Mom's Day meal = Incendiary

So, for Mother's day, the 'Bones and I ventured out to the country to spend some time with the woman who was nice enough to create and subsequently raise us: Mom.

The idea was to do your basic mind-blowing 3 course dinner on saturday night, and then just relax on Sunday with an easy breakfast and a nice little hike somewhere. Last week, 'Bones and I were watching an episode of Bourdain's show on travel channnel in which he was visiting and cooking in northern Italy; we were inspired to proceed along such an avenue ourselves.

We decided to start with a basic antipasti course, followed by a pasta course, and then a meat course. Bones would handle #2 (as is his wont- ZING!) and I #3.

To rachet things up a notch, I decided on diving into some ARTICHOKES; Bones & I operated, removed the hearts, and marinated them in lemon juice and some water. They were later quartered, slathered in olive oil, salt, and herbs; and then grilled up nicely. These were served, dressed in aged balsamic, with a nice salami and some asiago cheese for the first course.

Bones worked up his normal magic with the home made pasta, including a sauce with cream, cheese, and some of the braising liquid from my dish. Oh, he also melted some fresh ricotta on top to make it sexy (see photo at the top).

The third course was a braciole, which I'd never done before. I guess, traditionally this is served as a middle course, but fuck that, this isn't Italy, it's goddamn Massachusetts. I wanted this to be the main attraction. Started with skirt steak, pounded the uncle-tripping bejesus out of them until they were about a quarter-inch thick. Then they were stuffed with a mixture of grated pecorino, farm eggs (which made the stuffing a brilliant yellow!) and some bread crumbs. The little meat burritos were then rolled & tied with butcher's twine. Brown in a pan, remove, sautee your aromatics, de-glaze with a bottle of red wine. Then in goes about a dozen fresh tomatoes that I had grilled earlier (I don't think I'll ever go back to canned tomatoes after doing it this way) and then the meat goes back in. I think I threw some pitted black olives in as well. Once it's simmering, into the oven for an hour-plus (at least) braise.

Shit came out so good we forgot to take pictures. Well, we did take pics, but my Mom inadvertantly deleted them all. So I leave you with some shots of a fire we started out in the back yard.

'Wrence