SOLD OUT – $80

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One pan serves approximately 9 Anello size pieces. Available while supplies last.
Purchase and hand delivery available in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan only. Please note, We can not deliver outside of these boroughs of NY.

This year, for the first time, we are sharing some of our holiday feast with you. No longer will you have to look at beautiful pictures of amazing food and wonder if it tastes as good as it looks. We are making limited quantities of our signature meat lasagna and will deliver them right to your door. Remember, we are southern Italian’s so no bechemel here…just pure red sauce and triple meat, triple cheese. Now go start planning your feast!

What you get

Each order contains a 9×13 reusable steel pan full of our famous 5 layer lasagna. Delivery is included in your purchase. (Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan only please). We will deliver your order chilled along with proper reheat instructions. Each pan will feed 12-15 adults or 9 Italians. Ingredients: Tomato sauce, Tomato paste, pork, beef, veal (ground), spices, mozzerella cheese, ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, pasta noodles (egg, flour, water), olive oil

When you get it

Delivery will be on December 19th in the evening. After you complete your purchase we will contact you for specific timing and location information but please include delivery address at time of purchase in the shipping address field.

Questions? Drop us a note at info@forkingtasty.com

Forking Tasty – On a Farm Outside Rome from Anthony Anello on Vimeo.

I took a tour and explored the catacombs just outside the city of Rome and after they brought us to a farm for some cooking lessons. We were making Gnocchi that day and the eatin was good. I had a lot of fun watching this Italian women make Gnocchi for us all. She eventually had a few of the guests come up to help out. I wanted to join but there was no more room at the table. When it was asked who would like to help make Gnocchi (she didn’t ask because she did not speak a lick of english) I was busy stuffing my face and missed out. Maybe next time.

That headline may leave some of you a bit grossed out. Let me clear this up quickly. These two activities were not done simultaneously. Last Friday night started out with my first trip to the Russian and Turkish baths in the east village. It seems ridiculous that I had not visited this ancient neighborhood hot spot for the for six years I lived just four blocks away. Never-the-less, I was being taken by a veteran so I had little worry other than; “How hungry do you get during this ritual?

I will forgo the full description of what took place in the bowels of this dank, decrepit, building and get straight to the food. For those who have never gone, let’s just say it is an attraction. Communal steam baths, ice plunge pools and really tiny towels make for a sweaty, medieval, journey into a masochistic, voyeuristic and narcissistic land of multi, age, shade and gender new yorkers. The point here is when you are done bathing you are really hungry. Like, eat a horse hungry. We didn’t do that but we did eat BIG.

As we dried off and suited back up we started throwing out local food options. Quickly the word “Hearth” rang out through the porcelain, tiled chamber and the decision was made. Just a few blocks away was one of my favorite East Village spots and thankfully Danny suggested it without a second blink. I say this because Hearth is not cheap or fast in any way. It is an experience in fine food, great wine and comfortable space. None of which the EV is known for. I go sometimes just to read the stories the sommelier writes about his wine choices.

When we arrived, without a reservation, we were told the wait would be about 20 minutes. Instead of doing the restaurant dance where you walk the streets getting denied a seat from over capacity restaurants for the time it would have taken to wait at the first one, we took a seat in the window, ordered some drinks and waited. The friendly and highly aware staff updated us periodically on the progress of the table situation. Soon enough we were seated. Besides our shrinking stomachs we were all very comfortable. Immediately we ordered the two fastest appetizers on the menu. The calamari salad had a tasty smokey flavor that made it very distinct. The charcuterie board, our second app, had a myriad of pate, head cheese and dried meat on it. The head cheese smeared on the garlic brioche almost made me weep. Instead, I ordered more brioche and used it to wipe every single plate clean that would come to the table for the rest of this meal.

Before we had even seen our appetizers we ordered our main dishes. For this post I would like to focus on these three choices. Actually there is four. Danny decided to throw a price fix tasting menu on top of the whole order. His entree was a slow cooked veal served on polenta. It was very tasty, super tender and fell apart in your mouth just like what you wanted to expect. (I missed the pic on that one sorry). Before Danny’s over zealous, but smart addition to our order we had asked the waiter for the meatballs, the lasagna and the special.

The lasagna was bolognase sauce based. Those of you that know me know I make a killer lasagna. For me to order it in a restaurant is unusual. When the above came to the table I could see the distinct layers. It was not buried in melted cheese. Two good signs. As I cut the noodles with the side of my fork I new they had used fresh pasta. That is the only way to make lasagna in my opinion. Raising the bite to my lips I could see the meat sauce trying its best to stay hidden in between the soft green blankets of pasta. The taste was simple but bold. The flavors were not overwhelming but they fired many pleasure neurons in my brain. My friends consensus was that a bechemel sauce was also used in the lasagna’s construction. Not an uncommon addition to lasagna unless you are analyzing mine. I disagreed but the majority won this one.

Next up were the meatballs. A must have if you are dining with a well know Canadian woman mentioned often on this blog. Since she was sitting to my right, the waiter quickly jotted down MB’s on his antiquated but standard waiter pad. When they arrived to the table three small cheese filled ravioli’s accompanied them (pic at top). The meatballs were filled with ricotta and fresh mozzarella. Both of these ingredients were untraceable to the eye. The chef had mixed these dairy superstars into the grind so well that you felt like you were eating a cheese infused meatball. This also made the meatballs feel light and sit well in the stomach. This unique trait left room for the overindulgent, unnecessary final entree of the evening.

When the waiter recited that the special of the night would be an off the bone, pan seared, 20 oz. sirloin we all almost fell off our chairs. You see, after sweating it out in the baths, waiting 30 minutes for a table and downing a cocktail or two, you are not really thinking strait. He had us at “off the bone”. When it arrived, pre-sliced, the aroma made you want to spear a piece with your fork before it was even placed on the table. Blood ran down the long plate and pooled at one end. Then it started begging to be sopped up by that brioche. The rosemary spring added even more aromatics cuing the salivary glands to shift into a higher gear. We each placed a piece of the rare steak on our plates and grabbed for our knives, although not needed to cut this supple and glorious piece of bovine. The outer edge of the meat was crisped to perfection and salted post pan. Not a black char to be seen on the steak it was fascinating how they created such a thin, perfectly cooked outer layer and maintained a beautiful, gradated, red tone as you worked towards the center. Picking up on a conversation started a few weeks back it became apparent that the meat had some unique quality to it. Immediately the meatball loving Canadian shouted that the cow must have been grass fed. Agreeing, I took another bite and confirmed that the softer and less dense texture could certainly have come from this more natural and human process.

This topic has been heavily debated for years. Most recently it flamed up in my personal life when I debated the taste merits of grass fed beef over corn fed beef with a top-chef winner during a game of celebrity. The conversation ended in a stale mate but did start a challenge to try both types side by side. To settle tonight’s conundrum we simple asked the waiter. Upon his return, we were informed the cow was raised on grass and finished on grain. This is a agricultural way of saying they fed her what she biologically was supposed to eat for most of her life. Then they fattened her up with corn three months before they served her. This process is a bit the rage these days because it nods to the humane and organic food peoples desires but still adds a bit of marbleization to the meat which American’s seem to love. Regardless of what it was fed, it was tasty. We knocked back every bit of this plate right down to the last drop of juice.

All that was accompanied by a great bottle of gravello wine. Dessert followed as well as a few lemon verbena teas and an espresso. Satiated, buzzed and steam cleaned the four of us managed our way back on to the street to hail cabs. If this is the kind of meal I’ll get after every visit to the baths I might just go for that $200 membership ticket after all.

Hearth Restaurant
www.restauranthearth.com
403 East 12th Street
New York, NY 10009
(646) 602-1300

After 5 months at sea and with over 12 new countries under his belt (and in his belly), Ant returned home yesterday. Home for only a short 2 months before he heads out again, we made sure to start the eating immediately. My parents picked Ant up from his inbound flight, dropped his bags in Manhattan and then made their way to my place in Brooklyn for a traditional Anello homecoming meal.

Something that has not made nearly enough press on this blog is OUR lasagna. Growing up, making lasagna was one of our favorite things to do. Maybe it was the ALL day process of making the sauce, then the noodles, then the meat. Or perhaps it was the assembly line. Carrying an increasingly heavier pan across the kitchen from noodle station to sauce station to cheese station to meat station and back again was, somehow, exhilarating.

From those memories of our childhood to our modern day preparation, not much has changed with the ritual. The recipe on the other hand has had many iterations. To some degree, every time we make it there is something new involved. A different sauce, sausage meat replacing ground veal or a drier ricotta could be the test this time. Last night we mixed it up a bunch. We were all not just guineas last night, but guinea pigs.

There is no way I can tell you the ingredients with any meaningful insight that you could deduce the taste. I could, I suppose, launch into a bunch of rhetoric and explanation about how each intricacy and experiment performed during preparation had various profound effects on the final product. Instead, just look at the glorious image below and let your brain do the rest. My guess is I’ll have you salivating in under 5 seconds. Just another reason to make sure you are on the REEL TASTY DINNER list. This season lasagna just might be on the menu.

After the binge, we all crawled home to digest. Luckily for me that was only 5 feet away. Since Ant is home look for a bunch of new posts featuring the brother’s Anello and their eating adventures. Maybe we will even bring the ‘Rents along for a few meals too. You guys seem to like their appearances in our posts.

Well that was 2009. Was it good for you? It was great for us. Ant celebrated 3 times, once in Australia, once in New Zealand and once NYC time. For me, the last night of the decade started with a meal as you would expect. The leftover lasagna we housed at Serena and Josh’s was delish. The lovely thing about lasagna is that the more days it sits in the pan the better it gets. We accompanied the day old delicious with two tasty pizzas. Spinach, mushrooms, mozzerella, pepperoni and dough from the joint down the block were the building blocks. Here are the results.

The mini Italian fest was partnered with a few bottles of vino to get us reved up for the Times Square party we were headed to. My friend Sarah has an office overlooking the biggest new years party in the world. The windows sit over the Hard Rock Cafe and look right out to where the ball drops. Moments before the end of the decade we played a little game I like to call “Give me a zero and a one” Once again, here are the results.

All in, the night was brilliant. After the ball dropped many other adventures ensued. Preethi and I wound up at a diner in Queens eating a makeshift poutine, a BLT, a grilled cheese and a vanilla milk shake around 3am. Rojeh wound up somewhere on 2nd ave in midtown and Josh and Serena back in Brooklyn Heights. So, with that, happy new year to you all. I hope 2010 is as fun, rewarding and tasty as 2009.

Ohh yeah, one more quick word form our parents. They were flying home from Florida when that ball hit the street in Times Square.