I am all about tradition. Even as a young child, I always enjoyed re-occuring events based on a date, an event, or time. I don’t know what it is about me that just loves a good ritualistic event. Maybe it’s the food. Most likely…Now that I am an adult and getting older and recently married, I have started thinking more about traditions, what they mean to me and what kinds of traditions I want to start for my own family.

When we lived in Vermont, we used to have Roberto’s girls with us every other weekend, and I loved cooking special things when they were there. Especially in anticipation of Movie Night. We would rent a movie and then make fun food, perfect for watching and eating at the same time. Recently Roberto and I decided that we really need to bring back Movie Night – even if only for us. A time to get our jammies on and eat fun foods. We have done this three times so far and it seems to be sticking. We have prepared some really fun finger foods and menus that I want to share in case anyone else has Movie Night and is looking for recipes, or wants to start a Movie Night tradition of their own.

So for our first official movie night, a few months ago, we watched Simply Irresistible. I made Lisa’s Olive Stuffed Cheese Ballsand Curried Deviled Eggs. We also mixed Greek Yogurt with Sumac, Za’atar, Sesame Seeds and Olive Oil and scooped it all up with warm whole wheat pita bread. For dessert we had leftover Key lime pie with strawberries that my mom had sent home with us after a visit. It was a great time. The movie, Simply Irresistible is with Sarah Michelle Gellar. A cooking movie where the emotions she puts in her food while she is cooking, affects those who eat it! Really cute film, especially if you are a die-hard Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan like we are, and therefore are bound to watch anything that has any of the stars from that show in it for all eternity.

The next movie night we had was kind of themed without meaning to be. I had Lentil Koftas with cucumber salad on the menu with a side of Greek style green beans. As we were frying the koftas, I was looking for a plate to put them on, so they would stay warm. Our good friend, Tony had given us a Tagine for a wedding present that he and his partner, Jonathan had carried back with them from a recent trip to Morocco. It had a lid and looked nice, so I decided to use it as a serving platter. Plus I have really been dying to use the Tagine! Don’t worry, I just made Chicken Tagine this weekend - so you will be seeing it in its primary use in a little while!

We ended up getting The Kite Runner as a movie and the theme of the movie really fit well with our menu. The koftas were really great, and I plan on making them again.

I have made the green beans for ages and they were a perfect accompaniment. Recipes to follow. The movie was excellent. It is one of those films that you can’t shrug off for several days. I had read the book and felt the adaptation was perfect.

For our third movie night we really wanted to try Elle’s Mango Buffalo Wings from last month’s Royal Foodie Joust.
I love the spicy and vinegar combination of buffalo wings, but I have never made them at home. When Elle entered the contest last month with a mango buffalo wing, I knew I would love it, so I got the ingredients to make them. They were wonderful, the perfect combination of spice and sweet that I adore with that vinegar hot sauce note. However, the movie, I Am Legend was not a big hit. There is a very bad scene in the movie involving an animal and I just couldn’t take it…I am a big wuss when it comes to these kinds of movies.

However, this one bad movie has not deterred us from continuing the tradition of movie night! Join us for movie night and let us know your best creations!

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Okay guys, Brussel Sprout season is coming to an end, so I wanted to give them a little tribute since I love them so much. I know they have a pretty bad reputation out there. I also know I am talking to people who really appreciate food – so I am guessing you guys are a little more open minded about these cute little mini-cabbages and probably there are many of you reading this right now that also adore this vegetable! However, I am sure there are a few of you who are turning their nose up as we speak. So just hear me out, okay?

Lately I have seen lots of recipes out on the net targeting people who hate Brussel Sprouts – so here I am to give you a few more
recipes for your arsenal to welcome the members of the brassica (Brussel sprouts, cauliflower and cabbages) family onto your plate.

First, is my classic recipe where I just steam them and then throw them in a pan to sautee with onions, garlic and toss with a home made honey mustard vinaigrette. Sometimes I add a bit of bacon when I am sauteeing and it is a delicious side dish or main meal. I love this recipe so much, I got into the habit of making Brussel sprouts this way all the time – so I decided we needed to change it up a bit. So I did. I had a bunch of little bits of stuff in the fridge that needed to be used up, so I went with that as my inspiration.

This new way is even better than my old way and you will love it too!

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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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The winter is coming to an end here in the Sunshine State (I won’t rub it in that Roberto and I spent the weekend at the beach…), and before it gets too warm in the rest of the world, I thought I’d post about this wintery dish.

A few weekends ago we went to visit my mom. It was cold and gray and so she decided we were going to make stuffed cabbage rolls. This is an old family favorite. My Nana had two best friends as an adult – one was British and the other Liz, was what they called “Slavic” back in the old days. I am not sure if that means she is Polish, Czech, Ukrainian or something in between.

According to my mom, Liz always referred to these cabbage rolls as Halupky. Well, inevitably walking in my Nana’s footsteps, my best friend Jen also happens to be Polish and I knew quite a few people of Polish decent when I lived in Western Mass. Jen’s family and most of the polish people I know call cabbage rolls Golubki. So in honor of Jen, that is what I call it.

This is a simple dish to make and a rustic old school kind of thing, so I don’t really have exact measurements or anything. When I make Golubki, I tend to add some tomato paste to the broth because I really like that flavor and a thicker sauce. I also sautee onions and garlic and add that in the layers. When my mom makes it, she doesn’t use tomato paste, so the sauce, it is more of a broth.

If you are not big into meat, fear not, just fill the cabbage rolls with rice and tomatoes and skip the bacon. I used to make it this way when I was a vegetarian.

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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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This is my second to last recipe from dishes I made from my first foray into the world of local produce. These are meals from 2 weeks ago that I haven’t posted yet. So here we go, one more installment…

See, there is a lot you can do with greens. This little Farmer’s market series is my attempt to use a lot of the same ingredients in a variety of ways, so that you aren’t stuck in a rut wondering what to do with an over abundance of greens. These are some of the greatest of cooking challenges – what to do when you have TONS of one ingredient. How do you keep it interesting and tasty night after night? Of course you can freeze some, which I did do, but even at that you have a lot to contend with. These are the types of things I am going to challenge myself with this year – Farmer’s Market purchases, buying produce on sale and trying to keep my food bill down by getting really creative with what is available. I am going to try to take this seasonal eating as serious as possible. I am sure I won’t be perfect, but this is a resolution that I am trying to keep. Already I am noticing that I have a lot more energy. I was sick but only for 3 days instead of a week. These are small things, but not insignificant. I have also been interviewed and will be featured in a magazine article out in March about abundance and how to get creative with the food we got. More on that later.

Anyway onto the recipe…

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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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