Mozzarella Madness

After a fun, quick weekend trip to Miami, Arnie, the BF and I are glad to be back at home, relaxing, watching football, enjoying some adult beverages (not Arnie, she's enjoying some Purina and water) and eating food that is less-than-healthy.  I decided to take a stab at making Giada De Laurentiis's mozzarella sticks.  I made a couple of adjustments, like deep-frying instead of pan-frying and cutting the recipe in half (because no two people, not even the BF and I, need 56 pieces of deep-fried cheese), and I think they turned out great!

First, I took a 16 oz. block of mozzarella and cut it into sticks that were approximately 1/4" square and 3-4 inches long.

Yes, I realize they look more rectangular than square.  Geometry was never my strong suit.  After slicing my cheese into pieces, I set up an assembly line with eggs in a bowl, and the bread crumb and parmesan mixture in another bowl. 

Then, I followed the recipe's directions and dipped the cheese in the egg, shook the egg off as much as possible, then rolled the sticks in the bread crumbs, patting the crumbs in so they would stick.  Once my sticks were all rolled and breaded, they looked like this, and were ready for . . .

 . . . the freezer.  Boo.  I hate waiting for food.  But, since I'd never made this recipe before I figured I had better follow the directions, so I covered my cheese sticks and stuck them in the freezer for TWO HOURS.

And I waited.

and waited.

and waited.

Rather impatiently.  But then!  It was time, time to deep-fry.  Now, Giada doesn't deep fry her mozzarella sticks, my guess is because she needs to maintain her physique to be on national television.  Which is fair (although I, myself, have been on national television twice in the last year and a half and have no qualms about deep frying anything and everything . . . I'm just sayin').  But I decided to deep-fry mine, both because deep-frying makes everything taste better, and because the BF and I have a deep fryer that doesn't get used very often (although you probably wouldn't guess that, based on these blog posts).  So, after about three minutes in the fryer (and a quick heating of some store-bought marinara) I had my final product:

And hot damn, they tasted GOOD.  In the future, I might add a few things (like garlic powder to my breadcrumb mixture) but I thought they turned out awesome.

No shoes today.  Truth be told, I got a huge blister walking around South Beach and my tootsies would be agitated if I put them back in shoes when they can be lounging in socks.