TheKitchenSinkRecipes.com

At the risk of sounding like someone completely unfit to practice law, it kind of hit me on Saturday just how overwhelming this whole Bar Exam business is going to be. For one thing, I had a Bar Review class on a Saturday morning. The gall. And during the class, we spent exactly one hour “learning” a topic that I just spent an entire semester learning. In other words, there’s a lot to cover in a short amount of time and, well, it all felt a little daunting on Saturday.

So, when Kevin left for the Cubs game that day, I was all too happy to hole up with my books for the afternoon. By the time I emerged, my brain felt a bit swollen and my stomach was rumbling louder than the El train outside our back windows. Not feeling much like heading to the store, I took a gander in the fridge and pantry and threw together a quick pasta.

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After all my whining about spring-this and summer-that last week, I suppose it’s only predictable that I’m now feeling quite sad that winter is slipping away. Cozy sweaters, roaring fires, steamy bowls of oatmeal, freshly fallen snow. I love all these things and will be sad to see them go. And I haven’t even started in on the cold-weathered food I will miss.

There are still quite a few winter recipes on my to do list. Even though I’m itching to use fresh produce and lighter, brighter flavors, I’m not so sure I’m ready to give up roasting, stewing, smothering or braising. So, I’ve decided to embrace the last stubborn days of winter. I will eat root vegetables, I will make as many pots of soup as possible and, by god, I will stuff things with cheese.

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That tangle of gooey, cheesy, smoky baked macaroni that you see there just might be my husband’s favorite thing about me. It allows me to wield an influence over him that, frankly, borders on unfair. He practically swoons when I offer to make if for him. And, I say “for him,” intentionally. While I like pasta as much as the next gal, I don’t have the weak-kneed reaction to oozy baked mac that so many others (Kevin clearly included) do. So, I typically make this for him when I’m going to be out of town or just out for the night.

I mean, the whole absence makes the heart grow fonder thing is great and all. But when mere absence alone won’t do, I can always rest assured that a saran-wrapped dish of ready-to-be-baked-off mac in the fridge will do the trick.

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After my sister, Ali, upped the ante last week with her dinner pick (which she was forced to make in the wake of her Biggest Loser Bowl loss), I knew I had to come up with something pretty good when one of my teams got booted next. And if there’s a dinner that’s only too happy to one-up all the other dinners, it’s lasagna. A couple reasons for my choice …

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Fresh off the heels of one kitchen rectification, I’ve already got another one to share with you. It’s been a big couple days for me—as far as conquering kitchen demons go. And while I attribute the caramel success to a very helpful commenter to this blog, I attribute this latest success to a double dare. Practically a double dog dare.

You see, I’ve made it no secret that homemade pasta has been my Achilles heel. And, truth be told, I really had no serious intention of doing anything about it. But, this weekend, we didn’t have much going on and I started to think about it.

While it was still just a teensy, tiny idea in the back of my mind, I mentioned to my friend Brynn (an excellent cook) that it might be time to give it another go. She responded by telling me she had complete confidence in me. Do you know why, dear readers? Oh, because—as she went on to tell me—she used to make it all the time. When she was a little girl. Usually when her parents left her alone with a babysitter. She then proceeded to spout off the perfect ratio of ingredients from memory. So, as I said, I was essentially double dared by the 7-year-old version of my friend to make pasta. In my mind’s eye, she was actually sticking her thumbs in the ears, waggling her fingers, and sticking out her tongue at me.

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Santa was very kind to me in the kitchen department this year. As you’ll see in a slew of upcoming posts, I was lucky enough to receive a host of cooking implements. One such gift was clearly in response to one of my recent kitchen failures. One weekend this fall, we endeavored to make our own ravioli. Well, the fillings we created were delicious, but the pasta itself was a disaster. I had read in a few places that it was entirely possible to roll out pasta sheets for ravioli by hand. Well, it might be possible, but it certainly didn’t occur when I tried it. Most of the raviolis ended up in the trash (Kevin was kind enough to eat a few, but I couldn’t take more than one). Santa must have known about this disaster and, in response, he got me this:

It’s not quite as scary looking as our potato-ricer-disguised-as-torture-device, but it’s definitely a somewhat ominous-looking contraption. It’s a pasta-making Kitchen Aid attachment. Various inserts allow you to make linguine, spaghetti, fettucine and even sheets of pasta. I spent quite a bit of time perusing the instruction manual and the reviews of the attachment online. Let’s just say that they didn’t exactly ease my fears. In what I thought was an effort to increase our chances of success, I decided to use Kitchen Aid’s pasta recipe included in the instruction booklet and the least risky-looking of the inserts, which promised to yield a thick spaghetti strand. Well, thick it was. And also completely bizarre looking:

Using the machine itself was a challenge. After mixing and kneading the pasta, we began feeding the dough into the attachment in walnut-sized bits, following the instructions. And when I say “we,” I mean it. Using this thing kind of reminded me of assembling Ikea furniture: half-way through the instruction manual full of user-friendly photos depicting two people assembling a dresser you turn the page and–bam!–suddenly there are three people in the photo with the dresser. Likewise, this pasta attachment requires at least two people. At least it does if you want to remain halfway sane during the process.

The difficulty and odd-looking results aside, the pasta was actually really tasty. Especially tossed in two of the three sauces I’d prepared for the evening. You see, my sister was spending the night with us. Her Friday nights typically involve stories along the lines of: “When that place closed we went to X and when X closed we finished off the night at Y. Oh and we stopped off for some food at Z on the way home.” So the least I could do to entertain her on a Friday night in with old, boring married people was create a “bar” of three sauces ready and waiting to douse our weird, but homemade!, pasta strands.

Kevin’s choice was carbonara, a sauce I know he loves (cream, bacon and eggs: shocking that a sauce featuring these ingredients floats his boat, I know). Ali opted for a spicy tomato-and-sausage sauce, with a touch of cream. I went for a porcini mushroom sauce (any time I make myself something that Kevin won’t be eating, it’s a safe bet that it will involve mushrooms). Ali’s and Kevin’s sauces were both really good–I’d recommend them both without reservation. Mine, on the other hand, was not great–runny, bland and, frankly, a waste of $10 worth of dried porcinis. And after my trials and tribulations with the Kitchen Aid, I needed something great. Fortunately, our dessert (recipe and photos coming soon) more than made up for it.

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It all started innocently enough: “Let’s make gnocchi!”  “Okay!”  Well, little did we know that said gnocchi would involve five stores, four potholes, three inches of snow and Middle Age torture.  And a partridge and a pear tree.

Having read about or watched gnocchi-making many times, I knew full well that doing so required a potato ricer.  Having never made gnocchi before and preferring a different instrument for my potato-mashing, I also knew full well that we did not have a potato ricer.  “No problem,” I thought.  We’d pick one up when we were out for the groceries.  Easy enough, right?  Wrong. 

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