Last week, my good buddy Dharm hosted the April edition of The Royal Foodie Joust. His post about itwas the funniest thing I have read in a long time, and I thought it would be fun to emulate his style of writing, but a little different genre. But after re-reading this post I just wrote, I should have just asked Dharm to write it for me! Anyway…

Can you see me waving the Queen’s wave to all of you?

“Hear Ye, Hear Ye! It is decreed that the The Queen of Leftovers is officially beginning her Royal Tour of the provinces. She will be stopping first in the Southern Coast provinces of San Augustino, where she will marry the beloved Lord Roberto, Duke of Technical Support. They will be attended by her retinue of their family and friends on the white sandy beaches where their joining will bring much food, libation, merriment and technical where withal to the land. After a few days of rest and enjoying the salty ocean breezes they will leave and head on to the Land of the Turquoise Waters, The Caribbean Island of Jamaica, for their Moon of Honey (or should we say, their Moon of Pina Colada)”.

Sadly it will not last a moon, just a quarter moon, but any moon is a good moon in my book!

I promise to bring back delicious tales of food and adventure!

As an appropriate farewell for now, I will share something with you that we do every Spring Solstice (which was a few weeks ago). We plant a little garden. This time due to the fact that we have very little outdoor space we planted a little herb garden. Spring is a time of renewal and birth. It is when the earth wakes up and life starts to rise up all around us. It is the perfect time to reflect on the things you want to be born out of your own life during the next year. So with a wedding coming up, it was especially focused this year. So with every seed we plant, we make a wish on it - like:
“this seed is for a beautiful wedding day”, “this seed is for a happy marriage”, “this seed is for many more wonderful meals”, “this seed is for lots of love and kisses”, “this seed is for continuing down the right path”, “this seed is for the health and happiness of our loved ones”, you get the picture. It is a great way to plant your seeds for the future both figuratively and in reality! If you wish it, is will be so.

Another declaration is that this month’s Royal Foodie Joust has begun. Michelle from Thursday Night Smackdown won this past challenge with her Coconut-Yellowtail Lollipops with a Trio of Spicy Lime Dipping Sauces. Her choice of ingredients for this month’s Joust are Mango, Brown Sugar and Cardamom. You can join in on the fun here! This month’s Joust, in the Queen’s absence, will be overseen by Ben the Brave from What’s Cooking? Ben will also be sponsoring the Joust this month by giving away prizes to the first, second and third place winners this month from his Tupperware business, in addition to the personalized apron for the first place winner! So go check out the forum to get more details!

Thank you Ben!

See you soon!

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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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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December is drawing to a close, which means we are almost at Royal Foodie Joust time! Be sure to get your entry in by January 1, 2008!

This month our ingredients were chosen by Emiline of Sugar Plum, who was the winner of last month’s joust. She picked these ingredients Pomegranate, Pistachios and Mint, to showcase the colors of the season. I love the flavors that all of these components bring as they are all featured heavily in the foods of the Mediterranean. I created this dish to celebrate Yule, or Winter Solstice which was on December 21st.

You too can create your own pomegranate, pistachio and mint recipe for your chance to WIN A PERSONALIZED APRON! For details - check out The LeftoverQueen Forum.

Also, I have been featured on GlamNest and wrote an article about how to use those holiday leftovers! So please check out this article too!

Best wishes to everyone for a healthy and food-filled New Year!

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I am so pleased to be able to end this fabulous event we have been doing for the last 2 weeks! Thank you so much to Gina for writing this amazing cookbook, to Shelley for organizing the event and to Sara, Ilva and Michelle for participating and putting your culinary genius to work! This has just been so much fun and I am so happy I was able to participate!

Now on to the final recipe.

Fresh bay leaf also known as laurel, has a long history in the cuisine and culture of the Mediterranean. Crowns of bay leaves were used by the ancient Romans to award heroes in battle and the winners of sporting contests. It is used so much in Mediterranean cuisine and adapted so well to the Mediterranean climate that many think it is native to that land although it originates in Asia.

I am very interested in the history of food and especially how culinary influences from other cultures can change the cuisine of another country through the trade and communication between the two places. Food is an amazing tool that brings people together, teaches about other cultures and places and warms the soul. Bay leaf is just one of those ingredients – you see it in the cooking all over the Mediterranean – from Greece to Italy to North Africa you can taste its influence and see how it traveled as trade increased between those continents and empires.

I had never thought of using bay leaf in a sweet dish, so when I saw this recipe in Gina’s cookbook: Dolce Italiano, for Vanilla Bean and Bay Leaf Custard, I knew I had to try it. It would be a new flavor combination and something different from what I was used to. These are the kinds of recipes I am always drawn to. Some people are chocoholics, I on the other hand am a “vanilla-o-holic”. I love all things custard and cream. So the fact that this was a custard recipe, just put me over the edge! Roberto got his Chocolate Salami, this one was all about me!

Now if you are new to this Dolce Italiano contest that is going on, here are the quick details. You can win a signed copy of Dolce Italiano, by visiting these blogs below and commenting on the posts about the Dolce Italiano Recipes. Since I am ending this event – what a great honor I might add, I will make it easy for you. Here is where you have to go and comment:

Sara – Ms. Adventures in Italy made:Mosaic Biscotti & Sicilian Pistachio Cookies

Ilva – Lucullian Delights made: Chocolate Kisses & Cassata alla Siciliana

Michelle – Bleeding Espresso made: Ricotta Pound Cake & Sweet Apple Omlette

Shelley – At Home in Rome made: Chestnut Brownies & Chocolate & Tangerine SemiFreddo

Jenn – The Lefotver Queen made: Chocolate Salami & Bay Leaf Vanilla Custards - See it right here!

Please visit these sites and comment on those entries listed above for your chance to win the signed cookbook!

On to the recipe:

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If you thought I hadn’t enough to post about this week, step in Daring Bakers Challenge!
This month the Daring Bakers Challenge had good company at my Thanksgiving table. I figured, while I was in the kitchen slaving away at the Thanksgiving meal, what was one more thing to make?
Plus I figured my family would really enjoy this month’s challenge: Tender Potato Bread.
I “unleashed the Daring Baker within” as encouraged by this month’s hostess: Tanna by adding roasted garlic and rosemary to my dough and forming the bread into rolls – which turned out to be the size of mini loaves. I also had enough leftover dough to make a small foccaccia. So it makes a lot of dough! The recipe was very straightforward and easy to follow. It just takes a long time to proof at various stages, like most other yeast breads.

The addition of mashed potatoes gave the dough a bit more body and a lot of softness – this dough is VERY soft. I have mentioned before my aversion to kneading bread and this was my worst nightmare – sticky dough ALL OVER MY HANDS – YUCK! But I was happy that it turned out so well. This recipe made 18 HUGE rolls and a small foccacia. The only problem occured when I went to bake the rolls and baked a few sheets on the bottom rack - the combination of the buttered sheets and the high temperatures, burned the butter and scorched the bottoms of some of my buns!

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It is not very often that I feature recipes of celebrity chefs on this blog. Of course, I watch cooking shows, frequently and I have my favorites, but mostly they give me ideas and inspiration for creating my own recipes. I will learn a new technique and I will want to try it out – not necessarily in the same way as it was laid out on TV. However, it just so happened that I fell in love with two recipes done by everyone’s favorite Italian chef – Giada De Laurentiis ( I will post the second recipe at a later date). This dish, is a pasta dish where the sauce is made from squash. I love squash and I am always looking for new and interesting ways to cook this, and I was just enamored by this dish. So for once, I followed a recipe exactly how it was written. There are of course a few changes I would make in the future, which I will note at the end of this post, but all in all it was a delicious and unique dish! It is perfect to stock away for the fall season when many of you will have gardens or farm shares overflowing with squash. You will appreciate this recipe then!

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This is a wonderful and easy dish to prepare. It can be served hot as a main dish or you can chill it and serve it as a salad. It is a wonderful and refreshing dish that is easy to make variations of depending on what you have on hand and is the perfect dish to make with leftover shrimp!

Enjoy!

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