Stacerella

It’s been two weeks since I last blogged. In that time, we’ve celebrated Thanksgiving and my husband’s birthday. I have photos on the HD Flip as well as on the new digital camera he won from one of our suppliers, but I haven’t had time to process them. I have some photos (I think) of the delicious dinner rolls I made for our Thanksgiving dinner with Joe’s side of the family. When I get some time this weekend, I will throw them up here along with the shots of the roasted vegetables I brought to dinner that night.

And when I haven’t been cooking and/or baking, I have been consumed with cutting up video footage to make my brother some kick-ass how-to cooking DVDs. And last night I took an hour out to make a tribute photo montage video for the first anniversary of my nephew’s passing at the cruel hands of cancer. So, yeah… I’m bit all over the map these days.

Bare with me, everyone. Tomorrow is a very tough day I need to get over. I will see what I can do for you all after that.

Jerk Chicken Frittatta - Joe loved this. He has already requested I make this often.

Detail shot of the pasta, chicken, prosciutto and egg mixture with its lovely golden cheese top.

Tiramisu. Delicious, decadent and way too fattening for us, but what the hell, right?

A fuzzy detail show of the lady fingers and cream layers with cocoa topping. Brilliant dessert!

[ Flickr photo link for more recipe details ]

We’re no longer in Kansas, Dorothy.

In other news, so sad to hear about Bea Arthur dying. Maude/Dorothy was a ballzy broad, and I loved her to death!!

Oh… The lightening is getting closer to us. Time to power down this machine and prep for closing the store before heading home. Was planning a night of laundry, but maybe not so much anymore. (:-D)

Well, I’ve been here off and on, but busy lately with gearing down from the holiday season, putting stuff away into storage, cleaning up the general mess that comes with Christmas presents and wrapping them up all pretty like, throwing stuff out, reading, beading, baking… the usual.

Also we’ve been dealing with birthdays (mine, Joe’s mum’s, etc.), sick family members as well as a few family deaths. It’s been a bit weird around here lately, but hopefully when the FIL gets out of the hospital at the end of this week, things will start to settle down.

I have yet to read the lovely Marcella Hazan pasta book (Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking) Joe bought me for Christmas. I’m totally dying to dive into that one! In the meantime, I’ve been reading Brain Fuel instead. Almost done that one, as well as another he bought me for Christmas 2007 called Fire And Ice about the social differences between Canada and the USA that I’ve been reading on and off all year. (I don’t get many pockets of reading time. Can you tell? *snort*)

Anyway, I really want to blog about Marcella’s thoughts on pasta making and traditional Italian ricotta pie when I finally do get to read the book. Any great tips will be passed along to you, of course! In due time, kiddies, in due time. Promise.

Addendum: So, I went through my Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking book and there isn’t much mention about ricotta pie. There as a bit about using ricotta in cakes, but it was a mere passing comment - no recipes. Disappointing. Will have to seek out her other cookbooks in the future. As far as her thoughts on pasta making, she definitely perfers to make hers by hand, forks and rolling pin over a mixer and pasta rollers, but concedes both are standards and acceptable methods. The most important factor to her is that the pasta is homemade. She also has a great section on dried pasta and when it’s a better choice over its fresh counterpart, and a whole list of sauces to make and with what pasta. Fabulous! She included her father’s fish recipe that caught my eye, too. Interesting. Must try it sometime soon. This is a must have book for any serious budding Italian cook. I give it two thumbs up for the Cooks Illustrated inspired renderings of how to handle/prep/cook the ingredients, too. That alone makes this book worth its weight in gold in my eyes!

Marcella Hazan’s brilliantly easy to make homemade tortelloni.  This delicious recipe can be found in her “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” cookbook.

Yellow pasta dough

Filling

Pasta sauce

The Recipe: This recipe states it makes enough for six servings, and sometimes recipe yields are wildly off; this one isn’t. I cut the dough in half, wrapped up one lobe and froze it while processing with the second lobe for dinner. It yielded two full servings plus enough for a single serving for my lunch today. Next time I will know to cut the dough into thirds and freeze two lobes for future dinners for two, or I will take a whole day to use up the full batch and freeze what we don’t cook that night.

The Dough: Awesomely simple dough that comes out silky smooth when put through my KitchenAid pasta roller attached to my mixer, a.k.a The Mixinator. I love making pasta! The only issue I had making this batch was it was drier than it should have been, but that could be because I should have used four XL instead of four large eggs, or even five large instead of four large eggs, to sufficiently moisten the flour to get it ball up. I ended up deciding to add 3 tablespoons of water (one at a time) to make up the difference because I didn’t feel adding another egg would be good for my cholesterol challenged body.

The Filling: The Swiss chard at the grocery store looked like dookie, so I used clean, ready-to-cook bagged spinach instead, and I also substituted prosciutto with breakfast chicken strips because we don’t normally shop at an Italian grocery store like the one that’s around the corner from our home. No matter, the filling was just as tasty and balanced as if I had used the intended ingredients all along.

The Tools: I already mentioned using my KitchenAid “The Mixinator” mixer, and the Kitchenaid pasta roller from my pasta roller kit to make the long pasta sheets, but I didn’t mention the other tools I used to stuff the totelloni. I used my lovely little mini ice cream/cookie dough scooper to dump about 2/3 of a scoop out onto the long pasta strips, leaving about 1.5″ gutters between each blob, running the full length. I positioned each filling blob right below an imaginary middle line along the sheet so that when I folded it over, I would have a bottom edge to press together after I added a dab of water to the pasta sheet. I then used my fingers to press the air out and the pasta sheets together all around each blob, as though I were tucking a blankie around a child. The final tool I used was my seldom needed pizza cutter. I ran it along the bottom and side edges to square them up neatly before cutting smack dab in the middle of each gutter between the tortelloni squares. Worked like a charm.

The Cooking: I laid out each assembled and cut tortelloni square on a clean towel to rest before I cooked each batch in a pot of boiling, salted water. The squares drop to the bottom when they are raw and rise to the top when they are cooked. This happened in a matter of 2-4 minutes. I scooped them out using a slotted Chinese wire wok spoon, placed them in a bowl and covered them with the pasta sauce and freshly grated cheese.

The Sauce: I was running late with dinner last night, and by this point tired of being in the kitchen, so I cheated by heating up some bottled pasta sauce I had to use up anyway. I will try Marcella’s accompanying pasta sauce from scratch the next time I make this tortelloni. And there will be a next time; most definitely! I made so many that I have extra to cook here at work today for lunch in a lovely clear chicken broth. I can’t wait for lunch time to roll around. Hee.

All in all, I can’t find even one remotely negative thing to say about this recipe for tortelloni. It was super easy, about as time consuming as I thought it should be and tasted just as great even with ingredient swapouts. I don’t think you can go wrong with this recipe, kids. I give it a full 10/10 and a big “TRY THIS RECIPE!!”