Zucchini Bandits

If you are reading this you are probably thinking that you have seens these before. To which I can say, You are right, you have!  Zucchini Flowers or  Zucchini Blossoms, are a staple in our home the summer months. I plant extra zucchini plants just for the flowers!
My family loves these to the point of even  suggesting a zucchini flower raid when we don't have enough from our own garden.  I won't go into the details about our raids,  I'm sure you will understand why!  I seem to get caught in the act all the time!  My husband has told me that he can see the headlines now...Local woman arrested stealing zucchini flowers...and he's not bailing me out!
I have no shame!

I think I'll start knocking on doors asking for them. Perhaps my luck will be better that way! I've even gone to the local farm and asked them to sell me the flowers but they just won't give them up. They think they need all the flowers for the vegetable to grow. They don't. Some of them grow on a long stem and those are the ones to pick, early in the morning when they are wide open. It makes them easier to clean and stuff.

If you would like the recipe for these delicious stuffed zucchini flowers you can find it here.
We also love pasta made with zucchini and if you have extra stuffing left over you can use it to create a delicious tasting dish.

I submitted the recipe for the above dish in a contest being offered by Premio foods.  Check out the contest. You might want to submit one of your own recipes using their products.

Here's my recipe for the above dish.

Paccheri di Pasta Fresca con  Salsiccia e Zucca

1 pound Premio sweet sausage

1 pound Pasta, such as a Paccheri or an extra large Rigatoni

1 large green squash, cut into 1” pieces with skin on

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 medium yellow onions, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

1/2 pound fresh mozzarella

freshly grated Italian cheese, such as parmesean

1 tsp beef bullion paste

1/2 cup red wine

1/2 cup pasta water

salt and black pepper to taste

a pinch of red pepper flakes

a pinch of rosemary

>In a large skillet heat the olive oil and add the chopped onions and garlic.

>Take the sausage meat out of the casing, and break  into pieces.

>Add the sausage to the cooking onions and garlic.

>Cook on medium heat for approximately 10 - 15 minutes or until cooked      through.

>Add the beef bullion paste, red wine and mix well.

>Add the zucchini

>Cook for another 10 minutes.

>Add fresh chopped parsley

>Cook the pasta in a seperate pot with salted water.

>When pasta is cooked, remove from water and reserve 1 cup of the pasta water

>Add pasta to the sausage mixture, add the pasta water if needed to make sure all the pasta gets a hint of the sauce

>Add the fresh mozzarella and freshly grated cheese

 Serve in seperate bowls and enjoy!

Buon Appetito

xoxoxo

Lorraine

Lasagna = Love

We Love Lasagna. There are so many different ways to make it. Our favorite is the traditional way with ricotta cheese between the layers of Lasagna sheets.
If I had the time I would have liked to have made my own lasagna sheets, but this time of year, unless I really plan ahead it's not going to happen. I used Barilla Lasagna sheets. The ones that you boil. I do not like the no cook sheets. I'm not saying that they are  bad, I just don't like them.
After boiling the lasagna sheets in a huge pot of salted water I run them under cold water and then lay them out on dish towels to dry them.
When they are dry I layer my noodles, starting with sauce on the bottom of the pan and then a layer of lasagna sheets. I cooked some Sweet Italian sausage, out of the casing, and crumbled it up and sprinkled some of the sausage meat on the first layer and added some more sauce.

This is the first layer of my lasagna

If I am really ambitious I will make tiny meatballs and put them into the layers of lasagna too. I was serving meatballs on the side and decided not to add the meatballs this time.
Keep layering the lasagna sheets with the cheeses, meat and sauce until you don't have any Lasagna sheets left.

all layered and ready to go into the oven

I like to top off the whole pan with a generous amount of shredded mozarella cheese and some grated Reggiano Parmiagano.
Bake in a preheated 350 - 375 degree oven for 45 minutes to an hour until nice and hot and some of the Lasagna noodles get crispy! (That's my favorite part!)
I forgot to take a picture when it came out of the oven. You'll have to trust me on this one, it was beautiful!

Here's what I used to make this lasagna.

2 pounds of lasagna sheets
3 pounds of Ricotta cheese, either whole milk or skim
2 cups grated parmiagano cheese
2 pounds shredded mozzarella cheese
2 eggs
salt and pepper to taste
a small bunch of flat leaf parsley, chopped
Sunday Gravy sauce that my meatballs, sausage and pork have been simmering in for hours.

Mix all the cheeses together, reserving some of the shredded mozzarella to top the lasagna. Add the eggs, salt, pepper and flat leaf parsley. Mix well so all gets incorporated.  This is what you will use in your layers of lasagna.
Add some meat if you want. We like the flavor of sausage, which was cooked prior to adding it. I took the sausage meat out of the casing and cooked it through and crumbled it.
You can also cook the sausage whole and then slice it and add it to your lasagna. You may also add meatballs, either tiny ones or sliced. It doesn't matter...add what ever you want to your lasagna, it will taste great.
Just do me a favor and make your own sauce! That's the one thing that you should never cheat on!

Buon Appetito
xoxoxo
Lorraine

Stuffed Portabella's

Food Crawl with Portabella's!
I made these the other night for our guests. My family and friends went gaga over them.  It's not like I've never made stuffed mushrooms before! My secret ingredient in these must have been the prosciutto!
To make these you'll need
8 large portabella  mushroom caps
8 links of Italian Sausage
1 large onion, chopped
2 - 3 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped
fresh chopped parsley
handful of breadcrumbs
handful of parmigiano cheese
salt and pepper to taste
mozzarella  cheese
prosciutto

Take the sausage meat out of the casing and in a large frying pan, cook the sausage with the onion and the garlic. I added a pinch of rosemary to the cooking sausage. Just a pinch! ;)

After it is cooked through, put it all in the food processor and pulse it a few times. Put your meat mixture into a bowl and add a handful of seasoned bread crumbs.

Just a handful, not too much. If you'd like, add a handful of parmesean cheese at this time.
I sliced up some prosciutto and some mozzarella cheese and added it to the mixture.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and then lightly stuff the mushroom caps.

Just before putting the mushroom caps into the oven I topped them with a slice or two of rolled mozzarella cheese and prosciutto. Drizzle with olive oil and bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 15 - 20 minutes. You want the mushroom to wilt a little and the cheese to melt.

When you take them out of the oven they should look something like this!

I served these with a grilled Romaine Caesar Salad!

Stephen getting ready to fire it up!

If you've never grilled Romaine, you should try it. Delicious!

Enjoy!
Buon Appetitto
xoxoxo
Lorraine

Egg Rolls, Stella Style

Last summer I discovered Stella Ristorante in Floral Park, New York.  It's not a modern Italian restaurant by any stretch of the imagination, but the food is really very good.  I am very picky when I go out to eat  and I can be very critical. I have to say that I could not find one thing bad about this place. In fact everything was a step above really good. The Chicken Rollatini was divine, and if they have the home made pappadelle with a veal and mushroom sauce, OMG! order it!  You won't be disappointed!
Phyllis, my father's friend suggested that we start with the egg rolls. Ok, sure. Egg rolls in an Italian restaurant? What the heck!
What a surprise when they came to the table, the egg rolls  were filled with sausage, broccoli rabe and roasted red peppers. I can not even begin to describe the dance that these wonderful morsels played in my mouth! I turned to my sister and the rest of the group who was with us and said, "I am going to make these!"
The next day I went out and bought the ingredients that I thought were in them. I omitted the roasted red peppers, because I felt that broccoli rabe and sausage was a good enough combination for me, which got me thinking about making some egg rolls filled with sausage and peppers! We've played with many mixtures for fillings, and so far the two favorites are the Broccoli Rabe/Sausage and the Sausage/peppers  and onions. My family loves them both, and which ever one we make it seems that I can never make enough.

Broccoli Rabe and Sausage

Here's what you will need.
Egg Roll Wrappers ( one package usually makes 20 - 22 egg rolls)
sweet and hot sausage (family pack)
broccoli rabe or  sweet peppers
 2 large bunches of rabe *, or if using peppers one each of red, orange,  and yellow
mozzarella cheese, - 1/2 pound - 1 pound
mascarpone cheese or cream cheese - 8 ozs
grated parmesan cheese - one cup
and any other cheese you like!!!
one large onion
 a few cloves of garlic
salt and pepper to taste
* if using broccoli rabe, clean them,  cut off the bottom part of the stem and chop into small pieces. Cook  in a frying pan with garlic and olive oil, don't over cook, they should remain a little firm with a bite.
We're making the egg rolls with sausage and peppers. I could not find Broccoli Rabe (Rapini) in Ralph's while in California.  We made these as an appetizer for my father's 85 birthday dinner. It's so wonderful to have help in the kitchen. Marlene actually did most of the work on this one! Thanks Marlene!

Take the sausage out of the casing and breaking it apart into small pieces, saute the sausage in a frying pan until cooked through.

Phyllis frying it up!

In another frying pan cook your peppers and onions with garlic until they are tender. My sister Marlene chopped the peppers, garlic, and  onions very fine. She used a mezzaluna, her favorite tool in the kitchen!

slicing up the mozzarella

Smiling for the camera!

Drain the fat from the sausage and add the peppers and onions to the meat. In a large bowl add everything together with your cheeses.  You can adjust the cheeses to your liking. I've used swiss cheese, gouda or whatever is in the cheese draw in a pinch!  Everything should be in small cuts so you don't rip the egg roll wrapper. Marlene wanted to use the mozzarella cheese, cream cheese and parmesan cheese for these so that's what we used.

adding the cheese to the meat

This brand can be found in your grocery store. I usually find it by the tofu and vegetarian items.

Now it's time to roll!
Place your wrapper on a cutting board on an angle. Put some stuffing towards the bottom of the egg roll. With a pastry brush that you've dipped in water go around the edges of the egg roll wrapper. This will help the egg roll stay sealed.

fold up the bottom point toward the top, away from you.

Now fold in each side, making an envelope shape.

Finish by rolling the egg roll until the egg roll is enclosed.

I then let them dry out a little bit on a baking rack.  These can be deep fried, or if you want brush them with vegetable oil and bake them on a cookie sheet on high heat until golden and crispy.  I would suggest a temperature of 425 degrees.

I'd love some feedback if you decide to make these. They are truly a crowd pleaser. As I said earlier, when I make these I make more than I think I need.  You can also freeze these! They are better when you make them fresh, but they do freeze well,  just make sure that you wrap each one individually. When you're ready to make them, defrost them in the refrigerator.

Buon Appetito
xoxoxo
Lorraine

Burrata Cheese

I don't know how many of you are familiar with a cheese known as Burrata. It is such a delicious creamy cheese. It is a ball of mozzarella cheese filled with shreds of mozzarella soaked in cream. Can you imagine? I had been serving it on it's own, at room temperature with just a drizzle of some Extra Virgin Olive Oil, until I had the pleasure of dinning at Il Ristorante di Giorgio Baldi, in Santa Monica, California. If you have the opportunity to dine there, I would highly recommend it.  My meal was absolutely fabulous. We fought over what pastas to order, the truffle or the porcini and ended up ordering it all! We started with an appetizer of Burrata, which was served with some tomatoes on the vine which had been baked with a delicious pesto sauce, and then spooned over the room temperature Burrata cheese.  The aroma,  and the taste is something I cannot even begin to describe.  I wasn't given their recipe and when I got home I tried to recreate what I had been served. Whenever I can, I prepare the Burrata this way, improvising as I go along. My family says "Thank You", as soon as it's on the table before their forks break into these creamy balls of delight! They know what's about to hit their taste buds, and it is out of this world.

Plain tomatoes into a baking dish. Season the tomatoes with salt, pepper, chopped garlic, parsley, basil and some olive oil.

Bake the tomatoes until the skin bursts and the tomatoes can be mashed with a fork

Spoon the tomatoes over the Burrata and enjoy!

Buon Appetito
xoxoxo
Lorraine

Easter Pies

My sister and I are starting a new tradition. We are making our Easter Pies on Good Friday. The new part of the tradition is that from now on she will be taking the day off! You cannot start baking at 3 pm on Good Friday! You shouldn't start that late in the day on any given day! We made 3 different pies today. 2  different meat pies, one recipe is simply called Easter Pie ( the recipe is out of the newspaper) , and the other is Pizza Gaina, and is also known as Pizza Rustica. Until recently, I thought that this was one of my mothers recipes. I found out during a phone call to my Zia Josie, that this is not something that was a tradition on my mothers side of the family. It became a tradition while we lived on Daniel Drive in Farmingdale, New York.  I don't recall an Easter growing up that we didn't have these two pies on the table Easter Day! Thanks to "Aunt" Margie and "Aunt" Marie,  I now make these recipes and they have become a tradition in my own family.

Pizza Gaina


Filling
1/2 lb of Prosciutto
1/2 pound Genoa Salami
2 pieces of sweet dry sausage
1 pound basket cheese
1 pound ricotta
1 pound mozzarella
1/2 cup grated cheese ( I used Parmigiano)
12 eggs

Dough
4 cups flour
4 eggs
4 T Crisco
1 t baking powder
1/2 cup warm water

Cut up all your meats into chunks and put them into a bowl large enough for all of your filling ingredients.

Cut up your basket cheese, and mozzarella into chunks and mix with the ricotta cheese. Add the grated cheese and 12 eggs. Mix all together until it is well mixed.

Set this aside and start on your dough.  Mix all the ingredients together and knead. It will be a firm
dough, not sticky.

 Roll out the dough to fit in a large baking pan. It's not an easy dough to work with so keep rolling. Once you have the dough rolled out to the desired size place into your baking pan.

add the meat and cheese filling

usually the recipe calls for encasing the mixture into the dough, but I didn't have enough dough so I didn't do that! I just folded the ends of the dough towards the middle of the pan. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, turn down heat to 350 degrees and bake for an additional hour.

Let the pie cool and then slice into small pieces, and enjoy. This can be served warm, or at room temp. It is very rich and very tasty.
Buon Appetito!
I'll be posting our sweet pie tomorrow!
Come back and see me soon!
Ciao!
xoxoxo
Lorraine