If you wish to make an Italian feast from scratch, you must first invent the universe:

I was six hours into cooking, and I still had 3 recipes left to go. Frowning at the recipes taped on the cabinets in the kitchen, I crossed another off the list and set the dish aside. I sighed and looked at the cat. In that second, the pot of milk and heavy cream I was heating became possessed and started to boil over. I ran it over to the sink and tried not to burn myself. I looked back at the cat, who was looking suspiciously amused as he sniffed the spilled dairy on the floor. With only 3 recipes to go, I was too far in to turn back now.

The plan

When David takes his monthly trip up to Michigan for his job, I usually take the time I have to myself to relax for a few days, and make a nice dinner for his return. I'd already tackled an Indian meal, an elaborate dinner from Findlay Market, and a from scratch pizza.

I wanted to up the ante a little and make something more involved. After a few hours on tastespotting, I decided I wanted to revisit the Italian theme. But this time, I was not stopping at pizza. David likes Italian, but his main complaint is that at some restaurants the giant brick of lasagna that's served is simply too heavy. So the solution there? Italian, tapas style.

In addition to making lots of small dishes, for some naive reason I began to regret later, I enthusiastically decided I was going to do things the hard way. As I compiled recipes and made a Gantt chart, I realized that I simply didn't have enough time to make them all once I got home from work.

So I did the logical thing. I scheduled a personal day.

Fortified with a large dose of caffeine, I began the first recipe candying the orange peels for dessert--a layered bourbon vanilla nutella panna cotta made with kefir accented by candied orange.

I started the panna cotta next, to give it plenty of time to set. I adapted this recipe for kefir panna cotta to make it, making the vanilla bourbon layer first, then the nutella layer and using the freezer to set one layer before adding the next.

presenting: vanilla bourbon nutella panna cotta with kefir

Next, I cut tomatoes and prepped them for roasting for the roasted tomato marinara sauce for the lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs and chicken parmesan.

Yes, I used David's Global chef knife. Don't tell him, OK?

After roasting, I combined the ingredients and left them to simmer for most of the afternoon, while babysitting my orange peels.

I made ricotta cheese. It was actually very easy, but I was still absurdly proud of my accomplishment. While the cheese was draining, I made Parmesan meatballs and stuck them in the oven.

I then started on the pasta. We don't have a pasta roller, but I figured a rolling pin would do the job. Wrong. Making pasta without a pasta roller is a real pain. Roll until you think it's thin enough, then keep rolling. And then roll some more. It was still rather thick pasta, but it had a nice texture.

Next, the oven went up to 450 to roast chickpeas.

I discovered the cat loves chickpeas. Just plain out of the can. He goes absolutely bonkers for them.

The lasagna itself is made in the jumbo muffin tin, adapted from this recipe. It makes nicely sized portions that can be frozen and are perfect for leftovers.

As the lasagna cooled, I started the chicken Parmesan nuggets, and prepped the mozzarella zucchini bites, which David declared to be the best zucchini appetizer ever.

Even with the small sizes of the dishes, we had a ton of delicious leftovers all week. At the end of the evening, I was left with a new found appreciation of how difficult it can be to cook from scratch. No wonder lasagna prep used to be an all day event. It really takes all day to make.

My day of cooking really highlighted to me how lucky some of us are to have the luxury of going out to the store and buying those things (if we so choose), and how easily we can take something simple, like pasta, for granted. I never will again.
My arms were sore from rolling out dough for days.

the simplest dish like the concept of lasagna, has an elaborate recipe underpinning

bacon wrapped pork loin:

9 out of 10 times if I have some time off work, whether a free day or a few hours, I end up spending my time on cooking blogs and tastespotting, browsing recipes and adding them to my bookmarks. Somewhere around the 2 hour mark, I will have decided upon what I will be making and I will head out to the store with my list.

Which is what happened on Friday. David was working from home that afternoon, and after getting his input on the recipe, I retrieved the ingredients. David said he liked the simplicity of the dish. After we made it, we can say that this dish is deceptively simple. The ingredients are straightforward and work well together, but cooking the dish to bring out the most desired qualities of the ingredients is a little challenging.

You want the potatoes fully cooked and the bacon crispy--but the pork loin not overcooked and the tomatoes to retain a little shape.

We tied the lemon thyme in with the bacon and pork for some extra flavor. We recommend cooking the potatoes first for at least 30 minutes before putting in the tomatoes and pork to ensure they are fully cooked. We also added a little white truffle infused olive oil to the dish to make the flavor a little more unique.

Next time we try and make this, we may partially cook the bacon in the skillet, then wrap it, to make it a little more crisp.

You don't want to layer this dish, so it does take up a lot of space. We ended up using three dishes to roast it all. We had plenty of tasty leftovers.

From vending machine to Venice, twinkiemisu:

Food day at the office last month—Mexican. This month? Italian. After considering the multitude of options such as lasagna, hoagies, spaghetti and meatballs, ravioli, penne pasta and salad, I decided that I wanted to bring in tiramisu. As I looked through various recipes for easy tiramisu, I noticed a few anecdotes that kept popping up in recipe comments for an interesting substitution for the lady fingers—twinkies. OK, you have my attention.

Following the idea farther, I came across this recipe for twinkie-misu, involving nothing more than cool whip, instant vanilla pudding, vanilla extract, sugar, instant coffee, kahlua, twinkies, and cocoa powder.
I could handle that.



I made the vanilla pudding, added the vanilla extract, then stuck it in the fridge to thicken. After that, I busied myself carving up twinkies as instructed. I laid them in the pan, cream side up.



I heated up the kahlua, water, and instant coffee mixture, making the coffee a little stronger than normal. I added a few tablespoons of turbinado sugar, and drizzled the mixture over my twinkies.



Next, a layer of pudding.

I repeated the layering process, finishing with layer of cool whip and cocoa powder for presentation. I recomend you refrigerate overnight or stick in freezer for a few hours.



I had some extra twinkies, so I made a smaller pan for testing purposes, which I made presentation side down and stuck in the freezer. I had a subject already, as I was expecting Jeff over for our Monday run. I hoped that he believed I was actually baking when he walked into the apartment and found me surrounded by empty boxes and twinkie wrappers.
By the time we got back, the Twinkie-misu had set. I used tin foil to make sure it did not glue itself to the bread pan, and it came out fairly easily. We tried it, and I can say that this recipe is Nomerati tested and approved. The vanilla goes well with the twinkies and the flavors come together without overpowering eachother. I think the extract is necessary to add a little more flavor to the pudding. Who says twinkies can't be classy?



A last layer of cool whip and cocoa powder.