Cheesecake!

Topher and Marisa came over for cioppino (I loosely followed this recipe from newitalianrecipes.com). RC brought Marina over after backdancing class and then we porked (crabbed?) out. Topher and Marisa brought the cheesecake. I also used it as an occasion to exercise my new Diana+ plastic camera (which totally rules).

Making Pasta and Pasta Fagioli

On Sunday, RC and I went over to Nonni's house and made pasta and pasta fagioli. Mmmm...

Ribs and Champagne: Let Summer Begin

If memorial day counts as the unofficial first day of summer, what better way to celebrate than with ribs and champagne (and beer, pasta, guacamole, fresh salsa, chips, and lemonade by the pool)?

Allison, Bill, and Naomi came over and frolicked in the pool for a while, then came up to the house for a lovely (and very elegant) meal 0f ribs and pasta. Naomi said that her favorite animals were the "food" kind, but she was already full of watermelon and cherries.

It was a very lovely first day of summer. RC and I are looking forward to many more like it (with a little less wind, maybe).

Cheers!

Pizza, again

I made pizza again last night to perfect a few things and to foil the hippies who want the world to use whole wheat flour for everything.

I experimented through four pizzas and got the last one almost right. Here are a few of the changes I made that I thought worked well...

fewer toppings—that way, the dough doesn't get weighed down

toppings should be cool so they don't start turning the dough into glue.

dry mozarella—again, less heavy topping, not as much water to moisten the dough

roll out the dough to be much thinner, especially at the edges. The edges should have a blade, not a roll.

rub the dough with olive oil before cooking

toast the dough—put the dough in the oven with no toppings or just a sprinkling of grated parmesan cheese for a while before adding toppings. This gives the dough a chance to crust without the toppings making a misery of it. It makes handling the pizza considerably easier, since the crust already has some integrity. It's not floppy and doesn't want to stick to everything like raw dough.

There are more pictures on flickr.

Pizza

Last night, pizza and beer. I made the dough, but the lame hippies at Whole Foods had a box of whole wheat pastry flour dressed up as regular pastry flour. It sucked.

The toppings were good. I made a simple tomato sauce with garlic, herbs, and diced tomatoes. Added parmesan, sliced onions, and prosciutto, then mozarella.

I'm going to try it again with a couple of alterations. This time:

* real, non-hippie flour.
* dry mozarella instead of fresh
* cover the dough in olive oil once it's rolled out
* cold toppings

It might help to have some kind of larger spatula to move the pizza from the prep board to the pizza stone.

Fried Chicken, Crab Pasta, Short Ribs

Friday night we went out to dinner with A & M at Town Hall. We had a nice time, but it's kind of loud in there. Not particularly well-suited for the very pregnant (3 more weeks) M. A & I had gourmet fried chicken, brussels sprouts, and what was supposed to be biscuits and gravy but was actually mashed potatoes and gravy. Fried chicken sure is good, but you pay for it later.

They made us wait for a while which was a little alarming since M was pretty uncomfortable. But, at the end of the meal, they gave us a complimentary butterscotch pot de creme and were very apologetic.

Last night, we went to my parents' house for dinner. We started with Campari and another, lighter-colored aperitif very similar to Campari-- the name escapes me-- and olives and cheese and coppa. Then, homemade pasta with a crab sauce paired with short ribs. When we got home, we were itchy all over and took benadryl. Coincidence or weird food allergies creeping up on us?

Tonight, we had mall food at the "Food Emporium" underneath the new Bloomingdale's mall and saw Rocky Balboa. RC says that my dad made it sound far more rational than it turned out to be. The Bill Conti theme was by far the best thing about it. He really writes awesome themes. My dad said last night that he thought Bill Conti did all the music for Dream Girls. We'll have to see that one (we've been referring to it casually as "Dream Booty").

Pasta+Wine=Comfort

It was a somewhat difficult day. We found out that C's problem was on the worse end of the spectrum of possibilities. So, I went home to cook dinner. It was a comforting end to a crappy, short January day.

This is the empty bowl of a simple pasta with a simple red table wine. I didn't quite have the time to make a full sauce, so I started with a jar of something or other. It wasn't the best we've ever had, but it was decent and it's time for bed.