Chicken Spiedini

 
 This recipe is listed on Domestic Randomness

Italians love their chicken spiedini!  It is so easy to make and so elegant.  My grandmother was a Cunetto (Cunetto's House of Pasta, St. Louis, MO) so this recipe was in her blood!  Here is a picture of my grandmother, with her sister Mary and her mother Rosa Lia Cunetto..........

Aren't little old Italian ladies cute?!!!

Maniaci and Cunetto descendants at the Family Reunion

Here are the ingredients:

4 chicken breasts cut into 1 inch pieces

1 cup olive oil

1 cup white wine

1 cup Parmesan cheese

1 cup bread crumbs

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/3 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Sauce:

1/2 pound melted butter

1/2 cup lemon juice

Here are the ingredients for the marinade

Place the chicken, oil, wine and spices in a Ziploc bag.  Marinate for 1 hour.

Mix Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs together.  Roll the chicken in the bread crumb mixture. 

 Put the chicken on a skewer and broil for 10 minutes.

While the chicken in in the oven, melt the butter and infuse the lemon juice.  Whisk briskly while slowly pouring the lemon juice in.  Pour the butter sauce over the chicken when you remove it from the oven.

YUM!

I served my chicken spiedini over polenta.  DOUBLE YUM!

Mangia!

This recipe is featured on Foodie Friends Friday!  







Cassatta

Ohhhh, just hearing this word makes me drool!  I LOVED when I would visit my Nonna and she would have made this sweet treat!

My Nonna and her sister Mary

Here are the ingredients for this delicious treat:

7 cups whole milk
2 cups sugar
1 cup corn starch
5 cinnamon sticks
1 pound cake or angel food cake
1 large Hershey's bar, shaved
1/2 jar Marashino cherries, halved
Almond extract

Heat 6 cups of the milk and sugar to the boiling point, stirring occasionally, making sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.

Combine the corn starch with the remaining milk.  Stir the corn starch mixture into the milk.  Stir continously, making sure it doesn't stick.  Cook until the mixture thickens and it turns glossy - 5-10 minutes.

Remove the cream from the hot pan and let it cool completely.

To assemble the cake:

Put a layer of cake down.  Brush the cake with the almond extract.  Pour 1/2 of the cream over the cake and sprinkle 1/3 of the chocolate.  Put another layer of cake down and repeat. 

Put drained marishino cherries and more chocolate on the top.

Refrigerate until ready to serve

As my Nonna would say, "Mangia!"  This recipe is featured on This Gal Cooks! and Totally Tasty Tuesdays!

Far Left:  Aunt Malutza (married to Jake Cunetto)

Aunt Mary Fantuzzo (my great aunt)

Rosalia Cunetto (my great grandmother)

Nonna!

 

Chicken Tetrazzini

This post is dedicated to my Mom...........she is the reason I have such a passion for food.  She taught me to cook, which was fortunate for my father because Mom did a lot of traveling with her job!

 

Mom grew up learning how to cook from her father, who loved to bake, and her grandmother Nellie, who loved cooking Southern food. By marrying into a Sicilian family, she was also fortunate to watch my Nonna and learn some Italian cooking secrets.  To say she is an eclectic cook is putting it mildly!

OK - secretly I'm doing this blog as an excuse to scan in old pictures! 

 

I asked my Dad what was his favorite thing Mom made - his response was not surprising, "PASTA!"  Dad could eat pasta everyday.  My favorite pasta dish that Mom made when I was growing up was Chicken Tetrazzini.  Here are the ingredients:

 

8 oz spaghetti

1 garlic clove, minced

Chopped parsley

1 pound fresh mushrooms

1 bay leaf

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

6 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons flour

1 cup hot chicken broth

1/4 cup dry white wine*

1 cup heavy cream

Diced chicken breast

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

 

 

To begin, poach the chicken.  This means that you are simmering the chicken in water, with various vegetables and spices.  By doing this you are creating your own chicken stock.  I added onion, garlic, celery, lemon, salt and pepper to the water, along with 2 chicken wings and 1 breast. 

 

 

 

If you are going for fast you can buy a deli chicken and use that meat. 

 

When the chicken is cooked through, take the chicken out of the broth and let it cool.  Strain the broth and keep it hot.  When the chicken is cool, pick the meat off the bone.

 

Heat up a saute pan and put a little olive oil and butter in the pan.  Add the mushrooms and brown them.  Add garlic, bay leaf and parsley. 

 

When the mushrooms are brown, put them in the same bowl as the chicken meat. 

 

In the same saute pan, melt 6 tablespoons of butter.  When that is melted, add the flour and stir.  The butter will thicken, making a roux.  When the flour is incorporated into the butter, slowly add in the wine and hot chicken broth.  Slowly add the cream. 

 

In a sauce pan, cook the pasta in salted boiling water.  Stop cooking the pasta al dente.  This means that it still has a little bite to it - a little chewy.  The pasta will finish cooking in the oven.

 

Put the pasta in a pan.  Pour the chicken and mushrooms on top.  Pour the white sauce on top.  Sprinkle with cheese.

 

 

Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

 

*My Mom doesn't like cooking with wine.  Instead of wine, she put 1/4 cup milk into the dish.  Also, she added a little shredded cheddar cheese along with the Parmesan cheese.

 

Mom, Me, Tonette, Karrie and Julia

We all caught the cooking bug - OK, that might be an exaggeration with Tonette!

 

 

My dinner tonight!  Mangia!
This recipe is featured on Foodie Friends Friday! 

 





Homemade Ricotta Cheese!

Italians love their ricotta cheese, but it wasn't until the last few years that it was abundant in grocery stores.  So, what did my Nonna do?  She made her own and I was excited to learn that it is SUPER easy!

Here are the ingredients:

4 cups whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
1/3 cup lemon juice (you can also use 3 tablespoons of white vinegar)
1 teaspoon kosher salt

In a saucepan, heat the milk, cream and salt. 

Before it boils you will notice that it gets a little foamy on the top.  The temperature should be about 185 degrees-190 degrees.  At that point, remove from the heat and pour the lemon juice in.  Let that sit about 5 minutes and then pour the mixture in a small mesh colander lined with cheesecloth.

Let that drain a few hours, then gather the cheesecloth and squeeze any excess juice.

After a few hours you can see a huge difference!

 



The ricotta can be refrigerated 4-5 days before use.

My dad said that if Nonna didn't make her own ricotta, she would send my Nonnu to a store on The Hill (the Italian neighborhood in St. Louis, MO).  He would bring it home warm and they would spread it on bread, with a little sugar, for a sweet treat!

Mangia!

Toffee!

Today I tried my hand at making toffee.............it was easy!  Here are the ingredients for the toffee:

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips
Crushed walnuts

In a saucepan melt the butter, sugar, water, and salt.  Stir as you cook it...........as it cooks, it will start to brown and thicken.  When the toffee turns golden brown remove from heat.  Stir in the vanilla extract.

Pour the toffee onto a silicone baking pad, or parchment paper.  As it cools it will harden.  After 45 minutes or so, heat the chocolate chips in the microwave - 30 seconds, stir, then another 30 seconds.

Spread the chocolate on the toffee.  Sprinkle crushed walnuts on the chocolate.  Refrigerate to let the chocolate set.

     

Enjoy!

Lotion Bars

I've joined the craze!  Everywhere you turn on Pinterest, you find recipes for homemade lotion bars.  I decided to give it a try.  What this has to do with our grandmothers, I'm not sure, but I will think of something!

All of the research that I've done indicates that lotion bars have the following ingredients and measurements:

1/3 beeswax
1/3 butter
1/3 oil

I'm not talking about cooking oil and the type of butter that you cook with.  You can use Shea butter, mango butter, cocoa butter, etc.  As far as oils go, you can use olive oil, almond oil, grapeseed oil, coconut oil, etc.

I decided to use cocoa butter and coconut oil. 

The other little jar you see is essential oil.  I like a scented lotion so I put in a few teaspoons of lemon essential oil.

One note:  plan ahead before you begin this project.  I got the beeswax from Michael's, the essential oil from GNC, I ordered the coconut oil from Amazon and I found cocoa butter from Walgreens.  I'm going to do some research because I think I can find the beeswax and cocoa butter cheaper somewhere else.

To begin, I made a double boiler out of two pots that I have.  I melted the beeswax first.  It took a long time because the beeswax was really hard!

When that was almost melted, I added the cocoa butter.

When that was melted, I added the coconut oil.  That took no time at all to melt!

When everything is melted, remove the pot from the boiling water.  Then, add the scent if you would like.

I poured the oil into a measuring jar to help guide it into the molds.

Within 5 minutes, the bars started to harden!

At Michael's I bought some cute little baggies so that I can wrap them up and give them away!

Enjoy! 

Chicken Pot Pie

This post is dedicated to the hard working ladies in the Hillsboro Elementary School cafeteria!  This year, they have been working hard, making more homemade food, as opposed to frozen goodies.  More fruits and vegetables are being offered too!  These changes are good changes, but the children are taking to them slowly. 

                          The ladies dressed up for Halloween!

 

Last week, they made chicken pot pie.  It was so good!  We noticed that not many children were taking it..............and then we figured out that they have probably not ever had it!  Our lives are so busy, it is easy to stop and get some take out, or go to fast food.  If we are eating at home, it is too easy to open a box of frozen something or other (blah!).

Tonight, chicken pot pie is on the menu.  The first thing I did was make a pie crust.  Here are the ingredients:

2 cups flour
3/4 cups Crisco
4 tablespoons COLD water
1 teaspoon salt

I my food processor, I put the flour, salt and shortening.  I pulsed that a few times, until it is course.

Add the water, I tablespoon at a time, pulsing as you go.  Do not overwork the crust.

After the crust is made, remove it and place it in two ziploc bags.  Put the bags in the freezer while you assembly the other ingredients.  The ingredients are:

3 poached chicken breast tenderloins
1 small potato, cooked until just soft
1/2 bag frozen vegetables
1/2 onion, diced
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup chicken stock (broth you poached the chicken in)
3/4 cup milk or cream
salt
pepper

Next, I poached some chicken.  I put 2 cups of water in a saucepan, along with 3 breast tenderloins.  To the water I added, some celery, onion, salt, pepper, bay leaf, and parsley.  Simmer the chicken until tender, about 15 minutes.

I sauteed some onions in butter.  When the onions were transluscent, I added 1/2 bag of frozen vegetables.  When they were warmed through, I added the chicken and potato.  I added the flour and stirred to make a roux.  To that I added the chicken broth and cream, stirring as you go.  Let that simmer on low heat until you are ready to assemble the pie.

When you are ready to assemble the pie, take the pie crust out of the freezer.  Put some flour on your counter so that the dough doesn't stick when you roll it out.  Divide the crust in half.  Roll 1/2 of the crust and line the bottom of your baking pan.  I used a glass pyrex bowl. 

Add the chicken vegetable mixture.  Roll out the other 1/2 of the pie crust and lay on top of the pie.  Take a fork and put some holes in the top to vent.

I put my pie inside a stone so that if it overflows, I won't have a huge mess in my stove!  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until golden brown.

Keep up the great work ladies!  You'll convert the kids to the beauty of homemade food soon!  This recipe is listed on Simple Living and Eating!