To Italy we go!

I’m so excited to share that in two days, my husband, daughter and I are departing for a weeklong trip to Florence, Italy. My husband and I are big travelers. As we’ve gotten older, we’ve fallen more in love with our routines at home, but still believe that travel is such an incredible way to gain perspective and get inspired. We are so fortunate to have traveled all over the world, and had conversations early on in our relationship about how Europe is for “when we have a kid”. And so! Italy was at the top of the list this year, especially for me for, you guessed it, the food.

We have tours of art museums planned, a list of restaurants to visit, and even an Italian cooking class to take. Wish us luck, as we take an 8-hour flight with an almost one year old, and foolishly think we can also take her to a 3-hour long pasta-making class. We promised ourselves we wouldn’t let the “challenge” of traveling with a kid get in the way of showing them the world, so off we go!

Meatless Meatballs

The 411: In Molly’s Yeh’s recipe, Spaghetti and My Ex-Boyfriend’s Meatless Balls, she transforms roasted almonds, parm, breadcrumbs, garlic and parsley into the most perfect meatless meatballs. Rolling out the individual meatballs is a bit labor-intensive, so this recipe is best saved for the weekend. There will be a point where it’s unclear to you how finely processed almonds will become meatballs, but trust the recipe and follow Molly’s guidance.

How to grate parm in your food processor.

Zoe’s Technique Tips: Put your food processor to work with grating your parm before you start on Step 1. To do so, cut your parm into medium-sized cubes (don’t forget to add in extra for topping) and process them using the blade attachment until you have tiny little parm pebbles. I also tested out baking these meatballs at 350° to make the cooking process less hands-on. Stick to a shallow fry! They hardened up in the oven.

Taste-to-Time Ratio¹: 9:5

Tomato Sauce With Onion & Butter

The 411: There’s a reason Marcella Hazan’s recipe is categorized in Food52 as a “Genius Recipe”. All it requires is a can of good-quality tomatoes (I prefer Pomi), butter, salt, half a peeled onion, and time. The result is a flavorful and simple tomato sauce that’s delicious on any pasta.

Zoe’s Technique Tips: This recipe requires truly no technique outside of dumping a bunch of ingredients together in a pot. But be careful of splattering tomatoes!

Taste-to-Time Ratio: 8:10

Buon appetito!

1. The Taste-to-Time Ratio is a ratio that evaluates flavor on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest) with time on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the fastest). For example, our family favorite mac and cheese that requires 2 types of cheese, toasted baguette breadcrumbs, approximately all your kitchen pans, and 2 hours of baking is a 10:3 - insanely delicious, but not a quick weeknight meal.