Holidays

Erin and I had some great food while celebrating the Holidays. Some of the best:
1.) Filets at the Stookeys, Christmas Eve:
Erin's parents made some delicious filets. **So sorry I don't have a photo..I'm so mad, because they were soooo good!!
2.) What the heck is a stratta?
Turns out, it is some sort of quiche dish. It made for a pretty tasty brunch

3.) Nonna's Christmas spectacular:Similar to last year's, my grandma made a Christmas dinner for the ages. This year, we had Steak Sciscliano (prounounced SHISH-lee-ano). A very good cut of meat sliced into thin steaks, quickly seared on each side and soaked in olive oil and garlic and some italian seasonings. We had a lightly breaded and then baked shrimp; Pazella (italian style peas); homemade ravioli (with homemade tomato sauce)- they took my grandma something like 6 hours to hand make over 100 ravoli. They were the highlight of this wonderful meal. We had some nicely seasoned and spicy rappini (an Italian vegetable- a cross between spinach and broccoli).

4.) New Years Eve dinner: steaks at Red Gables Mesquittttte grill
We went to a small steakhouse in Sandusky with my brother and a couple friends on New Years Eve. The planning of our evening was very last minute, but we didn't complain. In fact, Erin ended up with the best steak ever. She got the filet, I got the ribeye. Both were perfectly cooked, high quality, and rubbed down with bold amounts of pepper and flavor. I tried a bite of Erin's- amazing.

**Also, sorry no photo, I guess the holidays=eating=Erin and Ryan's forgetfulness. I now have a New Year's resolution to remember to take photos of all this awesome food!

 A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to everyone!

Ryan Graduated!

Hey all, these have been a busy few weeks, lots of wedding stuff and school stuff. Ryan is done with law school! (besides that pesky bar exam) Last weekend Ryan's parents, grandparents and twin brothers (and Stephanie!) and my parents made the trek down to Cincinnati to celebrate.
Graduation was really nice and after that was over everyone headed back to our apartment and we had some appetizers. Ryan's mom brought shrimp cocktail and champagne for celebrating and my mom brought some cheese and crackers and grapes.Sorry for the photo with almost empty platters, I forgot to take a photo earlier..
We decided to make panne con zata which is a garlic-type bread that I think I've mentioned before. I bought a loaf of french bread and sliced the bread horizontally (like a sub) and then score each piece and drizzle with olive oil. You can season it with whatever you want, but I kept it simple. Salt and pepper to start, crushed red pepper and oregano. I just started growing fresh herbs again so I clipped some basil leaves and added those to the bread. I also added sun dried tomatoes to half and then sprinkled mozzarella cheese on each side. Then I wrapped the bread in foil and it bakes at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes. After 10 minutes I recommend checking to see if the cheese is melted.We also decided to make prosciutto wrapped asparagus which is a recipe from Giada De Laurentiis' first cookbook Everyday Italian. Ryan made this for me a while ago for my birthday and it was a great appetizer, and it was definitely a hit at our party! It was very easy, basically just seasoning the asparagus with salt and peper and a little bit of olive oil and bake it for 12-15 minutes. Once you take them out of the oven, let them cool and then wrap each spear in prosciutto and there ready to serve!After appetizers we relaxed for the afternoon and then had a great dinner at Bella Luna, a wonderful Italian restaurant in Cincinnati. Everyone seemed to really enjoy their dinners and besides the room being a little loud, I think everyone had a great time.

My dinner was great, I ordered the seafood stew, it was shrimp, mussels and scallops over a bed of pasta and the sauce was an olive oil sauce with diced tomatoes and a lot of spice to it! The sauce seemed to have a definite flavor of pepperoncini's. The last time I ate at Bella Luna I had a the mussels appetizer as my meal and the sauce was flavored with pepperoncini's and had them diced in the sauce. So maybe that's their thing. Either way, it works because both were tasty!
Another recommendation is to get the calamari appetizer. It's not the fried calamari that has become pretty standard on menus, it is cooked calamari in a spicy diced tomato sauce that is wonderful with the fresh breadsticks they give you.

It was a wonderful weekend full of wonderful food..and here is a photo of some of the fun that went on after dinner at the bar. :)

Easter Feast

Ryan and I made a lamb feast 2 years ago for Easter for our friends and it was a hit, so we decided it was time to for Easter Lamb: Round 2. This lamb recipe is from Ryan's mom so it was a nice way to bring family aspect to our Easter away from home.

We needed about a 10 lb. leg of lamb for the recipe and lamb is pretty expensive, especially around the holidays. So I decided to be the meat investigator and call around to various grocery stores and butchers to see who had the best price per pound. The butcher on the west side of town was definitely the most expensive, but they probably had the better quality leg than say, Kroger who had the cheapest. In the end it didn't really matter because when we went to go out and buy the lamb and other ingredients (we were out a little late Friday night and didn't get moving right away on Saturday) and Kroger and Bigg's were both out of lamb legs. Luckily, Fresh Market had plenty of lamb legs left and we were able to get a 6 lb. leg that worked out perfect for our Easter feast.

I'm going to let Ryan take it from here, he was the chef in charge of the lamb and I of course, was the sous chef, beautifully chopping the onion, potatoes and LOTS of garlic.

What's up, its Ryan...
So the lamb recipe is my Nonna's, given to me by my mom. I remember the tender, meaty, delicious lamb every Easter sunday, usually in Florida at my Nonna's home. Basically, its a meat roast, but it puts all the pork and beef roasts ever cooked to shame. We had the butcher at Fresh Market cut the leg into one inch thick "steaks". This allows you to get that tender, delicate texture without having to cook it for 6 hours. I cut away alot of the fat from the steaks once at home.


With Erin's cutting skills we lined a large roast pan with celery as a bed, then added the meat, potatoes, a couple cans of crushed tomatoes, some garlic (a couple cloves diced, a couple whole), onion, capers (chopped), and fresh mint (this was not in my grandma's recipe). I seasoned everything with some salt and pepper and cooked the roast at 400 degrees for about 1.5 hours. While we were waiting we had some panaconzata.

It came out pretty good. The lamb was pretty tender and very flavorful. The ingredients worked awesome together. It wasn't quite as tender as my grandma's. The other slight problem was that some of the potatoes could have used a few more minutes.

We had some friends over to help us eat this feast and celebrate Easter with us. Craig brought beer, JJ made a tasty green bean caserole, and Mo a great peanut butter pie. We also made a salad. The simple oil and vinegar dressing (really it was just some cheap balsamic, extra virgin olive oil, salt, and freshly cracked black pepper) that I learned from my mom was a hit.

We even had an Easter egg hunt... Erin won.

Happy belated Easter. Sorry this post is so late, we have had busy week. Check back soon for more posts. I'm going to guarantee 2 posts per week!

Cooking for friends

I always enjoy cooking for friends and Friday night I got another chance to try a new recipe, linguine with Shrimp and Lemon Oil. Ryan and I were going to cook for our friends but he came down with a bad cold (that I now have, thanks Ryan) so I went over to my friend Mo's to cook at her place for her, JJ, Mary and Mary's friend Eric who was visiting for the weekend.
This is actually a recipe my mom made for Ryan and I over the holidays and it's a meal she whips up for her and my dad all of the time. We also made panaconzata which I think we have mentioned in other posts, it is a wonderful Italian garlic bread that we have at Ryan's family gatherings.

To start, I put Mary to work making the panaconzata. For how tasty this bread it, it is surprisingly very simple and easy to make. Mary started by taking a loaf of Italian bread and slicing it horizontally (like a sub sandwich) and scoring the bread. After scoring the bread, she drizzled olive oil on each side and added salt and pepper and all kinds of spices including parsley, oregano and a little bit of crushed red pepper. The great thing about panaconzata is that you can add whatever you want, like sun dried tomatoes or fresh basil. Then she added shredded mozzarella cheese to each side of the bread and put the bread back together and wrapped it in foil. It's as easy as that! Then you pop it in the oven at 425 degrees and bake for about 15-20 minutes or until the cheese is melted. Here is Mary enthusiastically making garlic bread:
















While Mary was making the garlic bread, I got busy making the lemon oil which is very easy, just zest 1/2 a lemon and add 1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil to the bowl and let sit (you'll add it to the pasta at the end). I also put a large pot of water on the stove to bring to a boil for the pasta. Now, the recipe (which is copied below) calls for shallots but I used the red onion I had instead. So I began by sauteing onion in a large pan and salting the onions to bring out their moisture. Once the onions have cooked for a little bit I added some garlic and once the onion was translucent, I added the shrimp.














Once the pasta is done cooking I drained the pasta and added it to the large saute pan and mixed it with the shrimp, onions and garlic. I also added lemon juice and the lemon oil I made earlier and mixed it well. Then I added a few handfuls of fresh baby spinach and tossed it with the hot pasta until it wilted. I thought the meal turned out pretty well and my everyone seemed to like it. (JJ was able to get his vitamins and minerals for the day :) It's always fun to cook for friends and I'm glad I was able to try this great recipe for them. It is really simple and fast to make (moms are always right), a great meal to make any night of the week.