Italiano Night

I love Italian food, always have. So when I saw some of the new recipes in Joanna Gaines' new cookbook that were Italian inspired, I knew I had to try it. Be prepared to be hungry after reading and know you were warned.

First up, Aranchini balls or a fancy way of saying fried risotto balls. I first tried these mouth watering appetizers on one of the many family cruises I have been on over the years. On every cruise I have been on there is one night that is known as Italiano night and these are always on the menu as an appetizer, but to be honest they could serve as a main too. I have had a few variations of this dish and some of them are stuffed on the inside {bonus}.

Joanna's recipe is very straight forward and easy to follow. I did add a few things to it, mainly different types of Italian seasonings like dried basil and oregano {I really like Italian seasonings, but you don't need it if you are using her marinara sauce}. The one thing about this dish is it can't be done in under 30 minutes. This is a dish you need to be prepared from start to finish taking about 2 hours, however total active time is somewhere around 30-40 minutes. This dish can be accompanied by either marinara sauce or pesto or if you are like me and can't decide use both.

I made the marinara sauce that Joanna has in the cookbook and used store bought pesto, but I fully intend to try her pesto recipe soon. The marinara sauce is super easy and simple it has about 5 ingredients that go into. It is a thick sauce and can easily be added to if you want to add a meat to it, but it honestly doesn't need it. It takes about 30 minutes to make and was a big hit with my girlies.

The next dish I made was a Pesto Buratta with roasted cherry tomatoes. I was trying to remember where I first had Burata and I believe it was on a trip to NYC, that Ken and I went on several years ago. Ken has an old college friend that is a chef in Connecticut, who will meet with him when she can when he goes to NYC. She took us to two restaurants that night and introduced us to this cheese. It is sooooo yummy. The outside of the cheese is mozzarella but on the inside is this creamy goodness, that you simple have to try to truly understand. The pesto and roasted cherry tomatoes just sends this over the top. I had it with a simple crostini that was suggested in the book. The crunch of the bread with the softness of the cheese combined with the pesto and tomatoes was just heavenly. The perfect bite.

The third dish I made as her minestrone recipe. This again was a very straightforward recipe, right up my alley. I have tried different recipes of this but I really enjoyed that she adds squash in addition to the zucchini. I have come to love squash as I have gotten older and to have it in a soup was a bonus.

The final dish that I tried was her homemade gnocchi. Now when I was reading over the recipe I noticed she mentioned a kitchen tool she called a potato ricer. I had no idea what this was and looked it up. Imagine a supersized garlic press and you are close to what a potato ricer looks like. I asked my neighbor who has an Italian heritage if she had ever used one and she said no and asked what I was going to use it for and I told her it was for gnocchi. She informed me that I didn't need one to make gnocchi and that I could just mash them and it would be fine. I will definitely try it to compare but I was super curious and they are relatively inexpensive so I bought one. {It is also suppose to help make mash potatoes fluffier, so I will try that and let you know.}

I liked this recipe, because like all her recipes, it was easy to follow and didn't have too many steps. The potatoes are baked and then the insides are scooped out. From there you then rice them.

The next step is a little messy and it has caused me to look into a nice work mat for my counter top, because the end result of getting the potatoes to a dough consistency was not fun cleaning up.

The end result was totally and completely worth it. I didn't cook up the fully batch but froze half of it. As I was eating it, I had an idea that I may try these in chicken and dumplings rather than use biscuits like I normally do. I think it was be yummy!

I am really enjoying making the various recipes that are in this cookbook and I would say if you are someone who likes straightforward, tasty recipes, then you need to get this book.