An Italian Amuse Bouche?

Oy, I missed blogging about all of the April feasts (Matzo Ball Soup, Easter dinner, etc), but will get to them next week. For tonight, I am posting a simple but delicious meal Tom made me the other night. He came over and we were trying to decide what to eat for dinner.

It was 6pm and we were starving, we decided not to make pasta fagoli (and please, pronounce it the correct way- Pasta Fah-SZOOL) since he figured it would take at least 2 hours to cook (even though I so desperately crave it. The last and I believe only time I had it was when Vini fed me a bowl 5 1/2 years ago. Go figure.)

Instead, we went to the Westide Market and Fairway to pick up basil, garlic, onions, red wine vinegar, parmesan and pecorino/romano cheese, and ridiculous expensive pine nuts (seriously, 16.99/lb?! absurd, even if it is organic.) I still need to ask him for the recipes.

Tom made his own pesto sauce for our Farfalle (bowties) and red wine vinegar glaze for the cipollini onions that he learned to make in his cooking class he took in Florence, Italy. (best boyfriend ever!) To be honest with you, I was a little hesitant when he said he was making onions as a side dish, with nothing else. As much as I like a good Allium cepa, without a burger, salad or stew to complement it, onions on their own don't really appeal to me. Well as it turned out it takes a while for the onion glaze to thicken, and we ended up eating at 8:30pm anyway. And let me tell you, those cipollinis were amazing! It probably helped that it was drenched in a syrupy mess, but seriously, I could've eaten a whole bowl of them. He said that if I was impressed by that, to just wait for the other dishes he'll cook up since he's got a whole recipe book with more impressive meals waiting to be made. I will hold him to that.

Pizza & Juice

I haven't been cooking/baking lately- at least nothing worth writing about. Therefore, I am posting about a meal from what feels like eons ago: the BEST pizza and juice combo I've ever had the pleasure of eating. It's not just any pizza and juice... it's real Italian pizza and juice.

I was looking through some of my old photos from when I was living in London, and this was during my spring break. It was taken in Bergamo, Italy in March 2006. I ate a lot of pizza while I was in Italy, but this was from a pizza shop in Cite Alta that had a variety of Sicilian slices that they cut up for you. I think they also sold pastries.

The juice (what most called "ABC Juice") was an interesting blend of carrots, oranges and apparently lemons. We drank a lot of it that week. I enjoy the fact I took pictures of my meals back then too.


Spinach, mushroom, tomato pizza with a juice box