We were at California Pizza Kitchen with some friends one time. One of the dishes they ordered was Chicken Piccata. We’d never eaten it before (I usually don’t like capers) but Annie sneaked a bite and pronounced, “I can make this!”

So while out shopping she picked up a bottle of capers. A little later, she found a recipe off of Epiciurious and decided to try it. It’s a pretty easy recipe calling for chicken breasts pounded flat, lightly breaded then pan fried, laid over a mound of angel hair pasta and covered with a sauce containing butter, lemon juice, capers, and various seasonings. We threw in some mushrooms for fun.

It was very very good. We served it to our friend, who pronounced it better than CPK.

Aloha, Nate

Before I met Annie, I generally preferred my pasta sauces to be red – tomato based. I avoided “alfredo” type white sauces because…actually I really don’t have a good explanation of why I don’t like white sauces. Anyway, these days Annie usually makes pasta sauces with cream, olive oil, and vermouth, keeping it light so you can actually see all the other ingredients.

This linguine alla carbonara recipe (based on a recipe out of “Lidia’s Italian American Kitchen”), contains bacon, olive oil, onions, chicken stock, linguine, egg yolks, grated Pecorino Romano cheese, and s&p. Our additions included portobello mushrooms, thyme, and some toasted onion powder from Penzey’s.

Oh, it was sooooo good. Made even better by that special onion powder.

If you can get your hands on some, I do recommend it.

Aloha, Nate

Spaghetti is totally my comfort food. Back in my younger days, I used to make spaghetti by browning up some ground beef, pouring in a bottle of Ragu spaghetti sauce, and seasoning it with some Italian seasoning. That was then but now we hardly use bottle sauce as we like to control how much sugar and salt goes in our foods.

Annie made this sauce using bacon, Polska kielbasa, ground beef, zucchini, red bell pepper, portobello mushroom, tomato sauce, garlic and onion. Garnished with parsley, chili pepper flake, and grated Pecorino Romano cheese.

Enjoyed with a glass of Rosemount Cab Sav-Merlot. Ahhh. Life is good!

Aloha, Nate

Prepared a filling consisting of Italian sausage, chopped spinach, minced eggplants, minced onions, grated parmesan, and mascarpone cheese.

Made a tomato cream sauce. Stuffed the pasta shells with the filling and laid them down in a baking pan.
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