As I was reading the Dining Section in the NY Times yesterday I can across this article that I just had to share:
My Big Italian Dream Party
a) How amazing does Umbria sound? Who wouldn't want to stay in some big, beautiful farmhouse with your nearest and dearest group of people and I almost fell over when I saw the price for a week - it's actually pretty affordable when you break it down per person. This is so going on the bucket list.
b) As you probably already know, I'm somewhat obsessed with all things entertaining and especially theme parties. I loved everything about this woman's party: the menu and how they divided cooking duties up among everyone, the long table for 30 outside (I have a very big thing for long farm tables), and even the little American twists thrown in. I'm not really a believer of signs but I as I was reading the article I kept thinking to myself "hello, this is your Italian tapas party in front of you". So I might not be jumping on a plane to Umbria anytime soon but wherever you are, as long as you are surrounded by great food, fun people and 2 cases of wine is definitely going to work in your favor, you are bound to have a fabulous time.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Italian Tapas
By reading this blog, you will know that I've had Italian tapas on the brain for the past few weeks ever since my fabulous dining experience at Melograno in Philadelphia. I've been meaning to start trying out different recipes and even threw it out there for the all of the general public to read that I was going to have this theme party based on the above mentioned theme. It's been somewhat hectic lately and I have my 4th annual Palm Sunday brunch to plan first but in the near future once full blown Spring hits there is going to be a Friday night or another perfect day that's going to scream outdoor entertaining and Italian tapas and there will be no where else I would rather be then on my deck with a glass of wine, a fun array of apps and an entourage of friends. It's also one of these things that if I keep talking about it, I stay committed to the cause and there's no way that I'm letting this one slip away to the business of schedules and life. This past Saturday night, I has the opportunity to start practicing with a small dinner party that I was having which included a one dish main course, therefore leading way to a little bit more substantial first course.
We started off with cheese and prosciutto stuffed peppers. You know those little colorful peppers you always see in the produce section that look super fun but you aren't always sure what to do with them? Well my friend Deanna had the answer and passed along this great recipe to me that I knew I just had to make and is a keeper for the recipe box. One of my stand by rules when entertaining is that I like to have a majority of the cooking done by the time my guests arrive because I don't want to be chained to the stove while everyone else is off in the living room having a good time and this recipe allows you to look like you have it all together. These little peppers can easily be made ahead of time and popped into the oven shortly before the door bell rings as well as can be adapted if you are missing an ingredient or two. (For example: I left out the mozzarella in mine knowing that I had another appetizer that include it as a main ingredient).
We started off with cheese and prosciutto stuffed peppers. You know those little colorful peppers you always see in the produce section that look super fun but you aren't always sure what to do with them? Well my friend Deanna had the answer and passed along this great recipe to me that I knew I just had to make and is a keeper for the recipe box. One of my stand by rules when entertaining is that I like to have a majority of the cooking done by the time my guests arrive because I don't want to be chained to the stove while everyone else is off in the living room having a good time and this recipe allows you to look like you have it all together. These little peppers can easily be made ahead of time and popped into the oven shortly before the door bell rings as well as can be adapted if you are missing an ingredient or two. (For example: I left out the mozzarella in mine knowing that I had another appetizer that include it as a main ingredient).
Cheese and Prosciutto Stuffed Sweet Peppers
Prep - Preheat oven to 350 degrees; Grease a square glass baking dish with olive oil
Ingredients:
-Multi-colored sweet peppers, ¼ side removed to form a bowl or “boat;” seeds and membrane removed.
-1 small container or 1 cup of ricotta cheese (part skim)
6 small fresh mozzarella balls – drained on paper-towels and roughly chopped
1/4 cup (small handful) grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 pound of thin sliced Parma prosciutto – Roughly chopped into 1 inch pieces
1 tsp Garlic Powder
1/3 cup Italian breadcrumbs (eye ball this because you are just sprinkle some over the top of the peppers)
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to taste
Instructions:
Position the peppers in the glass baking dish, cut side up. Cover with tin foil and bake for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside. Increase oven temp to 425 degrees.
In a small bowl, stir to combine ricotta cheese, chopped mozzarella balls, Parmesan cheese, basil, prosciutto and garlic powder. Season with salt and pepper.
Generously stuff each pepper with the cheese mixture. Sprinkle the breadcrumb over the cheese of each pepper and drizzle with a little olive oil.
Bake in a 425 degree oven, uncovered, for 15-25 minutes, or until the breadcrumb starts to brown and the cheese is bubbly. The peppers will begin to char around the edges.
Remove from oven and let sit for 5-10 minutes so the peppers can cool and the cheese can firm.
The second appetizer I made was mozzarella in carrozza based on Lidia Bastianich's recipe linked here. I'm never one to turn down a piece of fried cheese and liked how at Melograno it was made between two slices of bread and was excited to try it out at home. Another recipe that can easily be made ahead and then kept warm in the oven because I don't know about you but hot oil and a dredging station in the kitchen isn't exactly something I dream about when thinking of ways to entertain guests. Melograno's version was served with an artichoke mostarda that I actually decided to serve in my salad instead so I took inspiration from Pasta Cosi in Branford and made my own lemon caper radicchio sauce to serve on top of it and it was the right amount of sauce and flavor that didn't make the mozzarella heavy likes red sauce tends to do with the dish. The lemon sauce is very similar to a sauce I serve with chicken but would also work well with shrimp or pasta as well.
Lemon Caper Radicchio Sauce
Ingredients:
-4 tablespoons of unsalted butter, divided
-1 tablespoon or 3 cloves of garlic minced
-generous pinch of red pepper flakes
-1/2 cup of limoncello*
-1/2 cup of radicchio, finely chopped
-2-3 tablespoons of capers
-2 tablespoons of freshly chopped parsley
-salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
In a small frying pan, heat 2 tablespoons of butter until melted. Add garlic and red pepper flakes and cook until soft 2-3 minutes. Add radicchio to pan and cook for another few minutes until wilted. Deglaze pan with limoncello and cook until alcohol cooks off and sauce reduced a little bit, 5-6 minutes. Add capers and let simmer until sauce has a nice thick consistency. Finish the sauce off with remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and season with salt and pepper. Once sauce is off the heat, add parsley right before serving.
*Note: I discovered I loved cooking with limoncello kind of by accident. One day I didn't feel like opening a bottle of wine for probably a recipe that called for all of a quarter of a cup but knew that I had a bottle of limoncello in the freezer so I figured "why not, lets try it" and it gave the dish this really nice subtle sweetness and it killed two birds with one stone with not having to add lemon juice separately. If you don't have what seems like an endless supply of limoncello in your house like we do, you can easily substitute 1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice and 1/4 cup white wine in place.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Changing up the rotation...
The weeknight meal rotation is a battle that every cook goes through on a pretty regular basis. It's always "how do I keep weeknight meals interesting and exciting without falling into the rut of eating the same thing all the time?" We've all been there; you work a full day, run errands, squeeze in a workout and by the time you finally get home there is barely enough energy left to sit and eat a meal let alone stand in front of the stove before you collapse into bed for the night. This isn't some closeted issue that only some of us go through, everyone at some point is going to suffer symptoms of the weeknight dinner burnout. Rachael Ray became a millionaire because she came up with the "30 minute meal" concept. Real Simple magazine would go out of print if they didn't get to dedicate so many articles about saving the sanity of the weeknight dinner cook. This is why there are so many crappy prepared foods in the supermarket that have a boatload of issues attached to them but people crack under the pressure and get sucked in. It's hard for everyone whether you are a gourmet cook or someone who doesn't know the difference between a knife and spoon. So what do you do so that Tuesday's dinner doesn't send you completely over the edge where you want to take a hiatus from the kitchen? (Because don't forget, after that you still have 2-3 more meals to come up with in a given week). Well you get help and guidance from anything that will make it easier and grab tips from anywhere you can. I have the "revelation moments" all the time where after I read something or did something for the first time and thought "why didn't I ever think of this before?". I remember the first time I ever marinated meat in a large plastic ziploc bag and thought "this is mind blowing how easy the prep and clean up is and it feels like you are gaining back minutes of your life". The great thing about tips like those is that they continue to be there and something is always going to come along and improve your cooking abilities, it's a pay it forward cycle.
This week I added some new recipes to my weeknight meal rotation and they were really good that I just had to pass them along. So good that I'm borderline disappointed that I just had them for the first time now but they are here to stay. Tuesday night I was in the mood for Mexican but wasn't feeling the usual route of tacos or quesadillas that we normally have in our house. I came across a recipe for Black Beans and Rice with Chicken and Apple Salsa and just subbed out the chicken for shrimp knowing that I wanted to have chicken another way the next day. It was an easy meal to prepare, involved having to buy limited things at the grocery store and just felt fun to eat once it was presented in the bowl (almost like a fun burrito bowl at a restaurant). You can either make the meal with a rotisserie chicken like the recipes calls for which if you haven't done it before stop wasting time and go out and buy one today. It's like the fabulous girl's version of fast food and for $6 it will be worth every minute you save in not having to roast your own chicken. With the shrimp, I made a simple marinate of olive oil, garlic, lime juice and zest and some chili powder that I mixed all together before brushing it on the shrimp as it was in the grill pan cooking for all of 5 minutes (another huge asset to a successful weeknight meal and grill pans are pretty inexpensive to buy). I'm not a huge fan of plain rice so I added a little bit of cilantro, lime juice and zest as I finished it off to give it a little excitement. If we ate a lot of rice in our house, I would totally subscribe to the time saving tip of making a big batch of it at the beginning of the week and just using it as a foundation for other recipes so I wasn't waiting to boil rice every night when I could be doing other things.
Last night I tried another new recipe this one being buttermilk roast chicken from Smitten Kitchen food blog. If you are not familiar with Smitten Kitchen, it is a very popular food blog based out of a tiny kitchen in New York City where the blogger does a lot of new takes for comfort food. This was actually the first recipe I ever made from the blog but her latest post of the fried egg and friscee sandwiches with bacon isn't going to be far behind. I always use a lot of buttermilk to bake with but the recipes usually only call for a cup or 2 therefore leaving the rest of the carton to go bad in the fridge before it gets pitched a week later. Well not anymore! What an amazing way to dress up a run-of-the mill chicken dish. The chicken came out so tender with great flavors and was a cinch to put together. The key to success is letting the chicken marinate as long as possible and making the marinade took all of 10 minutes to put together before everything got tossed into a ziploc (remember my favorite tip I mentioned above) and I was on my way out the door. Chicken only takes 30-40 minutes to bake in the oven which is totally doable for any weeknight and do not skip the step about lining the dish with foil because why wouldn't you want to make clean up easier? I think this would be a great dish to experiment with different spices depending what you were in the mood for and I served it up along side some simple roasted butternut squash and parchment baked asparagus. I'm telling you and maybe I'm being a smidge dramatic but one bite and it's life altering. I honestly can't wait to make it again.
Obviously it's been an exciting food week in my kitchen but here's one more to leave you with. I stole this off of one of my friend's pinterest boards (the highly addicting online pin boards) but these dried strawberries that I made today were AMAZING! They are like the adult version of fruit snacks and are super guilt free except that you can eat entire batch pretty quickly.
This week I added some new recipes to my weeknight meal rotation and they were really good that I just had to pass them along. So good that I'm borderline disappointed that I just had them for the first time now but they are here to stay. Tuesday night I was in the mood for Mexican but wasn't feeling the usual route of tacos or quesadillas that we normally have in our house. I came across a recipe for Black Beans and Rice with Chicken and Apple Salsa and just subbed out the chicken for shrimp knowing that I wanted to have chicken another way the next day. It was an easy meal to prepare, involved having to buy limited things at the grocery store and just felt fun to eat once it was presented in the bowl (almost like a fun burrito bowl at a restaurant). You can either make the meal with a rotisserie chicken like the recipes calls for which if you haven't done it before stop wasting time and go out and buy one today. It's like the fabulous girl's version of fast food and for $6 it will be worth every minute you save in not having to roast your own chicken. With the shrimp, I made a simple marinate of olive oil, garlic, lime juice and zest and some chili powder that I mixed all together before brushing it on the shrimp as it was in the grill pan cooking for all of 5 minutes (another huge asset to a successful weeknight meal and grill pans are pretty inexpensive to buy). I'm not a huge fan of plain rice so I added a little bit of cilantro, lime juice and zest as I finished it off to give it a little excitement. If we ate a lot of rice in our house, I would totally subscribe to the time saving tip of making a big batch of it at the beginning of the week and just using it as a foundation for other recipes so I wasn't waiting to boil rice every night when I could be doing other things.
Last night I tried another new recipe this one being buttermilk roast chicken from Smitten Kitchen food blog. If you are not familiar with Smitten Kitchen, it is a very popular food blog based out of a tiny kitchen in New York City where the blogger does a lot of new takes for comfort food. This was actually the first recipe I ever made from the blog but her latest post of the fried egg and friscee sandwiches with bacon isn't going to be far behind. I always use a lot of buttermilk to bake with but the recipes usually only call for a cup or 2 therefore leaving the rest of the carton to go bad in the fridge before it gets pitched a week later. Well not anymore! What an amazing way to dress up a run-of-the mill chicken dish. The chicken came out so tender with great flavors and was a cinch to put together. The key to success is letting the chicken marinate as long as possible and making the marinade took all of 10 minutes to put together before everything got tossed into a ziploc (remember my favorite tip I mentioned above) and I was on my way out the door. Chicken only takes 30-40 minutes to bake in the oven which is totally doable for any weeknight and do not skip the step about lining the dish with foil because why wouldn't you want to make clean up easier? I think this would be a great dish to experiment with different spices depending what you were in the mood for and I served it up along side some simple roasted butternut squash and parchment baked asparagus. I'm telling you and maybe I'm being a smidge dramatic but one bite and it's life altering. I honestly can't wait to make it again.
 |
| just mix your marinade right in the bag and eliminate another bowl to wash |
 |
| About to hit the oven. Don't forget to line your baking dish. |
Obviously it's been an exciting food week in my kitchen but here's one more to leave you with. I stole this off of one of my friend's pinterest boards (the highly addicting online pin boards) but these dried strawberries that I made today were AMAZING! They are like the adult version of fruit snacks and are super guilt free except that you can eat entire batch pretty quickly.
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