Homemade pasta is always better than store-bought. 

Cooking with friends is always better than cooking alone, especially when they do all the work. LOL. 

Ed, Su and Carlo

Imperia pasta machines, made in Torino, are FAR superior to any others on the market. Though the company’s been around since 1932, its roller pasta machine was first introduced in the late 1920s. Today Imperia produces a number of products, from cheese graters to tomato saucers. 

Image from Amazon

Did you know that Thomas Jefferson drew up plans for a pasta machine while traveling in northern Italy in 1787? Me neither! Check out this link from the American Treasures of the Library of Congress to learn more.   

Taken from http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/tlc0465.jpg

OK, so I digressed. So easy to do in the Internet Age. I also learned today that tossing too many ravioli into the pot of boiling water means they’ll need to cook by steam, under a lid, for longer than it would otherwise take. Air pockets in the ravioli fillings exacerbate the problem. It’s only a serious problem if you’re really hungry, like we were.

The filling for these ravioli was simply roasted butternut squash with shallots and sage; they were finished in a butter sage sauce. I served them with a super light salad made with shaved fennel, baby lettuce, clementines and pecans, with an orange juice-cilantro-olive oil dressing. Che buono!

Wish every day could be so much fun!

My way-too-heavy "cabernet" enamel cast iron Dutch oven

I’ve taken to roasting things in my cast iron Dutch oven: sweet onion, red onion, red potatoes, sliced fennel, baby carrots, and – don’t be shocked – a few whole garlic cloves. I threw in handfuls of chopped cilantro and parsley, stirred it all up with some olive oil, salt and pinot grigio, then added half a chicken cut up in pieces and baked it for about an hour or so. 

Nothing at all about this technique is remotely Italian. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Lately I’ve been suffering from kitchen wanderlust, wishing for a bigger and better space and a gas stove. Though this feeling has come and gone since I left my big open kitchen in Pittsburgh, it’s been fairly strong lately, mostly because the men I’ve recently dated all have fabulous kitchens! Little do they know how deeply their kitchens are tempting me to level jump right out of casual dating and into intimate weeknight collaborations. Want pasta tonight, dear, or risotto? LOL. 

Was thrilled to see Mark Bittman’s recent article in the NYT, written to folks like me who adapt to small kitchens in city apartments yet manage to “make it work”. He writes:

… when it comes to kitchens, size and equipment don’t count nearly as much as devotion, passion, common sense and, of course, experience. To pretend otherwise — to spend tens of thousands of dollars or more on a kitchen before learning how to cook, as is sadly common — is to fall into the same kind of silly consumerism that leads people to believe that an expensive gym membership will get them into shape or the right bed will improve their sex life. As runners run and writers write, cooks cook, under pretty much any circumstance.

Early on in the article, he says he’s here to make me feel better, and that he did… at least temporarily. I’m still in the market for some new bedroom furniture … and weeknight culinary collaborations.

What makes chicken cacciatore, exactly? And how is it different than a spezzatino, or a coq au vin for that matter? These are questions I don’t really care to research in depth tonight, but I do know that what I made contains neither garlic nor mushrooms, two ingredients found in many cacciatore recipes I’ve seen. It also contains neither the celery nor lardons found in coq au vin. So what does it contain, and what should I call it?

Pollo di domenica sera

Chop carrots and onion, and lots of fresh herbs (rosemary, parsley, thyme, basil, sage, oregano).

Quarter some red potato, the neck of a butternut squash, and a large summer tomato.

Cut up chicken breasts, leaving the bone (and wonder why you didn’t buy the more flavorful dark meat).

Get out your brand-spanking-new enamel cast iron dutch oven, curse its weight and vow to return to weight training at least twice a week.

Add some olive oil to the dutch oven heating at medium on the stovetop.

Brown the chicken several miniutes, remove it from the pan, and add the carrots, onion and herbs for a bit.

Add half a bottle of white wine and some chicken broth. Remind yourself to buy some white wine for the next impromptu risotto.

Return the chicken to the pan, and add the tomato, potato and squash.

Add some salt and pepper, cover and bake in a 400 oven for an hour or so.

Feel comforted by the smells, recall dinner parties past, and anticipate tomorrow’s lunch.  

Charge BOTH of your camera batteries, already. Geeze!

Came across this contraption while browsing the Williams Sonoma site the other day: 

What fun could it be to make a frittata without the thrill of the flip? More importantly, how could the frittata cook evenly when the cold pan you flip it into has been sitting on the kitchen counter? I bet this shortcut sells well to the unseasoned cook. 

Though I find the slope of the mandoline seductive, would buying one also be a shortcut? I mean, I’ve neither gotten cheap thrills nor lasting enjoyment from slicing and dicing. Still, I do it just about every day, choosing to chop by hand over the pulsing whirl of a food processor (even though I’ve collected three sizes over the years), believing that I’m inching my way towards better knifing skills, one onion at a time. Am I really making progress? More importantly: is the goal I’m working towards merely illusory?

Ate perciatelli with burro e parmigiano tonight, too hungry to slice zucchini, cook some tomato or put any effort into a sauce. Found some cooked beets in my fridge, cubed them and shaved some carrots and fennel into it, dressing with aceto balsamico and evoo.  A perfect impromptu dinner.

Aren’t the carrots beautifully sliced? My knifing skills could never create this, so I turned to my Italian acciaio inox truffle slicer. While it’s never actually sliced truffles, it has often shaved fennel, carrots, potatoes and zucchini. Made with stainless steel and a super sharp adjustable blade, this kitchen tool sure does come in handy … especially when I have no kitchen helpers doing my bidding.

Using this tool, though, makes me want to go out and buy a French mandoline (scandalous traitor that I am). Have a look at the Williams Sonoma demo video of the de Buyer Red Mandoline and let me know if you too feel you need it. Just think of all the pleasure it’d bring for only $100. That’s a heck of a lot less than a $13,700 bed!