Eric and Geoffrey! Town and Country Journey Town Recipe 1

So Rowan got me this fantastic Christmas present... a signed copy of Geoffrey Zakarian's cookbook Town and Country.  I've been watching Chopped on Food Network for a long time now, but I really really loved Zakarian on Next Iron Chef.  When I started thumbing through the book it made me think of that movie, Julie and Julia, where the girl goes through and blogs about making all of Julia Child's recipes from her French cooking book.  People probably don't know that Julia Child actually didn't like the project because it was mostly a stunt and there wasn't anyone there to judge the food being made.  I pretty much agree with that... HOWEVER.. I very much want to work my way through Zakarian's cookbook and blog about it because I think it will be fun and frankly I love the guy.  Anyway, here is a shot of the book....

The first recipe I made is from the "Town" section.... which is supposed to be slightly more elevated food that you get to have once a week as a special treat.  I'm not really sure about all that, but I trust Zakarian's judgment.  The recipe I made tonight was Zakarian's adaptation of ravioli nudi, a dish served at River Cafe in London.  You need the following ingredients: Acorn squash, kosher salt, pepper, serano ham, fresh mozzarella, brown sugar, butter, honey, and olive oil.  To paraphrase Zakarian's process... heat the oven to 400 degrees F.  Place acorn squash (cut into 8 pieces) on a baking sheet with olive oil.  Put salt, pepper, honey, sugar, and butter on squash wedges.  Cook for 15 minutes, turn the pieces on their sides, cook for another 15, and then return the pieces to their original position for a final 15 minute cooking time.  Take the squash wedges out, remove the skin while maintaining the wedge shape as much as possible, and place a piece of mozzarella and ham on the wedge.  Drizzle with olive oil.   Now, when I did this tonight, I couldn't find serano ham, so I used prosciutto.  Anyway, here was the end product.

We didn't eat this alone... we served it along with homemade pasta with a lemon-garlic cream sauce and roasted-garlic bread, as pictured below...

Thanks for reading, and happy cooking. 

MAN LOVE