a certain perspective on the world.

That's just quintessentially Mo Raka. And in a world where there are so many voices out there, it is rare to find someone who is so distinct. And that's why I love Mo. He's a correspondent for CBS Sunday morning and a host and creator of my grandmother's

Ravoli on the cooking channel. And yes, as a matter of fact, we did spend most of our conversation talking in detail about Ravoli.

“Remember, there's an episode of this pork full you want us to pull out of the deep freezer and”

reheat? I want to know about it.

Send us an email or voice memo to [email protected], tell me your first name, location,

what episode you want to hear, and why. Thank you so much. Mo Raka. Well, my grandmothers were, I'm going to guess. This is going to sound outrageous maybe, but they were close to nine inches square, three

by three. This is Mo Raka, you know whom from CBS Sunday morning and the cooking channel show, my grandmother's Ravoli. And he's talking about exactly that, his grandmother's Ravoli. They were really big, that would be like on each edge, being a quarter of a long, that

might be a little bit of an exaggeration, it was two and a half inches probably by two and a half inches. Okay. Definitely more than two inches.

So, they were, they were big pains, they were big, yeah, square pains, basically.

I mean, she could have, she could have worked like in a glass shop or something, putting these things together, and so I have a sentimental attachment to that. I don't like the little ones because the little ones, even though they're cute and, you know, they, they almost become, they have a bad ratio, they have a bad ratio and they almost become like, like, super-sized Miyaki, like they look like they become too joe-y.

Yeah. You need that ratio, the fillings to the pasta. Yeah, it also casts suspicion on the value if you're getting your money's worth, because if they're too little, you start to think, "Oh, this is all shell or jacket, it's all done.

Oh, envelope, all dough." And the same way that if you get fish and chips, and it's like, "Oh, it's just, or temporary, even." Right. These are awfully small, is it's just all batter and coat and batter costs like five

cents. Yeah, exactly. So if you get like a lobster ravioli dish and you got, it's mostly dough and it was twenty bucks. Great point, yeah.

You got jacked. Yeah. That I am the sportful Mo-Raka on ravioli, which is better, round or square.

“What's the ideal ratio of pouch pasta to trim pasta?”

And why does Mo describe his relationship to ravioli as sort of a Madonna or thing? Stay with us and find out. This is the sportful, it's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman, I'm what about to challenge your assumptions about consumption and drop a sportful of knowledge on you, because we're obsessively compulsive about eating more

awesome meat, and because the history is taught us anything is that the host of food shows need a lot of catch phrases. Great show for you today, and I can't wait to get right into it. Today's topic for massdication and rumination is, "Ravioli." Joining me now is a man whose work I've admired for a long time.

He's a correspondent for CBS Sunday morning, a panelist on a weightweight, don't tell me in the host of Cooking Channels, my grandmothers, ravioli, Mo-Raka, welcome to the sportful. Thanks for having me. So, you have a show on Cooking Channels called my grandmothers ravioli, and just a bit

I want to talk in more detail about that, but first let's just talk about ravioli the

food.

“The most contentious issue, I think, in any ravioli discussion, has got to be round versus”

square, ravioli, which do you think is better to eat and why? Well, like a lot of things, I'm torn between what I actually want, and what I think I should want, and there's a whole lot of guilt mixed in. The whole series was driven by guilt for not having helped my grandmother in the kitchen, and so I feel especially protective of her ravioli, which was indeed delicious.

They were big squares, big kind of delicate squares. However, even during this intro, I'm thinking and kind of craving the metallic taste of

done, and gelatinous, almost, that they kind of are almost, they're glob like, if not exactly

round. So, I'm kind of torn. Those are my guilty pleasure, but it's sort of a Madonna horror thing with me. My grandmother's, of course, is the Madonna, not as in material girl, but like the actual real Madonna.

Yeah, the real Madonna, and iconic, if you will, and they're square, and they are made by a woman who raised her child during the depression, and she knew how to make strong corners on her ravioli, and but the Chef Boyardy are just bad for you and oh, so delicious. I mean, you date, you date round ravioli, you marry square ravioli, okay? When you eat Chef Boyardy, ravioli, do you eat it right out of the can or do you pour it

into a bowl? I couldn't eat it cold, and you can't obviously write, you can't microwave the can, so I'd put it into a bowl, and then you could drop the can into boiling water.

You could do that, but that almost seems a little too, kind of, fancy or artisanal or something.

That seems, that's too hipstery for me.

“Right, that's how they do, that's how they eat Chef Boyardy in Brooklyn.”

Right, I think that I would have to go with square ravioli being better, and the reason is, if you look at the anatomy of a single ravioli, you have the pouch and the trim, the two body parts of a ravioli, the pouch and the trim, the pouch is the part that hold the fillings, the trim is the border, where the two pieces of pasta are pressed together. Right, okay, and so, by nature, in a ravioli, the train, I just have to argue with the

please, your question, because I think the singular might be raviolo. You're probably right. I think it might be. Your half Italian, right? That's more Italian than I am.

Yeah, but I took Latin. I want to adjust your high school. So I wonder if it's raviolo less ravioli. Why don't I google it? Because I know if it was a raviola as a plural that would be a raviolum, like in the

way that the singular of agenda is a gendom, although nobody would say, let's argue this a gendom.

“The internet seems to agree that it is raviolo.”

Raviolo. It's like when they go, oh, I've been hounded by that paparazzo. Yeah. I have not done. Right.

Okay, so thank you, Mo, for that correction. This is what we have here. Raviolo. You have a raviolo, and you have the pouch, which holds the fillings, and you have the trim.

Now, the trim by definition is twice as thick, because it's two layers of pasta that are impressed together around the trim, and only one layer in the middle. Right. Yes, although I'm just suddenly having visions of the Flintstones, you know how they would do that.

They'd have a bird who would be like with the beak kind of doing the edge of, you know what they do that with the pie? Oh, right. Oh, like the fluting or the, yeah, and I bet they would have, I mean, that would be at the Flintstones took place in ancient Italy, in like Stone Age, and like before the

Romans, but they'd have like a bird doing it, and they press it down hard enough, and

they always go like, it's 11, like when they come up, but anyway, I guess my point is whether

you're using a prehistoric bird or just an implement or your finger.

“If you do it hard enough, I think you can compress it, so I'm not sure that it really”

would be twice as thick. Maybe the density would be twice. Okay. Okay, anyway. Go on, sorry.

But I do think that when you boil the raviolo or a bunch of ravioli, the trim is always going to be a little bit firmer. It's not quite the same consistency, the pasta around the pouch versus the pasta and the trim, and I like that textural contrast. I do too, and a square raviolo has a higher ratio of trim pasta to pouch pasta.

Oh, right, because it's not a round ship, it's not the most efficient shape. That's right. By the way, it's a flock of ravioli, not a bunch, or it's in an exaltation of that. The gaggle, I think, a pot of ravioli. That makes sense, actually.

That's a very interesting point, so you're getting more of the al dente in a sense. That's right. And to me, one of the things that I love about ravioli is, and however to me, I say we're ravioli, it doesn't sound right, I know. Even though when I'm just saying it correctly, you've ruined that word for me forever, Mo.

Well, if we ever debate it, we should do it behind two different potia. Okay. Done. But I love that textural contrast, and so I want the square because it has more of the trim. The two sinkability that you get there.

Like, if you ever encounter ravioli, they had two wide of a trim.

You know, it's interesting.

“There were times with my grandmother's ravioli, where the trim on a particular raviolo was”

too thin, and so it opened, and it's the same anxiety I have of mailing a letter. Where I haven't sped enough on the envelope, I still think I use some of those envelopes left over with the glue. And you worry, or if you stuff a mineral envelope with tax documents, and it's bursting, I do that in my 20s and send everything in all the receipts, and then you think, whoa, what

if something is used envelope, I've recycled this envelope, this mineral envelope, what if the edge of it splits open a little bit, and a vital receipt sort of comes out, or the whole thing splits open, and I did have that anxiety sometimes with her ravioli, where a particular raviolo might have opened up on the edge. So I guess I prefer a good, probably, I would say like a quarter centimeter, maybe, something

like that.

That might even still be too thin.

That's pretty thin. That's a half centimeter. But I would not go to sort of an eighth of a centimeter. Okay. Okay.

If it opens up while cooking, that's a real shame. Well, that sucks, and because you're either going to get a watery raviolo, or you're having to disembowl, raviolo either bloated, or it will be dying, it'll die. Coming up, the conversation continues. Mo identifies the Kenny G of ravioli, and he tells us about his ravioli related dispute

with celebrity chef Lydia Bastionich, stay with us. And now, a delicious word from our sponsors. Welcome back to another spoke full reheat. I'm Dan Paschman.

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Again, that's spokefull.com/newsletter. Thanks. Now, let's get back to Ravioli and my discussion with Mo Raka. Did you when you ate your grandmother's Ravioli, which you see were two and a half inches around and you'd have five, two and a half.

Two and a half. Two and a half squares. Did you eat them in one? Why did you cut them? Cut them.

We would cut them.

“And even as savage children, I think we would have wolfed them down if we could.”

But my grandmother made them. I don't think she did this so that we would be more civilized, but they were so big you couldn't. But you wouldn't have to use a knife, but you'd use your fork. And how many pieces would you rate?

I would say, I'm going to say, three, three, like two vertical lines. No, it wasn't like, what's that ice cream, not Spamoni. Is it? Oh, the Neapolitan. The Neapolitan wasn't like that.

I would go for the bottom left corner, probably. Okay, gotcha. And more than corner. Right. Yeah.

I like a ravioli that's big, a raviologues. Excuse me. Big enough to break in half, because like you said, we want a higher ratio of trim pasta to pouch pasta, but also a high ratio of fillings to overall pasta. Yeah, sure.

And so I like when it's big enough to be broken in half, at least with a fork. Because I like that when you bite into that, when you put that half ravioli, into your mouth, it helps the fillings to kind of ooze out into your mouth. You get more of that filling flavor is accentuated. Because really what you want is more of the texture of the pasta and the flavor of the fillings.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's right. And so by having it in half, you're going to make those fillings come out right away right onto your tongue.

And I should point out, and it's kind of funny because I made this ravioli years ago.

Before I even had this series with Lydia Bastionic, who is amazing and who is a friend of mine.

And we put it on YouTube. And I told her what the ingredients were. And she said, there must be cheese inside. I said, all it was this ground beef spinach and garlic. And she said, well, that can't be.

There needed to be a binding agent. And your question is bringing this to mind. And I said, there wasn't. There wasn't cheese in it. And she said, no, no, no, no, they're had to be cheese.

And I said this, you know, emphatically because Lydia really is amazing. And she genuinely believed it must have had cheese. And what she said made sense.

“Because the truth is that my grandmother is a filling.”

And her ravioli did sort of just kind of spill out. I'm not saying it was like a hacky sack like that. That was like an empanada filling that can be a little bit crumbly. Yeah, but it wasn't far from it. It was delicious. But it wasn't, it didn't stick together.

Like a lot of ravioli. Ravioli's fillings do.

And indeed, when I ate what we made together, my first reaction was, oh, this tastes exactly like my grandmother's.

Ravioli, if it had cheese in it. But anyway, so to your point, if you split my grandmother's raviolo, a raviolo that my grandmother made in half and you put it in your mouth, that filling was going to come right out. Did your grandmother's ravioli have any like edge trim flourishes or was it just straight lines? She wasn't. She was pretty no nonsense.

So, there were no flourishes. There were no flourishes now. I feel like you don't need the flourishes. I don't think so. I think they distract from the essence. Yeah. How do you feel about bits in the filling?

Some ravioli have a very smooth, consistent filling. Others can have, sometimes there's a little bit of chopped nuts or maybe more substantial little pieces of meat.

“Do you want consistency in your filling or do you want variety?”

Well, I certainly don't want this filling to be creamy.

I don't want it to feel like a puree. I like bits. But there's a minimum level. If you're going to include in any ingredient, unless we're talking spice, that's different. But there's a minimum level of bits, like nuts. Because if you drop below that, it feels like an error.

And I begin to worry that my food is contaminated twice twice. Once in LA and once here in New York, I had a plate of food delivered to me at a restaurant. Both of them decent restaurants or thought they were decent restaurants. And there was broken glass in my food. Oh my god.

Clearly, somebody in the kitchen had broken a glass and something had gone in. The shocking thing about when it happened in LA is that they still charged me for the rest of the meal. Oh my god. I thought it was shocking. And I actually complained that the guy acted like I was crazy.

The waiter sort of, the manager came and said, "Why is the problem?" And I said, "You know, there was a glass in my food. You acknowledge that. You came and saw that and you replaced the dish." It's one thing if it's like hair. That can be a little gross, but you're not going to die.

Or it gets severely wounded from eating someone else's hair. But you could die. I mean, I could have-- It's really scary to death internally. Right.

And so anyway, that's one of the reasons I don't want random bits in my rapidly. Because I've just had a bad experience with random bits in food. But you're saying that what concerns you is when there's only a little bit of it. It feels like an apparition.

“So if there was a lot of glass, would that be better?”

Yeah, as if it was pure red glass, which is ironic. Because I hate things that are pure red. Right, right. If it was baby food glass, yeah, the Gerber makes that. Gerber glass.

Yeah. So I'm with you that I like some texture in the fillings, but I don't mind. I don't want it pure red if it's going to be soft and mushy. But I do love a nice, butternut squash ravioli with a nice sage brown butter kind of a soft situation. I feel like butternut squash ravioli.

And I'm not somebody that's an authority on this at all. I'm probably getting my dates from, but it feels very 90s. And look, the 90s in retrospect were pretty good time. But I guess I just feel like butternut squash ravioli makes you think of like Kenny G. Or something.

It just feels, you know, I want, and he's very, very talented.

Coming up, I push mode to take this whole Kenny G, a ravioli idea, a step further.

That's after the break. Stick around. Hope you're hungry because it's time for some ads. Welcome back. Now, let's return to my conversation with Mo Raka.

“So, if butternut squash ravioli is Kenny G, what's, I mean, what's Charlie Parker?”

Boy, it probably would be, oh, God, that would be something like some wonderful, you know, I don't know, like a beef brisket inside of the ravioli. Something that's really going to stick to your ribs. Okay, how do you feel about friad ravioli? I like it.

I mean, I, I worry that it's a little bit of a cop out that it's a way of making a lot with a very slim margin of error, but I'm not sure how satisfying it is. I mean, it seems like a little bit of a cheat.

Do you think it's a slim margin for error or a wide margin for error?

I think a slim margin for error because you fry it, you can keep it longer. And if you're serving a whole bunch of people, it seems to me. So, it's a wide margin. A wide margin for error means that it's hard to screw it up. Sorry, that's what I meant.

Right. Oh, my God, for years I've been saying that wrong. And I would say ravioli wrong. This is great, Mo, we've made a lot of progress here today. And also, we both might have been using the word Perus wrong.

“Because I think I used to think the Perus is just a sort of breeze over something.”

Right. Actually, to really scan it thoroughly. Interesting.

Sounds like someone's been perusing the dictionary.

I know. Let's talk a bit about the show. My grandmother's ravioli, which is on cooking channel, for the people who haven't seen it. Give them a quick explanation.

Well, I go around the country into grandmothers and grandfathers' homes, and I learn how to cook from them. Because I don't know how to cook. It makes shock. Everyone has heard me opining and lecturing.

And it's decreeing all about about ravioli. I'm 45. I turned around one day and I said I don't know how to cook. It's pretty pathetic.

“And I frankly like projects where I can learn something that I think I should know.”

Or that at least I'd like to know. And so I turned it into a TV show. So it's not sticky. It's like I'm really going around learning from these people. And hanging out with grandparents and fun with them.

I mean, that's really what makes the show compelling. It's your relationship with these old folks with very varied backgrounds. And you managed to sort of connect with them, find common ground with them. Sort of often develop a sort of teasing, fun rapport with them. Do you have specific lessons that you've learned from doing the show?

I mean, you said you sort of you set out to educate yourself a bit. Like, has it changed the way you cook or eat doing the show? No. I don't know at all. But I've learned a lot about how do I say this without sounding hokey.

I've learned a lot about people. I've learned a lot. I don't even know if there were cliches, but certain things have been confirmed for me. At least among these people that we've had on the show. You know, when you get older, you care less than people think of you,

which is I think where we all want to be. You settle into caring about two through your four kind of big things. Like, you're not caught up in things that, you know, maybe people who are 30 or 40 years younger, like me get caught up in. People are tribal.

They really are. And it's great when they admit it. They like people like themselves. And they like their kids to marry people like the family. Most people believe in God.

Everyone uses garlic except if you're Pennsylvania Dutch. In Pennsylvania Dutch, they just use tons and tons of butter to compensate. They are literally the only grandparents I've had who have not used garlic. But yeah, it's kind of, I wanted to, I thought, wow, this would be cool if this was the show that made you want to get old.

And I have to say, and I run the risk of sounding really sanctimonious here, but I'm really happy to do a show that features people that you'd actually want to be related to, that you like. Instead of freak show horrible people that are the main course, if you will, pretty much all non-scripted,

most non-scripted programming. Right. Yeah, I think there's a real earnestness to it, which I think is really, brings the viewer in. I really enjoy it.

So I hope you will check it out. Mo Raka, correspondence for CBS Sunday morning.

Don't tell me, and he is the host of cooking channels. My grandmothers, Ravioli. Mo, thanks so much. Thanks, Dan.

“All right, friends, that does it for this week.”

Thank you as always for tuning in.

This show is a production of WNYC and the Sportful. Our producer is Kristen Meinser. We get web help from Talia Ralph and a light strong, special thanks to Chris Bannon. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

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