Fast winds and fast times



From NBC 33 news photos

When I had just gotten home from the cooking class yesterday the winds began to blow and the rain came down furiously.  Frank kept yelling, Microburst!  and I thought he was nuts.  But after surveying the damage in our close area it may well have been one of those mini tornadoes.  We were without lights from 4:30 pm to 8 this morning.  Telephone poles were twisted and one was completely snapped in half.  And trees were down everywhere.  One apartment wall was stripped completely of its bricks, which were then hurled at this poor woman driving by!  Not funny, but can you imagine seeing 15 bricks heading toward you for no apparent reason?

Yesterday was the Italian Dinner Party Cooking Class with my favorite chef Enzo.  He showed us how to cook a 4 course dinner party for 8 with the most spectacular dishes and still have time to socialize with our friends. Some highlights from the class, well, heck you just want to see the food, don't you!

Here he is roasting a pepper.  Isn't he a dreamboat?  A good looking man who cooks like this?  I could just near abouts leave Frank (who only vacuums).

Is there anything better than Marscapone Cheese?  Not in this world.  Mix it with some strawberries and whipping cream and you get these beauties!

Yeah buddy, can you say food orgy?

Next he set up the Gorgonzola potatoes.  here it is just as it came out of the oven.  The hunk of Gorgonzola he used was incredibly beautiful and streaked with blue.  Again the whipping cream, but not too much!

The pasta course started with sea scallops and ended with the most incredible lasagna pasta you have ever seen.  He does his lasagna with tiny flat noodles with ruffly edges, not the big thick one with ruffly edges.  Hmm.  They provided a lot of surface for the Alfredo mother sauce to stick so you really didn't need a lot of sauce.

Then the salade course was Scaloppine Maiale.  He used pork rather than veal and showed us how to butcher the loin for use as thin medallions for the arugula and Caresse salad.  Another masterpiece from the hands of the master!

Here are the salads (and wine!!) waiting for the medallions to arrive before being distributed to the masses. 

 

This is what it looked like as just before I dove into the plate with wild abandon!

I see I am doing this all backward.  But the first thing Enzo did was to create an Antipasto plate on his grandmother's dish from way back in Italy.  It came here with the grandparents and got used at his father's restaurant in New Orleans and now we had the good fortune to share food from it.

His Antipasto consisted of the roasted bells, balsamic mushrooms (what are they called, those big ones?), hard salami made into cones with buffalo mozzarella inside, a wild assortment of olives, grape tomatoes with olive oil and mozzarella, Parmesan cheese sliced thin thin thin, cappicoa or prosciutto, and some tiny thin lemon asparagus spears.

Don't you want to take that man home with you and give him anything he wants in return for his cooking?

glen

Italian Cooking, I was the Chef's Pet and the so very dead dog.......

Went with my  buddy Ann to an Italian Cooking Class.  The Master Chef who taught us to make the most wonderful sauces works here in town at the Hollywood Casino.  He was Head Chef in Melbourn Australia, somewhere big in NYC and in Los Angeles.  He is really Italian!  Born in New Orleans to two Italian parents, he and his wife Annabell were married in Venice, Italy.  And he has two sons Vincenzo and Caruso.  Now THAT'S Italian!

He made Panned Chicken with Caprese Salad on top with the most amazing (and $50 a bottle) balsamic vinegar.  He said the best dessert was a good strong vanilla ice cream with this vinegar on top.  And yes, it was amazing.  I bought a $22 bottle which was good, but not as sweet as the one he used.  Who would have thought vinegar and ice cream would work together.

And he made Talipia and Artichoke with Lemon Sauce as well as a nice fresh Tomato Mother Sauce for the homemade pasta. 

Then he fixed Freshly Made Italian Sausage with peppers for an incredible appetizer. 

We drank five bottles of amazing Italian and Australian wine paired to the dish he was cooking.  And the white wine he used went into the Mother Sauce.

Everyone has a good Mother Sauce.  And we just go from there with it for different uses.  His was slightly different from mine, but we went the same places afterwards.  No one in the room used butter in their sauce to finish it like Chef Enzo and I did!  So that was cool.   And they all cooked with the casings on the sausage, unlike Chef Enzo and I.  Another cool. 

He told us that he cooks for people and their dinner parties if we were interested.  He involves the guests and makes an evening of it concluding with the meal.  I said, What do you charge?  Like $10,000? 

He never blinked but didn't correct me either.  I guess I can't afford him.

DiNozzo has been a bad bad puppy.  He stole the strawberries from the Farmer's Market this morning.  Then went back for the carrots. 

But the worst thing he has done since he has been with us is this:

And these are the flowers I will bury him under when I kill him. 

glen