A few months back I read an article in Bon Appetit Magazine for Cauliflower Steaks.  I can’t seem to find that recipe anymore but this is my take on it. I remembered it being fried before being baked but I’m going to try straight up roasted it next time.  I think at a high temperature it would be just as good and one less step, not to mention a heck of a lot neater!  I’m calling this a relish because it isn’t really a sauce and the artichoke hearts are in a mixture of oil and vinegar so it works.  Right?

This dish would be really nice to serve for company family style as a side dish or like you see here as an appetizer over greens.  

One of the tricks to creating a beautiful and functional buffet is to add height to the table.  A flat table is boring but when you add various heights you immediately create visual interest. 

Creating height is a lot easier than you think.  There are quite a few different ways to lift your platters and bowls off the table.  The most obvious is by using stands or tiered platters.

 Another option is to use large books stacked on top of one another.  You can do this at various positions along your table and then cover them with your tablecloth.  Be sure to try this out before the day of your party so you can be sure that your tablecloth is the right size and falls where you want it to.

A third option is to use different sized boxes.  Make sure that the boxes are sturdy enough to hold the weight of your platter without bending or buckling the box.

I love soup.  It’s one of those things I enjoy anytime of the year but it really hits the spot on a damp and dreary day.  We had one of those days last week and this is going to be another rainy week in New Jersey.  Bring on the soup!

This dish can be whipped up pretty quickly and doesn’t require many ingredients.  The Kale itself has a lot of flavor and it’s enhanced by the salty bite of pancetta.  Any green could be substituted if you don’t have Swiss Chard such as kale or escarole.

Visit my Willow House website to check out the items I love to use for entertaining and decorating. Hosting a party and need some ideas? Does the idea of entertaining stress you out? I’d love to help you! Check out my page and contact me for more info! www.micheleb.willowhouse.com

Hi everyone and welcome to the completely new MyItalianGrandmother.com.  Still everything you loved about the old one and much, much more.  We’ve imported all the old blog posts you loved, so nothing is lost and can still be searched for.  We’ve added an all new recipes section which is alphabetically organized into categories and recipes for easy navigation.  It will be updated regularly with new recipes.  This gives the user a much easier way to find the recipe they’re looking for in a quick and efficient way.

We’ve also started using more social media so you can like/tweet/ziplist/ or pin your favorite recipes to your social media pages to share with other fans.  Ziplist is a recipe program which allows you to keep track of all your favorite recipes in a special account that you can make for yourself.  You can sign up here at http://get.ziplist.com/

You can also easily print or email a pdf of the recipe you like using the print button located at the bottom right of every post.  It prints in plain black and white text, so your not running all the color ink out of your printer when all you needed was 10 lines for a recipe!

Once again, thank you all for all the support over the years and I hope you continue to read and enjoy my NEW Blog.

Happy Cooking!

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Anne Burrell.  She has such a strange personality and says weird things (like calling the yummy stuff that sticks to the bottom of a pan, crud.) that turn me off but her recipes always look delicious.  So when I found out that she had a cookbook coming out I immediately put it on my Christmas list.  My parents gave it to me as one of my gifts (thanks mom and dad!) and now I have half the book covered in post it notes.  I really enjoy reading cookbooks as much as I enjoy the recipes.  I like to get to know the story behind the chef and learn what makes them different.  One of the things I learned from reading Cook Like a Rock Star is that Anne Burrell is not a huge fan of black pepper.  Guess what, either am I.  In almost all of my recipes I write salt and pepper to taste as an ingredient however, I often leave out the pepper or put very little.  I know this may seem silly but it was almost liberating to read that salt and pepper DON’T always have to go together.  It is perfectly OK to leave out the pepper!  So from now on I am letting go of the rule that I somehow learned about where you add salt you add pepper.  Thanks Anne!

I followed this recipe pretty much word for word except I only used anout one-third of the pesto and as always I keep Pecorino Romano cheese in my house so that’s what I use.  Other than that the only change I would make next time is to use the full pound of sausage.  This was a fantastic recipe and I can’t wait to make some more pasta to eat with the leftover pesto! Just thinking that if you left out the sausage this would be a great meal to serve on one of those meatless nights during Lent. 

Orecchiette with Broccoli Rabe Pesto and Sausage

Source: Cook Like a Rockstar by Anne Burrell

Ingredients:

For the Pesto:

Kosher Salt
1 bunches of broccoli rabe, tough lower stems removed, coarsely chopped into 1-inch lengths
1/2 cup chopped pistachios
3/4 cup freshly grated Parmigiano
Extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup mascarpone

For the Pasta:

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1/2 pound Italian sausage, sweet or spicy, casings removed
1 pound orecchiette
Big fat finishing oil
Freshly grated Parmigiano

Directions:

For the Pesto:

1.  Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil.  Drop the rabe into the water, give it a swish, and remove it immediately, saving the water to cook your pasta in later.

2.  Reserve a cup of the rabe.  Toss the rest in a food processor and pulse, pulse, pulse until you have a coarse paste.  Add the pistachios and Parm and puree until smooth.  If it seems dry, drizzle in a little olive oil while the machine is running.  It should be slightly bitter, nutty, and creamy at the same time. Reserve.

For the Pasta:

1.  Coat a large saute pan with olive oil and bring a medium-high heat.  Add the sausage, using a spoon to break it up, and cook until brown and crumbly, 8-10 minutes.

2. Bring your broccoli rabe water back to a boil and toss in the pasta, cooking for 1 minute less than the package recommends.  Drain the pasta and add it, along with 1/2 cup reserved pasta cooking water, the reserved rabe, and two-thirds of the pesto, to the pan with the sausage.  Stir to combine and cook until the water evaporates and the pesto is clinging to the pasta.  Remove from the heat, drizzle with some big fat finishing oil, sprinkle with more Parm, and stir vigorously to combine.  Divide among bowls and serve immediately. 
Click here for a printable version of this recipe.

The dish I served this in is microwave and oven safe.  It can be found by clicking here. 

Source: Cook Like a Rockstar by Anne Burrell

Ingredients:

For the Pesto:

Kosher Salt
1 bunches of broccoli rabe, tough lower stems removed, coarsely chopped into 1-inch lengths
1/2 cup chopped pistachios
3/4 cup freshly grated Parmigiano
Extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup mascarpone

For the Pasta:

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1/2 pound Italian sausage, sweet or spicy, casings removed
1 pound orecchiette
Big fat finishing oil
Freshly grated Parmigiano

Directions:

For the Pesto:

1.  Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil.  Drop the rabe into the water, give it a swish, and remove it immediately, saving the water to cook your pasta in later.

2.  Reserve a cup of the rabe.  Toss the rest in a food processor and pulse, pulse, pulse until you have a coarse paste.  Add the pistachios and Parm and puree until smooth.  If it seems dry, drizzle in a little olive oil while the machine is running.  It should be slightly bitter, nutty, and creamy at the same time. Reserve.

For the Pasta:

1.  Coat a large saute pan with olive oil and bring a medium-high heat.  Add the sausage, using a spoon to break it up, and cook until brown and crumbly, 8-10 minutes.

2. Bring your broccoli rabe water back to a boil and toss in the pasta, cooking for 1 minute less than the package recommends.  Drain the pasta and add it, along with 1/2 cup reserved pasta cooking water, the reserved rabe, and two-thirds of the pesto, to the pan with the sausage.  Stir to combine and cook until the water evaporates and the pesto is clinging to the pasta.  Remove from the heat, drizzle with some big fat finishing oil, sprinkle with more Parm, and stir vigorously to combine.  Divide among bowls and serve immediately.

Michele’s Notes 

I followed this recipe pretty much word for word except I only used anout one-third of the pesto and as always I keep Pecorino Romano cheese in my house so that’s what I use.  Other than that the only change I would make next time is to use the full pound of sausage.  This was a fantastic recipe and I can’t wait to make some more pasta to eat with the leftover pesto! Just thinking that if you left out the sausage this would be a great meal to serve on one of those meatless nights during Lent

It’s that time again, time for the Secret Recipe Club!  If you don’t already know SRC is a group of bloggers that are assigned a secret blog and we each pick a recipe from our assigned blog and post it on ours with links to the original source.  It is a great way to discover new blogs and have others discover ours.   This month I was assigned Pepper and Sherry , a blog from England.  This was brand new to me and I there were a ton of recipes I wanted to try.  Unfortunately for this blog but wonderful for my business, the past two months have been extremely busy and I hardly cooked much at all.  I was planning on making the Cottage Pie because it has so many unique ingredients than what you normally find in Shepherd’s Pie, such as dried Shitake mushrooms and a red chile.  I will get to this as soon as I can but if you try it before me please let me know.  It looks divine!

I decided to make Appelmoes also known as Dutch Apple Sauce.  I’ve been wanting to make apple sauce (and baked apples) all season and I loved the spices that are added.  I also picked this because my nieces and nephew love apple sauce and eat it as a snack all the time.  I thought that they might like to try a homemade version and since I’ll be seeing them tomorrow it was a perfect fit.  This recipe couldn’t have been easier and yet it is still full of flavor.  You can eat it as is or use it as an accompaniment to pork or something I love…Pierogies (Steve thinks that is so weird)! I didn’t make many changes to the recipe at all.  I just left out the cardamom because I couldn’t find a small container and I didn’t want to buy a big bottle for $7 that I may not use again.  I don’t think that mattered too much.  I also reduced the amount of some of the spices because I wanted to make sure the kids would eat it and it wouldn’t be too strong on their delicate palettes.  I will post the recipe with my changes but you can view the original recipe (and check out all the other fantastic recipes) by clicking here. 

Spiced Applesauce

Ingredients:

4 cortland apples
2 tablespoons brown sugar 
1/2 tablespoon cinnamon 
1/4 tsp ground ginger 
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 
2 whole cloves

Original Recipe Source – http://pepperandsherry.com/2011/06/24/appelmoes-dutch-apple-sauce/

Ingredients:

4 cortland apples

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1/2 tablespoon cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

2 whole cloves

Directions:

Very simply, peel and chop the apples, place in the saucepan with the sugar and spices and only about 1/2 cup of water.

Bring to the boil and then cover, turn down to a low heat and cook, covered, for thirty minutes.

The apples should now be soft so bring up the heat and stir until it thickens into a good, proper sauce. (I used a potato masher so the sauce wouldn’t be too chunky for the kiddies.)