Continuing Italian

A little late I know, but grades were do at school so life has been busy. Now the cooking adventure can continue. As previously mentioned, mom and I had planned an Italian feast in an effort to celebrate our trip to Eataly. So early the next morning I rose (and worked out in order to prevent a total calorie extravaganza) and my mom headed to Kings to get some accessories for our meal along with some back up pasta in case our pasta making turned into a fettuccini fiasco.

I headed to my parents' house around 11am and the work quickly began. We started by making a quick pasta dough using Giada DeLaurentis' recipe, a pasta machine from Target, and some tips from Gian Carlo (the innkeeper at Podere Spedalone where I stayed in Tuscany). We then put the dough in the refrigerator and moved on to our next task: cannoli filling!

For this we used fresh ricotta cheese, a little bit of mascarpone cheese, chocolate, and orange zest. The ricotta cheese was from our trip to Eataly & was out of this world (available here) & we used Giardelli bittersweet chocolate (also highly recommended). It was delicious. I could have eaten the whole bowl with a spoon, but refrained due to the fact that two big hungry men would been appearing that evening. Instead, we placed it in the fridge to stuff the purchased shells right before serving so they wouldn't get mushy.

We then broke for lunch. A delicate panini from Eataly made up of prosciutto di parma with a few spoonfuls of Ligurian pesto (snuck through customs on my return from Italy) made for the perfect bite.

After lunch, we began our pasta adventure. We ran the pasta dough (separated into quarters) through the machine (with the help of my nephew Kenny). We laid the dough on the counter, spread flour atop it, and then rolled the dough up (like a jelly roll). We sliced it into 1/4 inch spirals that we handed to Kenny who let them unravel into beautiful pasta ribbons of fettucini. They were then tossed into a pile with flour & placed aside.

Next, we cleaned up the pasta making mess, set the table, arranged our meat & cheese platter, plated our figs & prosciutto. My mom threw some quick sausage in a pan to ensure that the hungry Irish men would not be saddened by the carb load we had planned with our pasta. In the meantime I did some searching of the net to make sure we knew what we were doing when it came to our stuffed zucchini blossoms. We had already decided on the stuffing (again based on my trip to Italy). It was to include more of that wonderful ricotta along with fresh mint & some salt & pepper.

As the gentleman arrived, we opened our chilled prosseco to drink & snack a bit before preparing the zucchini blossoms & pasta dish. We combined our fresh m ade breads wit h cheese, meat, & fruit spreads all from Eataly. The combination was a sweet, salty little bite of Italy. The gentleman moved onto football discussion and the kitchen beckoned for our return. We carefully stuffed each blossom, twisted the end, and planned to steam four & fry four. As four steamed away, we carefully placed the other four in a batter of fl our, seltzer, and fresh cut chives (a similar consistency to heavy cream) before putti ng them in the heated vegetable oil.



We called the boys to the table as they were each served zucchini blossoms two ways, fresh fettucini w/ truffle butter, and grilled sausage. The pasta recipe was from the Food Network's Ina Garten & the sausages were ala Barnicle! The mix of the creamy, earthy truffle butter with the smoky grill of the sausage created a delicious balance.



Finally, we finished with freshly stuffed cannolis, prosecco, & limoncello. All in all our evening was a great success & our bellies were quite full. This ended our night of Italian delights...next up will be the recipe for the sauces we made to pair with the butternut squash & spinach & cheese ravioli we also purchased during our trip.