• Epic Timpano

    A pasta timpano filled up with meatballs, sausage, chicken parm, and mozzarella sticks!

  • Timpano

    I have wanted to make a timpano for a long time. I have seen Mario Batali make a few, and hmm where else have I seen one? These Italian pies are made for special occasions. There are a few different varieties, but really you could throw anything you want in there! I think I will probably make another one soon and just throw anything I can think of in. This dish is totally worth the effort, and honestly it isn’t even that much work! More time consuming than anything. When you unveil the pie from its baking container, it is just as much of an event as it is in that movie… So what was our special occasion? Mandi’s sister visiting of course!

    So what topic am I skirting around in that first paragraph? What other time have I seen one? What movie? Well Big Night of course. Apparently on the internet, you can’t cook a timpano without talking about big night! (yes every word is a different website) So what do I have to say about it? Nothing that hasn’t been said already, just that if you haven’t seen it, watch it because it is great.

  • Caprese Burger

    I was sitting at a relative’s house in Rhode Island this past weekend enjoying the New England summer and (comparatively to Bermuda) low humidity. We were having a bit of a post wedding hang out and grill session, exchanging stories from the night before, All my cousins being sure not to take their sunglasses off. As the burgers were on the grill, I couldn’t stop staring at the basil plant behind it. My mouth was salivating for basil! I have a basil plant in my own yard, but for some reason when I see one I have the need to eat basil immediately. Of course I snuck over and grabbed a few leaves to put on my burger only to be called out 3 seconds later. I thought I had been sneaky! The burger was fantastic and I don’t know why I have never thought to put basil on one. This got me thinking, we already have a tomato, the addition of basil means I only need to switch the cheese to mozzarella and we have a caprese burger. A Hamburger Today in 2006 says caprese burger is a bad idea, but after making one, I disagree! The picture on that post looks awful, any burger that looked like that, caprese or not, would be gross! The key to this burger is nice fresh thick summer tomatoes.

  • Green Mac and Cheese

    A vibrant green stovetop mac and cheese colored and flavored with kale, basil, spinach, scallions, and jalapeno

  • Cubano Burgers

    Hello! Hello hello, sorry I’ve been away so long! I never meant to leave you… I have to admit, I got the idea for these burgers from Throwdown. You know, Bobby Flay’s show where he challenges people at their own specialty? I normally don’t like the show very much, but there was nothing on, and it was a burger challenge. If anyone can do burgers, it’s got to be Flay. The competitor was pretty interesting too. I kept the channel on and was pretty happy with all the burgers they made. My favorite was the one Bobby made to be the burger version of a Cuban sandwich. His method of pressing the burgers with a brick right on the grill was pretty neat. I liked it too because when cooking burgers for a bunch of people, normally everyone wants their bread toasted and it is kind of annoying keeping track of everything. This way you can build all the burgers on the grill and just hand them out to people.

  • Chili Risotto

    Risotto made with a rich broth flavored from dried chiles and filled with beef and pork to emulate a bowl of chili

  • Chicken Parm

    When I was young, chicken parm was my favorite meal. I got it whenever I went out to eat. I liked it so much that my mom even made it for me on my birthdays. (which happens to be tomorrow…) As I got older and more into the food world, I started to shrug off chicken parm as cheesy Italian-American fare. Something these so-called Italian restaurants serve to the masses. Places that lay on thick accents, but the food doesn’t resemble anything you would find in Italy. I try as hard as I can not to be snobby about food. Food is something that everyone shares, and if you are a snob about it, you will find yourself eating foie gras and sea urchin alone in a corner somewhere crying into your chilled melon and prosciutto soup(mmmsalty tears). If you set too many limits on your diet and only eat things people deep in the foodie world consider appropriate or acceptable, you may end up missing out on the best meal of your life! Last week I ate chicken parm for the first time in probably 4 years. I am sorry chicken parm and I hope you find it in your tenders to accept me back.

  • Give the Gift of Lasagna

    OR

    HOW TO MAKE AN AWESOME MEATSAUCE



    I am sure right about now you are saying to yourself… “But Dannnnnn didn’t you just recently make manicotti which has practically the same ingredients as lasagna? And didn’t you also already show us how to make sauce in that very same blog entry? What can I possibly gain from reading today’s post?!?” This may in fact be true, but looking back I noticed that the pictures and instructions I gave you last time for my sauce, well they just were not that good. And it wasn’t even my perfectly ideal sauce variation anyway. I make about 5 or so different tomato sauce varieties, this one is similar to the manicotti sauce. And although lasagna does share many of the same ingredients as manicotti, it is different and special and it deserves its own post! I also wanted to take this opportunity to tell you that lasagna makes a great gift. It is easy to make a few at a time and then give one away. It tastes GREAT right from the freezer, it is fairly cheap, and people will always be grateful!

  • Pasta Fagioli

    This is the way my Grandmother made Pasta y Fagioli.  It\’s not traditional, but it\’s what I grew up with.