Bottega Louie
700 Grand Ave., Downtown

We visited Bottega Louie on Friday night @ 7:30pm
Dish we will try to cook – Arancini $8

Restaurant Visit
We were both pretty excited to visit Bottega Louie. Even from the street, the place looked really nice and new, having opened 10 months ago. There are essentially four parts to the restaurant- the restaurant itself, a patisserie, a market and the bar. All are housed in one large area with about 20 ft high ceilings. To the eye, it’s very beautiful, but to the ear, the whole place was really loud. Definitely fun for large groups, but maybe not the right setting for a romantic dinner for two.

When we got there, the place was hopping. We stood in line a few minutes to put our name on the list for a table, but we only waited about 15 minutes to be seated. We entertained ourselves by watching the chefs prepare food in the open kitchen and of course, by hitting up the bar. The apple martini was delicious. It was made with apple cider, which lends it a surprising cinnamon flavor. Eric, a general manager, met us at the bar and carried our drinks to our table for us (its worth noting to the ladies, that Eric was extremely attractive!).

Most everything in the restaurant is white: white walls, ceiling, table cloths, plates and even the waiters’ uniforms. The place was very grandiose and impressive. In the back of the restaurant there is an industrial sized wood fire oven where they cook their napoleon-style pizzas. The wine list covers about a page, but isn’t as extensive as a wine bar. There is even a market area that caries many gourmet items as well as a nice variety of Bottega Louie’s own sauces and foods.

As with Animal, Bottega Louie’s menu is set up where you order many small plates along with an entrée. We choose the pork chops as our main dish and selected three small plates: asparagus with fried egg, arancini, and prosciutto, mozzarella & sage crostini. Honestly, we weren’t extremely impressed with the food, as most of the dishes we tasted seemed under seasoned. For the pork chops, we were expecting a thick cut piece of meat with lots of juice and flavor. They were actually very thinly sliced and grilled, which were fine but didn’t seem to have any seasoning. The asparagus was our favorite dish. The aioli underneath, combined with the yolk from the egg, gave the dish a lot of flavor and the asparagus were cooked perfectly. We liked the aioli so much that we dipped our pork chops in it to liven them up! The arancini was very unusual, which is why we chose to try to recreate the dish. We believe they used gruyere, which lent a deep, smoky flavor to the arancini and the spicy sauce was nice. Finally, the crostini was also a so-so dish. We’d recommend it more for an appetizer than a side dish to a meal.

Overall, we thought the restaurant was average. Since we’ve heard such great things about the place we will definitely give it another try. While everything on their menu should be fabulous, maybe we just didn’t choose the right dishes. We saw several tables ordering the pizzas and we think that may be the best way to go.

Shopping
(prices reflect the cost of the package, not the portion we used.) The rest of the ingredients we already had in the kitchen.

Bay Cities Italian Deli-
1/2 lb Pancetta $5.24
.47lb Provolone/Domestic Sharp $3.75
.725lb Parmesan $5.79
.475lb Gruyere $6.64
Chicken Stock $4.29
Bay Leaves $.98

Vons Grocery Store-
5 lb. Roma Tomatoes $4.72
Organic Celery $1.59
Organic Carrots $1.49
Yellow Onion $1.45

Whole Foods-
Arborio Rice $5.16

Recipe
Below is our take on an arancini recipe. We found some recipes that used wine and some did not, we also found a variety of cheeses used. Have fun and play around with some flavors of your own.

Makes about 18 risotto balls.

Pancetta Arancini with Spicy Marinara Sauce-

Arancini-

5 cups of chicken stock
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 tsp paprika
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1/4 cup provolone cheese, shredded
1/4 cup parmesan cheese, shredded
1 beaten egg
1/2 TBSP olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
2 (or 1/2lb) ounces pancetta, finely chopped
1 1/2 ounces gruyere, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
3 large eggs, beaten
1 cup dry Italian breadcrumbs
Salt and freshly ground black peeper to taste
Vegetable oil, for frying
Parsley for garnish

Begin by making the risotto. In a medium saucepan, bring chicken stock to a simmer. Keep warm. Melt butter in a separate, medium saucepan. Pour in rice and cook, stirring for 3 minutes. Add 1/2 cup of warm stock to rice and stir gently until all stock is absorbed. Add remaining stock to rice 1/2 cup at a time, stirring gently and cooking until the liquid has evaporated and the rice is al dente, about 25 minutes. Transfer rice to a bowl. Stir in provolone, parmesan, and paprika. Add a little salt and pepper, or to taste. Let the mixture cool slightly then mix 1 beaten egg to the rice. Cover the bowl of the mixed rice and refrigerate until cold (at least 2 hours, or preferably, overnight.)

Once the risotto has been chilled, heat a skillet on medium. Add olive oil and coat. Add garlic and cook gently for about 1 minute. Add pancetta and fry until browned. Slightly cool the pancetta on a paper towel to crisp them. Mix the pancetta and about a teaspoon of the reserved fat from the skillet into the risotto.

Line a baking sheet with wax paper. Next, beat the remaining 3 eggs in a bowl. Season breadcrumbs with a little salt and pepper on a plate, have the flour ready on a separate plate. Wet your hands with cold water and pick up 1/4-cup handfuls of the rice mixture. Form the portions of rice into 2-inch balls. Using your fingers, make an indentation in each ball. Fill the center of each ball with a cube of the gruyere cheese and pinch the rice back together and roll to close.

Coat the rice balls lightly in flour, tapping off any excess. Dip each ball in the egg 1 at a time, then coat with breadcrumbs, rolling and pressing until the ball is compact.

Heat 1/2 inch of vegetable oil in a skillet or Dutch-oven to 350 degrees. When the oil is very hot, add the rice balls and cook, turning until golden and crisp on all sides, about 8 minutes. Drain the balls on paper towels. Sprinkle the arancini lightly with salt.

Spicy Marinara Sauce-

10 cups (80 oz or 5 lbs) fresh ripe Italian-style tomatoes
2 large onions, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
2 carrots, finely chopped
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup red wine
2 TBSP each – dried oregano, rosemary, thyme,
Fresh parley, roughly chopped
2 bay leaves
1 tsp sugar
Salt and black pepper to taste

First, bring a large pot of water to a boil. On the side, have a large bowl of ice water waiting. Rinse your tomatoes. Using a knife, core out the stem of the tomatoes. Next, cut an “X” on the bottom of the tomatoes. When the water is boiling, lower the tomatoes in to the boiling water with tongs or a slotted spoon (only do about 10 or less at a time as to not overfill or slow the water temperature too much). Allow the tomatoes to cook for 15-30 seconds, or until the skin starts to wrinkle, then remove.

Immediately transfer the tomatoes into the ice water to shock them (stop them from cooking). Leave the tomatoes in for around 15-30 seconds. Remove from ice water and the skins of the tomatoes should slip off easily. Discard the skins. Next, seed the tomatoes by cutting them apart and pushing out the seeds. Strain the juice from the seeds and reserve the juice. Discard the seeds.

Heat a wide rimmed pot on medium. Add olive oil and coat the bottom of the pot. Add the onions and cook slowly until sweated out. Add the garlic, celery, carrots and herbs and add some salt a pepper. Mix and cook together for 5 minutes. Add the red wine and cook for a few more minutes.

Next, add the tomatoes with their juices, bay leaves and sugar and stir to mix together. Simmer together on low heat for about 2 hours. When finished, remove bay leaves and blend sauce in a blender. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Plating-
In a shallow dish, cover bottom with a good amount of sauce. Place 4 arancini balls on top of sauce. Sprinkle dish with parmesan and parsley leaves.

Rating – We give our dish 2.5 out of 5 stars.
We think our dish is very tasty and we’re happy with how it turned out. Yet, we rate our dish low due to it not being a very close replica to Bottega Louie’s arancini. Our balls had a thicker breading to them which we feel gives them more crunch and texture. However, theirs did have a smokier flavor, which ours lacked. Ours is a decent sauce, yet nowhere near what they had. Even just looking at the sauce, theirs is much more red and ours is more of a pink/orange looking sauce. It is also not spicy at all. We looked at several recipes for “spicy” marinara sauce, but none seemed to have any ingredients in them to make it spicy. We feel adding in some red pepper flakes would help spice it up a big.

Overall, we liked the dish but want to stress that it was very time consuming to make and the risotto can be difficult. If not cooked with a gentle, patient touch the rice will remain crunchy and become gooey. We also want to point out that this dish would make an excellent vegetarian option to meatballs. You could leave out the pancetta and replace chicken stock with vegetable stock and have a very appetizing dish.

How would you rate our recipe? We look forward to hearing feedback from you guys on whether you think we got close or if we missed the mark, what would you add to make the dish better. Anyone have a great recipe for a spicy marinara sauce? Feel free to email us if you have any questions on the cooking instructions and don’t forget to vote for next week’s restaurant!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Side Dishes. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.