Cookbook #2 Gourmet Cookbook

This logic is going to be painful to some. And to those of us who love dinnerware and entertaining, this will make perfect sense.

I was having some friends over for dinner and cosmos. We had prepurchased tickets to a particular "you are still going to stand in a long line for an hour to be seated" type of movie. It was my friend Mel's B-day and this was her b-day choice--wise woman. And we wanted to take her to the Landmark Theatres at Belleview for a little VIP theater experience. It's a pretty fun little theater where the popcorn and drinks are included with the slightly elevated ticket price and a couple of dollars extra buys you VIP seating and waiters at your seats. What genius is that? I sense it will be movie wave of the future. But I digress.

I knew exactly where my starting point for the dinner menu would be. These dishes. I needed to have this dinner with these dishes, and the food choice itself was second to that. I love these pink and brown pasta dishes even though they do not match any other dishes that I have. And this movie called for pink dishes. So I scoured my Italian cookbooks--but could not find anything appropriate. It could not be red sauce, it would clash with the pink. This dish had to be something the bday girl would like, while complementing these dishes. And then I found it...the recipe that was befitting both Mel's bday and the pink dishes-- Butternut Squash, Sage and Goat Cheese Ravioli with Hazelnut Brown Butter . Mel orders that when we go out so I knew it was the recipe immediately. And as complicated as it sounds, it was super duper easy, just a bit time consuming.

My cookbook for this adventure was Gourmet Magazine's Gourmet Cookbook, which is really just a hefty compilation of their recipes. About 950 pages worth of compilation. So while I did make something from this cookbook, it's hard to say I've actually *experienced* it. One recipe out of over a thousand? Ouch. The recipe was easy to follow and the hardest part was ensuring the tight seal around each ravioli so that they wouldn't burst open in the water. The only substitution I made was skipping the hazelnuts and throwing fresh sage into the brown butter. They sizzle up crispy and add such an aromatic flavor to the butter. I keep sage in a pitcher pretty much all summer long, just for sage brown butter.


And then for the topper, a little parmesan, and these...

Yes, they are cookies. Delicious, fabulous, european cookies. And while I thought Giada was a bit nuts when I saw her grating a cookie over her sage brown butter pasta , I also thought it sounded intriguing. And it was delicious. My skeptical friends also became converts themselves. There is just a mild almond sweetness that pairs with the saltiness of the butter and the parmesan perfectly. Mangia, mangia.