{little dom's}
Los Feliz is a hipster’s food lover’s paradise. And everything is a short walk away! No fighting for next-to-none street parking! Nestled among a strip of tiny local shops and restaurants is Little Dom’s, a throwback Italian restaurant with the best fried cheesy rice balls you’ll ever find.
Little Dom’s
www.littledoms.com
2128 Hillhurst Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 661-0055
Ah, the days of the “blue box blues,” when a prepackaged 5 minute meal was all it took to fill you up and make you sing like the happy little pigtail wearing 7 year old you were.
Now that I’m a grownup, the blue box just doesn’t cut it anymore, but I still love homey comfort food like mac and cheese. How could I “grow up” this childhood basic? By swapping out the cheese for something fancier: gorgonzola.
After a quick google search for gorgonzola mac and cheese, I came across this find. I really picked this for two reasons: 1. I already had most of the ingredients 2. It was the first one in my search results (true story).
On Sunday, I had also picked up some gorgeous brown mushrooms from my second home the farmer’s market. Perfect addition to my grown up comfort food:
The few ingredients needed (although still more than just one blue box of noodles and powdered cheese!). I found these beautiful spiral cavatappi pasta at Fresh & Easy and thought they would be perfect:
Macaroni? Cheese? Check. We’ve got the two basics ready to become baked mac & cheese (plus you know, the grown up stuff like gorgonzola, mushrooms and the not pictured bread crumbs):
After the dish was done, I sprinkled some chopped chives all over:
Ta-da! My grown up dinner is done:
My eyes were most definitely larger than my stomach. I saw what 8 oz. of pasta looked like, and didn’t think that was enough. Thats where I thought wrong. I decided to double the recipe, and used the entire bag of pasta. Whoops! I now have enough mac & cheese to feed an army (or three). The verdict: it doesn’t even compare to the truffle oil mac & cheese from Taste (but if I had some truffle oil, I’m sure I could come close;)) but it definitely kicks some blue box butt.
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Ingredients
• 8oz. of elbow macaroni, cooked and drained
• 3/4 cup gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
• 8oz. container sour cream
• 1 cup 2% milk
• 1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
• 1/2 cup dry bread crumbs, very finely ground
• 2 Tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated
• 2 Tablespoons butter
Directions
Prepare your oven by preheating to 350 degrees.
Lightly grease a 1 and 1/2 quart baking dish and set aside.
Place milk and gorgonzola in a saucepan over low heat. Stir occasionally until the gorgonzola is completely melted. Remove from heat, and stir in sour cream and pepper.
Add pasta and stir until completely mixed. Pour mixture into baking dish.
Melt butter in a small bowl and stir in breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese. Mix well. Sprinkle over the top of your macaroni.
Bake your gorgonzola macaroni for 30 minutes.
This dish is my version of a “heat-and-serve” dinner. No frozen dinners for me! This is an easy go-to recipe when I’m feeling lazy mid-week and I can’t scrounge up any leftovers in my fridge.
Dinner consisting of only 5 ingredients…pre-sliced crimini mushrooms, vodka sauce, whole wheat penne (not pictured), spinach chicken sausage (which I had pre-sliced and frozen a few weeks ago when I bought it) and this crazy flavorful 3 cheese blend of fontina, asiago and parmesan.
While the pasta was cooking and sauce was heating, I browned the sausage slices in a skillet, just a few minutes on each side:
The next and final step was to literally throw everything into a pot, stir well…
and of course, add a very generous helping of the 3 cheese blend:
The cheese becomes wonderfully melty all over the pasta…mmm…
To be quite honest, I’m surprised a Friends reference hasn’t appeared earlier in this blog. I can quote obscure lines from the series at the drop of a hat and have a knack for relating any given real-life situation to one from the show. And I know you’re dying to know: if I had to pick a character I’m most like, it would have to be Monica (duh). I like things neat and clean (severe understatement right there) and I obviously adore cooking. Oh, and there is no steak in this recipe. I just had to throw in my random Friends reference:)
I typically like to have some sort of protein as the centerpiece of my meals. However, when I was perusing the aisles of the grocery store, I picked up an eggplant simply because it was gorgeous. Seriously, it is so shiny and purple and pretty; the picture doesn’t do it justice:
Of course, when I got home, I had no idea what I was going to do with this eggplant. On the verge of experiencing buyer’s remorse (after leaving a grocery store…with an eggplant?!), I googled a few eggplant parmesan recipes. None of them really appealed to me. Some relied too much on pan frying the eggplant, others had way too many ingredients I didn’t feel like buying, and some took around 2 or more hours to make from start to finish (no thank you). So I decided to go at this dish sans recipe, incorporating bits and pieces of a few of the recipes I read.
(Almost) all of the ingredients: 1 egg+2 tbsp water whisked together, 3/4 cup bread crumbs, 2/3 cup shredded parmesan cheese blend, 1 cup standard marinara sauce from a jar, 2 tsp dried basil.
I had sliced the eggplant into 1/2-inch slices, threw some salt on each slice, piled them up in a colander, put a plate on top and a can of tomatoes to squeeze out all of the water. I let this sit for about 30 minutes to let the eggplant drain (there is a LOT of water in eggplants. Who knew?)
After taking the picture above, I threw in a bit of dried basil and oregano into the egg/water mixture before dipping the eggplant slices. After coating the eggplant slices in the egg mixture, I coated them in the breadcrumbs…
…and then pan fried them in a cast-iron skillet with a bit of olive oil, roughly 1 minute for each side to turn slightly golden brown:
I then coated a 9×13 glass pan with a very thin layer of marinara sauce, placed all of the pan fried eggplant slices in the dish, then covered everything in 8oz of shredded mozzarella, 2 tbsp dried basil, 2/3 cup shredded parmesan blend and then a little more marinara sauce (added after this picture was taken). Look at all the cheeeeeesy goodness:
I threw it into the oven at 425° for 35 minutes, until the top layer was slightly crispy and bubbled over:
And for the finished dish, I spooned more marinara sauce alongside the eggplant parmesan:
I love to wander up and down each aisle at the grocery store (my local favorites: Whole Foods, Fresh & Easy, Trader Joe’s) and usually end up taking home something new to experiment with. This time was an eggplant–I had never cooked anything with an eggplant before. I’m glad this beautiful purple vegetable (or is it a fruit because it has seeds?) caught my eye, because this is now on my list of go-to dinner recipes. The crispy cheese on top is to die for (especially if you love cheese as much as me). There are four different types in total (the parmesan blend has 3, but I’m currently blanking out on what the other 2 are). This dish is incredibly flavorful, without any of them being too overwhelming, and only using what really is just dried basil and oregano, and a ton of cheese. A perfect example of simple ingredients creating a dish that is anything but.
I highly recommend adding marinara sauce on the side of your finished eggplant parm, otherwise it might be a bit on the dry side. I survived a meal with a vegetable instead of a protein as the main dish…and it was surprisingly filling and oh SO GOOD!
Back in college, I subsisted solely on Chipotle, CPK, grilled cheese and cereal for dinner, except when my roommate was kind enough to cook me real food. Needless to say, this obsession with good food started post-college:) One of the meals she would cook is this pesto:
2 cups loosely packed basil leaves
2 medium sized garlic cloves
1 tsp salt
3 oz. pine nuts
1 tbsp grated paremesan cheese
1 tbsp grated romano
3/4 -1 cup olive oil
The only slight modifications I made to the ingredients were that I used 2 tbsp of a pecorino/romano/parmesan cheese blend, and I used less than a 1/2 tsp of salt.
The makings of greatness:
Really, the only step in making the pesto is tossing it all into a food processor (or a hand-me-down blender when you’re in college) and blending everything together.
The result is a bright green goop. But trust me on this: it tastes about a million times better than it looks.
I decided to go with a pesto salmon dish to get some protein into the meal. I took 2 small filets of salmon, put them on a baking sheet, added a bit of salt and pepper, more of the pecorino/parmesan/romano cheese blend, and topped each with about 1-2 tablespoons of the fresh pesto. 20 minutes in the oven at 350° is all it takes. Perfectly cooked and bursting with flavor (and oh so colorful)!
I decided to soften some butter and mix in a tiny bit of pesto to make a delicious buttery spread for the loaf of fresh french bread I picked up at my grocery trip:
The finished plate includes whole wheat couscous (the same easy to make kind from the couscous-stuffed peppers), butter-pesto french bread that has been baked for a few minutes in the toaster oven and of course, the salmon:
Presentation: needs improvement. Taste: A+. Don’t worry, I had a salad on the side to get the veggies in;)
The dishful thinker’s tips:
