Date Night at Pizzuto's

For our weekly Wednesday Date Night, we returned to the first place in our neighborhood that we visited when house hunting a little over a year ago: Pizzuto's Italian Cafe.



It's the kind of place that becomes like home - with familiar faces, food and drinks. In fact, folks were so comfortable tonight that when a toddler was making a lot of noise at one table, an elderly woman at the table next to us told him to hush. That got everyone smiling.



I stuck with my chianti, Roquefort dressing, and enjoyed the warm, house-made rolls - along with the comedy stylings of our waiter.





The only thing we mix up every time is the food we order - cuz the menu is huge and everything sounds so good. Dan went for a tortellini in a cream sauce (which was very tasty).





I couldn't resist that Cory (Pizzuto) is making his own sausage now, so I went for a dish starring that in a chunky, spicy red sauce. It was, as always, delicious.

Homemade Eggless Noodles!

My Mom's trying out a very restricted diet (see the 'For Mom' section of the site for more info), so I've started scouring through cookbooks and playing around with some recipes. Since eggs is on the forbidden list, and lots of pasta has eggs in it, I thought I'd start with a couple recipes from 1000 Vegan Recipes by Robin Robertson.

This one turned out to be incredibly easy. I made ravioli in a matter of minutes with some of the dough and a little leftover pancetta.

Egg-Free Pasta Dough
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tspn salt
2 Tbspn olive oil
1/2 to 3/4 cup hot water



In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour and salt.



Make a well in the center (to trap the liquids).



Add the olive oil.



Add 1/2 cup of the hot water.



Stirring with a fork, gradually incorporate the flour into the liquid.



Add additional water as needed to make stiff dough. You should err on the side of the dough being a little sticky, as more flour will be incorporated in while kneading.



Knead on a lightly floured work surface until smooth - about 2 or 3 minutes. If the dough is still sticky, sprinkle the surface with a little flour.



Shape the disk and wrap in plastic wrap and let rest unrefrigerated for 15 minutes. Or you can refrigerate the dough overnight (or freeze for up to two weeks), after which you'll want to bring it to room temperature before rolling it out.



And now it's ready to roll out, cut into whatever shape you like and boil for a few minutes.

Soy and dairy are also on her no eat list, so I also found this take on Parmesan cheese that uses sesame seeds and nutritional yeast.

Vegan Parmesan Cheese - Parmasio
1/2 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 tspn salt

In a dry skillet, toast the sesame seeds over medium heat, stirring, until golden brown - about 4-5 minutes. Immediately remove from the pan to cool so they don't burn. In a food processor, combine the toasted sesame seeds, nutritional yeast and salt and pulse until finely ground. Store in the refrigerator in a dry container with a tight fitting lid.



Here's my homemade ravioli topped with Parmasio.



And a couple nights later, I rolled out the rest of the dough, cut it into strips and paired it with broccoli and salmon.

Smoked Salmon Fettuccine Alfredo

For a quick Monday night dinner, we cooked up some fettuccine noodles, heated a jar of Cucina Fresca alfredo sauce and added chopped smoked salmon to it. As a side, we tossed a salad mix with a chopped heirloom tomato, sunflower seeds, bacos, and a vinaigrette made of lemon juice, white balsamic, and olive oil.

Pan Roasted Chicken w/ Spinach Spaghetti

Pasta Carbonara

Tonight I made a Pasta Carbonara using egg noodles, bacon, peas, eggs, Parmesan and sour cream (of all things). I earnestly tried to photograph the process (per my previous promise), and yet half-way through I forgot and just plowed ahead. I'll get better as it becomes a habit - I hope - though Dan still regularly has to remind me to take photos of my meals, even after 2 years.

The recipe I used as my reference point is from the simply named Italian - another of my favorite cookbooks, thanks to it's 180 recipes and four full color photographs of each dish being made. I altered it a bit (sour cream instead of cream, peas instead of mushrooms, egg noodles instead of spaghetti), but having their framework to start with made things go much more smoothly than my previous Carbonara attempts.




Pasta Carbonara
12 oz Egg Noodles
2 Tbspn olive oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, chopped
8 oz bacon slices, cut into thin strips
1 Tbspn butter
8 oz frozen peas
1 cup sour cream
3 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
Salt & Pepper to taste

Cook the egg noodles, per the package instructions, then drain, place in a large bowl (or back in the empty pot) and set aside. In a large pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat, then add the onions. Cook until transluscent and slightly browned. Add garlic and bacon and cook until bacon is crisp. Remove the onions, garlic and bacon and add them to the pasta. Stir together the sour cream, eggs and most of the Parmesan (reserve about 2 Tbpsn), and season with salt & pepper. Melt the butter in the pan and turn the heat up to high. Add the peas and cook until they're bright green and heated through. Add the pasta/onion/bacon mixture back to the pan and stir to combine. Pour in the sour cream & egg mixture and continue stirring while the egg cooks. Sprinkle the reserved Parmesan on top and serve.

Seafood & Veggie Pasta

After a long week at work, and a particularly bad experience as I ended a 10+ hour workday, I got home around 7pm not particularly motivated to cook. Thankfully, my husband's meal planning skills are exemplary, and tonight's dinner was an easy yet satisfying one: seafood and veggie pasta.

The hardest part was getting the water to boil - as our gas stove seems to have trouble in that department. Perhaps the pots that worked well on electric don't do as well with gas? I'll have to research that a bit. But once the water (salted generously) boiled, I cooked up some fettuccine, pulled it out, blanched some chopped broccoli, pulled it out, and then tossed in some chopped kale. While the pasta was cooking, I put 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan and melted it down over medium-high heat, then added 2 tablespoons of flour, whisking quickly, then added milk until I got a nice thick sauce going. I added Parmesan cheese and Mizithra cheese, and then realized the Mizithra smelled bad, so I tossed that sauce and started over. 2 more tablespoons each of butter & flour, the last of the milk in the house, and some more Parmesan, and I had a good sauce (seasoned with some salt and pepper to taste, of course).

I also tossed a very little olive oil in a medium high heat pan and cooked some prawns and scallops, just until they changed color.

When everything was cooked, I poured out the cooking water and tossed everything in the big pot to toss it together - sauce included - then dumped it into a big bowl for serving.

The kale could've either used more cooking time or to be de-stemmed first, but other than that I felt the dish was successful.

Salmon Pasta Salad

A quick and simple dinner tonight of pasta salad featuring Pike Place Fish salmon, cucumber, tomato, olives and mozzarella.

Chicken Pot Pie, Plus Pesto Peas & Pasta Salad

In response to last night's junk food extravaganza (did I mention Dan got something called a 'Baconator'?), tonight he stopped at the PCC to get some really delicious little chicken pot pies, and some pasta salad featuring pesto and peas. My tummy thanks him.

Bowties & Meatballs

Throwing together some ground pork with an egg, some bread crumbs, and various spices, I rolled the resulting mixture into small balls and cooked them in a skillet, rolling them periodically to get them browned on all sides. I had to do them in two batches, as I made so many of the little buggers. After they were all cooked, I put them aside and deglazed the pan with a little red wine, then tossed in some leftover marinara from the freezer to create a sauce. Then I combined the sauce and meatballs over some bowtie pasta, and grated some Parmesan cheese over the top.

Pizzuto's

Ruth & Paul came over tonight to see the house, and we all went over to Pizzuto's for dinner after.



I had the house-made gnocchi with basil pesto, which was as light and fluffy as our spitfire of a waiter promised - later revealing he makes the gnocchi himself in the mornings.





We all indulged in a little spumoni ice cream after our meal, too.

Shrimp Pasta

Gnocchi & Chicken Caesar

Our official first dinner in our new house - courtesy of the Seward Park PCC, just down the road.