Recipe Rut Be Gone!

It's been a while since I tried a new recipe. Between traveling, eating out, and not wanting to spend hours cooking in the kitchen during the hot summer, I haven't had the desire to delve into something new and challenging. I've been in a recipe rut. Sticking to meals I've made several times before, or dishes with few ingredients that require little prep time (i.e. asian stir-fry, pan fried tilapia, grilled chicken). The kugel that I made last week was one of the newest things I've tried in a while, but that was extremely simple--just a matter of cooking the pasta, mixing the ingredients, and baking it all in the oven. (By the way, the kugel was a success! Very easy to make, and my whole family loved it. It was almost a little too sweet for a dinner entrée, but with all the sweet tooths in my family, no one was complaining).

On this dreary, rainy Sunday with nothing to do, I figured this was no better time to bust out of my recipe rut. Lazy, dark days always make me crave hearty, comfort food, which in my family always means Italian. So to my Giada cookbooks I went! This already posed a problem, because I've cooked so many of Giada's recipes, I really had to comb through to look for something new. Finally, I found the perfect recipe: Bucantini all'Amatriciana with spicy smoked mozzarella meatballs.

A while ago, I saw the episode in which Giada cooked this dish with her Aunt Raffy. I remember thinking it looked like such a hearty family meal. A friend of mine also tried this recipe earlier this summer and said it was delicious, so I knew this had to be it.

The recipe calls for bucatini pasta, which is a thick, spaghetti-like pasta with a hole running through the center. Unfortunately, our grocery store does not carry bucatini, so I resorted to one of my favorites: linguini. I also decided to leave out the pancetta in the sauce. Pancetta is one of the crucial ingredients that makes an amatriciana sauce amatriciana, but knowing the picky eaters in my house, I decided I could do without it. I also used ground turkey instead of ground beef and ground veal as in the original recipe. This was another decision made based on the somewhat limited

palates I was serving, and also to lighten up the already hearty meal a little bit. So after I completely changed the recipe, it was time to get started!

The sauce was very easy. Just sauté some onion, garlic, and crushed red pepper flakes, add crushed tomatoes, salt and pepper, and some Pecorino Romano, and voila!

The meatballs were also fairly simple, just a little more time consuming. I had to grate an onion, which I've never done before. It was a little tricky, especially when I got to the end of the onion and struggled to grate it without getting my fingers as well. But luckily, I managed the grate the onion, with all my fingers still intact.

One of my favorite things about making meatballs is mixing together all the ingredients with your hands, and then rolling out the little balls. Cooking is always more fun when you can get a little messy! The best part about the meatballs was the smoked mozzarella inside. With my finger, I made a little depression in each ball and stuck a little cube of smoked mozzarella inside. As the meatballs baked in the oven, bits of cheese popped out like a little surprise!

In the end, it was a delicious meal. My whole family loved it, and I welcomed their praise. No need to be humble when a dish is undeniably good! I was worried that the meatballs might be a little dry because of my decision to use ground turkey, but they were surprising moist and had so much flavor from the smoked mozzarella, fresh parsley, and red pepper flakes! And even though it might not have been a traditional amatriciana sauce, the pancetta was not missed at all. The sauce was so rich and thick from the romano cheese, and had a subtle kick from the red pepper flakes.

Bucatini (er, linguine) all'amatriciana with spicy smoked mozzarella meatballs fulfilled both of my goals for today: 1. To serve a hearty, comforting dish to my family on such a miserable day; 2. Get out of a recipe rut!

Here is the link to Giada's original recipe:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/bucatini-allamatriciana-with-spicy-smoked-mozzarella-meatballs-recipe/index.html