Happy Valentine’s Day! Today is the day to celebrate the strongest power in the universe. Love. So since we are all slaves to it, in one fashion or another, here the music of the day:

Have you seen the movie, Chocolat? You know the one where Juliette Binoche plays Vianne, a woman who through her chocolate confections, changes peoples lives by unleashing their hidden desires? Who has a knack for guessing the favorite confections of the people in the village based on a basic understanding of the human desire? Where until she lets her own desires take over, she cannot guess the favorite chocolate of the one she secretly desires – aka Johnny Depp? Well I guess I have always fancied myself a cook’s version of this archetype. The Kitchen Witch. Who through blending the perfect balance of tastes and textures can win the heart of any person. I truly believe that the way to anyone’s heart is through food, not the physical food itself, but the energy that goes into it as you prepare it. This is not just a means to a romantic end either, this is love in all its incarnations.

Cooking is very ritualistic – you have the sacred space dedicated to it – the kitchen, you have your implements – whisks, knives, spoons, spatulas and then there are your magical potions and properties – herb, spices and ingredients. When it comes down to it, it is all very mysterious what happens in a kitchen – that which turns common ingredients into mouth watering delicacies.

So inspired by the movie Chocolat, I decided to replicate Vianne’s Mayan Hot Chocolate – spicy chili peppers paired with rich dark chocolate. It is MY favorite. What could be more soothing than a nice hot cup of liquid chocolate? What brings back memories of childhood better than hot chocolate? Well, this is not your mom’s hot chocolate! If anyone needs to spice up their love life or wishes to give a truly decadent treat to their lover, this is the perfect recipe.

The dark chocolate taste is smooth and thick as you first sip it, but then there is a surprise ending, the kick of chili in the back that just warms up your whole body and could certainly melt the coldest of hearts! Not to mention what it can heat up…
The real beauty is that you can whip this up really quick, because you most likely have all the ingredients already - that way you can get back to spending time with the one you love a lot quicker.

If you liked this post and are interested in learning more about the esoterics of food, stay tuned. I will have much more for you to read in this area in the near future. I was hoping to have it ready for Valentine’s Day, but you know what they say about the best laid plans! There is even a discussion on the forum about how you can be a part of it!

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Every year, right around the holidays, I turn a year older (don’t I look so much older and wiser here snapping this poor green bean?!). Since most of my family has migrated to Florida over the past 10 years, we now make a point to celebrate birthdays together. Since my birthday is in December, right around the holidays, I usually save my family party for a time when most of my relatives are here – from Florida and from out of state. So in between Christmas and New Years and MOVING, we put this shindig on - nothing is getting in the way of a party with good food. So this year we celebrated my birthday on January 1st – New Year’s Day. Per tradition, the birthday person, (in this case, me) gets to choose the menu. The weather has turned a bit cold here in The Sunshine State and so I was after more hearty fare.

I chose an Armenian Vegetable Stew, called Kharn Panchareghen, out of one of my favorite cookbooks called Secrets of Cooking: Armenian/Lebanese/Persian which is an Armenian, Lebanese and Persian cookbook, written by the sister of one of my mom’s friends. The stew was delicious. I added some Kalamata olives, dried prunes and about a ¼ TBS of ground cinnamon to the original recipe. I also opted for canned plum tomatoes as opposed to fresh, as tomatoes are out of season right now and not very flavorful. It was rich in flavor and the secret touches of sweetness really intrigued the palate. We served the stew with Rice Pilaf, Naan bread and Greek Salad.

Then there was the question of the cake. Now this next picture looks kinda weird, but don’t be scared…there is a story, rest assured.

I am not normally a chocolate person, usually opting for spice cake or carrot cake on my birthday, but I saw Giada make chocolate espresso brownies recently. I LOVE espresso. My mom had given me a bundt cake pan shaped like a giant octopus (I know I am weird, I love octopi) and so a plan for chocolate chip espresso bundt cake with an espresso glaze came to life. My mom wanted to decorate the cake all in waves and pretty icing, but since I am not partial to icing, I requested just a glaze. Hence a pretty much unadorned Octopus cake. But it was good.

Now for the recipe:

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Happy Yule Everyone!

Yule is a celebration of the Winter Solstice. It marks the longest night of the year and celebrates the re-birth of the sun and longer days to come after the darkness of winter. Christmas was transplanted onto winter solstice some 1,600 years ago, centuries before the English language emerged from its Germanic roots. The tradition of burning a Yule log is to celebrate light itself and the lightening of the days thereafter. Personal faults, mistakes and bad choices are burned in the flame so everyone’s New Year can start with a clean slate. You never burn the entire log, you save a piece for next year to start the next Yule Log. Traditionally on the eve of the Winter Solstice, at midnight, you turn off all your lights or candle lights and everyone takes a moment to sit in the dark and reflect on the darkness, then at 12:01 everyone lights their own candles, turns on all the lights and gives thanks to the sun and its life sustaining power.

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This has been a lucky year full of wonderful surprises and accomplishments. I stepped out of my comfort zone to pursue my dream of working in food, turning my passion for Mediterranean cooking and leftovers into a job description I made up for myself:
Professional Foodie. I am still not exactly sure what path lies ahead of me, but I am sure I am at least going the right way as it seems I have been rewarded each step of the way. I have met so many lovely foodies online from all over the world and have gotten little signs everywhere confirming that I am on the right path. One of these signs is a great honor I have been given. I am so excited about it that I can hardly contain my enthusiasm. I have been asked to participate in a very special food blogging event.

Shelley from At Home in Rome lives in Rome (Obviously), which just so happens to be Roberto’s hometown. She also just so happens to know Gina DePalma, the pastry chef for
Mario Batali’s Babbo Restaurant in New York City.
Gina’s newest cookbook: Dolce Italiano: Desserts from the Babbo Kitchen has just come out and in order to commemorate this event, Shelley, along with a few of us fortunate food bloggers have had the honor to try two recipes from Gina’s new cookbook and blog about it. How fun is that?!

But that is not where the fun ends – oh no siree – you too can join in too. Go blog hopping with us and comment on each Dolce Italiano post on each of our blogs and you will be entered in a contest to win a Dolce Italiano cookbook signed by Gina herself (who is such a nice person to boot!).
Here is how you enter: Check out each of these blogs on the days mentioned (if you are just hearing about this contest for the first time, be sure that you go to visit all these blogs for their posts THIS week) and then comment on the post about Dolce Italiano. Do the same next week and you will have 10 chances to win that book! Here are the other great blogs and the days you need to visit them:

MONDAY: Sara – Ms. Adventures in Italy
TUESDAY: Ilva – Lucullian Delights
WEDNESDAY: Sognatrice – Bleeding Espresso
THURSDAY: Shelley – At Home in Rome
FRIDAY: Jenn – The Leftover Queen - RIGHT HERE!

Gina DePalma’s Dolce Italiano is a must have for foodies that love Italian food. Even for someone like me, who does not fancy herself a baker or pastry person, despite all the baking I have been doing through the Daring Bakers, I found the recipes to be well-explained, unique and wonderful – just full of the flavors of Italy. It is also a fun book to read! I can really relate to Gina’s intense passion for the food she makes and also her story as an Italian American deeply in touch with the foods of her roots. I am so excited to have this wonderful cookbook in my collection as I know I will be using it often!

So on to the great recipe!

One of my choices of recipe just had to be Salame di Cioccolato. This is a dessert that every child in Italy has had. It is like Nutella, ubiquitous when talking about the foods of Italy for kids. I first heard about Chocolate Salami from Roberto when I asked him what the first thing he remembers cooking was. This was it. Apparently there is (at least when he was a bambino) what he describes as a Disney/ Boy Scout guidebook for kids in Italy known as Manuale delle Giovani Marmotte (Jr. Woodchucks Guidebook) and a recipe for Chocolate Salami was in his version of the book. In his memory it was crushed up cookies and cocoa powder rolled up, chilled and then sliced. Well, as soon as I saw the upgraded, new and improved version in Gina’s new cookbook, I knew I had to make it for Roberto and bring him back to his childhood. So we spent the afternoon in the kitchen making this delicious concoction and having a wonderful time. In his opinion it is WAAAAY better than the one from Manuale delle Giovani Marmotte, shocking, isn’t it?

Try a chocolate salami today!

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This past weekend we celebrated my mom’s birthday and I wanted to share with everyone the cake I baked to commemorate this special day and tell the story of my mom and I and our love of food. I have been thinking for a while how best to participate in Jeni and Inge’s blogging event Apples & Thyme which is dedicated to all the women relatives in our lives that helped influence the way we cook and eat. I have discussed often the influence my family has had on my cooking here, I have shared some of my Nana’s signature recipes here and here. I have also posted other family recipes like my Aunt Theresa’s Zucchini Cake and my Aunt Sylvia’s Easter Bunny Breads. But this time I wanted to talk about my mom, the person who taught me how to really experience and LOVE food and who I have shared a great passion for food with all my life.

I grew up near Washington DC and that in itself greatly influenced my food philosophy. My mom and I always tried different restaurants of various cuisines and really relished in all the variety that surrounded us. It was our way of experiencing the world and other cultures through our palates instead of a plane. We then always took those flavors and creations home with us in our memories and re-created it at home to suit our needs. Therefore my food philosophy and relationship with my mom has always been about trying new things and re-inventing old favorites with a twist. I have learned a lot when it comes to cooking from my mom. She is very exacting with the way she cooks which makes her a great baker and decorator. I am more of a cooking with a whim kind of a person. Through watching her I have learned that some dishes take patience and practice and in the end you appreciate it all the more.
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Apparently I am not the only Leftover Queen in my family. This much has been clear from the day I sat down and thought about where my food inspiration comes from. I was taught by a whole generation of Leftover Queens. In reality my love of leftovers comes from the resourcefulness of the older generation of my family – people who lived during The Great Depression and know what it is to get creative with what you have. These people were also Italian immigrants or children of Italian immigrants and therefore had the tenacity to make delicious creations from the bare bones. Everyone in my family of my grandparent’s generation had a garden. The garden was a place of great pride, a place where one could go and see the fruits of their labor, quite literally. It was the place where provided for and fed your family. It was a way of bringing a part of the Old Country to America with them, a little bit of security. One of the pictures that held a special place at the forefront of my grandmother’s dining room was of my Pap and his brother, my great uncle Sammy holding vegetables out in the garden. It was an old black and white picture and they were probably in their 40’s, two brothers proudly sharing their bounty.

This recipe comes from my Aunt Theresa – one of the many proud bakers in my family. Here is to keeping those proud traditions alive.

This cake was made from the leftovers of Zucchini Fritters with Chipotle Harissa Yogurt.

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I think I am now officially a Daring Baker. I have to admit I was rather smug during my first two challenges – Bagels and Strawberry Mirror Cake, completing them with no real difficulty and having a great time while doing so…a kind of baking bliss. Before becoming a Daring Baker, as many of you know, I did not bake at all and was very intimidated to bake. So with two challenges under my belt, I was feeling pretty good about this whole baking thing – it wasn’t such a big deal. I was actually amused by the stories other Daring Bakers shared about their experiences, people who actually BAKE, about frustrating moments and culinary crisis, imagining that if it were I who were in those situations I would have kept my calm and remained cool. This baking thing wasn’t gonna get me, it was fun, and dare I say EASY. Well I was about to experience the mother load of baking karma!

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This is my first time entering the BrownieBabe event. So I knew I had to come up with something good for Myriam over at Once Upon a Tart, and the rest of the fab bakers out there!
So without further ado!

This is not your ordinary brownie. This is something much more; it is decadence at its best. This is a family recipe, just not my family’s. It was given to my mom many years ago and had a rather non-descript name. So it is that same recipe, but it got a name makeover. Brownies are chocolate, so we didn’t need to stick that word in their title, but what makes these brownies so special are the little inlets of molten caramel that oozes through these brownies.

So after much deliberation, I decided to rename them
Caramel Fjord Brownies! I hope you enjoy these little pieces of heaven and that I am worthy enough to become a BrownieBabe!

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