Some days. You know the ones. Nothing plays out as you intended. Plans are broken, objectives lost. Your to-do list doesn’t have any checks in the margin and the later it gets, the less likely it seems that you’re actually going to get around to making dinner. But, dang-it, dinner was the thing on that list you wanted to make time for.
These are the days you need a dish like this salmon in your arsenal. You need to be able to just throw a bunch of ingredients together, toss them in the oven, and be treated to a great dinner half an hour later. A 1-pan situation is critical–you certainly don’t want to end the night with a stack of dishes or start tomorrow with a hideous wreck of a kitchen–and it’s got to be healthy because even though you had the best intentions, that jog you were planning on just did not get checked off the list.
This salmon is just the dinner to cap these sorts of days. It’s nothing but good-for-you fish, slow roasted on a big mound of escarole with briny capers and fresh bursts of lemon. Thanks to the magic of roasting at a low temperature, the fish stays beautifully moist. The greens wilt down with a few crispy bits here and there. It’s the kind of dinner you can get in the oven with 2 minutes of prep, then have 30 minutes to tear around the house, trying to make good on the to-do list…or enough time to decompress with a glass of wine. Take your pick.
My Sunday got off to such a promising start. I rolled out of bed at a leisurely hour, made coffee, and whipped up this frittata. Matt and I made plans to spend the day playing tourists in our own town and checking out a museum. Little did I know we’d get a ride home from our fun little date in a tow truck and our “cheap” outing would end with a 4 figure bill. Oh well, at least the day started on the right foot.
When I was 20, I spent a semester in Florence, Italy. I arrived a fairly committed vegetarian but within a week or 2, there I was, debating the merits of Prosciutto di Parma versus Prosciutto di San Daniele at the market, working up the nerve to try a tripe sandwich, and being schooled on how to chop chicken livers with a mezzaluna to make the ubiquitous crostini toscani. Needless to say, it was an exciting time in my life.
One of the joys of writing a blog is having an online record of how often I contradict myself. Last week, I stood up here on my soapbox and 
Just writing the title of this post, I feel like a maniac. How on earth do you even punctuate such a cookie concoction?