Oscar season is upon us. We have
received all of the screeners in the mail, and have our personal favorites. It
is a fun time of year, when you can cuddle up with your loved one and watch a
good movie. This year to celebrate the Oscars we are going over to our very
good friends’ Jackson and Yasmine to eat some wonderful food, drink some
dranks, and watch some glorious fashion and award giving. Mikey and I were
thinking what do we enjoy the most with movie watching, and we thought pizza!
So we have made you a really simply pizza crostini, or a pizzette you could
say. Though the first thing to our mind isn’t stuffed mushrooms, to Hell with
that, it should be! So we have also made a fabulous tarragon goat cheesed
stuffed mushrooms.
Predict those awards, critique
the fashion, and stuff your face with pizza on the couch!! Not to mention the
wonderful blood orange champagne cocktail.
*Chiffonade= cutting herbs or
greens in to long thin strips by either layering or rolling up the greens.
Ingredients: serves 12-15
Pizzette:
1 Baguette
½ cup tomato puree
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
1 pinch garlic salt
2 balls buffalo mozzarella
5 basil leaves
Stuffed Mushrooms:
15 cremini mushrooms
¼ cup goat cheese
2 sprigs tarragon
1 Tablespoon olive oil
Blood Orange Mimosa:
Champagne
Blood orange
Maybe you should make this
cocktail while you prepare the food, because it is very refreshing and a simple
twist on a mimosa. Simply squeeze the juice of a blood orange into a glass and
top off with champagne, and then garnish with a blood orange slice. So sleek!
The first thing you should do is
prep all of your ingredients and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Slice the
baguette on a diagonal slice so the bread is about a ¼” thick, set aside. Next
slice all the mozzarella about the same thickness, set aside. Next roll up your
basil leaves tightly, and using a sharp knife chiffonade all the basil, set
aside.
To make the sauce simply mix the
past, puree, and garlic salt together.
Now we assemble the pizzettes.
Cover the bread in the tomato sauce, then lay down some mozzarella, and top it
off with basil. Lay the pizzettes out on a baking sheet leaving room for the
mushrooms.
In order to make the mushrooms,
pull the stems out, and if need be use a paring knife to cut the rest of the
stem out. Put the mushrooms in a bowl, and coat them with the olive oil. Chop
up the tarragon and in a separate small bowl mix together the tarragon and goat
cheese. Fill the mushrooms with the cheese mix until overflowing a bit. Place
on the baking sheet.
Put the baking sheet in the oven
and bake for 10 minutes, pull out and remove the pizzettes, and then put the
baking sheet back in the oven and bake for another 5 minutes.
Now enjoy your delicious Oscar
food! Hurray!
Christmas Eve at my house is
left to last minute gift wrapping, dogs eating bottom branches of the tree,
running out to CVS at midnight, and on the less stressful note watch a classic Christmas
film and eat some delicious food. Traditionally in Italy one only eats fish because
we are technically “fasting”….but since eating 7 courses of fish isn’t
technically fasting, I will neither be fasting nor eating only fish. So Michael
and I have prepared a festive Christmas Eve lasagna filled with tomato sauce,
ground lamb, leeks, mushroom, and delicious ricotta cheese.
Enjoy this lasagna with your
loved ones, maybe around the fire place and next to the tree!
God Jul!
Joyeux Noel!
Buon Natale!
Mele Kalikimaka!
Ingredients: use a 9”x13”
baking tray
1 box oven bake ready lasagna
pasta sheets
5 cups diced tomato in their
juice
8 oz. tomato paste
3 cups sliced button tomatoes
2 lbs. ground lamb
2 medium leeks
4 garlic cloves
1/4 cup olive oil
¾ teaspoon salt
1 lb. ricotta
2 cups shredded mozzarella
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
and get all of your mise en place set up. Start by chopping the leeks. To do
this cut the root off, then cut where the light green starts to turn dark. Cut
the leek in half lengthwise and take one layer off. Holding the halves intact,
run them under water to get all of the dirt out. Now placing the cut side down,
thinly slice the leeks into half-moon pieces. Next pull the stems out of your
mushrooms, rinse, and slice into ¼ inch slices. Lastly dice up as finely as
possible all of your garlic.
In a large sauce pan heat
your olive oil. Once the olive oil gets to a searing temperature, put all of
your ground lamb into the pan and cook all the way through, about 7 mins,
stirring with a wooden spoon. Now take your meat out of the pan and drain all
the fat through a colander, and place the meat back in the pan. Add leeks, cook
about 5 minutes, next add garlic. Once the garlic starts to brown a bit add all
of your tomato paste and stir, cook for one minute. Add tomatoes and their
juices along with salt, and lower the heat to medium and let cook for about 25
minutes.
Mix ricotta and all but a ¼ cup
of mozzarella together in a small mixing bowl.
Once your meat mix is done
cooking, and your cheese is mixed, begin your assembly of the lasagna. Start by
laying some meat sauce down, then cheese, then evenly lay out the raw mushroom.
Top with pasta sheets. Repeat with meat, cheese, mushrooms, pasta two more
times. Once you are done layering your ingredients take the last ¼ cup of
mozzarella and sprinkle over the top layer.
You are now ready to cook.
Cover the lasagna with a sheet of aluminum foil and place in oven and cook for
50 minutes. After the 50 minutes are up, remove the foil and cook for another
15 minutes to allow the cheese to create a nice brown crust!
Your wonderful lasagna is
ready to be eaten! Merry Christmas!
