On dessert and demo-ing

I spent most of Thursday shopping for ingredients, Friday was cooking/prepping, and Saturday was more cooking and the actual party. A neighbor hosted an Italian dinner party for 12 that I "catered". The lady of the house had attended a couple of my pasta making classes and other dinners and her husband was jealous that he didn't get to come enjoy the food on those occasions. They decided to host a dinner so all the men could partake in the fun of making pasta and enjoying great food. The dinner consisted of a cooking demonstration of the lasagnettas (little lasagnas) we were serving for the first course of the meal, then a cocktail hour with cheeses, olives, and appetizers, then the meal itself and lots of wine.

The menu:
First Course, Lasagnetta with roasted pepper sauce.

Salad with red pepper, red onion, sundried tomatoes, goat cheese, homemade croutons, and my roasted red pepper and tomato vinaigrette.

Beef tenderloin with a port and cherry sauce (amazing!), roasted garlic asparagus, and lemon thyme carrots.

Dessert (made by my lovely assistant and sous chef, James) was a fabulous chocolate cake with a white chocolate mousse and strawberry champagne sauce garnished with strawberry dust and fresh strawberry.

The lasagnetta, salad, and dessert were plated and served while the main course was served family style and passed (as you can tell by the pictures).

The demo of the lasagnetta was a lot of fun. Everyone got ONE (some snuck a second) cocktail before so there were several distractions, but it made the process more entertaining. I had the pasta dough made and ready to roll and cut. I sauteed the veggies for the filling and blended the sauce as part of the demo.

Lasagnetta recipe:

This is my version of a recipe we made at ICIF in Italy when I was studying there. It was one of my very favorite things we made in class. Very tasty, fun to make, and impressive to serve to friends.

1 batch pasta dough rolled to desired thickness and cut to desired size.

Cook pasta for about 5 min in boiling salted water and lay flat on paper towels to cool and dry.

Filling-

1 bell pepper julienned

1 zucchini julienned

1/2 red onion sliced thin

1 tub ricotta cheese

Parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

Saute veggies in olive oil until tender. Deglaze with a splash of balsamic vinegar and season. Mix with ricotta and parmesan, salt and pepper to taste.

Sauce-

1 roasted red pepper

1/2 pint roasted grape tomatoes

splash of red wine and balsamic vinegar

red pepper flakes as desired

Salt and pepper to taste

Blend all ingredients until smooth. An immersion blender works best, but a regular blender will work too.

Constructing the lasagnetta:

Lightly oil the bottom of a baking pan and place first layer of pasta on the oiled pan. Top with ricotta and veg mixture and alternate with pasta circles for as many layers as you want; I have found 4 pieces of pasta is usually best. Top the final piece of pasta with a dribble of olive oil to prevent drying out and parmesan cheese. Bake at 350 until warm, about 15 min. Serve with warm red pepper sauce and enjoy! Be careful- it gets messy, but is totally worth it.

I am guessing there are some questions regarding this so called strawberry dust....

This was an experiment of mine. At the Ristorante Magorabin (the restaurant I did my stage at in Torino, Italy) we had an orange dust that was made by dehydrating orange rind then grinding it in a food processor until it was the consistency of dust. It was really cool to garnish both savory and sweet dishes with. I thought it might be fun to do something like that for our strawberry dessert (and I had large quantities of strawberries to use). It's time consuming and sort of tricky to dehydrate things without an actual dehydrator. I sliced my berries (and tomatoes and red peppers-but that didn't work as well) thin and put them on a pan with parchment paper. I set the oven to 170 degrees and it took several hours over the course of 2 days to get the berries sufficiently dry and crispy, and even then a few got slightly darker brown than I would have liked. Once the berries were dry and brittle, I put them in the food processor with a little bit of sugar and processed away for what seemed like days. In the end I had to run the dust through a fine mesh strainer to get it down to the size I wanted, but it worked out pretty well and looked nice on the dessert plates.

Try some dust of your own, the color and taste possibilities are endless!

And Chop on.

On Tapenade and Tomatoes

Today I had a tasting for an event I am catering in April. (Yes, it was actually solid food, not just juice!) I spent most of yesterday shopping and cooking many of my menu items for a few of the big wigs at the company hosting the open house to sample. The whole thing was MUCH more informal than I was thinking. I was stuck on the corner of a table in a communal office with two Doctors trying to work; needless to say, not what I expected. I was all prepared to talk about how I used local, organic or natural, and healthy ingredients when possible and how I re-hydrated my dried figs in brandy then used that to deglaze the caramelized onion pan and made that into a sauce...... Anyway, everyone devoured the samples and approved everything even without the preparation details.

One of my new menu items that is sort of fun and looks exciting is stuffed cherry tomatoes. I decided to stuff mine with a homemade tapenade which is traditionally a mixture of finely chopped olives, capers, anchovies, and olive oil, however, I used different ingredients because I think it tastes better and I am not a huge fan of capers or anchovies.

To make these delicious 1 bite snacks you will need a bunch of cherry tomatoes, and either homemade (recipe to follow) or store bought tapenade.

Tapenade recipe:

1/2 cup kalamata olives

1/2 cup green olives or mixed olives

6 peppadew peppers

8 marinated artichoke heart quarters

4 small marinated fresh mozzarella balls

5 small cubes feta

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and blend to desired consistency.

Step 1 for prepping the tomatoes as seen above- cut the core out of the tomato and remove the seeds.

Step 2: fill tomato with tapenade.

Step 3: garnish with parsley and Enjoy!

In addition to these stuffed tomatoes, I made:

Fig, caramelized onion, and gorgonzola bars

A variety of things on toasted bread- Tarragon chicken salad on cranberry walnut bread, Chevre and cucumber triangles, Sundried tomato and ricotta bruschetta, and a delicious Turkey, brie, bacon, and raspberry jam (not pictured).

Well, it was an exciting couple days of cooking and sharing food. Maybe my enthusiasm will inspire some new ideas or twists on these recipes. If anyone out there comes up with anything good-please share in a comment! and Chop on.

Pictures...try 2

Oops......technical difficulties with the loading of the pictures....and by that I mean I had no idea how to do it.

Now that I have everything figured out, here are the juice pics as promised.

On Juice and Juicing

I find myself starting this food blog about cooking with a curious absence of both food and cooking.

I decided to try a juice fast/cleanse over the next couple days which requires some chopping, some slicing, and NO eating of solid food. All the time I normally spend in the kitchen cooking and sampling and eating had to be redirected in another direction. I found time to start my blog, which I have been thinking about for quite a while. And just because I wasn't able to cook and eat, doesn't mean I can't read or write about it, Right? I am currently reading The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman and luckily I am still towards the beginning and he is only describing sauces in detail, not delicious and tempting foods. (I am reading Eragon by Christopher Paolini now too.) I had some time to work on planning a tasting, a pasta class, and a 12 person plated dinner coming up in the next week. I felt surprisingly well after the first day, a bit hungry and tired but not starving and/or crazy. No hallucinations, no strange or intense urges, nothing I feel like I should report to a Doctor.

I did come up with some very tasty combinations of fruits and vegetables that make juice one can survive on for a few days. My favorite, although probably not the most beneficial, is a few fresh apples, a slice of lemon, and a chunk of ginger run through the juicer. A more colorful and nutritional juice that tastes not like a salad is 3 carrots, 1 apple, 1 stalk of celery, a small piece of beet, 1-2 inches of cucumber, a piece of ginger, and a slice of lemon. This came out a really nice beet-y color and was very smooth, sweet, and drinkable. I poured both types of juice over ice to chill it and dilute it a little bit-sort of like bourbon on the rocks, only healthier.

I took some pics to log my first juices of the fast. All the fruit and veg before juicing, the juices, and the remnants of the juicing process-it makes great compost for gardens.

Well, I suppose I should finish with a welcome and thank you for checking this out! I will be documenting more solid (haha) topics in the future and covering my classes and events, so keep reading and Chop on.