Grilled Peaches with Chèvre & Prosciutto

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Grilled Peaches with Chevre, Mixed Greens & ProsciuttoNormally, I’m pretty worthless when I’m super hungry.  I get irritable and irrational.  I’ll yell, I’ll whine, I’ll pout, I may even cry.  Yes, toddler-style.  What can I say?  It’s not my best trait.

Once in a while, though, I’ll surprise myself (and my boyfriend) by behaving like a big girl long enough to push past the hunger and throw something together that makes everything okay.  I’ll see the one last peach perched on the counter, the nub of goat cheese in the fridge, and remember the garden full of lettuce and herbs.  Suddenly, I realize the crisis can be averted–I can make something out of this!  15 minutes later, I’ll be backing myself out of the crazy-losing-my-mind-from-hunger zone, and congratulating myself on turning a bad situation into a delicious one.  Then I’ll get so excited over how yummy it was that I’ll make it all over again the next day so I can take pictures and talk about it here.

Okay…now that you decided I’ve totally lost it, allow me to share my latest effort.  It’s a grilled or roasted peach stuffed with goat cheese, paired up with lettuce and herbs from the garden and a few slices of prosciutto.  It’s awfully good and can be assembled in minutes.   It’s the kind of thing that’s always a winner, on occasion, a savior, and just what I feel like eating all summer long.

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Grilled Shrimp Skewers with Farro & Chickpea Salad

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Grilled Shrimp with Farro & Chickpea Salad

I know it’s summer when my food brain can’t dream beyond salads.  Or grilling.  Or grilled salads.  Yes, indeed, summer is here and I am in the zone–let’s make something tasty.

To pass as dinner, a salad has got to have a lot going on: contrasting textures, bold flavors, vibrant colors.  You want it to taste light and summery but be filling and satisfying enough to keep you from devouring a pint of ice cream later in the evening.  Ideally, it’s a salad that packs well so you can whisk it off to a park for an impromptu picnic or bring it to a potluck and be the girl/guy who brought that salad.

It’s a tall order, but this salad is up for a challenge.  It’s got it’s bases covered–a hearty, nutty mix of farro and chickpeas tossed with tons of grilled zucchini and red onions, dressed for summer with fresh oregano from the garden, lemon, and red pepper.  The addition of grilled shrimp skewers transform it from “lunchbox” to “maybe we should open a bottle of wine”.  Perfect.

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Grilled Pork Chops with Rhubarb & Fig Compote

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Grilled Pork Chops with Rhubarb Fig CompoteGrilled Pork Chops with Rhubarb Fig Compote

This was an idea that started as a salad, grew butterfly wings, and transformed into something magical.

On the first go around, the idea was very vague–“hmm…pork would taste good with rhubarb and dried fruit”.  I pounded out  pieces of pork tenderloin, gave them a quick sear, and topped them with an arugula salad dressed with a rhubarb vinaigrette and a smattering of dried figs and pecans.  The flavors were good but it just didn’t pack as much punch as I’d imagined.  I wanted amazing, not meh.

Thankfully, I spotted a recipe on another food website that made me decide to give these ingredients a second shot together.  It was lamb chops with rhubarb-raisin agrodoloce.  Excellent, it was basically the flavors I had imagined working so well together made into a dish that made more sense.  I combined my ingredients list with the method used in the recipe and came out with a winner.  Meh?  No way!  I got the “amazing” I’d been after.

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Grilled Steak Salad with Italian Salsa Verde

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Grilled Steak Salad with Italian Salsa Verde

When you’re a kid,  spring and summer stretch out endlessly.  Each day is perfection, filled sunshine and free time.  But suddenly, you realize your childhood is long gone and perfect days like these have almost vanished with it.  I’m talking about days when the weather is gorgeous, there’s no where you absolutely have to be, and nothing you can’t put off doing until tomorrow.  When these gems of days (or even just an afternoon or evening) roll around, you’ve got to seize them–head to the backyard, grab a lawn chair, and fully soak up the perfection.

Now, obviously, we have to eat and days like this call for simplicity.  Delicious simplicity–nothing complicated and nothing that’s going to keep us standing in the kitchen when we should be kicking up our feet outside.  We want something inherently good, like a grilled steak.  We can dress it for perfection with a salsa verde that’ll be put together in less than 2 minutes.

Before we go on, I should remind you this an Italian salsa verde and not to be confused with a spicy Mexican green salsa.  No tomatillos or jalepeños, just a green sauce made with a bunch of fresh herbs, garlic, capers, and olive oil.  Think pesto with fewer rules.

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Best-Ever No-Knead Pizza Dough

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No-Knead Pizza Dough

I’m the type of person who is, sometimes really annoyingly, resistant to change.  Even if it’s the kind of change that might enhance my everyday living, like trading in my old flip phone or upgrading my decade-old, leaky, stained $10 coffeemaker, I’ll insist that my old way is just fine.  So naturally, I never had much interest in trying Jim Lahey’s famous no-knead pizza dough recipe that has been sweeping the rest of the nation for the last couple of years.  What good was that for someone like me?  I like spending time in the kitchen, I like getting my hands dirty, and I like kneading my dough.

An unfortunate side effect of being resistant to change is the tendency to hoard.  My old magazines had finally stacked up to the point of bothering me, so I recently started weeding through old issues of Bon Appétit and came across the no-knead pizza dough recipe again.  Fine!  I gave in and decided to give this crust a shot.

Thank goodness I did–it’s amazing!  It’s like the pizza crust I seek out in restaurants, made at home, in my ordinary oven.  The center is thin and crisp, the edges chewy and bubbly.  Plus, if you make the full recipe, you can keep balls of dough in the freezer and have pizza whenever the mood strikes.  So daily.

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