I had originally posted this entry on another blog I was writing a couple years back. I think the time is right to pull it out again so people can look for this particular “comfort food” during these cold Michigan winter days.
A plating of a mix of Pierino cheese and meat tortellini, with a burgundy marinara and some garlic toast.
Lately I’ve been craving pasta. I don’t know if my body’s on some kind of carb kick right now, or if maybe it’s the whole thing about comfort food in Michigan’s cold weather, or if I’m part “old-world mother”. There’s a local TV news reporter who shares his Jewish culture with us on a regular basis. He’d say I’m definitely the latter …
I’ve been making some pasta dishes lately that people seem to seriously enjoy. In a little less than two weeks, we went through 4.5 gallons of a very traditional, very simple chicken noodle soup. While not a true “pasta dish”, we’re talking three whole chickens, three heads of celery, three pounds of carrots, lots of onion … and some of the best handmade noodles I could find.
For other pasta dishes I’ve always used the staples, the boxed “standbys” anyone and everyone buys. The kind where you rarely pay attention to the brand, you just buy what’s on sale. Even with stuffed pasta. It would be either the canned stuff with the sauce that’s soaked through over the past six months, or the frozen stuff that’s occasionally pre-cooked.
That is, up until a couple weeks ago.
Being married to someone with a proud Polish heritage I’ve gotten to the point where sauteed pierogy and onions seem to be something I’ve cooked and eaten my whole life. We don’t make them ourselves … we get them pre-stuffed and frozen in an un-cooked state. We can then choose the right onion for perfect flavor and add anything else we’d like as well. I’d been thinking about grabbing some for another meal when something caught my eye.
At the Kroger I shop at there’s slightly more than an entire case of these red-and-green packages from Pierino Frozen Foods. It seemed odd for there to be so many of what appeared to be the same one-pound package of pasta. Really, it looked as though the store had received, maybe, twenty cases of this one package when they’d only ordered two cases, and for some reason couldn’t send the other eighteen cases back. But when I took a closer look I realized there were quite a few variety of pasta in that case. I took one of the packages out, looked at it, flipped it over …
Well, I’ll be. Lincoln Park, Michigan. That only means one thing.
We have to try them.
The first thing I did was to buy four one-pound packages of the meat ravioli. Pierino Frozen Foods makes a cheese ravioli as well but as my four athletic kids would also be here I felt the meat ravioli would be more appropriate as a single-dish dinner for everyone. That the six of us finished off all four pounds of ravioli at one sitting says a lot about the quality of what’s in those red-and-green packages.
For yesterday’s dinner I decided the Mayor and I should try Peirino’s tortellini. Now tortellini is one of those stuffed pasta dishes where mixing varieties of stuffing in a single dish appears to enhance flavors rather than detracting from individual flavors. I’ve attempted to mix varieties of peirogy without success, and because of this, I probably wouldn’t dare to mix varieties of ravioli either. However, it seemed natural to want to mix Pierino’s meat tortellini with their cheese tortellini for the dinner we ate yesterday evening. With the one-pound retail packages this is more than straightforward.
Mixing the two varieties of tortellini turned out to be a great idea. At one moment you might have to bite down a tad harder on some of the meat … but at the same time, the cheese would ooze from another tortellini, making for a wonderful combination. Pierino products have paired beautifully with the Bertolli Marinara with Burgundy Wine I’ve been topping their pasta with. I’m currently on the lookout for an appropriate recipe for a handmade sauce to go with these products. A Michigan-made sauce would be worth a look as well. And really, grated cheese on something like this should be at least a misdemeanor.
Two good servings each and we were each as stuffed as the tortellini itself. It was so satisfying, so brilliant in its handmade construction, that I almost regretted having to put the rest away. But we were too full, too satisfied, to eat any more.
Pierino Frozen Foods of Lincoln Park currently makes 16 varieties of pasta for retail distribution, available at stores such as the Kroger I shop at. They also make an even larger variety of products for food service and restaurants as well.
If you like pasta as I do, check out Pierino Frozen Foods. They’re good.
And they’re in Michigan.
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