Tomato Sauce

Gnocchi are plump Italian potato dumplings. As they are featured in these Potato Gnocchi With Quick Meat Sauce, they are light, yet filling. A serving has only 7.5 grams of fat. The meat sauce is made with juicy tomatoes seasoned with onion, garlic and oregano.The recipe is from "The No-Time to-Cook Cookbook" (Avery, $19.95) by Joanne Abrams and Marie Caratozzolo. They subtitle their book "Fabulous dishes for today's fast-paced lifestyle," and say no recipe takes more than 45 minutes to make.

There aren't many restaurants that would lure me to Westminster, but Paradiso Ristorante is one of them.Food tastes authentically Italian here. Not cookie-cutter Italian-American.Salvatore and June Romeo have owned Paradiso since 1992, but moved the restaurant across the street to a renovated Sherwood Distillery building last June.In the small dining room, the walls, trim and exposed ceiling are painted the deepest shade of green. Brass candle lamps with green shades provide intimate lighting at the cherrywood tables and wide upholstered booths in the room.

This week's menusEach day of the week offers a menu aimed at a different aspect of meal planning. There's a family meal, a kids' menu aimed at younger tastes, a heat-and-eat meal that recycles leftovers, a budget meal that employs a cost-cutting strategy, a meatless or "less meat" dish for people who may not be strict vegetarians but are trying to cut down on meat, an express meal that requires little or no preparation, and an entertaining menu that's quick.Sunday/FamilyTake...

Our timing was a little off when we visited the City Cafe recently. Not the kitchen's. Not the waiter's. Ours.As we left, we learned that this Mount Vernon eatery was about to change a third of its menu, as it does each season. The pastry chef, whose desserts we loved so much, was leaving, too. Oops.We enjoyed our meal so much, my guess is that Gino Cardinale's City Cafe will be serving food that is every bit as interesting and well executed as what we sampled.There's a confidence to the menu, the same kind of confidence that shows in the hip, New York-style personality of this spare black and white eatery.

We went to Tonino's in Reisterstown in search of what we heard was a great house dressing, and found much more. This family-friendly Italian restaurant handles pasta, pizza and subs as smoothly as it tosses its salads.It's true, the house dressing is incredible: Think of a lemon-less Caesar dressing with four times the Parmesan cheese. We tried the dressing on the Tonino's salad, a large Italian-style chef's salad, with jumbo shrimp nestled in cups of provolone and salami, sliced vegetables and artichoke hearts.

Some restaurants are worth talking about for what they are, others for what they might be.Teranga African Restaurant, serving food from Senegal, is a small spot with plenty of promise. Fode Kande, a veteran of African restaurants and nightclubs in Washington, opened Teranga in early June. So far, he has not had an easy time.Kande started with a complete Senegalese menu, including peanut butter-infused stews; marinated, grilled meats; and thiebou dieun, a baked bluefish that is Senegal's national dish.

A newcomer to Hampden, Stella's is the kind of neighborhood restaurant that would make any area's denizens crow with civic pride. Even after a wait of 15 or so minutes for lunch and up to 25 minutes for dinner, Hampdenites brim with good cheer and anticipation.Stella's is just across the street from Cafe Hon (in Hon's old space, in fact), and it does for Italian food what Cafe Hon does for traditional American diner fare. Very affordable Italian classics are offered in generous portions and clean presentations by a good-natured staff.

Giovanni Desimone may look familiar to aficionados of spaghetti Westerns. He acted in a number, gunslinging with the best of them. He's hung up his holster, however, abandoning the world of spaghetti Westerns to focus on, well, spaghetti. Desimone and his partners, Carlo Morra and Antonio Massa, are turning out uncomplicated and strongly flavored Italian food at their nine-month-old eatery in Ellicott City.At the site of the former Olive Branch in the back of the Normandy Shopping Center, Giovanni's is an unfussy, family-style restaurant with a bustling carryout place next door.

Ikaros, the granddaddy of Greek restaurants in Baltimore, is alive and well in Highlandtown.Owner Ted Kohilas opened Ikaros in 1969, and the restaurant is still going strong. Not much has changed since I visited four years ago. The rooms still sport crisp stuccoed walls, dark wood ceilings, oversized photos of life in Greece, white tablecloths and enough touches of blue to call to mind the Aegean. The menu has remained relatively untouched since my last visit, too.Ikaros is, after all, a place of tradition, not cutting-edge innovation.

I like the most recent additions to Little Italy. The new restaurants are small and personable, with good food and affable staffs. Baltimore's most famous neighborhood now ranks up there with Harborplace as one of the city's top tourist attractions. But the new places like Il Porto hearken back to the small, informal, family-run eateries that used to be on every block.Il Porto's owners might be surprised to hear their restaurant described that way. They're clearly going for a sophisticated look: The freshly renovated bar-restaurant is done in white and black and decked out with contemporary furniture, including a lounge area in front with low-slung black leather couches and a glass coffee table.

When it first opened back in 2006, I visited and enjoyed myself at Carlos O'Charlies. I remember being impressed first of all with how big the place was: two floors of shifting environments, several bars and multiple dining areas. Downstairs, there was a dance floor and a few pool tables; upstairs, more formal dining spaces; and in the center, a stone fountain. It didn't all make perfect sense, and it was hard to imagine its ever being full of diners, but its flamboyance put a smile on your face.

B.J. Thompson of St Augustine, Fla., was looking for a recipe she had lost for Italian chili that was made with sausage and pepperoni in place of ground beef. Rosemary Grantly of Knoxville, Tenn., sent in a chili recipe that she thinks may be close to what Thompson is in search of. She says that it is easy to make and a nice departure from the traditional-style chili. She also says that practically every time she makes this chili for others, she is asked for the recipe. I tested her recipe using a jar of spicy tomato and basil sauce which, with the addition of the spices, gave the chili a nice kick.

This year, more than others, we've declared war on wasting food. To help with the fight, we've come up with 20 ingredients that can be hard to use up before they go bad. Here are quick (and a few not-so-quick) ideas for putting them to delicious purpose. Keep the list on your fridge, and hopefully you'll never have to toss half a container of these staples again. When in doubt, turn to our quintet of favorite use-up dishes: frittata, fried rice, omelet, stir-fries, soup. They can take on many of the ingredients on our list.

Anne Cohen of Missoula, Mont., was looking for a recipe for Elvis Presley's favorite meatloaf. She said she used to have a recipe, published in her local newspaper some years ago, that supposedly came from Presley's longtime cook. After an extensive Internet search, I managed to find a recipe for Elvis' meatloaf on trackworksinc.com, a site for food from "moving pictures." It is a copy of an actual postcard someone sent into the site from Graceland, in Memphis, Tenn. The front of the card has the meatloaf recipe printed on it with the caption "from Elvis' kitchen."

The nostalgic satisfaction of meatloaf eludes many of us during the busy workweek because the soul-soothing comfort food takes so darn long to bake. But what about meatballs instead? The form lends itself to limitless flavor combinations. This version gets a Spanish flair from smoked paprika, which provides great depth of flavor. The meatballs are simmered in a little red wine and tomato sauce. Choose an inexpensive Rioja to cook with to keep the theme going. Menu Smoked Paprika Turkey Meatballs Spanish rice Glazed carrots Flan Smoked Paprika Turkey Meatballs Serves 4 -- Total time: 35 minutes 1 pound ground dark turkey meat 1 egg 1/4 red onion, chopped very fine 1/4 cup dry bread crumbs 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon sweet or spicy smoked Spanish paprika 6 sprigs parsley, minced 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 can (15 ounces)

Apples for Jam By Tessa Kiros Kitchen Memories By Anne Snape Parsons and Alexandra Greeley Capital Books News / 2007 / $24 This book takes the cooking memories concept on a global tour, offering a collection of family recipes from 25 countries. Some of the personal notes that accompany the recipes are truly interesting tales. The introduction to the Cambodian dish Chicken Amok is almost startling, and not just because the woman who contributes it declares, "I hate cooking." Phnom Penh native Montha C. Prom was "associated with the former Cambodian royal family" before she and her husband "escaped the killing fields into Thailand.

Around D.C. and Annapolis, the Lebanese Taverna restaurants are known for their Middle Eastern food and a feeling of family. That could be because the five restaurants, three cafes and one market all are owned and run by the five brothers and sisters of D.C.'s Abi-Najm family. "Our family has been in the business for 28 years, when our parents started as a neighborhood restaurant in Arlington," says Grace Abi-Najm, the youngest of the five siblings. "We all grew up working in the restaurant, and what we've tried to do [with each successive venture]

This Australian red wine offers quality far beyond its price and is well worth acquiring - or giving - by the case. It's a full-bodied, smooth-textured shiraz with ample flavors of blackberry, plum, chocolate and herbs. Its complexity equals that of many wines three times its price. This screw-cap-equipped wine is ready to drink now and should keep for at least three years. Serve with red meat, pasta with tomato sauce.

Charles Street has a new resident. CazBar has opened in the Brown's Arcade space where Shogun used to be. Owner Alec Haluk Kantar describes the place as a Mediterranean restaurant and bar, and he's renovated the space to reflect that. Kantar says you'll find colors like eggplant, dark green and light green on the walls and a "nice, warm tile floor" featuring black and burnt orange. There are also lots of wood accents in a rich maple and upholstery in a deep-copper color. The main floor consists of a dining room up front.

When fresh tomatoes are abundant this summer - and we have consumed all we can in salads, on sandwiches, grilled and in salsas before their beauty fades - we will long to make tomato sauce. But there's a problem: For a classic lusty red pasta sauce, chefs actually tend to prefer canned tomatoes, says Richard Stuthmann, chief of instruction at Baltimore International College. Fresh tomatoes "aren't consistent," says Stuthmann, "and they aren't the red color we expect." So take a middle ground and combine the bounty of the farmers' market and the garden with tomato paste to make a quick marinara.