Tidbits

March is one of my favorite months. To me, it's always been the beginning of spring. Here in Boston, it still feels like winter (except for the past few days but it was a bit of a fluke, a lovely fluke but a fluke nonetheless) but I don't care. March = Spring in my book.

Also, March is my birthday month. Let me be clear about exactly what day my birthday falls on, Saint Patrick's Day!

When my family adopted me, my mother and her side of the family were all filled with glee. Why? Well they're hardcore Irish Americans and any child born on Saint Patrick's Day was meant to be theirs.

I grew up with the luck of the Irish always on my side! Or least always with birthday cakes with green frosting and every Saint Patrick's Day birthday card ever produced given to me at least twice.

This March I was extra lucky and gifted with a new Nespresso maker from my very thoughtful parents. This is the model they got me:



Granted it's not the fanciest of all the models but since it's mainly me using it, I don't need a lot of bells and whistles. Oh man, I love this machine so damn much. The espresso is fantastic. We're talking crema on top and amazing flavor. And the milk frother is straight out of the Jetson's. It froths and warms my soy milk in what feels like seconds. And the container never gets hot. If you like espresso based drinks, I recommend giving Nespresso machines a shot. There is a Nespresso store here in Boston and it's really a relaxing and being zen lil spot. I went there to get new coffee capsules and was treated to an espresso while I shopped. It was lovely. The entire experience of owning this machine and visiting the store has been awesome thus far. I'm fairly certain that my new espresso machine and I will have a long and happy relationship!

This year for my birthday dinner with my friend Walter (who also has a birthday on the same day as me), we opted to go to Lineage. It's a place I've been to before and never been disappointed with the service or the quality of the food. It was a nice meal with two of my favorite people, E came along this year. Since this year our birthdays fell during restaurant week, we opted to order off the RW menu. We had a steak with a salsa verde that had me absolutely come close to licking the plate clean. I also enjoyed the parsnip soap that I ordered as my starter. But it was almost too rich and buttery for me. Luckily Walter and E were there to help me finish it off. The 4 desserts we tried were good but fairly unmemorable. Overall a lovely birthday dinner!

And lastly, E and my friend Ed had arranged to have a pizza party at Picco for me. As is well documented here in this blog, I love pizza and I love Picco. Plus they got me a birthday cake from Eldo cake house in Chinatown. I really do have great friends. Thanks you guys!



A great time was had by all!!!

March Food

I'm become such a sloth when it comes to blogging lately! I won't even bother to say much about these photos except this kinda sums up the food I ate this past month.


I'm sad the picture of this pizza is so small. It's from Picco in the South End and it's one of my favorite places for pizza in the city. The crust is perfect...not too thick or thin and the perfect char on the bottom. I should have done an upskirt pic but I'm an amateur so you're left with this crappy photo. Trust me, the pizza is good stuff. The service is hit or miss. Sometimes I get nice people who are very attentive and other times I've had servers that I wanted to throw knives out. But go for the pizza and the home made ice cream!





For our anniversary, E made triple battered chicken for me. I love fried chicken and I tend to love a thick crust. She did a great job getting a thick crust. How she got all that crust to hang into that poor little drumstick is beyond me. It had good flavor and made sure the chicken was juicy but it was a little too thick, even for the likes of me! But A+++ for effort.

In keeping with my needs for Korean food, we went to a place in Chinatown that was eh. But sometimes when you crave something you just have to have it no matter what. But seriously, can someone come up with an amazing Korean place in Boston already?!?

'Zza: October Daring Baker's Challenge

I had a friend who called pizza, "zza". It took me a while to figure out what she was talking about but once I did, I was glad to have a friend who's deep love of pizza meant that she had a pet nickname for the food.

One of my absolute favorite foods, all my childhood memories is a moving evolution of pizza. My family moved every two years and so every move meant a new pizza supplier had to be found! Stouffers French Bread to Pizza Hut to Little Caesars and finally to Bertucci's, I loved it all! When I was 14 I found a wonderfully simple recipe for homemade pizza dough in the back of seventeen magazine. I still use the recipe and have the ripped out pages to refer back to.

So when I learned that this month's Daring Baker Challenge was pizza, I was over the moon! I couldn't wait to try a new recipe for dough. I looked over the recipe but was a little bummed by one small issue. It was a two day deal, which was okay, I could do all the work one day but the issue was timing. The second day's instructions said to pull the dough out of the refrigerator two hours before it needed to be ready. Sadly, with my schedule the way it is with the store and all, I'm lucky to get even an hour to prep before guest arrive for dinner! Luckily, E was doing the challenge with me and had the day off so she was able to come over to the apartment and pull out the dough.

Yay! But back to the actual process. I followed the directions and kneaded the dough a bit more than the 5-7 minutes instructed. I was concerned about the consistency of the dough. It seemed a bit tough to me and I was wondered it would turn out too hard (like the Ina Gartener pizza dough had done on me). I kneaded for more like 10-15 minutes and crossed my fingers that the resting time would allow the dough to really get soft and tender.

The Challenge this month also called for sauce. Didn't matter what kind of sauce but I like a simple pizza and so I thought if we made a tomato and cheese pizza well, a jar sauce wasn't gonna be very tasty. I decided to make a simple tomato sauce from scratch. It was so simple. I simmered a can of crush tomatoes and a couple of cups of red wine with a spoonful of tomato paste, a bit of chicken broth, a handful of dried and fresh basil, dried oregano and two cloves of garlic, Later, I added a slug of olive oil and pat of butter and tasted. It was good but something was missing. I sprinkled in some crush red pepper and tasted again. Still good but missing something still! I stood around and pondered, "hmm..."

I added freshly ground nutmeg and the tasted again, the sauce was awesome! Simple but yet complex. The nutmeg seemed to amplify all the other flavors in the sauce. It was quite lovely. Seriously, why is nutmeg not used in more recipes? Hmm... anyway, I highly recommended it for fall soups and sauces!

On Day 2, I came home to E prepping the toppings. A lovely sight indeed :) She had been kind enough to take out the dough and we were ready to rock and roll. I started to follow the instructions on how to toss the dough but I chickened out. I also chickened out on turning the oven up to 500 and left the oven at 485. (I've been a little scared since my oven door glass shattered due to roasted cauliflower). Luckily, E was kind enough to toss the dough for us. I did notice how tender the dough had become. It was perfectly stretchy and soft. Perfect!

E topped it with my homemade sauce and locally made fresh mozerella and slipped it on the pizza stone.

The final product? Awesome! It was a very, very, very simple pizza all made from scratch, but it might have been the best pizza I've eaten in a long time! The sauce was fantastic but the crust was really quite delicious. It was crisp and light and it cooked perfectly with no soggy edges anywhere!

For pictures and more detail, you should check out E's blog entry...here.

I've very pleased with this Challenge and will definitely keep this recipe handy! However, in the future I'll need to play around with the 2 hour ahead of time step. I'm thinking more like 1 hour or 30 minutes before instead ;)

Thanks for letting me play again Daring Bakers!!!!!!

Dear Ina,

Hey lady, what's up? I'm loving that I'm seeing new shows and that you are still loving life out in the Hamptons. I haven't heard you mention Chris and Joey lately, so I hope you haven't lost your cute little token lesbian couple on the show. And where the hell has that adorable Parker Hodges gone to? I loved that episode where you made him set up a BBQ fire grill for a "surprise". Poor Parker is probably thinking, "sweet, I'm going to have me some Barefoot Contessa grilled shrimp, lobster, steak!" What was the surprise? Grilled pizzas. Um yeah, Parker probably hasn't been over since he got duped into thinking he was getting a surprise only to get something he could recreate in his toaster oven.

But you're as cute as a button and how could anyone stay mad at you? Especially when you seem to always bear gifts of brownies, carrot cake and free form plum crostata. Everyone knows I adore you and then some (my offer to come live with you and have you feed me every day still stands) but I really do need to sit and have a heart to heart with you.

See, here's the thing. I love your show and your cookbooks make everything seem simple and yum. But lately all the recipes I've tried from any of your three cookbooks I own, well, they haven't gone so great.

It all started with the 40 clove of garlic recipe. Peeling blanched garlic cloves and 40 of them, hmm, well it was time consuming but I figured it was for you. I thought, "This is for my girl, Ina, and well if she said so, I'll do it". So I did and the chicken was nice but it wasn't amazing and certainly was a let down. My own crispy roasted chicken recipe could have kicked your average 40 clove chicken anyday. "Oh well", I thought, "I've had great success with your chicken and biscuits recipe and your pasta, pesto and peas is a magical creation". So I blindly continued to follow you.

My issues with your cookbooks continued into a tiramisu recipe. If the word for tiramisu comes from the Italian phrase, "pick me up", well your tiramisu was sure to knock someone out! It was boozy and so boozy that the minute I opened the fridge, my entire kitchen reeked of rum. It was completely inedible b/c of the booze and I ended up throwing it out. I almost cried over having to waste all that beautiful mascarpone cheese. I pondered how you, dear Ina, could have made such a recipe. Is being married to Jeffrey so hard that you have to numb your woes with boozy desserts? Why Ina, why? Eventually, I took the rum content down A LOT and suddenly the recipe was able to shine. It was simple and lovely. It's a keeper recipe but one that has red sharpie crossing out the rum content to a much lesser AAA membership level.

But this last issue comes over something I hold very near and dear to my heart...Pizza. See, I was having some friends over to try that summer buttermilk and radish soup I had made (it was good, the texture was weird though) and thought I'd finally get around to using my new pizza stone. I was so excited. But what pizza dough recipe to use? I've had this one recipe that I've used since I was 15 and well, don't laugh, it came from Seventeen Magazine. Hey, I told you not to laugh! It's a great recipe, easy to make and fantastic results. And well, I also had your Parties cookbook that I had been given for X-mas (I want to give her a copy too but can't seem to find it anywhere, sold out, or pulled off the shelves for faulty recipes, hmmm...) and I remembered a recipe for pizza dough.

So, who would win the dough contest? You, my dear Contessa, a royal of food network and the Hamptons or Seventeen magazine, a publication that taught me to hate my body and decide I wasn't white enough to ever be pretty? It was a tough contest, well, not really. So I flipped to the pizza dough recipe and followed your directions.

I noticed that the dough didn't rise too much and well, when it came time to roll it out into six rounds, it was no easy task. The dough was tough, tough, tough. And the final outcome? The pizzas were more like cracker crusts than doughy. It was as though I didn't even need to put the yeast into this one. Was my yeast old? Did I over mix the dough? Sigh. Your pizza dough left me disappointed and doubtful.

I have to admit, as much as I'm sure it was a user error (meaning me), I also think perhaps it might be something to do with the recipe. I'm kinda disappointed. I miss the days when I trusted you unequivocally. The days I'd dream of frolicking with you on the beach eating bbq chicken, pasta salad and other delights. Oh Ina, Ina, where did it all go wrong? And more importantly how do I get back to our former magic? I'm afraid to choose another recipe to try, for fear that it will just be another tangled mess of average, disappointment and rum.

I'm going to go back to Epicurious recipes for a while and nurse my wounds. I promise I'll try and come back to you soon, but for now, I need some space. I'm hurt, but I hope we can patch things up enough that we can stay friends. It's not you, it's just me.

Sincerely yours,
L