Braised Short Ribs, Batali Style

Short ribs are not something I make often. OK, ever. Nick is not fond of them, mainly because they are so fatty. He's right of course, they are fatty. But fat equals flavor and braised short ribs are packed with it!

I acquired a package of short ribs and contemplated how I should make them for a little while as they sat in my freezer. When faced with the dilemma of how to prepare something there are several people I go to... Martha, Mario, Lidia, and Marcella. Mario won out. The recipe is simple but contains lots of flavorful ingredients. It can't miss!

OK, OK... you caught me. Really I'm making them this way because I'm always looking for an excuse to use my glorious Chantal pot!

In your own glorious pot or equally heavy bottomed skillet, heat olive oil over high heat until it starts to smoke. Sprinkle short ribs with salt and pepper and then place them in one layer on the bottom of the pot and brown on all sides.





This takes a good 15 minutes or so to do, if you do it correctly. DO NOT skimp on this step. It is very important to the outcome of the dish. Let those short ribs brown baby brown! And when they are browned on all sides, take them out of the pot and set aside.




To the pot add chopped carrots, celery, onions and garlic. I always use the celery tops. If you don't, I highly suggest you start. They are packed with flavor.




Cook the veggies until they start to brown and soften, season as you go. As those are cooking, take a can of whole tomatoes and crush them by hand. Mario says to use a 16 oz. can, but truth be told, I don't think I have ever seen a 16 oz. can of whole tomatoes. Whole tomatoes are usually in 28 oz. cans so I used a 28 oz. can of San Marzano tomatoes.




You will also need about 3 sprigs each of fresh thyme, rosemary and oregano. You can tie them together if you like, but I didn't bother doing that.



When the veggies have sufficiently browned and softened, add wine, broth, tomatoes (with juice) and herbs to the pot. Stir with wooden spoon and be sure to get all the browned bits up from the bottom of the pan. Bring the mixture to a boil and then add the short ribs back into the pot.




Then cover and place into a 375 degree oven and cook for 2 hours.

The meat is so tender and succulent. I served mine with crispy baked potatoes. But the next day I made orzo and served it with the meat and the sauce... Delish!

When you dream, do you dream of carrot cake?

Whenever my father in laws birthday rolls around I am asked to make him a cake. And whenever I ask him what kind of cake he wants, he tells me he wants something dense with a lot of nuts and stuff in it. Carrot Cake certainly fits that bill. In fact, IMO, you cannot get a better cake (that isn't chocolate of course) than Carrot Cake. The recipe I use comes from Southern Living Magazine and is far superior to any other recipe I have tried. I don't make it often because it is a rather expensive cake to make and is a bit time consuming. But the results are so worth all the effort put in!


You will first need three 9-inch cake pans lined with wax paper. The way I do this is to put a sheet of wax paper on the counter, put the pan on top of it and then trace the pan with a pencil or with a knife. The knife goes through the paper, but not hard. You still may have to cut around it. Then put the wax paper round in the bottom of the pan, then lightly grease and flour the pans. I make mine in two layers instead of three.



Grate 2 cups of carrots and set aside. You can use a food processor shredding blade for this if you like, but I just use the regular old box grater. Believe me, with all the bowls and things you use to make this cake, cleaning a food processor will become a very low priority!




Take your dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon) and stir them together.


Then in a mixer, beat the eggs, sugar, vegetable oil, buttermilk and vanilla at medium speed until smooth. A little tip... measure the oil before the buttermilk. When you then go to measure the buttermilk, none will be left in the measuring cup!



Add the flour mixture to the mixer and beat at low until blended. Then you will take the bowl off the mixer and fold in all the goodies... carrots, crushed pineapple, coconut, and nuts. The recipe calls for canned flaked coconut, but I've never used that and just use the kind in the bag. For nuts, I always use pecans with carrot cake. When well blended, pour batter evenly into pans.



Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes (or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean). Mine took a bit longer because I did two cakes instead of three.

Now comes the interesting part. The Buttermilk Glaze! While the cake is baking you can make the glaze. It is to go over the top of the cakes as soon as they are out of the oven. In a saucepan on medium-high heat, bring sugar, baking soda, buttermilk, and butter or margarine to a boil. The recipe, as you will see, calls for corn syrup but I leave it out. The cake is plenty sweet enough without it and it add nothing to the party except more calories. In fact, I only use about 1/2 cup of sugar in the glaze as well. When this mixture comes to a boil, take it off the heat and stir in vanilla extract.




When the cakes are done, drizzle the glaze over the cakes evenly. You do not have to poke holes in the cake at all. It just drinks it all in without them.




And now, the best part. That delicious cream cheese frosting that is signature Carrot Cake. There are lots of recipes for cream cheese frosting and this cake has it's own as well. I use it as a guide but use my own measurements. For me, cheesy is better than sweet. Take two 8 oz. packages of cream cheese (softened) and one stick of unsalted butter (softened) and beat together in a mixer until creamy. Slowly add 2 cups of sifted powder sugar and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. Beat until smooth and creamy. It does happen, I promise!




This cake must be completely cooled, or even chilled, before you begin to frost. Be sure to line your platter or serving plate with wax paper before you begin. As you can see, I forgot to do that here (although I was able to lift each side up slightly and get the paper under it before I started to frost the cake completely). Don't put it totally under the cake, you want to be able to pull it out when you're done frosting.





The recipe makes a lot of frosting so be generous with the filling. Then just spread it over the top and the sides.




Even if you don't think you frost cakes well, this is a very forgiving cake and mistakes are easily hidden, especially the way I decorate it.




And finally, here it is on my in laws counter after we all devoured it!

On top of Spaghetti

I've been hankering for some spaghetti and meatballs and just haven't had the time or the inclination lately to make that long simmering sauce. You know, the kind that takes 5 hours to cook but is so worth the time?

So what does one do when in that situation? Order in? Yeah, I guess that would be the obvious solution. But mine was to have a chat with my grandma and ask her how she makes her meatballs. After that discussion, my yen for the dish got even stronger. What to do!!! Then I remembered Ina Garten made spaghetti and meatballs on her show and she didn't make a long simmering sauce. What was I afraid of! Just make sauce you moron. So I did.

For the meatballs I used 2 lbs of ground turkey. Grandma never ever uses ground turkey but I like to use it and she'll never know I did it so shhh! To that I added bread crumbs, dried parsley, Italian seasoning, two eggs, half of a large onion (grated), and 5 (yes five!) cloves of garlic, grated.




Mix with your hands, they are natures best spoon. LOL who said that? I can't remember. Maybe Sara Moulton. Anyway, mix it all up with your hands and form into meatballs, about the size of a golf ball, especially if you're not using turkey because they will shrink up on you.




Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes. Or you can shallow fry them (which means to put about an inch of oil in your pan and fry them, turning to get each side browned). I did turn mine about midway through the cooking process, but you don't have to.

Now the sauce. Start out with that other half of onion, chopped in a big pan with about 3 Tablespoons of olive oil. When it's starting to look translucent, add another 5 cloves of chopped garlic. Oh come on! You know you love garlic! It's not that much. Really. Add some salt and pepper. Do not let the garlic brown! If the pot is too hot, turn it down. After a few minutes, add 1/3 cup of red wine.




Let it reduce a little then add a 28 oz can of tomatoes. I use puree, but you can use crushed or whole (and crush them by hand) or whatever you like. Bring it up to a boil then turn it down to a simmer and add some salt, pepper and Italian seasoning (if you have fresh basil use it, but add it closer to the end of the cooking process).




When the meatballs are done, add them all to the sauce, cover and let simmer for at least half an hour, more if you want. But make sure you stir so the meatballs don't stick to the bottom the pan or they may burn.

Boil your pasta. When it comes to long pasta I generally go for linguine. I like shape a little more than regular spaghetti. Add the pasta to the sauce and serve.




Add some grated Parmesan or Romano if desired.

The Fruits of my Labor Part II

In early March, you may recall, my 99 year old Grandmother showed my mother and I how to make her incredible homemade Italian sausage. I still have several pounds in my freezer because I try not to eat it too often. I want to savor it and it's not exactly figure friendly. I can't say enough how delicious it is and since it's been several weeks since we've had any, I pulled some out today and roasted it in a 350 oven for about 25 minutes.

I had been to the farmer's market again this week and picked up one of my favorite things, broccoli rabe, otherwise known as rapini.




I made it tonight with some of our homemade sausage and pasta.

Once you clean, cut off the hard stems and chop the rapini, blanch it in a pot of boiling salted water, just to let some of the bitterness escape. It doesn't have to be in the water for long. Then in a big skillet, saute some chopped garlic and add the rapini.



Our grocery store was carrying this delicious brand of pasta from Italy called Castellana that I never bought because it was pretty pricey at about $5 for a little over a one pound bag. But the store discontinued it and marked it down half price. I tried it, LOVED it and then was sad that the store discontinued it. I would imagine they were having a hard time selling it at full price when you can get Barilla for 99¢. Then one week I'm shopping and there is a grocery cart full of the pasta being clearanced out at 50¢ a bag! I bought them all!!! And now, after today I only have one left. This particular one I made today is flavored with artichoke and poppy seed.




Back to the recipe. Once the sausage is done, slice and add to the sauting garlic and rapini. Add some pasta water if the pan is starting to dry out.




Once the pasta is done, add it to the pan and toss. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil over the top and some freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese. Or better yet, some crumbled feta.

Forgive me Nick

No, not my Nick. Nick Malgeri. His Supernatural Brownies are the best. But yet, I keep playing with them, messing with them, and otherwise embellishing them. It's a compulsion I have. I got a bee in my bonnet to make Cheesecake Brownies. And as often happens, I am never satisfied with one recipe. So I combined a few. I started of course with Supernatural Brownies. I have no need to go anywhere else for my brownie base. It would be foolish to mess with perfection. So let's start there.

You know the drill. Grease your 9 x 13 pan. Preheat your oven to 350.

Start out by making the cheesecake mixture. I used one 8 oz. block of cream cheese (softened), 1/4 cup of granulated sugar, one egg and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Mix together with a mixer and set aside.




For the brownies you will need 8 oz. of semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate and two sticks of butter. Melt them together and set aside.




This time I did the recipe by hand instead of the Kitchen Aid. So whisk four eggs, then add 1 cup of granulated sugar, 1 cup of packed dark brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 2 teaspoons of vanilla.



Fold in one cup of flour and you are done! That's it. Simple ingredients that turn into deliciousness. Pour the brownie batter into prepared pan and then take the cheesecake batter and drop dollopfuls into the brownie batter. You can try and smooth it, but it's not real easy because the cheesecake batter is rather thick. I tried, but I think swirling it with a wooden skewer would probably work better.

Bake for 45 minutes and enjoy!







These are SO good. And quite honestly, I think two packages of cream cheese would be even better. What's odd is that a lot of the recipes I looked at only called for 4 oz. of cream cheese. I guess a lot of people feel that less is more, but I am of the more is more school of thought!

The PT of my Dreams

After 4 long months of my being carless, and Nick and I haven't to share our 1996 Prizm George, we bit the bullet and headed out to buy the PT Cruiser we have been dreaming of owning for 7 years. From the moment they were introduced by Chrysler in 2001, we've wanted one. We have a remote control one. We have Matchbox PT's and now, we were finally going to have a real one!!!

Friday morning we went to a local credit union and got pre-approved for a car loan. We weren't going to go shopping right away, but we decided to go to one place and take a look. They advertised having fourteen used PT Cruisers on the lot. That is what we wanted. A 2-3 year old car with low mileage. We went to Fred Martin Superstore in Barberton, Ohio. If you live in the area you know them because they are The Fred Martin Car Guys!!! They know cars! We were immediately met on the lot when we arrived by salesman Steve. He asked what we were interested in and I told him we'd take the Viper that was sitting right there in front of us. Yeah right! When we told him what we really wanted, we all hoped into a golf cart and started looking. This place is HUGE, but we found a 2007 black (exactly what I wanted) PT with chrome strips on the grill (exactly what Nick wanted) pretty quickly. Steve wasted no time getting us in that car and on the road.

You know when you have a vision of something and build it up in your mind for a really long time and then you get to experience it and the reality is a huge disappointment? This was NOT one of those times!!! The car, er... technically it's a van, drives beautifully. I started out driving it and then halfway back to the dealership Nick and I did a Chinese fire drill and he took over. We were smitten. BUT we also knew that Steve was going go in for the kill. He showed us the best one they had on the lot that met our criteria. Nick decided we should keep looking so Steve showed us a few others. A 2006 silver. A 2005 purple. Neither held a candle to the first one. That gorgeous black car that I knew I wanted more than anything the first moment my foot touched the gas peddle. It was love.

While driving the silver car, Nick and I decided that we were going to hold out, not buy today. Then I suggested a price that was $2,000 less than asking price for the black car or $2,000 less than asking price for the silver one. All he could say is no. Well in typical salesman fashion, Steve asked us those very pointed questions... "If the terms were what you wanted, would you buy today?" Nick didn't want to commit to that question and kept answering him with things like, "It's really nice." Steve would kind of chuckle and then ask him another question with similar results. When he left us alone for a little while we discussed between ourselves that we were not going to buy a car at the first place we went and buy the first car we drove. So we had to back each other up and make sure the other didn't cave. I told Nick that we have to be prepared out walk out the door no matter what he says!

It became very clear to Steve that we wanted the black car so negotiations began. We were not going to budge. We wanted the car, sure, but we thought we should shop around to other dealers too. Steve told us about their guarantee, that we weren't going to find a better car for a better price anywhere and if we did they would refund the difference plus 10%. So Steve went back and forth between us and his boss... so he says. I suspect that they just go into another office, chat with whoever is in there for about 5-10 minutes, then come back with a revised offer. This went back and forth many times. We wore him down, he wore us down. Finally the offer we couldn't refuse was given to us. They came down over $2700!!! We HAD to take it! Not only that, the car comes with an 8 year/80,000 mile warranty and 12 free oil changes. We'd be fools to walk out that door. We didn't. We made the deal!! And Steve sighed a huge sigh of relief to finally get a definitive answer from us.

Even though we got pre-approved, we had to go to the finance department and sign all the paperwork. OMG, what a trip this was! The finance guy, Kam was hilarious! He was friendly and funny, personable and fun. We talked and talked and talked, oh and eventually signed papers. We talked about everything, where he's from and how he's going back home for his father's 80th birthday. He asked how we met and how long we've been together. When we told him we have been together 20 years and married for 14 he asked what the hold up was! Funny thing is, HE has been engaged for 12 years!!! I couldn't believe he asked us what the hold up was after finding out that piece of info! And then, every once in awhile he would say something like, "I really like those colors in your hair." Why thank you. lol He asked me if it was done professionally (it's not). He told me I remind him of Cyndi Lauper (LOL). He said I look like I belong behind the wheel of a PT Cruiser (I do!). I swear, if my husband hadn't been sitting next to me, I'd think he was coming on to me. Don't get me wrong, he talked to Nick too. But we kept coming back to me, what I do for a living (Nick of course pitched him hard on hiring me for a catering job... ever the PR guy, my Nick), and on and on and on. I never laughed so much during a tense signing away of all our money! He really liked to talk, so much so that we were in his office for well over an hour and half and by the time we were done, Steve had left for the day and we never got a chance to thank him that one last time. But we have our car and I couldn't be happier!!!!! We have decided to name him Eddie (as in "... and the Cruisers"). All he needs is that kick ass yellow and orange flamejob!

The pie quest continues!

When I got my copy of A Passion for Baking by Marcy Goldman recently, it came with a little book, also by Marcy, called Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate. There are several things in it I've been meaning to try and this pie is one of them. And then, as I was perusing other food blogs I saw almost the exact recipe on Bakerella and knew I had to try it. I can't stand it anymore!! It looks too good not to try.

Since the recipe itself calls for a frozen pie crust, I don't feel like I cheated by not making my own. Hey I was just following the recipe! All you do is whisk the batter ingredients together, then fold in the nuts and chocolate chips, pour into the crust, bake and you're done!







It's so good and not nearly as sweet as I thought. But you may want to serve it with some vanilla ice cream as Marcy recommended. Enjoy!


Blondie Chocolate Chip Pie
(recipe by Marcy Goldman)

2 large eggs
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

1 frozen 9 inch deep dish pie crust

Preheat oven to 325. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a mixing bowl, whisk eggs with flour, both sugars, butter and vanilla. Fold in chocolate chips and nuts. Pour filling into pie crust. Place pie on the prepared baking sheet. (Do this to avoid unfortunate mishaps like these). Bake for 1 hour. Serve with ice cream and hot fudge sauce if desired.