Meet Diana!

Well, hey. Hi there! I’m just a nutty woman who loves, and I mean loves, to cook. While I love cooking for everyone, my family and dearest co-workers are the ones I like to cook for the most. They’ve got my back, and so therefore my food, ya know?!

I tend to cook spicy, savory foods. I rarely do sweets, but when I do, they often have something hot, like my beloved Aleppo chile pepper in them.

Bread and flour are my current passions. I have a flour stash from hell (try 90-120 pounds of different flours). My dining
room is now my flour pantry. I make a boatload of yeast breads and we probably have pizza 2-3 times a week.

Do you dream about food? I do. Some of my best dishes have come from food dreams. Yeah, I know, it’s weird. Some of these dreams come from walking around the farmer’s market. Others come from childhood memories. As spring approaches, and my thumb gets itchy, my dreams will be green with all of the herbs I want to plant and play with in the kitchen.

What am I best known for? Well, amongst my sons’ friends, it would probably be pizza. I’ve been known to make it at 11 o’clock at night for late night pool parties. They probably will remember me as the crazy mom in flour covered pajamas. While I make many things, SDS, aka Secret Dipping Sauce, with homemade ciabatta bread is probably on the most requested list. The sauce recipe makes more than a gallon and I’m lucky if I can keep it in the fridge for a week.

And so on that note, I will leave you with SDS.

SDS

6 cups olive oil (just your basic cheap kind--I used Wegman's)

1 cup sliced garlic
1/3 to 1/2 cup pickled Thai chiles (depending on how hot you want it)
4 ounces Asian chili oil
2/3 cup honey
96 ounces crushed tomatoes (of course, I used Sclafani!)
1 1/2 Tablespoons kosher salt

Cook the garlic on medium low in the olive oil until golden (I used a stock pot). Strain garlic from oil and reserve both. Puree Thai chiles with chili oil in blender--set aside. In stock pot with olive oil, add tomatoes, honey, salt and pureed Thai chiles in chili oil. Puree mixture with stick blender or puree in batches in blender. Whisk in garlic by hand. Store it in mason jars in the fridge. This sauce is great with calamari, on chicken wings, over pasta, with bread or just straight up with a spoon. Enjoy!