Site Title

Honeymooning

September 26, 2011

Within two days of arriving in Greece, all the worry and anxiety of the days before evaporated. We traveled by ferry from Athens to an island called Serifos, staying in a house that a cousin of my mother's lent to us. With no Internet connection and no phone line and hardly a soul around us, there was nothing to do but swim, read, contemplate the impossible beauty around us, eat sun-warmed figs plucked off the tree next to the front door, swim and read some more. Thank goodness.

I read five books in the first week. Actually, if we're going to get technical, five books in five days. Yes, this is the kind of crazed bookworm I am. If given some free time and a stack of books (or a Kindle, as the case may be), I will plow through them like a house on fire. Look out.

We walked through hilltop villages where everything was as white-cubed and blue-domed as in the picture books.

We held our breath as we swam, goggled, through crystal-clear water. We saw black sea urchins, holding on tightly to the rocks, and schools of fearless small fish that darted towards us again and again.

We met Greece's silent majority: Street cats.

We photographed every sunset and felt a million miles away from everything we'd left behind. It was just the two of us. Just the way it should be.

Whenever we saw horta on a menu, we ordered it. There was feta galore and there were tiny fried anchovies and, by the side of a small beach one day, a plate of pork meatballs that could redefine the genre. We dragged the meatballs through a smear of tzatziki and munched, hot, cold, crunchy, smooth, while we watched a teenager walk in from the water, a speared octopus in hand.

It occurred to me at some point that in my adult life, I have never had a vacation that lasted for two whole weeks. The Europeans are onto something here. As the days melted into another and I started forgetting if it was a Monday or a Thursday, I practically saw the tension lift off my body like steam and gently float away.

When our time on Serifos came to an end, we took leave of the impossibly clear water, the sprawling fig tree, the stone floors and the dirt road in front of the house and boarded a ferry, heading to Milos and then Santorini.

It was lovely there, but we missed the stark, lonely beauty of Serifos. Our quiet little beach. Our dirt road. Our fig tree. The sound of waves each night as we fell asleep.

But really, that's just splitting hairs. I still found it possible to fall more in love with my husband every single day. Feeling like I hit the jackpot for getting to spend the rest of my life with him. In fact, even when the trip came to an end, it was hard to feel sad. We got to go home together! Our lovely, cozy, homey home.

Honeymooning, man. It's pretty great. In fact, I've decided we'll be needing a honeymoon every year. Stopping at one just seems silly. Wouldn't you say?

I'll be back with new posts, recipes and more in a day or two. It's so good to be back.
Mark Bittman’s Tomato Jam

September 2, 2011

You know what's funny? It just occurred to me that in a little less than 24 hours, I'm going to be on my honeymoon in Greece. What's not so funny is that that sounds terrifying. Because in the meantime, sometime in the course of this day, I have to attach the manuscript of my book (at last count clocking in at just under 100,00 words) to an email and send it to my editor. And then I have to get up from my desk, turn off the computer and go away for two whole weeks.

Sometime soon, when I have a little more time, I'd love to tell you more about what a psychological trip this whole writing-a-book experience has been. There have been so many moments of absolutely hideous self-doubt, treacherous late-night thoughts about failure and a lot of real frustration, anger and sadness. But there have also been these strangely exhilarating moments, too, like the other night when I was really killing a chapter and I suddenly felt so seized with energy and power and happiness, yes, that my hands started to tremble as I typed.

That feeling, in that moment, was worth all of the other ugly stuff that came before. And right now, now that I'm scared stiff once again and am stuck trying to scrounge up a few more final words from my tired old brain and it's like squeezing water from a stone and I'm once again convinced that I am a hack and a fraud and should just go ahead and change my name to spare myself the humiliation of publication, I am trying to remember how glorious the other night felt.

Because that night I thought,

This feels so good that I never want to stop writing.

You guys, that was in the top five best feelings of my life, I'm sure of it. Right up there in the Number 2 spot.

I'm nowhere near done; my manuscript still needs a lot of work. There will be edits, rewrites, more edits, tears, self-doubt, misery and hopefully, along the way, a few more moments of that exhilarating happiness that crop up when you least expect them. But I did it. I got the first draft done, bird by bird, drip by drip.

I did it.

I did it.

Now because, as I mentioned, my brain right now is like a dry old stone, like a pumice stone that's been abandoned by the side of your bathtub for about three years and is practically cracking in half it's so dry, I'm going to keep the rest of this brief. (You have been so patient and so kind while I've been so quiet here lately that I feel awful leaving for two more weeks, but you understand, right? You know? That this isn't just a honeymoon for me and Max, but also the world's best-timed and most-needed vacation? That directly after pressing "send" on the most terrifying email of my life, I luckily have no choice but to go away and not turn on a computer for 13 whole blessed days?)

We are flying to Greece tomorrow to spend a week at a cousin's house on an island in the Cyclades and then, because we are honeymooners, we're going to spend an entire second week on the islands, too. Two entire weeks of vacation. I don't think I'll quite realize what kind of a luxury that is until we're there. We did not, when we booked the trip long before my appendicitis struck, have any idea that I would be writing up until the day before we left. I've never gone away on a vacation so unprepared. All I know is at what time the ferry to the island leaves Athens. I guess we'll figure out the rest when we get there.

A few weeks ago, back before I dove under entirely, I made a batch of this tomato jam. I'd come into some plum tomatoes for cheap and they were really good ones, thin-skinned and deep red and flavorful. I made the jam, barely paying attention, as with most things lately, other than writing. I filled two small jars with it and had just enough left to tide me over through lunch.

Tomato jam is a funny thing; sweet when you're expecting salty, savory when you're expecting sweet. I spread it on a piece of crusty bread and topped it with a fried egg, the gooey yolk sort of swimming into the hot, sweet jam. It made for a very tasty lunch-for-one-standing-up-at-the-counter and would have been an even better breakfast, especially if I had taken the time to sit down and eat like a civilized person. And perhaps added a few strips of bacon to the plate.

The original recipe says you have to consume the batch within a week or so, but I canned it with no ill effects by simply filling the very hot jam into sterilized jars, screwing the lids on tight and turning the jars upside-down until fully cooled.

I'm doing my best to hoard one jar for the depths of winter when we have no sun and no tomatoes and the pink sunsets that still steal across the sky these days are long gone. But I don't really get to complain yet. After all, I've got two weeks of sunshine awaiting me. Two weeks of beaches and books and walks and balanced meals and more tomatoes than I will probably know what to do with. Two weeks to spend time with Max and sleep in and go swimming and let the knot in my back unwind at last. Two weeks to remind myself every day that I did it, I did, and that that is the whole thing, the work, the accomplishment, the thing I set out to do. Two weeks to be grateful and happy for the chance.

And with that, I should go. I have to gather myself, have to let go, have to tell myself it's okay, have to tell myself to be proud, have to press send, have to howl with glee and terror, have to cry, just a little, have to pack, have to go.

I'll see you soon.

Mark Bittman's Tomato Jam

Makes 2 small jars with a little left over
Click here for the original recipe

1.5 pounds ripe plum tomatoes, cored and coarsely chopped
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1 tablespoon fresh grated or minced ginger
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes or cayenne

1. Combine all ingredients in a heavy medium saucepan, Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring often.

2. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until mixture has consistency of thick jam, about 1 hour 15 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning, then pour into hot, sterilized jam jars, screw the lids on and turn the jars upside down to cool completely.
Clementine Bakery’s Banana Cake

August 23, 2011

As promised, dear readers, I come bearing cake. Not just any cake, mind you, but the best banana cake the world has ever seen, if you will allow me some superlatives. This is not banana bread, in case you're wondering; it's nothing rustic and it's not remotely acceptable for breakfast. This is cake, rich and tender as all get-out and sporting a gorgeous cap of creamy-sour frosting.

To tell the truth, I made the cake for you. Because yesterday this blog turned six years old. Six. Six! If this blog was a child, it would be in first grade! It would be reading. And telling jokes! If this blog was a dog, it'd be middle-aged! I think that calls for some celebration. And what, pray tell, is a celebration without cake?

Six years is a long time. And it's a preposterously long time for a blog whose originator speculated it would barely last a year. The fact that it's still around and kicking and featuring unbelievably delicious cake is really, in no small part, due to all of you coming here and reading and cooking and commenting and all the rest of what you do. So I made you all a cake. You have no idea how much I wish I could have shared this actual cake with you, slice by slice.

When the book is published, do you know what I'm looking forward to the most? The book tour, is what. Because then I'll finally be able to meet some of you in person instead of just sort of vaguely knowing that you're out there. In fact, when the going gets rough, that's what I think about, I really do. It peps me right up. Puts a spring in my step.

But back to the cake. Hoooo, people. The cake. It is so good. It's super-tender and amazingly not-too-sweet and fragrant with bananas and velvety and moist and the frosting (which I changed a little from the original recipe, to make it a little less sweet) is the perfect foil for it, though I suppose if you left off this frosting and topped it with, say, something dark and glossy like this, I wouldn't kick it out of bed either. My friend Suzy, who I consider to have terrifyingly high standards when it comes to food, gave it high praise. As in, halfway through her first slice, she stopped eating, put her fork down and fixed me with a serious look. Then she said, "This is really good." Then she went home with a doggie bag and ate another piece after dinner which, according to her, never happens. Never ever.

The recipe comes from Los Angeles's Clementine Bakery and is, really, the holy grail of banana cakes, as far as I'm concerned. It even keeps well for a day or two, though it beats me how on earth you'd manage to keep it hanging around for more than a day, unless you were the kind of nut who bakes cakes for her blog and then has to run around the city delivering leftovers for friends lest she eat the entire thing all by herself. And best of all, it is so easy to make – no layers, no complicated mixing techniques. Just a bowl, some ripe bananas, a mixer and you.

I lessened the amounts of cream cheese, butter and sugar in the frosting, but then I added a little extra crème fraîche instead of sour cream, because I think that deeply creamy, sour flavor would be nice to underline. Plus it gave the frosting a little sensuous floppiness, instead of leaving it a stiff spackle. Which I think is sort of crucial when it comes to simple cakes like this one.

Now go forth and bake! And thank you for being here. And happy blog birthday to, uh, me!

Clementine Bakery's Banana Cake
Makes one 10-inch round cake plus a few extra cupcakes, or one 9 x 13-inch rectangular cake
The original recipe is here.

Cake:
2 2/3 cups pastry flour or 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour minus 2.5 tablespoons
2 2/3 cups sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 large or 4 small very ripe bananas
3 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
3/4 cup canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Into a large bowl sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, mash the bananas with an electric beater until smooth. Mix in the eggs, one at a time, until each is completely incorporated, then mix in the buttermilk, oil and vanilla. Finally, mix the dry ingredients into the batter just until thoroughly combined.

3. Pour into a 9-by-13-inch greased pan or a 10-inch round cake pan (you might have enough batter leftover for a few spare cupcakes). Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until golden-brown on top, a toothpick inserted comes out clean and the cake springs back when lightly touched. Cool on a rack.

Frosting:
6 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
2 ounces butter, room temperature
1/3 cup powdered sugar
3 tablespoons crème fraîche

In the bowl of a stand mixer, or in a medium bowl with a hand mixer, beat the cream cheese until smooth and there are no lumps. Add the butter and whip until incorporated, then add the powdered sugar and the sour cream. Beat until the frosting is very smooth and lump-free. Frost the top of the cooled cake, then slice and serve.
Friday Link Love

August 19, 2011

Hello, friends. It's 10:33 pm in Berlin right now and instead of drinking a gin & tonic on the balcony or staring at an outdoor movie screen or, frankly, sleeping, I am sitting in a café near my apartment with free wireless because my Internet connection at home inexplicably stopped functioning sometime yesterday afternoon. Fantastic timing, Internet gods! I will not bore you with the details of how long it took me to find a place that had wireless for me to tap into, but let's just say there's a reason why I'm now sitting here typing to you all from a red velvet arm chair whilst listening to very loud 90's R&B pounding on the stereo – reminding me of the sweaty discos I went to in high school – and smelling the fruit-scented smoke wafting my way from the table of four dudes my father's age who have just started smoking a water pipe. Oh, Berlin.

Elsewhere:

Clotilde did a little interview with me about how I cook on vacation.

This sounds like my kind of frozen yogurt.

Can you imagine people once thought the pickle was "totally depraved"?

I want to be invited to Winnie's next BLT party.

I loved this interview with Nigel Slater.

These beet-pickled deviled eggs are so pretty.

I miss my babka-loving grandma and grandpa after reading this ode by Lila Byock.

Coming to Berlin any time soon? Check out my lists at the Guardian (!) for my favorite cafés and bakeries and breakfast and brunch spots in this lovely city.

Okay, folks. I'm giving myself permission to call it a night. I'll see you here next week – and guess what? I'm bringing cake.
Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Roasted Corn with Manchego and Lime

August 16, 2011

In the last two weeks, I have cooked four pounds of plums into four jars of jam, I have boiled pretzels in lye and baked them into chestnut glossiness and I have turned nine lemons from my mother's companion's garden into creamy limoncello. I have made lentil soup and panna cotta and roasted cauliflower and pickled salmon. I have made three different batches of yeast dough – one to be rolled and filled with a poppyseed filling and baked into breakfast buns, one to be covered with marzipan cream and red currants and baked into a pie, one to be turned into doughnut rings and doughnut holes and plain old doughnuts, too, filled with puckery jam and fried to a sugary crisp. I am making liquor out of plum pits and vodka, there is a towel-wrapped bottle of milk being turned into yogurt wrapped in my oven right now and there are egg whites in the fridge waiting to be meringued.

I am also in need of a stiff drink.

Folks, I love my kitchen and being busy in it. But lately, when dinner rolls around, I just want to throw up my hands and take a hike. Living alone during the week means that I can at least get away with just eating buttered bread for dinner or a handful of cherry tomatoes while standing at the counter, hoping that by keeping very still, I won't lose my radio connection. But I feel guilty doing that, like I'm short-changing myself. I'm supposed my own best caretaker, but lately, I haven't been doing a very good job of it.

So yesterday at 4:00 pm, I pushed back from my desk and went outside. I took a long walk in the sunshine and stretched my legs. It felt so good to feel my muscles moving and to smell that clean Berlin air. I went back to TJ Maxx to buy the watercolor set I'd abandoned last week when the mean reds caught me off guard and I went to a nice organic grocery store that I should go to more often, where I bought really good tea and a nice, crackling loaf of bread and two ears of corn, still husked. Corn! Husks! That is a small luxury.

At home, I followed this recipe, roasting the unhusked cobs in the oven until the husks turned brown and papery and the corn beneath got all fragrant and sweet. After their pass in the oven, the yellow of the nibs practically glowed. I cut the nibs off the cobs and sautéed them until they started to pop in the pan, turning golden-brown and even sweeter still.

Once the nibs were done, I scraped them into the bowl and turned to the seasoning. I didn't have the jalapeño that the original recipe called for, so I used this potent Turkish red pepper instead. I left out the butter and the chives, but I used twice the amount of lime juice and didn't skimp on the Manchego cheese grated on top.

Then I took the bowl of seasoned, spicy, sweet-sour corn and I sat on the couch for dinner, alternating between watching the sky change color as the sun slipped below the horizon and watching 22-year-old footage on the tube of East Berliners charging through the border, whooping and hollering and weeping. That never gets old, never, ever, ever. (The Wall went up 50 years ago this weekend, hence the video retrospective on the television. Soon enough, the amount of time it's been gone will eclipse the amount of time it was up. How's that for the passage of time?)

The corn was sugary and super-spicy and the combination of the lime juice and the manchego cheese gave the whole thing these super-intense blasts of flavor, not unlike the ones you get when eating salt-and-vinegar potato chips. You know, when your whole mouth sort of suddenly puckers together or something, because of the intensity of flavor? I thought that kind of thing was only possible when engineered in a lab. Turns out that lime juice, Turkish red pepper and Manchego cheese can give MSG a run for its money.

This is best served as a side dish, maybe alongside a chicken thigh that's all sticky and charred from the grill. I bet it's even better when made with the local corn that you lucky ducks in the US can buy at the farmer's market, just-picked and still milky, husks soft and tender. But even with my tough old German corn, eaten out of the serving bowl all by itself while sitting on the couch, shoulders heaving at the sight of those cheering crowds, it was still pretty great.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Roasted Corn with Manchego and Lime
Serves 2
For the original recipe, click here

2 ears of sweet yellow corn, unhusked
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 lime, juiced and zested
1/2 ounce finely grated Manchego cheese

1. Preheat oven to 450°. Roast unhusked corn on a baking sheet, turning occasionally, until heated through and crisp-tender, about 15 minutes. Let cool. Shuck corn and cut kernels from cobs. Discard cobs.

2. Heat oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add corn kernels and sauté until heated through and light-golden in spots, 3-5 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

3. Transfer corn to a large wide bowl or deep platter and sprinkle with crushed red pepper flakes. Pour the lime juice over the corn and sprinkle with cheese and lime zest. Mix quickly and serve immediately.
David Tanis’s Tomato Salad Sandwich

August 12, 2011

I don't have much for you today. I've started and stopped this post about four times already. For a while, I thought about giving up. I turned off the computer and went for a drive in the rain, with Four Sticks and Neil Young on the radio. But now I'm back again and since I can't seem to let this be, I'm going to try again.

I don't know how the weather is where you are, but here, it's gray and rainy. I woke up twice in the middle of the night last night because the rain on the roof was so loud. I got caught in the rain a little while ago, when I was making off with two chairs from my mother's apartment, it's raining right now as I type and I assume I'll still be listening to rain drops when I nod off to sleep tonight.

It's been rainy here for weeks, really. All signs point to the fact that summer in Berlin is over, that it ended sometime in July. I'm trying not to listen to those signs, though I do still remember that one August – I was twelve – when my mother and I came back from our summer vacation in Italy on August 11th and had to turn the heat on in our Berlin apartment. We retell this story incredulously to each other every year. This year, though, I'm a little worried.

In truth, this is great weather for working. It's hard to feel bad about being chained to my desk every day when there's no way I'd want to be outside anyway. But the thing is, too much time spent indoors isn't good for the soul either. And I'm feeling a little bit soul-sick today.

I went to TJ Maxx earlier today (or, TK Maxx, as it's known here in Germany, which never fails to make me giggle) and somewhere between the kitchen supplies and the thank-you cards my heart was suddenly seized with an awful case of existential angst. Does that ever happen to you? Enormous big-box stores do it to me every time. I think I need to be drunk to shop there. Though that would probably make things worse.

I hightailed it out of TK Maxx as fast as I could and decided that instead of eating sad leftover soup that's been in my fridge since Monday, I needed to do something nice for myself. So I bought some tomatoes, perfect little Italian tomatoes. Tomatoes, you see, are my desert island food. There is nothing, nothing, I'd rather eat than a tomato. No brownie comes close, no hand-cut fries, no T-bone steak or foie gras. (Tomatoes, my darlings, I love you.)

Then I went home and made this sandwich for lunch. The bread was pathetic, flabby and flavorless and a pitiful excuse for a baguette, but soaked with fresh tomato drippings and olive oil and all the rest, I didn't even mind. Such is the power of a good tomato. I ate my drippy, messy sandwich in front of the computer. And wouldn't you know, it made the gaping chasm in my chest grow a little bit smaller, just a little. Such is the power of the tomato and the tomato salad sandwich.

I left out the garlic, but I urge you strongly not to leave out the anchovy. If you mince it fine enough, you don't taste any fishyness at all, but it deepens the flavors of everything else in the bowl, like magic. Your pretty great tomatoes will suddenly taste like the Best Tomatoes of All Time. And so on. You'll notice that my capers are pretty funny looking – all I had were some enormous caper berries, which I sliced.

Mr. Tanis says to let the sandwich sit for an hour, which I'm sure would result in an even more delicious lunch. But I didn't have that kind of time, so I ate it after about four minutes. It still hit the spot. Sometimes you just have to take care of yourself first and worry about following recipes later.

Folks, I hope you all have a lovely weekend. Full of sunshine and squishy, salty, savory tomato sandwiches.

David Tanis's Tomato Salad Sandwich
Makes one sandwich (here's the original recipe and quantities)

A handful of cherry tomatoes or one beefsteak tomato
Salt and pepper
1 garlic clove, finely minced (optional)
1 small anchovy fillets, rinsed and finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon capers, rinsed
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon sherry vinegar
Pinch red pepper flakes
6 basil leaves
A few tender parsley leaves
1 crusty roll or a sandwich-sized piece of baguette

1. Cut larger tomatoes in thick slices or wedges and smaller ones into halves, and put them in a salad bowl. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Add the garlic (if using), anchovies, capers, olive oil, vinegar, pepper flakes and half the basil, torn or chopped. Gently toss with the tomatoes and leave for 5 or 10 minutes.

3. Split the roll or baguette lengthwise. Spoon tomato salad and its juices onto bottom of each roll (or bottom half of the baguette). Lay a few basil and parsley leaves over tomatoes. Replace top and press lightly.

4. Cover sandwich with a clean dish towel and wait for an hour or so before serving, if you can.
David Lebovitz’s Herb Rub

August 1, 2011

Poppets, do I have a story for you. Four days before my manuscript due date, last Thursday, to be precise, I woke up feeling rather strange. This strangeness got worse all day and by the end of it, I found myself in the hospital with an anesthesiologist pumping stuff into my arm just before some very nice doctors relieved me of my appendix. Ain't that a kick in the head?

I got out of the hospital yesterday and am feeling a little bit like I got hit by a truck, both literally and figuratively. My head's still all woozy and I have the oddest tugging sensation on my insides and the deadline situation makes me want to cry and I really want to take a shower and it would be lovely to be allowed a cheeseburger for dinner instead of broth and boiled zucchini and to top it all off, I can't stop thinking about how, if I'd been born a Pilgrim, my life probably would have ended rather abruptly at 33. (Of course, if I'd been born a Pilgrim, a great many things probably would have ended my life much sooner than at 33, but logic and rational thought are not having a great day right now in the Mind of Luisa, so bear with me.)

I am trying not to wallow too much in the vat of Self-Pity (see Not Being Born A Pilgrim and so on for reference), but abdominal surgery, a missed deadline and the lack of a daily shower is starting to take its toll on your heroine. But before I slide completely off my rocker into the deep end, I need to quickly tell you about something sort of quietly wonderful.

It starts with my balcony, a little patch of white-tiled space nestled into the corner of our apartment building. By some stroke of luck, though it's on the courtyard side of the building and we are surrounded by apartments on all sides, no one can actually look into our balcony, which would be lovely if we were the type to sunbathe naked and as such is just sort of nice because we can have lunch out there in the summer without feeling watched (old Berliners love to watch people) and because I can neglect the plants out there without anybody giving me a disapproving look.

The only plants I have growing on the balcony are herbs, because I hate buying herbs only to see them grow black and moldy in the fridge and because I like my balcony plants to be useful, not just pretty. (Even if I do go and neglect them every now and then). I have high standards for plants, you see. So I've got two types of mint, oregano, thyme (that keeps migrating from its pot to other pots, magically), basil, rosemary, a very sad lavender bush and an exuberant spray of sage. So exuberant, in fact, that it sometimes feels as though it could be growing about half an inch a day.

The sage got to be a bit of a problem, in truth. To use it up, we tried eating a lot of ravioli in sage butter for a while. Surprisingly, that gets tired pretty quickly. So when I stumbled across David's method for using up sage, I never looked back. He first got the recipe from his friend Judy Witts Francini and, folks, it is a secret weapon if I've ever seen one. Now let me be clear: I have always nursed a healthy suspicion of herb salts. Or herb rubs. They seemed like a gimmicky way for chefs to sell products in grocery stores. The idea of cooking with them left me cold. But David has never led me astray. In fact, I'd probably eat a cold rubber tire if David told me that, marinated in Korean chile paste and sprinkled with sesame seeds, it tasted good. (Actually, that does sound good. Sweet cracker sandwich, people, I need some real food.)

So I cut back my sage and rosemary plants, chopped them up very finely with a mess of garlic and a big spoonful of Maldon salt and then let the mixture, sandy and herby and fragrant as all get out, dry on my kitchen counter for a few days. When it was good and dry, I packed it into a little jar and forgot about it. Really!

Weeks later, starving on a Sunday night, we had nothing but some nice bread and some very ripe tomatoes in the house. No cheese, no pasta, no nothing. Rummaging through the cupboards, I stumbled upon my herb rub. On a whim, I decided to quick-roast the tomatoes mixed with the herb mixture, liberally splashed with olive oil. What emerged from the oven was rather difficult to stop eating, especially when we started dragging the bread through the herby, tomatoey olive oil at the bottom of the baking dish. Next up was a pot of beans that I'd cooked into creamy submission, but that desperately needed some pepping up. I spooned the beans into a baking dish, mixed them with a bit of the herb rub, a good glug of olive oil and a few shreds of canned tomato and put that in the oven until the house smelled like a rustic Tuscan lodge (or something). We put pieces of toasted peasant bread into our deep soup plates and ladled the baked beans over the bread and attacked. Dinner was a quiet affair that night, nothing but spoons clanking against plates and lips smacking.

The herb rub has pepped up rice salads and simple roast chickens, a lackluster pork tenderloin and countless pots of beans. I've dipped into it over and over again until, a year later, the jar's entirely empty. Which is serendipitous timing, because my sage plant has gone into overdrive once again.

To sum it all up, people, you need this stuff in your stash. It will make countless Sunday night dinners, when you're cobbling together weird little meals out of odds and ends, that much better. It will make you seem refined and with-it when you mix it with olive oil and set it out for nibbles with some nice bread before dinner. It will help your balcony looking neat and groomed and, best of all, it just tastes so good.

That is all. I feel better already.

Herb Rub
Makes 1 small jar

A very large bunch of fresh sage, two to three times as much as the rosemary
A large bunch of rosemary
8 garlic cloves, peeled
1 heaping tablespoon Maldon salt

1. Pick the leaves off the sage and rosemary stalks. In a small food processor, chop up the herbs with the garlic cloves and salt until the mixture is pretty fine. Discard any sticks or seeds.

2. Spread the herb mixture on a baking sheet and let it dry for about three days. Once dry, store your herb in a tighly-sealed in a jar for up to a year.
Pamela Sherrid’s Summer Pasta

July 19, 2011

I did not mean to leave you hanging that long. In fact, I had this post stashed right up my sleeve, but then in a serious case of First World Problemitis, the other camera, the camera with which I took these photos, well, it lives with Max in Kassel, not with me in Berlin, and because he is a PC person and I am a Mac person I could not for the life of me figure out the instructions that he kept emailing me about unzipping the files of the photos he sent me and so I kept bleating, per email, back at him to just send me the photos as regular files already and he kept writing back to me asking me to download yet another program from the Internet to unzip the aforementioned files and I definitely didn't want to write a post without photos because who cares about unillustrated blog posts anyway and for Pete's sake I have standards and then he forgot his camera in Kassel when he came home this weekend and oh my goodness, are you still reading this? Seriously? Because I'm falling asleep over here and I'm the one who's typing!

All of this is to say I'm sorry it took me so long to write again. But look! I brought you spaghetti! With fresh tomatoes and basil and squidgy-soft mozzarella! I hope that makes up for something at least.

This is the kind of thing you want to make when you don't really feel like cooking anything at all, which, I find, is the way I feel all the way through July and sometimes August, too. Maybe it's too hot to cook or it's too hot to eat or maybe you simply have better things to do with your time than stand around in the kitchen, like canoeing down soft little rivers or picking sour cherries or drinking beer in outdoor cafés until the sun goes down or writing a freaking book, but since you can hardly subsist on popsicles or beer nuts alone (actually, you can, but perhaps your family cannot), if you can bring yourself to boil a pot of water for pasta you've basically done most of the work.

The rest involves dicing up a bunch of very good tomatoes, that very being italicized for a reason as your tomatoes should practically glow with flavor and burst with juice, slicing garlic (the original recipe has you dice the garlic finely, but I don't like raw garlic and never will, so I slice it, leaving it big enough for your fork to avoid, but by all means, do as you wish, because I do not choose to impose my tyranny against raw garlic against anyone, well, except for one particular individual whose mouth I like to get close to at times), and snip a whole mess of basil into a bowlful of olive oil.

This you can do first thing in the morning before you go to work, leaving it to macerate all day while you go and do whatever it is that you all do. (What is it you all do, anyway? Really. Doctors, secretaries, grant writers, students, anthropologists, mothers, who are you? Tell me below in the comments!) When you come home in the evening, all you have to do is boil your pasta and dinner is served. If you are, like me, a little more of the last-minute type, rest easy knowing that even if you don't manage to do this chopping, macerating business until two hours before dinner, you're still in pretty good shape.

The original recipe has you marinate the basil and garlic in olive oil all day long, adding the tomatoes only a few hours before dinnertime. But instead I mixed together everything at once, two hours before dinner, and went out to take a walk in these improbably beautiful fields on the very edge of Kassel. One minute you're still in the rather unlovely town of Kassel, the next you're staring at a mass of poppies in a field of wheat stalks and there is a lone horse in one corner and an allee of oak trees in another and you suddenly have the very distinct impression you are on the set of an avant-garde French film.

Once you've boiled the spaghetti and drained it and plopped it on top of your cubed, fragrant tomatoes, you chop up a ball of mozzarella (plain old cow's milk is fine) and put that on top of the hot spaghetti. The original recipe says that if you leave it to sit for a bit, the mozzarella will melt and fat will coat each strand of spaghetti. To be honest, we didn't have that kind of patience. I let the mozzarella start to melt, but we were so hungry at that point that we just dove right in, before any milk fat could coat a single strand.

Now, before there are any, uh, misunderstandings, let me be quite clear: this pasta dish would be a definite no-go in Italy. Italians are, well, let's say earnest about their spaghetti sauces and they have rules about food and they do not take kindly to mucked-up sauces or pasta salads or other abominations (their imagined words, not mine!), in fact, they can be are positively Germanic in their obsessiveness with following food rules.

Yawn. Still with me?

Now that we've gotten that disclaimer out of the way, let me just say that this is a delightful plate of spaghetti and that it had both of us tipping our pasta plates into our mouths so we could get every last drop of milky, basil-flavored, tomato-juice-tinged, garlic-imbued olive oil sauce down our greedy gullets. It was delicious. And refreshing, if you can believe it, and light and sort of exactly the kind of thing you'd want to eat on a nice summer's evening.

Summer Pasta
Serves 2

3 large cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1/4 to 1/2 cup of good-quality olive oil
12 basil leaves
4 ripe tomatoes
Dried spaghetti
1 ball imported mozzarella
Salt

1. Take out your largest bowl. Add the garlic. Pour in the olive oil. Snip the basil leaves with scissors into shreds over the garlic mixture or slice thinly with a very sharp knife. Let sit all day or at least an hour or two.

2. About 2 hours before serving, chop the tomatoes and add them to the bowl.

3. When you’re ready to eat, bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente. Meanwhile, cut the mozzarella into small cubes.

4. Drain the pasta and pour it on top of the tomato mixture. Do not stir. Spread the mozzarella on top of the pasta and toss only the pasta and cheese; the cheese will soften slightly, and the pasta will get coated with fat. Then stir up from the bottom, incorporating the tomato mixture. Season to taste and serve.
Friday Link Love

July 8, 2011

Thank you all for your comments and emails, congratulations, kind words and best wishes! They've gone and made this very happy woman even happier still.

I've spent the entire week visiting my husband (hee) in Kassel, writing like a woman possessed (25 days until my delivery date!) and taking long walks in the improbably beautiful fields next to his apartment. Now, nothing against small German towns or anything, I'm very excited for our train back to Berlin this afternoon. Oh, to be home again! We have wedding presents to unwrap, German tax forms to complete (the anticipation is just killing me) and on Saturday evening I'm going to this mysterious pop-up restaurant with some friends. I can't wait to be back in the big city again.

Elsewhere:

I discovered the wonder that is creamy limoncello on this last trip to Italy. Not made with eggs or with cream, but with plain, old, 1% milk. Seriously, people, it's like manna in a shot glass. I'm waiting for a recipe from my friend Carla, but until then, try this one from epicurious.com.

Food52 is at it again, this time with a brand-new column that I've fallen for, hook, line and sinker. Genius Recipes, it's called. And they're, well, genius.

Have you ever heard of "drinking vinegars"? Since I'm the kind of person who could drink pickle juice straight from the jar, I'm intrigued. Here's how to make them. (Via Oh Joy!)

Two years ago, I asked my mother to buy a simple charcoal grill for the house in Italy so we could cook fish outside in the summer. But I underestimated how intimidating grilling can be to a newbie and we've only used it once since then. Once! For shame. With these fabulous tips on grilling whole fish (no baskets or special equipment required!), I feel a lot more confident.

Kassel may be a snooze, but I discovered the Hugo cocktail at our favorite restaurant here the other night and because of that, it's already gone up a few notches in my book. I'm not a cocktail girl – they make me sleepy and cranky – but the Hugo is a different story – think prosecco, mint and elderflowers. Here's Sasa's recipe.

And finally, I'm still in shock over the closing of H&H Bagels. Thank goodness we can all make our own.

Have a lovely weekend, folks.
On Dresses, Wildflowers and Breadcrumb Pasta

July 6, 2011

A week before the wedding, I had a little case of dress regret. I'd bought the first dress I tried on back in December (on my birthday, no less, if that isn't a sign) on a stroll up the Ku'Damm and then basically forgot all about it. (That's what having a book manuscript due six weeks after your wedding will do to you: Put things in perspective.) Seven days out, then, I was suddenly unsure. Should I have gone long? Not done strapless? Had more lace? Luckily, there wasn't much I could do. Besides, I had the very distinct impression that this was my equivalent of cold feet. I gave myself a stern little talking-to (along the lines of "your dress is very pretty and it is way too late to do anything about it and also you are an idiot") and got over it.

When I got to Italy, my mother and father were waiting for me. A little treat for me, since I rarely have the two of them in the same place at once. We spent a few days running errands, making zucchini flower frittata for lunch and discussing wedding stuff. (My father: "I still cannot believe you aren't having any music." Me: "…" My father: "Really? Are you really telling me you're not going to have any music?" Me: "Nope, no music. None." My father: "I'm pretty sure that's the worst idea ever." Me: "…" My father:"…!")

The concerned father in question, searching for wedding music on Youtube to convince his stubborn daughter to change her mind and instead getting lost down a rabbit hole of Beniamino Gigli recordings from the 1920's.

There were important things to take care of in those final days before the wedding, like asking our five-year-old friend Emma if she wanted to be our flower girl (she did!) and then bringing her a small basket full of lavender heads with which she solemnly practiced, after her grandmother demonstrated how to walk down an aisle majestically, regally casting flower buds to the left and right. (In case you are wondering how she did in the face of 100 unknown guests a week later, I can only say that she should be hired out for all future royal wedding work – she was perfection.)

Another person who should seriously look into an alternate career if being a biologist and professor at some point no longer proves interesting to her is my stepmother Susan, who not only corralled a bunch of my girlfriends into a color-coordinated wildflower picking spree by the side of the road to Urbino the day before the wedding, but then turned the patch of grass behind the house into a veritable florist's workshop the next day, producing the most carefree, beautiful flower arrangements that she popped into glasses my mother found in the dining room cabinets and filled with gravel from the driveway. Also perfection.

Some of the loveliest bits of the days leading up to the wedding were all the busy, crowded dinners we had outside on the stone patio. Each day, more family and friends arrived and each evening, more and more chairs and plates were pulled out and put to use. With so much of my life divided and compartmentalized in different countries and continents, having all these people in the same place at the same time made me so happy. I might have even thought this was the best thing about the wedding.

Until the wedding itself.

Behold our first pasta course! Passatelli alla portolotta, or breadcrumb pasta with teeny tiny clams and other shellfish sautéed with tomatoes and probably a little bit of garlic and parsley. There was a second pasta course, too (that's how things are done in Italy, I swear), tagliatelle with meat ragù, and then branzino with stuffed tomatoes and skewers of breaded, grilled shrimp and calamari and there was rabbit, too, roasted with wild fennel and potatoes. And salad.

But I, for one, gave up after the passatelli up there. I spent the most amount of energy in terms of wedding planning on figuring out the menu (our caterer wanted sushi! In the rural hills of Italy! And I have a bit of a hard time handing out emphatic No-Freaking-Way-Are-You-Kidding-Mes so the negotiations dragged for a bit with me being all polite and we would really prefer a rustic, country thing and him being all, but signorina it's your weddddddddding) and then on the evening of the wedding itself I took one look at the food and lost all my appetite instantly. Furthermore, I realized I didn't even care anymore if anyone else liked it. I'd just had the most spectularly moving experience of my entire life and that was all that mattered. Is still all that matters. So was the food any good? Who knows, you'll have to ask one of our guests.

The day after the wedding, I walked out to the transparent tent set on the edge of our land and found a bunch of detritus in the grass. A few place cards that my mother-in-law hand-lettered the morning of the wedding. The wooden stumps my friend Dietrich sawed up for me and that we used as the table number holders (now they're picture frames at the apartment in Berlin). And a prop from the photographer's photobooth set-up. I found a few more props over the next days, including a dapper little brown mustache on a stick. I took that with me, too. I would have taken the entire tent with me if I could have.

We toasted with leftover Champagne over the next few evenings as our guests slowly left. And I told my cousin's daughter Giulia, who was still bubbling with the excitement of the wedding, that the next wedding we'd celebrate would be hers. She's only 12, so we've got a few years to wait.

And then it was all over and the house got very quiet and I took a hundred more photos of the sun casting its special evening light over everything, the way I do every evening when I'm there, every year that I go. It felt a little dreamlike, then, the fact that only days before people had gathered right there to eat and dance and celebrate with us. Now it was just ours again, filled with the incessant chirps, whirrs, hoots and warbles of the insect and animal kingdown all around us, and the insistent wind blowing, ever-steady, through the acacias and the olive trees. But I see it with different eyes now. Or the same eyes, but a different heart.

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