Confessions of an Amateur Cook: #3

I figure if I'm willing to open up my kitchen missteps, and occasional house fires, for internet fodder, I may as well take a moment to relish in my intermittent kitchen successes. (Yes, they do happen on occasion.) And I am overjoyed last night was one.

My Sunday night dinner experiment this weekend started with Giada DeLauretis' Braciola, a recipe I've wanted to try for years. Ever since I watched Deborah on Everybody Loves Raymond, a well-known disaster in the kitchen, make a braciola that brought her critical TV family back groveling for more.

Braciola is a traditional Italian sunday night family supper, and a recipe often adjusted to whatever is available for the cut of meat, cheeses and herbs. For ours I took flank steak, pecorino romano and provolone cheeses and italian parsley, rolled into a scrumptious bundle and cooked for 2 1/2 hours and basted in marinara sauce. What could be better?

Relatively easy, albeit time-consuming, the final result was worth every trip to the oven for babysitting. I even made my own garlic butter for the bread. Nothing half-ass was sharing a table with this entree. The whole meal turned out so delicious and Ben and I stuffed ourselves to oblivion. Ben was not asked to pose for this post-meal compliment!

If I've any wisdom to gain it would be to make this next time some afternoon we aren't booked with soccer when I can devote a consecutive amount of time for cooking. It would eliminate the need I had to reheat the meat. Even though the recipe called for doing just that if needed, it probably dried it out a tiny bit. But who could really tell when it was bathed with all that sauce?

If that wasn't enough, and as if we had room, I had to try my hand at a special dessert: Chocolate Molten Lava Cakes. I've always wanted a reason to make something in ramekins but never had any on hand, and I never would justify buying the $2 dishes for no known purpose. Can I just say it was so fun to buy dishes for no other reason than "dammit I am making this dessert!"

I was oh-so-tempted to overcook my cakes, as it seems so counter-intuitive to deliberately undercook them, but I followed my brain and not my instincts and they really turned out beautifully. Once cut into, the bittersweet chocolate lava flowed onto our plates like a sleepy decadent river.

Oh sweet gluttony, how you ruined us. And now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to eat my salad.