2008-01-20

Birthday Dinner (Chow)

In celebration of NDM's father's natal day, she told me at the last minute that I had to make baked mostacolli -- something I've never made before.
To distract from my lack of expertise with the dish, I threw together a fancy baked garlic and herb butter to make garlic bread with. A head of garlic drizzled with olive oil and baked for an hour, thrown together with parsley, oregano, basil, cayenne, lemon zest, and of course butter. Mmm!
Even I had no difficulty cooking the noodles until they were almost, but not quite, done.
Whipping up a quick red sauce was also pretty simple; I live and breathe red sauces. I made this one a little spicier than normal to cut through all the cheese, and also threw a bunch of parmesan directly into the sauce.
Topped it with a whole bunch of mozzarella and it was ready for a half hour in the oven.
My error was in the cheese course. I used some handy light mozzarella we had in the freezer, which as you can see did not provide a nice oozy melty top like fresh buffalo mozzarella would have. Live and learn. The crunchy top wasn't bad, but it wasn't what I was shooting for.
Of course the wife had to one-up me with a fancy cake...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok -- all of that looks great! So often your food preparations leave thinking, "Would I be willing to eat that?" But this looks fantastic. :P

Anonymous said...

*leave me thinking