Salt Fat Acid Heat

Fat.

It's nothing short of a miracle.

Fat is flavor.

Fat is texture.

Fat adds its own unique flavor to a dish.

And it can amplify the other flavors in a recipe.

Simply put...

Fat makes food delicious.

And one of the most important things any cook can learn

is how to harness its magic.

I've spent my entire life in pursuit of flavor.

Starting at the legendary Chez Panisse,

I've been cooking, teaching, and writing about food for 18 years.

You have to taste what you're about to cook with.

You have to look at it, smell it, touch it.

I've traveled the world...

[relaxed music playing, camera shutter snapping]

...tasting everything.

And what I've discovered is that the secret to good cooking

is hiding in plain sight.

Just four basic elements can make or break a dish.

Salt.

Fat.

Acid.

And heat.

Commit to mastering them

and you can become not only a good cook, but a great one.

A few years after I started cooking, I moved to Italy.

I wanted to learn more about,

and eat, all of my favorite dishes.

Right at the source.

And as I cooked and ate my way throughout the country,

one thing became clear:

from cheese to salami

ragù to gelato

Italians are masters at using fat to make their food

absolutely, fantastically,

almost impossibly delicious.

And for me, the fat that defines the flavor of Italian food

more than any other is olive oil.

[olive harvester whirring, leaves rustling]

This area is called Gaaci,

which means "protected lands."

The sea is right in front.

And the highest mountains of all of Liguria are in the back.

This big mix of sea, mountain, and woods

gives us very delicate flavors,

but also very intense.

I'm very interested in the idea

that the fat of a place

is in fact the beginning of its cuisine.

You can taste different flavors

that tell you about a different land.

Each oil in Italy manages to contain, one by one, its own land's history.

Taggiasca olives are grown only in this part of Liguria.

Because the terrain is very difficult, very steep.

There isn't any soil, and right underneath it there's rock.

So Taggiasca is only a very small part of all Italian olive oil.

But, since it's so sweet, so delicate,

it's somewhat considered like champagne among wines.

When you cook,

it's very important to know what kind of oil you're adding.

Oil should never cover up the flavor of your dish,

but it should accompany and enhance it.

[harvester whirring, Italian music playing]

How old are these trees?

- About 200 or 250 years old. - Two hundred fifty years? Really?

We sew a net inside the whole olive grove.

Starting our work at the top of the grove,

and then working our way down and further down,

we're able to keep all the olives on the nets.

Show her how it's done.

Don't we have any glasses?

How do we know when we're done?

When there aren't any more olives on the tree.

It's like going to the hairdresser.

Exactly.

Wow! It's so heavy!

And at the end of the day, we'll have a truckload of olives.

This is the mill where we produce the oil.

The paste is ready, so they'll unload it now.

Extra virgin olive oil is basically fresh-pressed juice

made without heat or chemicals.

A good olive oil must have three parameters.

It's fruity, spicy, and bitter.

In your mouth you must feel at least a bit of spiciness.

- Uh-uh. - Because if it's spicy, it's alive.

It's a flavor that remains in your mouth.

So if you drink and that's all, it's not a good olive oil.

But if you drink and after a minute

you still feel the oily sensation in the mouth, that's a good olive oil.

Oh.

It's so good.

The essential flavor of any dish starts with the fat it's cooked in.

Entire cuisines are defined by their fats.

Think of southern cooking.

It relies heavily on bacon fat and lard.

And French cuisine is defined by the rich taste of butter.

If you're going to make a great soufflé...

Before I even turn on the stove,

I know that one of the most important decisions I can make

is to choose the right cooking fat.

- Good morning! - Hi! Welcome!

Thank you so much!

Nice to meet you.

- It's my pleasure. - Can I give you a big hug?

Of course.

- Thank you. - Thank you for being here.

This question, this request you've made, it's really very interesting.

What a beautiful place!

We used to live in the country, then moved here...

- It's so beautiful! - ...and haven't left since.

Here we are.

See, this is my father.

- The one with the straw hat. - That one?

The others are townspeople, who have worked

removing rocks for the train tunnels.

When the work was done, they made a giant bowl of pasta for everyone.

Obviously, they celebrated the end of the work.

- Hi, Diego! - Hi.

- Diego is our focaccia expert. - Wow!

The breakfast of Ligurians.

Yes, and also of Samin.

With lots of oil.

Believe me, the secret is it has to be a Ligurian oil.

It has to be Ligurian.

Focaccia was born to suppress the hunger of dockworkers.

If they stopped to have a full lunch

there was no time left to finish unloading the ships' containers.

So they'd have some focaccia, a little white wine,

and then go on working all day.

- Okay. I'll leave you with Diego. - Right. Thank you.

- Okay. Bye. - Great.

The ingredients are flour, yeast,

malt extract, oil.

For me, the oil here is the sweetest.

- Lovable. - Buttery.

Yes, lovable. Exactly.

It's a question of the olive's acidity.

I think the air, even. Because...

the air is salty. I don't know.

But the oil in Liguria

- I think it's really the best in Italy. - I agree.

- Of course I'm biased, but... -

We have oil rivalries here, just like with wine.

The dough should start to feel soft.

How do you know you've worked it long enough?

When there are no bumps. It's completely smooth.

Okay.

Now you can add the salt.

If you're going to flavor it,

at this point you can add rosemary, sage...

- Olive paste. - ...olive.

If you crumble it up inside, you can make rosemary focaccia.

But keep that to yourself.

- Don't tell anyone. -

That goes for sage, too.

- Or any other aromatic herb you add. - That's beautiful.

- You rest it here... - Uh-uh.

...for 15 minutes, covered with a dish towel.

Now we transfer the dough to a baking pan.

And now the secret to Ligurian focaccia.

You roll out the dough.

The perfume from the oil... Wow!

And now see how smooth it is.

Olive oil does two important things for focaccia:

it lends a rich fruity flavor,

and it creates a tender crumb and crisp crust.

Wow, how beautiful, bathed in oil like this.

We take the oil...

and spread it out.

Let's start with the brine,

typical of the salty flavor that goes into the focaccia's holes.

Salt, oil. We mix them.

- Which fingers? - The first fingers: one, two, and three.

- There you go. - Oh!

- Don't worry about it. - I made a mistake.

The important thing is to press. Don't be afraid.

Okay. Now's the time for our brine,

the water and salt we made.

Just pour it over, don't be afraid.

When we take it from the oven, it will be obvious

which ones are my fingers and which are yours.

We wait another 40 minutes.

Otherwise, the holes won't stay in the focaccia.

- - It develops this color while it cooks.

When we take it out of the oven, we add more oil.

Oh, more? Okay!

- More oil. - Always more oil.

Pour all over it.

Always a good oil.

Ligurian focaccia is only two centimeters high, tops.

Anything higher than that and it's not really Ligurian.

How light, how beautiful.

Crunchy on the bottom and soft inside.

The holes taste like salt. You can taste it.

Hmm.

It's truly...

It's a focaccia that's very easy to make at home for breakfast.