Recently we had my family over for an open house. We have been in our new place for a while now and not everyone had been here to see it. So we decided to do a luncheon. I had two ideas going into this party – I wanted to make something rustic and old-school hearkening back to the times that Italians stopped what they were doing to enjoy a nice lunch spread together out in the fields, on a big slab of wood turned into a table. Also along this theme, I really wanted to make something using ingredients that we already had at home.

Too many times when preparing for a party, I decide on a menu and then go and buy all the ingredients. This time, I wanted to challenge myself more and use what was around. We had been to the Farmer’s market the day before and had gotten our staples: potatoes, tomatoes, squashes, onions and beautiful bread. We also had a bag of frozen mussels in the freezer. So I decided to make a regional dish from Puglia, called Tiella di Cozze or Mussel Casserole – it is said to have descended from Spanish Paella. Since we were having a crowd, I also added some shrimp to the dish, which was topped off with a delicious bread crumb and parmesan topping! It was wonderful.

We served it with a nice green salad,Garlic-Rosemary Foccacia from Maria, the bread lady at the Farmer’s Market and finished with a

Yogurt Carrot Cake with Toasted Hazelnuts . Keep reading for the recipes.

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I love polenta – it is total comfort food and a great base for a variety of vegetables and great with tomato sauce and cheese. My favorite way to make polenta is with sundried tomatoes, olives, cheese and spinach – put it in the fridge until it gets hard, dust it with flour and pan fry in olive oil. Served with a hearty tomato sauce it is really one of the best things to eat. This time though, I didn’t feel like frying the polenta – I wanted something lighter but still comforting and flavorful, so I decided to use the polenta rectangles as a base for lasagna. It was really good and something I will certainly make again.

This is also my contribution to Marie of Proud Italian Cook and Maryann of Finding La Dolce Vita ’s Event: Festa Italiana. All Entries due March 22nd. Please click on either of their links for participation guidelines!

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Man, I am getting in a lot of blog posts this week! I guess there is just so much good stuff going on in the food blogoshpere that I want to support and be a part of. Sometimes, I get so backed up with other food related posts that I wait until the last minute to get my entry in for a Foodie Event. I wish I had time to do them all! I just love the creativity in this community! Food Bloggers ROCK!

Which leads me exactly to this post and this Foodie Event which is called Eat To The Beat and is the brainchild of my friend
Elly from Elly Says Opa! Elly says she was inspired to create this event because her love of music is about as big as her love for food! I completely concur. I have always believed that my life would be so much better if it had a soundtrack. So since I have started working from home, I can listen to music all day long and it just makes my life so complete. I can’t imagine cooking without music, dinner parties or meals without some kind of music playing the the background. So in a way, I have created a soundtrack for myself!

Press Play:

As you all who are regular readers of this blog know, I do bellydancing and I love it. Due to this fact, much of my music collection is what we call in this house “bellydancing music”. If the music hails from the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey or any of the places in between it is referred to as such.

And as all of you know who read this blog, I love all the foods from those regions as well…coincidence? Most likely not.

So this gets me to the meat of this post. We were having friends over for dinner last week, and I wanted to create a fun atmosphere – so we did small plates – meze, antipasti, tapas, whatever you want to call it. I was really getting into all the dolmas or stuffed grape leaves people were making in the weeks leading up to it too – So I decided to combine Peter’s from Kalofagas and Mag’s from Hommus w/ Tabbouli to make my own version. I also made the Labneh from Mag’s blog as well, which is a soft Lebanese yogurt cheese, plus I re-created the Middle Eastern Meatballs with Orzo I had made last year. However, this time I made my own meatballs with the leftover ground meat from the gyros the week before. I just added and egg and some bread crumbs and baked the meatballs in the oven at 400 F for about 25 minutes. The meal was a huge hit and we had a great evening.

I chose this song, Desert Rose, click here to see the original video, the partnership of Sting and Cheb Mami, who is one of my most favorite artists and who is a very big star in his native Algeria and much of the “bellydancing music” world. His voice is unique and beautifully haunting. I also love Sting and give him major props for introducing Cheb’s beautiful voice to the western world through this song.

For more by Cheb Mami, click here.
To hear more of his music, click below.

Now for the recipes:

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I have been getting very inspired by blogs recently. Maybe it is because I sit down to check my daily bloggings while sipping that first cup of coffee before I eat anything – so I am half starved. But in any case, bad habits aside, I have been going crazy copying recipes from blogs that I visit through my daily interactions with The Foodie Blogroll. There is just so much good food out there and being exposed to it on a daily basis is a dream for someone as food obsessed as me.

To me there is nothing better than a Gyro – spiced meat in a warm pita slathered with garlicky Tzatziki, put an order of fries on the side and I am in a state of bliss. So the other day when I came across this, on Bitsy’s blog, A Matter of Taste, I was intrigued. I mean normally I only get Gyros out – and you watch them slice the meat off a huge cylinder of meat on a spit. For me, foodie though I may be, it never really occurred to me to think how this giant cylinder of meat might come to be. I mean there are no cuts of meat this shape and size, so what’s the deal? So when I learned I could make it at home, no spit required I decided to take up the challenge.

So here we go…

Here is your music of the day:

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If you have never had fried cauliflower, you are missing out. My Nana used to make it, just dusted in flower and pan fried. I used to eat it with ketchup when I was a kid! It was delicious. Years later, as an adult, I had fried cauliflower, known as Zahra Mekleyah, again, at a Lebanese friend’s house, then again at a Lebanese restaurant. They traditionally serve it with a delicious Tahini sauce and it is out of this world. Blows ketchup right out of the water!

I have always tried to take fried things I have enjoyed in a restaurant and see if I can make them healthier at home. I still enjoy all the fried stuff when I go out sometimes, but I hate the mess of all the oil splatters in MY kitchen. Yes, I am a neat freak,that is established. My favorite way to get a similar crunchy texture in the oven to frying is either to bake it at
450F, maybe 475F or broil it. These cauliflower, I did the former.

Instead of creating a Tahini dipping sauce, I decided to toss the cauliflower in it after broiling. It was phenomenal. Roberto and I kept saying, the few words that we spoke because we were too busy gobbling this down, through the whole meal that we need to eat this eat least once per week. Oh and did I mention that the cauliflower was from the Farmer’s Market?
Oh, yes, but of course!

Along with this wonderful cauliflower we made bruschetta with delicious farm fresh tomatoes, also from the market. The Bruschetta is Roberto’s recipe and made the Roman way – with crispy bread and warm tomatoes. It was really really good. I would not recommend making this unless you have really good tomatoes, as they are the star of the show.

Here is a little music with your dinner:

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The reason we are all gathered here today – at least in my corner of the universe, is because February 5th is
World Nutella Day 2008. This is the day that my buddies, American expats in Italy, Sara, Michelle and Shelley decided we should all sit back, relax and enjoy the Nutella.
This is a day to celebrate this delicious chocolate-hazelnut spread that puts smiles on faces young and old all across the world.

My first encounter with Nutella was when I lived in Norway, in 1994. Bread is a big thing in Norwegian cuisine. You eat it for breakfast and lunch with a wide variety of meats cheeses and spreads. My favorite was always Brunost (“Brown Cheese”) – I had it for breakfast and lunch, every single day. Of course, I was a foodie back then, too, I just didn’t know it yet, so I was addicted to going to the grocery stores there and seeing what kinds of products I could find that were unique to Norway. When I came across Nutella and realized you could eat it on toast for breakfast, I thought it was pure genius. I mean who doesn’t love the combination of Chocolate and Hazelnut? But for breakfast!? I thought this was a Norwegian invention and I was forever indebted, until I found out it was an Italian creation! Gotta love Italy. Anyway, I fell in love with the stuff. I discovered how good it went with waffles, another big treat in Norway. Well by that point I was hooked. When a Dutch friend of mine told me they eat chocolate sprinkles on their toast for breakfast, I began thinking we Americans are totally depraved.

Anyway, I digress. You are wondering about these wonderful pudding cakes I made. Well there is a story behind them too – I will try to be quick about it. Remember the Dolce Italiano Event back in November, where I, along with the geniuses behind World Nutella Day made recipes from Gina DePalma’s newest cookbook: Dolce Italiano: Desserts From the Babbo Kitchen? I made this and this.Well we were only allowed to make 2 desserts for that event (as if I was in any capacity with the impending holidays to make MORE than 2), but there was a third I was really wanting to try, her Chocolate and Date Pudding Cakes. I love dates and chocolate and pudding, so for me it was another match made in heaven. When I was thinking of a recipe to make for World Nutella Day, I immediately went to Gina’s cookbook to look for inspiration. I rediscovered these pudding cakes and decided to alter them to fit the bill for this fabulous celebration that I am sure Ms. DePalma would certainly sanction.

So what I did was instead of using the bittersweet chocolate and butter mixture, I decided to use Nutella. And in place of walnuts, I went for Hazelnuts, much more my liking and a much better match for the Nutella.

The verdict? These cakes are succulent. Yes, that is the word.

As Gina puts it : “The Medjool dates…contribute a deep caramel flavor that holds hands with the chocolate like a smitten teenager”.

Oh boy, does it. That with the warm taste of the hazelnuts underneath they are just pure heaven. I baked mine for 20 minutes and not minute longer. This made the centers perfectly moist and delicious. Bet you can’t have just one!
Happy World Nutella Day to everyone – get out there and get your Nutella on!

World Nutella Day: How you can participate.

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Here is a Leftover Queen classic! Remember all those greens from the Farmer’s Market several week ago?

Well even with all my recipes that week, I still couldn’t use all the greens, so I washed some and stored them away in the freezer. I also had leftover tomatoes in juice from the Imam Bayildi and then there was the issue of random pieces of veggies in my vegetable bin. I also had purchased a small piece of lamb shoulder at the store, perfect for soup. I went into the pantry and found a can of cannellini beans and a package of rice pilaf. Put this all together and what do you have – an AWESOME stew. I am telling you guys, the flavors in here really really rock. It’s got a bit of the Middle East happening in here since I spiced it up with Sumac and Za’atar, a dash of coriander and a bay leaf and the world is a warm bowl of stew. We ate some for dinner, had it for lunch the next day and put the rest in the freezer for next week, so we can have leftovers of leftovers!

Here’s what I did.

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On our last trip to the Farmer’s Market we also procured some little eggplants. Not the Japanese kind, just small eggplants. I love getting these because they taste so amazing – like eggplant is supposed to taste. Many times when I get the big ones they are full of seeds and the flesh is bitter, even when you salt them and let them drain. But these small ones are delicious and need no salting. One of my favorite things to make with eggplant is Imam Bayildi or The Imam Fainted. Apparently it is the copious amounts of olive oil in the dish that made him faint, but it is not clear whether he fainted from meanness or delight, so the legend says.

I have loved cooking since I was a young girl. I spent many many hours in the kitchen with my grandmother and my mother watching. That is what they say about writers – we are observers first and foremost, as being involved would make us lose our perspective. But I also helped these ladies of the kitchens. I was cooking full meals by the time I was 12 years old. My first love affair with food was with Greek cooking. The first time I had Dolmas, Tzatziki, Melitzanosalata and Feta Cheese I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I understood the magic of food – how it could transport you somewhere else. So began my love affair with food and traveling the world through my palette.

My love of food was noticed early. My grandfather used to love to watch me eat because he could tell how much I enjoyed it. When my friends came over to play, we would experiment in the kitchen, trying to bake cakes- that was before I understood about baking powder and soda, though – so you can imagine the many flops! I am not sure when I received this cookbook:

but I remember always having it – it was one of the first of many and probably still my all time favorite Greek cookbook. The recipes are easy to follow, it is unpretentious , the pictures of the food are drawn and it is where I learned that an eggplant is called aubergine and zucchini, courgette, which made me feel very smart and wordly.

I suggest when making Imam Bayildi, make extra. It is delicious and it goes down very easy!
I welcome comments from all my experts in Greek Cookery out there. I have never seen this dish on any menu at any Greek restaurant I have ever been to…do you have any stories about this dish?

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