Here is my second part of last night's post to go along with convincing all of you that I am not just a wild party animal (...or am I?) and that I'm sitting at my laptop diligently doing homework (...or so you think...). Anywayssss I wanted to write this in the middle of the day today (it's 4pm here) to elaborate on my cultural literacy class that I spoke about yesterday and to fill you in on my culinary adventures here in Italia thus far.
Cultural Literacy is everything I hoped it'd be! Sarah Barker is the name of the cute little Australian woman who teaches the class and she's wonderful. Today we went to a cafe and sat for an hour and a half drinking coffee/hot chocolates/milkshakes and talking about what we've observed of Italian culture since arriving here. It was great! Completely relaxed atmosphere and fantastic conversation.
OKAY. Now on to the yummy stuff...literally. As most of you know, my skilled mother Virginia is a very accomplished cook. Her ways in the kitchen must have rubbed off on my hands picking at the dinner before it was done because it seems I have a talent in the kitchen (if you can call the closet with a stove that we have here a kitchen) here in Italia! Living with 10 girls can be rough but one thing I'm glad we've got into the habit of doing are family dinners. My one roommate Jess and I go to the market almost every day and pick up groceries for whatever dish we've decided to prepare that night. Then the rule states that you pay your share of the dinner groceries (it usually only comes out to about 3 or 4 euros) before you get your plate of food. Everyone gets fed a delicious meal (if I don't say so myself!) for less than it costs to order WATER in a restaurant! Woohoo!
Here is what I have made so far and a quick writeup of what I did to prepare it. Weeeeeeeeeeee.
Parmesan Encrusted Chicken with Sauteed Veggies on the Side
This I must give a shoutout to my roomz back at Penn State for. We found this recipe one night on the foodnetwork and decided to try it out. It ended up being totally easy and totally amazing! It's really the simplest thing ever. We just seasoned the chickens with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and parmesan cheese and threw 'em in the pan for 7 minutes on each side...until the cheesey chicken is a scrumptious brown. The veggies we just kept on low heat in the back while we cooked all 12 chicken cutlets so they cooked slowly in oil and a lot of minced up garlic. YUM. It was a perfect first family dinner and totally got me a reputation as culinary genius with the ladies.
Zee Best Drunk Food We've Ever Consumed
Sorry parents but this has to be said. One night we came home from the club and were starving. This place isn't like college where you can order Are You Hungry or Gumbys and it comes to your front door within 5 minutes at 3 in the morning. We have to fend for our munchies ourselves here. So we get home and raid the kitchen. I don't even know how it happened but we combined everything we had into the most amazing tasting pasta slash THE ABSOLUTE BEST drunk food I've ever consumed in my life. I don't have a picture because we were more concerned with consuming it so you're going to have to take my word for it but my roommates can vouch for me. It was divine. We talked about it all the next day and realized we probably wouldn't be able to re-invent it in the kitchen. We'd just have to live with the fact that one night we came home and prepared a culinary masterwork of art...lost forever to the sober world.
Chicken Caprese
Basically I was sitting in class last week brainstorming about food (it was history of food class, my brain couldn't help but wander!) and I was like mmmmm there's nothing like a delicious fresh caprese salad and then I was like mmmm chicken and then I was like BAM!!!!!!!!!!!! HOW GREAT WOULD IT BE TO PUT TOMATO, MOZZ AND BASIL ON TOP OF CHICKEN. So then I got super excited and Nisha, my roommate who's also in my class, was like calm down we still have half an hour. The minute class ended I rushed to meet Jess, we went to the market and bought fresh delicious ingredients and went home. After a nap and some homework I embarked on my vision. Sidenote: we should really be given a medal for providing delicious meals for 10 girls in this small kitchen. We have a stove but no oven which nixes out a bunch of recipes but we've been managing. The most annoying thing is the stove, like everything and everyone else in Italy, is small. So we can only make like 2 cutlets at a time. 15 minutes cooking each chicken through and 5 shifts of 2 cutlets means a long time spent preparing these meals. Keeping them warm is an issue but we've really managed well. Chicken Caprese turned out amazing and looked even better. CHECK IT.
Mashup of Everything Leftover In the Fridge
Another night we had forgotten to go to the market and were sitting around at 6 complaining that we were hungry but not moving. So we got the water boiling dumped in 2 boxes of pasta and set out to create something to go on top. I had previously yelled up the stairs to have all the roommates come down and donate some type of vegetable or meat or anything that could be used in pasta. Together we had accumulated 2 bell peppers, 1 large cucumber, some of Christine and Allie's leftover prosciutto, 2 cloves of garlic from Jess and some leftover sauce from Nisha. Combining it all together we somehow managed to make a delicious sauce that worked great with everything in it. It was the perfect dinner...especially because we were all rushing to get ready since our naps had all gone into overtime. Success!
Chicken Saltimbocca and Homemade Bruschetta
This is what we made last night and O. M. G. Mom, you've made this before so I tip my hat to you because this was incred. It looks so difficult but it was actually really easy and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking to impress their future in laws or just to please themselves. Jess is my designated sioux chef but since all the girls have been telling their moms what I've been cooking, they've been told to take a few pointers as well! Sooooo there were three chefs in the kithcen last night. It was tight but having Ariana in there definitely helped it go a lot more smoothly and the division of labor was a lot easier to handle. For the bruschetta we bought fresh tomatoes, basil and a baguette. We "parboiled" the tomatoes...a phrase I had never heard of before last night. Basically you boil water and once it starts boiling you remove it from the heat and drop the tomatoes in for like two minutes. Then we removed them to ice water and peeled the skins off. After quartering them and removing the insides we chopped 'em up and added them to a bowl of garlic, oil, balsamic vinegar, chopped up basil and salt/pepper to taste. We sliced and toasted the baguette and voila! Delicious. For the chicken we needed the cutlets, prosciutto, freshly grated parmesan (that we grated ourselves!) and spinach. The recipe called for frozen spinach but why would we use frozen when we have the freshest market five minutes away from us. I don't know if they have them in the states but we bought these spinach balls. It looked like cooked spinach that had then been balled up and somehow stayed in that shape. We wbought two, broke up the spinach with some olive oil and seasoned it. We seasoned both sides of the 12 cutlets with salt and pepper then laid 2 or 3 slices of prosciutto on top of the chicken. Then we spread some of the spinach mixture on top and then some of the Parmesan. Here's the fun part. We rolled up the cutlets so that they looked like little jellyrolls and threw them in the pan. We forgot to buy chicken broth so we had to improvise with the sauce a little but they came out SO delicious!! It was a great meal.
Tonight seems like a pasta and sauce night since we're all about to nap and then want to get ready to go out. I'm about to go for my nap and then probs just heat up some sauce and some pasta before heading out. Ciao for now!!
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