For some of my dishes, I like to have a pasta with a light flavor as a side dish. I’m not a big fan of Alfredo because to me, that’s just too heavy and also kind of dull on the palette. I mix up a sauce that I guess is kind of Alfredo-like, but not really. It’s light tasting, creamy, herby, and has some mellow garlic flavor throughout.

• pasta (I use half of a package of linguine)
• ~1.5 cups of white wine
• parsley
• ~10 leaves of fresh basil
• 3 shallots (the greens, not the bulb)
• 6-8 garlic cloves
• juice of 1 lemon
• knob of butter
• 1/2 cup of ricotta cheese
• 1/8 cup of heavy whipping cream
• chunk of parmesan reggiano
• handful of olives (pitted, obviously)
• a few capers
• fennel seeds
• dash of dried pepper flakes, to taste
• a good sprinkling of dried oregano

Mince the garlic and fry briefly to mellow out the flavor a little bit. Then… click to read more…

Posted by mike on September 1st, 2007 in Italian, Pasta, Side dish

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Chicken Marsala is a really simple Italian-styled dish to prepare and is incredibly flavorful. There’s a surprising number of recipes out there for this dish, but they do something to the sauce which takes away from it–dillute it with water, mix in cream, substitute in a non-Marsala wine ( ), and so on. The whole point of this dish is to take the distinctive flavor of Marsala wine and focus the attention on that. So with that in mind:

• 1-1.5 lbs chicken cutlets (veal scallopini would work wonderfully, as well!)
• ginger powder
• Italian-flavored bread crumbs
• knob of butter
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• ~2 cup Marsala wine (which is roughly one bottle of cooking Marsala wine)
• 1/2 cup Chicken broth
• 1/8 cup flour
• 2 handfuls of fresh flat-leaf Italian parsley leaves
• 8 oz small mushrooms (e.g. baby bella, or whatever kind you prefer)
• 1 egg
• 3-4 sprigs of fresh rosemary
• black pepper
• optional: dried sage

… click to read more…

Posted by mike on September 1st, 2007 in Chicken, Italian, Main course, Veal

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