Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 12

Whole Lemon Strawberry Sorbet

I’m going through a real sorbet / ice cream-making phase right now. If you follow me on Instagram (and how can you not?!), you saw me make a vanilla bean ice cream a few weeks ago, and a Concord grape sorbet more recently. Not only was it fun to dig out my old ice cream maker (it’s nothing fancy; just a crappy old Cuisinart, with a canister I keep in the freezer), but it’s been EXTRA fun to have homemade frozen treats waiting for me every night after dinner. I have a real sweet tooth, but eating a whole dessert every night is a lot, so I just have a spoonful or two of homemade ice cream or sorbet, and I’m good.

Yesterday, I was at the farmer’s market and I decided to brave the line at the only organic stand (they’re so popular, they scared away all the others). As I gathered up heirloom tomatoes and zucchini, I spied really gorgeous strawberries. Even though strawberries are more of a spring thing (aren’t they?), these specimens were pretty undeniable.

I mean: who could say no to these?

As I lounged around reading the Sunday Times, I contemplated what I’d do with these berries. Obviously, I was going to take out my ice cream maker, it was just a question of ice cream vs. sorbet.

A lot of the articles that I read about strawberry ice cream spoke of the challenge of texture; that a strawberry puree would make for icy patches, etc. Plus most of the recipes involved many, many steps, like letting the strawberries steep with sugar and vodka for a few hours. Who has time for that?

As I turned to the world of sorbet, many of the recipes had you cook the berries. These berries were so beautiful and tasted so good, something about that felt very wrong. Wasn’t there a recipe that’d let me preserve that raw berry flavor?

Which is when I hit upon the most insane sorbet recipe I’ve ever encountered: Amanda Hesser’s take on The River Cafe’s recipe which has you blend a WHOLE LEMON along with TWO POUNDS of berries and two cups of sugar. That’s it. You churn that. Say WHAT?

I knew that I had to try it.

Luckily, I had a lemon: so I just sliced it, picked out the seeds, chopped it some more, and threw it into my food processor with two cups of sugar.

That’s what it looks like all blended up. That went into a bowl, and in went the two pounds of hulled berries.

When those were blended, I folded the two mixtures together and added a big splash of Campari because alcohol helps sorbet not get too hard in the freezer (plus: Campari seemed like a good idea).

This all went straight into the ice cream maker (it was a lot of liquid, may have been smarter to do this in batches) and I churned away while I did all of the dishes.

Thirty minutes later, I had this Whole Lemon Strawberry Sorbet:

What did it taste like?

Pow! It was so punchy and exciting and very, very sweet. But that raw berry flavor that I wanted was there, along with the bitterness and acidity of the lemon. The texture is kind-of viscous. But it’s unlike any sorbet you’ve had before, and the process is undeniably easy.

So if you see strawberries at the market, grab yourself a lemon and break out that ice cream maker. The zippiest strawberry sorbet you’ve ever had is just thirty minutes away.

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Lamb Burgers and Tomato Salad

One of the reasons that I stopped blogging for as long as I did was that I felt like I was starting to repeat myself. How many times could I tell you about making cavatappi with sun-dried tomatoes? Or how I roast a chicken?

Now, on this new-ish iteration of the blog (where my m.o. is to be much more casual about the whole thing), I find myself repeatedly talking about Cookbook in Echo Park. It’s where I do most of my grocery shopping and it’s pretty much the best food store I’ve ever been to anywhere. Look what I saw when I walked in there yesterday…

If that doesn’t make you want to do a cartwheel, I don’t know what would.

Craig had only one request for dinner: “Some protein.” I’d made spaghetti Carbonara the night before, and he ate the leftovers for lunch, so he was feeling those Carbonara carbs.

At Cookbook, I eyed the meat case and saw ground lamb. My eye traveled up and I saw buns. That’s when I had an idea: “Lamb burgers!”

I looked up a recipe — Anne Burrell’s did the trick — got the ingredients I needed (lamb, buns, yogurt, Feta, mint, dill) and also grabbed some heirloom tomatoes, because now is the time to eat tomatoes with everything.

Here’s how easy this dinner was: when I got home, first thing I did was heat some olive oil in a non-stick skillet and while that was heating, I diced a red onion and threw that in, and then chopped two cloves of garlic and when the onion was soft (oh I added salt to it), I added the garlic and let that cook a little too.

I scooped all of that into a large bowl and let it cool.

Meanwhile, I made the tzaziki topping: mixed Greek yogurt with lots of crumbled Feta (the good stuff), lots of chopped mint and dill, lemon zest, and a splash of white wine vinegar. Oh: added salt and Aleppo pepper too.

Finally, in another bowl, I cut the tomatoes into chunks and tossed them with olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, some more of the Feta, and some more of those herbs.

Then all I had to do was make the burgers.

To the cooled onions and garlic, I added the pound of ground lamb, added a big pinch of salt, some more lemon zest and herbs, and — the most surprising ingredient of all (per Anne Burrell’s recipe): water! About 1/4 cup.

I lightly mixed all of that together and formed four loose patties which I sprinkled with even more salt (salt on the outside makes ’em extra tasty).

In the same skillet that I cooked the onions (a Scanpan), I wiped out the onion bits and put the skillet on high heat. When it was nice and hot, I added the burgers and let them sit, undisturbed, for three – four minutes. When they were nice and charred on the bottom, I flipped them.

Then I kept them cooking like that until a thermometer showed an internal temperature of 125, which is exactly medium rare.

I moved them to a plate, let them rest for five minutes, and then put them on buns with lots of the tzaziki on top, tomatoes on the side.

This dinner was such a huge hit. I can always tell it’s a success when Craig gets a conspiratorial look on his face, like: “Oh my God, I can’t believe how good this is.”

So give it a shot! And if you live in L.A. and need a place to do your food shopping, have I mentioned Cookbook? (I swear, they should pay me a commission.)

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Fancy Weeknight Chicken and Cauliflower

Yesterday I went food shopping with my friend Diana. We went to Lassen’s and the produce looked fine, not great, so I grabbed two cauliflowers (cauliflower?) even though it’s the height of summer and I should be buying corn and tomatoes. Then we went across the street to the butcher (McCall’s) and despite the vast array of meat and fish options — short ribs, head-on shrimp — I chose two skin-on chicken breasts because I was just feeling very basic yesterday.

Sometimes, though, the most basic, bland, white ingredients (chicken breasts and cauliflower!) can be canvasses for the creative mind. To quote George Seurat in Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George: “White / a blank chicken breast or cauliflower / the challenge? Bring order to the whole.”

The only decision I had to make was: one pan or two.

I could’ve gone the one-pan route, seared the chicken breasts, finished them on a cookie sheet in the oven and then cooked the cauliflower in the brown chicken bits. But I liked the idea of using the chicken bits to make a sauce, so I opted for two pans.

Here’s how easy this dinner was: I got my biggest non-stick skillet, poured in a layer of olive oil, heated it up, and then cut two cauliflower (cauliflowers?) into florets, leaving some of the leaves. When the oil was hot, I added all of the cauliflower with a big pinch of salt.

I just let that go and go and go on high heat, turning every so often. At a certain point, the smaller pieces were getting browner and the larger pieces weren’t cooked through, so I just put a lid on the pan so the big pieces would steam.

Around this point, I added 4 sliced large garlic cloves and stirred them all through the cauliflower and the oil, letting them toast a bit.

At the very end, I added a big spoonful of capers and chopped up pickled peppers (the ones I made two weeks ago, but you could use Peppadews), plus lots of chopped parsley.

As for the chicken breasts, I preheated the oven to 425 and then in a large metal skillet, I heated another layer of olive oil until it was hot. I added the chicken breasts, seasoned with salt and pepper, skin-side down and let that brown for a while on high heat. When the breasts were golden brown, I flipped them over and put them in the oven for about 30 to 40 minutes until a probe thermometer showed an internal temp of 160.

I removed the breasts to a plate and looked at those beautiful brown bits left behind.

(Note the placement of the oven mitt… that’s to remind me that the handle’s hot!)

First I added a clove of sliced garlic and a splash of olive oil and toasted it in the pan. Then I added about an inch of white wine (1/4 bottle?), a big spoonful of capers, and a big pat of butter and brought it all to a boil.

You can make the sauce as thick or as thin as you want; I opted for thinner because I wanted more of it. Basically the more you let the liquid evaporate, the thicker it’ll get it. Just keep swirling that butter around as you go.

Then you just put the cauliflower on the plate, put the breast next to it, pour the sauce on top and sprinkle everything with parsley. Serve with the wine you used in the sauce (I used a Gruner Vetliner).

There you are: a fancy dinner with everyday supermarket ingredients and just two pans to clean afterwards.

Now back to your regular summer cooking.

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Lunch Therapy

Super excited to share with you loyal blog readers my brand new podcast, LUNCH THERAPY, which just launched today on iTunes. The concept is a riff on that old Brillat-Savarin quote from Iron Chef: “Tell me what you eat: I will tell you who you are.” Only here, it’s “tell me what you eat for lunch.”

My first guest is superstar RYAN O’CONNELL, whose new Netflix show Special just earned FOUR Emmy nominations (including one for best actor). We go deep on his Sweetgreen salad, tracing it back to childhood traumas involving room temperature Taco Bell.

I’ve got lots of amazing guests in store, so SUBSCRIBE and, if you enjoy what you hear, please give it a nice rating in iTunes. Here’s to an exciting new therapeutic adventure!

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Tomato Salad Shakshuka

The greatest sin you can commit at any dinner party, as far as I’m concerned, is to not have enough food. ALWAYS, ALWAYS make too much. There are two reasons for this: 1. No one ever leaves a dinner party saying, “My oh my, there were far too many delicious things to eat!” and 2. Whatever doesn’t get eaten, you can use the next day.

And sometimes — not always, but sometimes — the thing that you make the next day is even better than the thing you made for the dinner party. Case in point: this tomato salad shakshuka which, hyperbole police alert, may be the single best thing that I’ve cooked this year.

First: the tomato salad. I bought a bunch of heirlooms at Cookbook and just sitting there in a bowl on my kitchen table, they looked like a finished dish:

Actually, while I was at Cookbook, I ran into Ben Mims who pointed out the Nardello peppers (which I’d never seen before)…

He described them as having all of the flavor of a spicy pepper, without all the heat.

When I got home, I decided to quick pickle them: I just sliced them into rings, poured a cup of apple cider vinegar into a pot, added 1/4 cup sugar, a big pinch of salt, a bunch of peppercorns and brought everything to a boil. Then I added the sliced peppers (seeds and all)…

…let it boil for a minute, then turned off the heat, and just let them sit.

As for the tomato salad, it couldn’t have been easier: I just sliced the tomatoes into wedges, chunks, slices, and added them to a big bowl. I glugged in olive oil, Katz’s red wine vinegar, a big pinch of Maldon sea salt, lots of pepper, and tossed them all around.

I lifted them out on to a platter, then to the leftover dressing in the bowl, I added a sliced shallot, swished it around, then layered it on top of the tomatoes. Finally, I did the same with some arugula. Behold my tomato salad:

It was a big hit at the dinner party and I made so much, that I had about 1/4 of that leftover the next morning.

(I just put it in a plastic container and kept in the fridge overnight.)

The next morning, I took it back out, along with some bacon, eggs, sungolds, the pickled Nardello pepper rings, and parsley.

Here’s how I made the shakhuka… it was so easy. I took two pieces of the bacon, used scissors to cut into lardons, and added them to a non-stick skillet with a glug of olive oil.

I cranked up the heat and when the bacon had rendered a bunch of fat and gotten pretty crispy, I poured off half the fat and then added the leftover tomato salad directly to the pan, along with some sungolds and a pinch of salt.

I put a lid on it, let the liquid come out, and after three or four minutes, I took the lid off and used a wooden spoon to smash the tomatoes a bit.

When a lot of the liquid evaporated, but before the tomatoes completely broke down into a sludge, I cracked three eggs directly into the pan, sprinkled them with salt and pepper, and covered the pan, lowering the heat to medium.

I let that go, checking every 30 seconds or so, until the whites were set but the yolks were still runny.

I used a spatula to lift that into a serving bowl, drizzled everything with Italian olive oil, then topped with the pickled Nardello peppers and lots of chopped parsley. I sliced a piece of sesame sourdough to use to sop up all of the sauce. Check out this breakfast:

Mic drop.

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Instant Pesto

We’re all obsessed with instant things, these days– Instant Pots, Instagram — that the idea of doing anything NOT instant can be pretty unappealing. Which is why I’m here to tell you that pesto — which, for many, seems like a tedious, labor-intensive process — can be made instantly and deliciously if you have a food processor, a bag of arugula, and a few pantry staples.

In fact, I single-handedly guarantee that you — yes YOU — can have bright green, intensely flavorful pesto on the table in FIVE MINUTES. That’s right FIVE MINUTES.

Watch this. Take a handful of walnuts, and toast them in a tiny skillet until fragrant. (You could also use pine nuts or almonds. Doesn’t matter. Whatever you have.)

Meanwhile, cut a few chunks off a wedge of good Parmesan (you know it’s good because it’s a wedge and not pre-grated) and pop them into your food processor.

Blitz until it’s coarse…

Dump that out, put the walnuts in (let them cool a little first) and a few cloves of garlic, as many as you like (three fat ones is a good way to go, but four works if you like things very garlicky). Add a pinch of salt for good measure.

Blitz that, then add a BAG of arugula. You heard right: just buy arugula at the farmer’s market (that’s where I get mine, it’s extra peppery) or a box of organic arugula at the grocery store. The point is, unlike basil, you don’t have to do any stemming; you just put the whole bag in. Hence the INSTANT nature of this pesto. (I’d say it’s about three cups.)

Add another pinch of salt and blitz.

At this point, I add lemon juice (from about two lemons, but I like it zingy) then I put the lid on and slowly add olive oil through the feeding tube as the motor runs. About 3/4th a cup, but it could take a whole cup depending on how loose or thick you want your pesto. Ideally, you want it chunky.

And then you just add back your Parmesan and pulse a few times.

I wasn’t lying to you!

That’s seriously it: pesto in five minutes.

IMPORTANT NOTE: if your pesto doesn’t taste amazing here, fear not. Add more salt and lemon juice until it does. Seriously, I’ve had disappointing pesto moments that become amazing pesto moments just by adjusting with salt and lemon juice. So it’s important that you do that here.

There’s so much you can do with pesto in the summer. You can toss it with green beans (see here). You can do what I did the night that I made this and toss it with rigatoni, white beans (drained from a can), and a chopped tomato. (Not pictured: the tomato.)

Stir that all together and voila.

Or do what I did this morning, and put some pesto in with your eggs.

I just heated a little olive oil in a non-stick skillet, cracked in three eggs, scrambled with salt, and then stirred in a little pesto at the end.

Pesto will your best friend this summer. And now you know how to make it in an instant. Get cracking!

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Doctoring The Bagel

Writing this post on a hot Tuesday afternoon feels wrong: this is definitely a Sunday morning post. It’s what we did this past Sunday morning and what you should do this upcoming Sunday morning. So file this one away for the weekend, okay?

Here’s what we’re talking about: how to turn a bagel that you don’t make yourself (though you certainly can) into something special. You’ll need: two bagels and two packets of cream cheese. Then take a trip to the farmer’s market and come back with…

…smoked trout (assuming your farmer’s market sells that, mine does!), a tomato, really good lettuce, and lots of fresh herbs.

Now there are two types of herbs out there: those that do well in water, and those that do well in oil. I know that’s a weird thing to say, but Sara Moulton taught it to me when I cooked with her for my cookbook, and it kind of makes sense: if you were heating olive oil on the stove and you wanted to infuse it with herby flavor, you wouldn’t throw in parsley or tarragon or chives… they’d just sizzle and fry. But you could throw in rosemary, thyme, oregano: those would infuse the oil. Hence the oil / water distinction. (The water-friendly herbs would blend up easily in water.)

For today’s bagel journey, we’re using water-based herbs or grassier herbs: chives, tarragon, dill, and parsley. Put them on your cutting board and chop like crazy! (You should probably stem the parsley and tarragon and dill first.) Once you’ve chopped like a madman, add the herbs to a Kitchenaid mixer (fitted with the paddle) that’s been pre-loaded with two packets of cream cheese.

Other things you could throw in at this point: a chopped shallot, lemon zest, a splash of really good olive oil, lemon juice. Me? I just stuck with the herbs, salt, and pepper and whipped it on high.

That’s the most amount of work involved in this “recipe.”

Now, just toast your bagel (unless it’s warm out of the oven, in which case, toasting isn’t necessary).

While it’s toasting, toss your farmer’s market lettuces with your best olive oil, vinegar (I use Katz’s), Maldon sea salt, and pepper. Set aside.

Now schmear one side of your bagel (isn’t “schmear” a great word?) with lots of the herbed cream cheese and top with some of the smoked trout. Schmear the other side with more of the herbed cream cheese and top with a slice of the tomato.

Put one half on top of the other, place the salad on the side, and there you are: a dreamy, doctored bagel sandwich for your Sunday.

Maybe not unrelated, but after eating this, I solved the Sunday Times crossword in pen.

Coincidence? I think not.

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Hail Mary Pizza

Have you ever had the experience of eating at a restaurant, one that you sort of took for granted, and as you’re chewing mid-meal you realize that this isn’t just a good restaurant, it’s a great restaurant, and the whole world should know about it only you don’t want them to because that’d make it harder to get a reservation, even though this restaurant doesn’t take reservations?

That’s what happened to me last night at Hail Mary Pizza in L.A.’s Atwater Village (the village in which I live). In the space that once housed the beloved restaurant Canele, something exciting is happening. I knew it when I tasted the tomato salad, but I also knew it when the pizzas hit the table. Actually, I knew it when I stood at the counter ordering.

Do you see what I see? Food up on the counter, like a cafe in Europe: there’s cookies, cake, whole peaches, tomatoes, melons.

Things that I would normally find irritating at any other restaurant, I found charming here: bad air-conditioning. Counter-service only. Fetch your own plates and silverware.

The wine was really good: a chilled Lambrusco that was kind of the perfect thing on a hot summer’s night, with all of this spicy food.

And then the food. Check out this tomato salad:

That tomato salad was something else: sure there were the requisite heirloom tomatoes, but then there were big slivers of toasted garlic. There was a zesty, bright dressing that had some heat to it. And then all of those herbs. It’s the best tomato salad I’ve had this summer, and I’ve had a lot (including the one that I made myself).

Then there was the corn:

A riff on Mexican street corn, this was grilled to perfection, then slathered with a Calabrian chili butter, and then topped with a giant mound of Parmesan. It was outrageous. I don’t even like biting into corn on the cob (we were going to a party after and I didn’t want to have corn in my teeth!), but this was worth it.

But we haven’t even gotten to the pizza yet. The main pie you see above — okay, I’ll post it again — was called the Pep-Pep.

That had spicy pork chorizo, pepperoncini, tomato sauce, and mozzarella. It was the most exciting pizza I’ve had in a long time: mostly because of the heat (those chilis were spicy), but also because the dough that they use at Hail Mary is fermented with wild yeast and it makes such a difference. The same sort of fizzy funk that you get in a natural wine, you get in the pizza crust here. It rivals Mozza, as far as I’m concerned, for best pizza in L.A.

But we’re not done: we also got the Aye-Dunno, which had onions, gorgonzola, Mornay sauce, and — strangely enough — lettuce and ranch dressing piled on top.

There was some debate at the table about this lettuce on top of our pizza — “This would be better without the lettuce,” someone might have said — but I loved the boldness of this presentation, the weirdness of it. And also how much it made sense: people dip their pizza crust into ranch dressing, here was the ranch already on top of the pizza.

For dessert, we shared a salted chocolate chip cookie (excellent) and a brownie (just okay) but I think the star dessert would’ve been the Basque cake. I’ll get that next time. (Sorry for this blurry picture.)

In summary, let’s not tell too many people about Hail Mary, but I think there’s a world where a food critic could discover it and make it a thing and then we’ll never get to go there again. We’ll just keep this between us.

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Sausage with Corn, Sausage with Clams

The other day I bought a package of Hickory Smoked Sausage (at Cookbook, I told you I’d be talking about that place a lot) and it came with four sausages that I stretched out over two dinners, both of which — if I do say so myself — were pretty terrific.

The first involved serving the sausage as its own thing, which almost made me do it as a separate post since the corn salad that I served along with it was really the star. Let me tell you how I made it.

It’s kind of shocking how easy it is to turn an ear of summer corn from good to amazing; funny enough, it involves shocking.

Here’s what you do: boil water. Salt it heavily. Drop in your husked corn. Boil for four minutes. Shock in ice water.

Ta-da!

The cooking somehow makes it sweeter and the shocking helps it retain its freshness.

Use a sharp knife, cut the kernels off, and put them in a bowl. At this point you could add anything: I added a minced shallot and halved sungold tomatoes, along with olive oil, a splash of white wine vinegar, salt, and Aleppo pepper.

After tossing it, I realized that I still had a large, red heirloom tomato, so I cut that into cubes and added it too.

To finish, I chiffonaded some basil and stirred that in.

Admittedly, that picture should be the lead picture and this post should be just about that. Where the heck is the sausage? Calm down! I heated up a pan and melted some butter and toasted some buns in it.

Then I wiped out the pan, added a splash of grapeseed oil, and added two smoked sausages and cooked them until they were good and charred all over.

I put them on the buns, slathered with mustard, and served alongside the corn salad. I was going to put them on the same plate, but the corn salad got very wet, so this is a very unattractive picture. I’m not sure why I’m including it.

But this was a really great summer dinner that tasted like we were eating it outdoors, even though it all happened inside.

If you’re good at math, you’ll recall that I bought a package of four sausages and I used two of them, so there were still two left.

Which is why last night, I put them to work with a pound of clams that I picked up at McCall’s.

I always put clams in a bowl of cold water with a spoonful of flour to help draw out any grit. These clams were called “savory clams” which, according to the person who sold them to me, just meant they were a little brinier.

To cook ’em, I sliced the two remaining sausages, smacked some garlic cloves out of their skins (leaving them whole), and sliced up a bunch of pickled Peppadews.

(That wine was for drinking; I’d be using half a bottle in a second…)

This is so easy and so incredible, you really should try it. All you do is heat a large skillet — big enough to hold everything, and one with a lid — with a splash of olive oil. When it’s hot, you add the sausage. Let it brown on one side, then stir all around, and add the garlic.

When everything is good and toasty (and not burned) add half a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc (be careful: I lower the heat before I added a liquid to a hot pan). (Also: I should say here that the sausage gave off a lot of fat, so I poured some off before adding the white wine.) I also added a splash of the Peppadew liquid, for a little zip. Then I added the sliced Peppadews and brought everything to a boil.

On Instagram stories, I called this a “flavor jacuzzi” because that’s what it was. I cooked on a low boil until the liquid reduced by half and the garlic was super tender (a knife went through each clove easily).

At this point, you add the clams. This is so easy, it’s kind of hilarious. You just lift the clams out of the bowl into the pan, put the lid on, and crank up the heat. Literally a minute later, you’ll have this:

The second the clams open, I take them out with my fingers. You don’t want to overcook the clams.

And that’s basically it: you can let the liquid reduce a bit more once the clams are out, but you don’t want to reduce it too much or you won’t have anything to dip your bread into.

Ladle the sausage and Peppadews and garlic and broth over the clams in bowls.

Serve with bread to soak up all that liquid (the bread’s the most important part). Also a crisp Muscadet works great here.

And there you have it: two dinners from one package of sausages. Package of sausage. Sausages. Copy editor, please work on that.

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A Monday Night Picnic

I’m very suspicious of tomatoes. Even in July, I raise an eyebrow when I see a beautiful heirloom: “Nice try,” I’ll say. “But we all know you’re not at your best until August at the earliest, most likely September.”

But yesterday I journeyed to Cookbook in Echo Park (you’ll be hearing about that place a lot: it’s pretty much the best food store in L.A.), and there they were: tomatoes that seemed to be peak summer tomatoes. How did I know? The colors were bright, the textures had just the right amount of give, I popped a sungold into my mouth and it exploded with sunshine.

So I knew I had high-quality summer tomatoes to work with, but how to turn them into dinner?

Fun fact: our kitchen isn’t air-conditioned and it gets hot in there. So I decided to make a Monday night picnic that required zero minutes of cooking.

In addition to what you see above, I purchased two cheeses — a goat cheese from Spain, and a sheep’s milk cheese from upstate New York — and a baguette. I had olives and hummus from the farmer’s market at home.

When it was time for dinner, I dealt with the tomatoes first. I sliced the big red ones into slices and wedges, cut the green ones in half, and plated them on my two nice Heath Ceramics plates (I only bought two, for nights where it’s just us) and drizzled the tomatoes with incredibly good olive oil that I just got from Monsieur Marcel at The Grove (the manager there let me taste a few and I picked Titone from Italy: it’s grassy and burns your throat a little).

I drizzled a little Balsamic over the top (this was also fancy Balsamic — I sound so Ina — that was a gift), Maldon sea salt, and pepper. Then I chiffonaded basil, put that on top, and added the sungold tomatoes whole.

I mean, you’ve gotta admit: that’s pretty gorg.

As for the rest, I sliced the baguette into slices; I cut the cheeses in half; I spooned some hummus on to the plates and piled on some olives. Cracked open a bottle of ice cold rose, lit some candles, and there you have it: our Monday night picnic.

Seriously, this tasted better and more refreshing than anything I might’ve cooked. Do yourself a favor and keep those burners off, this summer. Make an indoor picnic.

It’s time to trust tomatoes again.

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