Cooking Italy: Ricotta Fritters

I'm a fairly new covert to recipes involving ricotta cheese. I had been introduced to it some months back by a some of the recipes Palidor over at  Crazy Asian Gal had been posting on her blog. Just one of those ingredients that I never much got into just because of a very limited exposure to it. So when I realized that this recipe was fairly easy not to mention involved honey, one of my favorite versions of sugar, I figured I had to try it. And as my sister was in town, I had a victim (I mean a taste tester) to eat half of them so it if was very good, I wouldn't have to worry about eating them all by myself.

I made this and the lamb chops on the same weekend, pretty much clearing out my supply of canola/vegetable oil in my house.And for the most part, I did like them. Maybe because I have such a massive sweet tooth I was taken aback at how mild the sweetness was. Probably closer to what I should be eating to retrain my taste buds to enjoy more subtle flavors. I thought the fritter itself was wonderfully light in texture and flavor.I think I might also try to add a little more lemon zest next time to give it a bit more pop on the taste buds or maybe even sprinkle a bit of cinnamon into the fritter dough itself before frying it. 

RICOTTA FRITTERS (MARCELLA HAZAN)

1/2 lb fresh ricotta

2 eggs

1/3 cup flour

1  1/2 tbsp butter, softened to room temperature

Peel of one lemon grated

salt 

vegetable oil

Honey

Place ricotta in bowl and crumble. Break eggs into bowl andmix with ricotta. Add flour a little at a time, working it into the ricotta/egg mixture. Add butter,lemon peel and pinch of salt and mix until evenly combined. 

Rest batter for 2 1/2 hours (no longer than 3 1/2 hours - why? She didn't say.)

Pour oil to come up 1/2 inch of pan you are using. Turn heat to medium high. Drop dough into hot oil. Flip in pan when golden brown on one side. Turn heat down if fritters are NOT puffing. Transfer with slotted spoon to cooling rack to drain. Drizzle honey and serve hot.

Cooking Italy: Parmesan Lamb Chops

I was a little dubious about trying this recipe. Mostly because I've never been a huge fan of lamb dishes.  A lot of the time it always seemed to taste a little gamey to me and as a result I ended up avoiding most of the opportunities to try it again as a grown up with some more mature taste buds. But I've learned over the past several months that I have in many ways gotten into a culinary rut that is only going to shift with going outside my comfort zone and trying new recipes. So I wrote up my grocery list, went to the store, realized I had no idea of what type of lamb to buy and ended up going home with two chops from the arm region figuring it was good enough (never never EVER good words to hear from me when I'm have a moment of culinary confusion.)

First things first...this was a much thicker chop than the recipe called for. So there really wasn't a way to flatten it to the consistency that Marcella called for not without pounding the life out of it in the process. And I've never really gotten a lot of practice with frying meats for the most part so I was somewhat dubious about how long to cook this while hoping that the oil was hot enough to fry the meat. In the end, after the nice brown crust had formed, I ended up taking it out of the oil and putting it into the oven to bake. 

My sister and I were both looking a little worried as we sat down to eat. She's never eaten lamb without mint jelly. I've not even had that but am fairly sure that I've eaten it in some middle eastern foods in the past so I wasn't sure what to expect from this dish. 

In a nutshell: it was amazing. 

My sister ate the entire lamb chop humming and yumming. Both of us agreed it was tender, without any hint of the gaminess that I had feared it would. Nor did it taste of oil due to the  bath in the oil before I gave up and switched to the oven. The color was gorgeous, the breading was awesome and that cheese coating was perfect. I would definitely make lamb chops again using this recipe. And that's saying a  lot. 

THIN LAMB CHOPS FRIED IN PARMESAN BATTER
12 single rib lamb chops, flattened
1/2 cup parmigiano reggiano cheese spread on plate
2 eggs, beaten lightly in deep dish
1 cup fine, dry unflavored bread crumbs on plate
Vegetable oil
Salt
Black Pepper

Turn chops on both sides in parmesan cheese, pressing firmly against the cheese until it adheres well to the plate. Tap to remove excess cheese, dip into beaten eggs and let excess egg drip off. Turn chops in bread crumbs, coating both sides and tap to remove excess. Chops can be prepared up to 4 hours ahead - bring meat to room temperature before cooking.

Pour oil into pan until it comes 1/4 inch up sides of pan. Turn heat to medium. When oil is very hot, slip chops into pan. Turn chops over when a golden crust ha formed and cook other side. Transfer to cooked chops to a warmed platter and serve promptly.

Sweet Potato Cappallacci

So this weekend, to keep myself out of trouble and from running amuck in the snack aisle out of boredom with my computer being out of commission, I decided it was time to get my first posting for my Cooking Italy blogging group done early so there would be fewer last minute "Oh this looks good enough moments". We are working our way through Marcella Hazan's wonderful book "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking" which even though there are no pictures (intimidating at first for me) I can highly recommend.

Now this recipe was not quite as alarming as it might have been a week ago thanks to the pasta making class I had last week when I learned making the dough is actually pretty much a breeze...rolling it out , at least for the gnocchi we made last week, was a lot more of a pain. And I can honestly say now that at least for this recipe, it is not necessary to have tons of equipment to make pasta. All it takes is a table and for me, a cookie cutter.

Pasta Dough

3 eggs

Approximately 1 2/3 cups flour

1 tbsp milk

Filling

1 3/4 cups fresh sweet potatoes (I used canned for convenience)

2 amaretti cookies (could not find so I used a splash of amaretto)

1 egg yolk

3 tbsp prosciutto

1 1/2 cups freshly grated parmesan cheese

3 tbsp chopped parsley (I forgot this)

Whole Nutmeg (I used ground)

Salt

Butter Cheese Sauce

4 tbsp high quality butter

1 cup parmesan cheese

Now the actual mixing of the dough is fairly simple and actually pretty fun if you're slightly nuts like me and used to like working with the paper mache dough. Although after working with the dough this time, I've learned that it's definitely a lot easier if you flour your hands before starting to work the dough as your hands are at risk of being shellaced with pasta dough. Also, I'd fogotten to whisk the eggs when they were in the center being mixing it in with the dough so that made for a slightly messy moment when I startd to pull the dough together.

I took a hint from Marcella's book and rested the dough for a few hours which made it a lot easier to work with once I was ready to roll out the dough. Although I was not as precise as she was with rolling and turning and letting it hang to stretch, I still feel like I ended up with a perfectly respectable dough.

Once I had the dough rolled out as far as I could to the point where I was nicely close to it being translucent, it was time to cut. I had purchased a pastry/pasta cutter at the store but at the last minute felt nervous about being able to pull it off. So I opted instead for using a round cooking cutter and cutting out uniform circles of dough.

Now as the moment of truth. Actually getting the circles of dough to rememble ravioli. The fist half dozen were NOT pretty. Apparently it is a lot trickier for me to gauge the amount of filling needed than I had anticipated. So those early poor little raviolis were oozing filling and a little mutated.

By the time I had hit the halfway mark, I was feeling pretty good and had fairly nice looking ravioli. Unfortunatately I have no actual physical proof of this. Although this was one of the early success stories with just a little filling oozing out.

Once the ravioli had dried for about 20 minutes, I threw them into a pot of boiling water and fished them out with a sieve once they had floated to the top. I was only a little dubious about the whole thing at this point as I had never had sweet potato ravioli before so I bit into one (it'd fallen on the floor so I figured why not).

Oh my.

Oh my my my oh my.

I had learned that I LOVE sweet potato ravioli. It was absolutely amazing. And this was even before the deliciously cheesy sauce that I didn't even make correctly. Apparently I was supposed to toss the pasta with alternating butter and cheese. Instead I had decided to take the remaining sweet potato mix and melt it with the cheese and butter. It is a thick sauce but oh so very tasty.

I made about 2/3 of the recipe too and then gave up on rolling it out again so I just made a calzone out of the rest of it.

So the end result is definitely hands down better than any store bought ravioli I've bought. And if I have the time on a weekend, I would make it again. It's from start to end at least for me maybe about 4 hours worth of work including resting the dought.