Gelato Matto

20260 N. 59th Ave., Suite 103
Glendale, AZ 85308
(623) 825-4543
gelatomatto.net

Smooth texture and intense flavor make this café’s traditional Italian ice cream high quality. Its thirty-eight flavors are made fresh on the premises every day. This gelato heaven also serves LavAzza Coffee (Italy’s favorite coffee), traditional cannoli, freshly made waffle cones and bowls, gelato spaghetti, affogato al café, granitas, biscotti cookies, gelato cakes, and more.

Paciugo Gelato

2530 West Happy Valley Rd., Suite 1271
Phoenix, AZ 85085
(623) 516-8749
paciugo.com

Paciugo Gelato has made us all happy by opening its newest location at the recently opened Shops at Norterra marketplace. With thirty-two flavors made fresh daily and over 200 recipes of traditional and unique flavors (try the rose—it’s good!) to shake things up, Paciugo Gelato will keep you coming back for more. Enjoy their free Wi-Fi and flat-screen TV, or enjoy a treat before heading next door to the new Harkins Theater to catch the next blockbuster hit. Catering is available.

Arlecchino Gelateria

4410 N 40th St.
Phoenix AZ 85018
Phone: 602-955-2448
arlechinogelateria.com

“100% autentico gelato italiano!” Yes, this gelateria prepares its gelato entirely from scratch with a preserved authentic Italian recipe and the best ingredients available. Owners Moreno and Marian Spangaro were both born and raised in Trieste, Italy, a town famous for its gelato and coffee, and they are well trained in the art of making gelato. They boast a 100 percent natural product, often made with imported Italian ingredients that include chocolate, espresso, and nuts, as well as handpicked seasonal fruit. Their daily offering of eighteen flavors continually changes and ranges from traditional Italian flavors to their own creations. Gelato cakes and tiramisu are available upon special request.

By Alison Malone

Lemon, pancetta, and broccolini dazzle fettuccini in this breezy dinnertime dish.

Summer’s long gone, and the ritual of planning the evening’s al fresco feast is a pleasant memory. Autumn’s upon us, and it’s now time to beef up your arsenal of quick weeknight meals. In this fettuccini recipe, bright lemon and crisp broccolini awaken the palette, while pancetta—a cured meat so salty that no additional salinating is needed in the dish—hints at the robust flavors of fall. Dinner comes together with ease in fifteen minutes.

Lemon Fettuccini with Pancetta and Broccolini

Recipe developed by Hilary Malone

Ingredients
• 3 ounces pancetta, cubed
• 2 bunches broccolini, rinsed
• 9 ounces dried fettuccini
• 3 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp lemon peel
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
• 1/3 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
• ¼ tsp pepper

Preparation
Sauté pancetta over medium-high heat until crisp and golden. Transfer to kitchen towel to drain.
Parboil broccolini in a large pot of salted boiling water for three minutes or until vibrant and green but still crisp. Transfer broccolini to ice bath and drain. Set aside.

Cook fettuccini in the same pot of boiling water used for the broccolini until al dente. Drain and return to pot. Add remaining ingredients and stir to coat.

By Cassaundra Brooks

Cupcakes

No one can mistake what this yummy bakery offers! Claiming that “a cupcake is more than just another sweet treat—it’s a lifestyle,” their daily and weekly rotating delightful varieties are baked from scratch with prime ingredients every morning, so your snack is guaranteed fresh every day. For parties, Cupcakes has four varieties of towers to rent at no extra charge, and their Kiddie Corner provides the little ones with an opportunity to decorate their famous Party Animal cupcake. For families whose pets are the children, Cupcakes also offers a Peewee Cupcake for dogs.

Located in the exclusive Hilton Village in Scottsdale.
6137 N. Scottsdale Rd. Suite B-105
Scottsdale, AZ 85250
(480) 656-3816
gotcupcakes.com

Sweet Thang Cupcakes

The old-world ambience and location in the notable Willo Historic District give passersby two great reasons to enter this cupcake shop’s doors, but we’ll give you three better ones: cupcakes, coffee shop, and tea bar. The full-service bakery not only serves up fresh gourmet cupcakes and other fresh-baked favorites but also offers award-winning tea and coffee drinks. Their cupcakes range from the traditional to original flavors you’ll find nowhere else, and with handcrafted flowers and an array of crafty designs, these cupcakes can be considered works of art. Special orders, catering, and whole cakes are also available.

503 W. Thomas Rd.
Phoenix, AZ 85013-4211
(866) 725-5457
sweetthangcupcakes.com

Lulu’s Cupcakes

Claiming to provide cupcakes that are 100 percent natural and 100 percent naughty, Lulu’s Cupcakes offers to make your favorite flavors in addition to their Seven Daily Sins: Blonde Bombshell, Tantrum Tamer, Mood Elevator, The Raven, The Landscaper, Chocoschnitzel, and Bunny Boo, not to mention a daily (ahem) D-Cupcake Special. Give in to your sweet tooth and sample the sugary seven sins at their location on the southeast corner of Miller and McDowell.

7607 East McDowell Road #108
Scottsdale, AZ 85257
(480) 990-CAKE
luluscupcakes.com

Fresh from the garden, rhubarb brings a burst of spring to lean pork tenderloin.

By Alison Malone

For many, rhubarb brings to mind fond memories of tummy-warming pies, tarts, and crumbles. The herbaceous perennial is originally from China and has been used for centuries for medicinal purposes. It grows well in the West Coast climate and, when cooked down, its crunchy pink stalk becomes luxuriously tender. In the recipe that follows, it is perfectly paired—perhaps unexpectedly—with pork tenderloin, and infused with tangy dried cranberries, brown sugar, robust balsamic vinegar, zesty lemon peel, cinnamon, and spicy ginger root. Round out the meal with a light salad, fluffy couscous, and a goblet of pinot noir, and you’re sure to swoon with palatal pleasure.

Pork Tenderloin with Rhubarb-Balsamic Compote

Recipe developed by Hilary Malone

Ingredients:
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 tsp grated ginger root
1 ½ tsp grated lemon peel
1 cinnamon stick
2 cups rhubarb stalks, trimmed and cut into ¼-inch slices
1/3 cup dried cranberries (or cherries)
2 1-pound pork tenderloins
4 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
In a medium saucepan, cook vinegar, sugar, ginger, lemon peel, and cinnamon stick until sugar is dissolved. Add rhubarb and cranberries and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer and cook rhubarb until tender—about 10 minutes. Season with salt, remove cinnamon stick, and cool.

Preheat oven to 350º F. Rub tenderloins with two tablespoons of oil and season with salt and pepper. In a large skillet, heat remaining oil and sear the tenderloins until browned on all sides. Transfer pork to a roasting pan and cook until a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the loin reads 150º F—about 20 minutes.

Transfer pork to cutting board, cover it with foil, and let it sit for 10 minutes. Cut tenderloins into half-inch-thick slices and serve with compote.

Early summer’s bounty paves the way for light, refreshing desserts.

By Alison Malone

When it comes to life’s simple pleasures, few surpass the pure wholesomeness of fresh produce. And who doesn’t adore a strawberry, with its stippled sweet red body topped by a green elfin cap? This June, as the days creep toward the longest of the year and the promise of summer draws near, weekend evenings mean lazing around on the patio with grilled food and chilled drinks. For cleansing the palate at the end of the meal, nothing hits the spot like a cool, refreshing sorbet. Not to be confused with sherbet, which contains milk and eggs, sorbets are made from fresh fruit purée. Considerably lower in fat than ice cream, this light dessert packs a flavor punch, as sweet and tart dance on the taste buds in perfect harmony. With so few ingredients, it is important to use fruit at the height of freshness, so pick up a basket of farmers’ market strawberries while they’re in season. The perhaps surprising addition of the egg white helps produce a creamier smoothness, stabilizing the sorbet and allowing it to maintain a soft texture for a longer time. Easy and quick to make, it will leave you—and your fortunate guests—simply delighted.

FRESH STRAWBERRY SORBET
Recipe developed by Hilary Malone

Ingredients:
2 cups water
2 cups sugar
8 cups strawberries, hulled and halved
1/3 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
Pinch of salt
1 large egg white

Preparation:
Combine water and sugar in a small saucepan. Heat until sugar dissolves and mixture comes to a boil. Simmer for five minutes, remove from pan, and cool.

Purée strawberries using a food processor or emulsion blender. Add lime juice, cooled sugar syrup, and salt. Press the strawberry mixture through a strainer to remove seeds. Chill mixture for one hour or until cool. Transfer the chilled mixture to an ice cream maker and churn following the manufacturer’s directions. Add egg white in the last five minutes of churning. Spoon into a sealed container and freeze until firm, at least three hours.

Makes 10 servings.

FOOD HOTSPOTS:

Bombay Spice Grill & Wine

A refreshing twist on Indian food recently made its way to Tatum & Shea. This casual yet elegant eatery offers healthy cuisine for under $10, with most dishes containing less than 500 calories. Bombay’s cuisine is prepared with no added sugars, butter, gee, or cream. Bombay has also introduced a unique wine concept, giving wine enthusiasts something to toast to. Their signature backlit wine bar offers forty carefully chosen wines for one great price.

(602) 795-0020 (Tatum & Shea) (602) 371-0111 (16th Street and Glendale)
10810 North Tatum Blvd. 7000 North 16th Street
Phoenix, AZ 85020 Phoenix, AZ 85020
bombayspice.com

My Big Fat Greek Restaurant

A Mediterranean oasis in the Arizona desert, My Big Fat Greek Restaurant brings the food of the gods to the people of the Valley. Transport yourself to Greece on fresh ingredients, a relaxed atmosphere, and warm hospitality in a variety of Arizona locations, including Phoenix and Scottsdale. And leave time and room for an appetizer—the flaming saganaki (imported kefalograviera cheese flamed with ouzo and metaxa) is a must!

2135 E. Camelback Rd. 4218 N. Scottsdale Rd.
Phoenix, AZ Scottsdale, AZ
(602) 954-2668 (480) 949-8900
mybigfatgreekrestaurant.net

Baci

In the mood for fine Italian dining? The newly opened Baci Restaurant serves up some sizzling seafood and prime pasta dishes, polishing off its savory presentations with an impressive selection of wine as well as choice delectable desserts, including cabernet raspberry sorbet. Private parties and catering services are also available. Enjoy!

711 E. Carefree Hwy. Ste. 160
Phoenix, AZ 85085
(623) 582-2326

By Myriam Joseph

In our ever-expansive eventful lives, conjuring up another idea for a dinner event can take more creative energy than you are willing to sacrifice. Few people can count on having a list of such talents as event planner, chef extraordinaire, and sommelier. So, why is it when it comes to planning, we take on so many responsibilities? Madness, I tell you—it is madness. With so many professional resources available, why not cater to yourself and embrace a catered life?

Personal chef services and event-staging specialists offer not only culinary and party services, but they also make your life literally more abundant. Many harried hosts make the assumption that personal chefs are only hired to cater special events. Oh, how wrong they are! A personal chef will come into your home at your requested time, create your desired meal, and then lovingly package, label, and place it all in your refrigerator for you to serve whenever you want to eat. Personal chefs are hired to use the full range of their expertise, not only in cooking elaborate meals, but also in creating daily, weekly, and monthly balanced menus; selecting the freshest and best ingredients at the market; stocking your cabinets with intriguing condiments; and having everything positioned so that you can easily have dinner served and ready on Monday night in under twenty minutes. The time you spend considering what you will make for dinner, all the while knowing you don’t even want to cook, could be better spent honoring yourself with an activity that you truly enjoy and savor. Dream abundantly about what you want to eat, and your personal chef will make it happen. In addition to routine dinners, there may be an evening during which you want the personal chef to prepare a more elegant dinner for your associates in your home. A true professional will design the menu and create an appropriate serving presentation for you, making it as comfortable as you like.

When it comes to abundantly arranging the other elements of a more formal dinner, a staging specialist is another new best friend. A staging specialist is the enchanted prodigy who comes into your home and sets your table, arranges your fresh flowers, selects your music, lights the candles, creates a beautiful presentation on your buffet, and then hightails it out when your guests arrive so you can take all the credit for making the evening fabulous. While you shower and pamper yourself in preparation for your guests to arrive, a wizard is working magic in your home, making sure you have delicate orchids in the bathroom and that the cocktail napkins are perfectly fanned on the coffee table. All the details you fretted over in the past fall under the auspicious eye of your staging specialist. Once guests arrive, hosts have a responsibility to set the tone for the evening by creating an experience for guests in which they, as hosts, may enjoy as well. Setting a tone that is welcoming, relaxed, and inviting and not being preoccupied with details such as making sure there is enough ice.

An abundant, perfect social event is certainly the bliss of the flowers arriving and the Cristal being poured into sparkling flutes. It also is finding ways to make planning and creating the event easy. Determine which part of the creative process you enjoy doing yourself, and leave the rest to a professional you trust.

The oft-forgotten root vegetable gets a New Year’s makeover.

By Alison Malone

Winter holidays go hand in hand with rich cheese platters, sweet-tooth–satisfying dessert trays, calorie-filled cocktails, and heavy meals centered on that ubiquitous bird. Now that the baking ingredients are stored away, the tree is taken down, and the in-laws are safely at home, there’s no better time to follow those New Year’s resolutions and introduce yourself to beets, a root vegetable that is rich with detoxifying properties.

The rich red and golden varieties meld beautifully with crunchy walnuts, fresh orange juice, spicy arugula, and tangy goat cheese, creating a flavor-packed winter salad that will ease the transition between your last guilt-laden holiday meal and your next trip to the gym.

Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese Salad
Recipe developed by Hilary Malone

Ingredients:

2 red and 2 golden beets, roots and stems removed
1/3 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
2 ounces soft crumbled goat cheese
5 ounces arugula or mixed greens
1 medium shallot, minced
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons orange juice
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Wrap red and golden beets in foil. Roast for 1 to 1 ½ hours or until soft and easily pierced with a knife. Cool beets slightly and remove from foil. Peel and cut into wedges. In a small bowl, mix shallot, vinegar, oil, orange juice, salt, and pepper; toss with beets. Combine salad greens and walnuts in a bowl, toss with beets and dressing. Top with goat cheese, and serve.

Makes 4 servings

By Myriam Joseph

When I think of Western things, cowboys, Indians, guns, and wild horses come immediately to mind. As I began my quest for Western recipes, I was certain I would find only recipes featuring roadkill and wild boar. I was right, of course, but I became excited when I discovered that, when planning a Western-themed party, barbecued anything will do. Everyone probably knows that the key to barbecue is the sauce. Barbecues center around grilled meats adorned with special sauces—“special” meaning that we must create our own. Are you up for the challenge?

Of all the ingredients and recipes that I sifted through and read in search of the perfect sauce, I found that there are a few key ingredients that form the base for many sauces. Ketchup is one—but not just any ketchup. Folks are partial to Heinz or Hunt’s, and some even make their own from scratch. Next comes Worcestershire sauce, which contains ingredients like molasses, anchovies, soy sauce, and garlic. With just a few shakes of the Worcestershire bottle into your bowl, you have saved time by adding all these ingredients at once! The final two common ingredients I found in barbecue sauces are brown sugar and lemon juice. If you put all these ingredients into a bowl, stir it up and baste your meat with it, it will turn out okay—not finger-lickin’ good, but decent.

We have higher standards, however, so here are some of the key “special” or “secret” ingredients that kings and queens of barbecue include in their recipes. Some add allspice, others, onion salt and beer. One notable grill master added apricot, peach, and raspberry preserves! Of course, the true connoisseurs would never divulge their secret ingredient, but they do all agree that having a twist in the flavor—a surprise of sorts—is what makes their sauces so special, and the one you create should have your own special flair, too. Challenge yourself to create different sauces and enjoy the numerous cookbooks available. Vary, substitute, or add ingredients to the base of an existing recipe. Better yet, start from scratch and create something completely new. Remember that cooking is ten percent ingredients and ninety percent love.

Love also figures into the amount of sauce on the meat. Some love it gooey, messy, and dripping, while others enjoy a thin coat of sauce that doesn’t require a bib to eat it with. Me? I’m all about the bib. Bring it on—I’m here to get dirty and love every savory minute. To accommodate people’s preferences, simply serve extra sauce on the side.

RECIPES
Here are a couple of my favorite sauce recipes to serve with pork or chicken. Remember, because barbecue sauce has such a high sugar content, it burns easily. To prevent this, brush on the sauce during the last fifteen minutes of grilling, or serve it on the side. I usually start by washing my meat with cold water and lemon and then patting it dry. Next, I sprinkle it with some salt and pepper and let it sit for a few minutes before grilling. Once the grill is hot and ready, I put all the pieces and grill until cooked through—no pink for me!

Barbecue Sauce for Chicken (Wings, Drumsticks, Thighs)

Ingredients

½ cup sweet chili sauce
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
¼ cup ketchup
2 tablespoons dry mustard
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoons dark molasses
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons grated fresh lemon peel
½ teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon hot pepper sauce

Preparation

Simple! Place all ingredients in small bowl and stir until blended.

Barbecue Sauce for Pork Tenderloin
(For a 2–4 lb. cut)

Ingredients

¼ teaspoon allspice
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoons black pepper
½ teaspoon chili powder
¼ cup white vinegar
½ teaspoon hot pepper sauce
1 cup ketchup
1/3 cup brown sugar

Preparation

Place dry ingredients into a bowl. Add vinegar and stir. Add remaining ingredients and stir until mixture is thoroughly blended. This sauce may be served room temperature or heated.