TheKitchenSinkRecipes.com

I had something of a wheat thin addiction in college.  For an entire summer, I am fairly certain I went to the grocery store almost exclusively for those yellow boxes and, well, beer.  I’m not proud.  But, for the record, we did throw at least a few backyard barbecues and I remember making a fresh salsa (wondering how the heck one removed the little leaves of cilantro from the stems) and helping my friend Louie make ribs (on a industrial size charcoal grill he’d “borrowed” from his fraternity).  But, back to the wheat thins.

After college, I became intrigued by all the letters on those wheat thin boxes.  And I’m not talking about n-a-b-i-s-c-o.  I’m talking about the quadruple-plus-syllabled-words in the ingredients list.  I investigated, became icked out and quit wheat thins cold turkey.  I miss those salty, crunchy little squares more than I care to admit.

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I have a go-to savory biscotti recipe and you’ll just have to believe that I’ve been feeling bad for quite some time that I haven’t told you about it yet. But, it’d been blogged about elsewhere and, well, I never got around to it. But I can more than make up for it with these delightful biscotti, which are also savory and happen to be loaded with aged gouda and studded with bits of walnuts. After one batch, they have displaced my previous go-to and I can tell already that they’ll grace many book club meetings and cocktail parties in my future.

They are compact and crunchy and golden, which is to say nothing of their incredible flavor: full, warm and toasted. The flavor was awfully comforting and hauntingly familiar and, after thoughtfully munching on more biscotti than I care to share, I finally put my finger on what they reminded me of. Cheez-its. And I mean that in the very best way possible. It’s also the first biscotti recipe I’ve seen that calls for yeast—an addition I initially questioned, but ultimately praised once I tried the crisp exterior and softer middle that it created. But all this said, I could hardly care less about this recipe right now. And I’ll tell you why …

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When I first discovered food blogs last fall (Where had I been! Oh, the years and years I lost), I felt like I’d found an entire long-lost limb of my family tree. My people. And they were out there in the Internets, just waiting for me. I promptly started devouring a few favorites, voraciously working my way through archives and eagerly awaiting the arrival of new posts in my Google Reader. Best of all, I felt inspired to cook and bake the recipes I was reading about—even more inspired than I am by magazine articles, cookbooks and TV shows (which is really saying something). One of the first blog recipes I made was this one: a Butternut Squash & Caramelized Onion Galette, created by Smitten Kitchen‘s Deb (who happened to be on Martha Stewart this week!).

I made the galette last fall when my parents were in Chicago to visit my sister, Kevin and me. It was a perfect fall weekend—brilliant blue skies, a warm breeze, sunlight twinkling off the trees’ golden, orange-y fronds. Best of all my family was all together and they were indulging me by letting me cook for them one of the nights. I made this tart as our appetizer. The recipe was so easy to follow, so fun to make, so gorgeous to gaze at, and so completely delicious to eat, I immediately declared it a keeper and myself an official Smitten Kitchen fan. And it’s around that time that I started toying around with the idea of creating a food blog myself.

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I know, I know. It was tomatoes yesterday and it’s tomatoes again today. But, it is August after all. And today’s recipe is actually quite different from yesterday’s. Instead of the über-simple slice-and-salt method at the heart of yesterday’s sandwich, this recipe requires some elbow grease. But, trust me, it’s worth it. Here’s how it works. First, take a gaggle of romas (bonus points for multiple colors) and halve them. Using a melon baller (or a grapefruit spoon or regular old spoon) scoop out the insides and gently tap out any excess liquid in the tomato:

But, don’t forget to save those insides! Roast them up in a baking dish with a drizzle of olive oil, some salt and red pepper flakes. Pour the whole melty result into a blender or food processor and whir until you’ve got yourself a very tasty marinara. I speak from experience.

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The weekend before the Exam That Shall Not be Mentioned Again, I maybekindasorta kicked Kevin out.  He’d been looking for a good time to take a trip to D.C., where we lived for two years after college, to visit our friend Seth and I more-than-gently suggested that weekend.  But before you start to feel sorry for him (he’s a very sympathetic figure, that one … especially when his wife is kicking him not just out of the house but out of the state too), you should know two things.  First, I would’ve made awful company that weekend (for a quick mental image: there was a lot of pacing around, reading flashcards out loud; not exactly an ideal Saturday).  Second, I just ended up missing him all weekend and longing for D.C. too.

Which brings me to today’s recipe.  You see, while Kevin was in away, I couldn’t stop envisioning D.C.’s sultry summer air, the blocks we’d walked hundreds of times, the always-present political conversations, the pleasant hum of activity, and, of course, the restaurants we’d grown to love.  One of those was 2 Amys, an excellent pizzeria that served frisbee-sized Neopolitan pies, wine in small tumblers and also an appetizer called suppli al telefono (which are also called arancini or, even better, mozzarella-stuffed risotto balls). 

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Before the bar exam, I used to love the weekends. Looooove the weekends, I should say. Live for them, actually. A dinner out here, an hour on the couch there; a leisurely walk; plenty of grocery shopping and cooking and baking … and the list goes on. A mainstay of these kicked-back weekends is lunch. It generally involves a two-fisted-type of sandwich. Sometimes they’re from our very own kitchen: panini-ed in the grill pan, passed under the broiler or eaten cold. Other times they are retrieved from our wide selection of neighborhood sandwich shops. But they’re always delicious, and flanked by a generous pile of whatever potato chip I’m currently loving (at the moment: these).

These days, though, weekends just mean studying. More studying. And, while I can pull myself away for long enough to eat (believe you me), I can’t really justify a long walk to the sandwich shop or a trip to the market for sandwich ingredients. So we’ve been making do with whatever we have around. And I have to say, the lunches we’ve been cobbling together with pantry and fridge odds-and-ends have been wonderful. Stellar, even. I hardly even miss the sandwiches (except for Goddess & The Grocer‘s California Dreamin’; I definitely miss that one).

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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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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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As you are reading this, chances are that I’m in a airplane, making a beeline out over the Atlantic and straight toward Bermuda. As in Bahama, Come on Pretty Mama. And I could not be more thrilled. After a week of post-graduation nothing, I could really use a vacation. But, don’t you worry. As I spent yesterday gathering passports, packing and daydreaming about pastel colored buildings, pink sand beaches and Bermuda fish chowder, I also tied up some loose ends with this site. For instance, I couldn’t let the first Farmer’s Market Finds series of aught eight (after Part I and Part II) languish until we return next week. Because I’m sure you’re dying to learn just what we did with our green garlic and rhubarb. Well, good news: green garlic is coming your way today and the rhubarb will be quick on its heels.

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Really, I should just stick to the regularly-scheduled plan. The one where I daydream all week long about what I will make the following week. The one where I wake up hours before Kevin on Saturday morning to sketch out a final series of menus for the coming week and painstakingly compile grocery lists. The one where we traipse around town to various markets, me with a cup of coffee and Kevin at the wheel. But, alas, last week I couldn’t resist the allure of the Farmer’s Market.

And while meandering from stall to stall and selecting the most enticing produce was everything—everything—I hoped it would be, it had a serious drawback. It left me with ingredients I hadn’t planned on. No recipes. No menus. And perhaps most daunting of all: no lists. So I ended up nervously glancing at my Farmer’s Market bounty, paralyzed by fear. I had to select the best recipe, so as not to let my even one crimson stalk of rhubarb or one pungent shoot of green garlic go to waste.

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