New Year's Resolution

While many people make a New Year’s Resolution to eat healthier, I am making a resolution to eat more pasta.  More specifically, I want to do more “Real Italian” cooking, (which in a lot of ways is healthier than a lot of American cooking anyway).  A new recipe every week.  I have a few Italian cookbooks from the US, and they are giving me a good start, but they use American units of measure and American ingredients.  So, I am also using Italian websites similar to the American allrecipes,com or cooks,com.  There are just as many or more of these Italian sites as there are American ones, so I have no shortage of recipes.  Many of them even have photos at every step.  But, yes, they are in Italian. 

What I have been doing is copying a recipe into my word doc recipe file, while also plugging it into a translator.  Any words I don’t understand, I type in English in parentheses behind the Italian word.  Then I print and work from the Italian version.  I feel like a better, more authentic Italian cook this way, and it is easier to make grocery lists.  I have found myself subconsciously writing some things in Italian when I write out my grocery lists.

 I didn’t start this until close to the end of January, but I do have some success stories already.  I did a baked Penne pasta with parmesan and prosciutto from my American cookbook, which was really good.  I also made a chocolate pie from that same cookbook.  I ran into some problems with this one. 

 First it required a graham cracker crust, but we don’t have graham crackers here.  And it called for unsweetened baking chocolate, which I also couldn’t find.  So, I was questioning this one from the get-go, but it looked so good in the book, and this was in place of a cake for Tim’s birthday.  I used cookies for the crust.  They were something between a butter cookie and a vanilla wafer, and they worked surprisingly well.  I just used plain chocolate bars and decreased the amount of sugar for the chocolate pie part.  This worked okay, but I think a simple pudding mix would have turned out much better.  There were also eggs involved, which I may have overcooked to make it safe for my pregnant self (after all, I am NOT making a pie I can’t eat!).  The whipped topping, however, was a huge success.  It was made of whipping cream and mascarpone cheese, and I will definitely be making it again.  It would have been great for strawberry shortcake. 

 I made a third thing from this American-Italian book, chicken alla Milanese, which is a breaded and pan fried chicken breast fillet generously topped with a creamy cheese mixture.  This was also really good, but I’m not convinced that it is “real” Italian.  The Milanese part yes, but the cheesy goodness on top sounds like an American addition.

From Italian websites, I made cacio and pepe, which is simply thick spaghetti noodles (I used troccoli) with cheese and pepper, but you have to do it just right.  Mine tasted good, but my cheese clumped together, so I need a little more practice.  For a Friday during Lent, I made pasta with salmon and a cream sauce, and that was really good.  Another day I made a bucatini all’amatriciana, which is like thick spaghetti noodles in a tomato sauce with pork cheek (I promise this is not gross as all).  That could have been a meal, but I served it with a parmesan crusted pork chop from an American Italian recipe.  Those both turned out really well.  Next, I made pasta con la’nduja, using a recipe I got from an Italian friend.  She is from Calabria, in the south of Italy, where this dish is popular.  The sauce uses spicy ‘nduja, a soft, spreadable salami made with red peppers.  I used the leftover meat with smoked scamorza cheese to make a rolled up spicy pastry.  The pasta and the pastries were both very good.  I've also done some without a "sauce", like aglio, olio, and pepperoncino (garlic, oil, and red pepper on spaghetti pasta).  These are also really good, and really simple, but not so common in the US.

Perhaps my best success story is my lasagna that was Tim's birthday request.  I can’t say that I made it from scratch because my recipe wanted you to actually make the pasta and the besciamella sauce, which I didn’t do, but I did make the 2-hour ragu (meat sauce).  And of course, I put all the layers together.  It turned out amazing.  Tim wouldn’t let me bring leftovers to work because that would mean less for him at home.  Ben’s first time eating it, he had three helpings.

 Onions, carrots, and celery.

Red wine in a juice box, genius!

 Starting the layers.

 Just put in the oven.

 Finished product.