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Oh boy, I’m "it". Cath, from A Blithe Palate, tagged me for my very first meme. This food-blogging community is quite a friendly and active one!

I am supposed to go through my posts until I stumble on the 23rd one, then seek out the 5th line, post it here along with some insights into what I wrote, in addition to the meme instructions for five more bloggers whom I tag.

Since my blog is but a wee baby blog right now, my 23rd post was actually posted just a few days ago, when I made ciabatta. The fifth line of the post is

"But, I told myself, I am a recipe-testing blogger!"

Ah yes, this was the intrepid, not-to-be-dissuaded tone I took with myself when the plethora of yeasts and flours needed for those breads threatened to overwhelm me into choosing an easier recipe. If I’m going to get all serious and mystical for a moment, I actually think this sentence pretty well sums up how I feel right now about the blog and the writing and cooking: it’s a challenge that I need in my life. Even when crazy ingredient lists or complicated preparations might seem daunting, I am a recipe-testing blogger and I will conquer them all! At least for the most part…

So, now it’s my turn to tag some folks. I choose Zarah Maria at Food and Thoughts, Debbie at words to eat by, David at David Lebovitz, Kim at Walker Eats, and Cherie at kitschenette: all of their blogs have been inspirations to me.

Searching for an authentic version of panzanella – that Italian salad made up basically of stale bread and fresh tomatoes – proved more difficult than I expected. Many recipes online and in cookbooks included fennel, raw garlic, tuna, chickpeas, Parmigiano, boiled eggs, and other such out-of-place ingredients that didn’t really fulfill my ideas of one of the exemplary dishes of cucina povera. I wanted something much simpler and totally stripped down, with only the most essential ingredients playing off each other. Armed with these ideas, I went down to my local bookstore and nosed through several books. I ended up finding the most promising recipes in Saveur Cooks Authentic Italian and Flavors of Tuscany (a highly covetable book, at least in my estimation).

Saveur has you toast a cubed baguette in olive oil and garlic, which you then toss with sliced tomatoes, red wine vinegar and basil. Nancy Harmon Jenkins has you toss water-moistened stale bread with tomatoes and other vegetables, basil and red wine vinegar. I liked Saveur’s plain and simple ingredient list better, but something about the moistened bread in the second recipe seemed more peasant-like to me. I decided to fuse the two ideas and make my own panzanella. I think it comes close to nirvana, especially if you are like me and think that tomatoes and bread might be the only two foods worth living for on this planet.

I started out with an assortment of gorgeous tomatoes. Miniature plum tomatoes called Juliet, which literally taste as sweet as candy, stripey Green Zebras, a delicate yellow tomato, and then one red and green striped one that looks like a Brandywine, but I’m not sure.

I cubed a hardened baguette (although now that I have some stale ciabatta lying around, that could certainly be used, too) and soaked the cubes in a small glass of lukewarm water for a second or two. I squeezed out the excess water and put the softened bread in a bowl. To that I added all the sliced tomatoes, a handful of sliced basil, and a good amount of salt. To dress the salad, I added some delicately flavored olive oil and a few drops of sherry vinegar (I think balsamic vinegar is too sweet and strong for the bread). Eaten straight away, the panzanella was refreshing and delicious.

I love using up stale bread, and while it’s still warm out, this salad is a good way to do that. Soon enough, when the good tomatoes are gone and it’s cool outside, it’ll be time for the warmer dishes using up old bread, like pappa al pomodoro and many of Judy Rodgers’ soups.

Blini are those smallish Russian pancakes made from buckwheat flour, often topped off with a cap of sour cream and a spoonful of caviar. In a recent article in the L.A. Times about corn, Russ Parsons fiddled with a recipe from Jeremiah Tower for cornmeal blini, adding fresh corn and jalapeno peppers. They were to be finished off with a spoonful of Mexican crema and a cilantro leaf. Now, to me, not much else can beat the repulsiveness of cilantro. I believe someone somewhere is doing a study on how some of us are missing the cilantro enzyme in our mouths, rendering the flavor of a leaf of it akin to, oh, say, a chemical meant to kill us all off in a few minutes or less. So I tend to avoid all recipes that include cilantro. In this case, I figured I could easily leave out the garnish and so would also remove the jalapeno from the batter (these two go together like peas in a pod, so what's one without the other?). To make up for this omission, and because I had two cobs in the fridge, not one, I doubled the amount of fresh corn in the recipe.

Don't attempt to make these blini any larger than the two tablespoons or so that are recommended in the recipe. The batter is thin, and the blini will rip apart if they are too big to be flipped easily. They are pretty salty, so the sour cream or creme fraiche is essential to smoothing out the taste a bit. I'd sprinkle some minced chives on top for an elegant, crunchy little appetizer. I can imagine getting creative with the toppings: slivers of smoked fish, a few tiny cubes of tomatoes soaked in basil oil, or perhaps even a tangle of caramelized onions. In total, the blini were not bad, though I do think that plain old buckwheat blini are somewhat easier to make (no pesky corn kernels flying through the kitchen), and that wonderful buckwheat texture really can't be beat.

First, I whisked together cornmeal, salt, sugar and some boiling water to create a thickish  batter.

After this cooled off, I beat in two eggs, some milk, sifted flour and a bit of melted butter. The batter becomes very thin.

I added in the cooked corn kernels and let the batter rest in the fridge for a while.
After melting butter in a pan (I don't use nonstick, but the recipe instructs you to), I poured in five or six little puddles of batter.

I cooked them a few minutes on each side, then turned them out onto a plate. Keep the plate warm in the oven until you're ready to serve.

What do you do when the gloriously perfumed stone fruit that you so carefully selected from large bins at the market one day, transitions too quickly from the promise of juicy, pliant flesh to an almost decadent state of over-ripeness? Slice away the offending areas, douse in an acidic slosh of citrus juice and booze, and serve with a floppy crown of cream. There's no real recipe for this, because so much depends on the state of your fruit and what you have on hand in your kitchen cupboards, and what your personal taste decrees. So, use my suggestions as a guideline and feel free to experiment. Important is only that your fruit not be the mealy supermarket kind, devoid of all flavor and texture.

First, I slice up whatever stone fruit I have that needs to consumed that very minute. Last night, it consisted of a nectarine and two white peaches. Don't bother peeling them – this is a rustic kind of dessert. Cut away whatever parts of the fruit may already be over the hill. You could use any combination of peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots and so on.

Squeeze half a lemon (or more, depending on the amount of fruit; or else use a lime or perhaps an orange) over the fruit and pour in a glug or two of dark rum (you could use Armagnac, cognac, fruit liqueur, Prosecco or whatever else seems appropriate). The alcohol pulls out some interesting flavors in the fruit – last night my peaches tasted almost like the freshest, sweetest bananas you could imagine. You won't need any additional sugar because your fruit should be chockful of the natural stuff. Toss the fruit with the citrus juice and alcohol, then let it sit for a while. Only have 20 minutes? That's fine. Want to make it a few hours in advance? That's probably fine, too, although the fruit might darken a bit.

When it's time to serve, plop a dollop of sour cream on top. You could sweeten this cream with honey or sugar or maple syrup, but plain is a nice balance to the sweet fruit. You could use plain yogurt or some heavy cream or creme fraiche or… you get the picture. Serve a bowlful with a snappy cookie alongside, or maybe with your morning toast. Whenever, whatever – this is one easygoing and forgiving recipe.

Dear readers, I have been humbled. After being somewhat scornful of the roasted peppers I made last night, I had some cooled to room temperature for lunch. And what had seemed bland and a bit forgettable yesterday was concentrated and delicious today. It's not exactly rocket science that leftovers (when not chilled to tooth-aching temperatures) often taste better than freshly prepared dishes, but nevertheless I crossed these off the list too quickly, without giving them fair shakes. So, mea culpa. My advice to you is to make these after work for a picnic the next day! They do seem like ideal food for an al fresco meal, wedged between some crusty bread that has sopped up the deeply flavored juices.

And while we're on the subjects of picnics (and warm weather fare in general, I suppose), I have to share with you one of my favorite discoveries of the summer: the combination of beets and mint. I like to boil beets until they're tender (you could also wrap them in foil and roast), then peel off the thin skins when they've cooled. The pink and stripey beets above are Chioggia beets. I toss the little nuggets with chopped fresh mint, a delicately flavored olive oil (or if it's around, walnut oil), and a few drops of sherry vinegar. Don't forget a light sprinkling of salt. Sweet beets, faintly pungent mint, a nicely astringent dressing: not only do the flavors really work together, this salad is assembled in no time at all.