Not Derby Pie

I think you’ll be happy to know that I’ve found a legitimately easy way to tame the most finicky of vegetables into submission. I’m talking about eggplant, of course. Eggplant is beautifully purple (or white with purple speckles!) until you cut into it, when it’s suddenly grey-brown. It’s thick and sturdy, until you start frying it, when it seems to soak up exactly as much oil as is in the pan, always with room for more. Then it suddenly turns to mush, and from there, there’s no going back. Yeah, eggplant is finicky. I said it.

I’m over here breaking a sweat about my ‘plants, but Yotam Ottolenghi is unfazed. From the gorgeous eggplant gracing the cover of his second book, Plenty, you’d never know the vegetable was the cause of such stress. The globes are perfectly browned, drizzled with sauce, and dappled with red gems of pomegranate. They’re practically begging you to stop whatever it is that you’re doing (probably ruining eggplant), and make them. So I did, and I did.

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When squash blossoms first come out in late spring, I go crazy with the hot oil. I fry them plain; I stuff and fry them; I even shred them, coat them in light batter, and fry them like chips. A couple weeks later, I come to my senses. There’s only so much fried food one person should eat, and I probably exceed my quota with squash blossoms alone. But then I stop buying blossoms altogether, unsure of what else I can do with them.

Last Sunday, the baskets of blossoms at Dupont were overflowing and not too expensive, so I picked up a couple, resolving to find a non-fry recipe in short order. Here’s a sentence I could write about so many things: Molly Wizenberg came to the rescue.

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First weekday lunch post in a while, and this one I’m sharing with gusto. I’ve eaten this salad on and off for two weeks. It’s a keeper, definitely going into the regular rotation. -r

I must confess, I’ve underestimated the potato.

I guess I thought they were just starchy orbs to be boiled or steamed or mashed or fried, then stuffed silly with butter or cheese. For most of my life, they’ve been vehicles for fat, salt, or sauce. And hey, I’m definitely not complaining about french fries or fluffy, buttery mashed taters. But as vegetables, I’ve never given them much thought.

A couple experiences over the past couple weeks have opened my eyes. One was when I took my grandma to Palena for the first time. Grandma loves good food (this you may know) and at Palena, that’s just what you get. (This you also may know.) Case in point: a salad of young potatoes – tiny, darling things – dressed simply with house mustard. And nothing else. Last year, you couldn’t have paid me to eat something called potato salad – let alone get me to pay for it. But lo, there the potato salad went. Straight down the craw. These potatoes – they were baby fingerlings – were yellow, soft, and creamy as can be. Also, they tasted fresh. There’s a word I never thought I’d use to describe a potato.

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Bittman says that spinach is a dish best served cooked, and who am I to disagree? I used to be very into raw spinach salads with strawberries, avocado, and sweet, sweet vinaigrette — you know the salad I’m talking about — but that feels very 90’s LA, or Upper West Side circa my college years. These days, it’s onward, upward, and into boiling water with my spinachy greens.

Last week, Bryce and I went to Toki Underground, again. (Brycie, think we count as regulars yet? Probably not. Lather, rinse, repeat. I need more ramen, stat.) Among the many treats buried in every bowl of ramen are these tightly rolled coils of spinach. You peel off layers of the spinach as you eat, sort of like ohitashi; they soak up the broth you’re slurping. It’s good fun.

I’ve been blanching and bunching spinach in all sorts of recipes lately. There’s loads of it at the markets, and while every time the huge bundle cooks down into a little blob I feel a bit deflated, even a small portion of the recipe I’m sharing today delivers a big punch.

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These are the precious few weeks when everything is in abundance. Normal people get really excited about this: they come home loaded with little yellow tomatoes, bright green beans, beautiful ears of bi-color corn, and – for the few days that they’re available – blackberries. Me? I get stressed. What if I can’t get enough tomatoes in jars to last me through the winter? What if my jam doesn’t seal properly? And so on.

Putting up produce has become a summer ritual, and one of which I’m quite proud. I love serving friends pasta with my homemade sauce. When I put out a plate of pickles, I’m happy that they’re mostly my own creations. And I love how peppers, cherries, and rhubarb from the summer markets find their way into everything from sriracha to vinegar to Manhattans, all in my kitchen. But getting this done adds a certain pressure to summer market trips, and once in a while, I’d like to just enjoy the market with no agenda at all.

So sometimes, when I feel the stress coming on, I toss out the agenda entirely. I head to the market in search of a few things that would make a great dinner tonight. Just tonight.

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I met my friend Robbie (hi, Rob!) when we spent the year in Israel together on a fellowship. I was 22 at the time, young and impressionable; he was 25, but he seemed so much older and wiser. He’d had jobs, lived in the big city, tasted life. He’d learned the challenges of living independently, the wonders of Greek food in Astoria, the secrets of dried fruit and nuts from Sahadi’s. I knew about Barnard, the Upper West Side, and college graduation speakers; Robbie knew everything else.

In Israel, Robbie and I bonded over amazing raw honey at the shuk, which we ate out of the jar by the spoonful without an ounce of shame. We became bonafide experts in hummus, learning the nuances of the different packaged brands and the mind-blowing freshness and flavor of the homemade stuff. We ran through the back streets of Jerusalem, passed long, summer days on the beaches of Tel Aviv and Ashkelon, and became residents of the wonderful neighborhood of Talpiot. It was a good year. It was a special, formative year.

That’s the year I realized I was serious about food. After our friend Naomi brought homemade granola on a trip, I started to obsess about what might have been in it, working methodically on my own recipe until it was just perfect. Robbie was good company to explore my new-found hobby. He had endless patience and curiosity for my home cooking. He was basically a vegetarian, primed to appreciate my mostly meatless diet. But perhaps most importantly, Robbie introduced me to Chowhound.

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There were fresh blueberries on the counter, sour cream – which I NEVER have – in the fridge, a brand new sack of flour in the flour jar, and just enough time after the gym and the market to whip up a batch of the most perfect blueberry muffins I’ve ever made.

Sometimes, the stars align.

When we went berry picking a few weeks ago, I came home loaded up with blueberries. Compared to sour cherries, which had me on a ladder in a tree, and strawberries, which got my knees grubby from all that squatting, blueberries were a cinch to pick. They were so sweet right off the tree, though, that it felt like a sin to do anything but eat them raw. I ate my way through 2 pounds in one week; my breakfast yogurt has never been better.

But some time passed, and finally, I was ready to bake.

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