So I think it should be pretty obvious by now that Andrew kicks my butt at food blogging. Do you know what else Andrew kicks butt at? Making eggplant lombardi. Don't listen to him go all "oh i don't know if it was right or not," because he made the most freaking delicious eggplant dish I have ever had. Word up.
Also, in case you thought "Maroonara" was a dreadful misspelling instead of a fabulous pun, let me elaborate. We made a marinara sauce -- garlic, crushed tomatoes, red wine, spices -- and then added a boiled, chopped beet. Isn't that brilliant? I can say that because it was Andrew's idea. Less brilliant, however, was that Andrew cooked the beet half-covered in water instead of grabbing a bigger pot. So, a word of advice, this will be easier for you if you cover the beet in such a way that you don't have to manually flip it over all the time.
Anyway, we cooked and peeled the beet, chopped it up, and threw it in the red sauce to simmer for a while, turning the whole thing the most beautiful, red-purple color. I think it kind of freaked people out when we served it, because they weren't expecting that color on top of their pasta. It tasted pretty darn good, too. It seemed like it might be a good way to sneak beets to somebody who didn't like them very much -- although it was still beety enough that fervent beet-haters might be opposed. Oh, another word of advice, you might want to save the beet water to thin out the pasta sauce if it gets too thick. We used ours to dye my father's hat, so our sauce turned out more chunky than pourable, but that's another story.
I will finish this (wholly inadequate considering how little I've been blogging) post with an order: make these cookies! They are seriously amazing. Like the love child of brownies and chocolate chip cookies. Like a cookie made entirely out of chocolate chips. Like a kick in the mouth from a very large person who is composed entirely of three different kinds of chocolate.
Moral of the story: make those cookies. You will not regret it, unless you do not like chocolate, in which case I am sorry. I will try to remain your friend anyway. Seriously, though. Make these cookies, pour yourself a glass of milk, lock your door and turn off the phone. They're that good. They might not be world-famous yet, but if there's any justice in the world, they will be.
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