Being Italian Means Family and Food

My brother came to visit me recently. We both needed a mental vacation, so we spent a lot of time talking, watching movies...and of course, eating.  We ate. A lot.  Which is one thing that any good Italian knows how to do.

Home-cooking

Of course, we cooked some food.  I put together a salad of epic proportions: spinach leaves, mandarin oranges, blueberries, cranberries, grape tomatoes, croutons, and candied pecans. All with a light raspberry vinaigrette.

Home-cooked simple dinner

We also made a simple chicken dish for dinner one night. It was marinated in a sesame ginger glaze with mandarin orange juice, garlic, salt, and pepper.  Then, Steven made some asparagus.  He drizzled it with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and breadcrumbs.  I would have added some grated cheese, too.  But to each their own. 

Chicken Tropichop with yellow rice and vegetables

Pollo Tropical
Pollo Tropical is one of my favorite places to eat. They serve mostly chicken, with Caribbean-inspired flavors. I always get the same thing (this is a bad habit I have when dining out): a chicken Tropichop with yellow rice and vegetables, tomatoes, guacamole...And then I add some condiments from the salsa bar, including the mild salsa and cilantro garlic sauce.   I'm kind of addicted. The plantains are also delicious; I enjoy them dipped into the cilantro garlic sauce. 

Bahama Breeze

Sweet Peruvian corn cakes, with pineapple salsa and butter

My brother and I have made Bahama Breeze one of our "go-to" restaurants. We go together every time he comes to visit me. This restaurant is one of the few that I will order different things off the menu every time. Everything I've ever tasted there is absolutely amazing, including their coconut shrimp and everything on their fresh fish menu. I personally really enjoy the salmon with the mojo marinade and mandarin oranges, or the almond-crusted tilapia.  This time around, we started off with the sweet Peruvian corn cakes, served with a pineapple salsa.

For my entree, I got the Paella, which deserves it's own paragraph. Paella is a traditional Spanish dish, known for it's pungent taste and distinct color, due to saffron. It's a rich dish, in the sense that there is loads of flavor and tons of stuff in it.  Paella is made with rice, mussels, shrimp, scallops, sausage, chicken, white fish, and lots of taste. It's absolutely one of my favorite dishes on the menu.  

For more information about Bahama Breeze, and to check out their menu, go to their website here: Bahama Breeze.

Taco Lu

The Carne Royale...deliciousness in a taco

Hands down, one of my favorite places to eat in Jacksonville is Taco Lu, a gourmet taco joint with a funky atmosphere. They have crazy combinations, like pork braised in orange juice and Coke or brisket braised in Dos Equis.  There's one taco that's not on the menu; you just have to know that you should order it. It's the Carne Royale.

Let me explain why this taco is so amazing. It's skirt steak marinated in soy sauce and lime juice, with brie cheese, cilantro, and a grape salsa. Yeah, it's AMAZING.  Steven tried three tacos: the fish taco, the Taco Lu verde (chicken with tomatilla salsa), and the Carne Royale. The Carne Royale was his favorite by far.  Oh, and the guacamole is phenomenal.

Check out the menu here: Taco Lu

Sweet! by Good Golly Miss Holly

Cookies and Cream

Cupcakes. When did that become such a big craze? They're everywhere...these little stand-a-lone cupcake shops have popped up all over, but this one is my favorite.  The woman who opened the shop (there's also one in Orlando) won Cupcake Wars. Twice.   I've tried a few different cupcakes, but I have two favorites: the Cookies and Cream (white cake, vanilla buttercream, crushed Oreos, and a cream filling) and the White Raspberry (white cake, white chocolate buttercream, and raspberry filling).  They have different sizes, but the mini cupcakes are perfect for a taste.  And don't even ask me how many points they are, because I don't know (or care).  

Check out the website here: Sweet by Holly

Seasonal happenings
Since it's almost Halloween, my brother and I bought a pumpkin. He did a phenomenal job carving it, transforming the face of the pumpkin into a caricature of Jekyll and Hyde.  

While my brother was carving though, I was roasting (and eating) the pumpkin seeds.  Who knew they were so delicious?

Happy Halloween and Happy Eating!

Sunday Dinner: Pasta and Meatballs (Part 2)

Let me start out with this disclaimer: my grandmother's recipe for meatballs isn't what you might expect. They're not meaty.

What I mean to say is that I they don't taste like hamburger.  And that's exactly the way I like them.  There is cheese and egg and bread and bread crumbs and it's just this wonderful mixture of ingredients.

But I've always been intimidated by the thought of actually making them.  I'd watched my grandmother mix the ingredients, acting on intuition and years of experience, making them near-perfect every single time. And the thought of making them (and knowing I was probably going to fail) absolutely depresses me.  But I gave them a shot, anyway.  Yeah, they didn't taste exactly like grandma's meatballs. But they actually came out well.

Grandma's Meatballs

(Quick disclaimer: there aren't actual amounts associated with this recipe...but I'll try to estimate what I added in to it)

Ingredients
Ground beef
Pecorino Romano Cheese
Breadcrumbs
Italian bread (soaked in water, with the crust peeled off)
Garlic, minced
Eggs
Oregano
Salt
Pepper

1. Soak the Italian bread in water, and peel off crust.

2. Combine all ingredients in a bowl. I added about 2lbs of ground beef, a cup of cheese, a cup of bread crumbs, the soaked bread, 3 eggs, 2 cloves of minced of garlic and a pinch of oregano, salt, and pepper.

3. Mix them until well blended. Now, here's the kicker: I taste it. Yeah, raw egg and raw beef.  Blah blah blah.  If you don't like the taste, you need to add more...cheese, salt, breadcrumbs.  Something.

4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a baking pan with Pam.  Roll the meat into 1.5 inch balls and place in baking pan.

5. Bake in oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

6. Add the meatballs to the tomato sauce (see previous entry for recipe) and heat on low for 30 minutes.

Granted, I did call my grandmother freaking out in the midst of the mixing of the ingredients, because it just wasn't tasting the way I wanted it to taste. My grandmother's quick fix? Add more cheese...

Buon Appetit!

Sunday Dinner: Pasta and Meatballs (Part 1)

One of the things I miss the most about home is the Italian cooking.  It's probably true that everyone thinks that their family makes the best food. But I'd challenge anyone to find something better than ANYTHING my grandmother makes.

I always keep a stock pile of cans of tomato. My preference is tomato puree. 

When I first started cooking in graduate school, tomato sauce seemed to be one of the easiest things that I could master. It seemed fairly uncomplicated.  A few years later, I still can't get it to taste exactly like my grandmother's sauce, but it is distinctly my own version (my brother thinks that the reason it tastes differently is because I use oregano...I stand by my decision).

Grandma's Tomato Sauce (for 4 servings)

Ingredients

• 2 cans of tomato sauce (I use pureed tomato sauce, but you can get crushed or whole, and puree it in a blender before you use it)
• 1/2 chopped red onion
• 3 basil leaves
• 4 links of sausage (Traditional Italian cooking demands pork sausage, but for the sake of maintaining a healthier version, I used turkey)
• Olive oil
• Dried basil
• Salt
• Pepper

1.  Coat the bottom of a sauce pan with olive oil. Heat it on medium.

2.  Saute´ the onions and sausage in the oil until onions are well done and sausage is cooked.

3.  Add 2 cans of tomato, dried basil, salt, pepper, oregano, and onion powder. Bring to a rapid boil.

4. Lower heat to medium-low, and simmer for 30 minutes.

See?  The tomato sauce isn't all that complicated.  I add the sausage to it so that it adds even more flavor. My family recipe also includes pieces of pork or even beef.  It gives the sauce both a richer, thicker texture and flavor.

Stay tuned for part two...the meatballs!

Ruminations on Recipes and Cooking

My grandmother and me

If there is one lesson that I learned from my grandmother, it's that recipes are always negotiable; they're more suggestions than an actual step-by-step approach.  That means that every time, it comes out a little bit different.  And it also means a lot of frustration when you are learning how to cook.

I didn't actually attempt to "cook" anything until I was in graduate school. Up until that point, I made things like macaroni and cheese, or frozen meals, or instant rice, and canned vegetables.  But part of me yearned for something more...something better...something that I actually made.

I started to look for simple recipes, and I managed to create some good concoctions. But as an Italian girl, I longed for the food that I would get at home. Good Italian, home-cooked meals. With lots of carbs.  So I would ask my grandmother.  This wasn't helpful.

The problem is that my grandmother doesn't cook with recipes.  Old Italian women don't follow a recipe...they just know how to make it.  Here's how it works.  Basically, she lists out ingredients, but doesn't give amounts. It's not "a teaspoon of basil" or something. It's more like ""basil...get the taste you want."  My problem was always that I didn't know how to get the taste I wanted...I wanted it to taste the same as my grandmother's cooking. 

The famous (infamous?) apple pie of Spring Break 2010.

Consequently, many of my graduate school attempts were complete failures.  But there was one day, over Spring Break, my second year of graduate school, that I think changed everything.  I decided to be culinarily adventurous (yes, I'm making culinarily a word). I decided to bake an apple pie. I followed the recipe perfectly for the dough. It didn't come out at all what I thought it should taste like, so I kept adding sugar, and flour, and water, and a pinch more of salt. Until I finally got it...I had so far completely deviated from the recipe that it was impossible to recollect what I put into the dough.

It was then that I understood how my grandmother cooks...it's not the food that makes a meal magical, it's the chef that infuses the spirit into the food.  This way of cooking, by taste, by instinct...it's become one of the things that I love most about cooking.  Creativity is not just in the presentation, it's in the way you personalize a recipe. 

There's a quote that I love: "A recipe has no soul. You, as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe." (Thomas Keller)

Bringing soul to the recipe: this is how I have learned to cook. I look at a basic recipe, and then I always manage to tweak it. I rarely follow one strictly; a recipe is more like a guideline, a basic suggestion.  What you do with it, how you change it, how you make it your own...well, that's up to you.