Here is another post about a featured pantry item. This was not planned it just so happens that the last few times I cooked, I got so inspired by a key ingredient and just went off on different tangents with it. Which to me, is my favorite way to cook – when I am inspired and excited about ingredients – when they make me hungry and I can’t wait for the dish to be done. This post is going to feature different uses for tomato sauces, which I made from boxed tomatoes.

Now I am putting a disclaimer out there that this isn’t my mom’s, my grandmother’s or probably anyone’s grandmother’s recipe for tomato sauce, or meatballs. Even though I grew up both Spaghetti Squash and Spaghetti and Meatballs, I don’t like making anything EXACTLY the same way every time. Since I like to use my leftovers, when I make a sauce or any kind of dish, really, I always do a tour through the fridge to see what needs to be used yesterday, and find a way to incorporate it. Usually this means we get extra veggies in whatever dish I am making, which is never a bad thing. But it also ensures that my dishes are always slightly different every time, making it more interesting.

Here is the story of this Tomato Sauce Extravaganza! I bought a spaghetti squash with all intentions to make baked spaghetti squash with fresh mozzarella for dinner. Then on Twitter, I was chatting with some of my buds and Elle, from Elle’s New England Kitchen was making Spaghetti and Meatballs, and Peter, from Kalofagas was talking about garlic bread. So naturally, I started craving both things. So I decided to act on those cravings and just make everything all at once. So I made the tomato sauce so that it could go in my baked spaghetti squash dish and also be used the next day for the meatballs. I must admit both dishes were fabulous!

Then I made garlic bread topped with parm and a little leftover blue cheese. It was the perfect accompaniment.
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I have the very distinct privilege of announcing one of the O Foods Recipe Winners, from those participants who were featured on Bleeding Espresso. We had a really hard time deciding as there were so many great recipes. So Michelle and I decided to share our top three and go from there – but we both had the same exact top three:
Olive Ascolane from The Flavors of Abruzzo , Octopus in a Stew from Spanish Recipes and Chard stuffed with Riso Arborio and Portobello Mushrooms from Feed Yourself.
Uh oh! How to chose now???

So I decided to enlist the help of a real expert – our new pup Peperoncino!

I saw on Wendy’s blog that she recently had a contest and her puppy, Marco chose the winner, which I thought was brilliant. So I put the recipes on a slip of paper, put them on the floor and the first one he sniffed was the winner! Well it looks like Peperoncino wants some Octopus! So congratulations to Nuria, from Spanish Recipes who has won a $50 gift certificate from Amazon, with her Octopus Stew!

Thanks again to all of you who participated and be sure to stop over to Nuria’s blog for some more great Spanish Recipes!

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PierOgi Pasta

Here is a great fall pasta dish, that is so satisfying and chock full of veggie goodness. My best friend Jen, who lives in MA is Polish and all the women in her family get together the Saturday after Thanksgiving and make Pierogi for Christmas. I have always thought this is a wonderful family tradition. I love Pierogi, but have never made it myself. A long time ago, when I still lived in MA I was at Jen’s house…she was making a dish for dinner that she called Lazy Man’s Pierogi, which was from what I can remember: sauteed cabbage, onions and mushrooms tossed with sauerkraut, cottage cheese and egg noodles. It looked and smelled great and I always put it on the back burner for a “someday recipe”. Well that day came. But I decided to change it up a little.

I sauteed the cabbage, onion and mushrooms like she did. Then I added sauerkraut, some leftover tomato sauce and some Greek Yogurt. I cooked it all down until it was soft but still crunchy and then added whole wheat tortellini to it and continued to cook it for another 10 minutes so the tortellini had time to steam in the juices. I seasoned everything with salt, pepper, cumin and paprika. It turned out great and made enough to feed a small army! We loved it and it is something I will certainly be making down the road again! Plus I get to see Jen a week from today, when we head up north for our yearly trip to New England! YAY!

Nothing says comfort food like a Tropical Storm!

We are still waiting for the storm to hit. Latest news reports say that it will not have enough time out in open water to turn into a hurricane once it hits land again, which is good, but it will hit land again as a tropical storm, right here in our lovely town of Saint Augustine. We are right on the coast here in Northern FL. Less than a five minute walk from the water. We have already seen rising waters and some low lying areas (well everything is low lying around here) have flooded and the storm isn’t even here YET. We should be expecting it tonight or more likely tomorrow. Everything is closing up and our county has declared a state of emergency. The National Guard is already here, thankfully, and we live on the second floor, so we are staying put. We are ready with supplies and we have just moved everything off the porch. The wind is starting to pick up, but nothing severe yet.

The summer has been pretty rainy here especially since the end of July, which is like monsoon season in Florida – it rains everyday, and even if it doesn’t rain, a large part of the day is gray and the sky rumbles.

So much for The Sunshine State.

My appetite begins to get confused – from inside, looking out it seems like a fall day, but as soon as you step outside it is sweltering hot and sticky humid. Even so, during the first week or so of this, my brain temporarily goes from cooling summer foods, right back to the land of comfort food. Which in this case, was Pasta al Forno – or oven backed pasta, much like a Mac n’ cheese of sorts. This dish was creamy and satisfying – chock full of flavors and textures. Roberto took one bite and he was transported back to childhood memories of tortellini with peas in bechamel. This may be a new family favorite. It certainly does hearken to rainy days under a blanket with a good book and glass of rich red wine under a Tuscan sky… Or perhaps just a storm safe closet!

But maybe this will even stave off Fay!
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We have been getting ourselves re-familiarized with pasta lately. Due to rising food costs, I have been trying my best to stretch things, like our veggies and meat and following in the footsteps of my Grandparents, pasta often comes to mind. There are a lot of great pasta types out there now that are more healthy than your garden variety enriched “white” pastas. Roberto, like a good Italian, has always been big on pasta meals. Before he met me, he used to eat pasta every single day of his life.
For myself, I have always joked that I am not a good Italian, because I have never really been a big pasta eater, even less so as I got older, because it really likes to stick to certain parts of my body that I really wish it would not. But now, with all these varieties to choose from, I have found healthier versions.

Not all pasta is created equal…

One of my favorites is De Boles. Not only is De Boles organic and all natural, but it offers gluten free and whole grain varieties as well as my favorite, the ones made with half Jerusalem artichoke flour and half semolina flour. This means it has a lower glycemic index. Jerusalem artichokes also contain inulin which is a pre-biotic (not pro-biotic – although those are good too) that stimulates the growth of beneficial bacteria in the digestive tract that in turn aids digestion and lowers blood pressure and cholesterol. Texture wise, it is just like regular pasta. You are unable to tell the difference. Take it from the Italian and the Italian American.

When using regular pasta, my favorite brand was always Barilla. It always cooks perfectly and is the preferred brand of most Italian households. The company was founded in Parma, Italy and has for 130 years been family owned and operated. Also in 2007 they were one of the six out of 5,000 globally recognized companies evaluated as “most ethical”. So you can also feel good about eating this pasta. Another reason to feel good about eating Barilla is that they too have some out with new healthier varieties with their Barilla Plus – multigrain line of products. Barilla is also way cheaper than De Boles, so it is often what we have in our pantry.

I wanted to try some different pastas that are not traditionally Italian in taste, to spice things up a bit. So recently I made a curried penne. I had finally found an Indian market near where my mom lives and I picked up some great spice mixtures and had a hankering to try them out. I am a huge yogurt lover, and yogurt (which contains PRO-biotics) is found prominently in Indian cuisine, so an idea for this spicy pasta started coming together. However, I doubt you would ever find this on a menu in any Indian restaurant! It is a Leftover Queen classic
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I really thought twice about posting this recipe. It is so simple, but isn’t that what The Leftover Queen is all about? Simple, yet delicious meals using leftovers and ingredients you already have at home? I also decided to post this, because it is the first thing I actually “cooked” in my kitchen when we came back from our Honeymoon, and therefore it is sentimental, as am I.

We stopped at my mom’s house on the way back from the airport to say hi and pick up our kitty. She had a nice chicken dinner ready for us. I was so food-ed out from the trip and the chicken breast was so big, that when I was full, it looked like I had barely touched it! So she wrapped it up to go – just like a good mamma!

The next day, I was faced with a kitchen that was mine but unfamiliar after almost 2 weeks without really cooking. The fridge was empty, but luckily the pantry was still full of canned and jarred goods, including artichoke hearts and sun dried tomatoes. I love chicken with either of these, so I figured, why not both!? Now I only had 3/4 of a large chicken breast to work with, so I knew I needed to stretch it, so immediately my mind went to pasta. We had some nice whole wheat spaghetti in the pantry as well, so into a boiling pot of water it went. Roberto went to work cutting up the chicken into chunks and grating the very high quality parmesan cheese, while I opened the jars (what a slacker!).

In a big mixing bowl we mixed the chicken, drained jar of artichoke hearts, some Kalamata olives and about 1/4 cup of sundried tomatoes with some of the oil from the jar (i love that stuff!). We added the hot pasta stirred it all together with about 1/2 cup of grated parm. Opened up a nice glass of chardonnay, left over from the wedding reception, and dinner was on the table, in minutes.

We both really loved it. I think the main reason why is because the pasta was cooked perfectly al dente and we used a super good quality parmesan. Without these, this dish would have been just okay, but because these were perfect, this dish was heavenly and has me craving pasta again! Time to make pesto!

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.  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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Okay guys, I am giving away secrets here. I use yogurt in a lot of my cooking. It is one of my culinary secrets. When a dish needs a little extra tang or some creaminess, I dig out the ubiquitous carton of plain yogurt in my fridge. I prefer the Greek style yogurt, as many of you know, but sometimes it is not available, so I just go for the all natural, organic plain stuff. No one can ever guess that it is in there, but it really adds a wonderful element to some of the best dishes I have made.

My Dad and Step mom were here this weekend visiting us. I wanted them to see the things about St. Augustine that we love so much, so on Saturday AM, bright and early we took a trip to the Farmer’s Market. We picked up some beautiful fresh local shrimp. We got some more of those huge Meyer lemons. I had pasta at home already and standing there at the market with fresh shrimp, lemons and beautiful green spring onions a plan began to form. This is the kind of cooking I love – being inspired by the best products you can find. The recipe is almost secondary.

After the market we took them to the the beach where we are going to get married in April. As you can see it was REALLY cold here this weekend. I am so glad I brought my parka with me from New England! We had a really great time. Roberto was the best sous chef ever and we had a great time cooking together in the kitchen while Dad and Kayzie relaxed in the living room with a glass of wine (did I mention that Kayzie is a wine distributor and they brought their own wine on their trip?! – lucky us!) The pasta was delicious by the way…
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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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