Fettucini Amatriciana with Smoked Mozzarella Stuffed Meatballs

The flavors of the pasta in this dish are simple and subtle so that the real stars are the smoked mozzarella stuffed meatballs. I had my reservations about using smoked mozzarella. I've only had it once before, when I melted huge slabs of it over portobello mushroom caps. At the time I remember thinking that I'd be avoiding it from now on. I think it was just too much and the smokey flavor too overwhelming. I am so glad now that I didn't opt for plain old mozzarella with this one. Those unassuming little half-inch cubes in the center of each meatball were so savory, with just a hint of smokiness.

I added a few small chunks of the leftover mozzarella to our Friday pizza and I used the rest with some grilled burgers which I also topped with caramelized onions.

Fettucini Amatriciana with Smoked Mozzarella Stuffed Meatballs
(This is only slightly adapted from a Giada de Laurentiis recipe. Hers is titled differently since she uses bucatini pasta.)

Sauce:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 6 ounces pancetta, diced
• 1 yellow onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 (28 oz) can fire-roasted crushed tomatoes
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more for seasoning
• 1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano

Meatballs:

• 1 small onion, very finely chopped
  
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 2/3 cup grated Parmesan
• 1/3 cup Italian-style bread crumbs
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons ketchup
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 tsp. salt
  
• 1/4 tsp. pepper
  
• 1 lb. ground beef
• 2 ounces smoked mozzarella cheese, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 1 pound long pasta (bucatini, fettucini, or linguine)

For the sauce: In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the pancetta and cook, stirring constantly, until golden brown, about 5 to 7 minutes. Remove the pancetta and reserve. To the same pan, add the onion and cook for 5 minutes or until tender. Stir in the garlic and saute about 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes, salt, pepper, and the cooked pancetta. Simmer, uncovered, over medium-low heat until the sauce thickens, about 15 minutes. Stir in the cheese and add more salt and pepper, if necessary.

For the meatballs: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, combine mix together all ingredients except the beef. Mix in the beef and combine all ingredients thoroughly. Shape the meat mixture into meatballs (about 1 1/2 inches) and place on the baking sheet. Make a hole in the center of each meatball and place a cube of mozzarella inside. Reform the meatball so that the mozzarella is completely covered with the meat mixture. Bake the meatballs for 15 minutes or until cooked through.

Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain and toss with the sauce until pasta is well coated. Top with the additional parsley and Parmesan, if desired.

Barefoot Bloggers: Spring Green Risotto

I actually made this a while back and I must confess, I made a few omissions. Miguel has an aversion to peas so I left those out, and I forgot to get asparagus when I went to the store, so that's absent as well. This is the first time that I've ever made risotto and I think it turned out pretty well. Though I may have cooked it just a few minutes too long. It was not overdone but I think I let too much of the liquid cook away. I've never had risotto before but it seems like I remember seeing it on TV and thinking that it was a little more liquidy. I don't know, but the flavor was great. I was tasting it all throughout the cooking process and I can say that the addition of the mascarpone, Parmesan, and lemon juice mixture at the end really makes it special. This dish embodies the flavors and colors of spring.

You can find the recipe at Foodnetwork.com

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In other news, Thursday is meal planning day and I'm looking at my list and it's totally empty. Do you ever get into a food rut? I think I'm in one - though it's not because of a shortage of ideas. I have a whole three ring binder and a bookmark folder that's full of ideas but I can't think of a single thing that I want to cook. It seems that I often feel this way in the spring. I'm not quite ready for the cool, light meals of summer nor do I have an appetite for the heavy flavors of winter. I need something in between . . .

A Cinco de Mayo Dinner and a Yard Sale

I spent a good part of my free time last week in my mother's garage preparing for a Saturday yard sale. Over the years, my parents have accumulated a lot of stuff. My childhood toys and keepsakes, the belongings of deceased parents, and their own collections have measured up to every closet, attic space, garage space, and storage space in their house being cram packed from top to bottom. And I mean that quite literally. Last week my mother finally prepared herself for the realization that she needs to purge.

It's not as easy as it sounds. As we opened up box after box, we found ourselves picking up one little item after another and saying, "Remember when . . . " It's astonishing to me how hard it is to let go of things sometimes. It's as though we think that if we let the objects go, the memories will go along with them. Inevitably, there were a few artifacts that found their way into my car rather than priced and onto the yard sale table.

When I was little my Dad worked for an airline company which added up to lots of travel and time away from home and family. He brought me a t-shirt from every place that he visited. I came across a box of about 2 dozen of those very shirts.

They were from places like:



And:



And often they had cute little sayings on them like:



And:



I also brought home a mini glass tea set given to me by my Aunt Inez,



a set of mini vases that belonged to my grandmother,



two "Depression Glass" serving plates, one from each side of the family,



and my little set of miniature Strawberry Shortcake figurines.



I wish I could say that was all but I also lugged into my car my first favorite little stuffed animal and the book that I bought with my very first allowance (It was a Care Bears book - published and bought in 1984).

In the midst of all of that, I did manage to fix a Cinco de Mayo inspired dinner for my husband and myself on Wednesday evening. We enjoyed Chicken Enchiladas with Mexican Cornbread.

Chicken Enchiladas



1 lb. chicken tenderloins
1-2 tsp. taco seasoning (recipe below)
12 corn tortillas
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 c. salsa
1 can (14 0z) fire roasted tomatoes
1/4 c. chicken broth
1/2 lb. shredded cheese (Monterrey Jack or cheddar)
sour cream

Preheat oven to 350. Heat a small amount of oil in a saute pan, then add chicken tenders and sprinkle with taco seasoning. Saute for several minutes on each side or until done and lightly browned. Remove from pan and allow to cool slightly and then shred the chicken. To the same pan heat about 1 tsp. more oil then add onion and garlic. Saute until tender then add the salsa, tomatoes, and chicken broth. Bring to a boil and remove from heat. In a separate pan, heat the tortillas over medium-high heat for just a few seconds on each side.

Grease a large casserole dish with oil and then add a spoonful of the tomato mixture to the bottom of the dish. Roll up shredded chicken and cheese inside of tortillas and arrange in the casserole dish. Pour remainder of tomato mixture over the top and cover with cheese. Bake for 10 minutes or until cheese is melted and bubbly.

Taco Seasoning

1 tbs chili powder
1 1/2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. onion powder
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
pinch red pepper flakes (optional)

I love to make my own taco seasoning. It's super simple and when you make it yourself you can be sure that it doesn't contain any unnecessary ingredients like MSG.

Fresh and Flavorful Turkey Burgers with Homemade Burger Buns

There's nothing like the zest that fresh herbs add to a dish. In my experience, the use of fresh herbs allows for and even commands simplicity in cooking. Pairing one or two fresh herbs with simple, unobtrusive ingredients really allows their flavor to take center stage. My turkey burgers this week were both wonderfully simple and full of flavor. They are seasoned with chopped fresh rosemary (from my herb garden) and store-bought parsley (mine's not quite ready for cutting).


Keeping it simple allows for a pleasant, fuss-free weeknight meal. A simple meal also lends itself to taking on greater baking endeavors - such as made-from-scratch burger buns! For these buns, I followed the recipe for Tassajara Yeasted Bread in the Tassajara Bread Book (the recipe can also be found at Culinate.com). I divided the recipe in half and then separated the dough into six rolls instead of placing it in a loaf pan. This recipe calls for the dough to rise three times. I assumed that it would only need to rise twice so I hadn't budgeted time for a third rise. Therefore, I omitted the first rise and all still turned out fine.

Turkey Burgers with Fresh Herbs and Goat Cheese
-adapted from MyRecipes.com-
Yield: 4 medium burgers

• 1 pound lean ground turkey
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
  
• pinch of black pepper (or to taste)
  
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup plain bread crumbs
  
• 2 ounces goat cheese, cut into 4 slices
• olive oil or cooking spray

In a medium bowl, whisk together egg with herbs, salt, and pepper. Add bread crumbs and ground turkey and mix just until well combined. In a saute pan, heat olive oil or cooking spray. Add burgers and cook about 5 minutes on each side or until meat in center is no longer pink. Top with goat cheese and your choice of burger toppings. Enjoy!

Spring Harvest Dinner: A Lesson in Waiting

Our Sunday dinner this week was inspired by an effort to eat more seasonally. Here in zone six, asparagus and strawberries are ready for harvest. So I put together a spring-inspired dinner of asparagus soup (that I made with locally grown asparagus), homemade rosemary bread, and strawberries, which I served with a cream cheese dip.


I've been doing some reading lately (more on that later) and it's gotten my wheels turning about being more conscious of my food choices. As I flipped through my meal plan notebook from the past few months, I realized that I ate a lot of asparagus in January. I'll be honest, if you had asked me a few months ago when asparagus was harvested, I probably would have guessed in the spring, but truly, I hadn't really thought about it. I suppose that's pretty much the norm in our modern lives. We can go into the nearest grocery store and get pretty much whatever we want, whenever we want it, regardless of where we live or what month of the year it is.

As I did my grocery shopping on Sunday afternoon, I was happy to plunk into my cart a number of conscious spring-time choices; a load of spinach for a mid-week spanakopita, strawberries for sorbet, and lettuce to use in salads and turkey burgers. I was also aware that it was not yet harvest-time for the potatoes, tomatoes, and cucumbers that I also tossed into my cart, which means that they have likely traveled across more than a few state lines.


In recent years, I've experienced the reward of purchasing seasonal, local produce. It looks better. It tastes better. I feel better about buying it. Better yet, I know where my money's going when I buy it - right into the hands of the farmer who produced it. I had that kind of experience this week when I bought my local asparagus. It was 10 times more flavorful than the asparagus that I prepared in January and I all but laid eyes on the very soil where it came out of the earth.

I learned a lesson. It pays to wait.

My first memorable experience in patience and restraint when it comes to food was with apples. Six years ago I started eating organic apples that I bought from the local health food store. They were so superior in flavor and texture that when I bit into a conventional apple, I nearly spit it out. I was sold. From then on I knew that, if nothing else, I would only eat organic apples.

As the season waned, I noticed the abundance of apples starting to dwindle, until one day I walked back to their usual spot on the bottom produce shelf and found that there were none - something that I rarely, if ever, experienced with conventional foods at the regular grocery store. For a moment, I pondered stopping at that regular grocery store on my way home and picking up some apples there. However, I knew from previous experience that I'd just be disappointed. So that was it. I didn't eat another single apple until early autumn of the following year.

Let me tell you, it was worth the wait.



Cooking notes: For the Asparagus Soup, I followed the recipe in The Big Book of Soups and Stews. I winged it with the cream cheese dip. I mashed up about four strawberries, mixed them with 4 oz. cream cheese, and then kept adding vanilla yogurt until the consistency was right and it tasted sweet enough. The rosemary bread is from the Tassajara Bread Book.

Long Live Pizza Friday!

I've reinstated "Pizza Friday" at our house!

For the first few years of our marriage, "Pizza Friday" was a weekly tradition. That tradition has evolved quite a bit since it's inception. In the beginning, we ordered take-out pizza, then we bought regular frozen pizzas, moving on to frozen pizzas in the organic foods section.

When I first starting making pizza at home, I used the pre-mixed dough packages that you can get in the store for something like .79 cents. There was our vegan phase when we topped them with nutritional yeast flakes. No your eyes aren't playing tricks on you - yeast flakes. Sounds appetizing, right? (Actually, it wasn't all that bad.) Eventually, I moved up to rapid rise yeast and finally graduated to regular slow-rise yeast.

What a difference the good, old fashioned yeast makes! If only I had known years ago how tasty and relatively easy a homemade pizza is. We could have been devouring it years earlier! Oh well, better late than never.



Since I started with the slow method, I've experimented with a number of different crust recipes. However, I keep returning to this one by Elise from Simply Recipes. It yields a crust that is so light and airy.



This week we went with a traditional pepperoni pizza (obviously our vegan phase has ended), though we like to vary the toppings from week to week. Oh, and the olives are only on Miguel's half. :)

Barefoot Bloggers: Jam Thumbprint Cookies

Oh my goodness, these cookies are so very, very delicious.

They came out so much better than I thought they would. When I first started to prepare them yesterday, I intended to make a half-batch. Then as I was mixing together the flour with the other dry ingredients I had a change of heart and decided to make the full batch and give some of them away. Later, after all the ingredients were mixed together I turned the dough out onto the carving board and attempted to bring it all together in the disc that was to go into the refrigerator. The dough kept crumbling and would not come together! I was beginning to get worried and thought that possibly in my decision to make a full batch I had miscounted the cups of flour and dumped in too much. So I divided the dough in half in order to make it easier to work with and kept at it until I finally formed two cohesive discs.

I remained unconvinced, however, that my little cookies were going to be okay. In fact, I was so sure that they were irreversibly wrecked, that while they baked in the oven, I composed a whole post in my head about kitchen failures and what that does to my inner chef (or in this case, my inner baker).

So you can imagine my delight when I pulled them out of the oven looking all sweet and dainty. I could barely allow them enough time to cool before I bit into them. They were soft and scrumptious; not at all the dry, crumbly mess that I had envisioned. In retrospect, I think my blunder may have been, in my haste, not waiting for the butter to fully come to room temperature. Thankfully, it ended up being just a tiny mistake that didn't affect the outcome.

I really think that the quality of the jam makes or breaks this cookie. Use an ordinary jam and you will have an ordinary cookie. Use a quality jam and you will have a fabulous cookie!

For about 1/4 of the cookies I used this seedless raspberry jam from West Virginia. I love that this jam does not contain corn syrup. It's hard to find store-bought jams and jellies that aren't made with corn syrup.

For most of the cookies, I used this orange marmalade that my parents brought back for me from Florida. They were so good that when I made the second disc of cookies I used only the marmalade.

Jam Thumbprint Cookies - a Barefoot Contessa Recipe



Ingredients nocoupons

• 3/4 pound (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash
• 7 ounces sweetened flaked coconut
• Raspberry and/or apricot jam

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until they are just combined and then add the vanilla. Separately, sift together the flour and salt. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture to the creamed butter and sugar. Mix until the dough starts to come together. Dump on a floured board and roll together into a flat disk. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough into 1 1/4-inch balls. (If you have a scale they should each weigh 1 ounce.) Dip each ball into the egg wash and then roll it in coconut. Place the balls on an ungreased cookie sheet and press a light indentation into the top of each with your finger. Drop 1/4 teaspoon of jam into each indentation. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the coconut is a golden brown. Cool and serve.

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