Dinner tonight - or last night.

not sure why you'd say pedestrian - pie is a lot more labour intensive!

I'm impressed. Pie crust takes such a fine hand.

I cheat and use a food processor.

I've never made my own pie crust. When I make the pumpkin pies I buy store bought pie crust.

Food processors make really good pastry. It's a tip from the Hairy Bikers TV chefs.

I've had a Marcato pasta machine for years and years. Among other things, it's a good looking piece of kitchen equipment, and doesn't take up much room. It works for lots of kinds of items, including other than italian, is fun to play with. I learned how from my italian teacher. She would have the finals at one of the students' houses, and she'd set up the pasta maker in the kitchen before the class. One time the student whose house it was made a delicious lobster and butter sauce for tagliatelle.. sigh.

After the exam was over/handed in, we each took turns making dough and rolling it, and we hung the pasta on thickish plastic hangers. Then we sat in her patio at a picnic table and had some wine or whatever while the pasta dried.

Some time later, I bought a real apparatus thingy for hanging pasta dough. Never have used it, still use hangers, and gave it with other stuff to the Habit for Humanity Re-Store just recently.

That's gorgeous, ehBeth. I may have to put that on my list before the-making-of-bagels.

Mmmm. I make crackers out of leftover olive oil dough from my ricotta tart making, varied seeds, but this seems a swell idea.

Never enough..

It is gorgeous. I first made it back in Abuzz days when I spent a lot of time on the old Fine Cooking site. Haven't made it in ages. Need to do it again.

It doesn't overwork the crust? I'm quite leery of using the food processor re pie crust.

I have a nice food processor and tried making bread with it once, didn't come out so well. Came out hard as a rock, if I had dropped it on the kitchen floor it would have cracked the tile

Funny

that would be nicely overworked bread

And that it was

I’m getting ready to place my meatballs in the oven; I’ll bake for about 40 minutes then finish cooking them in the sauce. I call them meatballs but they’re the size of softballs.

I use a pound of lean ground beef and a pound of veal. Mix it together with an egg, salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, breadcrumb, parmesan cheese and a little milk so they’re not too dry.

the giant meatballs are traditional in some regions

I had to get used to ordering the meatballs separately when I worked in Northern Ontario

http://cesiras.com/dinner/

you order your pasta with whatever sauce you like - then you order meatballs in multiples of 2. I've never actually finished more than 1 of them. Yup, softball-sized.


this place is fancy

most of their pastas come with 2 meatballs - even their meat ravioli comes with 2 meatballs

http://giovannisrestaurant.ca/menus/Giovannis.pdf

Look' n good!

If I remember correctly the larger meatballs were Sicilian, one of my grandmothers who was Jewish but Sicilian use to make those large meatballs in her Sunday sauce. I don’t think she baked them first, I think she fried them then put them in the sauce.

I cooked the meatballs in the sauce for about 30 minutes and here is the finished product, dinner is served. Antonio will be nine years old this month, he will eat two of those softballs, the kid eats like a small pony.

It looks fabulous!

You could be right about Sicily. I think baking v frying might have depended (to some degree) what else you were cooking at the same time - and whether you had an actual oven.

I have to admit Morgan has perfected that sauce. It’s delicious. Better then any sauce I’ve had in restaurants. As well as the meatballs, they’re light and tender, melt in your mouth delicious.