Recreating An Olive Garden Dinner

As a fun break from our standard weekly meals, we recently decided to have some friends over for a themed dinner night in which we would recreate Olive Garden recipes including a sausage soup, breadsticks, fettuccine alfredo, and a colorful house salad. Several of the recipes came from (or were inspired by)"Top Secret Restaurant Recipes" by Todd Wilbur, a restaurant clone recipe we got as a gift a few years back (thanks Matt!)

Our meal started off with a fabulous Toscana soup, which gave us an opportunity to use the chicken stock we made previously from our Easter dinner roasted chicken. Several cups of the stock were first mixed with heavy cream and heated up.

While the stock and cream were being mixed, spicy Italian sausages are cooked up on the stovetop. Any type of sausage will do, but adding a bit of spice really makes the soup's flavor stand out more.

After heating through, each sausage is sliced into small pieces at an angle. Add more or less sausage depending on how thick and hearty you want your soup to be.

Several russet potatoes are peeled and boiled as though you would be making mashed potatoes. After softening up, each potato is cut into small cubes and dropped into the stock/cream base.

Here we're adding in one whole bunch of chopped kale - a vegetable we'd regrettably never had cause to use before. Unlike lettuce, the kale actually retains a bit of its shape when heated or soaked and adds a slightly bitter flavor that is surprisingly pleasant and works very well with the sausage and cream. Without question we will be finding new recipes using kale in the near future.

Now that everything is cooked and chopped, the slices of sausage are splashed into the pot. For seasoning, throw in some salt and crushed red pepper flakes to finish off this deceptively simple soup that actually has a complex flavor.

The completed soup is both visually stunning and amazingly appealing to the palette, and easily as good or better than what you'd get while dining out.

The soup is just one stage of our Olive Garden meal, though, and what Italian restaurant dinner doesn't come with a few breadsticks? For our base, we actually used a pizza crust recipe that makes a soft dough perfect for pizza, cheesesticks, or just plain old breadsticks.  Here the yeast, water, oil, and other ingredients are mixed together and rising. It doesn't look like much now, but in a few minutes...

...you get a plump and perfect dough ready to be rolled out and topped with melter butter and garlic.

The dough is sliced up into portions and ready to go into the oven at 450 for about 15 minutes. This recipe is easily doubled or halved as well, if you need more or less for a group of people or just a pizza dinner for two.

After coming out of the oven, each breadstick is powdered with garlic salt for a little extra salty flavor, making them perfect to dip either into the soup or even the pasta sauce.

A dinner like this deserves a high quality salad to match the great soup and bread! Normally when making an alfredo sauce I like to put together our own caesar dressing, but this time we went with a restaurant style house salad with Italian dressing. Here's one of our salads, complete with tomato wedges, olives, slices of red onion, croutons, and a peperoncini hiding out in the back.

Not everyone liked the same ingredients (apparently we know some weirdos who aren't into tomato somehow), so everyone got a customized salad before dinner started.

For the main course we had a classic: fettuccine alfredo! This versatile sauce is best when you only use fresh ingredients and keep it very simple - try to max out at about 5 ingredients total or less.

A stick of butter, some heavy cream, pepper, and shredded or shaved Parmesan cheese is all you need to make a fantastic alfredo sauce. There are plenty of other ways to make alfredo though, so if you feel like perusing your options, check out this listing of potential recipes. For a spicy version, chop up some habenero and throw it in, or if you have some lemon-pepper pasta in the cupboards, add some lemon juice and grated lemon zest for a tart twist.

Unlike alfredo from a jar, your homemade sauce will thicken up to the point of becoming solid when the leftovers are refrigerated. Instead of microwaving your leftovers, plop the alfredo into a sauce pan and cook on a low heat, adding in a few tablespoons of milk or cream until it returns to its original consistency.

Creamy pasta to die for, salty breadsticks, five star soup, and a restaurant quality house salad - what more could you ask for?

How about a table full of friends and family to share it with?  Here's Cristal, Molly, Jacob, and me digging in, with Megan behind the camera.

We may not live anywhere close to an Olive Garden, but we sure weren't going to let that stop us from having the Italian dinner we wanted. Stay tuned for more cooking adventures coming soon as we explore how to use different types of peppers and making a cheesecake that's better than anything you'll find at the store.