Cheesy Creamed Spinach

Spinach is a new found love of mine, especially fresh baby spinach. Because of my newly acquired taste for spinach I decided to try creamed spinach once again. I didn't go by any recipes, just a little trial and error until I achieved the taste I was looking for.

It was the perfect side dish to our dinner that night and the only complaint was everyone wished there was more! This is definitely going into the food vault for future use.

Fresh Mozzarella, Prosciutto and Fresh Spinach Pizza

Fun fact right here....I believe this is the first recipe I'm posting about that has no connection to Pinterest, rather this pizza was inspired by a recipe I saw on an episode of The Pioneer Woman. PW made this pizza for a girl's night in, although hers was topped with arugula and I believe she used a different cheese. The addition of black olives was all me! I chose to use fresh spinach because I prefer the taste and my husband is not a big fan of arugula. This pizza came out awesome and was super tasty. 

Spinach Pasta with Alfredo Sauce

For my husband and I a trip to Brooklyn means stopping at Joe's of Avenue U for some Pane e Panelli a Sicilian dish which is chickpea flour made into patties, fried and then eaten on a roll with some freshly squeezed lemon. It means going to Villabate to get some cartocci or maybe some gelato and most of all it means a stop at Coluccio's and Sons, an Italian market where we stock up on all the goodies we can't find on Long Island.

There we grab some cheeses, pera (a pear nectar), olives, bread and of course pasta. One of our favorites it the spinach and semonlina pasta which is a bi-colored pasta that is best paired with a nice alfredo sauce. We took it one step further and pan seared a little pancetta and tossed that into the sauce as well. The result it heavenly and really one of my favorite dishes ever. 

It's a fairly simple dish to put together and quite honestly the only thing you need to compliment the meal is a nice piece of crusty Italian bread....and maybe some olives and soppressata.

Italian Wedding Soup

So I have been looking forward to making Italian Wedding Soup as soon at the calendar changed over to October, crisp cool weather was on its way and that meant soup season was upon us. Funny thing happened though, instead of getting colder, it got warmer. It was in the 80's this past weekend and I realized that my soup making days weren't quite as close as I thought and then I thought screw it, 80 degrees or not I'm making soup.

I've only made Italian Wedding Soup one time before and it was well over a year ago. I sort of winged it the first time and did the same thing this time around too. It's a fairly simple soup to make but does get a bit tedious when rolling out dozens upon dozen of mini meatballs. I actually didn't make my meatballs that mini because I like when there's a little bit of substance to them, but that's just my preference. I also browned my meatballs a bit before throwing them in the soup, I like the little bit of extra flavor it gives them.

To top it all off since this was a bit of an impromptu soup making experience I didn't have the right pasta on hand, orzo or ditalini pasta are good bets and usually I have them in my pantry but not tonight. No tonight I was limited to fettucine, spaghetti and farfalle. So what's a girl to do but improvise? I broke down the fettucine pasta into one inch pieces and made the best of it. After all, if there's anything at all to be learned about cooking it's that rules are meant to be broken.