I had no real strategy other than practicing this. I did think about killing Josh but I realized that there’s just too many cameras in the room. Every home cook has that one dish they’re more confident in than any other. That one dish that they know can truly compete with the pros, or can it? Today, one imposter chef takes on two very professional mythical chefs to see if they got what it takes. Everybody, please welcome today’s guest, Eddy Burback. Woo. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I guess, we can hug. We’re doing hugs, yeah. It seemed right at the time. Eddy, you- You make an order a hug her if she feels comfortable. No, I’m like one of those parents who’s like you have to give consent to be hugged from Auntie Destiny. Free hugs. Eddy, welcome to Mythical Kitchen. Thank you. What is the dish that you are more confident in than any other dish in the entire world? So it’s not… That’s not exactly why I picked my dish because I am not good at cooking at all. I would say it’s like my weakest skill. But my girlfriend Chrissy’s great at it and she helped me pick Cacio E Pepe. Okay. Because it’s, I guess like it’s you said technique-wise, hard to nail but also simple to remember how to make. True. And that’s all I need. I need to be babied into it. I need to start my cooking journey with something that I can make just like in a pot and not have to prepare meat or anything like that. This is gonna be an incredibly hard challenge ’cause I have very hard made Cacio E Pepe once in like 18 years of cooking and I screwed it up. Me too. So badly. This is gamesmanship, I love this. I also eat it a lot so I know how it tastes. So that’s good. I guess, tell me that. Is that good? Yeah. Tasting is like that. If you guys wanna, if everybody here wants to tell me that things I’m doing are good the whole time that would be great. That would make me feel- That’s like a mythical kitchen, like normal thing. Even if you see me doing something bad or dangerous, I will prefer if you say good job. Eddy, you may not be able to self-soothe but today we’re gonna find out if you can cook because all of our Cacio E Pepe dishes, they’ll be blind taste tested by a judge and they’re gonna find out if they can… You can turn your back, and then we’re gonna flip around on 3, 1, 2. Catch the imposter chef. So I guess I’m making Cacio E Pepe. You wanna know fun facts about me and Cacio E Pepe? We don’t get along very much. The first time I ever made Cacio E Pepe was whenever I was dating my now husband and I screwed it up so bad that the cheese was completely coagulated at the bottom and there was a huge pool of oil and just bare noodles on the top. Guess what? Still got married. So I’m just seasoning my pasta water with some salt. Some people say to season it like the sea. I think that’s a crock of bias. I think it should be nicely salted but not too salty because you’re just gonna salt it later and you have so many things that impart salt that you don’t need to do that. We’re gonna use bucatini noodles. I love bucatini noodles. They’re not my favorite noodle, but I think they’re cute. I’ll tell you why I like ’em so much. They have a little hole in the middle and this little hole in the middle allows sauce to get trapped in it. And Cacio E Pepe the sauce is so damn delicious that I really want it to just live in the noodles, just exist in the noodles. All right, so I’m gonna take my bucatini noodles and put them into salted pasta water and I’m gonna let them cook for approximately nine minutes. Now why am I doing only nine minutes? Because I want it to be what? Al dente. Oh my gosh. Incredible. Alexa, set a timer for eight minutes and 50 seconds. Eight minutes and 50 seconds starting now. That’s my girl. So Cacio E Pepe, Cacio, cheese, Pepe, Pepper. And I’m gonna be using two very distinct peppercorns because why? I’m a chef. Sorry Eddy. I’m gonna take some tellecherry peppercorns. Now the the container says these are bright and punchy. These are kampot peppercorns from Cambodia. These are spicy and rich, spicy, rich, bright and punchy. So I’m gonna take half tellecherry peppercorns and then half of these kampot peppercorns. Oh no, I spilled it all over the place. That’s fine. I’m just gonna grind these. Alright, that looks pretty good to me. I’m gonna judge my pasta a little. Make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom. If you put oil in your pasta water, grow up. So I’m just gonna take some of my pepper and I’m just gonna have it kind of bloom and perfume in this naked pan here. It’s gonna release some oils and some scents which is what we want. We really want the pepper flavor to be imparted wholeheartedly throughout this dish. And now we get to the cacio part, the cheese part. I’m actually shredding a Pecorino Romano which is a little bit saltier, a little bit more intense of a cheesy flavor, and Parmigiano Reggiano right over here has a crystalline salt compound that I think really, really aids itself in the cooking process. I think it tastes really delicious paired with the Pecorino. I’d say that’s 50/50. All right, let’s give our peppercorns a little mix. Yep, smells exciting. Smells good. Okay, I am just gonna take a ladle and I’m just gonna add this. And now we have made pepper water and our noodles are going to cook in this pepper water in a little bit. I’m gonna take a ladle of my pasta water and I’m gonna add it to my cheese mix. I’m not gonna add too much. I’m gonna make it look kind of like a paste. You can see that it’s melting down. I think I might need more cheese, but we’ll find out, we’ll find out. A little bit more, just little bit. Okay, okay, let’s just whisk it. It’s still a little clumpy, I’m not gonna lie. We are getting a lot of clump. This is more clumpage than I was anticipating. I’m not panicking. I know what the hell I’m doing. Okay, I am gonna add my noodles and look at that. Introduced to that beautiful speckled water. Very nice. Very good. Okay, I’m going to take my cheese mix. What am I gonna do? I’m just gonna pour it in here and pray to the cheese gods that everything’s gonna work out. I’m gonna add a pad of butter for insurance. Okay, our cheese is melting. That’s good. That’s good guys. Something’s happening. Oh, my cheese is starting to coagulate. Okay, let’s just move with confidence and speed. As I stir furiously, you should head over to sporked.com and see what Zodiac sign you are and see if it aligns with their pasta that they think you are. I’m a Gemini and they think I’m a cavatappi or whatever the heck. I don’t think I am, I’m a rigatoni rigate. Everybody knows that. I’m beloved. Check out sporked.com. Yeah, it’s all about like temperature and timing and honey I ain’t got none of that. I just got two kinds of pepper corns and two kinds of cheese. Just a little bit of time a little bit of time, a little bit of patience. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Very good. Nice. Good job. I’m gonna taste my food. It tasted really good. The texture is slightly off, I’m not gonna lie, but it does taste really good. I think if I plate it, Jordan will notice. Nah, screw it, let’s do it. I’m just gonna take it. I’m just gonna plate it. Okay, very good, nice. Cacio E Pepe. Okay, okay. That’s happening I guess. A little bit hide the cheese clump. Pour some of the sauce over. Beautiful, look at that. Stunning. No. Here design, this will be the decor. Lemme just shred a little bit more piece on here. Very good, very good to hide what I did, my monstrosity. And then a little bit more those peppercorns. There we go. Okay, I guess I made pasta Cacio E Pepe. Thank you for watching. Your move better chef and Eddy. Okay, so I am sort of cheating with this dish, but that’s okay ’cause I’m the imposter chef so I think I can do whatever I want. This is not a traditional Cacio E Pepe. It’s a combination of I don’t know what the traditional, I think the traditional dish is still just called pastina, that’s what the pasta’s called as well. You make it with like chicken broth until it absorbs it and you mix in some butter. The dish combination is just adding elements of Cacio E Pepe to that. This dish was mainly practice with me and my girlfriend Chrissy because she’s great at cooking and I’m terrible. So we practice this a bunch. So I hopefully can’t screw it up but if I do, let’s blame her. What I’m gonna do first is grate some of the cheese just because I’m not very fast with it and I wanna make sure that I have enough when I need to put it in. Guys, what’s the proper method here? Like this way? You’re doing great sweetie. Okay, well that broke off right when you said it, so. I also with pastina thought I had never had it, but when Chrissy made it last year, I had my Ratatouille flashback to childhood moment where I realized my great grandma had made it for me. Completely forgot that memory. So there’s a kind of nice connection to this dish with my personal life and also panic with whether or not I’m gonna mess it up on camera now. The pastina becomes almost like a mush. So you’re not really trying to nail making pasta properly and dry and then putting a good sauce on it. This is more combining it all into one cheesy kind of peppery pasta mush, which tastes good. So I guess that’s all that matters. I had no real strategy other than practicing this. I did think about killing Josh, but I realized that there’s just too many cameras in the room so it might reveal, you know, my crimes. Is it- Is that you with the blow dart gun? Yeah. No, there’s a couple of methods I tried. There was blow dart gun, non-blow dart gun, otherwise known as a regular gun. When I put the pasta in, there we go. How much do you guys fight the urge to not just stir things constantly? When I look at something in a pot, I’m like, “Oh I better move that or it’s gonna burn.” What are you talking about? It’s in liquid. That’s nothing? All stirring should be intentional. Oh, okay. It agitates starch. Okay. How much do you want your starch to be- I don’t wanna pay attention to the science of it. I just wanna listen to my taste buds. Okay? I want the food to give that Ratatouille moment where like a bunch of lines are coming out ’cause he had a strawberry so good. This will probably be enough cheese, but we’ll see, I’ll maybe make more. I didn’t set a timer. Set a timer for three minutes and it’ll just vibrate on my arm. I don’t need to hear about it, you can just do it. I have a Siri voice on my iPhone and watch that I don’t think anybody else has. It auto set it when I updated my phone, but I love, oh what’s going on here? Somebody tell me the science of how to fix this. You agitated the starch too much. Okay, so I shouldn’t be stirring? Well, I don’t know, do you want it? I don’t want it to overflow. Put spoon in it and it’ll stop it. See, that’s what I was looking for. Some of that, the touch of a chef. Okay, so it looks like the pasta has almost fully absorbed the broth to where I can put the butter in. So I put the heat down to medium and then I’m just gonna plop butter in and let it melt. And then I’m just gonna stir that around a little bit. The Siri thing I was saying is not very interesting. So it’s bad that we left it on a cliffhanger. My Siri, just this voice for some reason like Siri wants to send a text and I say don’t. He sounds disappointed. So I’ll go like, text Tony something and it’ll get it wrong, and I say don’t send. And he goes, “I won’t send it.” And I feel bad for him every time. Alright, the butter is melted so I think I’m just gonna put the cheese in and let that melt and put pepper in and that’s about it. This dish is I believe idiot proof because I’m doing kind of well right now so you guys can applaud, it’s fine if you… Thank you, thank you. I put the cheese in. Alright, cheese looks melted. I’m gonna also bring it down to low and then I’m just gonna add pepper. I’m putting a lot of pepper in this just because it’s such a mush that when I started before, it’s kind of tough to taste the pepper unless I put a bunch in. So you know, it’s kind of the only rule I’m going off of. Gonna stir this a bit. Definitely wetter than when I made it before but I don’t think I hate it. I think it does need a little bit more cheese. I’m gonna put a little bit more pepper in this and I think it’s, I’m just gonna say it’s done. So if you say something’s done, then it just is. I’m just gonna put this in. I’m gonna put a little bit of Parmesan on top and then some pepper and then we’re good. Actually, pepper first. No, changing my mind. I’m calling it. There you have it. My Pastina Cacio E Pepe. Cacio E Pepe. It is known as Italy’s most ancient pasta dish. Sheep herders used to walk around with dried spaghetti in their pockets. A little sack of Pecorino Romano cheese which is maybe the world’s oldest cheese and some black pepper, they would crush it up and eat it for lunch. What both Nicole and Eddy did to Italy’s most ancient pasta dish is an absolute shame and I’m here to teach them how to cook it properly. I have a protein shaker conspicuously in the shot. We’ll get there. I’m taking spaghetti ala chitarra. and chitarra means what nicole? Guitar. Guitar. Because the way they would make this pasta, they would physically press it through strings as opposed to rolling it out and cutting it, much like a guitar. We got that going. I’m gonna toast my peppercorns while that is boiling. Nicole used a timer, so I’m gonna use Alexa too. Alexa play Pepas by Farruko. These peppercorns here are burgundy style peppercorns grown in Ecuador from a family run farm. I have no idea. I tasted ’em the other day and I really liked them. Cheese, Pecorino Romano is the only cheese that I’m going to be using because Parmigiano reggiano, Parmigiano from Parma, Pecorino Romano, Romano is from Rome, this is a Roman pasta dish. I don’t appreciate. I think all the Italian city states should have remained separate. I’m very anti-Italian unification and so I’m just gonna grate a whole lot of cheese in there. And then here’s what, sorry. Here’s what we’re gonna do. Spaghetti, dunno how long it takes at all. I’m gonna stir it around. There we go, we’re gonna leave that in there. It’s gonna burn my hands later. We’re gonna give the peppercorns a nice little toss. We’re letting that go. Got a bunch of cheese grated. I’m very anti pasta water. You saw Nicole add pasta water in there. And then you served what? The wettest spaghetti I’ve ever seen. I said little Tony’s in North Hollywood had the wettest spaghetti in the valley. No way, Nicole took that title away from them and that’s a shame. I’m anti pasta water because the ideas that you’re getting the starch from the pasta water to emulsify your sauce and cling to the pasta, every pasta water is going to be different based on the amount of surface area of the pasta, amount of water that you have in there. Is it fresh pasta? Is it dried pasta? The cook time of the pasta. It’s all going to be different. So that’s why I’m standardizing my pasta water. We got 10 ounces of lukewarm water and a protein shaker. Got the blender ball in there so it don’t clump up. Yeah, it smells like chocolate, chocolate coconut protein that I drink every morning. And I’m gonna add three tablespoons of flour. I’m gonna shake this up. I’m gonna add it as needed if I need to cheat. Nicole cheated by… How’d you cheat? I literally didn’t do anything. Did you add butter? Yeah. Yeah, she cheated. Cacio E Pepe has no butter in it. Okay, so did Eddy. I opened with, I cheated. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. So I got my starchy water here. This is pasta water. Now look at that. Thickened, starchy. This weak, wimpy, wimpy, wimpy, hefty, hefty, hefty. All right, I’m gonna bash the hell out of this. These peppercorns, they say they have a burgundy like red wine color, nice and finely ground, crazy aromatic and add a ton, a flavor and texture. We’re gonna check on the spaghetti. Okay, I’m gonna let this cook for a second and then we’re gonna utterly fail at this but you’re gonna enjoy watching it. Okay, oh, this is gonna be such a disaster. Pasta’s like pretty much cooked. No, I’m kidding. Test out my theory. There we go. Hold on, ye have little faith. That is, oh my God, that’s way too thick. Okay, wait, wait, wait, hold on. Actually, we’ll use pasta water, that’s going in there. I’m gonna thin out ’cause this is perfect, the method works. Everybody agrees with that. Oh, I didn’t practice this at all by the way. We’re gonna add just a little bit of that now. You have particular emulsifiers. You have chemical emulsifiers right? Flour emulsifies things which is to bind proteins, fats, and waters. Particulates do that by physically just absorbing it, so flour in a roux, and then chemical ones do it by physically changing the protein structures. This would be a particulate emulsifier using flour. There we go, boom, science baby. Cooking is hot, nasty, badass science. Now what we’re gonna do is gonna try and get so much of that flour to cling to the outside of the pasta. The pasta is just above aldente, which means what? Gonna get a whole lot of pepper. We want a lot of pepper in there. Again, one pepper and cheese is the only two flavors, you gotta go hard on both. So the idea, check this out. The idea is to make this hot and wet enough to be able to absorb all that cheese and create a perfect emulsified sauce. Let’s go over here ’cause I need this to be hot enough to go right into the cheese. Here we go, and then I’m gonna wait for the exact right moment of this to be thick, hot, and wet enough to go into that cheese, in which case I will violently agitate the starch with chopsticks which are the best noodle cooking tools in the world. But to do it baby, we’re going in and I’m gonna start a sort of cheese tornado and pasta go, go, go. Go, go, go. We’re doing it. We’re doing so wet. This is perfectly emulsified, which is great, as long as the chittarra absorbs a little bit of that on the plate, we’re good to go. I need to taste the wetness real quick. Is probably going to taste like a floury mess. That’s perfect. We did it. No butter, no cheat, no little pastina. I am a cooking God. And I’ll go down with the grates like Gusto from Ratatouille. This plate is significantly too large. Beautiful, pasta in, just gonna garnish with a little bit more of this brown pepper. Why is it so brown? I do not know, it’s so brown. And then a little bit of cheese. What? You guys don’t cheese notch. Well, I love my cheese notch. A little bit of cheese on top. Bango bango, there. It’s Cacio E Pepe, all thanks to my winning ingredient, . Welcome Jordan from sporked.com. Hi. So before you, you have three Cacio E Pepe dishes. Please enjoy. Ooh, okay. I love Cacio E Pepe. First of all, I love Pastina. It’s so good. Nice. This one almost tastes a little eggy, almost like carbonara But it’s delicious, I love how much pepper there is. It’s creamy. This one looks like a different kind of pepper. This one almost looks like it has szechuan peppercorns ground up on top. Does it? Was I right? I can’t tell. I don’t know, maybe not. Okay, still good. I mean, good, creamy. It does have less of an egginess than the first one does. The pepper is a lot sharper, but also really good. Okay, and then this last one. Is this bucatini? I love bucatini. This one seems to present with the least amount of pepper but the biggest pieces of pepper on top. It is bucatini. Okay. Delicious, very good. I love the big pieces of pepper. I wish there was more, and it’s not quite as creamy as the other two. It’s a little bit lighter. Okay, also, I want someone to clarify they did not make the pastas, correct? No. Okay. Because if they had made the pastas, I would’ve been like a chef, I guess has to have made the bucatini, I feel like that’s the hardest pasta to make. But if they didn’t, that changes things a little. I think pastina is a very homey type of pasta. This to me feels like something that your mom or your grandma would make you when you were sick which I think a lot of people would say, “Oh then that means it’s probably not the chef.” But I think it is a chef maybe. I think chefs like things that are easy, things that are comforting, and I think I could see like a chef making themselves this after work. I also think this, I think a chef made this too because something about the type of peppercorns that were used feels a little bit different. It’s extremely creamy. I honestly think Josh made this. If I just had to guess, knowing nothing, knowing Josh I’m like, I think Josh made this based on the flavor of the peppercorns. This one is the least creamy, it’s the lightest. They use bucatini, which bucatini is very chefy but the sauce is so much lighter. There’s not quite as much flavor because the things that are used are used minimally. Which hey, maybe you’re a minimalist chef. But for me, I think these other two have more flavor. So I think these two are the chef, this one is not the chef. I made that. I’m sorry. It’s okay. It’s good. It’s just fine. I just wanted more pepper. I know. But it tastes, I liked all three of them. It’s just fine, yeah. Yeah. I didn’t do my best. I wasn’t my mythical best. And then we have the actual imposter chef who fooled the judges, Eddy Burback. I’m Jordan. Hi, Eddy. Nice to meet you Eddy, you made this? Yes. And Josh made this. Yes. Okay, so I was right in a way. This is delicious. It was definitely taught to me by my girlfriend Chrissy. Okay. So like she walked me through it, I did make it here, but it’s not like my own invention like with the portions and everything. Interesting, I love it. And what kind of peppercorn is this? So it’s an Ecuadorian burgundy colored peppercorn but then also I used a protein shaker filled with flour and water instead of pasta water to make a premium emulsified sauce. Eat it, Italy. Sorry, I’m so sorry. I love your corrupt government. Sorry. No, Italy. Oh my god. Whole country, you’re talking about, just a whole nation of people. Should have been city states. I’m just saying, not bully. Rise up. Eddy, congratulations. You conquered your fear of cooking and you officially- Thank you. Fooled everybody as an imposter chef. Thank you, appreciate it. Tell the people where they can find you. Either on my channel, Eddy Burback on YouTube or my channel with my twin brother Tony. Our channel’s called Burback, so they’re very similar names. Tony, come on here. See if you can make carbonara. Pasta shapes of the new Zodiac signs. Find out what pasta shape you are at sporked.com.