When Gil and I visited Milan last year, we had quite a few memorable meals, as you can imagine, and most of them were within walking distance of our hotel. The pizza at a nearby trattoria (run by Chinese immigrants in the dead-after-dark financial district) was leagues better than anything we’ve ever tried in the States, and the revelatory salumi at Osteria del Treno still makes it challenging for us to completely enjoy local cured meats (though I do have my eye on a couple of mail order purveyors). But my favorite dish of the trip, the one I recall with a sigh, had to be the parmesan flan at Joia.

The soft, cakey exterior of the flan spilled its secret as I cut my first bite and discovered a pool of parmesan flooding out to greet me. Much like the moment of piercing a poached egg yolk and realizing there are only a few fleeting seconds to truly enjoy the sensation at its finest, it filled me with delight and longing. But the ephemeral joys of these dishes are part of the reason we love them so, aren’t they?

Cooking Light published a recipe for parmesan flan in their most recent issue and I considered making it, but didn’t think it’d come even close to what I remembered, so I hit the interweb looking for a better more sinful recipe. I found it at Weir Cooking in the City. I did like CL’s idea of using fresh tomatoes as a topping, though, so I prepared a few heirloom tomatoes from the farmers’ market in my favorite summery way — doused with fruity olive oil and balsamic vinegar and shot through with minced garlic and slivered basil, with salt & pepper to taste. It’s simple and delicious as a bruschetta topping, on crackers, as a topping for fish or pasta, or even eaten on its own in great spoonfuls. Yum.

I forgot that convection ovens cook a little faster than regular ovens do, so the flans were a little crusty on top, but still completely delicious. I’ll keep looking for a recipe that duplicates that glorious parmesan flood, but until then, this flan is staying in the rotation.

recipe after the jump

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That thing I had against leftovers? Not a problem anymore. No sirree, not after last night, at least.

I had quite a bit of filling left after adapting the Plump Pea Dumplings recipe from 101 Cookbooks, so I pondered for a while what exactly to do with it. Then I remembered another recipe I’d bookmarked from Delicious Days (whose photography just kills me) for Egg Yolk Ravioli and dinner was taken care of!

So I mixed together a double recipe of pasta in my food processor (if it’s good enough for Lidia, it’s good enough for me!) and kneaded it until it was pliable, then formed it into a ball before setting it in the fridge to chill for 15 minutes.

Making ravioli from scratch meant digging out the pasta maker we received as a wedding gift and only used once. Not exactly sure why it isn’t in the rotation more often because it turned out nice, thin sheets of ravioli dough.

First, I quartered the dough and ran half of it through the machine to make sure the rollers were completely clear of metal shavings before I got down to it.

And then slowly I rolled, step by step, inch by inch.

Oh yeah, that’s why I don’t use this more often! My arm nearly fell off.

But, as I said, it turned out nice, thin sheets, which I then topped with about a tablespoon of leftover dumpling filling per egg yolk I planned to use. This left me with four frankly not-very-attractive balls of green stuff, into which I formed little craters so the egg yolks wouldn’t escape.

See? Unattractive, but just you wait.

Then I used the egg separators right at the end of my arms to separate the yolks from the whites. The whites went into a bowl and the yolks just sat very perkily atop the green mounds.

Well, ok, not ALL of them were so perky…

That guy at left? He was trouble.

After that balancing act was done, I brushed the dough all around the fillings with egg white and set the other strip of dough on top, carefully sealing each ravioli and doing my best to squeeze out all of the air. Not sure I succeeded on that count, but none burst in the water, which is all I need to consider myself a culinary genius. Set the bar low, kids.

I’m no Martha, but I do love a scalloped edge.

So these babies boiled for 2-3 minutes while I scurried frantically around the kitchen, warming the plates, melting the truffle butter (yeah, you heard me), and getting out the microplane grater so I could top each eggy pillow with cheese before it had a chance to cool off.

I’d say it all turned out well, wouldn’t you?

Sometime last week, one of my friends asked me, “What can I do with barley and mushrooms?” I put on my thinking cap and came up with barley risotto for her, which sounded pretty good once I gave it more thought, so I threw it together for dinner Friday night.

And being the first risotto of any kind I’ve ever made, I was pretty happy with it. Not ecstatic and not quite thrilled enough to give you a recipe just yet, but definitely pleased.

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To hear Gil tell it, he was a bit … cuddly … and carried around an extra 40 pounds before we met. Though I’ve seen evidence of it in pictures, I still find it hard to believe, given his rangy look these days. Granted, he’s almost a foot taller than me, so that amount of weight isn’t quite the disaster it would be on someone my size, but still — it’s pretty significant. So like a lot of other people at the time, he turned to the Atkins diet for a quick fix (which happened to stick).

Even after he lost the weight, he continued to shun carbs for a long time. And then he met me. (Mooo-haaa-haa-haaaaaaaaah!) Actually, I’m not really that big of a fan of carbs, but I don’t believe in depriving myself, so we eat a pretty well-balanced diet these days. And that includes carbs — sometimes quite a lot of them, as it turned out this weekend.

Scrambling for a late lunch Saturday, I threw together what is always a no-brainer: Orecchiette with chicken sausage and broccoli rabe. It’s easy, filling, not unhealthy, and best of all, delicious. But this wasn’t to be our only pasta indulgence over the weekend, thanks to the chuckleheads working the meat counter at Zeytinia.

I asked — twice! — for two duck breasts. They repeated my order and told me with regret that the breasts were frozen into one big package and I’d have to wait for them to thaw it enough to separate two. Not a problem, since I love to browse the store, so I waited. And waited. Five minutes turned into 15, but the thought of my duck breast dinner kept me going.

When I took the package out of the fridge the following day to begin marinating the duck, imagine my surprise to find two legs where the breasts should’ve been! Allowing myself only a momentary growl, I plunged headlong into preparations for duck ragu. (I suppose I could’ve made confit, but it didn’t seem to be worth it for only two legs, and dagnabbit, I wanted duck that very day!)

Can I just say a quick thank you to the aforementioned chuckleheads for their error? Though I had to supplement the duck legs with a few chicken thighs, this dish was really, really, really good. And pretty simple, too, once the nasty business removing the visible fat from the legs/thighs was done.

I’m so happy Gil learned to be flexible with his diet once his excess weight was lost. If he hadn’t, there’s no way I could’ve attempted the carbo-loading I did this weekend, and our recipe binder would’ve been much poorer for it.

recipes after the jump

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I picked up some broccoli rabe at Zeytinia over the weekend and needed to do something with it, and soon. A bulb of fennel was keeping the rabe company in the fridge, so I started formulating a couple of recipes. Upon doing a little research, I realized most of the heavy lifting had already been done by better cooks than I (though I was mostly on the right track), so tonight’s dinner came together quickly and turned out to be awfully good.

The beans you see above were a riff on a recipe in Super Natural Cooking, by Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks. It’s the first thing I’ve made from the cookbook, but the pictures alone are worth the price of admission. Wow. She’s so passionate about food, healthy cooking, and communicating it beautifully to her readers. If you can’t tell, I have a bit of a blog-crush.

Anyway, I made a few substitutions based on what we had in the house, but it turned out great, anyway. I’d probably go ahead and sauté the onions and garlic in olive oil before adding the beans next time, but otherwise would follow the recipe to the letter.

To go with the beans, I roasted some fennel wedges with prosciutto, Parmeggiano-Reggiano, and butter, then spritzed the bubbling mass with a little lemon juice. The recipe seems to be pretty common, but I’ll give credit to Lidia Bastianich, one of the authors I saw online and whose show I absolutely adore.

recipes after the jump

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