When it starts to get cold and rainy outside, most people crave comfort foods like stews and casseroles. I crave Italian food. The funny thing is, my wife has grown to share this craving. So yesterday I decided to make some stuffed shells. If you’re going to take the time to make dishes like meatballs, stuffed shells or manicotti, you might as well make a lot and freeze them. It’s just too difficult and inconvenient to make small batches. So I bought all the ingredients to make cheese-stuffed shells and meat-stuffed shells.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bruschetta is one of those recipes that many people really like to make, but few make really well. This past weekend, my wife and I had some great bruschetta at a restaurant in Hendersonville, NC. What made it great was the simplicity of the ingredients. It was just sliced baguette, crushed tomatoes, basil and soft mozzarella. It was nothing like the bruschetta you often get at restaurants. Those dishes are usually made with pizza sauce or canned “bruschetta spread.” This dish was made with freshly peeled and crushed tomatoes, and that made all the difference. I decided I wanted to recreate the dish at home, and the results came out great.

First, I prepped the tomatoes and peeled and halved a clove of garlic while my wife picked some fresh basil.

Read the rest of this entry »

The wife and I are nuts for Insalata Caprese. We’ll make a large platter and munch on it for days. This time, we used the last of our green tomatoes to make an extra crispy version:

We served it with some sopressata. The fresh mozzarella will only get better as it soaks up more of the balsamic vinegar. We’ve made this dish with our homemade mozzarella before, but we just can’t seem to make cheese that tastes as creamy as the expensive stuff. I think it’s because the milk we buy isn’t very sweet. Does anyone have any experience with this?

This weekend, my wife and I dropped by the local Farmer’s Market to kill some time before the post office opened. I bought some ground beef and pork sausage, as well as the requisite peppers to make chili on Saturday. My wife noticed that they had some raw milk, so we bought a gallon and decided to make some more mozzarella. On Sunday, I used my kit and made a softer, fresher-tasting cheese than last time:

We had some chicken on hand, so we decided to try to merge Insalata Caprese salad with grilled chicken salad.

Read the rest of this entry »

We figured the best way to use our homemade mozzarella cheese was to make Margherita pizza. My wife decided to make pizza dough to keep with the ‘fresh’ theme. We used this pizza dough recipe. Here she is manually dissolving the yeast:

Getting your hands dirty is the key to good dough.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, my wife and I tried our hand at making mozzarella cheese. This kit from Leeners.com cost $25 and will make 6 pounds of cheese:

The kit cost over $30 after shipping and handling, and we'll have to buy six gallons of fresh milk. That might sound like a lot of effort and money for so little product, but it would cost us over $90 to buy that much fresh mozzarella from the grocery store. So we think it's a good deal — if the cheese tastes good.

Read the rest of this entry »