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!