Tag Archives: goat cheese

Roasted pepper and tomato tart with almond-hazelnut crust

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Pepper and tomato tart with hazelnut almond crust

Pepper and tomato tart with hazelnut almond crust

I fell asleep while watching cave of forgotten dreams. I regret it, of course, but at the time I was powerless against the great wave of sleepiness. I’d worked all day, and we’d been busy, and the film is so quiet and dreamy, Herzog’s narration so sweet and sleepy…well, that’s my excuse. I didn’t miss much, I didn’t sleep for very long. In a way, though, it seems perfect to have fallen asleep during this film, this beautiful film. It’s as though the film itself became a part of my dreams, dreams I will never forget because they’re marked on stone and captured on film. The movie has a sort of dream-like logic to it that I love: When faced with something that you don’t understand, follow it farther and deeper than you would have thought possible. Even as you’re exploring, and you realize that you will never understand, you keep looking, because the mystery itself is so beautiful. As circus performer-turned-archaeologist Julen Monney tells us, “it’s a way to understand things which is not a direct way.” This is exactly what I love. I love the idea of looking at something from the side, or from some angle we can’t even imagine. Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a small glimpse into the Chauvet Cave in Southern France. These caverns contain the oldest cave paintings yet discovered, and they’re remarkable. They show bears and lions and rhinoceros and jaguars, creatures you can’t imagine living in the South of France. The pictures are layered one upon another in a marvelous design. The paintings are beautifully rendered, stylized but so well-observed you believe whoever painted them must have spent hours watching the animals. Their faces are wise and almost sweet, or so it seemed to me. They’re almost all in profile, except for one bison who looks right at you. Some are surrounded by layers of rippling silhouette as if to show movement. There are no paintings of human figures, and no human bones were found in the cave. The only sign that these marks were made by humans is a wall of palm prints, made by distinct individuals, and a footprint made by an eight-year-old boy. The boy’s footprint is next to that of a wolf, and we’ll never know if they were friends or prey. I think I must have fallen asleep through the part of the film in which they discuss the humans of the time in greater detail. I have glimpses of memory of this. But I’m almost glad to have missed this part, because to me a huge part of the wonderful power of the paintings is that they seem deeper than human achievement or understanding. Julien Monney went down in the cave for five days, and then he decided not to go down any more. He said it was too moving, too powerful. Every night he was dreaming of lions–real lions and painted lions. He wasn’t scared of them, but he had a feeling of powerful things and deep things. He said that we need to find a way to look at the cave paintings. Where would he start to look for this new way of looking? Everywhere. He tells the story of an archaeologist in Australia traveling with an aboriginal guide. They came upon some cave paintings that were thousands of years old, and fading and crumbling. His guide started to touch up the paintings. The archaeologist asked him why he would do that, and he replied that he wasn’t doing it, he wasn’t painting, it was only the hand of the spirit. You have the feeling, when looking at the Chauvet paintings, that this is the only explanation for this beautiful series of pictures. They were painted in the same style, but hundreds of years apart. Cave bears have scratched at the walls below the pictures and across the pictures, as though they were trying to add to them, or to make them disappear. I’ve always believed that humans aren’t the center of everything, that there’s some spiritual force in the earth and the air that we can’t control or understand. Maybe the animals understand it better than we do because they’re not always making noise like we are. In a strange way these cave paintings seem to reinforce these ideas. Whatever was captured in the cavern, we were part of it, but not the only part, not the most important part. And Herzog ends with shots of a nuclear power plant near the caves, and he tells us that in Lascaux, mildew formed by the breath of tourists caused the paintings to deteriorate. It gives you a powerful feeling that we have to stop destroying things, stop making noise, stop taking things apart in order to understand them. We have to keep silent, and watch and listen and feel.
Roasted pepper tart with tomatoes, olives, and hazelnuts

Roasted pepper tart with tomatoes, olives, and hazelnuts

This tart was loosely inspired by romesco sauce. The hazelnuts, almonds and smoked paprika are in the crust, and the garlic, roasted peppers and tomatoes are in the filling. And all the flavors blend nicely together. I also added some different kinds of cheese–goat cheese and smoked gouda, and some olives and capers for briny goodness.

Here are some songs from the soundtrack of Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It’s very haunting!

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Goat cheese tart with roasted eggplant, olives, and a lemon-semolina crust

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Goat cheese tart with eggplant and olives

Goat cheese tart with eggplant and olives

It’s Saturday storytelling time! It’s summer sporadic schedule Saturday storytelling time!! As I’m sure you’ll recall, each Saturday we post a found photograph, a vernacular picture, and we write a story about it, and invite everyone else to write one, too. And then, in theory, we all read each others’ stories and offer wise editorial advice. Today’s picture is lovely, I think. It has layers. And here it is… Send me your story and I’ll print it here, with mine after the jump, or send me a link to share, if you have somewhere of your own to post it.
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eggplant-olive-tartIt’s a summery tart! The eggplant is from the farm, of course, which means it’s really really the middle of summer. This whole tart is quite light and fresh-flavored, I think. The crust has semolina in it, which makes it extremely crispy, and it has lemon in it, which makes it bright. I think olives, eggplant and goat cheese form a sort of perfect trinity of flavor. So there it is!

Here’s Up on the Roof by the Drifters

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Roasted grape tomato crostini, and penne with zucchini, spinach, olives, capers and almonds

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Roasted grape tomato crostini

Roasted grape tomato crostini

A while back I was standing in the kitchen at work waiting for food to run, and I chatted with the food runner, who was standing in the same place with the same intent. For some reason, I mentioned to her that you’re not supposed to be sarcastic in front of children because it confuses them. She laughed and said, “your kids must be confused all the time.” Well! This gave me pause. I hadn’t spoken often with the runner or even said much in her presence. How could she know about the sarcasm? Had my inner-sarcasm somehow seeped through the cracks of my professional and friendly demeanor? Because I don’t think you’re supposed to be sarcastic in front of bosses or customers either–they get confused, too. I started to think about what it means to be sarcastic in front of your children. It’s true that my boys get confused when you say something they know isn’t true. When Isaac walks into a room, don’t say, “Well, who are you? I’ve never met you before,” because he hates it as much as if your words could actually negate his existence. (Although apparently he’s allowed to say, “Mom, my right arm is attached to my left hand and my left hand is attached to my right arm, and both my arms are put on backwards!” and I’m supposed to take this alarming information all in stride.) Honestly, children ask a lot of questions. Sometimes you don’t know the answer, sometimes it’s too complicated, and sometimes it’s too dull, and like Calvin’s dad, you find yourself presenting a different version of the world. So when they ask you why the subway is so much hotter than the street, you might find yourself answering, “because it’s closer to the fiery earth’s core,” instead of the actual answer–that it’s the cumulative temperature of all the pee that’s been peed there, which can’t cool and evaporate so far under ground, because this is obviously too scientific an explanation for little minds. But surely this is just using your imagination to present an alternative view of the world, and surely the world is always shifting and mutable anyway, so that there are no constant and correct answers. Obviously, if your child is uncomfortable you abandon the joke, but most of the time they recognize a good story, and if nothing else, they learn to become very skeptical of everything they’re told, and that can’t be a bad thing. I did a little research on the subject of sarcasm and children. Apparently, you’re not supposed to be sarcastic at all, in front of anybody, ever, because it’s cruel and dishonest. Well! (again) this gave me even more pause, because I love sarcastic humor, but I abhor cruelty and dishonesty. Sarcasm comes from the Greek meaning to tear or cut the flesh, and I realize this does sound cruel, but like anything else in life, it’s how you use it. You can use sarcasm to be snarky and bullyish and make people feel bad about themselves, certainly. But why would you? You can also use sarcasm to cope with an unpleasant situation, to make fun of yourself, to express something that you’re not allowed to come out and say. It’s a coping mechanism, and it’s a tool I’d like my children to posses. I always admire people that can disarm a tense or nasty confrontation with a joke. At its most effective, sarcasm can demonstrate the absurdity of a predicament and help you to change it or wade through it. And, far from being dishonest, sarcasm, like all humor, is a way to speak truths that otherwise couldn’t be spoken, that wouldn’t be accepted in any other form. With sarcasm and irony you can turn the world on its head, and sometimes that needs to happen. So I’m not going to teach my boys that sarcasm is bad, I’m going to teach them that pettiness and cruelty are bad, however they’re expressed. And when they each inevitably develop a sarcastic sense of humor (they’re sarcastic on their father’s and mother’s side, so it’s only a matter of time), I’ll be glad to step back from the world with them, have a chuckle at the absurdity of it all, and forge back into life better prepared to shape it the way we like it.

Zucchini and spinach with olives and almonds

Zucchini and spinach with olives and almonds

I’m combining these two recipes because we ate them together, but they’d each be fine on their own. They’re both super-simple, so this is a nice summer meal. I roasted some grape tomatoes with olive oil, balsamic and herbs (use fresh if you have them!) and piled this on little toasts spread with goat cheese. That’s it! A nice combination of flavors, though. And then I made a stir fry of zucchini with spinach, capers, olives, and topped the whole thing with almonds. The boys ate it with pasta as a sort of pasta primavera and I ate it over greens as a sort of warm salad. Good either way!

Here’s Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers with Hyena Stomp. Need a laugh? This has plenty.
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Malcolm’s double decker tomato pie (with the surprise filling!!)

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Malcolm’s tomato pie

I talk a lot about Malcolm, so lets let him speak for himself, for once! This is a poem he wrote for class:

I Was—slow, an infant, a scooterer, funny, strange, a kindergartener, dumb, adventurous, curious.
I am—a climber, big and tall and strong, a brother, an athlete, a player of basketball, a free runner, a lover of nature, cool, rough and tumble.
But still—a question asker, a skateboarder, a vegetarian, a TV liker, a liker of junk, I won’t stop eating, a liker of toys, an inventor.

I love that! I love him! I’m so happy that he knows he’s strong, that he believes he’s cool and funny. And that he eats a lot! And since he won’t stop eating, I’m glad he helps me cook! I love when Malcolm describes something he wants to cook. He describes it with his hands – showing the exact dimensions and specifications. And he’s very sure about what he wants to make. He’s decisive, he’s decided. I’ll suggest something that might be easier or more traditional. And he’ll say, no, I want it like I just said! So that’s what we try to do. I fire questions at him, trying to establish the practical details, and he has an answer for everything.

Malcolm’s tomato pie

He wanted to make this tomato pie for days, and was disappointed each night at dinner when I forgot and made something else. So finally we made it. I had to work all day, so we started the dough in the morning, and just let it sit and rise all day long. It’s basically a pizza-dough crust. He wanted a double crusted pie, with “a quiche” inside – eggs blended with tomatoes and roasted peppers (and smoked paprika!). And on top of the top he wanted a layer of thinly sliced tomatoes and grated cheese. It turned out very good. Malcolm loved it, which is one of the nicest feelings in the world.

The secret filling!

I let Malcolm pick the song to go with this pie, and he picked Brianstorm, by the Arctic Monkeys.

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Beet carpaccio with warm goat cheese, pecans and sage

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Remember the Chekhov play The Three Sisters, in which one of the sisters longs to go to Moscow? It’s a theme! Well, here at The Ordinary, for the past few days, our Moscow has been the secret path that leads to the secret path on the other other side of the towpath. If you think I’ve mentioned it before, it’s because I have, and that’s because IT’S ALL I’VE HEARD ABOUT FOR DAYS NOW!! When will we go? Why can’t we go? Why shouldn’t we go just because a storm is raging around our house? On the very first day of summer vacation, way back in the glowing, hopeful, anticipatory month of June, Malcolm and I happened upon a small winding path that branched away from the towpath. He was ecstatic! We ran through it, leaping fallen logs, stooping under trees, racing through light and shadow. He’s wanted to return ever since, but with one thing and another, we’ve never made it back. Lately his yearning has reached a fever pitch, so today we braved spiders, ticks, stinging nettles, poison ivy, mosquitos and impending thunderstorms, and set out on our journey. (Who is an anxious mom? Who is?) It’s quite a long journey, as the Isaac walks, but it was worth it to see how happy the boys were. After a night of rain the ground was muddy, the leaves sodden and fragrant, the creeks fast-flowing. In June all the green things were small and pale and bright, but today they’re lush and dark and overtaking all the paths.

Secret path

Tree climbing

The way home

Malcolm looked for the spider sitting on a milk jug, that he’d seen in June, and was surprised to find the jug buried in weeds, and the spider gone. Isaac had heard of this milk jug! He was excited to see it. Isaac jumped off of a huge log, and said, “Mom, did I hop like a toad?” Yes, you did. “I toad-hopped it!” They climbed a tree in the strange wet palely glowing light, they hid in a hollow of vines and branches. Isaac asked about each thing Malcolm had described to him – the vine to swing on, the stump to jump off of, the dead tree to crawl under, and Isaac could never be disappointed by any thing that Malcolm showed him. The late-summer smell of wet steaming earth was all around us, and I can’t smell that lately without craving beets. I know that’s odd, but there it is!

Glowing beet

Funnily enough, we’d eaten this beet carpaccio the night before, and I’d remarked that prepared this way, beets didn’t taste like dirt. Huh? Asked Isaac (he’s a small boy, dirt is his medium). I’d replied that beets grow in dirt, so they taste like dirt, but in a pleasant way. In this carpaccio, however, they were juicy and sweet. This couldn’t be easier to make, and it’s very delicious. The boys loved it!! I love goat cheese with beets – sweet and juicy meets a bit of creamy tartness. The pecans added crunch, and the sage added depth.

beet carpaccio

And here’s Modest Mouse with So Much Beauty in Dirt.
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Goat cheese & caramelized onion tart with arugula & pine nuts

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Tall crust goat cheese and arugula tart

Some days feel like time-outs. If life is like a giant game of tag, and “it” is pursuing you relentlessly, and you’re giggling, breathless, with that small edge of real fear that tag-playing elicits, and you’re miles from base: sometimes you have to call time-out. The last couple of days have felt like that. Isaac and I have been on a team, and we’re taking a little time out together. He’s under the weather. Monday we spent a couple of useless hours at the doctors’ office, and I got antsy, and thought, “Dammit, I’ve got important things I need to be doing!” Yesterday he had a fever, and the whole house was hot as hell except for his air-conditioned room. He didn’t want to be alone, so I lay on his bed next to him, and thought, “Oh dear, I’ve got important things I need to be doing!” And then I realized that I really don’t. It’s an interesting fact about a time-out, that sometimes from this point of view you see the game more clearly – everybody else running around frantically, in a red-faced tizzy. As I lay there besides Isaac, with his hot little head touching mine, I realized that I don’t really have anything important to do. The realization was a little sobering, a little liberating. I was very tired, because I don’t sleep much when there’s a fever in the house, and for the moment it felt good to lie next to Isaac, and listen to him explain Isaac-y things to me in his sweet serious way. Their room is bright, with sea-green trim and pale curtains that hold the light. It felt a little like floating in cool water for a short while. And, of course, this little glowing ripple of a moment is the most important thing I need to be doing.

Tall crust tart

I’m always a little crazy when the boys aren’t feeling well. I don’t sleep much, I get that weird tired-nervous energy. It makes me want to bake! In the winter time I’ll bake cookies with the boys. It was, frankly, a little hot for baking yesterday, even for me! But I’d had this thought in my head for a while of a tart that would be fun to make and fun to eat. I’m very excited about this one! I think it turned out really well. Really perfect combination of tastes and textures. I’ll tell you all about it. It’s a peppery hazelnut crust, and it’s a very tall crispy crust. Inside of that, we have a thin layer of goat cheese custard with thyme and caramelized onions. Simple. The whole thing is served slightly warm and inside is a mess of cool, lightly dressed baby arugula with pine nuts and fresh tomatoes! It’s like a salad tart! Perfect for a hot day, cause you can make the whole thing in advance. I love goat cheese with arugula. I love hazelnuts with arugula. (If you don’t have pine nuts, you can use toasted chopped hazelnuts instead.) This is a nice thing to eat when you’re taking a time out. Be it a summer-day time out, or a stop-and-enjoy-your-nice-dinner-and-glass-of-wine time out.

Here’s Dave Brubeck’s Take Five.
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GInger beer-battered zucchini & artichoke fritters

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GInger beer-battered fritters

We had a family joke when I was growing up that whenever my brother was ill, my mom would make enchiladas. Delicious, yes, but maybe not an ideal comfort food. It probably only happened once or twice, but it became the stuff of family legend. Yesterday Isaac wasn’t feeling well, and I made these. Sigh. I thought it would be fun for him, because he likes food you can eat with your fingers and dip in sauce (as who doesn’t!). In my defense, his fever didn’t start till after dinner, but when you’re feverish, battered vegetables probably aren’t your first choice of meal. Malcolm loved them, though, and the dipping sauce they went out in (which had tamari, balsamic, lime, red pepper flakes, and basil.) I thought it would be fun to make a beer batter, but with ginger beer, because I LOVE GINGER BEER! I flavored the filling with a touch of ginger and lots of fresh basil, and added goat cheese for taste and texture. So, crispy on the outside, soft and melty inside, tasty and fun to eat.

A while back I wrote an essay on food, music, childhood, comfort, memory and the soul. I sent it around to a few places, but, strange to say, there’s not a huge market for essays about Proust, Memphis Minnie, and RZA! Who knew! Well, guess what, today we’re going to have a guest speaker in the form of my own self. Most if it will be after the jump, because the authoress goes on and on and on.

And here’s a short playlist of the songs mentioned.

The Taste of Memory

We all know about Proust’s Madeleine. After a dreary day, the prospect of a depressing morrow left the narrator dispirited, until one bite of Madeleine, dipped in tea, filled him with an overwhelming joy. The taste of the food, and the memory of childhood happiness acted as a powerful tonic. He describes taste and smell as souls, persistent, faithful, bearing the weight of the vast structure of recollection in their tiny, fragile essence. Most adults have probably experienced this – when you’re feeling unwell or depressed, you crave some food you ate when sick as a child. It’s not the food that makes you feel better, it’s the memory of being cared for, of a time when you were not isolated by your maturity, not relied on to make decisions, not expected to take care of yourself and protect others.

To be continued…. (the recipe is after the jump as well, just like it always is!)
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Beet & goat cheese roulade filled with greens and pinenuts

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Beet roulade

I’m feeling a little dull and blue today, for no reason whatsoever! It’s a funny thing about feeling blue, because it’s not really a bad feeling, as I use the term. It’s a contemplative, slightly melancholy feeling. But there are so many shades and moods of blue, and I love them all. Tintin blue is one of my absolute favorite colors – bight and clear. Bill Traylor’s high singing blue is exhilarating. Midnight blue is deep and mysterious. Indigo is dark and rich. Sky blue is light and floating. Flame blue is like a flickering soul or spirit. Vein blue is alive and poignant. Musically, the blues put you in a mood, but it’s not a depressed mood. A little sad, maybe, but joyful, too, just because they exist. To shake the dullness, I thought I’d post a few dancey scenes. Dancing always livens the party! There are so many good ones, and here are few of my favorites.

There are so many! I could go on and on and never stop! What are some of your favorite dance clips?

You know what else will cheer you up? A bright pink and green pinwheel! This roulade was very fun and easy to make, and tasted delicious! The roulade itself was like a big fat pancake (it’s actually closer to a flatter soufflé!). It was sweetish, because of the beetish, and a little tangy with goat cheese, and lovely and summery with thyme. The filling used the greens from the beets, in combination with some chard (you could use any green you like!) and was a nice savory contrast to the roulade. Pine nuts add a bit of smoky crunch. The nice thing about the roulade is that it’s very good at room temperature, so if you don’t want to heat your kitchen up before you eat (on a 100 degree day, say) – make this earlier in the day and set it aside till you’re ready! We had it with a no-cook sauce of tomatoes and avocados, chopped chunky-style, and tossed with olive oil, basil, and balsamic. Add a salad of crisp arugula and crunchy hazelnuts, lightly dressed with olive oil, sherry vinegar and some crumbled goat cheese, and you have a perfect summer meal!!

Here’s Jackie Mittoo and the Soul Vendors with Love is Blue.

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Trumpet mushrooms with chard, brie, and smoked gouda

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Trumpet mushrooms and chard

It’s hot as hell, they’re doing construction on the house attached to ours, which apparently requires loud bad radio and lots of cigarette smoking, and the boys are trying to knock all the plaster off the walls and yelling about how mean I am. I’m going to give myself a time out.

Last night we started watching a film by Yasujiro Ozu. He uses these beautiful still “pillow shots” between scenes. They’re shots down hallways, of empty rooms, along an alleyway. They’re not entirely static – the camera is still, but there’s movement of light, or of people walking by, clocks ticking, curtains blowing. You sense that the story is playing itself out somewhere nearby. The shots are so cool, so quiet but not silent. I find them incredibly compelling. I’m a huge fan of stillness in films, and quiet moments. Whether they last the whole film long, or they form a small pocket in a louder busier film. I wish the word “moment” wasn’t overused in precious greeting cards and knick knacks and self-help-speak, because it’s such a good word. A few years ago I submitted a series of short videos to an online gallery run by the remarkable Peter Ferko, a New York artist. The series was called Now:Here:This, and it involved art made in a moment (or a few moments) by people all over the world at roughly the same space in time. I started making short, static videos. I gave myself some rules…they had to last about a minute. I couldn’t change the frame. The sound would be whatever naturally occurred for that minute. I focused on leaves, or water, or shadows, even dirty dishes in the sink. The sound generally involved my children yelling for me and trying to get my attention, which was an idea that I liked a lot. It captured my life at the time (and to this day.) Children always want your attention most when you’re doing something else. When you’re on the phone, or making short videos, or writing about trumpet mushrooms on some stupid blog! I became very taken with making the videos – there was nothing brilliant about them, but I liked the way that shooting them made me think about how long a minute lasts, how hard it is to be quiet and still, how my life sounded, how pretty small things could be. And then Ozu went and stole the idea from me! I’d like to stop and look at my house, for moments at a time, from down a corridor, when nothing is happening. Of course it wouldn’t be quiet and clean and cool, like in Ozu’s films. It would be a warm messy muddle.

Segue! This meal is a sort of warm/cool combination. A warm salad, or a cool stir fry. I went to the Stockton market. I bought some trumpet mushrooms. They were ridiculously expensive. I felt a little foolish, clutching my brown paper bag of precious mushrooms. The meal turned out very tasty, though, so it’s okay, I think. I sauteed some chard with garlic, red pepper, castelvetrano olives and fresh basil. I mixed in some brie, smoked gouda, and goat cheese. (Three cheeses! So extravagant! They were very nice together, and gave the meal a warm, creamy, tangy smokiness that was lovely. But you could use what you have.) The mushrooms I sliced very thinly, and then sauteed in olive oil with fresh sage leaves. The mushrooms and sage leaves became nice and crispy. I said the mushrooms tasted like bacon, and David said…”better than bacon – like steak and bacon. Steakon!” The pine nuts added a lovely crunch. They always have a little bit of a smoky, bacony taste to me, too!! You could easily make this with portobellos, spinach, and whatever cheese you happen to have.

Trumpet mushrooms

Here’s Louis Armstrong with Tight Like This. Geddit? Trumpet mushrooms! Plus this remarkable piece is full of perfect moments.

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Zucchini fritters with goat cheese and pine nuts

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Zucchini Fritters

With a ringing of bells, a man entered our store. He was slim and elegant and quite dapper in an understated 60s Greenwich Village way. He wore some of the coolest sneakers I’ve seen in a while. He walked straight to me, without looking around, and he clutched something under his arm. My heart sank. We have more people come into our store trying to sell things than the other way around, sadly. I was late to meet someone, we can’t afford to buy anything at the moment – but he held a book of photographs, and I took the time to look. They were beautiful – black and white, quite dark in tone and mood. He explained that they were of Bosnia, his home country, during the 70s and 80s. I told him we weren’t in the financial position to buy anything, however much we liked it. He turned to leave, but halfway along, he stopped. He told me he loved the store. He said that “they” were trying to squash craft and art and creativity, but that a wave was coming that they couldn’t stop. He said it would wash right over the bunkers that they build out of all the crap that they make us watch and eat and read. He was very eloquent. He said we would be okay because of a good way of life (he rubbed his belly) and a pure soul (he put his hand on his heart). It was like a strange benediction. When he left I felt a slight trace of regret – that I didn’t have more time to talk to him, maybe, or that I couldn’t help him by buying his prints.

My favorite cooking utensil – the one I use for absolutely every meal I make, is a wooden stirrer-scraper that David made. It’s made from curly maple, and it’s the perfect combination of beauty and function. It’s long-handled, but the handle is tapered, so it doesn’t fall into your pot, or fall out of your pot and clatter in a big mess on the floor. Its straight beveled edge is absolutely perfect for scraping the bottom of the pan when you add white wine, to get all the lovely caramely tasty bits mixed into the sauce. I love that David made it, and that I use it to make meals for the family. I love that it takes on the colors of the food I cook, and that, as it does, its beautiful, rippled grain becomes more visible.

Of course I used it to make these zucchini fritters!! They’re fairly simple – crispy outside, soft in, melty with goat cheese and crunchy with pine nuts. (My god they’re good! I haven’t splurged on them in a while and I’d forgotten how delicious they are!!) The fritters are lightly flavored with fennel, lemon, and basil – summery! Malcolm invented the dipping sauce. We’d been eating salted limes, and he thought that if limes were good with salt, they’d be good with tamari. The sauce is full of flavor – ginger, garlic, lime, tamari and hot pepper. It’s unusual with the fritters, but really lovely. You could, of course, make any other sort of sauce you like with them.

Here’s The Specials with Too Hot, because it’s close to 100 degrees here, and we’re melting!
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