Chicken Cutlets with Zucchini Spears and Rice

Chris made dinner tonight. Sauteed chicken with olive oil, butter, salt & pepper. He made a nice balsamic vinegar sauce to go with it. Zucchini spears and rice. Really good meal. Thanks Chris!
The sauce was fantastic. Perfect with Italian bread.

A Pile of Eggs &

Okay so the stove top plan is not going that well. I get home too late to prepare a meal from scratch. When I went shopping this weekend I was thinking I would be doing a lot of baking and preparing meals in an oven. I did not want to waste anything so I thought frittatta! Perhaps not the smartest idea. I sauteed the veggies - onions, red peppers, zucchini, fresh parsley. I added sweet capicola, fontina cheese and the eggs. The whole frittatta idea quickly fell apart, literally! So I guess it was scrambled eggs with veggies and cheese. Pretty, no. Tasty, yes!

Let this be a lesson to all of you, never put plastic in the oven, even if you think it will only be for a few minutes... Someone is coming over Thursday to see what can be done to fix the stove...

Beans in Sauce

Stove top meal number one. The recipe from La Cucina comes from the Campania region. It is said to be a typical dish of Salerno. I was able to use fresh fava beans which tasted wonderful. I also added some chicken sausage, just so it would not be meatless Monday.

Ingredients
1 lb. fresh shelled beans
1/2 lb green beans, tips cut off
5 tbsp. olive oil
2 gloves garlic, crushed
1 1/2 cups tomato puree
5 basil leaves
1 small bunch flat-leaf parsley, chopped
several celery stalks, chopped
1 dried chili pepper
slices of peasant-style bread, toasted

Method
Boil the beans in a large pot of water to cover by a couple of inches until tender, about 15 minutes. Add the green beans after 10 minutes.
Meanwhile heat the olive oil and add the garlic, tomato puree, basil, parsley, celery and chili pepper. Cook until just blended.
Transfer the beans to bowl, pour the sauce over and toss to mix. Let stand 30 minutes so the flavors can blend. Serve on toasted slices of peasant-style bread.

Ricotta Cavatelli

First off this will be a week of stove top meals. Enough on that subject.
Tonight's dinner came about when I saw last Wednesday's New Haven Register and there was an article by Claire Criscuolo about a woman named Josephine Signore. Click here to read the story. Josephine Signore is my mom's cousin. In the article she says the Cavatelli recipe is from her mother which means that it is from my great grandmother! So for Mother's Day I made my great grandmother's Cavatelli recipe. Very cool. I even have my mom's Cavatelli machine. I was amazed how easy they were to make. And the taste, well lets just say it is obvious why this recipe is still around.




Happy Mother's Day

A funny thing happened when I made dinner tonight...

I picked up a nice piece of meat that was rolled up with onions and peppers from Whole Foods today. The butcher said all I had to do was pan sear it and pop it in the oven to cook it through. So I came home and turn on the oven. I got a very nice sear on the meat. I had shredded zucchini and onion sauteing in another pan and rice on the back burner. I opened the oven to put the beef in to finish off and what the F##@** did I see?

Well a couple of nights ago we had the grilled chicken and we have this cat, Kramer, who climbs up on to the counter, so we put the tray which the chicken was on (a white plastic IKEA tray) in the oven until we did the dishes. Well I guess I forgot about it.

This is the bottom of the oven...

Smoke was coming out of the oven. I called Chris for help. He carried out the oven racks which were covered with melted white plastic...

Anyway we had a nice bottle of Cupido Sangiovese... Sigh...

Ravioli Capriciossa and Veal Matesse

So what did I make for dinner? Reservations! Tonight we ate at Quattro's. One word can sum up the meal. Wow! And the exclamation point is required.

We started with their Bruschetta which is one of the best that I have had (my brother-in-law also makes a really good Bruschetta). We also had a special appetizer which was Grilled Seafood on a plate of salad greens with a lemon vinaigrette dressing. The seafood was Calamari, Scallops and Shrimp. The seafood was grilled perfectly. Chris will be practicing grilling Calamari this summer. The dish was over the top.

Next for dinner we had Ravioli Capriciossa and Veal Matesse. I had the Ravioli which was one surprise after another. There were 3 different ravioli on the dish. One was spinach ravioli, another was mushroom, which I had never had before. When I cut into it I forgot it was a vegetarian dish and thought it was ground meat. I gave some to Chris to try and he liked it. Then I tried it an was blown away when I realized what the filling was. But we don't stop there. The third ravioli was filled with a smoked cheese. I think it was Fontina. It was delicious. The sauce was sauteed veggies and tomato. Prior to tonight my favorite meal at Quattro's was the Gnocchi, now it will be a tough choice.

Chris had the Veal Matesse. It was topped with Jumbo Shrimp, fresh Mozzarella and sauteed Spinach. He did not have to add any salt or pepper to the dish. It was perfect.

We split a Coconut Sorbet for dessert and had a bottle of Chianti Classico, Castello d'Albola Tuscany with our meal.

I am sure I can not top this meal in the upcoming week.

Wedding Soup and Grilled Ham & Cheese Sandwiches

We were looking for something simple tonight. I had some Wedding Soup in the freezer. Chris made the grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. He added spreadable Feta Cheese. Nice touch!

Grilled Chicken and a Calzone

Look at those grill marks! Yes grilling season has returned. Hallelujah!
Tonight Chris marinated chicken breast in a mixture of spicy brown mustard, olive oil, salt and pepper. It was wonderful. He grilled some zucchini spears and we split a small Double-Cheese and Prosciutto Calzone. What a delicious meal.

Caesar Salad!

This weekend I had a Caesar Salad at my nephew's house. It was so good I had to have it again! We had some left over steak and added it to the salad. A healthy meal, if you don't count the half a loaf of bread we had with it!

Lasagna and Caesar Salad

Today my great-niece Anna received her First Communion.
For dinner my nephew and his wife made this incredible lasagna. The recipe came from Cooking Light. When Julianne was making the sauce it smelled wonderful. The lasagna was very light. I always think of lasagna as a heavy winter meal but this recipe is perfect for warm weather.

My nephew made a Caesar Salad. The recipe came from the Not-Strictly Vegetarian Cookbook. Garlic, olive oil, lemon, Dijon mustard, apple cider vinegar, parm, pepper. Delicious!

For dessert we had Ice Cream cake and S'mores. Two of the best desserts!

It was a great meal and a good weekend with the family. And congratulations Anna!