Sisters and Spaghetti!

Hey there! If you're in New York this weekend I'm hanging out at the Circle of Sisters event with WBLS at the Jacob Javits Center. It's a 2-day event (Sat. & Sun.) with entertainment, seminars, stuff for the kids and I'll be there Cooking, for real :-). Here I am just this morning on local station WPIX talking about the event and more with host Sukanya Krishnan aka "Suki" ...

Sukanya and I have a mutual friend in common so it feels like we know each other and I was too excited to see her again. My first visit to her show was back in 2008 and I blogged about it in "CW 11 Posts video!". Seriously seems like yesterday. You know what they say about time flying, eh? Pretty accurate. Hope you'll join me this weekend at the event and if you can't, please join me for a new episode of Cooking for Real!

I call this new one First Date Spaghetti. I make my Spicy Spaghetti with Mega Meatballs, Easy Garlic and Olive Knots and a drink I call a Juicy Martini. I did this menu for a few reasons. A while back I had dinner at a friend's place and he served spaghetti with a nice kick. It was just on the edge of hot, made you want more to calm the heat that would return with each bite. A crazy vicious cycle and I loved it! I make almost everything a bit spicy, so I'm sharing my personal recipe for a spicy sauce. I love meat balls so I thought I'd go big or go home with some mega meatballs of flavor and stacked them with plenty of love so they aren't just big chunks of meat. I keep 'em juicy and tasty so if you have leftovers you can do a meat ball sandwich the next day with some reserved spaghetti sauce!

Then to go on the side I share my version of an NYC pizza place staple, the garlic knot. Mine are sandwiched with the flavor of garlic, parmesan cheese and olives between two thin layers of pizza dough. I keep pizza dough frozen and defrost it in the fridge over night, but you can also find it in a pop-tube thing. I find the pop tube thing to be a bit on the sweet side, so use a bit more salt when I use that version of dough. It's a really easy recipe and I do it the way I show on this week's episode as well as with other fillings. Sun-dried tomatoes and parm being my second fave, then jalapeno and cheddar.

The drink is something I wanted to share with party guests this summer at the AC Food & Wine Festival. I had a full menu of drinks, sliders and dessert to share at my Sunset, Sliders and Spirits pool party. As we went through the process of trimming the menu down, we had to cut one drink and one slider. I cut the Chicken Chorizo Patty Melt Sliders and My Juicy Martini was put to the side to share at a later date as well. When I was planning this show I thought dessert on a first date would be nice, but with the pasta, the huge meat balls and the knots it just felt really heavy. A drink sounded like a good idea. I love making drinks at home and sometimes do one big signature drink in a pitcher to serve everyone, or myself all night :-). Just kidding ... ok, I hope you enjoy the show! The Chicken Chorizo Patty Melt is on a future show too! Don't forget ...

Cooking for Real: First Date Spaghetti, this Saturday @ noon on Food Network. 11AM central. Tell a friend!!