Inspiring Zucchini With a Side of Feta Cheese

I have a lot of cookbooks, not more than I should, but enough that each box made Brian curse my not-so-little collection as we moved into our fourth floor walk-up last summer. Some of the books are well-loved, splattered with a sauce from page 84, a gooey drip of batter from page 128, and a fragrant spice mixture comes tumbling out of the spine each time I turn to page 223. Others are pretty to look at, with vibrant meals displayed on each page, and blurry, saturated images of food artfully presented, with the serving utensil displayed just so. I love my cookbooks, but the fact of the matter is I rarely use them as they are supposed to be used.

A good cookbook can be used as much for inspiration as it can for hard and fast recipes. I read cookbooks much like I read a stellar novel, from cover to cover. I glance at each page, my eyes focusing in on the endless lists of ingredients. I may try to imagine the final product, because as we all know a cookbook is often like used car salesman selling you a final product that is not always like what he says. Sometimes, even I am in need of some inspiration in the kitchen. I walk into the kitchen and it is like a science laboratory, science never really being one of my strong suits in school--I am lost. I have no idea what to cook for dinner, and worse yet, nothing even sounds good to go out for. It is times like these when I crack open a book that is good for inspiration if nothing else (but it is great for other things too)-- The Kitchen Diaries, by Nigel Slater. And he never fails. This week, he offered me zucchini cakes with dill and feta.

Why isn't Nigel Slater a bigger deal in this country? Maybe he needs to wear cleavage baring tops like Nigella Lawson, or bash everything up in a mortar and pestle throwing British-isms around like rice at a wedding like Jamie Oliver, but whatever the reason may be I adore him. And I love this book. I purchased it in the U.K. awhile back, so all of my measurements are metric. (Although now this book is available in the U.S., so run, run to the bookstore!) Whenever I bake from this cookbook (and measurements are key), I depend on my trusty kitchen scale. But when I cook (or fry, as this recipe would have me do), I grow too lazy for exact measurements, and just wing it. Which is exactly what I did for this recipe.

The book is arranged much like a daily calendar, and on July 15, these pancakes are what Mr. Slater had to eat. And on June 26, Adrienne, feeling quite inspired, had virtually the same little cakes. I grated and salted a few zucchini and left them to drain for a half hour in a colander. In a saute pan, I softened a few sliced scallions and one clove of sliced garlic. Then I stirred in the drained zucchini, and cooked until the zuke was just beginning to color. I added few tablespoons of flour, and continued cooking , just to get the raw taste out of the flour. Then I removed the whole mess from heat, and placed it in a mixing bowl. I crumbled in some salty feta cheese, and a handful of fresh sliced dill. I tasted the mixture, seasoning with salt and pepper. After mixing in an egg or two, I had a loose, not watery batter.

Then I heated a few tablespoons of olive oil in a shallow pan, spooned in the batter, a few tablespoons at a time and cooked until golden brown on both sides. About 5 minutes. Flip gently. Elaborating upon the original recipe, I added a yogurt sauce for dipping. Simply take a small container of plain yogurt, grate in half a clove of garlic, another handful of fresh dill, salt and pepper, and mix until blended.

Perfect. Light. Utterly Delicious. And the ideal way for me to use one of my cookbooks.

Stinky Sandwich

When I was young there were two sandwiches which I absolutely could not stand-- egg salad and tuna fish. Although their lumpy appearances definitely did not appeal, it was above all their lingering odors that were so detestable to the sensitivity of my young nose.

I would head out to the kitchen, teeth brushed, shoelaces tied, and shirt tucked in (because yes, I was one of those never-play-in-the-mud, proper children), to pour myself a bowl of cereal. Before I even arrived in the kitchen, the sulfuric smell of my mother mashing a half dozen eggs, mixed with coarsely chopped dill pickles for her egg salad, would hit me like a ton of bricks . A proper, though never meek child, I would fuss about the smell making me gag first thing in the morning. Pleasant.

Then there was school lunchtime. I would pull out my peanut butter and jelly sandwich sandwich; the only sandwich I would tolerate for some years. Friends would gather next to me, we would chitter-chat absentmindedly, and then the odor would come wafting through the cafeteria table. There my friend Jane would sit, gobbling up a tuna fish sandwich straight from a crinkly waxed paper wrapper. Sitting for hours, warming in her Strawberry Shortcake lunchbox, it smelled of the ocean after a storm, one that had riotously blown all of the fish out of the sea to bake in the sun. But Jane was a dear friend who did not deserve my complaints like my mother did. Instead I simply did not breathe through my nose for the duration of lunchtime in the cafeteria.

It's funny how tastes (and smells) can change over the years, because fast-forward about twenty years, and I have been known to eat many a stinky thing: Cheese? Pass it over my way. Anchovies? But of course. Pate? Why not! I'll even eat the dreaded egg salad and tuna fish sandwich, get this-- together.

Ah yes, the good old stinky sandwich, all grown up, and made even stinkier, and brinier by the addition of fried capers. Made with olive oil packed tuna fish, drained (but not too well), a few perfectly cooked hard-boiled eggs (11 minutes in boiling water), and some chopped fried capers mixed into one wonderfully smelly mess. I add a few leaves of crisp, peppery arugula, and serve the whole jumble on a fresh baguette. De-licious!

If you are wanting a little stink from your next meal (and truly, I jest, the odor is almost innocuous) the recipe for this stinky sandwich filling is on the Daily Specials page.

Updated Ambrosia

Ambrosia has always fascinated me, not the food of the Greek gods, rather the good ol' American buffet speciality. (And maybe by fascinated I should clarify-- repelled.) I remember a few family BBQ's at my grandma house. All the food would be lined up on the dinning room cum buffet table: potato salad, crocks of baked beans, ears of corn, and way down, at the end of the table, a Melmac bowl full of ambrosia.

You would think this salad would be endlessly pleasing to a child's palate, mandarin orange segments, chunks of pineapple, dried coconut, mini-marshmallows tumbling about. Sounds pleasing enough. But it was the "dressing" that turned me off every time. The thick, globby, preservative-laden dressing, or sauce...maybe covering is the best choice of words for the concoction, which was so dense you could not even see what it concealed. Sometimes it was made of sweetened sour cream, other times an entire container of whipped topping was mounded then mixed into the fruit, and other times, it was a combination of the two. Regardless of its nature, this mixture just did not do it for me.

I'm not even sure what made me think of this "salad" of yore, but I started thinking about making a new ambrosia. How about mixing in a bit of plain creme fraiche, unadorned, and just enough to coat but not smother? And why must the fruit be peaked, easily hidden by this sweet dressing? I wanted something bright, not buried-- I wanted berries. And this is what I got.

Pink, delicious ambrosia. These cherries and raspberries were the berries and cream of my dreams. I pitted so many cherries, bursting with juice, for my ambrosia, that my fingertips became sanguine, but I didn't care. I spooned in a tablespoon or two of creme fraiche, and mixed carefully. The topping turned from stark white to a stunning, rosy pink shade. Then I folded in the much more delicate raspberries, each knob of the berry getting a proper, thin coating. The creamy topping was buttery and just rich enough, nothing like adding a bit of decadence to a normal fruit salad.

And there you have it. I'm not sure if this ambrosia would have gone over very well at my childhood BBQ's, but as a dessert at my adult dinner, I loved it.

Simple and Delicious

Well, I'm back from California. But I suppose that I should have told you that I was going upon leaving. The first of two trips back this summer, aaahh, it is wedding season! Bring on the bouquets; bring on the bridesmaids; and bring on the catered food. Northern California was actually cold when we arrived, balmy and breezy, with a thick layer of marine fog in the morning. Cold though it may have been, the inclement weather did not keep the farmers from harvesting every sort of stellar local produce possible and bringing it to market

California was inspiring. I guess you cannot take the state out of a girl who was born and raised there. There were pies to be made at my parent's house, with a mixture of stone fruit, and boysenberries so plump they looked like the belly of Santa Claus. Apricots that were far from elegant, bruised and dimpled, yet bursting with flavor. The shelling English peas, the pods opening with a crack, and the smooth peas lined up like soldiers inside, were so delicious I could eat hundreds raw. And the produce was cheap as chips.

But for me all of this inspiration for to simplicity. If I learned anything from being raised in California, it is that when food is in season: bright and flavorful, you don't have to do much with it in order to make a miraculous meal. It seems almost ridiculous to show you what I made for lunch the first day back in NYC. But a trip to the market, some careful selecting, and this is what I had:

A little bite of bruschetta (well several, it was my lunchtime). I bought an ear of corn which was flash sauteed in a bit of olive oil. Juicy beefsteak tomatoes were seeded and coarsely chopped. Some freshly torn basil, a grinding of pepper, a good dose of salt, and a drizzle of green olive oil, and there I had it. Mounded high on slices of grilled baguette, lunch was served.

I made this bruschetta in New York. And staring out my living room window, at the feathery green tree tops, peeking out of Central Park just a few blocks away, munching on my lovely bruschetta, I realized that I just needed a trip to California to make me realize that summer is here.

Plummy Apricots

Some people have electronic gadgets that do almost everything for them, others simply have to glide on yet another new shade of glistening lipstick, other people inhabit homes that resemble radio stations with albums lining the shelves like blades of freshly cut grass on a soccer field. Me, I'm a sucker for unique fruit. If fruit were eternal, never to rot away with age, I definitely would have a collection.

Frankly I'm not even sure where this love came from. But the first time I saw those mini watermelons lined up one on top of the other, my spine tingled. I thought to myself, "How ingenious, a personal sized melon that won't take up precious room in my already full refrigerator!" Or those flat donut peaches, when I walked by their fragrant bouquet, and touched their delicate skin, I knew that a life-long love affair was about to begin. So imagine my glee when I spotted the fabled red apricot at the market recently.

No it's not the aprium, or even the pluot, or better yet, the plumcot, all which I have become intimately familiar with in summers past. It is simply the red apricot. And let me just say, a fruit with skin this crimson, can taste as sweet. However, this fruit toyed with my senses. When I took a slice of this apricot to my lips, skin rosy yet with a flesh pale orange, my mind began to play tricks on me. Although the scent was pure apricot, flowery and fresh, I could have sworn that upon the inaugural bite, I tasted a plum. The fruit just looked so much like one. But bite number two, was a different story.

I closed my eyes, and took a second taste. Placing the fruit squarely on my tongue, the firm feel, the soft fuzz, and summery taste was of course, all apricot. What a relief, nothing had happened to my beloved stone fruit, they had simply donned a new, racy set of clothing. I guess even fruit is allowed to have a change of style from time to time.