Noni's Tortellini Soup.

This recipe is a Leonatti family legend. Leonatti/Bernardi* women have been making it for at least four generations: Noni, Grams, my mom and my aunts and now me. And I'm sure Bernardis are still making this in Torino. My mom would make it when I was little and tell stories about going to visit Grandma Noni in Carlonville, Ill., when she was little. I imagine my mom sitting on a stool watching Noni roll the dough through a pasta machine, place a dollop of ricotta/chicken goodness on the paper-thin dough and pinch it into perfectly shaped pocket. I took a few shortcuts on this one, namely frozen tortellini. There is no way I'm going to attempt homemade pasta again until I get a pasta machine for Christmas (*hint*). Frozen pasta aside, this is my favorite soup of all time. Colors of the Italian flag (or Irish flag, whatever)

There is no written down recipe, or at least I don't own it (I'm being dramatic, I'm sure there is somewhere). This all meant that I called my mom no less than three times last night to make sure I was doing it right. Turns out my mom is actually making this soup for dinner tonight. Scary.

"Can I put garlic in it?" "What herbs do you use?" "How long do I need to simmer the vegetables?" She answered all these with patience, even though I called her four times while she was on the phone with my sister and likely fielding questions from my other sister. I tell you, parenting never stops.

Megs and I ate the soup at 9 p.m. (European style) after we got back to the gym. Below is Megan's addition to the meal: the greenest, healthiest salad ever. It had cilantro and dill in it! I know, you're drooling, it's OK.

Note: If you don't already know, I am an inprecise cook. I just made a pile of carrots, a pile of celery and a pile of onion and called it good. So add as much or as little of each as you want. Noni's Tortellini Soup: 6 cups chicken stock 1-3 celery stalks, chopped (with leaves, unless your celery leaves are brownish-pink like mine were, then you should throw them away) 1 cup carrots, chopped 1/2 cup onion, chopped 1 garlic clove, chopped (optional) 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 tablespoon corn starch mixed with a bit of cold water (for thickening, also optional) 8 ounces frozen (or fresh) tortellini 1 tablespoon dry tarragon (optional) Saute vegetables in olive oil until onion and garlic are translucent (apparently my mom doesn't perform this step, I just didn't want to wait 30 minutes for the vegetables to get soft, so I helped them along). Add chicken stock and bring to a boil. Simmer stock and vegetables for 30 minutes. Add frozen tortellini to stock, boil for 7-9 minutes. Add corn starch and tarragon. Stir and serve sprinkled with parmasan cheese. *If you're confused about the surnames, Leonatti is my mom's maiden name and Bernardi is her grandmother's maiden name. We've got this patriarchal tradition of losing the mother's name, so who knows where this recipe started.

November 5, 2008

yeeeeeee!!!

Life's Not Always About Food.

The other day Craig asked me if I would ever write about something not related to food on my blog. Well here it is: Like every other blogger in the blogosphere, I will put my 2 (10) cents in for voting. Mostly I'm just excited to exercise my democratic rights (also I haven't had time to go grocery shopping so there is no food to blog about anyway, and an as yet unsuccessful attempt at making a quiche).

I showed up at the polls at 8 a.m. this morning, and there was already a line. I am excited about the fact so many people are voting this year. I've heard projections that 70 percent of the eligible population will be casting their ballots--versus the usual 30 percent. Incredible. Now, I don't want to sway anyone to vote for a particular candidate for president (ahem, Barack Obama) or any of Nebraska's particularly attractive Democratic candidates for the House and the Senate (seriously, have you all seen Scott Kleeb and Jim Esch? Reason enough to vote right there. These guys are adorable--my dad is rolling out of his desk chair as we speak). Needless to say, I am looking forward to the end of this whole campaign thing, equally excited for new leadership and hopeful that our country can really turn a corner (and stop bullying people--just my opinion). And third, I'm having a spectacular day because when I got my oil changed at Jiffy Lube, they also vacuumed out my car--for free.

All the workers at the auto shop were encouraging every customer to vote, which for whatever reason, I found surprising and kind of moving. Our country is generally so complacent about these things, it's nice to see everybody getting involved. There was a father and son waiting in the lobby with me. The boy was about seven years old, and I gathered that he was getting out of school to go vote with his dad. He watched Barack vote on the Today Show and asked his dad if he thought Barack would vote for himself (drawing a chuckle or two from eavesdroppers such as myself). It's great to see parents teaching their kids the value of voting.

Warm fuzzy feelings all over today. And sincerely hoping to see Nebraska's second congressional district go blue. (Picture me grinning from ear to ear).

Maria Makes Risotto.

Maria called me the other night, "I'm making the risotto. So I cook the rice with stock not water and I saute it beforehand?" She sounded a bit frantic, as if she was calling mid-saute. My first reaction was excitement, "Someone is making something from my blog!" Then I thought, "Wait, that risotto was so-so, what if she doesn't like it and never comes back?!" "Maria, are you putting any meat in it?" "No, remember I only like chicken." "OK, put some other seasonings in it." "Can I use garlic?" "Sure, why not." Conversation ensued on whether it was acceptable to use bouillion cubes (I said yes). Fortunately, it seems that Maria's risotto was a success. Maria used pinot grigio instead of marsala (a good choice) and added broccoli and carrots to the squash and apples. She seasoned with thyme, salt and pepper (note: no garlic). Still creamy, still excellent. Thanks to Maria for demonstrating the versatility of this recipe. Maria's cat Ollie apparently likes Food Eaten just as much as she does. Well maybe not quite. Food Eaten is still accepting submissions for recipes (note: you will not be turned down, providing your dish is not obscene). Or, even better, you can invite me over for dinner and I will write about how wonderful you are. lrseyler at hotmail dot com.

The Worst Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever

Back in college, we used to joke that I should host a cooking show called cooking with the clutz. Back then, every time I cooked something I made an enormous mess. There was the time I dropped an entire bottle of olive oil on the kitchen floor. What do you use to clean that? Water? There was the time I left the soup cooking on high and came back from a run to find it burned to the bottom of the pan. And there was the time I made 200 sugar and gingerbread cookies for a Christmas party. We didn't have a rolling pin ... so I used a glass ... that broke while I was rolling ... we still ate the cookies.

Lately though, I thought I had grown out of it. I can brag about my chocolate chip cookies. I only use the recipe on the chocolate chip bag, but I promise they are the best cookies you ever ate. The difference is in two things: butter (not margarine) and Mexican vanilla. Joy of Baking says,

The Mexican vanilla bean is a thicker and darker bean that has a smooth, strong,rich fragrance and flavor.

I don't know about the chemistry and makeup of the Mexican vanilla bean versus hothouse vanilla beans, but I do know that these cookies are usually awesome. It all started out fine with the wet ingredients, but then Eric and Mark came over to watch Obama inspire the nation and it all went out the window.

This is the first batch of cookies I pulled out of the oven, at which point I realized I had only added half the flour. OK, so I added more flour, stirred (a lot) and threw another batch into the oven. I pulled that batch out 8 minutes later. Still not right ... because I hadn't added the salt or the baking soda. Third time's a charm, but these were definitely the (second) worst cookies I have ever made. (There was the time I forgot the flour completely, the cookies melted, ran off the baking sheet and started a sugar fire in the oven). Sorry to Megan, Eric or Mark who may have inadvertently biten into a pocket of salt and/or baking soda. Eric said he liked them and obligingly took some home. Chocolate Chip Cookies: 1 cup softened butter 3/4 cup granulated sugar 3/4 cup brown sugar 2 eggs 1 teaspoon (Mexican) vanilla 2 1/4 cups flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate morsels Pre-set oven to 375 degrees. Mix butter, sugar and vanilla. Add eggs and beat it (while singing and dancing to Michael Jackson songs). Sift together all of the flour, baking soda and salt. Add gradually to the wet ingredients while mixing. Mix until the consistency is smooth. Add chocolate chips. Place spoonful of cookie mix a couple inches apart on a baking sheet. Bake in oven for 8-10 minutes or until edges are lightly brown. Enjoy. (And don't forget to turn off the oven).

Taco Night

Recipe for successful taco night: Step 1: Pick a venue. Preferably one with a friendly dog and a big dining room table. Step 2: Call some friends together. (It's best (though not necessary) if said friends have experiences with church potlucks, they know the protocol). Step 3: Assign each person an ingredient (or two) to bring. If you're lucky, like our group, one couple will bring seven pounds of taco meat, that way you don't have to worry about conserving your portions. Don't forget to assign a dessert, and if possible, ask someone to bring a baby (not to eat, just to hold). Step 4: Set the table. Here's where the big dining room table plays in--everything fit: guacamole, cheese, beans, meat, tortillas, lettuce, tomato and 12 people. Step 5: Pass food to the left. This will break down at some point, and you will have to start making loud requests for more salsa and sour cream. Step 6: Eat and enjoy. Step 7: Play with the baby and/or the dog (but not both at the same time). Step 8: Wash and dry dishes (this is a three-person job). The rest of the party should sit on the couch and digest for a few minutes. Step 9: Bust out the games. Cranium, Imaginarium, Trivial Pursuit, Nintendo Wii ... Step 10: Say goodnight, declare what a great time you've had, and promise to do it again soon.

Autumn Risotto

Here's another Italian dish from my repetoire. Risotto is one of my favorites, probably because of the abundance of parmasan cheese (ask any of my roommates--I'm obsessed with it). And I make a kick-ass risotto. However, this batch was one hitch kick shy of amazing. My theories on the less-than-stellar performance: 1) no meat, sausage or pancetta adds another element of savory, but I didn't have any, 2) I accidentally grabbed vegetable stock instead of chicken stock at the store, and 3) I totally spaced out on adding the sage, so the only seasoning was parmasan cheese, not necessarily a bad thing, just not all it could be. I also made a rookie mistake of confusing butterCUP squash for butterNUT squash. Who named these? (Butternut squash is yellow, buttercup squash like a small, green pumpkin).

Even so-so risotto couldn't ruin my Monday night. My Monday-night ritual involves coming home from work dragging myself outside for a jog (made significantly better by the addition of Coldplay's Viva La Vida to my music collection), after which I cook a something new and then sit down to watch Gossip Girl. It's beautiful.

Squash and Apple Risotto: (adapted from Food & Wine and Giada di Laurentiis)

4 cups chicken stock

3 tablespoons butter

2 ounces pancetta

1/4 cup diced onion

1/2 butternut (or buttercup) squash

1 1/2 cups arborio or short-grain white rice

1/2 cup dry white wine (I used marsala, which is not at all dry, it was alright since a lot of the other ingredients are a bit sweet)

1/2 cup chopped apples

1/2 cup grated parmasan cheese

1 teaspoon dried sage (you could experiment here with other fall-ish herbs/spices, thyme for example)

salt and pepper to taste

In a medium sauce pan, bring the stock to a boil, reduce heat to low while sauteing the vegetables and rice. In another sauce pan, melt the butter and saute the pancetta, onion and squash until the onion is translucent. Add the rice and stir to coat with the oils. Add the wine and simmer until almost evaporated. Ladle in 1/2 cup of chicken stock to the rice mixture and stir until stock is almost absorbed. Repeat with remaining stock. I added the apple about halfway through. The rice should be creamy and tender to the bite. Take off heat and add cheese, sage (or other herbs), and salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

Is The Reader Crazy?

I'm a bit nervous about announcing this. (I'm sort of afraid I'm jumping the gun, and it won't end up working out.) But The Reader has at the very least offered me a position as the, ahem, contributing editor of the Dish Section, and I have taken it. When I told my mom about the job, she said, "Oh you'll love it because you'll get to be in control." (I confess, I am a typical oldest child).

No worries, I am not quitting my job at Home & Away Magazine. This job is in addition to Home & Awizzle (as coined by the Baker sisters). It turns out a career as a writer isn't as lucritive as J.K. Rowling, James Patterson and Steven King would make you believe. Shocking. I know.

But this means I will (essentially) get to run the restaurant review section of the Omaha-area newsweekly. And I apparently write a column? And another blog? And manage a dining Web site? And send out a weekly newsletter? Oh my god, what was I thinking?!

Just kidding. I'm cool with it, nay, I'm stoked. But yes, a bit nervous that I'll do a good job covering the entire Omaha metro area including Lincoln and CouncilTucky, I mean Council Bluffs. I was driving home from work on Friday and sitting at a stop light, I became a little overwhelmed/veclempt. I mean, as little as two years ago I was just starting out with this whole getting-paid-for-writing thing. It's strange to get to do something that you dream about, and it's definitely not exactly what you think it would be. It's great in a different way.

But I need help. I don't think I need writers. But I do want ideas. So if you have a neighborhood restaurant that you just love and you think would make a good story for The Reader. Or, if you want to join me for a good meal in Omaha, let me know. Thanks to Josh and Jill, I've already got a headstart.

Easy and Tasty Tomato Sauce.

Taking index of my blog postings, it's pretty clear I favor Italian cooking. It makes sense to me: Italian is pretty easy and pretty tasty. And (even though no one believes that Italians can be blond), I am 1/4 Italian. And in this day in this country, that's practically ethnic, right? Well this isn't a family recipe (or at least not yet). I got it from a really hee-larious blog The Amateur Gourmet that has become my new mid-day distraction. I had all the ingredients in my pantry (which never ever happens to me), and it really took about 15 minutes to make--so unlike my homemade ravioli recipe, is actually mom-friendly. I only deviated from his recipe when I used diced tomatoes instead of whole canned tomatoes--not sure that qualifies as "recipe development." But it is less messy. I have also come one step closer to acheiving my goal of making and mastering the grand sauces. As yet I've only attempted hollandaise (disaster), bechamel (eh) and tomato (conquered here).

(Lainey's Take on Adam's Take on Lydia's) 15-minute Tomato Sauce:

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 clove of garlic

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (adjust to your liking)

2 tablespoons tomato paste

2 14-ounce cans diced tomatoes

1 teaspoon dried basil

salt and pepper to taste

1 pound dried pasta (rigatoni in my case)

Chop or mince garlic. Heat oil in pot. Add garlic to pot and saute until it is light brown. Add red pepper flakes and saute a bit more. Add tomato paste and toast until it turns orange. (Mine actually burned right away, so you should turn down the burner, but there was really no problem with the burned paste, so worries). Pour in diced tomatoes, basil, salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Simmer on low heat for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta. When pasta is soft to the bite, drain and stir into sauce for another 5 minutes. Serve with plenty of parmasan cheese.

Musings on Costa Rican Food.

Alright alright, it's been almost two months since I got back from my trip to Costa Rica and I'm just now posting photos. Whatever. I'm even further away from actually writing the cover story and the reason why I went to Costa Rica in the first place. When I travel I am usually preoccupied with thoughts of food. I worry about when the next meal will be served, if it'll be too spicy and if I'll like it (which I always do). I guess I like my life's mundane predictability (yes, I eat a sandwich for lunch just about every day). I've gotten better with traveling for Home & Away as the journalists are grossly overfed on organized press trips--not that I'm complaining. And Costa Rica wasn't much different. I must confess that I'm not too familiar with Central American dishes. I mean, I get the Mexican food: enchiladas, mole, burritos, tequila, etc. Unfortunately, I can't lie that I wasn't too impressed with Costa Rican fare. I actually liked the food in Honduras better, even though it may have given me traveler's diarrhea for the first time ever in my life. The baleadas I ordered to the Habitat for Humanity worksite were amazing: a tortilla filled with beans, peppers, rice, eggs and mild goat cheese. In Honduras we ate at restaurants, while for the first couple days in Costa Rica we ate from a buffet. So that's probably the reason why I'm not ranting and raving. But that doesn't mean Jenny and I didn't share a few good meals. We did decide to splurge on a nice meal at Volcano Arenal. The photo above is/was a plate of ceviche. Ceviche (for those who don't know) is what I would call a "salsa" of fish, lime or lemon juice and usually cilantro, some peppers, onion or any sort of variation. The thing that would likely freak my dad out is that the fish is "cooked" by the acid in the lemon or lime juice not by conventional heat. But it lends the ceviche an incredibly fresh flavor. We destroyed the appetizer before I even had time to snap a photo. The remainder of the meal was memorable, but plating wasn't so great (thus no photos). The only bad thing about the restaurant was the absolutely ridiculous music. They were playing Kenny G-instrumental versions of Bette Midler songs in a sorry attempt to create an ambience. Yikes. Below is a photo of me rolling my eyes and wanting to gag myself.

Another thing I was completely fascinated with was this banana factory we stopped at. It happened to be a Del Monte packing "plant," which made me even more excited. I was like, "We eat these bananas! I used to peel those stickers off the fruit and put them on my shirt!" I'm not really sure why this intrigued me, considering I live in the middle of an ocean of corn stretching from Illinois to Eastern Colorado, so farming shouldn't be out of the ordinary. And even more especially since I've been trying not to eat fruit from the nether reaches of the globe. So I'm pretty sure I don't actually eat anything from Del Monte.

Another reason why not to eat these bananas: The factory with in the middle of rows and rows and rows of banana trees. However, our tour guide warned us not to step one foot in the plantation. Why? Because the trees are heavily sprayed with "toxic" chemicals that would make us sick/possibly kill us. Hmm ... But this produce is somehow safe to eat. OK?

I don't know who told me everything would be cheaper in Costa Rica, but they were wrong. Maybe it was because we were staying at resorts so all the cocktails cost what they would in the States and were just as diluted, maybe we just got hosed for being tourists. Our driver stopped for lunch at the place pictured below, and it was only $5 for both our meals. And I thought it was one of the best meals we had the entire trip, complete with fried plantains, mixed rice and fish. The best/strangest part of the meal was the "vanilla juice" we had, recommended by our driver. It tasted like melted ice cream. Yum.

Fortunately, there's more than one reason to visit Costa Rica (i.e. monkeys, turtles, sloths, beaches, volcanoes, etc.)