A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Timpano di Maccheroni: The "Mythic Pasta Dome"

  

This recipe was so much fun to make!  I'd seen it years ago, a classic Italian dish made famous by Stanley Tucci's movie "Big Night" , the story of two restauranteur brothers (Tucci and Tony Shalhoub, more recently starring as Adrian Monk) whose fortunates are on the wane.  In a last mad dash, they have one "Big Night" extravaganza to save the restaurant and this is one of the dishes they served.

I served it our Dexter Dinner group to celebrate the season six premiere of Dexter. We gathered for Timpano, Death in the Afternoon cocktails, and Dexter (Apple) cake. Everything, including Dexter, was delicious!  This recipe is definitely a showstopper and very flexible. I'll be serving it again.

Several years ago, I had planned on making it for my pasta-lovin' niece Jordan's birthday party as a truly celebratory entree but at the last minute I flinched, afraid I would leave the whole family in the lurch if I messed it up, and simply served baked mostacciola instead. While the dish does have several steps, almost all of them can be made ahead and the whole dish can easily be finished early on the day of serving and baked a bit before serving.  Actually, with at least a half hour cooling time it's a great dish to take to a potluck or to serve at an open house. I only made a 2qt bowl full and not only was it plenty of food for the four of us watching Dexter that night, there were leftovers, and during the dinner, the dish was still warm to the touch 45 minutes after cutting.

As much as I sort of dreaded and anticipated and was scared and excited all at the same time about preparing this dish, it really is much easier to make than it looks! I promise.

Dexter Dinner: Timpano, Dexter Cake, & Death in the Afternoon Cocktails

 

Dexter premiered season six last night and we were there! Last year, my cousin, James, came over to the house on Sunday nights so we could all watch Dexter together since we were all huge fans.  We adopted Auntie Miranda into the cult and have been a Dexter Dinner foursome ever since. We always meet at Gene's and my house and I make dinner, usually using them as guinea pigs to test new recipes.  It's a win-win for me and for them and the safety net is that if it's ever is a win-lose, there's always pizza that can be delivered.

 

Literally, for years I've been wanting to make Timpano, the classic "mythic dome pasta" (Mario Batali) dish made famous by the movie Big Night from 1996 where Stanley Tucci, as one of two restanteur brothers (Tony Shalhoub is the other) makes this dish for their "big night" make it or break it extravaganza.  My understanding is that Tucci himself came up with the idea to use this recipe in the movie since it's one that his family actually makes for special occasions in real life. In 1999, following the popularity of the food from the movie Tucci's mother and the chef who consulted on the film authored a cookbook "Cucina & Famiglia: Two Italian Families Share Their Stories, Recipes, and Traditions" by Joan Tropiano Tucci and Chef Gianni Scappin.

This week I'll be blogging my version of the Timpano recipe starting with a 15 hour slow cooker meat sauce for pasta, Auntie's fruited salad and vinaigrette, the apple cake with caramel apple filling, and Death in the Afternoon cocktail created by Ernest Hemingway using Absinthe which is now legal in the U.S. again.

Let's begin with the meat sauce...

Slow Cooker Meat Sauce for Pasta

Timpano the Mystic Pasta Dome

Death in the Afternoon Absinthe Cocktail

Apple Cake with Caramel Apple Filling

Nieces and Nephew Summer Slumber Party: Easy Cheesy Mac for a Crowd

 

Once a year or so we try to have a big slumber party with all three of our nieces and our nephew.  Two of them live here in town but the other two live about an hour away with their mom. Just because of work, school, life in general, we don't get to see them as much as we would like but we all know how it is, right? But we do try to have an overnighter when we can so that we can do an Aunt Gonnie and Uncle Gene and the kids thing where it's more about hanging out and catching up with what's going on in their lives.

One of the things I've learned over the years is to try to put aside the OCD "party" definition in my brain that tends to make all things including food and house cleaning into a spectacle so big that by the time my guests/friends/family arrive I'm so tired from over-working myself that I didn't use to enjoy the "together" part of getting together as much as I should have.  These guys are my nieces and nephews. They know I'm not a perfect housekeeper and they don't want a meticulously Martha Stewart set table or gourmet food so this family casserole my brothers and sisters and I were raised on is perfect fare for the occasion: quick and easy to make and yummy to eat. I even made it up the day before so that all I had to do was slip it in the oven when I went to pick up the kids at my brother's and then my sister's house.  We grew up with Mom (Karen) calling it "goulash" but it's not the traditional Hungarian dish of chunked meat with vegetables, it's an Americanized version from the 50's, I believe, that's made with hamburger, macaroni, and a tomato sauce.  Gene's mom had a recipe for it in her recipe box called "Chuckwagon Macaroni". The recipes follows the jump, along with lots of fun dorky pics.

Sweet Potato and Roasted Peep Easter Casserole

 

Where most people roast marshmallows, my niece Jordan and I love to roast Peeps.We love that extra crunch the outside layer of sugar of the Easter peep provides along with the perverse spectacle. So why not combine two of our favorite things:  Roasted Peeps and sweet potato casserole? Mmmm...

Fresh Mussels and Shrimp over Pasta

 

 

At every Italian restaurant Auntie Miranda and I have been to together that has had mussels on the menu, we've always shared an order. They are always served as an appetizer in a large bowl with the mussel broth nicely seasoned, with crusty baguette slices on the side.  Every single time we always say to each other "Instead of (fill in the blank) why didn't we just order a plate of these for each of us and ask them to put a side of plain angel hair in that wonderful broth?"  I don't know why we never remembered either but I finally recreated the dish at home--so easy and so yummy!--when my grocery store had steamer-ready mussels on sale.  I thought "This is the night I make that dish!"  It was a good as I had hoped.

Home-Made "Hostess" Cupcakes--Worth Every Minute!

 

Being in charge of our monthly work (night shift) birthday parties, I have way too much fun making up the food themes and cooking. This month was no exception.  The theme I foisted upon my fellow coworkers for February was "White Trash/Trailer Park" where we feasted on Pigs-in-a-Blanket, Sloppy Joes, Cheese-in-a-Can, and junk food like these mock-Hostess-cupcakes. Okay, junk food that's good for you.  Okay, junk food that's not chemical-laden and bad for you.  Yeah, I can live with that definition for these.

Well worth every minute it takes to make them from scratch, they're also simple to decorate even for a novice decorator armed with a pastry bag and two basic tips.  They're even more fun to eat. Of course!

There are three parts:  The Cupcake, The Filling, and The Chocolate Frosting

Holli's Birthday: Lady John Deere Cake

 

  Happy Sweet 16th Birthday to our niece (okay, really 2nd cousin or some such whatever but niece is more the relationship)  Holli Meadows.  Poor kid has a pre-Halloween birthday so she has at times gotten lost in the shuffle but not anymore.  Last year, along with Halloween chili and treats, I made a Twilight themed cake which blended in well. This year, Holli said she'd love a lady John Deere theme which worked out well as a family funny.  Everyone knew Holli had just had her birthday but everyone kept wondering why I'd put a John Deere hat on a cake board on the Halloween dessert table. We didn't even realize how many people didn't realize it was a cake until Gene and I compared notes after the party. At least a half dozen people had no idea it was a cake rather than just a JD ball cap. Once we cut it people were standing around with their jaws dropped and then grabbing pieces of coconut layer cake to dessert on. What a compliment!!! Holli and I were thrilled. 

Along with the cake, Gene and I got her a lady John Deere purse (see pics below for the purse) in the same pink/brown theme that my friend Misty Starnes has and loves. 

Happy Birthday Holli Girl!

For pics of the cake construction process, click below.

Happy 50th Birthday, Gene! Nannie's Banana Pudding Just For Gene

 
  
Happy 50th Birthday to my wonderful hubby, Gene! 

On the other hand, I can't believe I'm married to an official old man, AARP candidate, self-proclaimed "cranky old bastard".  How do these things happen in life?  They just sneak up on you with a baseball bat in the night.  :-)

Had a great party for old bastard (hey, his words!) last night with a few old friends to help usher him along into this over the hillishness and of course I have a few stories to tell.

Let's start with Friday, the day I was prepping food for this little shindig but in the middle of the afternoon I needed to go get my allergy and asthma shots. I'd just put on a pot of water to hardboil eggs for deviled eggs and, standing in the kitchen, told Gene "Just let them boil hard for 10 minutes and then turn them off and let them be."  His response was to scowl and bang his hand on the counter, yelling at me "I'm so damn tired of you starting crap and leaving me to finish it and take care of everything!"  My eyebrows were somewhere in the fifth dimension, I believe. While THINKING "You. Are. A. Dead Man." I SAID quietly "Are you kidding me?"  He immediately laughed and said "Yes! I am! You should see the look on your face. That was hilarious."  Yeah. Hilarious.  He almost didn't make it to that Big Five Oh.

But of course it was funny and I've been telling everyone.

He's been so ornery the last few days--it's been really fun and funny around our house. He also bacame his own birthday chronicler from time to time as he photographed the birthday prep.  After uploading this one, I asked "Why did you take a picture of me picking egg shell pieces out of the eggs?" He said "You were doing something with your hands?" 

Cute little dirty old man! :-)

 

I put up the fall and part of the Halloween decorations for last night and then added a few spiffy old man party things including this caution tape across the door and wound some of it around the pillars on the porch. We also made him wear a ribbon/button that said "OH NO THE BIG 5-0" and he stuck a little caution sign I'd bought for the dessert table into his shirt pocket that said "Caution: 50 year old having a senior moment" so I guess he was as decorated as the house.  He also had a baseball hat that read "50:  Been there, done that, can't remember it."

 
The Motley Bday Crue--Front Row:  Dee McKeel and Birthday Boy, Middle Row:  Debbie Henderson, Barb Schurke, Tammy Jahnke, and Jenn Garrison (Campbell).  Back row:  Jeff McKeel, John Henderson, John Schurke, Corbin Campbell, and Dave Jahnke. And not in the photo,  Darrel and Leigh Hasty, friends through Corbin and Jenn.

The connections are:  Jeff and Gene grew up together in Marshfield...John H. and Corbin and Gene were all in the radio game together for the last two and a half decades...Barb and John work with me but Gene loves them too... and Dave and Tammy have been neighbors and friends for over 15 years. 

We ate tons, told lots of fun stories, played a little poker... 

What a wonderful evening--thank you all for joining us and celebrating Geno's transition officially into old-man-hood!

And now for the recipe.  Gene's favorite dessert is my Nannie's (grandmother's) old-fashioned banana pudding, the truly southern version using 'Nilla Wafers.  She used to make a big bowl of it for him every year for his birthday and as a special treat whenever she thought he needed a little Nannie pick me up or whenever he did something extra special nice for her which was often. They were pretty tight. I love that they loved each other so much. The bittersweet part of that is that Nannie is no longer with us. So in memory of her and her love for Gene I get to make the banana pudding for him.

Night Shift Birthday Party: Jessica's Cucumber Sandwiches

 

One of the great side effects of work birthday parties is getting to taste new recipes like these pretty open-faced cucumber sandwiches our friend Jessica brought in.  Easy to make, they were delicious, so good Carrianne and I ate almost a container of them by ourselves (luckily, there were three containers so others could indulge too).

By the way, I'm going to start adding Cook's notes to recipes with "use this...or that..." and I've set up a new category to reflect recipes that take substitutions well.   So many times recipes can be equally good using several different ingredients and it can all depend on what you have in the pantry or what you need to use up from the garden.  Not all cooks are adept at making those substitutions the way I was taught growing up in my mother's kitchen.  Quite frankly, we were very poor and running to the grocery store for a $5.00 ingredient was rarely an option so my mother became extremely proficient at still trying new recipes while also still using her pantry items on hand.  For example, most recipes that call for asparagus taste just as great substituting broccoli when asparagus is out of season, zucchini for eggplant, or in this recipe Cavender's Greek Seasoning is a great substitute for fresh dill when you don't happen to have fresh from the garden on hand.

Summer Family Birthday Party: Bratwursts in the Crockpot

Not only did we have a fun summer family bday party, honoring (boy) Jordan, Sydney, and Kaylee (who wasn't able to come--we miss you, girlie!) we made up a new recipe.  Usually bratwursts and grills go together but for a variety of reasons it just wasn't an option this time so we fired up the crockpot instead.  I've made hot dogs in the crockpot (beef broth instead of water) for work things so I knew it would work but I didn't realize just how well. One of the yummy side effects of the crockpot was how tender the brats ended up coming out.  Deliciously tender.  Amazingly tender.  Plus, in the last few cooking hours, I added a sliced onion, red pepper, and banana pepper to the mix and they became one of our favorite toppings.

I worked right before the party so the Price Cutter bakery at Republic Road and National had to step up to the plate with cakes. These were adorable (and very reasonably priced) "Fancy Baby Doubles", an eight inch layer topped with a six inch layer. Plenty of cake to serve everyone plus small enough to be able to get individually designed boy and girl cakes, one in chocolate and one in vanilla. We all loved them. I've really been impressed with Price Cutter's bakery the last few years. They've got a great staff of talented and versatile decorators.  The kids happily shared their cakes and still had leftovers to take home.