.Mario Batali.

so this week, we got to focus on Mario Batali.  

Mario Batali?
Mario Batali was born on September 9^th, 1960. Known for his extreme knowledge of the Italian cuisine and culture. Destined to be a chef, Mario followed in his father's footsteps. Batali opened his first restaurant, Po, in 1993. Only a couple years later he opened “Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca” with his friend Joseph Bastianich. In the very same year, "Babbo" won an award for being “the Best New Restaurant of 1998”. In 2002, James Beard Foundation's awarded him with the "Best Chef: New York City" award. Since then, he has opened various restaurants, written books, hosted cooking shows, and inspire. One of his greatest achievements occurred in 2008. The Mario Batali Foundation was created. The foundation had one soul mission of not only feeding, protecting, and educating, but also empowering children.

Some of his dishes that I got to play with were the: 
Penne alle Cipolle

To start off this dish, isn't one of my favorites. For the lack of a better word, it's very "oniony". Basically what your doing is cutting up two pounds of red onions, that have been soaked in water for 30 minutes, and sauteing them over very low heat. Similar to one of those "set it and forget it recipes", haha. Start by adding the onions and some olive oil and let it saute, then for 1 hour and a 1/2 that you have it sitting you add some water, white wine, salt & pepper gradually. Cook your pasta separately and then add to the mix, throw some parsley in there and voila, you have (translation = penne onion style)! 

Next we go to... Pasta e Fagioli con l'occhio

This recipe is more of a soup. Now the recipe doesn't call for tomatoes to be diced into the soup, I made a couple of boo-boo's on this one, but still very good. You basically are cooking some black eyed peas, sauteing some prosciutto, making a simply tomato sauce, I basically had no liquid so I added chicken stock at the end, so it came out very similar to a chicken noodle soup with pasta inside. But with some salt and pepper, diced tomato, rosemary, and a little "pzaz", it came out well.