Nothing like a little serendipity. When Zarah and I decided to schedule our Dining with the Bloggers themes in advance, we picked a bunch of themes and assigned dates without giving it much thought. As it turned out, the theme for this week - my last Dining with the Bloggers post before leaving for my vacation in Sicily - is Pasta!
I have two pasta recipes to tell you about this week. One is an old favorite and the other was new to me this week, but is destined to become another favorite.
My old favorite is probably the first recipe I ever made from a food blog - well before I started my own. It is Spicy Lentil Sauce from the hungry tiger. Come to think of it, this recipe was probably my introduction to red lentils. They are so cheap, cook so quickly, and taste so good! I've made this recipe several times now and really enjoy it. There are no specific amounts given, so you feel like you're winging it - which is kind of fun! A real advantage of this recipe is that if you keep some red lentils around, you can make it on the spur of the moment. You're likely to find all the other necessary ingredients in your pantry.
My new found favorite, from Rowena at **Rubber Slippers in Italy**, is Spaghetti con Agnello e Cipolle (spaghetti with lamb and onions). Rowena is from Hawaii and is now living in the Lombardia province of Italy. I love reading about her experiences in Italy and enjoy delving into her archives to find posts about a visit to an interesting small town, a wonderful bakery, or a new find at the market. I recently found this spaghetti recipe which sounded easy, and as luck would have it turned out to be a recipe that let me use up a number of things. I cheated a bit and used ground lamb - this made the prep work a little simpler and also allowed me to buy just the amount I needed. Everything else was on hand. I used up that big old red onion I bought for a long forgotten recipe, the tail end of a bottle of white wine, and the ends of two boxes of spaghetti (one regular, one spelt). In addition to the above mentioned ingredients, this dish also has a moderate amount of curry powder in it. All in all, it is a beautiful medley of flavors!
Be sure to pay a visit to Zarah to see what she's cooked up this week. My next Dining with the Bloggers post will be on May 18th, but I believe Zarah will be sharing some interesting finds while I'm away.
1 comment:
Spaghetti-Italian Style and Philippine Style and Iranian Style
I love spaghetti a lot and my son like it more than me. I thought the Philippine style of Spaghetti is the real spaghetti, but the spaghetti I cook for parties and for our town fiesta( a celebration of our place in Jaro,Iloilo City, Philippines every February 2 in honor of Our Lady of Candles where we invited our friends, and relatives for a day of feasting) is Philippine version of the real Italian spaghetti which I found out when I asked our Italian priest Father John from south of Italy in St. Abraham Church in Tehran when I asked him how do you make Italian spaghetti.He told me that first you have to sauté onion and mix the ground beef until it is brown, then separately boil water and add spaghetti until cook, and for the sauce use fresh tomatoes and cook in slow fire for 2 hours and mix the brown ground beef , add salt and spices and add to spaghetti.But the Philippine version of spaghetti is that some add condensed milk and sugar for a sweet taste and slices of hotdog and salami are mixed but the sauce usually is made from canned tomato sauce and when cooked we put plenty of grated cheese on top.
In Iran, they also cooked spaghetti, but they call it here “ macaroni”, and aside of the pepper and salt they add turmeric and green pepper and mushroom, and for the sauce they usually use tomato paste.So this are the three style of making spaghetti.But in Japan , in one suburbs of Tokyo there is a restaurant serving different kinds of spaghetti from pepperoni to spaghetti with mixed seafoods which is delicious.I hope others will share also how they cook their spaghetti, the yummy food.
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