RESEP MASAKAN ORIENTAL

As many of you hardcore foodies know, there’s a southern tradition of eating beans and greens on New Year’s Day to help bring good fortune in the coming year.  By eating “poor” the first day of the year, you supposedly ensure prosperity and good luck the rest of the year. I think I speak for all superstitious, Italian-Americas when I say, that totally makes sense. Whether you believe in such things or not, you should still try this year’s edible good luck charm, Utica Greens. This delicious Upstate New York vegetable casserole comes in many forms, but usually contains some combination of bitter greens, usually escarole, pancetta or prosciutto, hot fresh or pickled peppers, and bread crumbs. I’m adding some cranberry beans, so you all get rich in 2014, but that’s totally fine since the locals often add chunks of potatoes, and once you start doing things like that, all bets are off. Whether side dish or main course, this is a perfect winter vegetable magnet, and I hope you give it ...

In honor of the presidential inauguration, the title of this recipe, "Pork and Beans and Greens - Good Luck Making This," has temporally changed to this more Washington-esqe one. As many of you foodies already know (it's on the entrance exam), a very traditional southern New Years meal is black-eyed peas, or some other type of bean, and greens. Eating this meager meal on New Years day is supposed to bring you great prosperity for the rest of the year. This video recipe is a lighter and easier Italian take on the classic, and is topped with some crusty, caramelized roast pork. Speaking of the south, you'll see me use a spice rub (a wet rub, aka "wub") on the pork before roasting for a sort of Italian barbecue effect. All in all, this is an odd recipe. The pork is not slow-roasted, but cooked at a higher heat for a crusty finish. The greens are not slowly braised, but just wilted. The black-eyed peas have been replaced with cannellini beans. And, I can't ...

If I suggested you make homemade butternut squash ravioli as an appetizer for your holiday meal, what would you say? You'd say no. That's because you would envision s ome long complicated process fraught with disappointment. People throw around the "best thing since sliced bread" line for all kinds of things, and rar ely do they deserve such a tribute. Ready-to-use wonton skins, however, are not only the "best thing since sliced bread," they are better than sliced bread…much better. Anyone can slice bread (except those cooks on Hell's Kitchen), but how many people make paper-thin, perfectly round wonton skins. Hopefully this video recipe show s you just how easy ravioli can be when using this easy-to-find, and very liberating product. I've used them for tortellini, pierogi, dumplings, ravioli, and yes, even wontons, all with terrific results. There are eight million known ravioli fillings, so once you get this simple technique down you have a lot of...

It only took about 300 food wishes before it finally came true, but here is my favorite lasagna. Since this is such a traditional Italian-American Christmas recipe, I figured what better time to post it? By the way, this is simply my rendition of Italian-American lasagna, and not intended to claim any type of superiority, authenticity, or other such nonsense. If your Nonna uses fresh pasta, or insists on a béchamel, then bless her heart, but that's not how this half-Italian rolls. There are only two things you need for great lasagna; a thick, rich, super-meaty meat sauce, and lots of it; and a ricotta filling where only the finest cheeses are welcomed. For the sauce I love a combination of half Italian sausage and half lean ground beef. I also like lots of sauce. If you use too much sauce, the worst that can happen is you have a plate of pasta with sauce, but if you don't use enough, you end up with dry lasagna, and there's nothing sadder than dry lasagna. For the cheese m...

For decades I've made and enjoyed chicken cacciatore without ever realizing what a terrible name it has. Chicken cacciatore basically translates to "hunters-style chicken." So, what's wrong with tha t you say? What kind of lame-ass hunter settles for chicken?? Are you telling me the proud, cunning hunters of Italy have allowed their official dish to use chicken as the main ingredient? Where's the dangerous wild boar? How about hard-to-shoot pheasant? I mean how hard is it to hunt chicken? My hunting skills are only slightly better than Paris Hilton, yet I could shoot a damn chicken. Sorry to have to call you out, Italy. Don't feel too bad; you still have your cooks, artists, lovers, and opera singers to be proud of. All that being said, chicken cacciatore is a very delicious dish, and this video recipe shows my favorite version. Enjoy! Ingredients: 2 tbsp olive oil 1 whole roasting chicken, cut in quarters salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste 1 large on...

I hope this video recipe for Spaghetti Aglio e Olio looks better than it sounds! A fairly minor cold led to a few days of semi-laryngitis, but I just couldn't wait any longer, so I summoned up my best Phyllis Diller impersonation and went for it. Like Phyllis always said, "the show must go on!" Spaghetti aglio e olio is about as primal a pasta dish as there is. This is easily the most popular spaghetti recipe in Italy, and if you'll pardon the probably-annoying-to-Italians analogy, the comfort food equivalent to our "mac and cheese." This is a very simple recipe – in fact, the recipe is much easier to make than pronounce. You know a recipe name is hard to say when you can't even come up with a respectable phonetic spelling. It's something close to "ah-leoh-oh-leoh." Give it a couple tries, and if you can't do it, feel free to just call it garlic spaghetti. Anyway, this is my version (no two spaghetti aglio e olio recipes are alike), and...

The best recipes, especially ones you're making for those holiday dinner parties, are the dishes that only have a few ingredients, are simple and fast to put together, and taste like you spent all day on them. This Seared Scallops with Pancetta and Leeks video recipe I just did for About.com is one of those. It would make a great first course, or you could double the portion for a main course. The three main ingredients go together so perfectly that all you'll have to do is avoid the temptation to add a bunch of other stuff. Your restraint will be rewarded. Many of the grocery stores are now selling frozen "wild" scallops. I got these at Trader Joes, and they are far superior to the "fresh" sea scallops in the fish case. Those fresh sea scallops are all soaked in a preservative brine to keep them white and prolong the self-life. That's why they have that faint chemical aftertaste, and shrink so much when you cook them. Frozen wild scallops are not soake...

I just flew back from New York, and boy, are my jokes tired (as you’ll hear). So is everything else, and there’s no rest for the weary as I pack for a quick trip to see the team at Allrecipes.com in Seattle. So, time is short, and I’m posting this incredibly delicious Italian rice croquette recipe, sans extra wordy article. There isn’t much to add anyway; what you see is what you get. This great appetizer was filmed at a recent family dinner at my Aunt Angela and Uncle Billy D’Arduini’s, and if they sound familiar, they should! They’ve been featured on the blog numerous times; in such smash hit recipes as, Cabbage Rolls , Chicken D’Arduini , and Homemade Pasta . You can definitely do this recipe completely vegetarian, by skipping the giblets, or switch those out for almost any other cooked meat. Sausage, prosciutto, or ham are just a few of the many options. When it comes to the rice, we used a standard long rain, and went with a 2 parts water to 1 part rice ratio. You want fully hydr...

No, I couldn't, but when I eat a meatless dish as delicious as this mushroom ragout (pronounced ragoooo), I realize there are plenty of recipes that are just as tasty and satisfying as my favorite meat dishes. Of course, almost anything is good poured over garlic toast, and you'll see a great trick for ultra-fast and easy garlic-scented toast in this video recipe I recently produced for About.com. I did sneak some chicken stock into the sauce, but if you are a vegetarian you can use a vegetable stock and it will be fine. Whenever I do a video recipe that uses Marsala wine I get lots of emails about what they can substitute. You can't, go get a bottle of Marsala wine. Just regular Marsala, not the sweet dessert Marsala as it is way too sweet to cook with. Ask the person at the wine shop to help you; tell them you are cooking with it and don't want the sweet variety and they will show you the right one. Buy the cheapest one of the selection they give you, and you're ...

Are you having trouble deciding what classic Christmas roast to do this holiday? Well, maybe that’s a sign you should take things in totally different, and much more Italian, direction. Follow this link to see the Christmas lasagna recipe video I originally posted last December. Enjoy!

You would certainly be well within your rights to call this ricotta pie a “cheesecake,’ except then your guests would be expecting cheesecake, and that might cause some problems.  If you tell me I’m about to get a slice of cheesecake, I’m picturing something tall, dense, sweet, and very rich. Those adjectives are why people order cheesecake in the first place. That’s why this lighter, less sweet variation is being called a ricotta pie. So much of cooking for people is managing expectations, and a recipe’s name is a big part in that. Moving past semantics, I really enjoyed this cannoli-inspired take on the rustic Italian classic. I played around with a hybrid pie-dough/cookie crust, with flavors borrowed from a cannoli shell, as well as studded the filling with chocolate and candied orange; also common features of that other ricotta-based dessert. If you don’t want to mess around with my crust, or you’re still trying to do the paleo thing, you can skip that step, and just butter and...

When I treat myself to a personal “food wish,” it’s usually something I’ve eaten out and become obsessed over, and this episode is a classic case. There’s a Ligurian restaurant called Farina near us, and I’ve become a full-blown focaccia di Recco stalker.  After watching them make it in front of me so many times, I had to give it a try. It doesn’t look like the focaccia most of us are used to, but come to find out, “focaccia” simply means any flatbread cooked in a hearth, and varies region to region. This particular example hails from Recco, and is nothing more than some Stracchino cheese trapped in between two, super-thin layers of dough. The dough is nothing more than flour, water, olive oil, and salt; but thanks to a very hot oven, and this probably ancient technique, some serious flatbread magic happens. As I confess in the video, I was scared to use too much cheese, but I’ll use more next time. At Farina, you can see a thin layer of the molten Stracchino oozing out between th...

My love for the no-knead method has now b een extended to my pizza dough reci pe. You kn ow the sayi ng, "if it's not broken, don't fix it?" Well, when it comes to my pizza dough I' m glad I ignored that chestnut. My pizza dough recipe wasn't broken, but I fixed it anyway , and am very glad I did. As I expected, the magic that is no-knead bread, adapted beautifully to this purpose. After one day, and almost no effort, I had enough soft, and supple dough for 2 regular, or 4 small pizzas. As you see in the video recipe, I ended up making a "white" garlic pizza, which was one of my childhood favorites as prepared by my grandmother. This pizz a, made from not much more than garlic, olive oil, and cheese, really shows off the character of the dough. Give this dough a try, and maybe even give white pizza a spin. Enjoy! Dough Ingredients: 1 1/2 cup water 1/4 tsp dry active yeast 1 1/4 tsp sa lt 1/4 tsp sugar 2 tbsp olive oil 1/2 cup wheat flour 2 1/2 ...

I realize that if you haven't seen the movie Zoolander, the title of this pasta e fagioli , aka pasta fazool, makes absolutely no sense. But, having recently seen someone perform the famous underwear extraction scene from the movie (see bonus video below), I just couldn't help myself. So, is this hearty winter soup really so good you'd spontaneously attempt to remove your underwear without taking off your pants? Well, possibly, but you'd really have to love soup. Really love soup. Regardless of whether you go Zoolander or not, no one will deny this is a super simple, very fast, and quite nutritional recipe. The addition of cheese tortellini in place of significantly less interesting macaroni, makes for an extra satisfying bowl of food. As I say in the video, this is an answer to all the people who claim not having enough time to cook after a long day at work. This entire recipe, start to finish, takes about 30 minutes. And, if your excuse is you don't cook at all, ...

I always feel a little apprehensive when I post a recipe like this minestrone soup. It’s the type of dish I never make the same way twice, and the fear is that someone will watch and assume that this is my “official” version. You don’t need a recipe for minestrone, just like you don’t need a recipe for a great sandwich, or an epic salad. To make minestrone soup precisely same way every time, using a very specific list of ingredients and amounts, is to trample on the soul of this Italian classic. Having said all that, what if you happen to make it so incredibly delicious one time that you want to experience the exact same shuddering soupgasm in the future? That seems like a perfectly sound reason for why you should write down the recipe…except cooking food doesn’t work that way. Your perception of how a recipe tastes involves so many factors above and far beyond the list of ingredients. Remember that time you made that super awesome whatever, and it was so perfect, and then you made it ...

Manicotti, which means, “little muffs” in Italian, has to be one of the best ways ever for using up leftover Thanksgiving turkey.  The moist filling will bring the driest bird back from the dead, and you can literally add anything that can be chopped up. Leftover green bean casserole? Throw it in. Peas and Onions? You bet’cha. Cranberry Sauce? No, don’t be ridiculous. Anyway, thanks to the absence of cheese, tomato, and pasta on the usual Thanksgiving menu, this concoction will erase any connection with the aforementioned feast. One portioning note: The recipe below made six crepes, and if you make yours slightly smaller, the filling recipe will make six nicely sized manicotti.  I went low-carb and used all the filling to make four portions, but you should probably just fill all 6 crepes, or even double the recipe to get 12. I think you’ll want leftovers of the leftovers. So whether you make manicotti with the last of the holiday turkey, or just use the technique to recycle ...

During the recent Foodbuzz Festival , I had the honor of being asked to participate in a panel discuss on video blogging. I was joined by the lovely and talented, Pim from Chez Pim (and author of The Foodie Handbook ), and future video blogging star, Sabrina from Rhodey Girl Tests . The panel was moderated by Krissy Wall, and you can see all four of us here (I'm the bald guy on the right). At the end of the session, I told attendees that if we inspired any of them to make a video, to email me the link, and I would feature on the blog. Here's our first installment, a beautiful looking risotto demo, compliments of Edward from Weekend Food Projects . For more information, you can see the original post here . Thanks Edward! Enjoy! Making Risotto Panel Photo (c) Marissa from Where I Need to Be

When I tell people I don’t like gnocchi, I always have to clarify that I’m talking about the traditional, potato-dough style dumplings, and not the much easier and lighter, cheese-based versions, like this one featuring butternut squash and mascarpone cheese. Unless created by the hands of a true master, traditional potato gnocchi are too often dense, gummy nuggets of disappointment. However, as temperamental as the classic recipe is, these cheesier, low-starch versions are really quite simple. These are often made with drained ricotta, and you are welcome to substitute, but here we’re going with mascarpone, a very rich and luscious Italian-style cream cheese. Along with Parmigiano-Reggiano, all you need besides the cheese is some cooked squash, and just enough egg and flour to keep it all together. Once your mixture is done, and you let it firm up overnight, you have a few options as far as final service. You can follow the spoon-boil-fry-serve method seen herein, or you can do the sp...

I was speaking with my mother, Pauline, last week, and she told me about a bread she used to eat at her grandmo ther's house. She said it was basic Italian bread, but had some cornmeal in it, and was one of her favorites. She wanted to try and make a loaf to resurrect this family heirloom, but she wasn't sure of the recipe. She had tried one she found online, but while the cornmeal to flour ratio was good, the texture was off, and it was cooked in a bread machine, which we were both fairly certain Great G randma C hadn’t used. I love to play food detective, so I took her description and went to work. Since she had done the hard part and had a basic cornmeal ratio, the rest was just applying it to a recipe for rustic, Italian bread. I believe this is pretty close to what she remembers, and even if it's a bit off, it was still delicious. By the way, the name, Pane di Granoturco, is what popped up when I did an online translation for "Italian cornbread." I'm pret...