Blossom to Stem

The Tuscans have a way with beans.

If I came away from my year in Italy learning one thing about food, it was this. As much as I love pizza and fresh pasta and gelato, and, oh, do I love those foods, my most memorable meal on the boot shaped peninsula involved none of them.

It involved a vineyard, a cool misty spring day, and a bowl of beans. Well, really a bowl of warm pasta e ceci, which translates to pasta and chickpeas, drizzled with the vineyard’s own olive oil and a toasty hunk of focaccia.

Eight years later, I still remember dipping my spoon into the thick stewy concoction and realizing for the first time that a chickpea could taste like comfort, so sturdy and so subtle. So good.

This is a dish that is so much more than the sum of its simple parts. A simple saute of onions and celery and garlic with a generous sprinkle of rosemary, chickpeas simmered and partially pureed, with nubby little bites of ditalini thrown into the mix. It emerges as a delicately flavored bowl of stick-to-your-ribs goodness. Dan likens it to macaroni and cheese, and I think he’s on to something with the comparison. Except it’s easier on the waistline.

And it’s easy on the pocketbook as well, which is no small thing these days.

Simple food, well-prepared. It’s the sort of thing I could eat until summer.

Pasta e Ceci

Source: Adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Italy

This dish is peasant food at its finest. It works well with canned chickpeas, but it’s even better with dried. I use one of my favorite tricks in this dish to enhance the flavor. I save the rinds from parmesan cheese and store them in the freezer, then I cut off a piece, about an inch square or so, and simmer it with the chickpeas. It’s optional, but it adds another dimension to vegetable stock or even water, and I highly recommend it. 

3 cups cooked chickpeas (or 2 15 ounce cans)
1 stalk of celery, finely diced
2 cloves of garlic, finely minced
1 medium onion, finely diced
3 cups of vegetable stock (or water)
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon dried rosemary
1 inch square piece of parmesan rind (optional)
3/4 cup dried ditalini
2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup of shredded parmesan (preferably parmigiano reggiano)
olive oil for drizzling
salt
fresh cracked pepper

In a medium sauce pan or dutch oven, heat a tablespoon of olive oil and add the onion, celery, garlic, rosemary, and bay leaf. Cover, and cook over low heat for about 20 minutes, or until the onions are translucent and the vegetables are soft.

Add the stock or water and chickpeas and parmesan rind, if using. Bring to a simmer and cook until the chickpeas are soft, about 35 minutes. Turn off the heat, and remove the bay leaf and the parmesan rind. Remove half of the chickpeas (about 1 and 1/2 cups) with a slotted spoon and set aside. Puree the remaining chickpeas with a stick blender (or food processor or standard blender). Return the reserved chickpeas to the pot, add the ditalini, and simmer over medium-low heat until the ditalini is al dente, about 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, and stir in the grated parmesan. Drizzle with olive oil, and serve.

Yield: 4 smallish servings or 3 large ones.

We are in the bleak mid-winter in Chicago, the ground crusted with snow, the wind face-bitingly, finger-numbingly cold. Apart from the rare bit of blue sky peaking out at us today, we have been living in a pallet of whites and muted grays.

I am getting tired of pilling scarves and hats and salt stained shoes. I am wearying of winter’s dinge.

I have been subsisting on one warm bowl after another filled with chilis and curries and ribollitas, ladled over rice or sopped up with bread. But as much as I love these comfort foods, I am ready for a break from them too. I’ve been longing for something vibrant, with a rich saturated hue and a bold flavor to cut right through the winter doldrums.

That’s where cranberries come in. These deep red beauties are still hanging around in the produce section of my supermarket, looking lonely in the wake of the holidays.

After sputtering in a pot, slipping out of their skins, simmering with sugar and a vanilla bean and a splash of Cointreau, and then being rounded out and thickened with a couple of eggs, these tart red berries are tickled into a luxurious velvety pink curd.

I think of cranberry curd as winter’s rosy cheeks, if such a thing could be jarred and spread on lemony muffins or cornmeal pancakes or whole wheat toast, or sneaked in little spoonfuls all by itself. It isn’t a summer jam, but a rich smooth sweet spread, with notes of vanilla and orange and just a hint of a pucker. Just the thing to brighten a buttery croissant and a mug of hot coffee on a mid-winter Sunday morning.

Cranberry Curd

Source: adapted from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess

This luxurious, brilliant pink curd is a cinch to make. Cranberry’s natural acidic tartness is tamed here into something sweet and round, but the berry’s bright fruit flavor remains strong. It would be right at home on a holiday table, but it really shines as an accompaniment to a simple breakfast or dessert. If you want to make this beyond the season when cranberries are available in the grocery store, stock up on a few extra bags and throw them in the freezer where they’ll keep for months.  

2 1/2 cups (8 ounces) fresh or frozen cranberries
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons Cointreau
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
fine mesh strainer or food mill

In a medium saucepan, heat the cranberries and water over low heat until the cranberries pop and split open. Press the cranberries through a fine mesh strainer or food mill, discard the solids, and return the puree to the saucepan. Add sugar, butter, vanilla bean (or extract), and cook over a low gentle heat until the sugar dissolves and the butter melts into the puree. Remove the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds into the puree (if you like, you can rinse and dry the bean and save it for another use). Remove the pan from the heat and allow it to cool slightly. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl. Add a little of the warm cranberry mixture to the eggs (this is to gently warm the eggs to prevent the eggs from curdling on contact with the hot mixture). Add the egg and cranberry mixture to the saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Be careful not to curdle the mixture by raising the heat too high.

When the mixture is thickened, push it through the mesh strainer, and allow it to cool before putting it into jars and refrigerating.

Yields about 2 1/2 cups of cranberry curd. Keeps in the refrigerator for several weeks.

Some days I don’t want to make the effort. I really don’t.

I love good food, but I’m tired, I’m hungry and I just want to order a pizza. Or stop by the freezer case in the grocery store and pick up something I can have done in fifteen minutes. Or maybe just have some baby carrots and a spoon of peanut butter and those Girl Scout cookies that I think I still have tucked away somewhere. I can’t exactly say I feel sated and refreshed after a dinner like that, appealing as it may have seemed at the time.

But I have good trick for those days. If I can think ahead a little.

It’s about a million times better than most commercially made frozen pizza. And I can even pronounce all of the ingredients.

It’s my homemade frozen pizza crust.

This is more of a method than a recipe. I have a favorite recipe, slightly modified from Peter Reinhart’s Neapolitan pizza crust in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice. You can find a trimmed down version of the recipe here. But you could just as easily use your favorite pizza dough recipe.

This is the sort of thing that I hear people recommend and I think, pshaww, I will never make and freeze a huge thing of whatever and eat it for months. That sounds onerous.

But it turns out that it doesn’t feel so terribly onerous, at least not on a lazy Saturday when I have a few hours of afternoon to fill.

And it feels absolutely terrific to open the freezer a week later and remember that I can have homemade pizza for dinner in less than an hour.

Homemade Frozen Pizza Crust

I have often come across recipes that recommend freezing balls of dough before the first rise. That turns out beautiful pizzas, but it requires thawing in the refrigerator overnight and a few hours of rising out of the refrigerator after that. When I get home from work and I’m hungry, that frozen ball of dough doesn’t do me much good (and even the one in the refrigerator means I’ll be eating late). This method gets the pizza from the freezer to the table in about 40 minutes, only about 5 of which requires any active work. I can handle that on a week night.

A batch or two of your favorite pizza dough (such as this one), mixed. If yours uses 2 cups of flour or less, I’d think about doubling it
olive oil
parchment paper
plastic wrap
gallon-size zip top freezer bags
a couple of baking sheets (or any sturdy, freezer-safe flat surface)

Lay some parchment paper out on the counter and cover it with a thin film of olive oil.  Spray oil works, so does spreading a few drops with your fingers. Take your dough and divide it into six-ounce balls, about the size of a small fist. This doesn’t have to be precise, but something close to this size fits nicely in a gallon-size freezer bag. (My recipe makes 6 of these.) Set them on the oiled parchment, spaced at least a couple of inches apart. Lightly oil the tops of the dough, and cover with plastic wrap. Let them rise until doubled in size, about an hour or two.

Cut one piece of parchment paper a little larger than your freezer bag for each ball of dough. Gently pull the dough into a circle roughly 9 inches in diameter, place on the parchment paper, place that on a baking sheet, wrap tightly with plastic wrap, and put the whole thing in the freezer. Repeat with the other dough balls.  I usually manage to find space to freeze about four of these, stacked on top of each other, at once. Keep any dough that you have yet to shape and freeze tightly covered to prevent it from drying out.

Freeze the dough for about 45 minutes, or until it feels reasonably solid. Remove the dough from the baking sheet, but keep it on the parchment. Double wrap it in plastic wrap, place it in a freezer bag, and return it to the freezer.

On the day you want to make the pizza, pull the dough out of the freezer about 40 minutes before you want to eat (keep it covered with plastic wrap). Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F. After a the dough has been sitting at room temperature for half an hour, top it with your preferred toppings, and bake on a pizza stone or baking sheet for about 8-10 minutes.

These keep for about two weeks in the freezer.

The TED site has a great little lecture by Peter Reinhart up now. It’s worth a listen.

(If you are interested in improving your bread baking or just curious about how it works, you should check out his books.  I’ve been testing some recipes for his new book, and I can’t wait for it to come out.)

It is so easy to get into a rut. In college and shortly thereafter, you could open my pantry and expect to find pasta and jarred sauce and olive oil and a green can of the powdery dry parmesan-esque stuff and probably a jar of peanut butter and a bottle of salad dressing, and that was about it. Although I wanted to cook interesting things, it was difficult because whenever I looked at a new recipe, I had to go out and buy just about every ingredient on the list. Buying new spices and a bottle of vinegar and a new kind of rice in addition to whatever fresh ingredients were called for made the grocery shopping trip expensive and time consuming, and it was all too easy to retreat to the pasta-and-sauce habit or trot over to the frozen pizza section and call it a day.

Now, I hardly ever do that. (Though I’ll admit that Amy’s frozen pizzas do come in handy every now and then…)

But that’s because if I’ve built a pantry that enables me to cook, and I enjoy what I eat so much more as a result.

Over at the New York Times, Mark Bittman has a story, currently at the top of the most emailed list, about new pantry essentials. I mostly agree with his list, and I wanted to use it as a jumping off point for offering my own advice on how to stock a kitchen to be ready to prepare all sorts of meal with the purchase of only a couple of fresh ingredients.

Of course, every cook has his or her own idiosyncratic preferences that evolve over time. But this is should get you well on your way.

•  Oils. Always, always keep extra virgin olive oil on hand. If budget permits, have an everyday olive oil for cooking with and a special one for drizzling on salads or dipping bread in. You should also have a neutral oil with a relatively high smoke point, such as grapeseed oil or canola oil or a plain, untoasted sesame oil. In the more optional category, I like to keep organic peanut oil around for meals with Asian flavor profiles. I also like to keep toasted sesame oil around to use as a seasoning but not as a cooking oil. It’s probably a good idea for our health and for the environment to look for organic, expeller pressed oils whenever possible. Store most oils in a cool dark place–light and heat can make them go rancid. Most nut oils are highly perishable and should be stored in the refrigerator.
• Butter. Unsalted butter is typically used for baking, salted butter for spreading on toast. I mainly stock the unsalted variety and add my own salt to taste. Store butter in the freezer if you plan to keep it around for any length of time. The stick you are working on should probably stay in the refrigerator to preserve freshness, but if you want it spreadable and are going to go through it quickly, room temperature is fine.
• Flour. If you are an occasional baker and a regular cook, you probably only need good old reliable all-purpose flour, but you could also make a case for white whole wheat flour. White whole wheat is made from a variety of wheat that is lighter and milder than the more common red variety. It’s the most versatile whole grain flour I use, and in most cases it can be substituted for all-purpose. Even if you seldom bake, you should keep some flour around for thickening sauces and for breading things. In the more optional category, I’d recommend having cornmeal around (white or yellow or even the rarer blue or red varieties are fine).  It’s indispensable for cornbread and it’s nice for sprinkling under breads or adding interest to pancakes or yeasted breads or cakes or other baked goods. Whole wheat pastry flour is nice for softer baked goods, though if you don’t bake much I’d go for the white whole wheat first. Bread flour is good for, well, bread and pizza dough and choux pastry, and if you make those things frequently it’s worth having around, but you should keep in mind that you can make all of those things with all-purpose flour too. Store whole grain flours in an airtight container in the freezer. Refined flours should be kept in airtight containers at room temperature.
• Salt. If you keep just one salt around, it should be kosher salt. Maybe I’m putting us all at risk for goiter, but I think the highly processed iodized stuff tastes a little chemically and isn’t the best way to expend my sodium allotment. If you keep two salts around, add something flaky and flavorful, such as Maldon or any fleur de sel. If I were wealthier, I’d definitely splurge on other high end salts.
• Pepper. Keep whole peppercorns on hand at all times and grind it when you need it. There is no reason to buy the preground stuff, which retains only a shadow of its former flavor.
• Vinegars. This is largely a matter of personal preference. I like to keep red wine, champagne, and rice vinegar around. I also like sherry vinegar for French things, and balsamic for Italian (that’s another area to splurge if you have money to burn).
• Lemons. Freshly squeezed lemon juice and freshly grated zest add such a zing to things. Limes are good to have for Latin or Asian flavor profiles. Also for a nice gin and tonic…
• Sauces and condiments. I like to keep soy sauce around. I like San-J’s organic tamari. If you get into Chinese or Thai or Japanese or Indonesian cooking, you’ll find there’s a whole world of them, from thick soy sauce to dark soy sauce to thin soy sauce. But if you don’t know your kecap manis from your shoyu, you probably just want a thin, naturally brewed soy sauce. Fish sauce is good to have around if you want to do any Thai cooking. Oyster sauce or thick mushroom sauce (sometimes sold as vegetarian oyster sauce) is also nice. Sriracha is great for adding a kick to things. A dijon mustard is good for salad dressings. Peanut butter for well, sandwiches, but also peanut sauce or peanut butter cookies. Some kind of hot sauce such as Tobasco or Cholula, and maybe a jar of your favorite salsa (mine is Deser Pepper’s Corn and Black Bean Salsa) for Mexican dishes or just for chips.
• Beans/legumes. You can go with dried or canned. I like to keep a can of black beans around for nights when I need something quick, but I’ve mostly switched over to dried beans for the other varieties. Dried beans have better texture and they are significantly lower in sodium. They are also cheaper and involve less packaging. I’ve discovered that soaking them overnight and cooking them for a couple of hours is far less arduous than I’d imagined it would be. You can freeze whatever you aren’t going to use. I typically stock chickpeas, black beans, and some kind of white beans like cannellini or great northern. I also like to have red lentils for Indian dals and firm French green lentils for soups and salads. Frozen edamame are also convenient for an easy lunch with nothing but salt to accompany them.
• Dried pasta. I like to keep an assortment of dried pasta around. Usually something long like spaghetti, something medium-sized like penne or rotini or farfalle, and something little for soup like ditalini or orzo. I also like to keep whole wheat couscous around. It cooks in about five minutes, which is tough to beat.
• Grains. I’ve continued to move toward whole grains, even though I tend to keep a few refined grains around. I usually have brown jasmine, brown basmati, and short grained brown rice around. I like to have Arborio around for risotto or rice pudding. I’ve learned that I really like quinoa, which isn’t technically a grain but looks like one (and it’s a complete protein and it’s gluten-free), and I try to have it around for main dish salads. I always have old fashioned rolled oats and steel cut oats around too. In the more optional category, I like to keep barley and farro and bulgar around. Store whole grains in the freezer and refined grains in airtight containers at room temperature.
• Leaveners. There are only a couple of these, but you should probably have at least baking soda and baking powder. I seek out aluminum free varieties of baking powder, such as Rumford. Yeast is important for bread baking. I mainly use instant or bread machine yeast, which can be used in all recipes that call for active dry yeast, and it doesn’t need to be proofed in water. Store yeast in the refrigerator or freezer and use within six months of opening the container. The packets are fine if you don’t bake bread or pizza much.
• Herbs and spices. The beginning of the year is a good time to inventory spices and toss the ones that have lost their oomph. This is going to be a matter of personal preference, but the dried herbs and spices I use most frequently are cinnamon (both ground and sticks), nutmeg (whole is best), cumin (both ground and seeds), oregano, coriander seed, fennel seed, whole dried rosemary, whole bay leaves, thyme leaves, cayenne pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, smoked paprika, chili powder (ancho or chipotle, or gaujillo are all good chili peppers), cardamom (whole), cloves (whole), fenugreek, allspice, brown mustard seeds, ground ginger, and turmeric. I also keep a curry powder blend and a garam masala blend around. I also keep a few kaffir lime leaves in the freezer. I tend to look for fresh flat leaf parsley, fresh basil, and fresh cilantro rather than using the dried versions of those spices. I always have a bottle of pure vanilla extract around too.
• Garlic. I always keep a few bulbs of garlic around. I’m not crazy about the jars of pre-minced stuff, and I only use garlic powder when I’m nostalgic for that sharp flavor. I find it’s easy to mince a clove or two when you need them.
• Onions. I keep yellow onions around all the time, and I usually have a red onion too. Shallots are nice to have around too. All dry onions keep well in cool dark place for weeks.
• Parmigiano reggiano. Accept no substitutions, and don’t bother with the pregrated stuff.
• Sugar. I’ve discovered that I now have about six kinds of sugar around at any given time, but if I were not such an avid baker, I’d only keep granulated white sugar and light brown sugar around. Look for brands that specify they are pure cane sugar. If you’re going for a third one, I’d opt for a raw turbinado or demerara. Honey is good to have unless you often cook for vegans, and real maple syrup makes pancakes so much better (I opt for the darker grade B variety). If you get more adventurous with sweeteners, you can look for agave nectar, molasses, piloncillo, palm sugar, muscovado, dark brown sugar, vanilla infused sugars and so on.
• Dried fruits. I like to keep raisins around. Add them to oatmeal, or saute them with garlic and pine nuts and spinach for a lovely Spanish side. I tend to keep some kind of dried cherries or cranberries around, and maybe apricots. They keep for a long time.
• Nuts. More and more, I’m convinced that nuts are underutilized in most American kitchens. Pine nuts give a richness to pesto. Almonds or hazelnuts to romesco. Walnuts and pecans can give salads a pleasing crunch. And that’s before you even get to baked goods like pecan sandies or frangipane tarts. I’m also convinced that many people think they don’t like certain nuts because they had one that was rancid and bitter because it seems we’ve only just realized that they should be stored in the freezer. So please, store your nuts in the freezer, and toast them before you use them to bring out their flavor.

Welcome Dallas Morning News readers. If you were looking for a scoop of yellow watermelon sorbet, look no further.

My original post with the recipe can be found here.

The farmers markets have started back up again, it is late spring in Chicago. It is warm (mostly). And there are green things sprouting from the ground.

Although the magazines feature asparagus in April, the local stuff never shows up here until late May. It is still the early part of the growing season. A time for green garlic and radishes and rhubarb. About that rhubarb…

I was lucky enough to have special delivery of rhubarb from my parents’ garden when my brother was here a few weeks back. It made a lovely filling for an almond topped crisp. But I don’t have a picture. Or a recipe really. It was one of those toss-together-some-butter-and-sugar-and-ground-almonds-and-cornmeal-and-bake-for-awhile kind of things. And it was good and homey and comforting, but there are thousands of rhubarb crisp recipes that will get you, more or less, to the same place.

I have some more rhubarb waiting in the refrigerator. I have a few ideas for it, but I haven’t quite gotten to it and it’s been waiting for more than a week now. So we’ll see. I don’t have anything to share with you just yet. But I’m itching to get back to taking photographs and chronicling the ways that food intersects with my life.

But I’m busy just now.

Things are changing. I am getting ready to move.  There are boxes sitting in my apartment, waiting expectantly to be filled. There will be so much gathering and sorting and cleaning and unpacking and resituating in the next couple of weeks.

When the dust settles, I’ll be back here. Just give me a little time.

Some parts of cooking require experience and skill–being able to dice an onion in fifteen seconds, knowing that the bread dough needs another dribble of water, recognizing that the butter has been worked into the pie crust just enough, seeing that if you turn off the burner now the cast iron pan will cook those potatoes to crispy perfection without burning them or wasting energy. The way to get better at these things is to practice.

But while practice requires much time and energy, there are few things that can make cooking easier that only require forethought. It’s all too easy to skimp on that, which can make preparing a simple meal stressful and chaotic.

I feel like these are simple, but they really are the ways that I started moving beyond being a competent cook to being a rather more confident cook. Sure, you can do what I used to do: glance at an ingredient list and dive in, and it’ll work most of the time, but really, like 10 minutes of reading and prep work can save you headaches later on.

Here are my favorite bits of advice (when I follow them, cooking is easier).

• If you are working from a recipe, READ THE WHOLE THING FIRST. Really, before you go shopping for ingredients, before you preheat the oven or put a pan on the stove, figure out what you’re getting yourself into. This will give you a good mental snapshot of what you need to have on hand. It will let you know what equipment you need, like, say a 9-inch cake pan or a 6-quart stock pot or a candy thermometer. It might even prevent you from having to send your boyfriend out for a large slotted spoon while your water is boiling and your bagels are sitting there over-rising because you didn’t really think about how you were going to get them out of the pot. It will let you know that this whole process takes two days or three hours and if you were planning on eating before midnight, you might want to save this for Saturday. It will let you know that you need to divide the butter into three different parts even though the ingredient list doesn’t mention that, and it could save you from adding all of it to the batter leaving you none for the filling. It will let you know that you need to have the mushrooms chopped and ready to go instead of leaving you digging in the back of the refrigerator for them while the garlic is burning. It will tell you that you need the sauce ready before you cook the pasta. Recipes contain all sorts of great information like that.

• Prep all the ingredients before you start cooking. In the culinary world this is known as mise en place. You know how on cooking shows they have all those little bowls with the ingredients pre-measured and diced or chopped and ready to go so they can just add it when they need it? That isn’t just for TV, chefs really do that. You don’t need matching little bowls, but if you dice your onions and peel and chop your carrots ahead of time and maybe leave them in little piles on the cutting board wherever you can reach them, your life will be easier. If you’ve read your recipe, you’ll know what needs to be done. It isn’t just chopping. It can be melting butter or separating eggs or putting the wine within reach for easy deglazing. The idea is get everything organized so that you can find it when you need it. You can do this to a greater or lesser degree. If you want to measure out a half-teaspoon of salt and put it in a little bowl to have ready you can do that, or you can just keep the salt handy so that you can add a pinch and taste everything and adjust.

• If you have a little extra time, read up on technique or food science or on classic flavor combinations. My favorite cookbooks tend to offer more than just good recipes. Those pages in the front and in the back that it’s so easy to skip past? They can be the best part. They might give you advice on the author’s favorite tools (a microplane for zesting, a bobby pin stuck into a wine cork for pitting cherries). They might give you a basic vinaigrette that you can use on anything. They might tell you how to fix a broken emulsion or which brand of canned tomatoes they reach for in the grocery store (Muir Glen). They might tell you how to pick a good melon (look for the ones with the most netting and the best fragrance). They might have a few ideas about how to handle a wet bread dough without having the whole thing stick to your hands (either coat your hands in flour or wet them before touching the dough). These are the sort of things that help to prepare you for future cooking projects, that help you shop more effectively, that give you ideas about how to improvise successfully.

We’ve had a bit of a cold snap around these parts. A little autumnal chill that hints at the jacket weather to come. The kind of weather that begs for closing up windows and putting on warm socks.

Of course, yesterday it was too warm for long sleeves, and even though there was apple pie and roasted squash, it was clear that fall has only been teasing us and has yet to be reliably here.

In the midst of this fitful seasonal hot and cold, there are still odds and ends of summer to use up. And this is something you need to know how to make if you have a few odd tomatoes lying around waiting to be put to good use.

It’s so easy it’s hardly even a recipe. It was invented by those thrifty Tuscans who were always looking for ways to use up old bread (their saltless pane Toscano seems to have left them with an overabundant supply of the stuff).

Panzanella is the sort of dish everyone should have in their back pockets, ready to pull out and assemble in hungry moments. It sounds too simple to be so incredibly delicious. But it isn’t. Really.

It’s another take on the familiar combination of tomatoes and starch so popular in spaghetti and pizza and bruschetta, and it can hold its own against any of them. When I made it for the first time about a year ago, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been eating it forever. Just crusty bread, tomatoes, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and basil. And some good salt and a few cracks of black pepper. And you have a dinner to devour. Really.

Panzanella, or Tuscan Tomato Bread Salad

This is a dish with so many variations. Some versions add slices of cucumbers or onions or olives, some use red wine vinegar instead of the balsamic I use here. The traditional method seems to be to soak pieces of day-old bread in water, but I prefer the depth of flavor and complex texture that toasted bread brings to the dish, especially since I usually make this with fresh bread that needs to be a little dried out to soak up the oil and vinegar and tomato juices. If I’m feeling decadent, I sometimes add some fresh mozzarella. Feel free to experiment, but do use a good artisan loaf of bread and the best tomatoes you can find. I’ve given rough amounts here for one person for a main dish, multiply as you see fit.

1 medium tomato per person, sliced into bite-sized pieces
2-3 thick slices of crusty bread, cut into rough 1-2 inch cubes
1 clove of garlic, peeled and smashed with the flat side of a knife
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
3 teaspoons good quality extra virgin olive oil (plus an optional smidge of any old olive oil)
a few big leaves of fresh basil
kosher or sea salt
freshly cracked black pepper

In a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat add a smidgen of olive oil (optional) and add the garlic clove and the bread cubes and toast until the bread gets golden on a few sides. Stir and toss the bread cubes and garlic occasionally and watch to be careful that they don’t burn. This should only take a few minutes. Add the bread and garlic to a medium bowl. Add the tomatoes and the olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Tear up the basil and add it to the bowl. Add a pinch of salt and a few good cracks of black pepper. Give everything a stir and let it sit for about 10-15 minutes. Give it a stir again. (You can pull out the garlic clove if you like. Its flavor should have rubbed off on everything.) And eat–either straight from the bowl or on a plate if you can wait that long.

Yields one main course serving. (Easily multiplied.)

I don’t do well in the heat. On days when the mercury pushes 90 degrees F I wilt. I can go for weeks without cooking anything substantial. I drink big glasses of lemonade mixed with iced tea. I stick my head in the freezer in search of some refreshing sorbet. I sip on gins and tonics with generous slices of lime. I survive on simple sandwiches, on tortillas smeared with pinto bean dip sprinkled with cheese and warmed in the toaster oven, on bags of prewashed sugar snap peas and baby carrots. If I’m feeling fancy, I might snag a nice hunk of multi grain baguette topped with a slice of tomato with a drizzle of good olive oil and a pinch of sea salt, but I’m usually too heat addled to even think of something that sophisticated.

It is nice then, to find a few days of reprieve, when turning on the oven doesn’t sound like punishment and when I can roast some beets and bake some polenta and sit down to a dinner that feels worth eating at the table, slowly, with pleasure.

It is only in the last few years that I have learned to appreciate beets. They have such a pleasing density, such an unusual intensity of hue. I find that their earthy sweetness plays well with bright citrus flavors as well as with pungent and creamy cheeses like the gorgonzola in this salad.

It takes just enough time and effort to make it feel like you went to some trouble, but not enough to overwhelm you. Just enough to convince you that it might be time to make friends with the kitchen again.

Roasted Beet and Gorgonzola Salad

With its deep red beets and striated blue cheese set against a bed of greens, this salad is a stunner. It can withstand all sorts of modifications. Use any greens you like or have on hand. I used a mix of baby greens, but spinach or escarole or arugula or a crisp leaf lettuce would be fine. If caramelizing the onions and mushrooms feels like too much, leave them out or toss on some green onion or some fresh herbs at the end instead.

1 bunch beets (about 4 medium)
1/4 cup gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
1/2 small onion, sliced
a small handful of mushrooms, sliced
3 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted
a big handful of greens, washed
balsamic vinegar
good extra virgin olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Wash the beets and trim off the stem and root ends. Rub the beets with olive oil, wrap in aluminum foil, and roast until they give a little when squeezed or prodded with a fork, about 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a heavy bottomed skillet over medium-low heat, saute onions and mushrooms in a little olive oil until the onions are caramelized and the mushrooms are deep brown, about 20 minutes. You don’t have to stand over these, just check on them every five minutes or so to make sure they aren’t burning and to give them a little stir. Set aside.

When the beets are done roasting, rinse them under cool water and slip off the skins. If the skins are stubborn, remove them with a peeler or a paring knife, but be careful–those beets are still really warm inside. Cut the beets into thick slices.

Pile the greens on a plate and drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar (toss with your hands to give the leaves a light all-over coating). Add the caramelized onions and mushrooms and slice beets. Sprinkle with pine nuts and gorgonzola. Add another drizzle of olive oil and vinegar and a pinch of sea salt. Eat.

Yields two light main course servings or four side servings.