tomato sauce

Baby Octopus In Spicy Salice Salentino/Bell Pepper Sauce With Ziti Lunga

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Sunday’s lunch featured two of my favorite ingredients, baby octopus and lunga ziti. While the baby octopus have become a beloved food during my younger year’s as a marine merchant in the Mediterranean, lunga ziti, or, as they were simply known in our home when I grew up, macaroni, have been a familiar food item since I can remember as a small child. My mom used to serve them simply with some butter-sauteed bread crumbs (schmelze) and freshly grated swiss cheese. What a feast that was, fondly remembered to this very day 🙂

Bon Appetit ! Life is Good !
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To serve, top pasta with octopus. Sprinkle with chopped italian parsley.

Cook octopus in salted water until tender, but still with a bit of bite. Drain.

Saute in olive oil until starting to change color.

Add finely diced onions and garlic paste. Saute until fragrant.

Add diced bell peppers, saute one minute.

Add diced tomatoes and sliced scallions. Saute for one minute.

Add diced tomatoes, oregano and sliced scallions. Saute for one minute.

Deglaze with Salice Salentino or other robust red wine, add kpsher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Simmer for two minutes. Check seasoning

Deglaze with Salice Salentino or other robust red wine, add kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Simmer for two minutes. Check seasoning.

Meanwhile, cook the lunga ziti al dente.

To serve, top pasta with octopus. Sprinkle with chopped italian parsley

Baby Octopus In Spicy Salice Salentino/Bell Pepper Sauce Over Lunga Ziti

Baby Octopus In Spicy Salice Salentino/Bell Pepper Sauce With Lunga Ziti

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Meat Ball Sandwich – Merguez Meatballs In Harissa/Tomato Sauce On Garlic Bread

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My neighbor and friend Sami is from Egypt. He sometimes gives me some Egyptian, Middle Eastern and/or Mediterranean food to taste, usually about once a month.
Normally it is fully cooked and nicely presented, but yesterday morning he gave me some Merguez stuffing he had just prepared and asked me to “make something different with it”.
Here is what I came up with. I enjoyed it a lot and so did he 🙂

For the sauce, I mixed 2/3 tomato sauce with 1/3 of harissa.
(This sauce was so good, I think I will use it for other dishes or as dipping sauce in the future)

Bon Appetit ! Life is Good !
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Meat Ball Sandwich – Merguez Meatballs In Harissa/Tomato Sauce On Garlic Bread

Garlic bread, hard boiled eggs, romaine, radish, pickled chilies, drizzled with lemon vinaigrette

Garlic bread, hard boiled eggs, romaine, radish, pickled chilies, sprinkled with sea salt and drizzled with lemon vinaigrette

Lamb meatball sandwich with buttered corn and “stuff”

Meat Ball Sandwich – Merguez Meatballs In Harissa/Tomato Sauce On Garlic Bread

Bella’s version, without the spicy sauce 🙂

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Seafood Pizza & Salsa Mexicana

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I just loved this pizza my friend Leo and I had last night.
According to Leo, the best pizza he ever had.
(Unfortunately, he is not exactly a food expert, so the verdict is still out 🙂 )

Pizza Dough Recipe Here

Toppings : Mascarpone cheese, squid, crab meat, scallions, chili flakes,
dried oregano, asiago cheese finely grated, garlic paste, salsa mexicana.

Note : Add the salsa and scallions after cooking, just before serving.

Bon Appetit ! Life is Good ! >
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Seafood Pizza & Salsa Mexicana

: Seafood Pizza & Salsa Mexicana

Spaghetti With Chili, Tomato, Basil, Parmigiano Reggiano, Cream & Red Wine

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Saturday night dinner with friends. Good times 🙂
Spaghetti With Chili, Tomato, Basil, Parmigiano Reggiano, Cream & Red Wine
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Saute chicken until done. Remove from pan, reserve. Saute onion, garlic paste and chilies, add red wine and cream. Simmer until lightly thickened. Add freshly cooked al dente spaghetti, tomato, butter, parmesan cheese, kosher salt and pepper. Mix well until all spaghetti are coated with a light , creamy sauce. If too thick, add a bit of the spaghetti cooking water. If too thin, add a bit more cheese.

Bon Appetit ! Life is Good !
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Spaghetti With Chili, Tomato, Basil, Parmigiano Reggiano, Cream & Red Wine

Spoiled Brat ! (Bella)

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Perciatelli, Tomato & Poached Egg

“Waiter ! One order of Perciatelli, Tomato & Poached Egg please !
I wish I could order food like that in a restaurant around here !
Everybody seems to serve the same old stuff, (grilled fish with mango salsa anyone?), desperately trying to be “innovative”, “modern”, “on the edge”. But sadly, what I mostly find is mediocre food that has been invented and created a long time ago, then suffered a long and steady decline in quality and substance at the hand of badly trained cooks and so called chefs . We now find the most outrageously crappy food for even more outrageous prices in a vast majority of restaurants. I fully acknowledge that there are lots’s of great chefs out there but unfortunately, they are the minority in a sea of mediocracy or worse. How about some more top quality, simple, tasty, beautiful “REAL FOOD” . I would not mind paying top $ for a plate like this if it were fresh, good tasting, clean and nicely presented. Unfortunately, most “hip” folk’s think food like that has no place in a restaurant and it would be beneath their advanced eating habits to consume . (In public, anyway). While I appreciate as much as the next person food that is prepared and presented in an artful, unexpected, unconventional way, on a day to day basis I prefer great food which is practical and economically sound. After all, most of us have to cook the stuff before we can eat it. While there are plenty folk’s out there who apparently can run up a dinner bill of a few hundred or even a few thousand bucks a few night’s a week, most of us are not that privileged but nevertheless deserve to eat good (and, many times, much better) on a reasonable budget.

Perciatelli, Tomato & Poached Egg

Any thoughts on that friends ?
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Ingredients :

Perciatelli, cooked al dente, some cooking liquid reserved
Eggs, poached
Tomato, chopped
Garlic, paste
Olive oil,
Basil, stems removed
Kosher salt,
Black pepper, freshly ground
Parmigiano reggiano, grated

Method :

Saute garlic paste in olive oil until fragrant, add tomatoes and basil leaves and saute for three minutes. Remove basil, add salt and pepper and mix in blender until smooth. Poach eggs in lightly salted and vinegared water to your desired doneness. Toss perciatelli with olive oil, cheese and a bit of the cooking water until a thin film of sauce forms. To serve, drizzle tomato sauce over pasta, top with poached eggs. Sprinkle with cheese and garnish with fresh basil.

Bon Appetit ! Life is Good !
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Ziti In Wodka Sauce

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If you love pasta, this dish is for you.
The only, important, vital thing to take into consideration :
Butter, butter, butter.! Olive oil just does not cut it here.
I know butter has gone out of fashion with many folk’s,
but here is the time and occasion when you have to leave
your healthy pad for a moment and indulge in the goodness of
butter. Not butter substitute, not clarified butter, just plain,
rich, good tasting butter 🙂

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Ingredient’s

Ziti, cooked, drained, some cooking water reserved
Tomato sauce, canned
Wodka,
Garlic, paste
Peperoncino romano, finely grated
Butter,
Sriracha,
Maggi seasoning,
Kosher salt,
Chili flakes,
Italian parsley,

Method :

Saute garlic in butter until fragrant, deglaze with wodka.
( Careful with the flame, you don’t want to set your eyebrows
or your kitchen on fire ). Add tomato sauce, cooking water,
sriracha and pasta, heat to a simmer. Remove from heat,
add more butter, cheese, maggi and salt and mix well. Adjust
texture with cooking water if necessary. Adjust seasoning to
your liking. To serve, sprinkle with more cheese, chili flakes
and italian parsley.

Bon Appetit ! Live is Good !
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” Saure Kutteln ” (For Offal Lover’s Only)

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” Saure Kutteln “ (Sour Tripe) with potato gratin.

I grew up eating this dish often, it used to be a popular dish in southern Germany.
Eating habit’s have changed over the past few decades since I was growing up there,
so who knows, maybe , like so many other wonderful classic dishes, it too has
disappeared from today’s “modern” menus 😦
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Ingredient‘s :

Tripe
Tomato sauce
Demi Glace
Cider vinegar
Dark rum
Garlic paste
Caraway seed
Onions
Butter
Salt
Cayenne

Method :

Blanch the tripe, starting with cold, vinegared, salted water, twice. The third time, simmer until tender. Don’t overcook ! In my opinion, the tripe should still have a bit of a bite to it.
Strain, rinse. Saute the onion, garlic and caraway seed’s until fragrant. Deglace with rum, add demi glace, tomato sauce, vinegar, let simmer for 5 minutes. Add tripe and simmer for another 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with pasta, potatoes or a rustic bread.

Bon Appetit ! Life is Good !
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” Beer Braised Turkey Leg’s “

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Last night’s dinner brought out the very best one can get from turkey legs’s:
Tender, juicy, loaded with flavor, accompanied by a wonderful herbed rice.
In my opinion, turkey doesn’t get much better than that 🙂
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Turkey :

Ingredients :

Turkey legs, bone in
Morcilla, diced
Beer, a bottle or two of your favorite
Bell peppers, diced
Onions, diced
Garlic, paste
Scallions, sliced
Oregano “Litehouse” freeze dried
Basil “Litehouse” freeze dried
Chives “Litehouse” freeze dried
Maggi
Grape tomatoes
Tomato sauce canned
Oil, to sautee

Method :

Saute legs in oil until golden, remove and reserve.
Sautee peppers, remove, reserve.
Sautee onions and garlic until translucent, add Morcilla, tomato sauce
and beer, return leg’s and half the peppers to the sauce.
Add salt and pepper and simmer until legs are tender. Shortly before the
end of the cooking process, carefully remove legs into another pot.
Strain sauce onto legs, add remaining peppers, tomatoes and chives.
Bring back to simmer for one more minute and serve.

Rice :

Ingredients :

Jasmin Rice, soaked for two hours, washed repeatedly
Butter melted
Herbs fresh or freeze dried
Salt & cayenne pepper to taste

Method :

Cook rice in boiling plain water for approximately 4 minute, or until tender but not mushy (Polo Method)
Strain rice and with a fork mix in the butter, seasoning and herb’s.
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Bon Appetit ! Life is Good !
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