I recently had a “meatball sandwich” from an establishment that shall remain nameless. My friend got one too, and we were both a little confused when our sandwiches came out with lettuce, tomato, and onion on them.

What??

Is this a Bay Area thing? This has happened to me here before, and I don’t get it.

Hot meatballs and marinara sauce + cold, bland toppings… does not compute.

To top it all off, the food from said establishment left us both with stomach aches all afternoon.

It goes without saying that I needed to make this right, so a few days later I cooked up my own meatball sandwiches.

We definitely have some of the usual suspects here, although I used goat cheese where I normally use parmesan. And the meat mixture is beef and pork sausage; apparently I needed some really fattening meatballs to get over the previously mentioned atrocity.

I think the most important thing to keep in mind when making meatballs (and I could make a lot of jokes here, but I’ll spare you) is to not overwork your meat! I know you’re worried that it won’t get mixed properly, and that’s why I always thoroughly mix everything but the meat first. That way you’re combining the meat with one homogeneous mixture instead of 10 different ingredients.

These meatballs are baked because dammit, it’s just easier that way. You still get a nice outer crunch, they all cook evenly, and you don’t have to tend to them at all. While they bake, a simple sauce (with even more goat cheese) gets made and they’re ready to go at the same time. At that point you could always leave them in the sauce on very low heat to keep warm until you’re ready to eat!

I mean really, as Ina would say, how easy is thaaaat?

Click here to view this recipe.

You know that point when you’re about to go out of town and trying to whittle down the produce in the house? And then you end up with a potato and a handful of arugula and think, well I guess I’ll try to make a meal out of this…

It could just be me. Other folks might go for take-out at that point, but I like a good food challenge.

I especially like it when an attempt to use up some random food ends up being really, really delicious.

My baked potatoes normally get ALL the fixin’s thrown on top. Why not, right?

Well, think of this as the minimalist baked potato. Minimal effort and ingredients that yield huge flavor in return.

It starts out in the usual manner. Rub some oil on the potato, sprinkle it with salt, stab it with a fork a few times.

The fork part can double as a way to relieve some stress if you need it to.

The potato gets thrown in the oven and forgotten about for the better part of an hour. Once it’s done, you’re 2 minutes away from potato magic.

Have you sautéed arugula before? I hadn’t until I made this dish. It’s crazy how much 30 seconds in a pan can change the flavor. Especially if there is butter and garlic in said pan. It mellows out a little and becomes more like spinach’s funky cousin.

Arugula and garlicky butter taste really nice with parmesan cheese, so that goes on top. Going out of town or not, I’ve always got some Reggiano in the fridge!

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I know that braising isn’t exactly what comes to mind at the start of summer, but hear me out.

This isn’t one of those cold weather, giant hunk of meat cooking all afternoon kinds of braises. Nor is it loaded down with heavy flavors.

If a summery braise ever existed, this is it: fast, light and packed with bright flavors.

This comes from the “need to use up some odds and ends” recipe collection.

It started with a single tomato, some leftover white wine and fresh herbs on their last leg. Then I had these chicken thighs staring at me.

(If you had some different chicken parts staring at you – say breasts or drumsticks, you could certainly use those instead. Just adjust the simmering time accordingly.)

I had some pink peppercorns left from those lovely pickles and thought they might play nicely with the other odds and ends I’d gathered.

I love when things come together like this.

The rest is pretty much pantry staples!

This could be served family style on a bed of herbed rice (which I highly recommend), or with a side salad or veggies of your choice!

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This has been an adventurous week over here. I crossed two, yes TWO, things off my cooking bucket list!

Whoa – big things!

On Wednesday I cleaned and prepared mussels for the first time. This one I’m almost ashamed to admit. For the amount of mussels I’ve consumed in my life, I feel like I should have gotten to this eons ago. Nevertheless, they were amazing. White wine, lemon juice, fennel seeds, garlic… you get the picture. (I used this recipe, just not on a grill.) And yes, I ate all of them.

The second kitchen feat was homemade pickled vegetables. Whaaat? I know. Crazy.

Or is it?

After making them, I say hell no!

I used to think of pickled veggies as one of those things that just… exists. You go to the salsa bar and boom – there they are. Like croissants. Those aren’t a thing you make, they’re just there!

So if you’re weirded out right now, I feel ya. But let me ask you two things:

1. Can you boil water?

2. Can you slice vegetables?

If you answered yes to both those questions, you’re on the road to pickle some veggies! Woooo!

If you answered no… then we’ll have to save that for another post I guess.

What cured my pickling apprehension was Ted Allen’s feature in a recent Food Network issue which highlighted his new cookbook, In My Kitchen. I looked at the recipe and thought, “Oh… that’s it?!”

So much of my life spent not pickling!!

As I mentioned earlier, it’s about as simple as pouring some hot liquid over sliced vegetables.

And according to Ted, you can pickle anything using this method. So if you’re a pickled veggie fan, I’ll let you get to slicing!

Click here to view this recipe.

Alright Patrice (my dearest gluten-intolerant friend), next time you ask me to make hummus or something with bacon, I’m making you these instead!

Well, I might also make something with bacon. We can always use some bacon.

Anyway, about these cakes. They’re sort of like hummus in that garbanzo beans, tahini, lemon, and garlic are involved. But wait! Then they’re mixed with fresh herbs and jalapeno, formed into cakes, and crisped up in oil.

Then, as if crispy cakes of hummusy goodness weren’t enough, they’re topped off with a super flavorful spicy herb sauce that echoes the flavors in the cakes.

You could serve these as an appetizer, a light lunch with a salad, or a side dish. If you’re anything like me and were snacking all day before making these, 2 of them make a mighty fine dinner. The sauce, if you somehow had some leftover, could be used on pretty much anything savory that needs an extra punch. Serve it over grilled meat, drizzled into a soup, stirred into plain rice… get crazy with it.

You could also make these into smaller, more bite-sizey cakes if you were feeling cutesy. I dished these out with a standard ice cream scoop, because that’s how I roll. Or scoop.

Click here to view this recipe.

I have some partially completed projects floating around right now:

An advertisement that’s finished in my mind, but not on my computer screen.

A pile of merely thumbed through magazines sitting next to the new ones that won’t stop arriving.

A stack of manuals for a new camera that I made a weak attempt at starting.

I’m guessing… 5 loads of laundry I only got down to 3.

Multiple lists of things to cook - at least I’m at 9 out of 16 on that one.

Getting to this point in this very post was done over the course of 2 evenings.

And now you’re looking at some beautiful fresh peas that are in no way part of this recipe, but were going to be at one point!

Last week a friend and her daughter came over for an afternoon of foodieness, during which the peas would become a puree, served with the pan seared cod and rainbow chard.

As we started shelling them, we noticed them getting smaller and smaller. Slightly discouraged, we kept on shelling. Then some got crushed at the hands of a hilarious 2-year-old. We were left with barely a handful and figured, “eh”.

I just couldn’t let their lack of involvement sentence them to the “whoops” folder where my failed recipes (& their accompanying photos) go to die. Live on through the photos, you lovely little peas, LIIIIVE!

And so, this recipe also goes on my growing list of partially completed things.

Maybe it’s best this way. With my brain in a million different places at once, a two-part dish is a little more my speed. Pea puree can be done another day.

For now, simple pan seared cod with sauteed rainbow chard that is exploding with flavor. Mmhmm!

Click here to view this recipe.

Well this week was… eventful. Or not, depending on how you look at it. I started it off by pulling a muscle in my back, spent the next few days mostly in bed, then topped it all off with a couple of cooking misadventures. Nothing is more discouraging than throwing away food.

At least I caught up on some reading.

Today, I needed something to lift my spirits: a goooooood brunch. And lots of coffee.

In order to celebrate finding a pretty good burrito place & a Mexican market (with fresh masa! Omg.) within a stone’s throw of our house, I knew it had to be Mexican breakfast hash.

This uses a handful of ingredients that you can find at most grocery stores, and for sure at any Mexican market.

This recipe is best done in a cast iron pan, which will give your potatoes the best color and crunch. I recently had to re-season mine after roasting a chicken on a bed of onions and lemon wedges… um, whoops. If you cook super acidic things in a cast iron pan that isn’t seasoned extremely well, the acid erodes the protective coating. So I ended up with lemon wedge shaped spots of ruin in my pan.

After waiting way too long to remedy this lapse in judgement, my champion of hash, bacon, and general meat searing is finally back. If you don’t have a cast iron pan, let me tell you – it’s the best kitchen investment you’ll ever make. As long as it’s properly cared for, cast iron will last forever.

I serve this up right in the skillet with salsa, limes, hot sauce, and queso fresco to garnish.

Click here to view this recipe.

My calendar just informed me that it’s March. Apparently this has been the case for a few days now.

It also informed me that there’s this holiday coming up where we all pretend to be Irish for a day, so I guess my recent craving for shepherd’s pie worked out pretty nicely.

Any dish where you have meat, veggies, mashed potatoes, wine, AND cheese all in one sloppy package is an instant winner in my book. And when you’re as busy as we’ve been lately, a dish that provides a family of two with instant comfort food for a week is a huge bonus.

Like yesterday for example, when I was trying to start working on this post, photographing the next one, preparing for a cocktail party, and talking on the phone all that the same time. Doesn’t work, in case you were wondering. At least lunch was taken care of – we had leftover shepherd’s pie.

Speaking of life and time saving phenomena, have I ever expressed my love for potato ricers? Absolutely 100% perfect, lump-free mashed potatoes every time. Or perfect, lump-free anything else you want to mash. Best $7 I ever spent.

So since I have literally nothing I need to accomplish today beyond relaxing and scarfing down leftovers from last night’s party, I’m just gonna cut to the chase.

Buy potato ricer.

Make shepherd’s pie.

Receive bacon.

Eat really, really well for a week.

Click here to view this recipe.

Oh, hello again!

That brief recess in posting was brought to you by my best friend – Patrice! She came to visit for 5 magnificently lazy days filled with gluttony, bad TV, even worse movies, and some short-lived adventuring in and around Mountain View. We even made up a couple of cocktails! One of which might be worthy of posting, the other… maybe not so much. We also burned things with a kitchen torch. Delicious things.

As soon as I dropped her off at the airport yesterday morning, I was missing home. Good thing I’ll be there in 3 days! Woohoo!

To tide me over until then, I needed to make something from my childhood. Lemony Caesar Salad, perhaps? Why yes! There was a time when my mom made this damn near every night as part of our dinner and I loved it.

I called my mom to get the recipe. We spent several minutes bouncing a series of guesses and approximations off each other as we struggled to remember exactly how this salad was made years ago. I jotted down some notes and set off to experiment.

It tasted just like I remembered – only better. Anchovy paste was replaced with whole fillets, and pre-shredded grocery store brand parmesan cheese was swapped out for large shavings of Parmigiano Reggiano (you have to say that in the Giada voice); I even used organic lettuce. Then there’s the homemade croutons from good quality bread.

Oh. My. Gosh. Heaven. Josh said it was the best caesar salad he’d ever had – and that was after it sat around for a while being photographed!

This salad is legit. It has elements of a classic caesar salad – the coddled egg, anchovies – but it’s different. My mom loves lemon, so her version has a good amount of lemon juice, and no mustard or worcestershire to stand in its way.

This is the caesar salad I grew up on – the one all others are compared to. It’s bright and acidic, which explains why I never really liked the super creamy kind. My mom made sure to remind me to put “2-3 garlic cloves” in the recipe, because not everybody loves garlic as much as I do. Yes, mother…

Click here to view this recipe.

Are you noticing a pattern yet?

I love soup.

And I saw a cloud in the sky yesterday for the first time in about a week, so I made some.

This has to be my favorite soup genre. The “chop stuff up, roast it and blend it with some stock” kind. It works for every vegetable you can think of. Seriously. Broccoli? Check. Butternut squash? Oh yeah. Tomatoes? You bet. Bell peppers, garlic, sweet potato, fennel, asparagus… You get where I’m going with this.

Roasted potato leek soup is what started it all, really. It was one of the first things I cooked from Barefoot Contessa’s Back to Basics. And boy is it basic – in preparation, that is. The flavor is about as far from basic as you can get. Probably in my top 5 favorite soups. A couple of those other top slots are also filled from this very same book. This woman knows her soups.

And so it began. I started roasted and blending everything I could get my hands on. Perhaps this is why my immersion blender seems to be dying… Sorry buddy, I know I’ve put you through a lot these past few years.

This time I used carrots and parsnips, two flavors that get along beautifully. Can’t you just see a carrot and parsnip holding hands, skipping off into the sunset?

Maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, they’re delicious together. Sweet carrot, peppery parsnip. BFFs.

I got a little fancy with this soup and made a lemon ginger cream for drizzling. Isn’t everything better with an extra pop of flavor at the end? Well, it’s totally optional. But I do highly recommend it. It’s extremely bright and acidic, which is a nice finishing touch on something that’s been cooking for a while. It would also be delicious on many of the other chop-roast-blend type of veggie soups.

As much as I hope you make this particular soup, I’m equally hopeful that you’ll go to your fridge right now, pull out whatever grabs you, chop it, roast it, and blend it up. You can thank me later.

Click here to view this recipe.