Cookbook Review: Giada at Home

I am a huge fan of Giada de Laurentiis, so I was very excited to get my hands on a copy of her new cookbook, Giada at Home: Family Recipes from Italy and California.

As usual, Giada's slim volume is packed with drool-worthy recipes and cool ideas that never fail to inspire me. This book, as the flap states and as the title indicates, incorporates traditional Italian dishes with the fresh, clean flavours of California. In typical Giada style, this new book also heavily features pictures of warm get-togethers with friends and family, with a heavy emphasis on Giada's new baby daughter, Jade. I have to admit, I was a smitten with the baby as I was with the recipes!

Giada always uses clean, whole ingredients in her recipes, focusing on fresh veggies and seasonality. Divided into the usual cookbook categories of appetizers, soups & sandwiches, desserts, etc., there is also a brunch chapter with some recipes I can't wait to try. The Pancetta & Cinnamon Waffles on page 228 being at the top of my list. My new waffle iron is going to get a great workout with this one. The dessert chapter also tantalized me with a very mouthwatering take on tiramisu, this one using lemon and hazelnut instead of the traditional coffee flavours. I cannot wait to make that.

The one recipe I have tried was the Rigatoni with Creamy Mushroom Sauce on page 80. I had a friend over for dinner last week and I thought this was the perfect time to try a new recipe out. This was a simple dinner, though I had to make some substitutions because marscapone cheese is way too cost prohibitive for me; I used some light cream cheese instead and it worked fine. For the mushroom assortment, I used a portabella, some regular button mushrooms, and some enoki mushrooms. Instead of white wine, I used some cooking sherry. This was a great dish! I wouldn't spend the money on enoki mushrooms again, though; they didn't really add any big flavour to this. The portabella mushroom was totally worth it, however!

This is the third Giada book I have on my cookbook shelves, and once again, it's well worth the precious space there!

Cookie Time

I love it when I get to bake for other people. It means I get to enjoy the process of baking, but I don't have a whack of sugary treats tempting me all the time. Giving baking away gives me joy, gives the recipient joy, and is good for my waistline!

Giada di Laurentiis's recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies with Hazelnuts is currently my favourite cookie recipe. I went to visit a friend the other day, and as usual when I go to see this friend, who has a 9 month old baby, I take along some baking. She & her husband always appreciate it.

The recipe is here.

I left out the nuts because A) I don't have any hazelnuts left, and B) I didn't know if anyone in my friend's household had issues with nuts (turns out, nuts aren't a problem; good to know for the future).

These are amazing cookies!

Back to Baking!

Well, it was considerably cooler today, thanks to a cold front and a bunch of thunderstorms, so I decided to do some baking. I'm also off to the lake tomorrow and wanted to bring some treats along with me. And since it's my birthday, I thought I'd make my favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe.

It was a hard choice - because pretty much every chocolate chip cookie recipe I have is awesome and could be considered a favourite. I've never met a chocolate chip cookie I didn't like! So, I decided to pick the most decadent recipe I could find and whose ingredients I had on hand. I chose Giada de Laurentiis's Chocolate Chip Cookies with Hazelnuts. Recipe here.

This is an awesome recipe! I even had a bag of Chipits Skor bits on hand, that I'd bought on sale a while ago but hadn't yet used. I also had exactly one cup of hazelnuts from last year's hazelnut harvest left over, which reminded me that in less than two months, I should be harvesting hazelnuts again from my SIL's parents' tree. I can't wait for that!

The cookies were wicked and I got about 4 dozen - plenty for an overnight camping trip.

I'm totally stoked about going to the lake, even though the weather might not be as hot as it was last week - I don't care! If you are interested in my plans, see this post!

101 Uses for a Roast Chicken #15: Chicken & Olive Ravioli

This is the second dish I made on the weekend with the chicken I wrote about in yesterday's post. It's a variation on Giada de Laurentiis's Ravioli Caprese, which I blogged about here. I like this method of making the ravioli dough: it's easy, quick, and involves two whole ingredients - flour and water. Oh, I have a pasta maker and a ravioli press, but this is just as good. For the dough and for the directions on how to form the ravioli, follow the instructions in the original recipe here.

For the filling, the following is what I used. I put olives in because I had some kicking around from a dish I made a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to use them up.

Chicken & Olive Ravioli Filling

3/4 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
12 - 15 kalamata olives, pitted & finely chopped
1/2 cup finely chopped chicken from a roast chicken
2 tsp dried basil (or fresh)
1 egg
2 cloves of garlic, crushed or grated
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Fill ravioli as directed in the recipe.

I served this with some left over sauce from my Eggs in Purgatory meal. It was really good ravioli, and made enough for three meals. I put the left over ravioli in the freezer for future meals.

Bon appetit!

101 Uses for a Roast Chicken #10: Fresh Fettuccine with Roasted Chicken & Broccoli Rabe

I have been gushing a lot about Giada de Laurentiis lately, and with good reason: her food rocks. She also has a social networking site you can access here; I of course signed up!

While perusing Giada's Family Dinners the other day, I came across this recipe that uses roasted chicken, and as we all know, I'm always looking for ways in which to utilize this particular ingredient.

It looked simple and light, but I had to make a few substitutions. I used lime instead of lemons, because I am still unable to find decent lemons at a decent price due to the shortage. My local overpriced grocery store didn't have any broccoli rabe in, so I used regular broccoli. I also used penne instead of fresh fettuccine.

The dish was as simple and light as I was expecting! I love lime and chicken, so I was happy with that substitution, and even though I only made half a recipe, I'll get about three meals out of it in total. The chicken was on sale at the grocery store, and mine cost just under $7. I still have enough left for at least one more meal, plus the stock and soup I'll get from the bones.

The recipe is available on the Food Network site here.

Enjoy!

Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Cookies

I mentioned in yesterday's review of Giada's Kitchen that I also own Giada's Family Dinners, which was gifted to me by my friend Karen. I felt guilty about not having made anything from the book since I received it in July, so I took it off my shelf the other night and took another good look through it. I'd forgotten that there was a cookie recipe with hazelnuts in it! And of course, we all know that I have a whack of hazelnuts kicking around! So, this afternoon, I baked.

You might remember the "perfect" chocolate chip cookie recipe I posted about here, that also made waves around the foodblogging world? The one where you chilled the dough overnight in the refrigerator? It was pretty much as near perfect as you could come with chocolate chip cookies, though it's hard to make a bad one. Well, this recipe from Giada is just as perfect. In fact, it's the ULTIMATE!

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Hazelnuts, page 220 of Giada's Family Dinners

1/2 cup oats (not instant)
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp each baking powder and baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter, at room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 cup white sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Skor bars, crushed or finely chopped (I whacked mine with a rolling pin outside on a cement wall)
1 cup hazelnuts, roasted and chopped
1 12oz bag chocolate chips (I used about 1 1/4 cups)

• Preheat oven to 325F and prepare two cookie sheets.
• Pulse the oats in a food processer until fine. Combine them with the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
• Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, then the vanilla. Fold in the chocolate chips, Skor bars, and hazelnuts.
• Drop the dough by tablespoonfuls but do not flatten them (they flatten them as they bake). Bake until golden - about 15 minutes. Don't overbake them! Cool on the sheets for a few minutes before transferring them to racks to cool completely.

When I baked these, after I added the chocolate and nuts etc.,I realized my dough looked very strange...It was dry and wouldn't hold together. A brief perusal of the recipe revealed that I'd forgotten to add the eggs! D'oh! I quickly whisked two together in a small bowl and added them to the dough, aware that I was in danger of overworking the flour with each additional turn of the KitchenAid's paddle. But, it all worked out in the end, and these cookies are a huge success.

This cookbook contains a few recipes I plan on making in the near future, and I have a good feeling that this book is going to be just as much a gem as Giada's Kitchen was. Thank you, Karen!

Cookbook Review: Giada's Kitchen

I love Giada de Laurentiis! I've been a fan of her shows on the Food Network and the recipes I've tried from her shows have always turned out fabulously for me, so when I saw that she had a new cookbook coming out I was totally stoked and knew I'd have to get my hands on a copy. My good blogfriend Karen recently gifted me with Giada's Family Dinners, which I have read through but haven't tried cooking from yet - sorry Karen, but I guarantee you it's on my to-do list! (Previous dishes blogged about here are Giada's Ravioli Caprese and her salmon & tomatoes.)

So, today Giada's Kitchen comes to your friendly neighbourhood bookshelves. Subtitled "New Italian Favourites," the flap states that Giada "takes us down a new path, sharing her love of food with clean, vibrant, simple flavors and bursts of bright colors that look as beautiful on the plate as they are delicious." In the introduction, Giada tells us that through her exploration of every type of Italian cooking imaginable, her own style has been evolving, and the recipes in this book have been inspired by her culinary journeys.

For the purposes of this review, I made two dishes from this volume. I had planned on making one more, the Spicey Calamari Stew on page 48, but my local overpriced grocery store was out of squid. So, I stuck with two dishes: Fregola Salad with Citrus and Red Onion (page 81; I used orzo as I couldn't find fregola at the store - which is owned by a huge Italian family and sells all kinds of other Italian specialty foods, just no fregola) and Beef Roast with Spicey Parsley Tomato Sauce (page 140; my dad supplied the roast, which was buffalo).

Both dishes were super easy to make, and as Giada promises in the intro, contain "clean, vibrant, simple flavors" and indeed have "bursts of bright colors." A traditional roast beef meal can be heavy with starchy potatoes and lots of gravy, and this version was so much lighter and much more interesting. I'm not the hugest fan of the typical roast beef dinner - never have been; once or twice a year is fine, but every week (as was often the case when I was growing up) was way too much for me. The roast recipe piqued my interest because it was paired with this simple sauce made from tomatoes roasted with the beef.

I will admit here that I've never made the perfect roast beef - probably because I don't make it at all, so I don't get the practice. In last night's case, I overcooked the buffalo way too much and I was annoyed with myself . Even though I cooked it for the recommended amount of time for its weight, and despite the fact that it was still frozen in the middle, it still was dry and almost flavourless. But the sauce was great! And the orzo salad paired well with with meat dish and was itself very fresh and light, so all was not lost.

For dessert, I served a hazelnut pie, but that's a post for another time (soon!).

The verdict: yes, this book is worth it and it totally delivers, based on my two experiments from it. The styling is amazing and all of the recipes appear to be easy and quick, and I am so looking forward to trying more from this book - and from Giada's Family Dinners, too.

Full Flickr set here.

Ravioli Caprese

I really enjoy Giada de Laurentiis's Everyday Italian on the Food Network. Last week, I saw her make these yummy-looking Ravioli Caprese, got ambitious, and made the recipe yesterday for a family dinner. It was a huge hit! The ravioli themselves were not terribly difficult to make, and the simple dressing was light and perfect. This is definitely a keeper.

Ravioli Caprese recipe here. The only issue I had was that there was more pasta dough than filling. I could probably have made an other half a recipe of the filling at least to use up the extra dough I had, and I even used a special scoop I have that measures exactly 1tsp, so my fillings were equal. Also, fresh basil is a must. This won't be the same without it.

Yum!

Giada's Salmon

Yesterday morning I watched Everyday Italian with Giada de Laurentiis, whom I like very much. She made something like this on the show so I thought I'd try it out for dinner last night. It was a big hit.

Here it is.

1. Take salmon. I used a side because I was feeding four people, but you can adjust this very easily to accommodate the number of people you're feeding. Put in a baking dish or on a piece of heavy duty foil.
2. Take some vine-ripened tomatoes and chop roughly - no need to peel or seed. You'll need enough to cover the top of the salmon you're making.
3. Put the chopped tomatoes into a bowl and add salt & pepper to taste, some dried herbs like oregano, thyme, basil, some finely chopped scallions or shallots or onion of some description, some fresh garlic to taste.
4. Pour over this some good quality olive oil, just to coat - you're not making a salad dressing with it. Over this, squeeze some fresh lemon juice to taste.
5. Spread this over the salmon evenly. If using the baking dish, cover well with foil and bake until salmon is cooked through. If you're just using foil, fold it around the fish firmly into a nice package and cook until done.

I served this with rice and a green salad.

Notes to the readership.

• You could use halibut, cod, or many other types of fish for this, including large shrimp.
• If fresh tomatoes are not available, canned ones are fine; just drain off the juice. But don't chuck the juice! Save it and put it in soup or something.
• Feel free to play around with the herbs. This has a distinctly Italian flavour to it with the oregano etc., but dill would be nice, too.

Questions, comments? You know the deal.