Snowball Pizza

That's right, Snowball Pizza. Made famous in Middletown, CT by Giuseppe's (it now has a new name), and the place of my employment for 3.5 years of college.

Giuseppe's was owned by Rose and Joe (Giuseppe). They were from a small town in Sicily and I swear all of their relatives now live in Middletown.

Anyway, I adored working for them. I learned about how amazing ricotta cheese is. Rose made the BEST ricotta pie. Oh my, my mouth is watering just remembering it. She also taught me to make pasta, mix it with spaghetti sauce and then add some wilted spinach and a spoonful of ricotta.

So the famous snowball pizza:
You can start by making your own pizza dough. Sometimes I make my own, often times I buy it from Trader Joe's. It's not hard to make your own, I just find that for $1.50 I would rather just buy it. One less thing to do.

Make sure the dough comes to room temperature, and then roll it out on a floured cutting board. PREHEAT your oven with your pizza stone inside already to 450. Let your pizza stone sit in there for at least 25 minutes - it makes it crispier (or so I hear).

When you are totally ready, pull out the pizza stone and magically put the dough on it. I think the best way is if you have one of those pizza things - the wooden thing with the handle. We don't have one so this is always awkward and terrible. Once the dough has made it in one piece to the stone, spoon on sauce. I like to copy how they did it at Giuseppe's and use a ladle and swirl from the center out. Leave a smaller crust than you think seems normal. I feel like crust GROWS.

Then add a healthy topping of mozzarella cheese to the top. On top of the cheese add an entire layer of baby or slightly chopped spinach. I just cut off the ends and cut the pieces in half or so. It will feel like your whole pizza has been taken over by spinach - this is good. Seriously COVER IT. Then on top of the spinach dump a chopped tomato. On top of that add big wonderful spoonfuls of ricotta. The more the merrier.

Bake for about 20 minutes or so, but watch your oven. When it looks crispy enough then take it out.

Thanks Rose!!

Spaghetti Carbonara with Spinach...Healthy? Jury still out.

Ok I will not try to become one of nine million gazillion food blogs, however I really do like writing about food. My life (at this moment) is just not that exciting - but food is!

I made it through my first day back at work. In fact the second I saw the little second grade faces I melted and remembered that I adored them. Even though I left them in December all hyped up on sugar and looking like gremlins, they are once again normal looking and acting. Wow, I like them more off the sugar! We discussed presents and what we did over vacation. One second grader (not in my class) informed me that she loved, "the color of my hair." I am not sure how it is any different than the color it has been all year, but hey I'll take a compliment wherever I can right?

So back to cooking. Tonight I made. Wait I have to stop because Tom just informed me that I have soot covering my entire face. How is it that I rearrange the fire for 10 seconds and immediately am covered in soot, but Tom can play with the fire all night and have NO soot on himself. I don't get it. Ok so cooking. Tonight I made something that I started making a few years ago when Leah and I had cooking dates with each other (miss you Leah and Bailey....and Nate). It's a Cooking Light (although not very light) version of Spaghetti Carbonara (with the apparently healthy addition of spinach - although I'm not sure spinach makes bacon and cheese healthy). I will give simple instructions - hopefully Deana can even follow them!

First cut up some spinach. Cut up way more spinach than you could imagine needing to eat. It calls for a 6 oz bag of baby spinach. I think that's a lie. I buy the regular spinach and one bunch is seriously NOT enough - I would do two bunches. Cut off the stems and then chop it up a little bit, but not too small. Heat a frying pan and coat it with some cooking spray (or olive oil or butter if you please). Add the spinach and a little sprinkle of salt and let it cook until it wilts. Once again the recipe says 1 minute, but that is BS. I think it's more like 3 minutes.

While that's cooking chop up about 6 pieces of bacon into smaller pieces (you can probably do as much or as little bacon as you like....but you need something to add some flavor). Sharp knives (such as the ridiculously amazing Shun knives I now have) make it super easy. Take the spinach out of the pan and put it into a bowl. Now add the bacon. Beware that if you have bought organic not so fatty bacon (as we now do. I think we became official yuppies with this Seattle move) you might even want to add a bit of oil to the pan. Cook for as long as you want. Depends on how crisp you like your bacon. The lying recipe says 3 minutes but it has never taken me less than 6 minutes to get it even near to being crisp. Ok so now take the bacon out and put on a plate with a paper towel (if you have a better draining idea let me know).

Add about 1/2 a large onion (around a cup or so) to the pan with the drippings. If you used super fatty bacon then skim off the fat and leave maybe a tablespoon or so. If you used yuppie bacon you might need to add some oil. Cook the onions over medium to medium high heat (really i hate those ranges. On my stove I cook it at about a 7!). Scrape up the bacon goodness too while you are at it. Cook for about 3 minutes (that part is correct - yay recipe!) and then add 2 tablespoons dry white wine. I think you can add whatever you want here. I had no dry white wine tonight so I added sherry. It came out the same as before. I wouldn't stress about this part at all - no wine - whatever, don't add it. Ok so now the wine cooks off for like 30 seconds.

Oh crap....hopefully you have already started boiling your water. I think this pasta is better with spaghetti noodles rather than angel hair (I typically only eat angel hair...not sure why....but I like it the best). Recipe calls for 8 oz...I say make however much you want. I probably made about 12 oz. Just know that the more you make, the less sauce to go around. When you drain the pasta save about 1/4 cup of the liquid. Once again the recipe says 2 T, but I say save some more.

So the pasta is done and drained. The onions have cooked all yummy and brown. You now need to mix one entire egg and one egg white (today I did two eggs because I felt too lazy to separate... all was still delish), a pinch of salt and pepper and a ton (probably a packed 1/2 cup measure) of parmesan cheese. Those of you who know me know that I am addicted to Kraft cheese (I just am!), but I actually added a better quality tonight. The better the cheese I think the yummier the meal for sure. However I still advise putting Kraft cheese on top when you are done (I just can't help it). So you mix the egg, egg white, s & p and cheese with a whisk in a bowl. Put it in a big bowl or you will get egg chunks all over yourself!

Now dump the pasta into the pan with the onions. Add the extra cooking liquid from the pasta. Stir it all around. To make it easier to stir you might want to cut up the pasta while in the pan (I still cut my pasta when I eat it, so this makes me life doubly easy). Now add the bacon and spinach back in and put the pan at around a 4 (medium?). Mix it all around - good luck if you haven't cut your pasta!!! Now dump in the egg cheese goo mixture and stir stir stir. Cook long enough to not freak out about the egg. Recipe says 1 minute, I go for probably 3 minutes. Do this while still stirring. When all done sprinkle some parsley on top and then of course I like to cover my entire plate with parmesan cheese. YUM!