A 10-minute play.
Setting: Dinner for 8 at Casa Nova.
Act I. The food gets plated in kitchen
Act II. Everyone gets served and I sit at the table.
Act III. No one picks up their forks, but instead look inquiringly at me.
Dialogue
Guests: (with lifted eyebrows and questioning voices) Aren’t you going to take a photo?
Me: (laughing) No, not every meal I cook is presented on FOODalogue.
Guests: (in unison) But this looks sooo good.
Me: O.K. 
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After a long hiatus, Our Family Food Fight is back!
The theme: Surprise (stuffed) Burgers.
The challenge: present a burger with a surprise stuffing. And, of course, it had to be thematically correct, appropriately dressed and accompanied.
The Contestants: The usual suspects (Jim, Cassie, me) plus our newest family member, Julie (Jim’s wife). We’ll have to update that photo in the sidebar one of these days.
I debated between calling mine “The Sunday Sauce Burger” or “The Italian Stallion”. It has all the components and flavors of an Italian Sunday Sauce dinner but, as I developed the idea and went with the ‘one-burger-for-all’ instead of sliders, it began to take on the personality of an ‘Italian Stallion’. Besides, I liked the rhyming.
I took Amtrak from West Palm Beach to Tampa for a 1-day/2-night visit with lifelong friends from ‘up north’. I armed myself with a good novel, my ipod and snacks and found the experience totally bearable, if not completely enjoyable. The Silver Bullet got me there in 3.5 hours.
Come along while I show you Tarpon Springs, a heavily-populated Greek sponge fishing village that made me feel like I was back visiting the Islands, but first…
I struggled with whether to call this a ‘bruschetta’ (which to me has always been a toast topped with a tomato mixture) or crostini. After some research on our friend google, I discovered that Food Blogga had already tackled the question. I’ve concluded, along with Susan, that it breaks down to the size of the bread.
Served with a salad and a glass of wine, this is a perfect summer meal — whatever the topping or nomenclature. Continue Reading
They looked so good…creamy yellow skin, a little red and plumped up. I was enticed to buy more than I needed — so a couple of days later I had to be creative. I thought about a cherry salsa but, ultimately, decided on pickling because it was a bit more of a stretch for me.
After I ate, my mouth was singing – all high notes! I loved it! It was really delicious and I wanted to share it with you. Continue Reading
Remember the cod fish salad from the other day? Well, there was leftover cod and I decided to make a very Italian dish. Baccala is one of the traditional 7 fishes served on Christmas Eve in many homes.Though my family embraces our Italian half on Christmas Eve and we celebrate with multiple fish courses, we’ve never strictly adhered to the ‘traditional’ dishes. Therefore, I don’t recall ever making a baccala and pasta dish before — but I knew I wanted it ‘fra diavolo’ (spicy). Continue Reading
While I don’t eat cod fish salad often, I always enjoy it when I do…and this week I had a hankering. I like the Italian version with oil-cured olives and tomatoes — and I equally like the Puerto Rican version with avocado and lime juice.
It didn’t take a brainstorm to come up with the idea to combine my favorite elements of each. They certainly are complementary. Two traditional ingredients to the Puerto Rican version that I forgot are hard-boiled eggs and pimentos so we’ll call them optional.
Culinarily speaking, “Agro Dolce” means sweet and sour sauce. I use the term loosely here. This sauce has all the savory ingredients you might expect with lamb and a surprising hint of honey which qualifies it for the ‘dolce’ tag.
Saute shoulder lamb steak(s) with thinly sliced potato, onion, carrot and garlic in olive oil; add cherry tomatoes, fresh spinach, Sicilian olives. Season with oregano, rosemary, fennel seed, salt + pepper. To create the sauce, add small amounts of balsamic vinegar, tomato paste, chicken broth and honey. Cover and cook till tender.
The star of this dish is supposed to be the fish…a Peruvian Sea Bass which I crusted with toasted hazelnuts blended with thyme and star anise. This was an inspired combination that turned out really well. But, truth be told, I’ve become such a pasta-holic that when it got down to eating, my focus was definitely on the pasta which was simple, light, healthy and oh-so-tasty!
I present the recipes separately. You can serve them together as I did – or consider them as separate dinner components. Continue Reading
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