Eataly

I’ve challenged myself to cook one recipe from each of my 125 cookbooks this year. I thought I had better get started, it’s already January 12th.  So…where to start?  Why not with Giada? I adore Italian food.  I should have been born Italian.  I told my mom,  if I had been born in Italy, I’d probably be there still. She told me that my dad loved Italian food too.  In fact, when they went out to a restaurant to eat, if it didn’t have the right smell, my dad walked out.   The smells of cooking Italian.  The garlic. The onions. The tomatoes.  The cheeses. Intoxicating. Last time I was in Las Vegas we ate at Giada’s restaurant. It was divine.

I decided on Ziti Stufati. It’s labour intensive and Giada said they had it every Sunday, growing up.  Giada also writes ‘that a good meal is more than just delicious food-it’s taking pleasure in cooking for those you love, and slowing down to embrace every moment spent at the table’.  A girl after my own heart.

I wanted to cook something truly Italian and go that extra mile to make it authentic. I managed to find Mutti tomato purée, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, whole milk ricotta cheese and ziti rigate (the pasta) at my local supermarket. I haven’t even started and my pulse is racing and my mouth watering.

Stufati is an Italian name for stew.  Very appropriate given the massive amount of ingredients in it.  This is definitely not a recipe for someone who doesn’t like their foods touching each other.

I followed the recipe as close to the book as I could.  However, I did not remove the sautéed veggies from the tomato sauce.  I left them in. Why not?  They smelled and looked so good. I wasn’t going to waste them. More fibre and texture. Instead of crumbling up two slices of bread for meatballs I used Panko crumbs. Slight deviation.  Those meatballs were both flavourful and tender. I didn’t have quite enough of the homemade tomato sauce so I used  a store bought four cheese spaghetti sauce to coat the bottom of the pan and mixed all of the recipe sauce into the cooked ziti rigate. Once the pasta was cooked and smothered in ricotta cheese tomato sauce, and the meatballs were fried and the cheeses grated,  it was time to layer it all together.

The only thing that I found to be rather strange were the chopped hard boiled eggs that were included between layers. Hard boiled eggs?  I almost didn’t put them in. But  decided to follow recipe exactly, so in they went.  Maybe Giada knew something I didn’t. I mean,  she does have her own show and  restaurants. Its quite possible she has secrets unknown to us amateurs.

The ziti was everything I had hoped it would be.   The scent will be in my hair next time I wash it.   Cheesy. Creamy. Tomatoey. And those meatballs.  We couldn’t even taste the eggs.  Still baffled at their presence, I googled hard boiled eggs in Italian cooking. Here’s what I found out.  Some said that the eggs absorbed the acidity of the tomatoes.  Apparently it’s also a cultural thing from the Naples and Sicily area.  Many Italians are catholic so when they were giving up meat for religious reasons, they used eggs for added protein.  I guess there was a time when most Italians were not well off and they used the eggs to replace meat they couldn’t afford. Many had an abundance of chickens and therefore, eggs  and they used to eggs to grow their recipes for their very large families.  In any case, this practice is authentically Italian and so I complied.   Giada said she included them because  her grandmother always did. We have many traditions that we apply to our lives merely because a previous member of a previous generation did it.  Even if the reason for the thing no longer exists.

Another truly Italian practice I accidentally adhered to was making way too much.  We like leftovers but even, we, have our limits.  I sent some home with mom and froze half of what was left for another time and we will eat what’s left every day this week until  it’s gone.  Things could be worse.