Friday Night Torts

Ideally, the weekends should be all about cooking, cruising around on the motorcycle, and a generous smattering of fun. Sometimes, though, Friday night finally comes, and you’re facing the weekend wilted and a bit depleted. And not feeling so much like busting out a big meal.

Last Friday was just so, but luckily DucCat had the foresight to cruise by Florimonte's Fine Foods Deli up in Williamsburg (25 minutes away on a good day, but most days here in the parking lot of Hampton Roads- closer to 45). We've no neighborhood Italian-American deli, and as Florimonte's is peerless, we’ll take it in whatever portions we can get.

We're normally unrepentant Florimonte's pizza dough fiends, but have been making a conscious effort to branch into something new. This week, DucCat picked up some tortellinis- meat, and portabella.

While the pastas boiled away, he made a quick and very rustic tomato sauce to laden across them. His bowl, inevitably, went heavy on the meat, and was a beautiful sight to behold.







I laid down a little bed of wilted spinach, and piled it up with the portabellas. A couple of meats snuck in, in the interest of comparison.


I'd been expecting the portabellas to contain chunks of mushroom, but found that these were comprised of something more closely resembling a paste. While good, they didn't have a pronounced mushroom flavour, and unfortunately, ended up being hammered down by the spicy tomato sauce.

The meat tortellinis fared much better, very beefy, garlicky and flavourful. Surrounded by pasta, and floating in a sea of red, they were just about perfect for a chilly, early winter's eve.

Of course, we had wine with this, but the bottle was selected in a special manner. The following post will contain further details.


As we were opening the wine, somebody tried to run a little interference. Oh, the power of meat and mushroom tortellinis...