Timpano First Attempt

A while back, knowing I was a foodie, my friend recommended me to watch “Big Night“, a movie from 1996 about two Italian brothers, one chef, one manager, trying to make their restaurant work in America.

The movie was a lot about food, and one of the dish showcased in the movie was Timpano — a baked pasta dish that looked amazingly stunning and interesting, decided to test the recipe.

In my opinion, Timpano is best described as a pasta cake: an outer pasta sheet encasing more pasta, meatballs, salami, eggs, cheese and sauce.

I consult 2 recipes: one from New York Times and one from Food Network.

Initial glance at the recipes looked so daunting, with many elements to make from scratch: outer pasta skin, meatballs, sauce; I settled with store bought meat balls and tomato sauce to save some time for this test of concept, and I made half the recipe in case of disaster.

Outer pasta dough was easy to put together (I used the New York Times dough recipe), but was not easy to make thin — specially I am not a pro in dough-making. Continue reading →

Molecular Gastronomy Fun — One-Bite Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup

It was time to play with my molecular gastronomy kit again.

I am definitely using it way less frequently than I thought, this experiment was only the second time I used the kit after the making of arugula spaghetti.

One of the deterrent was the fact that I made a huge mess in the kitchen every time I played with it — no exception this time.

I wanted to try spherification, or basically, encapsulation; and decided to go for an encapsulated tomato soup over grilled cheese sandwich — mini sandwiches that were meant to be taken in one bite.

I watched the accompanying video and followed the instruction.

The video showed a square vase being used to mix the 2g of sodium alginate with water.

I made the mistake of using a much larger bowl, which I thought would make the spherification process easier with more space to work in.

However, the larger bowl made the depth of liquid shorter, and when I placed the hand-held blender in the water, water squirted everywhere!

Mess!

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What’s for Dinner?

Beef is a must when my Dad is around.

In the past, his favorite was El Gaucho’s fantastic steaks.

This year, I decided to make prime rib for him.

It was not my first time making prime rib, however, I do not make it that often just because beef is not a big part of our diet.

When I made it recently (twice actually; because my Dad loves it so much, and he thought it was better than the expensive Red Cow steaks), I was being reminded how easy it was to make prime rib.

Aside from buying great quality meat, the key to success is an accurate meat thermometer.

If an au jus is desired, be sure to use an oven and stove top safe pan for roasting and making the sauce.

A perfect dish for large party, give it a try!

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My “Skinier” Meat Ravioli

Once upon a time, I brought my Dad somewhere to have dinner, and he chose meat-filled ravioli.

He loved them and remembered them fondly.

In recent years, it seemed difficult to find meat-filled ravioli at restaurants; ravioli seemed to have become the default vegetarian choice: commonly cheese-filled, and other times, mushroom or squash-filled.

With my Dad’s recent visit, I have decided to make sausage-filled ravioli; yet for health reasons, I wanted to make sure he reduced his meat intake: came the idea of filling the ravioli partially with tofu.

I made lasagna normally with tofu anyway to be dairy-free, and to reduce calories and greasiness — figured that ravioli with tofu mixed in would not be far-fetched.

Well, the ravioli turned out creamy and delicious.

Here is what I did:

For Pasta Dough — recipe courtesy of William Sonoma’s, makes 1.5 lb. pasta

INGREDIENTS

2 cups semolina flour

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 tsp. salt

3 eggs @ room temperature

3 tbsp. water

DIRECTIONS

Combine all ingredient in a food processor and pulse

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Baingan Bharta Sausage Spaghetti

This is my double fusion dish!

Baingan Bharta is the Indian vegetarian roasted eggplant curry.

First attempt in making Baingan Bharta, I wanted to be able to freeze them and have them for quick lunch at home.

I like Chinese or Japanese eggplants and their soft skin, and decided to use them in the Indian recipe — fusion #1.

I followed this recipe online with spices shortcut — I bought a Baingan Bharta spice mix from my neighborhood Indian store so I didn’t have to buy garam masala, cumin, cumin seeds, chili and coriander powder (which later found out I had them at home anyway).

Instead of garlic paste, I used finely chopped garlic; and canned tomatoes place of fresh.

I used only olive oil in the recipe for health reasons, and keeping the recipe vegan-friendly.

Continue reading →