From Fancy to Finger Food

"Greater than the sum of its parts" is probably over-used in food writing, but it nonetheless is sort of a Holy Grail. To be able to take simple, easily available ingredients and make them into something delicious and satisfying is a pretty cool thing. I think this is true for a couple of reasons: readily available often means (relatively) affordable, using ingredients you can find at your local grocery store means you can replicate this recipe whenever, and it makes you feel like an awesome cook for just throwing together a few things and producing something wonderful (these reasons are mainly from a home cook's perspective, but hey, that's what I am!). Tacos are generally regarded as a type of recipe that fits this description, but I hadn't had much luck with homemade tacos until not too long ago. Truthfully, I'd only had a few really mind-blowing tacos in my lifetime, so I didn't have much to go on. Technically , I suppose, anything that is put in a tor...

Bonjour de France! I am in Grenoble, France for two weeks to learn about interferometry at IRAM (a European interferometry observatory). I've been eating a lot (90% of which has been bread) and doing a lot of science. I won't talk about the science here because truly almost nobody cares about interferometry. And because I've been talking about science all day. But food. That's another story. Grenoble is in the south of France, and while it's a reasonably large town, in some ways the culture here feels closer to that of rural France (which I've largely read about and gleaned from pop culture, rather than experienced) than to that of Paris. In part, that means that most of my meals have involved some glorious combination of potatoes, cream, cheese, bacon, and chicken. It's been a bit heavy, but to be honest, that's kind of my jam . Some days I've only eaten one real meal (either lunch or dinner), and then just some combination of pastries, ...

This one has been in the works for a long time. I really like the idea of making a panzanella where I grew the tomatoes and baked the bread myself, and finally my plants are giving me ripe fruit! For those of you who are unfamiliar, panzanella is essentially a bread salad. Traditionally it was made as a way to use stale bread, but here we will toast the bread to get a little extra flavor. Though I don't dislike greens, it's nice to mix things up a bit (I've been eating a ton of greens since I often get them in my CSA box), and this salad is all tomatoes and bread. The vinaigrette is very punchy, which I think is necessary in this type of dish and also makes it quite refreshing. Following a brilliant tip from a Serious Eats article on the subject, I salted the tomatoes and collected the juices to add to the vinaigrette, which really made it pop. I thought I'd want some sliced red onion in the panzanella, but I actually found that it wasn't necessary - ...

It's officially tomato season in Apt 2A, where the tomato plant:human ratio is 3:1! (I won't delve into the overall plant:human ratio, but it is very high). I picked my first harvest recently, most of which went into this salad. My cherry tomato plant, especially, has really exploded and I expect I'll soon be drowning in cherry tomatoes. Perhaps more importantly, this blog is a year old today! Although it has occasionally been neglected for long periods of time, I'm still quite pleased (and a little surprised) that I've been doing this for a whole year. Lots of people surprised me with their support and enthusiasm for my public ramblings about food (and occasionally plants), so thank you all for reading! In celebration, I've prepared one of the most summery things I could think of. Like all good summer recipes, this is more of a loose sketch and should be guided by whatever is freshest and most beautiful in your crisper at the moment. Or, in my case, whate...

The idea for these came to me shortly after plum season last year (of course), so I've been sitting on this for the better part of a year. I fully expected to have to run through several iterations of this before I hit on the right ratios in the syrup and the right amount of plums, but I was pleasantly surprised by how happy I was with my first batch! (Can you imagine if I'd had to plow my way through countless ice pop "failures"? The horror.) In these pops, the spices serve to support the plum flavor, rather than overpowering it, exactly as I'd hoped. Plus, if you use pink- or red-fleshed plums, the ice pops take on a lovely deep pink hue. If you have a different combination of dried/ground and fresh/whole spices, feel free to mix and match - just adjust the amounts accordingly. I do hope you make these - they're a snap to make and taste like summer. The taste of summer, incidentally, is why I haven't been posting much - I've been spending my...

I feel that I've spent far too much time this summer doing very responsible, adult things, such as paying bills and scheduling/attending an unholy amount of appointments. Thus, this is the perfect time to post this delicious and spectacularly unsophisticated recipe, which, quite honestly, is not even a real recipe. This is more what the New York Times calls a "No-Recipe Recipe", with loose measurements and easily scaled portions. You should feel free to add and swap ingredients to your heart's content. There's no time to take good pictures when crunchy delicious things await! Not pictured: the taco I had already shoved down my throat before I realized these would be good for the blog. These tacos were cobbled together from a few things I'd seen online over the years, plus some vague ideas floating around in my head and the need to use up awkward amounts of various Mexican-ish ingredients (see what I mean about this not being a real recipe?). As with mo...

Now that spring is practically over, I thought I'd share this delightful pasta I made a couple of weeks ago. But first, a look at this spring according to my phone and snapchat story. I joined a CSA this year (in which you pay a farm up front and get a box of fresh produce every week), and I've been having fun with some unusual ingredients like applemint and garlic scapes. Here are the contents of my first box from a few weeks ago: And of course, I've been making lots of trips to the farmers market(s) as well. And my tomatoes are finally in the ground! My herbs and garlic are doing wonderfully, as well. My fridge has been bulging with produce for the last month or two as I try to get as much rhubarb, asparagus, and strawberries as I can before their all-too-short season is up. When I saw this creamy lemon pasta on the New York Times cooking newsletter, I couldn't help but dress it up with some of that produce (plus a little Parmesan, of course). It wa...