Kitchen Masterpiece: Spaghetti with browned butter and mizithra

I need to start by saying that I LOVE the Spaghetti Factory.  We went there often when I was young, probably because the kids' meals are reasonably priced.  I always wanted to sit in the trolley, but we were never able to as a family of six.  A few years ago, my husband and I did get to sit in the trolley and were disappointed by a very weird funk coming from the general area, which made us never request the trolley again!  My favorite thing on the menu, by far, is the spaghetti with browned butter and mizithra.  In fact, it is probably even my favorite food in the world.

I have struggled with this recipe for going on two years now, trying to make it myself.  It shouldn't be so hard, right?  I mean, the ingredients are in the title!  I researched a bit into how to make browned butter, which seemed pretty straightforward: cook it until it is brown.  I then threw the spaghetti in a bowl with some mizithra cheese (Harmon's carries it), and the butter.  It was good, but definitely NOT Spaghetti Factory caliber!  What could I have been doing wrong?

Inspiration struck on my most recent visit to the Spaghetti Factory with my dad and step mom and step sister.  As I put the ambrosia in my mouth, I had a sudden epiphany.  Inspiration!  Eureka!  Problem solved!  I got out of the bath tub naked and ran through the streets shouting!  Okay, not really... Now I'm wondering if that story is really true.  Hrm.  Anyway, the spaghetti had PARMESAN on it!  I was sure!!  I recognized the taste!  Nowhere on the menu did it say that Parmesan was on the plate!! Sneaky Spaghetti Factory and their secret ingredients!  I have discovered your secrets!  Not even the recipes I found online suggested that I mix the parmesan and mizithra!!  I felt like a genius!

At the outdoor fireplace in Trolley Square.  The self satisfied smile
on my face is from figuring out that there is Parmesan involved
in the making of my favorite dish.  

Melting butter over
MEDIUM heat

So, the last time I stopped at Harmon's, I decided to give my theory a try.  I picked up a plastic container of shredded mizithra, and today was the day!  In order to get the recipe right, I decided to google butter-browning techniques, since my butter never seems quite flavorful enough.  In my search, I found this: CD Kitchen: Spaghetti with burnt butter and Mizithra recipe, which actually was a really good walk-through on how to burn the butter without lighting it on fire.

Step one was take a cup of butter (or two sticks), and chop it up.  Here was where my first mistake was happening.  I'd just throw the whole sticks in a skillet.  Then they melt unevenly.  Now I know better.  I put them in a saucepan (next time I will use a bigger sauce pan, because this one overflowed a little.  Live and learn) and turned the heat on medium.  Before, I would turn the heat up super high.  If I had cooked the butter for the right amount of time on high heat, I could possibly have burned my house down!  Lesson learned!

Stirring, stirring, stirring

After the butter starts boiling and bubbling, you need to stir.  Stir, stir, stir.  Keep stirring while it boils, or the recipe I found says it'll overflow and catch on fire.  I do not want fire in my kitchen, so I stirred vigorously!  You can see the blurriness of my wooden spoon in the picture from all my stirring.

The recipe says it's supposed to turn brown after it swells and bubbles.  Not true, at least not with my butter!  It almost overflowed, went down, then almost overflowed AGAIN.  Tricky!  I actually did have to pull it off the heat, because my poor stirring arm wasn't going fast enough to keep it down.  Then I turned the heat down a little. It didn't seem to ruin it though.

It's nice that Josie likes to hang out
in her walker and eat Kix while I
cook!

Wow, that's really brown!

Pretty quickly after the second almost-overflowing incident, it turned a nice brown color.  Previous readings indicated that it should be an amber-type color, which previous attempts had been.  Other readings said that the darker it is, the more flavorful it is.  I like flavor, so I let it get almost to the color of coffee!  It smelled so nice!!

Next step is to let it sit for a few minutes while the sandy stuff sinks to the bottom.  I had always stirred that in with my spaghetti.  It didn't taste bad, but it didn't look pretty either!  I finished up the pasta while it sat, and I pulled the bread out of the oven.  

A nice baguette to go with my pasta!

Now I know what you're thinking, who does Wendy think she is, making this AMAZING pasta AND fresh bread??  She is such a show off!  I'm not, really.  The fabulous bread is from my new most favorite book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  I'm sure I will blog about it in the future, when I have had the opportunity to try more of the recipes, but this is the first recipe in the book, and I love it.  What I love the most is it really does take only about five minutes of my time (besides resting and cooking, of course) and I get awesome crusty, fluffy bread.  It makes killer breakfast sandwiches too.  Getting off topic here.  

After my dark brown butter sat for a while, I got out a bowl, strainer, and a paper towel.  I put the paper towel in the strainer and then dumped the contents of the pan into the towel.  It looked something like this: 

Yuck, black stuff!

The strainer/towel left only the delicious, creamy brown butter in the bowl.  There was a bunch of black sandy stuff stuck in the bottom of the pan, so I quickly put water in it to soak until after dinner.  

I was surprised at how much gunk was in the bottom of the pan, and in the paper towel.  All this time, the secret to beautiful, non-icky browned butter was right in front of me on the internet, and I never knew!  

Another shot of my
beautiful butter.

Now that I have my butter all ready to go, I started assembling the plates!  

First, I plopped a pile of spaghetti on each plate.  I think next time, I will put cheese on first.  This is because, when I go to the spaghetti factory, and I stir up my pasta, there's always some on the bottom that gets stirred in.  Without it on bottom, when I stirred, my cheese went away and I had to add more at the table!  Now I know.  So, you can learn from my mistakes and put cheese on first!  

Secret ingredient!

Next, I added mizithra and parmesan cheese to the top of the pile of spaghetti.  

I then poured some of the butter on top of the cheese/pasta pile and it looked absolutely awesome.  I was so excited to try it with my secret ingredient!

Lots of pics in this post!  Oh well, pics are fun, and good for attention deficit types.  

Bread, complete with olive oil,
balsamic vinegar, and ground pepper

So delicious!

To complete my masterpiece, I sliced the bread and put some olive oil and balsamic vinegar with ground pepper in a condiment cup.  Here's a tip: the oil/vinegar mix (Johnny Carino's style, I think...I can't really remember exactly what restaurant does the dipping thing, maybe Macaroni grill?) Anyway, it needs to be on a plate.  I knew this, but didn't want to make another plate dirty (Don't ask me why I care, I run the dishwasher every night) The vinegar sunk to the bottom, so I ended up dumping it on the plate anyway.  

Josie is enjoying her spaghetti

Here's another tip: The people who wrote the Artisan Bread book warned me not to cut the bread until it was completely cooled.  I knew this, and I cut it anyway.  The last bread I made I did not cut until it was time, and it tasted way fluffier and better in general.  Always listen to the people who wrote the book, they seem to know what they're talking about.  

Unfortunately for Jeff, he had to pull over on his way home and fix a problem for his work, so his dinner was a little bit cold when he got home :(

Josie and I sat down together and ate some bread and pasta though, and she had a lot of fun. She reached a new milestone at dinner as well.  It's the I-discovered-how-to-feed-the-dog milestone. 

She flings food off her tray and was hanging over the side, watching the floor.  It took me a while to figure out what she was doing, until Q came in her line of sight and she started giggling.  Every single time!  Throw food on the floor and watch.  Life will 

Josie is very pleased with herself, throwing food on the floor
and watching Q eat it.  

never be the same, and it will drastically improve for the three furry creatures that live with us.  

Q is under Josie's high chair, waiting for more food to drop

Back to the pasta.  It tasted exactly like the Spaghetti Factory's!  It was SO good!  Insert all kinds of braggy awesomeness here, because I am so good!  And I discovered the secret ingredient! In your face, stinky trolley!  Just kidding, I really do love the Spaghetti Factory, and discovering their recipe does not make it any less awesome to have someone else cook it for me.  And clean up after.  Never underestimate the value of paying someone to do your work for you!  

Of course, how else could I finish off the night besides with a cup full of Dreyer's Spumoni ice cream?  Perfect for the spaghetti factory theme!  

Spumoni!  Yum!

Of course, poor Jeff was helping his parents move a spa, so he didn't get any Spumoni tonight.  If he hadn't eaten most of it a few nights ago, there would have been some for him, so it's hard for me to feel too bad!  

Oh and a follow up to my carb-limiting experiment.  Complete and utter failure, because I ate a bunch of candy on Easter.  Who didn't warn me that Easter was coming and weight loss experiments should be postponed???   

I will try again in a few days, and let you know!  

A poem for Josie

Dear Josie,
You've given me so many things,
Smiles and giggles I like to keep
You've given me so much joy
and oh-so-little sleep.


There's one thing I'd like to request,
I'd like to give it back
These dark circles beneath my eyes,
Today they're almost black!
Love,
Mommy

For the love of carbs.

Granola bars come in boxes
 of 100 at Costco.  Not good
for moderation!

It's time for me to admit it.  I am a carb addict.  I love them.  My daily struggle is when I start feeling hungry: string cheese, full of protein, or a granola bar?  Full of carbs.  This may not seem like a big deal, after all, the calories are close to the same.  That would be all good and fine, if the granola bar were not followed by three more granola bars.  Could I eat the string cheese in the same fashion, one right after the other?  No way, I'd get sick of it, and I may even feel full (so I hear, I wouldn't know.  The carbs get me every time).

Mmm..Twinkies.  

Now, I know that weight loss is all about calories in vs. calories out.  This man's experiment: Twinkie diet proved it to my satisfaction.  The guy ate all his calories in twinkies and candy, and he ate a can of green beans and probably a horse-sized vitamin pill every day.  He then lost 27 lbs.  Now, 1600 calories in twinkies doesn't go nearly as far as 1600 calories in celery, so I guess that's where the healthy food theory comes from.

Ah, my sweet and salty Chex mix.  

Back to the subject at hand.  Carbs.  Ah, sweet, sweet, beautiful, delicious carbs.  The reasoning in my head is as follows: "I simply can't feel full without carbs!"  But, unfortunately, I also know inside my head that I could sit with an entire bag of Honey Nut Chex Mix and consume the whole thing.  All 1700 calories and who-knows-how-many carbohydrates.  I could, and I have.  On multiple occasions.  For that reason, when I walk by those little bags of sweet and salty deliciousness, I stare straight ahead and try not to look at them.  It's very sad, I miss my chex.  I just can't buy them, no matter how much they beg and cry.  Sigh.

Back to the subject at hand.  I think that I can't feel full without carbs, and yet I could eat them all day.  How is that even possible?  One thing is certain, a chicken breast is much less satisfying than my beautiful Chex mix.  I mean, bleh.  All that healthy protein.  But seriously, I need to quit the carbs.

Or at least cut them down, because I can't fit into my pants yet.  Josie is ten months old, I thought I'd be in my old pants by now for sure.  I have seven stubborn pounds that won't go away, and at least some of that is due to the carbs I'm eating.  And my beloved Chex mix.

Josie drinking breast milk
out of a sippy cup.  

While I am a whole hearted believer in the Twinkie diet, cutting calories is simply not an option for me until I am no longer nursing.  Until Josie turns one (and is no longer relying on me for her main source of nutrition), I don't want to risk cutting my calories to the point that it will affect my ability to feed her.  BUT, I can be smarter about the calories that I am eating.  Example: when I got hungry between breakfast and lunch today, I ate THREE of the rolls I made last night for dinner.  (Very good recipe: Allrecipes: Sweet dinner rolls) They are so delicious, but I most certainly did not need to eat three of them.  The carb trap is never ending.  Plus, I was looking at cupcake recipes on cooking blogs this evening.  Now I really want a cupcake.  What is wrong with me??

Because of this problem, I am publicly declaring my goal to eat only FIVE carb-based items a day.  As much as I would like to count all three rolls as only one carb-based item, the fact that there were three of them means that I should have probably counted them as three.  I wasn't counting today though, and I'm sure I was over that limit!  After one week, I will report back as to how much - or little - I have lost.  Good luck to me!

And here's a Lolcat to add to my inspiration:

How to make nice, FLUFFY rice!!

So to some of you experienced chefs out there, this may seem like a no-brainer.  But to me, it was a revolution.  I started to wonder to myself, "self, why does the rice I make always suck?" At first, I thought that the secret was a rice cooker.  So, since my E-mealz this week had like four meals that used rice, I used the opportunity to buy one.  It ran me $13.88 at wal-mart.  What a deal?  Anyway, the directions didn't say how long it took to actually  cook the rice, I suppose because the idea is that it is automatic.  Still, I wanted to have some idea about at what point I should put the rice in the cooker to have it fresh for dinner.  In googling this, I discovered the following: 20 most worthless pieces of junk: #20 rice cooker  Oh great I thought to myself, I just bought something that was on the list of most worthless pieces of junk!  At least it was number 20 though, so it's the last on the list.  I noticed later that bread makers were also on the list, and I must wholeheartedly disagree with that!  I use my bread maker ALL the time.  Not to make bread though, just dough for rolls and things.  Still, super useful!  Number one on the list is happy meal toys, in case you wondered.

Anyway, the reason that link is important is because NONE of the benefits in the debate about rice cookers stated that they magically make rice fluffier, or more 'steamed'.  Hmm, I thought.  Well, at least I can just put it in the rice cooker and forget about it.  It doesn't take up a ton of room, and when I'm making a main dish and sometimes another side dish besides rice, and often taking care of Josie while I cook, it doesn't seem like a bad purchase.  Oh, if anyone is curious, it takes rice about 20 minutes to cook in a rice cooker.  So, about the same amount of time it takes to cook on the stove.

So, I looked up "How to steam rice".  I've never heard of a rice steamer, and I thought a rice cooker would do it, but apparently it works the same as the stove, so there had to be something else I was missing.  I may as well have googled, "Why does my rice always suck?" because it does.  It comes out smooshy, sticky, and gross.  I wanted to know how to make that panda express, fluffy white rice!  I then found this: Shiok - Chef's notes: how to make perfect steamed rice. AHA!  The secret I've always wanted to know was just a mouse-click away!  I love it when that happens!

Basically, the secret to beautiful, fluffy rice is.... rinse it!
Yes, when you put the rice in a bowl and fill the bowl with water, the water turns completely white and cloudy.  It is apparently the bran, it clings to the outside of the rice (and has all sorts of yummy vitamins and stuff that are good for you, but also deplete the fluffy awesomeness of your rice.)  I put enough water in to cover the rice, stirred it around with my hand, and drained it using a wire strainer.  It took about ten good rinses before the water cleared enough for me to see the rice.  Begone, icky bran!  (I did not soak it for 30 mins as the page suggests, and it still came out great!)

Unfortunately, my story does not have a happy ending.  My $13.88 rice cooker shut off about five minutes after it started cooking!  Completely shut down, and changing outlets did not work.  I apparently bought a defective rice cooker.  So I dumped all the rice and water into a pan and finished cooking it on the stove.  It came out beautiful!

My conclusion is that the rice cooker is not completely necessary, but it will be convenient, so I will be exchanging it and hoping that the next one does not shut down on the first run.  But, it is completely possible to make fluffy, delicious rice on the stove as well!  Just rinse the crap out of it!!

Love this!

Kelly Wels is giving away my FAVORITE kind of diaper on her blog this week! Woohoo!!