baked pasta with cheese and tomatoes

Happy New Year! When I was younger, I had difficulty making resolutions, but now it seems I am full of them: decorate my apartment, keep my room in order, read more books, be less angry and stop flipping out over the little things, volunteer, make art, eat better, get some exercise, get a job with health insurance... Gah. So much room for self-improvement. Daunting, isn't it?

So I'm starting with something easy: a blog entry. Have you missed me? (No, you haven't, non-existent reader, but that's okay.) I would really like to catch up and write about all the things I cook in a more timely manner, and even though it's a daunting task, I'm feeling up to it.

i miss arthur avenue

arugula, prosciutto and parmesean salad

I am really, really glad that I live in Manhattan now. Yes, it may be upper Manhattan, but it's still way more accessible than our old place in the Bronx. People are willing to come over on days of the year that aren't Fordham homecoming or my birthday party, and I love that.

What I do miss is Arthur Ave. The meat, the cheese, the torrone, the wine, the pasta... So much amazing foodstuff. I love it here in Harlem, but I haven't seen so much as a leaf of basil up here, let alone prosciutto di parma. I'm not asking for specialty Italian food, but a nice butcher would be cool.


red pepper and fresh mozzarella bruschetta

So, when I get a chance to go back, I blow two weeks of grocery money in a single afternoon and eat like a pig. I go to Casa Della mozzarella and buy pillowy little bocconcini. They are absolutely perfect and delicious bites just as they are, but I don't always stop there. I also go to Madonia Bakery for their excellent bread, (and peerless canoli), because bocconcini also make absolutely delicious bruschetta with some garlic marinated roasted red peppers, basil, parsley and some wilted greens.


prosciutto close up

Here we have a lovely and simple little salad that I threw together after my last trip to Arthur. I got a quarter pound of prosciutto di parma and a small wedge of parmesean at Teitel Brothers. I made the salad with the paper thin slices of cured meat, some curls of the cheese, a lemony vinaigrette dressing, and then arugula and tomato from the co-op.


four little bruschetta

Man, this was a good dinner. I wish I could get back up there more often. The ingredients on Arthur Avenue are so good and so flavorful that you barely have to do anything to them!

mozzarella en carrozza with sundried tomato jam

No pictures today, I'm afraid, but I'd like to tell you about the first real meal Nathan and I made after they snipped my wires and replaced them with rubber bands. It took me about twice as long as usual to smash up everything and carefully swallow it, but for what was essentially a grilled cheese sandwich, this mozzarella in carrozza was pretty soft and easy on my wounded jaw.

It was also a really nice night in general. Nathan's roommate, Pete, moved out in September, but we all ate this meal together before he moved downtown. It was also a special night because Pete recently started dating our very good friend Jess. This was a long overdue development. It's too bad that Jess and I can't hang out while visiting our respective boyfriends, but I'm of course very happy for them regardless of where Pete is living.

I've had mozzarella in carrozza before, but it wasn't quite like this. Here, the fresh mozzarella was sandwiched between two slices of bread and dipped in a mix of egg and milk, and then fried in butter. Basically, it was a hybrid grilled cheese french toast. When I had this on Arthur Ave at Marios, the bread must have been much much thinner, because I really thought it was just breaded and fried. This was also delicious, but much more sandwichy. I think the key was that the bread soaked up so much of the egg and milk that it kind of melded together with the cheese. If our bread had been thinner, it would have been an even more cohesive dish, and more like what I remembered.

The accompanying jam was what really excited me about this dish. Sundried tomatoes, roasted red peppers with strawberry jam, a little sugar, red wine vinegar and salt, it seemed easy enough. I liked it well enough, but we probably could have drained less of the olive oil off the peppers and tomatoes. It was definitely too dry, and not nearly jammy enough. Maybe my solid food cooking skills were still rusty? I'd consider making this again, but I wouldn't exactly jump at the chance. It was definitely tasty and hit the spot after a month of slurping purees through my teeth, but it didn't quite come together.

a simple supper

tortellini in tomato sauce, sauteed spinach and a fresh mozzarella garlic crostini

This is the kind of meal I love best: delicious cheesy pasta and a nice fresh vegetable. Normally, I try to get my protein in there with some meat, but sometimes it's nice to have a lighter meal, and one without meat can be just as filling.

This meal was pretty much the offspring of my previously featured pizza party. I had initially planned to make spinach ricotta pizza, but didn't have time to saute the pizza before my guests arrived, and it just would have been too much to handle with five other people in the kitchen. However, the spinach went to good use in this meal. As you can see in the picture, it is just barely cooked. I rinsed off the leaves and then cooked them on medium heat with garlic and oil until just wilted. If there is a lot of spinach, it make take some conscientious stirring to ensure that it all cooks evenly, but even then this shouldn't take more than five minutes.

The main dish of the evening was the tortellini, which I served with the same sauce I had made for the pizzas. Normally, I make my sauce by sauteing garlic and olive oil, and then adding chopped canned tomatoes, cracked black pepper, and parsley and basil, if I have them. I deviated from the usual routine when I found this recipe, a darling of the food blog world, just days before hosting the event. The sauce is incredibly simple: half a stick of butter, and half an onion, unchopped, simmer with a can of whole tomatoes. That's all there is to it, no chopping involved! It was really quite tasty, and the butter certainly gave it an added richness. Of course, I tossed in a clove or two of garlic, because I felt wrong making tomato sauce without it. When it came to the end, I felt bad discarding the garlic and onion before serving, so I tried mashing it up with the tomatoes. If I made this again, I'd probably take it out and smear it onto some Italian bread. My only complaint with the recipe was that I felt that it wasn't as good the second day. I probably will continue to stick to my usual sauce in the future, but if tomato sauce intimidates you, this is a great one to try making, as I can't imagine screwing this one up!

tomato sauce a simmerin'

The Italian bread was also leftover from the earlier gathering, as pretty much no one had eaten it the night before. I roasted a couple of garlic cloves in olive oil with salt, pepper and a little grated cheese. This is absolutely a divine way to eat garlic or onions, as it makes them much mellower and sweeter, without totally eradicating the strong flavors that make them so delicious in the first place. I melted some bocconcini on top of the bread, and smeared the garlic clove on top. With some cracked black pepper on top, this was really simple and tasty and the perfect final component to a completely satisfying meal.

pizza odyssey

When I was still living in the Bronx, no one wanted to come all the way up north to visit. This was understandable, but perpetually disappointing. However, I have great friends, so there were occasions when they all made the trek to visit Laura and me. Generally, this happened I bribed them with food. My final stint as a Bronx hostess was no exception, as I offered our guests the best of Arthur Avenue's imported and homemade delicacies served up on a pizza.

Nathan's delicious meatsa trio

As I alluded to in an earlier entry, our old oven was a totally crazy inferno, to the point where Laura was afraid to light it. The first time I baked a cake, I was shocked to discover that it was cooked through in less than half the prescribed time. It was absolutely impossible to tell what temperature the oven was set to, and I would have to try and gauge by opening the broiler to see the size of the flame. Needless to say, this was a considerable culinary challenge when it came to most foods. However, when it came to pizza, I had long suspected that the high temperatures would only work in my favor.

creamy taleggio cheese with porcini and cremini mushrooms make the night's best pizza

Professional pizza ovens exceed 1000 degrees as a matter of course, so home cooks have difficulty replicating their results. Many bloggers have tried and failed, but they didn't have my oven. I cranked it up to full heat and left it on until my entire apartment was swelteringly hot-- no small achievement considering the jerks downstairs hadn't turned on the heat all month. Anyway, my mom gave me grandma's old oven thermometer, and the needle went past the maximum temperature of 500 degrees and back past 250 degrees before something inside it burst and covered the interior with chalky dust. Also, I got nice rubber coated pot holders for Christmas, and they actually started melting. This pizza party was intense, and probably the closest I'll ever get to making pizza parlor pies at home.

prosciutto di parma, pepperoni, polly-o and sausage

I was pretty proud of how well the whole thing came off. I made my own dough, my own sauce, and used fresh herbs and the finest toppings that Arthur Avenue had to offer. However, that is not to say that things went off without a hitch: my first pizza was actually a total mess. Jess lent me her pizza stone, so I put that in the oven to get properly hot. If you're properly equipped you use a wooden peel to transfer the pizza onto the stone. I was not properly equipped, so I thought maybe I could just drop the pizza in there on a sheet of wax paper. I tried this, and as you probably will have guessed, it immediately began to burn and melt. We awkwardly attempted to transfer the first pizza to a sheet of aluminum foil and tried again. The final product, with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella from Casa and fresh basil and parsley, was delicious, but more closely resembled a ghetto disaster of a calzone than a proper pizza.

the first attempt: a delicious mess

However, we used the foil technique for all the rest of the pizzas with wonderful success. I ended up making five pizzas that night and seven overall. (I baked up the rest of the dough with some olive oil, herbs and a little grated cheese to make pizza flatbreads to bring to Jess and Marc's birthday). In addition to the deformed plain pie, there was pepperoni one, and several specialty pies: a porcini cremini mushroom taleggio pizza with fresh basil, a lox pizza with a sour cream, dill, shallot sauce and Nathan's home cured salmon, and my boy's prosciutto di parma, sausage, pepperoni stuffed crust send up to the meatsa trio, ingredients purchased at Arthur Ave's amazing Calabria Pork Store.


Nathan's homemade lox with fresh parsley and a dill sour cream shallot topping

The next day I also made two pizzas including a three meat pizza with Polly-O cheese (ran out of the fresh stuff!) and fresh basil and parsley for lunch. They were allllllll awesome, and so easy to make! I've recently recreated the mushroom pie as a crostini, so you can expect an elaboration in a later post, as well more on the homemade tomato sauce. Also, hopefully Nathan will also share his lox with you. For now though, I'll leave you with everything you need to know to make your very own pizza dough.


the risen dough

This recipe makes two 10 or 12 inch pizzas, depending on how successfully you stretch the dough! Bake as soon as you've topped your pizza, and at the highest possible temperature, as it will cook faster and keep the dough from getting soggy and your pizza from being a floppy mess.

Carefully stir one packet of yeast into a cup of warm water with one tablespoon or either sugar or honey. I used sugar, because I forgot my honey at my apartment and I made the dough at Nathan's because boyfriend has a bad-ass Kitchen Aid, but lots of recipes seem to prefer honey. While the yeast is getting nice and frothy, (let it sit for about 5 minutes), mix three cups of flour with two or three tablespoons of olive oil and a teaspoon of salt. Slowly add the yeast and water, mixing until they form a dough. This is easier when you have a mixer, but definitely doable by hand. After it comes together, knead the dough on a floured surface for a few minutes and then form it into a ball. Drizzle olive oil into a bowl to coat it, and set the dough in it to rise, making sure to cover with a towel or plastic wrap. The dough should double after an hour or two, after which you want to knead it again. At that point, you can let it rise again, or you can get down to the business of making pizza, giving each pizza crust a nice dusting of cornmeal on the bottom to make it less sticky. I let my dough rise again for hours and hours, and that was fine. I even refrigerated some of it over night and kneaded it and let it rise again before I finally baked it. You can also freeze your dough, but I think you have to do that before it rises. I was totally expecting to fall flat on my face with my first attempt at pizza dough, but it was surprisingly easy. Try it!

more pizza dough than you could possibly ever need