The little kitchen was a hotbed of activity this weekend. There's nothing like a tidy kitchen to make me want to mess it up all over again. A clean kitchen is my blank canvas. I perused the possibilities.
I started out by reining in the wildly out of control stacks of photo-copied & printed recipes...things I've yanked out of magazines and the Chronicle Food & Wine section, recipes I've copied from stacks and stacks of cookbooks I've lugged back and forth from the library, those freebie recipe cards from the grocery store and the farmers market info table. I flipped through each and every one, evaluating the who's, what's, where's, why's, and when's.
As much as it pained me I did toss away a good third of the mass accumulation. Some were easy, like the quarter pound beet burger. The photo was gorgeous and all the ingredients seemed managable and it would have fullfilled my adventurous quest at meeting new vegetables but in the end it had to go, so many recipes so little time.
I started out by reining in the wildly out of control stacks of photo-copied & printed recipes...things I've yanked out of magazines and the Chronicle Food & Wine section, recipes I've copied from stacks and stacks of cookbooks I've lugged back and forth from the library, those freebie recipe cards from the grocery store and the farmers market info table. I flipped through each and every one, evaluating the who's, what's, where's, why's, and when's.
As much as it pained me I did toss away a good third of the mass accumulation. Some were easy, like the quarter pound beet burger. The photo was gorgeous and all the ingredients seemed managable and it would have fullfilled my adventurous quest at meeting new vegetables but in the end it had to go, so many recipes so little time.
I can not believe how close I came to tossing this one: Dieters Tartine. The title of the recipe turned me off. I hate anything that labels anything as "Diet" food. It immediately sounds restrictive, even if it did come from my guru, Dorie Greenspan's gorgeous "Around My French Table", a gorgeously written and beautifully photographic inspiration of French cookery. I've marched this book back and forth from the library probably 6 or 7 times in the last year.
The ingredient list was small and I had every thing on hand, including a half of a large cucumber that was teetering on the edge of the trash can, two plum tomatoes and about a third of an Italian loaf that was definitely ready for toast.
The ingredient list was small and I had every thing on hand, including a half of a large cucumber that was teetering on the edge of the trash can, two plum tomatoes and about a third of an Italian loaf that was definitely ready for toast.
I chopped up the tomato, cucumber and basil and tossed it with a little salt and pepper. The recipe called for some kind of fancy spreadable french cheese I'd never heard of, but what I did have was a big log of goat cheese that I ended up mixing in with a little greek yogurt to make it spreadable.
The slices of french bread are toasted in the broiler on one side only. My tweak was to rub some garlic on the hot toasted side.
I then spread the cheese and yogurt mix all over the toast, spooned the diced vegetables on top and finishing with a touch of white pepper, sea salt and a few strips of basil.
Super simple, waaay de-lish and kinda elegant.
I tweaked it the next day, adding avocado and bacon crumbles to my leftover vegetable mix from the day before. A Dieters Tartine? not so much.
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