Movies That Make Me Go Mmmmmmm

Movies That Make Me Go Mmmmmmm

What's your favorite film food feast?

A wiseguy in jail still knows how to cook a mean marinara.  Is that a basil plant to Paulie's right?

Impulsive? Me? Well, we are talking about a woman who moved to London with a man she knew for two months. 

My impulsive nature did more than just land me a husband and three British kids. It also causes me to cook constantly, impulsively, and it takes little more than watching Paulie in Goodfellas slicing garlic with a razor blade "so thin it liquefies in the pan" to cause me to leap off the sofa and whip up a batch of marinara.

Here are a few of my other favorite big screen slurp shots that really get my creative juices flowing.

• Moonstruck: I love the scene where Cher's mom is cooking "eggs in the hole", carefully cracking an egg into the hole of a slice of Italian bread that is sizzling in a cast iron skillet.  Every time I see that movie, I've gotta make that dish! 

• Something's Gotta Give (by Nancy Meyers): The food market scene and the dinner table are glorious.  But the food that gets me cooking is the scrambled eggs the two lovers eat out of the big stainless steel pan at the counter with two forks. Oh!  I'm a cheap date.  Two forks, an egg and candles please. I also absolutely MUST go to Le Grand Colbert in Paris for "the best roast chicken on earth". 

Le Grand Colbert...Renata's Kitchen Field Trip Anyone?

Kitchen from It's Complicated where the two lovers share scrambled eggs by candlelight from a pan

• It's Complicated (Also by Nancy Meyers): OK, there are so many food shots in this movie it is hard to choose.  It's not the Croque Monseur, the chocolate cake, the roast chicken, the three pies (apple, blueberry or plum!), or even the lavender honey ice cream Meryl Streep eats in the bathtub.  The dish I most salivate over is this potato/green bean/walnut pesto dish that she and the kids eat at the kitchen table when her guilty ex-husband sadly hits the road with no supper.  That's a cautionary tale, folks.  Don't tick off the greatest chef on earth! 

"The Bakery" that Meryl Streep's character owns.  Don't worry, she's still like us,and has to hold up her eyebrow when she's watching tv cuz it droops so much. 

• Goodfellas: When Paul Sorvino uses a razor blade to slice garlic so thin it "liquefies in the pan" I start rummaging through the drawers of  the house for loose razors, only to find one or two old pink Lady Bick shavers. These don't make great sauce. Besides, I'm a fan of leaving the garlic clove only densely smashed and sorta left whole.  It makes for a sweeter sauce.  But I really have always wondered if the garlic really DOES liquefy in the pan.  

So what's your favorite film feast?  Email me at renataskitchen@gmail.com or post to my Facebook page Renata's Kitchen!

 In the meantime, enjoy dinner and a movie tonight.  There is no better combination to soothe the weary senses!

Renata's Rib Fest is ON!

The vegan has left the building.
Renata's Rib Fest is ON!

 When ribs go on sale, snatch them up and I will show you this super easy recipe. 

 Lick, nibble, chew, suck, chomp, repeat. Slurp!

INGREDIENTS:

• 1-2 large packages of pork ribs
• 1-2 bottles or so of your favorite BBQ sauce (I use Weber now because it does not contain HFCS, but Sweet Baby Ray's was used in this photo)
• 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper

COOK:

Put raw ribs into large pot and fill water to just cover ribs.  

Sprinkle a teaspoon of garlic powder, a teaspoon of salt, a little pepper, turn on heat and simmer for an hour. 

Pull cooked ribs out of water and put into large roasting pan.  

Cover with your favorite BBQsauce (I use Weber which has no high fructose corn syrup but have used Sweet Baby Rays/Open Pit in the past).

Cook in the oven at 325F for about 90 minutes.  Move pan under broiler and broil on high for about 5-10 minutes until ribs look gooey, dark and finger licking sticky. 
Serve with or without utensils, depending on how you like to eat your ribs!

STORY:

My vegan goddess and first born baby flies the nest tomorrow to enroll at U of I. Once I am done shedding my tears, it's time to fill the void with a few of my favorite things that I have been putting on the back burner (literally in this case!) for a long time.  Yes, I realize most people would not think cooking meat was considered a hobby, but what can I say? I was born to cook!

SO! The next couple of months will follow with my return to the world of cooking more meat. Yes, I still have one vegetarian at home, my youngest daughter Olivia.  But she is so tiny that I can get her protein needs nicely met quite easily.  Then it is on to the meatfest for my son Lucas, my husband Peter and me!

Next week my friend is coming here to prepare smothered turkey wings for me.  It's all I can think of ever since we got off the phone.  In the meantime, I want to share this super easy  recipe for BBQ ribs.  Yes, you can certainly put them on the BBQ instead of the oven but I have never done it that way.  If you have, please let me know!  I love to learn new things and it takes a village to raise a great home chef.

Dedicated to my vegan goddess,  Sophie Gough, who I will dearly miss eating at the kitchen counter

How You Doin'? "Mezza-Mezza" Pasta

Mezza Mezza Pasta

Half Roasted Tomato/Half Butter and Cheese Mezzi Rigatoni Dinner

***click here for 1)  Recipe for Red 2) Second Recipe for Red

Recipe for White: 1/2 box DeCecco Mezzi Rigatoni cooked in heavily salted water, drain and mix with 4 T organic butter, 2 T grated Parmesan cheese

In Italian families if you ask someone "how you doin'?" you may hear the answer, "mezza-mezza".  This kinda means "so-so" in English, or, in other words, half good, half bad.  

Let's face it.  Most of us live in this mezza-mezza world by the time dinner rolls around.  Maybe that's why this dish is so popular with families.  Not only is the pasta shape half the size of regular rigatoni,  but we like to dish out half tomato sauce, half butter and cheese.

The nice thing about the smaller mezzi rigatoni, and making one batch of red, one of butter/cheese, is that you can mix and match quite nicely...even per bite!

This is our 'go to' dish in our house when we have friends over, or even if it's just our family. The red sauce is good for the vegan, the butter/cheese is good for the vegetarian and the rest of us, and we mix and match a little meat or bean/lentil dish for the meat/non-meat eaters. 

It's so fun to see who sticks with all red, who picks all white, and who mixes them to form a lovely creamy tomato sauce.  

When all of the different people come to the counter to load up their plates, most of the mouths go from "mezza-mezza" to "Mamma mia!"

You can't please all of the people all of the time, but you can please some of the people half of the time.  Huh?

Renata's Smashing Marinara (No chopping required!)

Renata's Smashing Marinara Sauce

No chopping, no mincing, no dicing

Some of my best recipes come from being frenzied, lazy, or in a hurry.  This recipe is smashing, I promise!

INGREDIENTS: 

• *One 28 ounce can Italian peeled plum tomatoes, blitzed very briefly in blender, with 1/4 can water, just to make it smooth (*I love Carmelina San Marzano Tomatoes in the yellow can)
• 4-5 T extra virgin olive oil (I call these 4-5 'glugs')
• 4-5 big, fat, juicy cloves garlic that you smash with the side of your biggest knife so it comes apart and is kinda squished apart, maybe it even falls apart a little...get your body weight on it and SMASH your day's stress on them!
• salt and pepper to taste (1 tsp salt for me, but  that may be too salty for you. Start with a little and taste at end to add more if you like)

COOK: 

In a large pan, throw your lovely smashed garlic cloves onto a beautiful pool of olive oil and turn your heat on to medium heat.  

When the garlic begins to smell gorgeous but not before it turns brown, add your blended tomatoes/water mixture, salt and pepper and stir to combine.  

Cook for 30 minutes on medium/medium-high heat until sauce is thick and luscious. That's it! This is one sweet sauce.  By not chopping the garlic, you get all the natural sugar and no bitterness from all the surface area being exposed. 

You will love this sweet, smashing, sensational sauce! Renata's go-to original. 

NOTES:  Remove garlic cloves afterward if you wish and discard.  Or mix them into the pasta and let people decide whether or not to pop them in their mouths!

*Open your can of tomatoes and carefully pour the whole kaboodle in the blender.  Pour away from you so you don't splatter your pretty shirt! (Oh yeah, or wear an apron, oops.) If you use Carmelina tomatoes they are quite thick, so add 1/4 can of water and swirl it around to get all that liquid gold off the sides of the can.  The extra water will give your beautiful tomatoes a chance to cook a little longer before they reduce all the natural sweet sugars out and won't become thick so soon.  

*I also like Muir Glen Organic tomatoes. ALWAYS get peeled whole tomatoes! Think about it. Chopped stuff has already had the surface area exposed. (Hey--is this a recipe or a geometry problem?) Demand only the whole story! Then blitz those babies yourself.  Mmmmm.

Sophie's Vegan Chocoluscious Chip Cookies

Sophie's Chocoluscious Chip Cookies

(..that the rest of us don't care are vegan)

Vegan? Really? Didn't notice. I was lulled into a chocolate coma. 

My daughter is a vegan baking genius. I have begged her to take her college fund and open up her own bakery but she wants to explore astrophysics and biology.  Go figure.  These cookies are from the mind of a choco-mad scientist. Enjoy!

• 2 C flour*
• 3/4 C sugar*
• 3/4 C brown sugar
• 1/4 C maple syrup* 
• 1/2 C fresh pressed virgin coconut oil (should be a solid)*
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 T ground flax seed whisked with 3T water (let stand 3 mins--you can buy the flax seed already ground)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 T soy milk* 
• 1 (12 oz)pkg Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips 
• 1 C walnuts (optional--and chop them up a little)

*Note--Sophie used organic ingredients marked with asterisk. They break the bank, but are truly worth the flavor. If you absolutely cannot afford organic virgin coconut oil, you can use vegan "butter" alternative or Crisco. (If you live in Elmhurst, you can borrow 1/2 C of ours!) If you cannot afford organic maple syrup, get ordinary maple syrup, but I wouldn't use regular pancake syrup. Email me with any questions at renataskitchen@gmail.com if you get into a bind with ingredients! I am always happy to take questions. Food is my life!

----------------

Preheat oven to 350F and line your cookie sheets with parchment paper for best results

Directions:

In a large bowl first mix wet ingredients with a big ol' spoon.  Next, add dry ingredients and combine. Lastly, add chocolate chips and walnuts if using.

Drop spoonfuls onto cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (we have never tried them on greased cookie sheet, but you can try! Sophie has excellent results with parchment paper, the cookies turn out beautifully).

Bake at 350F 18-22 minutes or until all evenly baked, with centers about same color as outer edges.

 

Da vegan chef Sophie.

Vegan chocolate chip cookie and glass of almond milk.

Baba's Masterpiece: pan roasted tomato spaghettini

Baba's Masterpiece--pan roasted tomato spaghettini

(a.k.a. "You just got schooled by your dad" sauce)

Ingredients:

Baskets full of herbs on the veranda at my parents' house

• basket of garden fresh tomatoes
• fist fulls of garden fresh herbs (Baba used mostly flat leaf Italian parsley and a little rosemary here)
• half bulb of garlic
• copious olive oil
• salt and pepper and a little sugar for sprinkling
• *1 pound box DeCecco #11 spaghettini

"You roasted them for two hours at 350F?" I asked my dad, (a.k.a. Baba).  "Don't they burn?" 

"No!" Baba said, then tilted his head, "Well, there is a little brown on the bottom of the pan, you can see it, but it tastes great and I like it real dry and sweet."

I picked up the fork and twirled a small mound in the round, metal pan. (This is home, we dive in at the counter when necessary.) "I'm not that hungry," I said, "I'll just try a little--"

"Oh my GOD!" I said out loud.   

A phrase popped into my head as I exhaled the artistic genius of this simple and exquisite dish: 'You just got schooled by da master'.

Directions: preheat oven to 350F

1. Coat the bottom of a large oven roasting pan with olive oil.(6-8T)  Nestle cored and halved tomatoes face up until nicely snuggled in their pan. (Depending on size of tomatoes, size of your pan, 6-ish tomatoes.)
2. Finely chop half a bulb of garlic (non-Italians, this is half bulb, not half clove! about 6-8 cloves) and sprinkle across bed of tomatoes.
3. Finely chop 2-3 fist fulls of fresh flat leaf Italian parsley and a pinch of fresh and finely chopped rosemary (rosemary optional), sprinkle across bed of tomatoes.
4. Season with salt, pepper, and just a tiny pinch of sugar one each tomato. 
5. Drizzle pan of loaded tomatoes with copious olive oil (don't be stingy folks, load 'em up-- a  teaspoon/tomato as a guide, but go with your gut.)
6. Bake them uncovered for 1.5-2 hours at 350F.  "I like 'em real dry and real roasted," Baba said.
7.  When tomatoes are done roasting, pull them out and with a fork and knife, cut them into fine pieces, using a criss-cross method until you have a very finely minced, thick sauce.
8. Cook 1 pound DeCecco #11 spaghettini in plenty of salted water.  Toss cooked spaghetti straight in the pan of finely chopped, roasted tomato mixture.  The thinner 'spaghettini' is an excellent marriage of sauce and pasta here. The finer strands are an outstanding canvas to hold on to the thick, sweet tomatoes, yet stand up firmer than angel hair so you can really sink your teeth into every herb roasted bite.

* If you can't find #11, then use regular DeCecco spaghetti. Mariano's, Pete's Fresh Market, Frankie's Deli usually carry this size.

The finer 'spaghettini' stands up to sauce, yet slips through the thick, sweet tomatoes easily.

Another glorious creation I watched my dad build in the 1970's: the stone bridge over the creek at home.

The 'Florida Room", at home.  Peter and I exchanged our wedding vows in the background on the raised bed in front of family and friends over 20 years ago. 

Shiitake, sun-dried tomato, basil and garlic in almond milk, walnut cream sauce over whole wheat linguine

If ever there was a vegan recipe to try--this is IT!

Shiitake, sundried tomato, basil and garlic in almond milk, walnut cream sauce over whole wheat linguine

cook time: less than 10 minutes

• one package chopped shiitake mushroooms (Or about 2C)
• 1-2 cups fresh basil
• 6-8(+/-) garlic
• 1 C walnuts
• 1 (7 oz approx) jar drained sundried tomatoes (I used Alessi but let me know what ya love!)
• 2C unsweetened almond milk
• 1 T plain flour
• 1/4 cup white wine 
• 1/4 cup water (from pasta you are cooking at same time)
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (optional, or +/-)
• 1/2tsp salt (+/-)
• 4T olive oil
• 1 pound whole wheat linguine (I used organic DeLallo)

On cutting board chop mushrooms (if not already purchased chopped), fresh basil, walnuts, garlic, sun dried tomatoes.  Slice 'em, chop 'em, nothing has to be perfect, this is gonna be a heavenly concoction. 

Put large pan of water on to boil pasta.

In separate large pan, heat oil on medium high heat and add all chopped ingredients, stir to combine and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add white wine and get ready to be blown away by heavenly smell.   Sprinkle flour over cooked mixture and combine to coat.  Add almond milk and stir to combine, it will become thick fairly quickly, about 2-3 minutes.  Add cayenne and salt if using and taste to adjust seasoning (I like to blow my head off with heat, some people-- not so much.) Turn off heat and wait for your pasta to cook. 

Boil your linguine and right before draining, dip a coffee mug in and grab a cup of water ("cooking liquor") for rescue trick later. 

Heap linguine into largest serving bowl and top with your thick, rich, 'cream' sauce. Fluff with two forks and get all your crown jewels of walnuts, tomatoes, mushrooms glistening on top. 

If your pasta is a bit thick and not 'slippery' enough, grab your reserved 'rescue mug' of cooking liquor water.  

This is true with all dishes where you  may have pasta that sticks together. Add a little of your cooking liquor at a time, just to get it juicy, slippery, and saucy enough so every glorious strand of linguine is bathing in the flavors, with just enough sauce oozing off in the plate to make you wanna twirl that linguine and grab every last drop off the plate.

Notes: If there is anyone who doesn't like to run into a big hunk of walnut, you can blitz them in a small food processor if you wish, but only long enough to make small, fine bits, not paste.  

Top with extra torn basil leaves for garnish.  

This is a cream dream of a dish and will stun your meat loving audiences.  Carnivores and vegetarians will never miss the full fat dairy cream.  

vb