There Are No Absolutes in Life-Only Vodka...

I don't really know where that quote is from, but I know that it does relate to tonight's dish. I'll preface this entry by saying that I think I have found my new favorite thing to make. Yes, I have a lot of favorite things to make. But this dish is definitely in the top ten. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...Vodka Sauce!!

Seeing as I live on a dry campus, this was a covert operation that had to be conducted off campus. You may be thinking, "Brianne, you cook the alcohol out of this sauce and you hardly use any at all." You may also be noting that I've never actually disclosed what college campus I live on in any entry (however if you know me, then you would already know). All that being said, by the off chance that a college administrator looks at this blog and figures out who it is and where they are, I am not about to get kicked off campus for making sauce. End of story.

I always thought Vodka Sauce would be a long, complex process (don't ask me why. Delicious things always seem like they should be very time consuming). I was wrong. It all starts with some marinara sauce. Being the resourceful chef that I am, I froze some of the sauce I made earlier so it was already made and ready to go for this dish. You heat the marinara with some vodka for about 20 minutes to cook out the alcohol and reduce the mixture.

Note: Unless you want to taste death, DO NOT taste-test this sauce before it has reduced. I am speaking from experience.

After the reduction, you add some heavy cream or, my new favorite go-to item, fat-free evaporated milk. Once this has been heat through, you remove the pan from heat, stir in some Parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper, and serve it over pasta. I chose the standard penne for mine.

I wasn't sure how the sauce would come out having not used heavy cream, but it didn't matter at all. The only thing that was missing was that terrible lethargic after-feeling from eating something so rich. When I first went on my healthy food kick, I feared I would never be able to eat a creamy sauce again without feeling guilty, but my nice little swap in this dish has proven that theory wrong!! I am in LOVE with my vodka sauce. In fact, I'm having leftovers tomorrow night.

Side note: according to Giada, vodka sauce is actually an Italian-American sauce. You will not find it in Italy!

I am officially cooked out for the week. I probably didn't make up all of the weeks I had taken off during my break, but I do feel as though I am back on track with this project. The next time I cook will probably be Sunday, so please check back then for more delicious eats!! Ciao!

A Man Walks Into a Pub with a Squid...

Let's get right into it. Tonight's dish was from the "Everyday Seafood" chapter of "Everyday Antipasti" and was none other than Fried Calamari!! YUM. I first tried calamari at my grandparent's wedding anniversary back when I was in middle school and have been in love with it ever since. But, of course, being the health nut that I am, I simply could not fry my dish tonight. Believe me, I really wanted to. Especially because I have never fried something without the help of a commercial deep fryer. But I knew I would pay for it tomorrow morning when I would have cement legs on my morning run.

Therefore, I made Faux-Fried Calamari. Hungry Girl does this to her recipes all the time. Rather than frying the food, she bakes it. She also coats it in crushed up Fiber One cereal (honestly, don't knock it till you try it), but that seemed way to "un-Italian" for a recipe out of Everyday Italian.

I started by preheating the handy-dandy toaster oven to 400 degrees. I then took my defrosted squid bodies out of the refrigerator. Though I love eating calamari, handling it while raw is a completely different story. When squid are live, I have a terrible irrational fear of them. The thought of one of their tentacles latching on to my arm with their little suction cups makes me shudder (in fact, I just did as I typed that). Thankfully, the squid that I had bought did not come with tentacles. I feel many tears would have been shed if I had had to handle those.

What you may not know unless you've worked with squid before, is that raw squid has and absolutely disgusting texture. When the bodies were frozen, it was perfectly fine to touch them. But once they had defrosted, my God they were the most slimy, gummy things you have ever touched. I DEFINITELY shuddered when I first picked one up. I also made this weird noise that was a gross between nervous laughter and surprise. Thankfully, this was early in the morning and everyone was asleep.

I cut the bodies into half-inch thick rings, then worked on their coating. In Giada's recipe, she simply dredges them in flour and parsley, then sticks them in the oil to fry away. Considering I was baking these, I wanted a little more coating. At first, I followed the recipe by dredging them in flour and parsley. Then, I tossed them in some bread crumbs. Unfortunately, having been coated in flour first, the bread crumbs didn't really stick too well. I skipped them flour on a few rings just as an experiment.

I then baked the calamari for about 20 minutes. Giada's recipe recommends using her Marinara Sauce to dip them in, but I didn't have the time to make any tonight or last night. Therefore, I made a poor man's version. I took some tomato paste and watered it down to a sauce consistency and it was just fine.

Once the calamari were done, I gave it a taste, and was satisfied. It was definitely not the fried calamari that I was used to, but it was still very good. I dipped them in the sauce which was good, but I actually preferred them without it! The sauce overpowered the squid flavor (which is not as horrifying as it sounds. It's quite good). The coating was just enough to give it some crunch without filling my arteries with fattening oil :)

Overall, I think I could perfect THIS version of Giada's appetizer with a little more work, but it went well for my first time around! I'm now off to make some ricotta cookies as a gift for a friend (my cooking skills are really all I have to offer on a college student budget). Wish me luck with this new recipe!

Another Open Letter to Shrimp:

Dear Shrimp,

You are wonderful, fantastic, divine, and a plethora of other adjectives that have yet to be invented. I'm sorry for my deep dislike for you all these years and hope you can forgive me. I see us having a beautiful relationship in the future.

P.S. I love you.

We've already been over my prior severe aversion to shrimp, but I'll elaborate a bit more. My mother used to order Shrimp Scampi at restaurants and make it at home back in the shrimp-less "dark ages." I always thought it smelled so good, but never thought to maybe try it because I was convinced I did NOT like shrimp.

Talk about a complete 180. I made Scampi on Couscous tonight, and I absolutely loved it!! Honestly, why didn't anyone force this down my throat years before?! This was so flavorful and awesome, I will begin to explain the process.

I started by heating a teaspoon of olive oil. I reduced the amount of oil for this recipe just to keep the WW points down and used the olive oil spray if necessary. Once the oil was heated, I added a clove of garlic, half a chopped onion, and half a chopped carrot (I pulled another Rachael Ray and saved the "nubber" of the carrot for snacking while cooking). You let this cook about five minutes until the onion has softened. To this, you add some canned tomatoes with their juices. The original recipe that makes four servings and calls for 16 ounces of chopped tomatoes, but for my single serving I used only about two to four ounces. With the tomatoes, I added two ounces of clam juice, a tablespoon of some cooking wine, and salt and pepper. This is brought to a boil and allowed to simmer for about ten minutes. The liquids should be reduced by then and the tomatoes should fall apart.

I let this cool, then put it in my handy dandy chopper to puree it. I added some water every so often as Giada said to do in order to get a broth-like consistency. Next came the tricky math part. In the original recipe, you now take two cups of the tomato mixture with one cup of water and bring it to a boil. I had to break this down to one serving and figured out I needed 1/2 cup of the tomato mixture and 1/4 cup of water. I brought this up to the kitchen to cook the couscous.

According to the recipe, you're supposed to bring all of this to a boil and then add the couscous (I only added 1/4 cup of couscous...the food so nice they named it twice). You then cover it and set it aside so the couscous can absorb all the liquid. I hadn't thought to bring my cookbook upstairs with me and did my best to try to memorize what needed to be done up there. Bad idea. I sort of left out the covering step and the couscous kind of attacked me. It started spitting at me like crazy over the heat, and it hurt! I turned off the burner and removed it from the heat so it would calm down. I tried to slowly bring it back to the heat, but knew it was too soon when it went right back to spitting. Eventually, I tamed the couscous and was able to keep it over the heat long enough to absorb all the liquid.

Next came the shrimp. Because my mother went grocery shopping with me this time, I bought the right kind of shrimp for the recipe. I actually bought RAW shrimp this time, but I had to peel it this time through (no pre-cooked, pre-peeled salad shrimp). First of all, when I opened the bag of shrimp, it had not completely defrosted yet and my hands were frozen as I attempted to peel the shrimp. I was on the phone with my dad at this point and he heard me freak out as I tried to peel them. Once I got rid of most of the ice, I saw that the shrimp still had legs! LEGS!! So help me God they had legs. My roommate found this humorous as did my father and she offered to help me out. I decided to be an adult, and just do it.

After running the shrimp under some hot water to get rid of the ice, I finished peeling them, legs and all, and moved on. Thank God they were the "EZ Peel" variety. If I had to pull off each leg by itself, I may have died a little. Once they were all peeled, I cooked the shrimp in another teaspoon of olive oil and another clove of garlic. I cooked them until they were a white/pink color and had my roommate check them out (she's quite the seafood aficionado) to make sure they were cooked all the way. To my surprise, they were!

I turned off the electric frying pan and once it had cooled, I added the juice of half a lemon, some fresh parsley, and some crushed red pepper.

I put the couscous on a plate and added the shrimp on top of them. I then heated the remaining tomato mixture and added that on top. I'm pretty sure if I were on Iron Chef, I would lose points on presentation on this one, but it really didn't matter once I start eating it. The sauce was very tomato-y and spicy and the lemon worked with the salt of the clam juice. The couscous held the sauce really well and the shrimp were absolutely amazing. I think it's safe to say that I am officially a shrimp fan.

I should mention that I looked this recipe up on FoodNetwork.com to get a ballpark figure as to how long it would take to make it. The recipe said about 30 minutes. This is very wrong when you have to work in two kitchens (one being a floor above the other), and when you're shrimp are frozen and full of legs. I'm not entirely sure how long it took me to make this, but it was longer than 30 minutes. It only took me about five minutes tops to eat it.

So that was recipe number two from the "Everyday Entrees" chapter and the "Everyday Grills and Sautes" section. Friday I will be moving on to the "Everyday Contorni" chapter again making another stuffed vegetable: Eggplant Rollatini!! Check back then for something that is sure to be delicious :)

P.S. Check out the beautiful rainbow outside our window!

Olive Juice

This.....was fantastic. Not only was it quick, but it was extremely easy, and extremely flavorful. Tonight I made Giada's Tomato Sauce with Olives--the second recipe from the "Everyday Sauces" chapter in the "Everyday Tomato Sauces" section. The recipe requires four cups of her Marinara sauce which I highly recommend making the night before.

As I said in my post from last night, I made the Marinara sauce again much more successfully this time. I didn't forget any ingredients and managed to sustain only one minor injury. On top of all this, I didn't have to leave my room to make it (take a bow electric frying pan) and was able to watch BOTH So You Think You Can Dance and Glee. After making the sauce, I stored it in the fridge over night (I only had to make a half batch this time so I made it fit in one container).

The sauce, as expected, was even better the next day (I snuck a taste around lunchtime) so I was really excited to add a new dimension to it. For this sauce, you start by sauteing one and 1/4 cup of olives in 1/4 cup of olive oil. Me being the food cop that I am swapped out actual olive oil for EVOO spray, and only used six ounces of olives...because that's all that came in the can i had bought. I should also mention that you need to halve the olives before sauteing them. To this, you add one and 1/2 teaspoons of crushed red pepper (gotta love that spice!) and cook it for three minutes. After that, you reduce the heat, and add the marinara sauce.

As I let this heat, I ventured upstairs to cook some spaghetti to go with the sauce. I thought I was on the right track seeing as I even brought a lid for the pot with me this time. I let the water come to a boil, measured out the proper amount of pasta, and added it to the water (which I also remembered to salt!). I never break spaghetti before adding it to the pot and rarely have issues with it, until today. The spaghetti kept trying to escape the pot and I continuously tried to push it back in. It DID cooperate eventually, but some of it had hit the burner and created a kind of gross burning smell in the kitchen. I'm sure the kid that was doing his homework in there (yes, doing homework in the kitchen) was probably wondering how I managed to burn pasta, but it all worked out.

When I got back to my room, the sauce was heated all the way through and I drained my pasta. I had about a cup of pasta with a cup of sauce, and a little Pecorino Romano on top. This sauce...was money. It was much more rich in tomato flavor this time around, but still very fresh. The olives balanced out the richness with a bit of saltiness and the crushed red pepper gave it just enough spice. As I was eating it and re-reading the recipe, I realized I hadn't added the 1/2 of thinly sliced fresh basil, but then remembered I was feeling creative last night and had already added it then. The basil isn't very prominent in the sauce, but it keeps it light.

Again, dinner: successful. Tomorrow night is my first time attempting some semi-homemade pizza, and Sunday marks my next Giada mission. I will be delving back into the "Everyday Pasta, Polenta, and Risotto" with the Spaghetti with Garlic, Olive Oil, and Red Pepper Flakes recipe. YUM!