Delizioso!

For a few months now, I have been telling my mom that we should make Braciole (pronounced "bra'zhul"), which is a delizioso Italian dish. When my brother called my mom from five hours away and said he wanted Braciole, that did the magic trick and as crazy as it sounds, it became our plan to make a wonderful Italian feast... the day after Thanksgiving. Suddenly the thought of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and all the Thanksgiving goodness got shoved to the back of my mind!

My dad's aunts (the Italian side of the family) came out to visit a few years back and passed on some of the tricks and recipes to my mom for some of the amazing dishes that my dad's side of the family would make. If you didn't know my mom and you had a bite of one of these Italian dishes, you'd probably never guess that she ISN'T Italian. If you ever have the chance to join in on one of the oh so common cooking/eating parties at the Angelastro house, you're lucky!

Okay, okay... I'll get to the good part of all of this. Pictures of all the goodness!

 My mom ground up a mixture of fresh meats to create these round little masterpieces:

 The meatballs have fresh parsley, bread crumbs, spices and of course, garlic!

 While the meatballs were baking, the sauce was being created. After my dad's aunts came for their visit and spent a week cooking in my mom's kitchen, they decided she needed a new addition for her kitchen - They sent her a ginormous pot! This pot fits enough sauce for a small army of hungry guests, which is usually what happens when people find out my mom is cooking.

 The sauce is best when started early in the morning (or even the night before) and simmers all day long. 

When the meatballs are done baking, those get added to the simmering sauce. 

 Oh the smells! It could literally be smelt from the sidewalk outside of my parents house.

Now for the star of the show.... Braciole! 

Braciole is thin slices of beef (we used flank steak), filled with a mixture of parmesan, parsley, garlic (of course!), bread crumbs and pepper then rolled up and tied up with cooking string or held closed with a toothpick.

 

Some good friends came over to enjoy the flavors and ended up getting to do some hands on learning. 

Even Little Miss Hannah, who is 4, helped with the rolling!

The Braciole is then either baked or pan fried in it's own juice or a little bit of olive oil. We chose the baking method this time since we were making so many.

Once cooked, just like the meatballs, they were added to the simmering pot of sauce.

The best part of cooking everything... the taste testing through out the process! (And the company.) It's like appetizers and the entree all in one. Even better with a nice glass of red wine as your assistant :)

One of our friends, Elsa, brought a great addition... fresh Italian cookies from a small local place, Italia Panetteria and Deli. Yumm!

Are you drooling yet?!

pseUDONym

I had another "Ah there's still a lot more veggies I need to use up before they go bad!" moment the other night. I must say, I definitely impressed myself with this one. It turned out SO good! So much flavor, and even a nice spicy bite! Teriyaki sauce was the inspiration for this dish. I had originally made some couscous (one of my favorite sides!) but then after the chicken and vegetables were done and I realized how wonderful it tasted, it hit me that I actually had some Udon noodles tucked away in the cupboard. So the couscous (that I had actually already cooked) got shoved to the side in tupperware and out came the noodles! I'm so glad I remember those, it really made this dinner perfect! Alright so enough blabbering... here it is:

Elements needed to create the masterpiece:
(Yeah, you actually get a recipe this time! - - but just remember, I very
rarely ever measure anything so this is my guesstimate after the fact!)

2 Chicken Breasts

1 small Zucchini

1 small Yellow Squash

2 cups Broccoli

6 medium to large Mushrooms

1/4 White Onion

2 cloves Garlic

1/4 cup Jicama

1 package Udon Noodles

1 T Cream Sherry

1 cup Chicken Broth

1/2 cup Teriyaki Sauce

Olive Oil

Garlic Chili Sauce
1/4 cup Sliced Almonds

Spices:

Black Pepper

Salt

Red Pepper Flakes


What to do with all those wonderful ingredients:

Start off by cutting up all of the vegetables into chunks and set aside. Steam the broccoli until slightly tender (you don't want it too soft) and set aside for later once cooked.

Cook the chicken with 1/2 of a cup the chicken broth and the teriyaki sauce. over medium to high heat. Once it's mostly cooked through, turn off the heat, cut the chicken into bite size pieces the continue to cook the chicken. Add a dash of pepper and your desired amount of garlic chili sauce (depending on how spicy you like it -- me, I like it spicy!). Once completely cooked, set chicken (and juice) aside in a separate bowl.

In the same pan, add a little bit of olive oil and add your onions. Once they start to brown, scoot them to the edges of the pan, add a little bit more olive oil in the center and place your mushrooms in the pan. Add a sprinkle of salt and the cream sherry over the mushrooms. Cook until tender.

Go ahead, sneak a taste! I'm sure you won't be able to keep yourself from doing so!

Stir in the rest of the vegetables (zucchini, squash, jicama, garlic) to the onion and mushroom mix. Add the remaining 1/2 of a cup of chicken broth and sprinkle in some of the red pepper flakes (again, if desired). Cover and let the veggies simmer for a few minutes.

In a separate pan, bring water to a boil and add the Udon noodles. I made my noodles al dente.

Wait... is it still called "al dente" when
you are cooking Asian noodles?? :)

This took about 10-15 minutes.

Stir in the chicken and broccoli to your veggie mix until everything is heated through. Sprinkle in the sliced almonds. When your noodles are ready, dish em up and top them off with the chicken and veggies!

Hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

Hurry! Before this goes bad!

During my last trip to the grocery store, I bought a bunch of produce and almost forgot about all of it until tonight while scavenging through my fridge. I didn't want it to all go to waste so I took everything out of the drawer to see what I could create for dinner, in attempt to save the poor veggies before they turned fuzzy! yuck.

I cut up a little bit of everything that was living in my produce drawer: red potatoes, onion, zucchini, squash, mushrooms and ripped up some basil leaves.

(I bet you my mom is reading this and chuckling to herself
due to the fact that I would fight trying mushrooms for about 23.5 years
of my life... and yes, those are mushrooms. In my kitchen. Sshh!)

I started out by cooking the red potatoes in a little bit of olive oil (and some pepper) to brown them up a bit. Once they got some color, I moved them outta the way to make room for the mushrooms. Threw in a tiny bit more olive oil in the center with some sea salt and placed the mushrooms in the center of the pan. Then I added the two things that cause these fungi freaks to taste quite... uhm... delicious:

After creating an amazing fancy version of Macaroni and Cheese, I have learned that sauteing the mushrooms with Cream Sherry does the trick of turning those bad boys into something quite tasty. And of course, you can never go wrong with garlic!

Once the mushrooms were sauteed nicely, I moved those aside to make room for the onions. Once the onions were a little brown and began to soften, I added the zucchini and squash to the mix and topped it with the torn up basil leaves:


I used a little dash of each of these to season everything up a bit. I covered the pan for a few minutes to let it all cook (on medium-low heat) to let the zucchini and squash soften up. PS: This smelt amazing!! Once it all had a chance to cook through, I dished some up and topped it off with a little bit of cheese. I used Feta cheese, but I think some Parmesan or maybe even some Goat cheese would have been a better choice (although, the Feta wasn't bad!).

Ta-Da! Not too bad for a last minute, hurry and use everything
up type of meal! It was quick, healthy and... tasted really good! :)