And what better day than Monday for Italian, right? It’s gonna put you in a good mood. Trust me. WATCH THE HOW-TO VIDEO:
Actually, I’ve been kind of in an Italian mood lately. I’m thinking you’ll be seeing more Italian later this week, hope you are cool with that.
So have I told you guys about my dad yet? I mean I know I have talked about him, but have I also told you how amazing he is? Let me just brag about him for a second because it sort of ties into this recipe. See, my parents are currently in Mt. Hood Oregon for a while with my youngest brother Red (PLUS my oldest, second oldest and third oldest brothers. PLUS my brother just below me and little miss Asher (who I miss so much!). They are there so Red can train up on Mt. Hood with the US Snowboard team. They go every summer and this is the first summer I have not gone too. Thank God. I cannot handle anymore snowboarding in my life. A break was necessary.
But anyway, my dad works as a bond broker. This means he works on East Coast Time, meaning in Oregon he gets up at 4am for work and finishes at 2pm. This also means that he has some time to kill in the afternoons. You know what he does? He searches for places in Portland to check out on the weekends. What kind of places? Old vintage shops. Shops full of junk that I might possibly be able to use for photos. You see I get really bored of using the same dishes and things in my photos so I am on the constant look out for new stuff… or really my dad is, because he is just the best. He actually takes the time to rummage through all the junk, take pictures of it and send those said pictures off to me so I can look at them and give him the big thumbs up or thumbs down (*Side note: I totally just put my thumbs up and down as I wrote that. Nerd alert). I mean, come on. I am pretty sure I have the bestest dad ever.
I also have to give a big shout out to my mom and very sick younger brother Kai (he has strep and they went rummaging after they stopped at the med center) for helping him out this past Saturday. Oh and Asher too, but I am sure she might have done more damage than help. I hear Kai was a major trooper though. So thank you! Mom and Asher always tag along because my parents are weird and never like to be apart. You would think that after 30 years together they might be sick of each other by now, but nope. Also, I feel I should say that my mom wants to help me too just as much as my dad and does not mind spending her Saturday in hot, dirty vintage shops, but my dad’s just really into it. I guess the point of the story is that I am currently feeling really grateful for my parents. I couldn’t have chosen better ones, even if I tried.
So how does this all tie into this recipe? While a while back my parents went to Leadville, CO for the day. I can’t remember if they were going just to look at vintage shops or if they had a hike over that way they wanted to do too, but they stopped in a shop and came home with all these old cookbooks. Most of them where duds, but there where two really cool Italian ones that I kept. I hadn’t really looked through them until last week though. And that’s when I came across the Mozzarella in Carrozza. Mozzarella in Corrozza means mozzarella in a bundle (the bundle being the bread) or something like that. I guess “in carrozza” actually means “in carriage”, so mozzarella in a carriage. I think what everybody is trying to get at is the idea of mozzarella encased in bread. Dumbed down to my level, I take it as just some fresh mozzarella in bread that has been dipped in eggs and fried.
That’s really all it is. And it’s so good.
I added basil to mine because it’s summer and I add basil to all my summer meals. All of them. The recipe in the book (which I cannot read the name of because it is in Italian) served this with an optional anchovy paste and while I bet that was good, I did not have any anchovies, so I went with summer fruit. It never fails me.
The blueberry balsamic jam is the perfect topper to this mozzarella in carrozza. It sinks into the warm and ooey, gooey, melty mozzarella and it is all kinds of delicious. Seriously, it’s the simple things in life that are so good.
Simple and delicious on a Monday – NICE.
