Happy National Cheese Day! Cheesy Recipes below.

     Apparently, today is national cheese day. I didn’t realize this was a thing, but since it is, I’m glad to celebrate one of the most versatile foods in the world. Different types of cheeses are staple foods in so many different cultures. Today, I want to share some of my favorite cheese recipes and my favorite cheeses for antipasti platters.

     In my hometown of Pittsburgh, most people know that the best place to go for a great cheese selection is Pennsylvania Macaroni in the Strip District. Not only does Penn Mac have over a hundred varieties of cheese to choose from, but their cheese counter employees are knowledgeable and helpful. They’ll ask you what some of your favorite cheese are, if you are looking for something soft or firm. Then they will usually suggest something and even give you a taste of it to ensure you like it. I always come home with my top three favorites when I shop at Penn Mac, but I also choose one cheese I’ve never had before. Fair warning, if you happen to shop at Penn Mac during Christmas week, the wait at the cheese counter can be over an hour long. Everybody shops for their holiday cheese platters there, so be prepared.

     My three favorite cheeses for nibbling are Piave, Vlaskas, and Midnight Moon. I slice them and serve them on platters with dried Italian sausage or Soppresata and my daughter’s favorite – Castelvretrano olives. Piave has a nutty, Parmesan-ish flavor to it. It’s a crowd pleaser every time. Vlaskas is a bright yellowy orange cheese that’s a little sweeter and creamier but not soft. Midnight Moon is a firm goat cheese with a bold but not overly strong flavor.

      I, unlike most Italians, do not like strong cheeses. I am not a fan of sharp Provolone. My family in Italy makes this pungent cheese. The first time we visited them, my parents purchased an extra suitcase just to haul cheese back to Pittsburgh. My aunts and uncles here in the States go crazy for it.

     Not me.

     The smell of it reminds me of the weeks after I returned from my first trip to Italy, when I drove from one uncle’s house to the next, delivering wheels of homemade cheese to each of them. My car smelled like stinky feet for a month. I lovingly refer to my family’s homemade provolone as “stinky feet cheese.” 

     Yuck.

     Locatelli Romano is my favorite for topping pasta, especially pasta with red sauce. It is also a must-have for meatballs. They just don’t come the same if you use any other cheese. My mother, the meatball expert, can attest to this. Some prefer Parmesan for grating over pasta. I like to use Parm for something else.

Parmesan Crisps with various Tapenades

Ingredients

5 cups or more of finely grated Reggiano Parm

Directions

Heat oven to 400 degrees and spray baking sheet with Pam

Measure 1/4 cup Parmesan and place it onto a baking sheet like a drop cookie.

Pat down the cheese so it’s flat on top.

Repeat this, leaving space for the cheese to grow as you would when baking cookies

Bake in the 400 degree oven for about 5 minutes or until they are golden and lacy looking

After the crisps cool, you can use them in salads or as appetizers topped with various tapenades.

Olive Tapenade

In a blender or food processor, pour 1 can drained black olives, 3 cloves garlic, juice from one lemon, a dash of salt, and a tablespoon olive oil. Puree until smooth and spoon onto crisps

Roasted Red Pepper Tapenade

In a blender or food processor, place 1 jar drained roasted red peppers, 3 cloves garlic, 5 or so fresh basil leaves, a dash of salt and a tablespoon olive oil. Puree until smooth and spoon onto crisps.

You really can top the crisps with anything you like! There are even store bought tapenades you could use. They are a fun finger food.

The second cheese recipe I’d like to share is a cheese spread I’ve been making for about 15 years. When my husband and I were first married, we ate at a little Italian BYOB restaurant in Beechview. Some restaurants serve flavored oils and bread on the table before salads or appetizers. This one served bread with a cheese spread that was so delicious I tried to recreate it at home.

Gorg Cheese Spread

Ingredients

1C Gorgonzola cheese

1 8 oz. stick of cream cheese

1 small jar of green olives with pimentos, chopped

1 can pitted black olives, chopped

1 small red onion, chopped

Olive oil for serving

Directions

Soften the cream cheese and Gorgonzola together in the microwave.

Blend the two cheeses.

Add in the olives and onions and mix until they are throughout the cheese.

Place the cheese spread in a bowl or on a pretty dish and drizzle with olive oil.

Serve with warm bread or pita crisps.

The last cheese I have to mention because it is so wonderful is Halloumi. Halloumi is a cheese you can put on the grill! It softens a little and gets chewy, but it picks up the grilled flavor perfectly. This cheese should be on every summer meal salad you serve! I grill romaine and red onions, chop them for salad then top with chunks of grilled Halloumi cheese. YUM! You can add any grill vegetable you like.

Try the Halloumi. You will love it!

Most grocery stores carry Halloumi cheese in their specialty cheese section.

Happy eating this week! Be cheesy!

    

      

Eat soup. Stay Warm. Be happy.

It’s finally cold.

I can’t say I love the bite of the wind on my face or the shock of snow that sneaks into my jean cuffs and freezes my dry winter ankles. What I do love is the feeling of comfort I experience when coming in from the cold.

And soup.

I love making soup in winter.

It fills the entire house with fragrant warmth and tells everyone who knocks on my door, “come in from the cold.”

My mother is a chicken soup expert, as my grandmothers were before her. Each woman had her own techniques with a chicken and a pot. My mother would place the chicken and all of the fixings in the pot. She never chopped the carrots, celery or onions but left them whole so that the soup was floating with long carrots and celery, big chunks of chicken and whole onions. It was colorful and fun - the veggies were like prizes. At dinner time, I always claimed the whole onion. After cooking all day, the onions had a sweet flavor, and I loved breaking them up into my bowl of steaming broth and noodles and dumping parmesan cheese and black pepper all over them. So yummy.

Nana Battaglia never called it chicken soup. For her, it was pastina. Fresh chicken broth with bits of meat, celery, onion, and most importantly – acini de pepe -  tiny pasta balls that must release some kind of healing magic the second they burst on your tongue. Nana fed us pastina when my brother and I were infants and gave it to us when we were sick as kids. When our hearts were broken, she’d say “Come in the kitchen. I make a pastina.”

Food is therapy for Italians.

It’s medicine too.

My kids love pastina, and I make it for them often, although my favorite soups are thicker and heartier than the traditional chicken soup.

My personal favorite soup is one I have been making since college. My roommate introduced me to the vegetarian Moosewood Cookbook, and I found an awesome vegetarian minestrone in it that I have tweaked over the years. It is the perfect soup for cold days, full of flavor and healthy veggies and legumes.

Vegetarian Minestrone – originally from the Moosewood Cookbook

Ingredients

3T olive oil

2 onions chopped

6 or so cloves of garlic, minced

A couple handful of fresh or frozen basil

2 chopped carrots

2 chopped celery stalks

1 eggplant, peeled and chopped into bite size chunks

1 zucchini

1 green pepper

2 28 oz cans tomato sauce

4C water or vegetable broth

1 can chick peas

2 cups cooked elbow macaroni or ditalini

Grated cheese for serving

Directions

Saute onions and garlic in olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Add carrots,celery, eggplant and basil. (If you are using fresh basil, save some for serving to sprinkle on top.) Let the veggies cook until they are soft. Add the zuke, the green pepper, the tomato sauce and water. Bring to a boil then turn down to a simmer. Cover and allow the soup to cook for at least 45 mintues so that all of the flavors meld and the veggies get soft. Add the chick peas and let them warm up in the soup. Serve with grated Parmesan or Romano cheese.

If you are in Pittsburgh like I am, then it’s time to make this soup. The snow is coming this weekend, and there’s nothing better than sitting down to a bowl of this with some crusty bread while you watch the white stuff fall. I’ll be making the vegetarian Minsterone this afternoon so that we can have it to eat all weekend.

Stay warm, friends!

And, eat soup!

Winter is for Writers!

     Earlier today, I wished my Pandamoon readers a Happy New Year, and I wanted to do the same for my own followers here on Whatever Inspires. Below is a post from The Pandamoon Publishing blog.

     I always love the months of January through March, because, although they can be rather gloomy in my home city of Pittsburgh, they are quiet and slow. After the rush and push of the holiday season, I welcome the calm of these months. They allow me time to reflect and write, and I’ve found that I am most prolific in the bleak mid-winter. In fact, I wrote three out of four of my books during these months.

     Summer is a wash for me, because of sunshine and swimming pools, and shrieking children. Spring is musical theatre performance time and Easter. Fall is back to school and holidays. I still write every single day during these seasons, but I find that the pace of life in winter allows my mind to wander further into a story than I can at other times during the year.  I’m up early, curled into the words of a new world, and late at night, when the rest of my house is sawing logs, I’m sitting at my kitchen table, wide-eyed at the wonder of whatever tale my fingers are click-clacking onto the page.

     I am looking forward to jumping into my next adventure, and I invite you to tell me about what you’re writing. Post a comment and fill me in on whatever is inspiring you to create. Tell me your setting or your protag’s biggest challenge in your current project. Are you experiencing writer’s block? I have been there too, and I know it’s so frustrating! I would love to hear where you are on your writing journey.

     For all of you writers out there – I wish you a fruitful and successful  2016. Write stories that move you, and you will move others!

    

Aunt Ann's Pepperoni Roll - The coveted appetizer

          Aunt Ann was the classiest lady I knew. She and Uncle Tony ran a jewelry store in Northway Mall, Santini’s Jewelers, and every time I visited the shop, I’d take note of Aunt Ann and her two pretty sisters who either worked there or were always there for a visit. They never failed to look like fashionistas – dressed and accessorized to the nines with perfect makeup and hair. Aunt Ann was well-coiffed well into her eighties. She was barely five feet tall and had the tiniest hands, but the dazzling four carat diamond she wore never looked out of place on her little fingers. It was her calling card.

     Auntie was not only the epitome of fashion but was an avid connoisseur of the good life. She and my Uncle Tony painted the town pretty often. Their favorite restaurant was Rico’s – an old school Italian classic here in the North Hills. They graced the restaurant at least twice a week, where my uncle would embarrass Aunt Ann by snapping at the waitresses to get their attention, demanding this or that. Rico and the staff loved him though. Aunt Ann and Uncle Tony traveled to Las Vegas several times a year, where they’d do a little gambling and Uncle Tony would inevitably buy a few silk shirts for his snazzy collection. In my eyes, the two were jet setters. I never expected Aunt Ann to be a good cook. I was way off.

     Uncle Tony passed away shortly before I got married. In fact, he took my husband diamond shopping for an engagement ring just before he fell ill. My husband has fond memories of Uncle Tony showing him ginormous stones.

     “This is a nice one, eh?” Uncle Tony would say, wiping the sweat from his bifocals and nodding, as Bobby shook in his shiny black shoes. Bobby finally swayed Uncle Tony away from the four carat stones that so resembled Aunt Ann’s big rock and toward the ones that were more his (and my) speed.

 

      After Uncle Tony died, Aunt Ann was terribly lonely. She never really got over the loss of her one true love, her best friend. She yearned for him and spoke of him every single day of her life, even years later when dementia unfortunately set in. My mother took Aunt Ann under her wing, picking her up for Friday lunches – Rico’s of course, to the salon to get her perms, and to the mall – Auntie loved to shop. She spent more time with our family than she ever had, and I was able to get to know her even better, which was really a blessing. She was a beautiful woman inside and out and was one of my grandmother’s very best friends.

     I cannot, for the life of me, remember exactly when I asked my great Aunt Ann for her pepperoni roll recipe. I have a pretty good memory for things like this, but this one’s gone. All I remember is calling her on the phone the first time I tried to make it. I was confused about exactly how to roll out the dough. She calmly explained what to do.

     “Let it thaw until it’s easy to roll, you know,” she said. “And, Dana, make sure you put a lot of peppers in it. I mean, you don’t have to put them in, but the peppers are what make it really tasty.”

      Her words were gospel. Aunt Ann’s pepperoni roll has been a huge hit since I started making it fifteen years ago and the God’s honest truth is the trick is in the hot peppers.

     This post is for you Aunt Ann. Every time someone raves over the pepperoni roll, I swear I give you credit. I hope you’re dancing with Uncle Tony in Heaven!'

Pepperoni Roll - Bring this app to your holiday party. You'll win the prize!

Ingredients

1 loaf Rhodes frozen bread dough

Pepperoni- pizza slices or sandwich slices – doesn’t matter

Shredded mozzarella or provolone cheese – or a mix of both

Banana Pepper rings – hot or mild, depending on what you like

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Let the dough thaw overnight in the fridge or on the counter for a couple of hours. Roll it out into a long rectangular shape. Lay pepperoni all over the dough. Don’t skimp on this step. The more pepperoni, the better. Overlap the pieces so that every space of dough is covered. Lay shredded cheese on top. Sprinkle peppers over the cheese. Roll it up from the short end and tuck in the sides, so you have a nice loaf shaped roll.

Bake on a greased sheet for 40 minutes.

Slice and serve.

YUM!

Happy holiday partying!

Tis' the Season to Nosh!

And so we have begun the season of "The Nosh."

Nosh – to eat food enthusiastically or greedily

I love this time of year. Everything is festive, especially the food. I don't know about your house, but at holiday time, we indulge. Usually I'm not the baker extraordinaire; I much prefer cooking. Close to Christmas, I get the itch, and I end up baking at least 20 different types of treats. My cookie trays are an art form, to me, and I take painstaking care to perfect them for delivery to neighbors, friends and family every Christmas Eve morning.

 Here's a pic from one year.

Our parties revolve around food. Christmas Eve is the ultimate. Everyone brings something to my Uncle Vince's house where we have a display of noshing fit for royalty.Stuffed artichokes, Pizzachina, stuffed banana peppers, ham, marinated vegetable platter, fried cauliflower and mushrooms, pasta, etc.. etc...  The buffet is an overflowing apex of pleasure where we converge and chatter and tease and love on one another as family does.

It's so beautiful. It's so extraordinarily traditional. 

To kick off the season of the nosh, I have, as promised, the recipe for my family’s homemade Thanksgiving ravioli. My mother willingly shared the recipe, because she doesn’t believe anyone will make them to taste like ours.

     But, I believe in you!

     FYI, the measurements are questionable. We are Italian. We don’t really measure out ingredients!

     You will need a pasta machine for this recipe.

Babe’s Ravioli

In food processor mix for dough:

  3 Cups flour

  3 eggs

  1 tablespoon oil

  Add water a little at a time until dough forms into a ball.

Filling

2 lbs ground Veal

1 lb. ground sausage   We use Jimmy Deans Original recipe. 

Approximately 6 cloves minced garlic

About 1 cup chopped fine parsley

10 oz. pack of chopped frozen spinach,  thawed with all of the liquid squeezed out.  

1 small chopped onion

3/4 cup Romano cheese

dash salt and pepper

3-6 eggs, depending on the consistency. Should feel a little wetter than a meatball mixture.

Directions

Mix all of the filling ingredients together. My mother uses the food processor to chop the garlic, parsley, and onion then mixes in the rest by hand in a large bowl. Once the filling feels similar to meatball mix but slightly wetter, you’re good.

Use a food processor to make the dough and then follow your pasta machine’s directions for rolling it out into sheets. With ours, we start on a high gage so that the flattened dough fits through the slot. Then, we work our way down through the thinner settings until it’s about on the second or third to thinnest notch. You want the dough to be thick enough so that the filling can be wrapped inside. You don’t want it to split apart during boiling.

After we roll the dough into sheets, we lay it flat on a floured surface and fill it, about ¾ tsp to  1 teaspoon per rav. My aunt Ceil might be shaking a finger at me from Heaven, admonishing “No it’s a ½ tsp, Dana!” She always yelled at us that we made them to big, but I like a nice, hearty ravioli. You can’t really screw them up by making them bigger.

As shown in the pic below, we fill one long strip then fold it over. 

We then use a juice glass to cut the ravioli into little half-moons.

 We press the edges closed with a fork and pierce the centers then lay them in rows on waxed paper covered baking sheets. 

The ravs are frozen, bagged and stored for Thanksgiving day, when we boil them until they float then toss them with delicious homemade sauce.

The ravs are a  treat we only get to enjoy a few times a year, but the best part about making them is the fun we have together, carrying on a delicious family tradition that would make our ancestors proud.

Good luck! If you make a batch of ravioli, please write and tell me how it works out for you. I can’t wait to hear how much your family loves them! In the coming posts, I'll be sharing more sweet and savory recipes! People are always looking for a great holiday appetizer to bring to a party. I have a few up my sleeve that I’m willing to share, and I’ll post my very favorite (and everyone else’s) next week. Later in the month, I'll have some special cookie recipes for you to include on your cookie tray!

The Beauty of Traditions

     One of my favorite songs from a musical is “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof. I love how the song lyrics talk about the roles of the Mamas and Papas, the daughters and sons. I also love the idea that, even as children, when we have no idea why we participate in certain customs, we build memories of togetherness that tie us to the family and friends who share in our ways. Traditions remind us of who we are and where we’ve come from. They bring to mind those who came before us, those who loved us enough to share their unique spirits, in hopes that we would carry on their traditions when they were gone.

     And we do.

     Italians, like other cultures, have so many traditions. Some customs may seem superstitious – burying a statue of St. Joseph in the yard when you’re trying to sell your house or wearing a special golden horn around your neck to ward off the evil eye. My grandmother used to say you should bury a potato to make your warts go away. I wish she were here today so I could ask her about that one.

     One custom my family has upheld since long before I was born is making homemade ravioli for Thanksgiving. My Nana - Amelia Parmigiani, my mom, and her sister would get together some time in November to make “the ravs.” My grandmother was a strong lady. My mom always talks about how she made the dough and rolled it out by hand to pasta thickness – which is pretty thin and not an easy task when you have that much dough.

     What I remember most is the three of them, all talking at once (one louder than the other,) while they worked to make one of the most special family recipes we have. They’d fight over whether someone was making the ravioli too big or using too much filling. My grandmother would taste the raw filling and sometimes declare it too cheesy or too salty. Now that my grandmother and Aunt Ceil are gone, we make the ravioli at my house, and my mother inevitably forgets the juice glasses we use to cut the ravs. She always runs back home to get the special glasses, because God forbid we use something that’s a tenth of an inch off. That would change the size of the ravs, and that is a no-no. Nana Parmigiani and Aunt Ceil always come up in conversation, and I’m sure they’re smiling down on us as we roll, fill, cut, and press. They’re probably critiquing our form, and I can bet my bottom dollar that they’re shaking their heads at all the kids around my kitchen island. When I was a kid, I was not invited to the pasta-making party. It was serious business, and I was told to skedaddle. Now, we include all of the grand-daughters in the process. My kids have been making ravioli since they were one year old, as has my eighteen-year old niece, Cassie. After years of itching for the superstar role, Cassie’s now the leading lady of the pasta machine, rolling out the dough sheets like a pro.

     “The ravs” are the most coveted dish at our Thanksgiving table. We eat turkey and all of the traditional American fare as well, but our ravioli are the piece de resistance. Every year, my mom worries that we won’t have enough, but we always do. Maybe someone’s looking down on us from above, making sure we have just what we need.

     My Nana Parmigiani could make homemade noodles in her sleep. She didn’t have a food processor or a pasta machine. She had a rolling pin, a big wooden board, and some serious upper-body strength. I was lucky enough to have my Nana live with us during my teenage years. She was a special lady, always ready for a good laugh or a heart-to-heart chat, always there to spice things up in the kitchen. My brother and I loved her homemade macaroni, but I never picked up the recipe.

     Last weekend, when we made the ravs, we had leftover dough, as usual. As we have in the past, we used it to make some homemade noodles for the kids’ lunch. What a treat. A few days later, I was getting ready to make a pot of chicken soup for my Shaia who was home sick from school. She said to me - ”Mom, let’s make homemade noodles for the soup.”   I didn’t really feel like going through all the trouble, especially with a broken dishwasher. I imagined it to be a mess, and I told Shaia that I didn’t have the recipe.

    “3 eggs, 3 cups of flour and some salt,” she said matter of factly. “A little olive oil too. And you add water as you need it to get the dough to come together.”

     Bug-eyed, I asked her. “How did you know that?”

     “I watched Nunny,” she said.

     In that moment, I was so glad I included my kids around the kitchen island to help make the ravioli.

     Sure enough, Shaia was right on the recipe. The noodles were perfect, even if they were a bit thick. Next time we will roll them a little thinner. It wasn’t that messy. I’ve included some pics of Shaia watching my mom, intently, as she makes the dough for the ravioli and also some of our homemade soup noodle day.

Here’s the recipe:

Homemade Noodles

Ingredients

3C flour

3 eggs

A pinch of salt

1T olive oil.

1/8 to 1/4 C water

Directions

Combine eggs flour and salt in food processor. Turn it on and drizzle oil in as it’s mixing. Add water by the tablespoon until the dough comes together like a ball inside the machine. Take the dough out and work it with your hands into a smooth ball.

Flour your work surface.

Cut the dough into pieces that are a good size for you to roll into sheets.

Slice the sheets into noodles of whatever size you like. We did about ½ inch thick.

Let them dry for about 30 minutes.

Boil.

Note: These take much less time to cook than dry pasta. As soon as the start floating around, taste them. They will probably be done.

     Visit my blog next week for the Thanksgiving ravioli recipe. My mother has given me permission to share it one here. I was shocked that she’d allow it. Her reasoning was this.

     “Nobody’s gonna make it taste like ours anyway.”

     She makes me laugh so much. I love her.

     But, I bet you can make them if you try.

     Until next week, eat happy!

WARNING!!! RANT INCOMING. Why I'm annoyed at a local grocery store.

     Usually I write positive, heartfelt, pieces about things that inspire me. Food, people, travel, the theatre. Today I’m going to rant about a place that’s been bugging me for awhile.

     It’s a local grocery store that I won't name.

     It’s Giant Eagle’s snobby sister.

     Why can’t you hire some baggers, UNNAMED GROCERY STORE ? I don’t want to spend fifteen minutes in the checkout lane while your friendly cashiers study every third item they ring up from my order. I’m not interested in sharing recipes in the grocery lane. I do that on my blog. Not only do they ask what I’m going to use the Thai coconut curry sauce for, but they then take forever to file it neatly into just the right cheap plastic bag. One cashier and one bagger for each cash register. That’s all I’m asking for.

     In most people’s opinions, this UNNAMED GROCERY STORE’S prices are high compared to other stores. In fact, in April 2015, consumerreports.org ranked Giant Eagle stores in general among the grocery store chains with the “worst prices in the nation.” With such high prices, this store should be able to afford to pay baggers. Give a high school kid a job for goodness sakes! Quit spending profit to pay the tuxedo-clad piano player who’s pounding out Beethoven’s 9^th and clogging up lane 15. Use the surplus cash to pay a bagger.  Your less fancy counterpart doesn’t have a string section in the dairy aisle, but guess what they have.

     Baggers!

 

     There’s a laundry list of reasons that this particular grocery store gets on my nerves.  I’ll point out just a few.

     There are always at least a bazillion workers re-stocking in every section. They tote extra-wide bins that are nearly impossible to navigate a shopping cart around. Less stockers. More baggers.

     Every lane has a ridiculous amount of minutiae piled on brand new fashionably rustic shelves, obstructing cart traffic and causing lines of shoppers to develop on either side of these super-practical things they’re offering. Things like raspberry scented dog toothpaste or toaster covers with Justin Bieber’s face silk screened onto them. Can’t live without these things.

     There’s no great magazine section and very few greeting cards to pick from, but UNNAMED GROCERY STORE sells ostrich eggs.  Giant alien-looking eggs that are draped in fake straw and marketed to shoppers in farmy-looking yellowish baskets that are probably made in China. Why such a crappy greeting card section, UNNAMED GROCERY STORE? Is your target market seriously more likely to buy an ostrich egg than a birthday card?

     Just quit purchasing the weird stuff. Quit stopping up my shopping trip with grumpy stockers. Quit training your cashiers to allay their customers’ annoyance with goofy chatter.

     Hire baggers.

     End of rant.

     DISCLAIMER: In no way am I bashing someone for buying an ostrich egg. I like exotic foods. Also, raspberry dog toothpaste is fine. Justin Bieber toaster covers – not cool.