Tag: Italian

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Hors 'deouvre or Entree: Foccacia Gets The Caprese Treatment

That’s right:  it could be an hors ‘deouvre or an entree, and you could call it anything you wish, because the fact is that although I have created this recipe, I have not christened it!

So, how do you make it, you ask?  Well, you get yourself a great Foccacia flatbread— mine is made by my local bakery with rosemary and sea-salt.  Slice through the bread and put the cut-side face up.  Drizzle extra-virgin olive oil on the airy insides of the foccacia.  Next crumble the best quality of Goat Cheese or Chevre onto the bread, then slice up your tomatoes (from your own garden are best, by the way), a little more Chevre (made in USA, this one) please, and finally, the piece de resistance:  fresh basil from your garden.

Bake in a preheated oven at 400 Fahrenheit for 15 minutes, remove, serve on a quarter-plate with fork and knife, and voila, you are a goddess!  Seriously!  See for yourself what I mean!

Basil

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The Transformation of Italian Meatballs: Another Creative Indian Flick-of-the-Wrist

If you believe that Italian Meatballs are good only for a hearty meal of Spaghetti with Marinara Sauce, you are monstrously mistaken, gentle reader.  Because I am here to tell you that one can take these same readymade hearty Italian Meatballs and do with them something completely unexpected and extraordinary.

And what might that be, you ask?  Well, here’s what– and let me present this as if it were a recipe:   
  1. Take those meatballs and toss them into a skillet.  I always like to add some water to recondition them and let the liquid evaporate and/or be absorbed into the balls. 
  2. When they’re “done”, cut them up into four parts each so they’re nice bite-size pieces.
  3. Next, take a good dollop of that handy Garlic-Chilli Paste (that you must always have in your refrigerator), and add to your skillet with a tsp. of oil so as to fry it a little before you stir it up with your meatballs.
  4. Next open a bottle of a fine Salsa— I prefer one with chipotle peppers, black beans and corn.  Toss into your skillet and stir-fry on a high heat. 
  5. Now:  on the side, in the microwave, you ought to have baked a few Yukon Gold Potatoes in the microwave.  Cut these up into small chunks, and add to your meatball mixture
  6. Stir some more, and then cover lid and simmer for a bit
  7. Turn off heat, set the table, and serve with Rotis or Rice.
Mmmm!  I believe the Italians would say Buon Appetito! but around these parts we say Yeh Hui Na Baat!

Alukoftas

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Ambrosia, Thy Name Is Tiramisu

That’s right– it IS the food of the gods!  Completely DIVINE is what Tiramisu is.  And the perfect cake for a special birthday for a very special person.  Incidentally, the simplicity of the ingredients and assembly is nothing short of genius:  ladyfingers (which essentially become the spongy layers of cake), mascarpone cheese, whipping cream, liqueur, and chocolate shavings.  This one is not home-made, but Whole Foods does a fantastic job.  See for yourself:

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Cottage Inn – An Ann Arbor Institution

So, where would you want to go for the finest pizzas and pastas and canolis and tiramisu in town?  Well, if you’re in Ann Arbor, the choice would be clear:  Cottage Inn.  The one downtown on Williams, that is.  We paid a visit today, and got some of all of the above.  Check it out:

Cottageinn

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Ravioli Casserole In A Flash

Ravioli

Okay, so for all my non-Italian friends, ravioli is square pasta-pockets with a filling, usually a cheese or meat filling.  I suppose you can make them from scratch, but I’ve never done that.  But then, neither have I bought the ubiquitous canned variety either. Instead, I prefer the frozen kind. 

And here’s why:  you can make a Ravioi Casserole dish in no time with essentially three ingredients in 55 minutes flat (5 minutes to assemble; 50 minutes to bake), and still give the impression that you slaved over it.  So, here’s how you’d do that: 

  1. Open your bag of frozen ravioli and empty its contents in a nice casserole dish; spread them around dish as evenly as you can
  2. Open a jar of spaghetti sauce and pour over the ravioli (I like the Prego mushrooms and onions variety)
  3. Sprinkle a cup of shredded mozzarella cheese on top; cover w/ foil; bake at 350 for 50 minutes

Serve with love!  And thick slices of homemade bread if you have any (the cheating kind is fine, btw!); otherwise, store-bought will do just fine!

Bon Appetit!

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Open-Faced Brunch Sandwiches

Brunch

Thanks to the MLK holiday, these open-faced brunch sandwiches seemed to materialize out of nowhere.  Well, out of the left-overs from within the fridge, to be precise.

The main ingredients were:  a loaf of french-bread, pepper-jack cheese, four boiled eggs, and some rotisserie chicken.  Salt, pepper, dijon mustard and butter are staples that almost go unmentioned.

Thick slices of the bread got a thin spread of Olivio butter, followed by the cheese, eggs and the shredded chicken, and finally topped off with a swirl of dijon mustard and a thin slice of butter.

Bake at 400 in a pre-heated oven for five mins; then, broil for another 5.

Serve with love.

A slideshow follows.  Note:  this is our variation of the Danish open-faced sandwiches mentioned in this blog a couple weeks ago.

 

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Chicken Picatta Manchurian

Chickenpicatta

So, if you’ve never heard the name of this dish, it is because it was invented today.  For lunch.  As the name suggests, it is a chicken dish.  Picatta is Italian for thinly-sliced cutlet.  Which also happens to be a popular Italian dish by the same name:  Chicken Picatta.

Well, today, I decided I wasn’t content with the good old Italian recipe, and looked inside my kitchen pantry and saw an unopened jar of Ching’s Manchurian Stir-Fry sauce.  This, I had picked up from our local Indian store, Bombay Grocers a while back.  The recipe on the back of the bottle was one for Gobi Manchurian!  This is the truth, people!  Gobi Manchurian is a popular dish in India which is a spin-off of the Indochinese dish Chicken Manchurian, only you’ll find it made from gobi or cauliflower, not chicken.

So, manchurian sauce in hand, I thought why not make a type of chicken manchurian.  Only I didn’t have the requisite cubed chicken pieces; instead, I had the cutlet-style pieces.  So, I dredged them in cornflour, and you can see the rest in the slideshow below.

And voila, here was the Chicken Picatta Manchurian.  A lovely union of Italian and Indochinese!  If that’s not multi-ethnic, I don’t know what is!

Oh, and need I say that it was finger-lickin’ good?  🙂