Cooking Up Greatness with Chef Scott Conant

There's some mornings where we start shooting at 8:00 a. m. and we'll have a plate of lamb testicles in front of us. It's not fun. And seen. What's up guys? Leslie Robbins here for Young Hollywood. I am over the moon right now. I'm at the Montage in Beverly Hills and I'm about to go into the kitchen of Scarpetta with the chef and owner, Scott Conant. And he's going to cook just for me and I'm going to eat every last bit of it. I have a really hard job. Scott Conant, thank you for having me in this gorgeous kitchen. I'm a little jealous of this kitchen. Why why don't be jealous. You can hang out here whenever you want. Can I? No reason to be jealous, it's fun. This is gorgeous. You have five Scarpetta restaurants. Yeah. Two cookbooks, TV personality on the Food Network. You have a nice resume going.

Yeah. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. More to come.

Were you an overachiever as a child?

I was not. I, uh, you know what? I I was a baseball player. So I loved the competition. Most importantly, I loved the camaraderie. And it's funny, I was 15 when I started cooking. And when I walked into a kitchen, it was the same camaraderie that I felt on a team. So it really resonated from a very from an early age.

What is your main dish here? People come here and say, I want that, because everyone's talking about it.

So, you know, there's five Scarpetta's as you said, around the country. Um, and the one dish in all of those restaurants is the spaghetti with tomato basil. It's a very simple dish. It's very straightforward. But I sell almost 10,000 spaghetti in each restaurant per month. That's a lot of spaghetti. This is all about simplicity. Right? Spaghetti tomato basil. Now we make the spaghetti in house. Go ahead. Jump right in there. Okay. Really? It's just dive right in there. Um, we make the tomato sauce. I cook the tomatoes for about 40 minutes. It's all fresh tomato. We peel and seed all the tomatoes. I do a non-infusion of oil. Kind of like a tea of pepperoncino and garlic and basil. There's a lot of right? It's a sum of its pieces.

I'm going to act like a chopped judge right now.

You're going to chop me?

No, no, I think you're going to make it all the way through the dessert round.

Thank you. Thank you.

Now, I have to ask you, you're married. When you were wooing your wife, did you have to cook for her? And when you were single, did every girl you date say, oh my God, you're a chef, cook for me?

Well, one of the benefits of being a chef and having restaurants, when especially when you're single, obviously. Women would come into the restaurant, it's just, you know what, send them out a little. I also have a polenta.

Is that how we got women? You sent them out a little

Send them out a little something. So I have this polenta dish which is really good. I mean it's just a sexy dish.

I'm sure.

That was one of those dishes that kind of worked. It worked for me.

What else do you have?

I got more stuff. Here we have a tomato salad, uh, local tomatoes, some prosciutto, uh, stracciatella, grilled local peaches, a little arugula and baby greens and ridicchio and stuff. And then we have a mushroom, uh, a mushroom agnolotti with roasted corn, chanterelle mushrooms and a red wine glass. But taste this first. Okay. Wait, stop. Isn't that cheese ridiculous?

The cheese is ridiculous. Yes. Ridiculous. And then the mushroom agnolotti with roasted corn, chanterelle mushrooms and a red wine glaze. Enjoy. Enjoy it. I this there's that little corn puree on the bottom of the plate. Aren't you kidding me? Isn't that good? It's like a little pocket of heaven. So

You need something to drink with this.

Yeah. What do you pair with delicious food like this?

This is Casa Dragones. This is my favorite tequila. This is what I drink. So, it's a sipping tequila. You drink it out of a champagne flute.

That's different. I didn't know you should drink tequila out of a champagne flute.

Well, this this this tequila in particular is is great for that. Cheers.

Cheers. You see how it doesn't have that bite in the back of the palette like normally it takes it and you always get that little bit. Isn't that still in my mouth? It's amazing. Yes. What are we drinking?

We are drinking a Brunello. Brunello di Montalcino, so it's a Tuscan a Tuscan red. Cheers.

Cheers. I hope you like that and I think that'll go really well with this corn agnolotti. I'll have a drink, take another bite. Isn't that great? Oh, that's got like a That's like a there's some some it's fruit, assertive, it's And then I'll have some more of your food. So let's talk about chopped for a minute. Yes. What's the oddest secret ingredient you've ever seen on the show?

Well, the worst was durian. It's a really funky fruit. Okay. Um, and it it's it's horrid. And there's some mornings where we start shooting at 8:00 a. m. and we'll have a plate of lamb testicles in front of us. It's not fun. And seen.

Yeah, please eat because you're not going to want to eat after this story.

Uh, culinary, the people who put the baskets together,

Mhm.

they need to trim the exterior of the of the lamb's testicles. She pierces the the sack with a knife.

Knife.

And it kind of skeets all over her face. Literally. All over her. She had tequila that day. It was fabulous. Like all of us were on set and just laughing hysterically. I'm Scott Conant, you're watching Young Hollywood. Thanks for hanging out with us at Scarpetta Beverly Hills.