Floataway, pasta making, and other stuff

Well, despite my hopes and dreams, we ended up passing on the Painted Hills ribeye at Sawicki's. It was a sad little ribeye, half the size of a normal ribeye, rather the size of its brother, the strip steak, nearby. The veal rack had a weird right-angle chuck cut out of it so that it didn't really look like a chop at all. We decided to get some bone-in ribeye at the farmers market instead.

I made my sauce and meatballs and tossed them altogether. I browned the meatballs in the new skillet just like I said they would, and even though they are smaller than usual, they all fell asleep just like they always did whenever I browned them in a pan. Well, I hope they taste good, at least.

Last weekend, I broke out the old pasta machine and made some fresh pasta. It's easy to forget how easy it is, just mix together a two eggs and a cup of flour (I made double since it's been so long and I had forgotten) until they come together. Then knead for eight minutes, pass through the pasta maker, and cut. We've been watching a lot of Mario Batali shows so I decided to cut my own. As you can see, it's pretty thick but I didn't count on it swelling up so much when I dropped it into the water. It was tagliatelle thickness or maybe even more.

I had a real craving for calamari, so we picked up some cleaned squid and dry sea scallops and used another Mario recipe, which basically just calls for dredging the seafood in a mixture of salt and corn starch and then frying in oil for two minutes. The calamari came out well, but the scallops were absolutely divine. J loves scallops anyway, so they were a huge hit.

I also made fried oysters, which can't really be prepared at the same time as the other fritto misto so I'm not really sure why I always choose to make them together. This batch of oysters was really only okay, likely since we were already pretty full from the calamari and scallops. This is a Scott Peacock recipe, so I also made his vinegary sauce to go with it. Too much of it though, and your lips start to pucker.

I like buffalo wings. I first learned my standard recipe from an old high school friend, but it's not very healthy. Basically, you cook your wings in butter and Frank's hot sauce. A lot of butter. J has never really liked them so I've been trying to find a way that he'll enjoy them. I made Ina Garten's version which is baked and he wasn't thrilled. So I made some that were teriyakied, and we both agreed that they didn't keep enough taste.

With the idea that we would reuse the oil from the calamari frying, I bought more chicken wings with the intention of frying them. (It's kind of stupid to think I would have reused the oil because the oysters really kill any oil you had. The calamari and scallops might not have, but certainly the oysters did, so I went with fresh oil (plus a bit of the old!).) The wings get a s+p+flour dredge and then into the hot oil for 10 minutes. Then I tossed them with my standard butter and Frank's mixture. As you can see, they turned out perfectly. J has a cute habit of saying "I like it!" in a cute little voice when he likes something (usually food related). When he bit into these wings, he said, "I love it!". Well, I guess that's endorsement enough to make them again in the future. In fact, I bought some more wings today.

I also made a homemade blue cheese dressing to go with the wings from the Joy of Cooking. I have to admit that I was little concerned with the recipe since it calls for a lot of parsley and some Worcestershire sauce, but it was incredibly good.

The other night, I randomly decided that I wanted to go to Floataway Cafe. I always thought it was so far away, but it's actually only like five miles from here. I really like the space where they are, it's at once cozy and yet fine dining.

We started off with two appetizers, the chicken livers and the squash blossoms. J and I have been wanting to try squash blossoms for some time but have never been able to find them. These were stuffed with ricotta, lightly battered, and fried. They were light, delicate, and very tasty. The chicken livers came threaded on rosemary stems served a red onion jam on thickly sliced, grilled, probably italian bread. I thought the taste of the rosemary was a bit too heavy, but they were still good. With some of each of the onions, livers, and bread, it was divine. Even J liked them which is interesting since he normally doesn't like chicken livers. By the way, two appetizers is far too much food, even for us.

For our main, we both got the pork shank confit served with Anson Mills grits and chimmichurri. The pork was wonderful, browned and crispy on the outside, moist and rich inside. And huge. Each of us could only finish half (so we brought the rest home to make tacos!). The grits were sweet, and to my mind, a little al dente which is not how I like my grits. With the pork, they were good and since there wasn't a mountain of them, they were clearly only meant to go with the pork.

Despite how full we were, we opened for French press coffee (J's favorite) and the honey-ginger pudding cake with sel gris ice cream. The ice cream was awesome, an awesome mix of salty and sweet. The pudding cake was a bit too sweet in my opinion and a little overdone. I would have easily loved a bowl of just the ice cream.

And so, we had a good time at dinner. We learned to next time not order as much. Oh, we also had the by-the-glass Valpolicella which our very nice waiter, Geoff, recommended. It was spicy and good, though I found that I preferred water with the heavy food. I've been moving away from wine with meals recently preferring water. Obviously, it's a phase. I go through those a lot. J likes his wine with dinner still though, and he thought it was great.

Well, time to go start the steaks for tonight, check on my sauce, and put some onions on for french onion soup. Well, maybe not the latter. As I think about it, I think I'm out of boxed beef broth and I forgot to buy beef bones. Well, there is always next week!