Calamari Pizza @ Coppa

This is the Sicilian Fisherman's Wood-Fired Pizza from Coppa.

It will be the best fried-cephalopod pizza you've ever had. 

We went to go check out Coppa this week.  I'm glad we did.  It's a beautiful, simple, elegant hole in the wall with great music and a yummy, creative menu.  We sat at the bar, had a couple of beers and ordered the broccoli raabe antipasti with Meyer lemon and garlic.  It was one of the best dressed greens plate I've ever  had.  Next we got the above photographed pie.  This was special not only because it was frikkin' fried calamari on a pizza, but because I've been pondering grilled squid on pizza for a while.  I thought it might be too chewy, so this was a way to experience a similar version and test my theory out.

The Squid came piled high- tubes, tentacles and all, along with cherry peppers, parmesan and tomato. Each slice was decked out, and the first bite was slightly awkward as calamari toppled over onto the plate, but overall it was an unbelievably delicious combination of flavors and textures.  And you know what?  The squid that falls to the plate, you just pick up with your hands and eat.  No biggie.  I didn't find the squid to be too chewy for the application, either.  The key here may be the quantity of the squid on the pizza - enough so that you get at least one whole tube with every bite.  The tentacles required a little more sophisticated maneuvering, but totally worth it.

Big fan of Coppa.  Can't wait to try out Toro, with another menu by Chef Jamie Bissonnette.

One pie served two of us with leftovers to spare.  Made an excellent late night snack AND breakfast.

The Giant Garlic Spaghetti Monster

aka The Spaghetti Sandwich

I've been wanting to make this for a while, and actually found a recipe for a spaghetti sandwich in this awesome kids cookbook- Cooking with Herb: The Vegetarian Dragon.  When I recently had a big craving for spaghetti and meatballs, I decided to go for it.  I made one adjustment though,  I used egg noodles instead of a longer stringier pasta like spaghetti, fettucini or angel hair.  The fluffy egg noodles took some of the 'weight' out of the dish allowing for more face stuffing! 

Quantities are vague hear, because I assume everyone has their own way of making spaghetti and meatballs.  For the record, I used a 12 oz bag of basil egg noodles, almost a full jar of Newman's Own Marinara, and one 12 oz bag of veggie meatballs.  For the garlic bread, I just followed the directions on the box but homemade garlic bread is easy to concoct if you have some bread, garlic and butter lying around.  Here's a good recipe from a fellow blogger. Oh, and we were able to eat off of this for almost a week, so, let's say serves 8-10.

Ingredients

Noodles (spaghetti or egg noodles work well)
Tomato Sauce
Pesto
Meatballs (Try a great meatless version- Nate's Zesty Italian 'balls)
Garlic Bread (Trader Joe's frozen variety was used in this experiment)
Provolone

Directions
Boil up some water for the noodles.  Heat up your tomato sauce and meatballs in another pot.

 Add a heaping spoonful or 2 of pesto to your tomato sauce.  Drain the noodles and heat up the garlic bread in the oven with provolone on top for extra cheesiness.  Mix noodles with the sauce and meat balls.   When the garlic bread is done, top a piece of garlic bread with  some saucy noodles.

Top with another piece of garlic bread.  Smash down real hard.  Try to fit it in your mouth, then give up and eat it with your hands and a fork like a normal person.