Friday Roundup

This week went by too quickly!  Cooking highlights were a new Rabbit recipe.  Used an English recipe for Rabbit and Leek Pie, but only made the stewed Rabbit with Leeks and added lemon zest & juice for the sauce.  It was very yummy! The rabbit was boneless, the first time I've dealt with boneless rabbit!  Most of the other dishes were repeats. 

At home we had the Veal Rolls! Double Yum and Nana asked for a Mario Batali dish she saw him produce on Rachel Ray's Show: Stuffed Manicotti with Beef.  I made a basic tomato sauce for it then prepared the beef ragu.  We cooled these and stored them overnight. Nana finished the recipe the next day for our dinner.  It was really good, I can't wait to make the Ragu again, so tasty.
I'm posting the cleaned up version of the recipe here.  There were a few issues with the recipe on the site, some typos and one major issue was that it told you to make the stuffing while you were heating the water for the pasta, meanwhile the stuffing needs to cook for 1 1 /2 hours!  So I rearranged the directions just a bit! Here's two pics of the process and plated:

On Friday we lunched in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with our Daughter @Dumont Burger we sat outside as it was a gloriously beautiful day, a tad warm but not scorching.  It was a great meal, Nana had the Mini Burger w/Fries; Tiff had the Chickpea Burger with Onion Rings and I had the Turkey Burger with Salad.  All were delicious. But the real star was the Fried Pickles we enjoyed for an appetizer:

After a walk of the neighborhood and a bit of shopping, we found our way to the Van Leeuwen Ice Cream Truck!  Diets beware!  We tried three flavors-Mint Chip--Chocolate--Pistachio. All were perfect and refreshing! We had them in cups and no one spilled any on their clothes, therefore enjoying every last drop! Triple YUM!  It's just a good thing the truck doesn't come to our neighborhood, we'd embarrassingly be chasing it down the block!!

While I was at the Queens Health Food Emporium on Thursday, shopping for ingredients for my client, I saw the most gorgeous English Peas.  So on Friday Nana and I went back and bought a bunch along with Ricotta Cheese.  Came home and made Farfalle with Pea/Ricotta/Mint puree tossed with sauteed shallots and extra peas.  Served this as a side dish along side of grilled boneless chicken breast.  Here's the yummy picture:

Not a bad week for Foodies eh?