Italian Cooking

[cara]

don't you?

 

[Addie]

don't you?

Bless your heart! I wish.

 

[CWS4322]

Don't forget that Italian goes way beyond red sauce/gravy. Gnocchi, risotto and carpaccio, just to mention a few.

+1. Not being a red sauce fan, I prefer gnocchi, risotto does nothing for me...I would say Italian is not one of my fall-backs, but I do love porchetta. I do enjoy watching Lydia and Maryanne.

 

[Addie]

+1. Not being a red sauce fan, I prefer gnocchi, risotto does nothing for me...I would say Italian is not one of my fall-backs, but I do love porchetta. I do enjoy watching Lydia and Maryanne.

I prefer one or two large spoonfuls of red sauce on my pasta. I will go a month or two without any pasta. Then I get a hankering for some just swimming in the red gravy. When the pasta is in my bowl, I just can't do it. One or two spoonfuls is all I can put on it. Loaded with butter of course!

 

[CWS4322]

I prefer one or two large spoonfuls of red sauce on my pasta. I will go a month or two without any pasta. Then I get a hankering for some just swimming in the red gravy. When the pasta is in my bowl, I just can't do it. One or two spoonfuls is all I can put on it. Loaded with butter of course!

I go months without eating pasta as well. I don't think I've made anything with pasta since sometime I October/early November--just not a pasta person. Wild rice, however, is another story, that I eat 2-3 times/month.

 

[CarolPa]

This morning I was listening to a talk show on the radio and a woman called in, talking about Sicilian Ground Meat Stuffing. Who can tell me something about this?

 

[RPCookin]

I go months without eating pasta as well. I don't think I've made anything with pasta since sometime I October/early November--just not a pasta person. Wild rice, however, is another story, that I eat 2-3 times/month.

Don't know about Rural Ottawa, but anyplace I've ever lived, wild rice is prohibitively expensive except for special occasions (I doubt that I've made it more it than a half dozen times in my life), and I know that a lot of people don't like it... to much chew compared to the rice they are used to. Down here you can't even get it. We do eat a bit of brown rice - I usually make it with sauteed onion and garlic, and use chicken or beef stock or bouillon for the liquid.

An island staple is peas and rice (made with white rice and pigeon peas), or variations like beans and rice, crab and rice, conch and rice, etc. They always use some sort of a browning agent so the rice is a rich brown color.

We also have the basic pastas readily available (macaroni, spaghetti, angel hair, shells, bowtie, penne), so pasta dishes are also common (an island form of mac 'n cheese is almost as common as peas and rice). One thing you find out living here is that typical island meals are starch heavy. Most restaurants offer all of the sides a la carte so that you aren't locked into a starchy meal if you don't want it.

 

[GotGarlic]

This morning I was listening to a talk show on the radio and a woman called in, talking about Sicilian Ground Meat Stuffing. Who can tell me something about this?

What did the woman say about it? I've found recipes for turkey stuffing, bell pepper stuffing and rice ball stuffing made with ground meat.

 

[Addie]

This morning I was listening to a talk show on the radio and a woman called in, talking about Sicilian Ground Meat Stuffing. Who can tell me something about this?

If my memory serves me right, it is a meat based stuffing to go into another meat. Turkey, chicken, butterfly pork loin roast, or a beef roast, etc. The following is the closest to what I remember my girlfriend's grandmother making for the holidays and was stuffed inside the turkey. I always thought (as a child) that it was weird to use meat to stuff meat. But I do remember how delicious.

Gramma Caruso's Sicilian Stuffing Recipe : : Recipes : Food Network

 

[Roll_Bones]

I love "red" marinara sauce as its the base for many delicious meals.

I am thinking of mussels in red sauce at this very moment. Sunday meatballs or pork pieces. Italian sausage. Shrimp.
You can do many things with marinara sauce.

 

[CarolPa]

When I was in Jr High a girl said "Ewwww" when she saw they were serving stuffing made from bread, the only stuffing I've even seen. She said her mother stuffed their turkey with ground meat, my turn to say "Ewwww." I never heard about it since until the woman this morning said that the Sicilian Ground Meat Stuffing was the best part of the Thanksgiving Dinner.

I found a u-tube video of a guy making it, but he was making it as a side-dish not to be stuffed into the turkey. It resembles what I use for stuffed peppers, and does look good. If you put ground meat into a turkey raw, wouldn't the fat from the ground meat combine with the flavor of the turkey? Or would you cook the ground meat before stuffing the turkey.

SICILIAN HAMBURGER AND RICE STUFFING - THANKSGIVING - CHRISTMAS STUFFING - YouTube

 

[Somebunny]

In the southern US (maybe elsewhere also) they make a sausage/bread stuffing for stuffing a turkey with.
In fact I have made it myself, by adding cooked sausage to my regular stuffing. It seems to taste good with the bird, so i suppose without the bread it would taste good too

 

[CWS4322]

Don't know about Rural Ottawa, but anyplace I've ever lived, wild rice is prohibitively expensive except for special occasions (I doubt that I've made it more it than a half dozen times in my life), and I know that a lot of people don't like it... to much chew compared to the rice they are used to. Down here you can't even get it. We do eat a bit of brown rice - I usually make it with sauteed onion and garlic, and use chicken or beef stock or bouillon for the liquid.

I get my wild rice from a friend's son in MN. The lake is on a reservation and since he is a member of the tribe and lives on that reservation, he is allowed to harvest wild rice from that lake. I pay him about $4/lb once it is processed and pick up 10-15 lb when I make my annual pilgrimage to MN. It is natural wild rice, not that cultivated kind. I don't find that it is chewy, but I have friends who prefer the cultivated because the natural wild rice tastes "too grassy." I even "pop" it and eat it like popcorn.

 

[Addie]

In the southern US (maybe elsewhere also) they make a sausage/bread stuffing for stuffing a turkey with.
In fact I have made it myself, by adding cooked sausage to my regular stuffing. It seems to taste good with the bird, so i suppose without the bread it would taste good too

My mother used to make a mashed potato stuffing mixed with sautéed stuffing for the neck of the turkey. For the cavity, we always had just plain bread stuffing. I always had a hard time choosing between the potato and bread stuffing. I would have been happy just putting stuffing on my plate. Covered with gravy.

And to answer your question Carol, you do not put raw meat into the bird. You always cook it first. At least that is the way I remember seeing my friends Noni's doing it.

A seafood stuffing with bread is also very popular in this region of the country. You lightly sauté the clams, oysters, etc. before adding it to the bread stuffing.

 

[CarolPa]

And to answer your question Carol, you do not put raw meat into the bird. You always cook it first. At least that is the way I remember seeing my friends Noni's doing it.

A seafood stuffing with bread is also very popular in this region of the country. You lightly sauté the clams, oysters, etc. before adding it to the bread stuffing.

I have had the stuffing with sausage that is pre-cooked, usually with cornbread instead of regular bread.

Cooking the ground meat before stuffing the bird sounds OK to me, but as a kid, I just thought of putting that ground meat alone into the bird and having it cook inside the bird, like a meatloaf. LOL Now that I see the way the guy did it in the video it looks really good, even though he didn't put it in the turkey. My family loves bread stuffing, so if I did the meat and rice I think it would be a side dish and we would also have the bread stuffing.

 

[CarolPa]

Now I have another question. Does anyone here put a bechemel sauce on top of their lasagne? I don't, I just have cheese and sauce on top. But I recently saw a recipe that called for baking the lasagne half way then putting the bechemel sauce on top and finishing baking it. I have seen lasagne and also fettuccini alfredo that had what appeared to be an inch of melted cheese on top, but now I'm thinking maybe that was bechemel.

 

[CWS4322]

Now I have another question. Does anyone here put a bechemel sauce on top of their lasagne? I don't, I just have cheese and sauce on top. But I recently saw a recipe that called for baking the lasagne half way then putting the bechemel sauce on top and finishing baking it. I have seen lasagne and also fettuccini alfredo that had what appeared to be an inch of melted cheese on top, but now I'm thinking maybe that was bechemel.

I do.

 

[Addie]

Now I have another question. Does anyone here put a bechamel sauce on top of their lasagna? I don't, I just have cheese and sauce on top. But I recently saw a recipe that called for baking the lasagna half way then putting the bechemel sauce on top and finishing baking it. I have seen lasagne and also fettuccine alfredo that had what appeared to be an inch of melted cheese on top, but now I'm thinking maybe that was Bechamel.

Carol I can't remember if it is the northern part or the southern part of Italy that uses béchamel sauce for the whole lasagna. Not just on top. But growing up in an Italian town, I have seen it both ways. It all depended on which part of Italy they came from. I prefer the béchamel sauce over the red sauce. Less acid for my sensitive tummy. And I find it is closer in taste to mac and cheese. Who doesn't love mac and cheese?

And for the stuffing? It is best to stick with what your family is used to and loves. Any experimenting can be a separate side dish. Just note their reaction for future making.

 

[Addie]

The section of Boston that I live in has it own history of immigrating Italians. During WWII we had a camp of Italian POW's out at Wood Island. We also had our own little Ellis Island Immigration center down on Marginal Street. They finally tore it down last year. So a lot of Italians immigrated here just before we got into the war. In fact, the Italian women would cook and bring food to the POW's. They would fly the Italian flag out their window. When we got into the war, they changed it over to an American flag.

By the time I was old enough to play outside without my mother, I think our family was the only non-Italian one. We had stores where if you didn't speak Italian, you couldn't be served. So I learned some Italian as I was growing up. I was immersed in the Italian way of life. Quite an education. If I went to call on one of my girlfriend's, I always was made to come in and have something to eat. Sometimes as I was sitting there waiting for my friend, I would watch the grandmother or mother cooking. So I learned a lot just from them. Most of the Italian homes I went into had two families living together. Always from the same town in Italy. Most of them had a Nonni (grandmother) living there also. They were the real teachers of traditions in cooking their hometown foods. And all their cooking was from scratch. Fresh homemade bread for every meal. Very little meat. Nobody every had a steak to themselves. It was ground up for meatballs to feed the whole family. Lots of greens on the table for the big meal of the day. They could pinch a nickel so hard, the Indian was riding the buffalo. I loved growing up here.

The second generation grew up and moved upscale to the North Shore. This town now is mostly Hispanic. There are some of the Old Italians still here. And you can still find one or two corner stores that carry Italian foods. But I still love living here.

 

[CarolPa]

I wonder if my husband would like the bechemel. He likes my lasagne the way I make it and hates when I change a recipe he likes. But that would just be like an extra layer of cheese and he likes cheese.