These are just a sample of the fabulous recipes discussed in Harlot's Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss and Greece.

(And if you click the spaghetti below, you'll also get to see a video of me demonstrating how to make harlot's sauce, or as it's called in Italian, salsa puttanesca.)

Below are my own recipes, but if you look to the right column you'll find links to readers' websites who have created special recipes that are both delicious and clever, all inspired by Harlot's Sauce.

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The Harlot’s Baklava

Baklava is a Greek sweet made with nuts, honey butter and filo dough. This recipe is my own, which I’ve culled from four or five other versions of baklava. If you’ve read my book and remember Gregori’s best man, Leonides, you know why I named it  ‘The Harlot’s Baklava’   ; )

Ingredients

150 ml (¾ cup) unsalted butter, melted
500 g  (1lb.) fresh filo dough
1 ounce  or 30 grams (¼ cup) caster sugar
(“caster sugar” is sold in U.S. as “superfine” sugar)

240 grams (2 cups) finely chopped almonds
120 grams (1 cup) finely chopped walnuts
10 grams (2 teaspoons) ground cinnamon
5 grams (1 teaspoon) ground cloves

For Syrup:

1 cinnamon stick about 5 cm (3 inches) in length
5-6 whole cloves
½ ounce / 15 ml (1 tablespoon) of freshly squeezed juice from a lemon
1 ounce / 30 ml (2 tablespoons) honey
thin strip of lemon rind, washed
½ litre (2 cups) regular white sugar
½ litre (2 cups) water

1. Make syrup first by placing all ingredients in a saucepan with a heavy base and stir over medium heat until all sugar dissolves.  Bring the liquid to a boil and continue to boil over medium heat for approximately ten minutes to blend flavours. Remove lemon rind, cinnamon stick and cloves. Let sit and cool while preparing rest of recipe.

2.  Next is the filo dough.  If you’ve never used it before, it comes in a package that looks a lot like a cardboard carton of spaghetti. When you open this package and remove the plastic, the filo resembles sheets of wet, white paper that are rolled up. Unroll the sheets so they are flat, but leave them together. Be sure to keep the dough moist as you work---you won’t believe how quickly it dries and flakes. To help with this, place a damp dish towel over the sheets of filo. 

3. Using a pastry brush, brush, some of the melted butter on base and sides of a baking pan approximately 33 x 23x 5 cm (13 x 9 x2 inches). Place ten sheets of filo dough at the bottom of the pan, one at a time, brushing each piece of dough with melted butter. Do not soak the dough with butter, but be sure that each piece is thoroughly coated.

4.  Mix nuts, sugar and spices together and spread half this mixture over filo sheets. Top the nut mixture with three more sheets of filo, also brushing with butter, and spread remaining nut mixture on top of these. Place all remaining filo sheets on top of this second layer of nut mixture, brushing them with melted butter, too.

It’s important to trim the edges of the filo if they are hanging over the sides of the pan, or edges will curl upward while cooking and won’t look very nice when your pastry is done. You can trim the dough, but also gently tuck the edges down into the sides of the pan with the flat side of a butter knife. Sprinkle the top layers of filo with water to prevent curling and drying, and make sure the edges are moist with water and/or melted butter. This will give your Harlot’s Baklava a professional look. 

5. Score diagonally through the top layers of filo with a sharp knife (a steak knife works well) one way and then the opposite, making diamond shapes.  Then, as the filo bakes, it will be pre-cut into the shapes of the baklava.

6. Bake in oven on middle shelf at 160 degrees Celsius ( (325 degrees Fahrenheit) for thirty minutes. After thirty minutes check to see if top is browning too quickly. (Filo should be a light golden brown when done.)  If so, cover with foil or greased brown paper. Place the pan up one shelf in the oven and bake for another thirty minutes, but be sure that the filo has cooked all the way through to the bottom layers.

7. When baklava is done and removed from oven, test that the syrup has cooled. Spoon syrup over hot baklava and let steep. Leave baklava like this for several hours before cutting into portions, using the pre-perforated diamond shapes you cut in the  top layers as your guide.

Baklava is very sweet, buttery and crunchy. It tastes wonderful served with very hot, strong coffee. It’s a perfect holiday dessert!

 The Mother-in-Law’s Moussaka

Ingredients

1 kg  (2 lb) aubergines (eggplant)
olive oil (Gregori would say “use Greek,” but I say, “Italian)
3 pressed garlic cloves
1 large, finely-chopped yellow onion
1 kg  (2 lb ) minced (chopped) beef or lamb
45 grams / 1½ ounces  (1 cup) ripe, chopped tomatoes
45 grams / 1½ ounces  (1 cup) prepared tomato sauce
1/10 litre / 1/5 English pint  ( ½ cup)  merlot wine
30 grams / 1 ounce  (2 tablespoons) chopped parsley
5 grams / 1/16 ounce  (1 teaspoon) white sugar
5 grams / 1/16 ounce  (1 teaspoon) cinnamon
Salt and freshly ground pepper to your taste

Cream Sauce Ingredients

90 ml (6 tablespoons) salted butter
1/10 litre / 1/5 English pint (8 tablespoons) white flour
1 litre / 1 English pint (4 cups) whole milk
2.5 grams / 1/32 ounce (½ teaspoon) nutmeg
2.5 grams / 1/32 ounce  (½ teaspoon) cinnamon
120 grams / 4 ounces (8 tablespoons) grated imported parmesiano or kefalotiri cheese. (If you can find both cheeses, use a combination for a zestier taste.)
2 eggs, beaten slightly

1. Leaving the skin on the aubergines (eggplants) slice them lengthwise, in 5 mm (¼ inch) slices. Place the eggplant on a dish and sprinkle slices with salt. After an hour, you’ll notice droplets of moisture on the squash, which has been brought up by the salt. Blot up the moisture with paper towels. (Blotting up the moisture takes away a bitterness which would remain in the taste of the squash after it’s cooked.)

2. Brush each slice of squash with olive oil, place on a baking sheet and back in over at about 350 degrees F. (176 degrees C ) As you remove each piece, stack them on a plate and set aside.

3. Fry onion in oil until onions are clear. Add garlic and sauté quickly.

4.  Up the heat and add meat, stir briskly as the meat browns.

5. Add all remaining ingredients except for those ingredients set aside for the cream sauce. Season the meat sauce to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper.

6. Cover the sauce pan and let simmer for thirty minutes, or until no more excess moisture remains in the pan. Set aside.

7. Start cream sauce by melting butter in a sauce pan, adding the white flour and cooking this mixture gently for three minutes, while constantly stirring.

8. Add milk gently, but all at once, continuing to stir to even out consistency. Keep stirring as sauce bubbles, gently and slowly, lowering heat if necessary to accomplish this.  Note: this mixture can scorch very easily, so continued stirring and an ‘eagle eye’ on the heat is imperative. Sauce should bubble consistently for about one and half minutes.

9. Remove the cream sauce from the heat, stir in about half of the cheese, all the cinnamon and nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste. We’ll stir eggs into this cream sauce mixture just before we spread it on top of the assembled moussaka.

10.  To assemble the moussaka fully, butter an oven dish approximately 33 x 23 x 5 cm (13 x 9 x 2 inches) in size. Place a layer of the squash at the bottom.  Place half of the meat sauce on the layer squash,  add another layer of squash on top, and then  the rest of the meat sauce on this second layer and then cover with a third layer of squash.

11. Spread the cream sauce on top of the meat and squash layers. (Some of the sauce will trickle down into the sides of the pan and this is fine.)

12. Sprinkle the top evenly with the remaining grated cheese.

13. Bake in 176°C (350°F) oven in middle of oven for about 2 hours. Colour will be a deep golden brown when done, but if top begins to burn, cover with foil. 

14. Let moussaka cool for about 15 minutes before cutting into squares with sharp knife to serve.

Phew! That was a lot of work, but it was worth it. Just remember to be sure and ask if your dinner guests like cheese. (Believe them if they tell you, “no,”  and just serve franks and beans, instead.)

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Yoo Hoo! Second Helping of Recipes, Anyone?

If you're hungry for some great Italian food, check out the work of another Italian chef,  Ann Minard, at her Food Column at Harlots' Sauce Radio

Click photo above to read Karin's review of Harlot's Sauce

 Many, many thanks to all who took the time to make a recipe inspired by Harlot's Sauce. We enjoy reading them and appreciate your hard work more than you know.

If you have a recipe that we missed, please be sure to send us a note, and we'll link your recipe to this website, too!

Christmas Lima Beans

• Briciole, a lovely Italian cook transplanted from Perugia to the San Francisco Bay Area was inspired by "the bean story" in Harlot's Sauce. Click here or on the beans above to read her take on the book and her special recipe for Fagioli Monete del Papa (Literally "Pope's Coins") She's also posted an audio file of this recipe there.

Turkish Moussaka

• Food Junkie, Not Junk Food, has a Greek-Turkish background and chose to make a Turkish version of  moussaka called Hünkar Beğendi.We made it and it is simply gorgeous. Food Junki explains why she found Harlot's Sauce "painful" to read. We felt so bad that she thought Patricia didn't like Greeks for a while there, but we hope she later saw as she read on that wasn't so.  Click here or on the photo above for her commentary on the book and her YUMMY recipe. 

 Sassy Baklava

• The Growing Foodie posted "Sassy Sweets" a special version of Harlot's Baklava.Click the icon above or here to read her take on Harlot's Sauce and her delectable recipe. 

Ouzo Sorbet

• Deb in Hawaii liked the part of the story where Patricia drank too much ouzo and had "unexpected visitors" in her hotel room. To celebrate that she made a fabulous recipe for a refreshing ouzo sorbet.   Click the photo above or here to read her take on Harlot's Sauce and get her fun recipe which we're sure is destined to be very popular.

A Soothing Tisane

• Alas, you can't please everyone. FoodyCat, an Australian chef transplanted to the UK did not enjoy reading Harlot's Sauce, partly because the food in the memoir is often used to control and manipulate. And she's right about that. For that reason, we had to post FoodyCat's review, as well as her recipe for a soothing tisane which helps one recover from indigestion.  In addition to that her blog has some other terrific recipes. Click the photo above or here to read FoodyCat's take on Harlot's Sauce.

Greek Pizza, Anyone?

• Our chefs' hats go off to Eliot's Eats for coming up with what we think was the most creative recipe inspired by Harlot's Sauce. Eliot writes that she kept going back to how Patricia and Gregori bonded over pizza. (A sure sign of true love for anyone who is serious about their pizza, without a doubt.) Her version of Greek pizza is both unique and nostimo. (That's Greek for "delicious.") Click here or on the pizza above for Eliot's review of Harlot's Sauce and her terrific recipe.
  

Pizza Alla Puttanesca

• If you're still looking for more delicious pizza inspired by Harlot's Sauce, La Buona Cucina's recipe for "Pizza the Harlot's Way" is one we devoured along with a whole bottle of Italian red wine. Click the photo above or here for La Buona Cucina's Review of Harlot's Sauce and her delizioso recipe.

 Greek Fisherman's Stew

• The Crispy Cook  "wheat free, meat free" chef created a stew with fish and shrimp as it's base ingredients. Crispy says the character that appealed to her the most was Nancy, "the chain-smoking philosopher." CC also says she created this recipe from a Greek cookbook Perfect Greek (London Parragon 2006) and that it's fit for a harlot, a fisherman or anyone else who wishes to try it. To see her scrumptious recipe click on the photo above or click here.

If YOU Have a Recipe You'd Like to Share With Us, Email publicist@patriciaVdavis.com If we post it, you'll receive a complimentary copy of one of Patricia's books. 

Click the photo above to see a funny, animated book trailer of Harlot's Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss and Greece

Oh, and One More Note to All:

I’ve put my recipe measurements in American Standard and Imperial Standard and/or Metric. to avoid offending as many readers as possible, as some of us are as jingoistic about our cups and litres as we are about our national flags, language dialects, spelling and anthems.  I’ve put in the Imperial standard after the metric, wherever possible, both in bold print, separated by a backslash. (Looks like this: / )  The American Standard is listed in parenthesis.

To put more than three types of measurments would have been too confusing, so I apologise to those everywhere who would prefer to express their particular patriotism when following recipes by using oka, stone, parsec, pony, jigger, light year or whatever else!