Happy Birthday, Sis! An Unintentionally Italian Fête (Plus Pie!)

I am not Italian.  Let's be clear about it.  But I love me some Italian food (as you might already know from my near-innumerable postings about Antico Posto in Oakbrook).

My sister requested stuffed shells for her birthday, and the menu that resulted ended up being pseudo-Italian and super delicious.

I'll admit, I made the shells from the recipe on the package.  It was simple enough but tedious at the same time.  If you're not a patient person, make lasagna instead.  The first shell I stuffed was neat and pretty; I made a cannelle from the filling and gingerly placed it in the pasta.  By the time I got to the last one, I'm pretty sure I was angry and had ricotta in my hair.  My best suggestion for the shells is this: make them ahead of time, arrange them in the pan, and stick it in the fridge until about 45 minutes before you're ready to eat dinner.  Nobody needs to see you cussing out a casserole dish.  Trust me.

Now, since pasta's pretty heavy (especially the kind filled with all manner of delicious cheesiness and topped with sausage-y tomato sauce) the only side dishes I made were salads.  Grape tomatoes looked excellent at the grocery store, so I halved two pints to make a caprese salad.  Here's how it went down:

Caprese Salad a la Foodie:

2 pints grape tomatoes, halved and salted to draw out moisture (stick them in a colander over a bowl for about 20 minutes)
8 oz. fresh mozzarella cut into 1/2 inch cubes
4-5 large leaves of basil cut into ribbons just before serving
2 Tsp. Balsamic vinegar
3 Tsp. extra-virgin olive oil
~1 Tsp. honey (maybe a little less)
Salt and pepper

Toss the mozzarella and tomatoes together.  In a small bowl, whisk the vinegar, oil, and honey with a pinch of salt and fresh-cracked pepper.  (You won't use all the dressing for this amount of salad.  Either store the remainder or use it for salad.)  Pour dressing, to taste, over tomatoes and cheese and add in basil.  Toss gently to coat and chill before serving.

I also threw together a great big romaine salad with thinly sliced hearts of romaine lettuce, quartered grape tomatoes, and a little thinly sliced red onion (which I rinsed with cold water and soaked for a while in a mixture of balsamic and water to take some of the sharpness out).

We usually go crazy with appetizers, but I wanted to do something simple this time around. We'd purchased a trio of Italian cheeses and some fruit, so I set up a little cheese board.  It featured Balsamic Bellavitano (strong, aged, nutty, with Balsamic vinegar), Parmesan SarVecchio (aged, sweet, nutty, a little caramel-y) and Asiago Fresco (a bit like Swiss, tasty but not my favorite) along with quartered black figs, sliced Fuji apple, and crackers.  Coupled with a nice Cuvee red wine and a sweet white, these snackies were an all-around crowd pleaser.

Dessert was pie (not homemade, regrettably, but darlings, I just didn't have the time!).  Also, fun fact: you can make your pie into a milkshake.  I won't go into details about why I made it.  Just know it's yummy.

Apple Pie Shake (Serves 2)

1 slice Dutch apple pie
2 scoops vanilla ice cream
1 cup 2% milk

Throw it all in a blender and blend on high until smooth.  Taste it and be amazed (I know I was).

I'm still full...I guess it was a success.

Happy Almost-Labor Day!

~AF

Your Morning Yolk's New Best Friend

Maybe this isn't anything revolutionary.  But it sure is tasty...

You know when you get a jar of pasta sauce (good pasta sauce, something authentic and rustic) and you're left with too much sauce to toss and too little to use on another batch of linguine?

I have the solution, lovies.  My sauce of choice today?  A zingy, tangy arrabiata sauce, left over from last night's cincue colori conchiglie alla arrabiata (phew, that's a mouthful...a tasty, tasty mouthful).  My recipe?  A fried egg and focaccia sandwich with a shmear of the tomatoey stuff.

Here's how it goes.

Egg Sandwich Italiana

1 large egg
Sandwich-sized piece of focaccia (any kind you like)
1 tsp arrabiata sauce
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

1. Split focaccia, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle lightly with salt.  Toast in toaster oven until golden brown.

2. Heat olive oil in a frying pan or skillet until it glistens.  Fry egg on one side, then add about a quarter cup of water to the pan and cover.  The egg should steam for about two minutes, sealing in the yolk under a thin layer of egg white and leaving it runny.  Top the egg with a bit of salt and a touch of cracked black pepper.

3. Smear the arrabiata on one half of the focaccia.  Place the egg on the bread and enjoy.

The sammy's messy, but it's delicious.  The fatty, savory yolk complements the acidic and spicy tomato sauce.  It works the same way as the hot sauce I liberally apply to my bell pepper and egg sandwiches.  And the focaccia?  Well, that just serves as a tasty, crusty bread that holds up to the cascade of runny yolk and reinforces the Italian-ness of the dish.

Molto buono.  Molto, molto buono.

Buon appetito!

~AF

A Return to the 'Burbs...But Just For a Moment!

Darlings, the Foodie has a plan...subsist during the week on salad bar creations and soup (plus the requisite latté, of course) so that, when given the chance, she can indulge in things far more delicious than she could ever encounter in the school cafeteria.

On a trip home this past weekend (joy of joys!), I was lucky enough to be able to go to my absolute favorite restaurant...my favorite Italian restaurant, that is...we mustn't play favorites.  Never know who's reading, now do we?

Anyways!  Off to Antico!  The risotto of the day was an obvious seasonal nod, featuring sweet corn (glory be!), along with pork tenderloin, caramelized onions, and a splash of aged balsamic.

Risotto, in my opinion, is one of the many dishes that just make your eyes roll back in your head.  It is that good.  The texture, the flavor...all that cheese!  And this risotto was no exception, by any means.  Velvety and creamy, rich, smooth and yet a bit toothsome.  It was awesome.  And it was only made better by the fact that the corn was just shaved off the cob and tossed in at the last minute.

Now, you may be thinking, 'Raw corn! Oh, but Foodie, that isn't right!'

It is so right.  Especially when the corn is this fresh.  It is sweet without even needing to be cooked.  And by not boiling the stuff to oblivion, there remains a wonderfully contrasting texture, a slight crunch, that lightens up the risotto in a way (unfortunately, it didn't make it seem light enough for me to indulge in a mini dessert...shame, really...).

And now, regrettably, I must offer some notes of criticism to my beloved Antico Posto.

The tenderloin...was not tender.  I've had tenderloin there before that was served with a heavy-duty serrated steak knife alongside, but which would only have required a butter knife.  This time, all I had to work with was an excessively dull butter knife, and a piece of pork that simply refused to disassemble.

The pork wasn't really dry...but it wasn't as luscious as I've had it.  Perhaps someone turned away from it at the critical moment, and it was left to seize up a bit before placed atop my dish.  Whatever the reason, although I found the flavor of the meat to be delightful (what wonders a splash of the balsamic will do!), I could have gone without it entirely.

And I must add also that the caramelized onions could have gone a bit longer.  They were caramelized and sweet, but they lacked a certain velvety spreadability that I have come to appreciate in a cooked onion.  Their residual strength of structure made it rather difficult to evenly disperse the stuff throughout my rice.  I would have liked if it had fallen apart.  All the more flavor to spread around.

But I can hardly complain much more than that.  The closest thing I've had to Italian food on campus was at a Build-Your-Own-Pasta station.  I was met with overcooked, under-drained farfalle sauced with a lackluster and undersalted marinara.  My flavor combinations would have been glorious had they taken some Pasta 101 classes from the cooking school.  And the garlic bread looked like it had toasted breadcrumbs on it...how redundant!

Look for my next post: Building the Best Salad Plate!

Peace, Love, and (Hopefully) Antico to You All!

~AF

Antico Strikes Again! Hard-to-Twirl Noodles at My Fave Spot

Antico Posto is my ab-fab favorite way to start the weekend! (Can you tell by my jubilant punctuation?)  Nothing like carbs served with carbs served with garlic and olive oil!  And here we go...

Pappardelle with Fennel Sausage, Goat Cheese, and Tomatoes

My mom and I had the lunch special, Pappardelle with Fennel Sausage.  Fresh pasta in a tomato sauce, tossed together with crumbles of house-made Italian fennel sausage and topped with piquant fresh goat cheese and a pretty chiffonade of basil.  Can I get a "Whoop, whoop?"  As rich as goat cheese is, it actually felt like the one ingredient that lightened up the dish.  All the rich, earthy flavors--the tomatoes and the sausage--needed something sharp and acidic to perk them up.  The dish was so well-balanced in its flavor profile.  I took half home, but it's already gone.  I had it for dinner.

I love pappardelle.  However, that being said, pappardelle is very, very, very difficult to eat gracefully.  For those of you who don't know what pappardelle is, think fettucine...on steroids.  It's about halfway between a fettucine noodle and an un-ruffly lasagna noodle.  This is the sort of pasta that stands up well to something super meaty and hearty.  Thus, it was the perfect pasta pairing with the crumbled sausage.

But the size (nay, the girth!) of the noodles requires you to A) be able to do origami to fit an entire noodle into your mouth or B) cut your noodles into bite-size pieces.  Good luck trying to twirl these babies!  It will not work, especially with the thickness of the noodles at Antico.  Any thicker and they could be considered boiled flatbread; any thinner and they'd break when tossed with the sauce.

But from what I think could be considered an engineering standpoint (bear with me...I know it's a stretch), Antico's pappardelle are the perfect size.  And although it absolutely kills me to cut my pasta, it's worth it.  Especially since it keeps me from getting tomato sauce behind my ears.  That would not be classy.

Unfortunately, we skipped dessert today.  But next time, I shall have my Panna Cotta with brandied cherries.  It is so good.  But you knew that already.

Peace and Love From a Noodle-Cutting Classy Lady,

~AF

Bella, Bella, Bella Means Beautiful...Food that is

It's carefully hidden in Oakbrook Center.  Or at least that's what it says on the menu.  Almost a next-door-neighbor to ma cherie, Mon Ami Gabi, the restaurant Antico Posto is like Gabi's quiet Italian cousin.  It's a "Lettuce Entertain You" restaurant just like Gabi and another restaurant I love, Wildfire.

Ever since the first moment I stepped inside this restaurant through its revolving door, I loved it.  There's a bar at the front and a couple bar tables, but the majority of the restaurant is dimly-lit, white-tablecloth dining.  And it's usually packed.

The first thing placed on the table is crusty, fresh-baked bread with coarse salt on the crust and a dish of add-ons: fruity olive oil with garlic, parmesan, and balsamic and a dynamite giardiniera with green olives, onion, celery, cauliflower, and eggplant.  If the entrees themselves weren't quite so phenomenal, I could just eat the bread.

But the thing is, the entrees are phenomenal.  So don't do too much carbo-loading at the outset of your meal.

They make these really great brick oven pizzas with a chewy crust that tastes a little pretzel-like to me.  They hardly use any sauce, which allows the flavorful toppings to shine, whether it's oven-roasted tomatoes and basil on their goat cheese pizza or sweet fennel sausage and fire-roasted peppers.  The goat cheese pizza is my sister's favorite, and it's the food item that taught her to embrace the roasted tomato.

I happen to be rather partial to the pasta dishes, and I've sampled quite a few.  The pasta is made fresh in-house, and this really makes a difference in their plates.  I love the gnocchi (both bolognese and pomodoro), and the spaghetti bolognese.  While not necessarily authentically Italian (according to Food Network's Alton Brown), this combo of thin, delicate pasta and rich meaty sauce is undeniably delicious.

My all-time favorite pasta at Antico is the cavatelli, which in Italian means "little worms"...delicious, right?  But in all seriousness, it's a hearty yet delicate pasta with a pleasant chew to it.  At Antico, they make it with ricotta, and they pair it with assertive toppings.

I've tried the cavatelli special with vodka-cream sauce, tossed with sweet fennel sausage  and lots of fresh parsley (shown right).  It was a great deviation from my usual, a plate only available once a week.

Behold, ladies, gentlemen, and others: Cavatelli with Sunday Meat Sauce.  It is a heaping plate of pasta tossed in a light cream and topped with a great big ol' dollop of braised meat.  On my last visit, our waiter gave up the names of the meats they use, five in all: pepperoni, sausage, sopressata, roast beef, and roast pork.  All of this is cooked down in garlic and tomato until it's a soft, sumptuous sauce full of meat that is fall-apart tender.  I can think of nothing to improve upon it.

And don't even get me started on the desserts.  They have these great little mini-desserts, from a velvety panna cotta with brandied cherries (my favorite, right) to a creamy lemon cheesecake, topped with whipped cream and lemon curd (my sister's favorite, already half eaten before I got a chance to snap a pic...though I don't blame her).  All you need to cap it off is a LaVazza cappuccino, and you're in business.  Bella, bella, bella.