Leftover Makeover #4 - Calzone

I have an early childhood memory of having calzones for dinner at my aunt and uncle’s house. The whole family was there, and my great grandmother kept asking what was the name of the dish was, and then chuckling.

You see, she was from Spain and filled-dough turnovers in spanish are called are empanadas or empanaditas. Well, these were not the meat-filled turnovers of her youth, but rather, cheesy gooey turnovers that every italian knows by the name - calzone. 

And that is where the chuckling comes from, because in spanish, the word ‘calzone’ translates to shorts. So she was chuckling at the fact that we were eating underwear!

Although, I still smile and give a little chuckle every time I  hear the word calzone,  it doesn’t stop me from eating them!

So this Leftover Makeover is an homage to that memory, a perfect blend of my spanish and italian heritage.

Calzones can be made with any leftovers in your fridge - steak, chicken fingers, meatloaf, wings, etc. We were lucky and had some leftover sauteed broccoli and chicken sausage, light summer fare that was delicious, but as usual we had plenty leftover. Typically, we would make our calzones from pizza dough, but i didn’t have any in the freezer, so I repurposed some tubed biscuits to make the dough, which was stuffed with chopped up the broccoli and sausage and mixed with ricotta, mozzarella, locatelli and an egg.

Simple and fast (under 10 mins to make, 30-45 to bake).

Battle Burger: Round Two - Stuffed Slider Surprises

Some of you may remember last year’s burger battle, this year we turned up the heat with these stuffed slider surprises.

I was up first with my slider version of a Burger “King” Happy Meal. Obviously, the foodies and burger aficionados among you may realize that there is no Happy Meal at Burger King. But that’s only because their burgers don’t include king crab, scallops, celery greens or for that matter a ginger aioli special sauce. I served my burger with homemade chips seasoned with fresh locatelli and a truffled white balsamic vinegar.

[Pictured above: Pan seared scallops were pureed into a paste, mixed with king crab, shaped into a log, and chilled to form patties, which were pan crisped and oven roasted. Tomatoes were slowed roasted confit-style]

Cass was up next with her Middle Eastern Veggie Burger. Grilled portabello mushrooms, topped with a scoop of home-made tabouli, cucumber leban and a toasted pita.

[Above: A family-recipe tabouli featuring a special blend of spices known as Syrian pepper]

Julie presented her Christmas in July Burger (aka a Thanksgiving Burger). This flavor-packed turkey burger was actually STUFFED with a traditional bread stuffing, and served on a homemade buttermilk biscuit with a fresh cranberry relish. Julie served her burger with sweet potato frites drizzled with honey.

[Above: Sage-spiced ground turkey stuffed and grilled]

Last up was Mom’s Italian Stallion. This was one magnificant beast of a burger and was so large, it could not considered a slider. The Italian Stallion featured a full pound of ground beef, stuffed with gravy meats (for those of you who did not grow up italian, that means sausage and braised pork braciole-style) and served on a rosemary fociacca topped with pickled fresh summer veggies. 

Holy Mackerel!

Actually it was a red snapper, but holy snapper didn’t sound right and “whole-ly snapper”, although cute, wasn’t as catchy. Here’s a picture of the 5lb red snapper fresh from Capt. Frank’s, our local fish store.

We spent the afternoon golfing with our good friends Jeremy and Tiff and were planning on finishing the day with some great food. Freshly caught and simply seasoned and grilled, this fish was perfectly suited for a south florida summer dinner! 

BTW, check out his sharp teeth in the last picture!
Fresh thyme, rosemary, lemons and s&p brought out the delicate flavors of this locally-caught snapper.

We’re Back!

To say the past six months have been busy would be the understatement of the year! We are finally settling into our new home and our new family roles as husband and wife.

From February - April 23 we were busy setting up our new home and getting projects accomplished in order to host our families and friends for our wedding on April 24th.

Although we are a family of foodies and had the NRA’s hottest chef as one of our guests, we decided not to cook a thing for our wedding. Instead we hired a transplanted Cuban to roast a delicious whole pig complete with congri, yuca con mojo y ajillo and arroz con pollo. The pig arrived on a large board and the talented staff at Jorge Aquino’s Exceptional Service’s did an excellent job of breaking down the pig and serving our guests.

BTW, the wedding cake a giant three-layered rice crispy treat topped with kissing monkeys that was made by Julie! We also had a white chocolate fondue fountain and a some of my favorite desserts which included strufoli and a fudgey the whale from Carvel!

New Year, New Home, New Kitchen!

The end of 2009 was an exciting whirlwind of activities. My girlfriend fiancée moved in on December 15 and just 10 days later we were hosting an intimate Christmas Dinner for 18 people (our immediate family) .

Moving and unpacking brings it’s own stress and problems, and many relationships crumbled under less stress than that. Secure in our relationship, we upped the stress ante with Christmas shopping, wrapping presents, decorating trees and hosting 18 people for dinner. And to top it all off, there was no room to unpack all of Julie’s belongings into my townhouse! At one point, i considered wrapping her moving boxes in Christmas paper, just so we could leave it in the living room!

By December 17th we realized that no Christmas miracle would allow us to comfortably fit in the townhouse, let alone start a new family. So along with the stress of “moving, unpacking, Christmas shopping, wrapping presents, decorating trees and hosting 18 people for dinner” we decided to house hunt as well!

This is a food blog, so let’s talk about food. For Christmas dinner, we decided to make a traditional porchetta roast. Something i’ve never had, nor had I ever heard of until my mom returned from her FoodBuzz weekend in San Fran. Undaunted, I added to my list of “moving, unpacking, Christmas shopping, wrapping presents, decorating trees and hosting 18 people for dinner, and house hunting”  the search for pork belly in Palm Beach County. Which apparently, is a lot harder than I thought. Thankfully, chef Jeremy had some contacts that allowed me to cross pork belly off my list of “moving, unpacking, Christmas shopping, wrapping presents, decorating trees and hosting 18 people for dinner, house hunting, and finding pork belly” and helped us get a couple of Kubota Pork bellies.

I used this three-part video (1, 2, 3) that I found on Jamie Oliver’s site of Gennaro making the porchetta roast as my inspiration. BTW, these roasts measured over 21-inches long and barely fit in my oven! And we ‘needed’ two roasts to feed our 18 guests, since Genarro said they would reduce in size by almost half!

Obviously, Gennaro never used Kubota Pork Belly, since these were so lean and delicious, they barely shrunk! The roasts paired well with Creamy Polenta with a Fricassee of Mushrooms and Truffle Reduction, as well as pumpkin risotto, and string beans with romesco sauce that were made by my mom.

Whew! Now that we survived “moving, unpacking, Christmas shopping, wrapping presents, decorating trees and hosting 18 people for dinner and finding pork bellies” it was time to focus on house hunting full time.

Offers were made, countered, rejected and we ultimately found “exactly-what-we-never-knew-we-always-wanted” on January 2. We happily closed a month later and now sit amongst boxes, loving, laughing and giggling at the echos and playfully getting ‘lost’ in the our new home as we happily plan another big event — the wedding!

And finally, our new kitchen with the realtor and home inspector as models! New photos to come once we unpack the kitchen.