TheKitchenSinkRecipes.com

Do you have recipes that have you convinced that the dish is healthy, virtuous, practically spa-worthy because it involves a certain ingredient? Because I’ve got tons of them. Come summer, the turkey burger is at the top of that list. Swap out the ground sirloin for ground turkey and, voila, you’re on a diet! Never mind the fact that the generous canopy of cheese, the giant bun and the smears of condiments remain. It’s a turkey burger: eat it with reckless abandon.

Teasing aside, I don’t just make these turkey burgers because they lessen the guilt. They also happen to be delicious. I’ve played around with the technique for a while (okay, fine, practically once a week, but who’s counting?) and I’ve come to a few conclusions. They are these: (1) do not overwork the meat; (2) add to the meat some minced onion or shallot as well as some flat-leaf parsley or cilantro, which will prevent the burgers from drying out; (3) account for shrinkage on the grill: shape your patties into rounds that are larger that the surface area of the buns you’re using; (4) cheese: use it, preferably a sharp or smoked cheddar.

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I adore recipes. I’m sure, given the 200-odd recipe-driven posts that have preceded this one, that this is not exactly an earth-shattering announcement. But I really love them. I love to read them: glancing through the ingredients, composing mental grocery lists; visualizing my way through the instructions; imagining the flavors in the finished product. I’ve come to love writing them too: making little notes and tips on butter-stained, sugar-dusted scraps of paper as I go along.

But, most of all, I love to follow recipes. There’s something incredibly satisfying about assembling a list of ingredients and following a firm set of instructions, confident that the equation you’re following will yield a delicious result. It’s the same (nerdy) reason I liked algebra growing up: plug in the variables and you’ll get the right answer.

So, recipes usually suit my concrete-sequential (some might even say “uptight” … “obsessive compulsive” … “anal retentive“) side. For the bar exam (a mere fortnight away, people!!!), this approach is pretty much essential: know the legal rule, apply it and bingo! you’ll get the right answer. But when you spend hour after hour every day doing just this, even the algebra lover in you (you know s/he’s in there!) grows a little tired of it. So much so that I’ve been shrugging off recipes in the kitchen with wild abandon. And to the recipes I have relied on, I’ve re-arranged and edited and made-over. I’ve been downright reckless, I tell you.

Take this tomato salad, for instance. Late last Friday afternoon, about T minus 2 hours from our pre-concert picnic, I decided we needed a little salad of sorts to tuck into our picnic basket. A quick rummage through the fridge revealed a half-pint of grape tomatoes, a nub of red onion and a couple stray basil leaves. I oiled up the tomatoes and slid them, salt and peppered, into the oven. While they roasted, I sliced the basil and onion into thin ribbons. Once the tomatoes were hissing and popping, I pulled them out and, while they were still piping hot, drizzled them with a stream of balsamic vinegar. Next, I added the onion and basil, along with a generous pinch of coarse sea salt.

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Today’s recipe is essentially this: take some summer, slip it between two tortillas, toss in some cheese to meld it all together, and give the whole thing a spin on the grill. In this case, “summer” is grilled sweet corn kernels, strands of zucchini, and wisps of basil. The meld-y cheese, or “glue” if you will, is shredded monterey jack and smears of goat cheese. Topped off with the grill’s pretty criss-cross imprint and accompanied by the last of our roasted tomato salsa and a dollop of sour cream, it was a lovely starter to dinner with Kevin’s sister, Abby, on Sunday night. Dinner, I should note, was eaten on the deck in the glow of the sunset and the dusk of an absolutely perfect day. Yes, these are definitely summer quesadillas.

The end result is one of the best new flavor combinations I’ve stumbled upon this summer. I could see the same zucchini-corn-goat cheese-and-basil components tossed with salad greens, atop crostini as a midsummer bruschetta, or stirred into quinoa or farro, along with a simple vinaigrette. I have Bobby Flay to thank for the ingredient combination; I got them from a quesadilla recipe in his Mesa Grill Cookbook. I couldn’t get the recipe out of my head, even after returning the cookbook to the library. So I did my best to recreate it and, boy, am I glad for it.

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On Friday night, we went to a fundraiser concert near Lincoln Park. It was an earlyish show, so we decided to meet in the park—Kevin coming from work and me emerging from the haze of studying in which I now live—to precede the show with a picnic. We found a shady patch of clover-filled grass, looking to escape the 90-degree heat, and set up shop, smoothing out a thin blanket and unpacking our picnic basket (actually, a picnic shopping bag, but who cares).

We dined on sandwiches (thin baguettes, split lengthwise, jaws stuffed with roasted vegetables and goat cheese, in my case, and soppresata and mozzarella in Kevin’s case), a vinegary tomato salad, some potato chips dusted with sea salt and black pepper, and a few wedges of watermelon. And, if you must know, we also sipped on a tasty beverage: San Pellegrino Limonada mixed with a glug or three of vodka, all poured into a thermos (actually, an empty Perrier bottle, but who cares; as you can see: we were going for disposable).

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One of my favorite things about Chicagoans is that they (we) take summer very seriously. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, I challenge you to find empty tables in a beer garden, free patches of sand at North Avenue Beach, Lake Michigan’s blue expanse undotted with sails, or ice cream parlors without lines out the door. It just won’t happen, as long as the sun is shining. When winter is so vicious and summer is so fleeting, Chicagoans understand that you really have to get your bang for your buck.

Chicagoans take other things seriously too: baseball, neighborhood pride, and the predictable foods like hot dogs, pizza and Italian beef (a healthy lot, we are). But you might not know that there’s another culinary subject about which Chicagoans, at least in the neighborhoods I’ve lived in, are very serious: breakfast. Every weekend morning, then, is greeted with an enticing set of choices: unfurl cinnamon rolls at Ann Sather, much on Milk Duds while you wait in line at Lou Mitchells, take your omelet with a side of sliced tomatoes at Tempo, wait forever for your famous apple pancake at Walker Bros., or order your breakfast in, shall we say, liquid form (I suppose there are vegetables in bloody marys, right?) at any number of neighborhood bars?

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I hope I’m not the only one suffering from an affliction I like to call PPS: pretty produce syndrome. Here, let me describe the symptoms and maybe they will ring a few bells. It kicks in when you are roaming the aisles of your grocery store. As you leisurely amble through the produce section, scanning the displays and sipping at your coffee, it hits. You see a pyramid of luscious, promising and, yes, pretty produce. And it’s all you can do not to grab the nearest piece of fruit in the pyramid, recklessly inviting the risk of a fruit avalanche. You know that it’s not exactly peach season yet. You know that the peaches you pile into your cart will in all likelihood disappoint you: too firm, mealy, sadly odor-free, flat. But you just can’t help yourself.

So the next thing you know, you find yourself in your kitchen feeling chagrined (I will try to eat more seasonally and locally, I will try to eat more seasonally and locally …) and, inevitably, disappointed. Because even though you were ready for the peaches, they just weren’t ready for you.

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This chocolate-zucchini bread—something I’ve been wanting to try (both baking and, I’m kind of nervous to admit in a place like this, tasting) for quite some time—has a bit of an identity crisis. It’s not sure if it’s a loaf cake or a quick bread, for one. And then there’s the matter of whether it qualifies as breakfast, despite its strong measure of chocolate. But can you really call it dessert, when it’s shot through with tendrils of zucchini? Also, it’s homey and humble looking, but it’s flavor is complex. And, perhaps best of all, it looks and tastes like a decadent indulgence, but the recipe calls for not even one pat of butter.

And you know, this identity crisis just gives me one more reason to love this bread. Because I kind of feel its pain. I’m in a weird gap right now: done with school, but studying (for the bar exam) harder than ever; graduated from law school but months from my start date at the law firm; wishing summer would last forever, but feeling quite sure that July 2008 will be one of the worst months of my life. So, me and this bread are kindred spirits, I suppose.

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I know it was only a long weekend ago that I was lamenting the (all too many) recipes that I made and posted about long ago, whining that I wanted to post and post and post again about my favorite recipes. But there is a very big upshot that I failed to mention. In fear that the powers-that-be will revoke my glass-half-full badge, I think it’s best to mention the bright side now. And that is, of course, that this blog has inspired (or perhaps “forced” or “cajoled,” but let’s stick with the more positive “inspired”) me to push past my culinary comfort zone, leaving the recipes I can make with my eyes closed in my wake.

There are times, though, when I need a middle ground—when I don’t want to rely on my old standbys, but I don’t want to be beholden to a recipe either. Today’s salsa fits snugly in that middle ground. It’s a variation on the salsa that I’ve made a bajillion times: a make-over, if you will. Instead of combining raw tomatoes, garlic and peppers as usual, I’ve roasted them here, which deepens their flavors and, in this case, compensated for the rather sad roma tomatoes I was stuck with. And then, instead of chopping the veggies, I briefly whizzed them in the food processor.

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These hand pies were a matter of atonement. You see, on the fourth of July, Kevin and I had a barbecue for a couple friends, so we could all watch the fireworks from our rooftop. The fireworks were the main attraction, for sure, but there was food too: a spread of salsas, guacamole, fajitas and the like. Not exactly all-American. Feeling decidedly unpatriotic about this state of culinary affairs, I knew I had to atone the next night when the same crowd reassembled for another BBQ at our friends’ new place

Thus, I offered to bring hand pies. Because not only are pies as American as … um, right. But I was also planning to fill the pate brisee rounds (white!) with strawberries (red!) and blueberries (blue!). When I made this offering to Maggie, our hostess, I explained that they’d be kinda like those pie things at McDonalds, just not gross. Or empanada-ish, but sweet, rather than savory. She was sold.

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Whoops! A milestone came and went this week and I didn’t stop to notice. Wednesday’s panzanella was my 200th post! I’m the sentimental type who likes to use opportunities like this for a little reflection. Indulge me? It is a holiday (Happy 4th!), after all. First, some photos of the recipes I’m proudest to have conquered during the last 100 posts: whole wheat pita (sooo cool; you must try it); jam (so easy; who knew?); profiteroles (to finish off a dinner party for 15; yes, you read right: 15); and bagels (again: sooo cool; you must try it):

Okay, enough about me. On to you and this three-day weekend we’ve all just embarked on. I’m sure many of you already have menus planned for the holiday, but for those of you who don’t, let’s play a little choose your own adventure. It works like this: choose one option from each of the next three sets of photos (mains; sides; sweets), all pulled from the archives of the last 100 posts, and you’ve got yourself a BBQ. BYO fireworks.

First, the main dishes, all carnivorous (for the vegetarians, skip down a category!)—sandwiches (steak & blue cheese; brisket & cheddar; turkey meatball; grilled chicken); fun with beer (beer can chicken; beer boiled chicken brats); and grill love (grilled pizza; bourbon-glazed ribs):

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