February 3, 2011 new recipes

This evening we celebrated the 25th birthday of Zachary Clark, Carls's nephew (that's him sitting with Carl, waiting for dinner). We also celebrated the fact that Mike Guillen, the husband of Carl's niece Melissa, is at home with us recovering from a concussion he had today snowboarding at Winter Park. The celebration, of course, is not that he had the concussion, but that he is recovering at home. He is very lucky, and so are we all that it was not a worse injury!

This evening's new recipes are both from Mario Batali's Molto Italiano. We were looking for vegetarian (ovo-lacto) and these fit the bill nicely. We had Zuppa di Cicoria con 'Uova (Chicory Soup with Egg)--the recipe is also on the Food Network site. The recipe calls for pancetta, but we have found a nice way to get that bacon flavor without the meat--add a little olive oil, and the add some smoked paprika to the dish. In this case, I added about 1 teaspoon to the onions. The surprise element in this recipe is that you stick a crouton in the bowl, crack and egg over it, and then pour the soup over it the cook the egg. The egg is a nice surprise! We had this with Pasta Norma, also called Baked Penne with Eggplant. There are a lot of recipes for this on the web--the one in Molto Italiano is a little different from them all, even from the Mario Batali recipe on Epicurious.

The pasta is the photo on the top, and the soup is below it--I thought it looked so colorful in the pot!.

Suffice it to say, both recipes were very good, and we would make them both again!

We had this with a Clif's Cuvée Pinot Noir (no year, produced by Eola Hills Wine Cellars). It was a very nice match to both dishes!