Goodbye, Italy! Take 2

It’s my second last night in Italy within the past month. I am too freaking lucky. Look at all this great food!

 

Caffe Latte and Pastry at a Cafe at the corner of Via Nazionale and Via Faenza in Florence.

 

Pastries from Il Forno, by the Mercato Centrale.

 

Firenza salad, Mostodolce pizza (tomato, mozzarella, truffle, mushrooms – AMAZING), and the Martellina beer – this restaurant/pizzeria brews their own beer. I tried the honey brew, and WOW. It was so good! I haven’t have house-brewed beer since I left the States, so this was a real treat – very sweet with spicy notes and a just-bitter-enough finish. Perfection!! All from Mostodolce, Via Nazionale in Florence.

Sadly, I didn’t get ANY pictures of our pasta courses we ate out our first night. Extremely disappointing. It was amazing and I forgot my camera. More later.

I am super sad to be leaving Italy.

Goodbye, all you lovely Italian pastries and caffe lattes :(.

I will be back.

a black tie affair

Last weekend one of my roommates (not the apple picking one :P) and I hosted a very classy party, in honor of the opening of a new performing arts center at our (engineering) school.

The opening of this performing arts center has been the topic of a lot of controversy lately, over many issues that generally center around the need for other improvements on campus, and the sheer amount of money being spent on this new building.

While I have my own opinions about this, I won't go into them in too much detail on this blog.  However, as a club officer, I was invited to the invite-only Gala Opening Event last Friday night.  I definitely wanted to go check it out, mainly because I was sure there would be good food there (and I was right!).

It was black-tie only - so sophisticated!  I've never been to such a "grown up" event, so I was pretty excited to get to wear my black prom dress again ;).  Unfortunately, I forgot my camera and didn't get any pictures of the night!  I have some bad-quality cell phone pictures, but it doesn't do anything justice.  The pictures you see now are from re-visiting the building the next morning, with my mom.

So, anyway, I spent most of the day on Friday preparing for our unofficial after-Gala event - the anti-event!  Julie (my date for the evening!) and I really enjoyed the irony in the party hopping we did.  I present to you our menu for the evening:

• Vegetables with Roasted Red Pepper Humus
• Strawberry, Grape, and Mandarin Orange Fruit Skewers
• Parmesan Rosemary Walnut Shortbreads
• Grape and Rosemary Focaccia
• Warm Cheese Artichoke Spinach Dip
• Cayenne-Paprika Spiced Popcorn
• Raspberry-Lime Petit Fours

The petit fours took the longest to make - about 2 days.  I deviated a bit from the original recipe listed above, starting with the Magnolia Bakery Vanilla Cupcake recipe, baked as a sheet cake, as the base.  From the birthday cake mentioned in a previous post, I found layers were extremely easy to cut when using this recipe, so I didn't want to risk anything new!  Especially trying to balance making all of this between classes and meetings.

The focaccia recipe's already made a debut at the Apartment Warming party, made by Chris both times!  It's a huge crowd pleaser every time - everyone's usually surprised that it tastes so good, since the idea of grapes on pizza dough is a bit strange at first.  I LOVE this stuff, and it was definitely a hit at the party.

(Can't have a classy party without champagne!)

delicious? or just a bad idea?

SO.  a tad bit late (oh when will I learn!), but here's the macaroni and cheese pizza post that I promised.

I had been doing my "research" (searches for "pizza" on flickr) for the next pizza I was going to make, and came across several pictures of DELICIOUS looking macaroni and cheese pizza that I knew I had to try.  but I didn't want to make a mac n cheese only pizza, so bacon was the natural second choice of ingredient.  I figured I had to try add something vaguely nutritious to the pizza (if nothing else but to make it look a little more appealing), so I grabbed some frozen chopped spinach in the grocery store and threw that on as well.

mmm, look at all of that deliciousness.

now, although this pizza was incredibly delicious, it was also incredibly rich and had me slightly sick the next day.  chris didn't seem to have much of a problem with it (he does agree it was very rich though), so I'm venturing a guess that my body just wasn't used to all of that creamy/greasy goodness at once.

but don't let that deter you!  I can see this being an excellent snowed-in movie night dinner.  NOM!

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Bacon, Spinach, and Macaroni & Cheese Pizza

pizza dough (I use this recipe)

prepared package of Macaroni and Cheese

1/2 lb bacon

1/2 of a 10 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry

3/4 C mozzarella cheese

1/4 C tomato sauce

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 tsp Italian seasoning

1/2 tsp chili powder

1/4 tsp paprika

1 tsp olive oil

Preheat oven at to its highest temperature. (Mine goes to 450 F...the higher the temperature, the better the pizza)

Let the pizza dough sit at room temperature while the bacon is cooked.

Cook the bacon on the stove at medium high until just under crisp (it will crisp more in the oven).  Dispose of or save the fat and lay bacon slices on paper towels to soak up extra grease.  Chop the bacon into bite size pieces.

Spread the dough on a greased pan.  Poke the dough with a fork if you're having a tough time - this will break up some of the gluten.  Once the dough is shaped, spread the olive oil over the dough.  Sprinkle the dough with the spices and garlic, and then spread the tomato sauce over that.

Next, add the macaroni and cheese layer.  You're not going to want to use all of it, that'll be too much.  Spread the macaroni and cheese over the dough so it makes a single layer.  Then top with the spinach.

Sprinkle the mozzarella cheese over the pizza.  Top the pizza with bacon pieces.

Bake in the oven until crust is lightly browned and crispy.  At 450 F, it usually takes my pizzas 10-12 minutes to cook.  Check on it regularly after 8-10 minutes of cooking.

Enjoy!

Quick Update - Summer of Pizza

I'm writing this from the corner of my couch, curled up with some Lychee tea, Harry Potter 7 open at my side (the Ministry just fell), and my laptop balanced on a knee.  There's a thunderstorm rolling in!  From my seat on the couch I have the best view of the lightning over our woods - I'm at home for another few days, then back to work after a marvelous 2 week vacation with my family.

 

Nina just got back from working at the Omega Holistic Institute as a seasonal worker, and brought back some amazing brownies with her.  They had the perfect brownie texture - fudgy, but still cake-like, deeply chocolatey, and smooth.  Yum!  Those brownies got me thinking about comfort foods, and comfort foods got me thinking about the Summer of Pizza.

 

This summer was the Summer of Pizza for Chris and me (and I? Gah.).  Anyway, we found a great little deli near us called Maselli's, right on the way to Price Chopper.  They sell "pizza making kits" for $3.50.  What a bargain!  It includes homemade pizza dough, freshly grated mozzarella cheese, and their own tomato sauce.  Heavenly.  And the best part is, we almost always have sauce leftover after we make the pizzas!

 

So anyway.  Chris is due for a guest post, to talk about two of his amazing pizzas.

Shallot Grape Focaccia, made for the Apartment Warming Brunch.  I suppose this isn't technically a pizza, but it WAS made with pizza dough, so it counts in my book!

Chicken, Spinach, Artichoke Pizza with White Sauce.  YUM!  I actually might have been missing a few ingredients, but that's why I'm not making that post ;).  This was kind of a take-off on a pizza I had in Seattle from a "Take and Bake" place.  I don't know if that's a new term for anyone else, but I thought it was really cool!  We don't have those on the East Coast.  The idea is you order a pizza from a menu, and they put it together for you.  Then you take it home and bake it yourself!  Deeeeelicious.

<--Pizza inspiration.

 

I do miss Seattle.

 

P.S. Look for my Mac 'n Cheese, Bacon, and Spinach Pizza recipe to be up later this weekend!