Mission: Delectable

When your cooking idol tells you what to cook, you do it, right? Right. So when Giada De Laurentiis told me, in person, to my face, to make her Raspberry Tiramisu, I was scooping out the mascarpone before she finished signing my book. I found the perfect occassion to make it when Mother's Day came up a week ago. In case it didn't quite work or wasn't quite enough, I also whipped up another batch of Espresso Brownies, which have quickly become my go-to dessert for entertaining and chocolate fixes. (In case making Raspberry fuckin' Tiramisu wasn't gay enough, now I'm having chocolate fixes. Great. What's next, runway coaching the girls of Top Model?)

Raspberry Tiramisu - Giada must think of this as one of her signature desserts. Not only is she pushing it at book signings, it's the only featured recipe on her website and her popping one the powdered-sugar-dusted raspberries into her (cavernous) mouth made the cover of her second book. I can understand why she's so into it - for tiramisu, it's fairly simple, yet automatically looks both fancy enough for company and complicated enough to make said company think you worked harder on it than you actually did.

However, while I definitely liked the recipe, I wouldn't say I loved it. In fact, out of the seven desserts I've made of hers, there are at least five others I'd make again before this one. Everything was about it is...fine. Grand Marnier mixed in with both the layer of raspberry jam and the layer of whipped mascarpone? Sounds awesome, but in the end was just...there. The layers just didn't come together for me the way they do in traditional tiramisu, mainly because the mascarpone, even folded into whipped cream, was way too heavy for what's trying to be a ligher alternative. The slight crunch from the ladyfingers should have contrasted with the fluffy mascarpone filling and the bursts of raspberries layered in between, but in the end it felt like dressed-up raspberry shortcake. Again, not a bad thing, and it did get raves from my family, but with all the build-up - I mean, it was recommended by none other than Giada herself; this was the recipe she had recommended above all others! - it didn't live up to expectations (which, in all fairness, may have been trumped up unreasonably).

After making the tiramisu, with an entire pound of mascarpone cream folded into whipped cream, I swore off desserts for a while. Since I left my family's homemade Mother's Day brunch with a bag of leftover berries, I naturally made...

Fresh Fruit with Cannoli Cream - Right, because taking the filling out of a cannoli shell and plopping it onto some berries doesn't count as dessert? I wish. But I've been eyeing this recipe ever since I bought Everyday Italian and I now had the chance to make it. All I had to do was fold some ricotta cheese into whipped cream with a dash of cinnamon and I was set. Sprinkle some sliced almonds on top (but take care not to burn them, like I almost did) and you've got one satisfying dessert. Plus, since you're eating fruit, you can convince yourself you're being somewhat healthy.

Fresh Fruit: $4.95 Ricotta Cheese: $2.95 Self-Delusion: Delicious.

With those creamy sins tucked into chilled tupperware, I made a few stabs at actually cooking something for dinner.

Roasted Chicken with Balsamic Vinaigrette - With summer almost upon us, I thought I'd squeeze in one roasted entreé before it gets too warm to use the oven. I don't think this is exactly an Italian dish, or even Italian-American. Instead of always recreating Italian recipes for us modern, ADD home cooks, Giada sometimes, as she explains on her show, chooses to incorporate staple Italian ingredients into regular American stand-bys. Here, she uses balsamic vinegar in a chicken marinade. That part was fine. It was after the chicken baked that I had problems. In the online version, it says to simply place the roasting pan on the stove-top, add chicken broth and boil while scraping up the brown bits on the bottom to create a flavorful sauce (technically a gravy, actually). In the book, however, there's no chicken broth; you pour the remaining marinade into a saucepan and scoop off excess oil (which was hard as it was 75% oil). I then boiled the sauce down to a thick paste rather than a syrup that I could barely spread on the chicken, much less pour.

Oh well, I wasn't expecting to cook 125 recipes perfectly every time anyway. I garnished the moist, tender chicken with some lemon zest, served it with a baked sweet potato and spinach and I was happy. And pretty healthy, too. However, I had to turn to Giada's second book to really make a healthy dish that was perfect on a sunny spring day.

Grilled Chicken with Basil Dressing - Marinate the chicken in olive oil and crushed fennel seeds, grill, and then serve with a basil/olive oil/lemon dressing, like pesto without the Parmesan and pine nuts (although, again, the online version is different - what's up with that?). Done. That's it. Grilling chicken is so fast and easy, and if done correctly (not that hard), produces beautifully tender, juicy meat. Love it. Serve with grilled zucchini and yellow squash, plus some brown-buttered corn with basil, and I was a happy man.

Last time I blogged about cooking I said I'd attempt Giada's marinara sauce next, which hasn't happened. I had made a lot of pasta dishes at that point and wanted to take a break. Plus, I'm thinking of trying whole wheat pasta again, but I've had bad experiences with it (chewy, tough) so I'm hesitant to go back. But it's healthier, and there's no way I can get through a book that practically worships starch without trying some alternatives.

If the whole wheat pasta doesn't taste good, I'll just top regular noodles with some cannoli cream. That makes everything healthier.