Christmas Dinner

For the second year in a row I was the only one of my siblings to make it home for Christmas. While the holidays aren't quite as exciting when you're the only one home, it certainly has its advantages. For one, I get way more presents than either of my brothers. And isn't that what Christmas is about? Just kidding, Bobby and Kyle. I'm sure mom and dad gave you just as many presents as they gave me. You guys got ponies, too, right? If not you should be happy to know that they at least hung up your stockings this year unlike the last when mine was the only one dangling from the mantle.

Since there were only three of us around to eat Christmas dinner, we kept it pretty simple. I brought my pasta-making discs home, and my mom and I made an Italian dinner from scratch. Noodles, tomato sauce, meatballs, and a caprese-like salad were on the menu, followed by a chocolate tart and a mincemeat pie for dessert. Yes, you read that correctly. Three people and two desserts. That's just how we roll. If it were up to my dad it would have been three desserts and no main course. That's just how he rolls. And due to his running regimen he has no rolls.

When I was in Matt's hometown last week I picked up a deeply discounted copy of the Silver Spoon Pasta cookbook at their soon to be no longer B. Dalton, satisfying my several month long desire to add that book to my collection. I set out to make meatballs and sauce from recipes in the book, and I ended up tweaking and adding on to both dishes. For the meatballs I combined about 1/2 lb. ground beef and about 1/2 lb. ground pork with an egg, a handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley, maybe 1/4 cup breadcrumbs, salt and pepper.

The fresh parsley was key to the tastiness of the meatballs. The original recipe called for a single sprig of parsley, but I used several. It helped to brighten the flavor of the little balls of meat.

The meatballs were first browned in a little oil over medium-high heat, and then the lid went on and they were transferred to a 350 oven for maybe 20-30 minutes until they were cooked through.

My mom's 30+ year old KitchenAid may be on its last leg, but it still managed to crank out all of these pretty noodles.

Post-boiling.

The sauce was diced tomatoes, crushed red pepper flakes, Italian seasoning, garlic, and salt. It was OK (and much better than it looks in this photo), but it could have been better.

My plate.

My mom and I wanted to add olives to the pasta sauce, but since we knew my dad wouldn't be thrilled we resorted to sprinkling them on top as a garnish. It was slightly weird, in part because they were cold and raw and in part because they were of the green, pimento-stuffed variety. Next time I'll plan ahead and buy different olives and cook them with the sauce.

The salad was grape tomatoes, fresh mozzarella balls, chopped artichoke hearts, fresh basil, vinegar, and oil.

I've been going through this awful phase lately where I haven't been very impressed with desserts, but this Mexican Chocolate Tart has completely changed my outlook on decadent, chocolate things.

The tart was incredibly easy to make, it looks elegant, it tastes delicious, and it goes perfectly with a dollop of freshly whipped cream.

I was going to post a picture of the mincemeat pie, but the amount of time it takes to upload a picture with this slow internet coupled with the fact that I don't like mincemeat held me back. Maybe next year.

An Italian Feast with Friends

Last Wednesday night my friend Sarah and I, with plenty of help from our friend Caitlin, had a dinner party that has been four months in the making. It all started in June with an email from Sarah suggesting we cook together sometime, followed by a few months of indecision when it came to setting a date, then being broke and needing to postpone until a new round of student loans came out, and finally cold feet. Most people get cold feet about getting married. I apparently get cold feet about dinner parties. I'm not really sure why. I never thought twice about cooking dinner for my friends in college, and I once went so far as to have a couple of my professors over for brunch. Since college my time in the kitchen has increased considerably, but the number of people I'm regularly cooking for has decreased. I'm usually only cooking for Matt and myself, and cooking for your boyfriend who is content eating Kraft singles and Tuna Helper is a little less intimidating than cooking for a dozen of your friends who read your blog and think that you know what you're doing in the kitchen. I knew I had to break out of my one man audience shell eventually, and that time finally came.

Sarah and I committed to a date for the dinner party a couple weeks ago, although it was a commitment made late at night at a crowded, poorly lit karaoke bar. Or was that a different night? I'm not really sure, but fortunately Sarah had the good sense to follow up with an email the following day, and so a date was set.

The original idea back in June was to use some recipes from an Ina Garten cookbook Sarah had checked out from the library, but in our last minute planning the menu shifted to an Italian theme. I think it had to do with the fact that I got a new pasta making attachment for my KitchenAid when I was in Seattle last week, and I could not wait another day to try it out. Our friend Caitlin heard we were making fresh pasta and understandably wanted to get in on the action, so the three of us donned aprons, sipped on some wine, and cooked up an Italian feast for some of our fellow FLA* members.

*Future Lawyers of America

Il Menu:

Salami, cheese, olives, bread

Salad

Spinach + ricotta gnocchi

Fresh pasta

Bolognese sauce

Cheese + rosemary pizza

Chocolate + sea salt truffles

Macaroons

I'll start out with a picture of the cooks: me, Caitlin, Sarah. Geez, I am short.

Have you ever wondered what 2.5 pounds of spinach looks like? Wonder no more, my friends.

After my one class of the day was cancelled I decided I would start getting some things ready ahead of time so it would be less hectic once people came over. Sarah was in charge of the bolognese and I knew she and Caitlin wanted to be around for the pasta making, so the obvious choice was the spinach and ricotta gnocchi. The recipe came from Silver Spoon, and it was one of the first recipes I bookmarked to make when I got the cookbook a couple years ago. It took me two years to make the recipe, and it will probably take another year or two before I work up the nerve to make it again. Keep reading.

Here's about half of the 2.5 pounds of spinach after being cooked and squeezed as much as I could possibly squeeze to get all the liquid out. As much as I could possibly squeeze was apparently not enough, though.

The bowl full of chopped spinach, ricotta, egg yolks, parmesan, salt and pepper made me very hopeful. It made me think of delicious spinach balls, which remind me of Thanksgiving, which is my favorite holiday, which makes me very happy and hungry. Unfortunately, hope alone does not result in spinach and ricotta gnocchi.

After I formed the mixture into little balls I decided that I should go ahead and do a test run by boiling a few of them. What. A. Disaster. My lovely little bundles that looked like snow dusted evergreens hit the boiling water and instantly morphed into a watery spinach and ricotta soup.

Here's what the book says they'll look like. The only thing I didn't do exactly as it said in the book was to use 2.5 pounds of spinach instead of 2.25 pounds. You wouldn't think that a quarter pound of spinach would ruin the result, though. I did a google search for the recipe, and I think people who had a more liberal interpretation of "dust with flour" had better results. Maybe next time I'll roll the balls in flour instead of dusting them. I hope I can remember this a couple years from now when I work up the nerve to try this recipe again.

In case you're worried about the fate of the gnocchi that weren't involved in the test run, you can relax. I ended up baking them instead of boiling them. I wish I could say they were still great, but I'm not a very good liar. The spinach flavor was overpowering, and to be honest I can't really think of any redeeming qualities. I would have much rather had spinach balls or plain potato gnocchi.

Fortunately, the rest of the food was delicious.

We started out with a meat and cheese tray for people to munch on while the pasta was being made. From the left: brie, sopressata, Dubliner. There were also some olives and sliced baguettes.

I know I said that the rest of the food after the gnocchi was delicious, but that doesn't mean everything went smoothly. Caitlin and I each made a batch of pasta dough from two different cookbooks, and we both had wells of flour that gave way after we tried to squeeze too many eggs into them.

I guess I could blame Sarah for my well collapsing since she was the one to add the final egg, but I was the one who encouraged her to take part and the same thing would have happened had I cracked that egg. After the first well collapsed panic ensued and Caitlin's well gave way, too. This is a photo of the aftermath.

Not to worry, though. In the end we had two balls of pasta dough, which went on to become two large bowls of pasta. Caitlin's dough is pictured above.

Overhead shot of Sarah making the bolognese. Boiling beets on the left.

I was very, very excited that my new KitchenAid attachment was spitting out macaroni(!!).

So were Tom, Ron, and Caitlin.

Caitlin stepped in to make the rest of the pasta while I threw together a pizza.

Fettucini and a pile of uncut macaroni. Pretty good for three girls that don't have Italian grandmothers.

Ron enjoyed his sippy cup of wine while Caitlin enjoyed the food.

Sarah ate. Dan drank. I see a trend here.

Kate ate. Garin watched. Why are only half the people eating?

Here's my plate. The big pile of macaroni kind of weighed itself down, so by the time we tried to cut it into little pieces it was no longer hollow. Instead of hollow little tubes we ended up with rustic slabs. Delicious rustic slabs. The salad was green leaf lettuce, beets, parmesan, balsamic, and a little olive oil. Yum.

Who invited these (matching) dweebs?

Sarah made some awesome chocolate and sea salt truffles. She warned me that they were incredibly rich and a whole one may be too much, so I ate half of one. Ten minutes later I went back for the second half. They were amazing.

Thanks to Sarah and Caitlin for your cooking help and photos!

Thanks to Dan and Ron for your cleaning help!

And sorry, Sarah, but go Hawks!

Pike Place Market + Homemade Pasta

Still in Seattle. Still loving it. Still cooking.

Yesterday we had some yummy crepes for brunch, headed to Pike Place Market to do a little shopping, and then spent the rest of the day in the kitchen prepping for a a big dinner party. Or a little dinner party where 5'5" was the maximum height of about 90% of the attendees. The theme was Little Italy - little people and Italian from scratch - complete with Windows 7 door prizes since, after all, we're in Seattle.

Sarah and I by the water.

Pike Place.

Pretty veggies.

And more.

Fresh cheese curds, so fresh that they're squeaky on your teeth! Just like the ones we used to get at the cheese factory in Kalona when I was growing up.

We got some delicious ginger pigs to fuel our day of cooking.

Sarah made a lovely apple, pear, and almond tart.

I made about a million meatballs.

And then WE MADE PASTA! Fresh pasta is something that's been on my list of things to make, and Sarah and I were both excited to finally try it out. It was fun and it was difficult and it was stressful, but it was ultimately rewarding and delicious. After looking back on our experience and checking out a few pasta books today we've learned what we would do differently next time. Here are a few of them, in no particular order:

- Use pasta flour instead of regular flour.

- When kneading becomes difficult, or even hopeless, olive oil helps.

- Fresh pasta is not a quick process. At least not on your first time.

I was really excited to crack an egg into a well of flour. That was also on my list of cooking things that I've been wanting to do, whether it was in the process of making pasta or during some other endeavor.

Sarah was equally excited.

Three and three-quarter cups of flour. Four eggs in the well. A little salt. A little olive oil. A lot more olive oil to come.

Slowly mix them together with a fork.

The recipe we used told us after 15 minutes of kneading and stretching we should have a smooth ball of dough.

After 15 or 20 minutes and many drizzles of olive oil we had two still pretty crumbly balls of dough and achy arms and wrists. We were more than happy to let it rest for 30 minutes, and we would have been fine with letting it rest in the garbage for eternity. But we had people to serve, so we pressed on.

After some struggling we realized that pressing pieces out a little by hand makes getting them through the pasta roller much easier.

Crank crank crank.

Once you have a sheet rolled out things are somewhat smooth sailing. Unless it's too wide or you don't feed it in straight. We became familiar with the reverse crank.

Some of our noodles were a little on the long side. Or maybe Sarah just has really short arms.

And we have fettucini!

During the kneading phase we had little hope for results like these.

I was relieved that the pasta survived boiling and didn't dissolve once it hit the water.

I snapped a quick photo of the finished pasta and the spicy olive sauce that Sarah's boyfriend made to go along with it. Both the pasta and the sauce were a great success.