Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 13

P-Town

For the past three years, we’ve been going with a group of friends to Provincetown, Massachusetts. Located on the very tip of Cape Cod, P-town (as its known) is a gay-friendly paradise: beaches, bike-riding, BenDeLaCreme: P-town has it all.

There are certain rituals that are very important to those of us who go back to P-town year after year. The first, and most important, is Frosé.

What’s Frosé? WHAT’S FROSE? Frozen rosé of course!

We get it at The Canteen, which is pretty much our favorite place to eat in P-town. You order at a counter and then bring your food out back, where picnic tables are set up on the beach.

(I promise there’s a pretty view of the water, I just forgot to take a picture of it.)

Besides Frosé, there’s lots of seafood-y things to order at The Canteen. On our first night there, I had a lobster roll which definitely hit the spot. Even better: on our next visit, I had the fried oyster roll.

If that doesn’t look like summer on a bun, I don’t know what does.

Maybe the best bite of all, though, was this massive Gay Pride rainbow cookie.

Loyal readers of this blog will know that rainbow cookies are my favorite cookie, and this one proved that sometimes bigger IS better.

After The Canteen, our next favorite place to eat in P-town is Liz’s Cafe.

Liz’s reminds me of the kind of cozy, small town diner that Vito Spatafore escapes to on The Sopranos when he’s discovered as gay and that hunky bear makes him Johnny Cakes. The food at Liz’s always hits the spot; we like it best at brunch, when the food can cure even the worst hangover.

I always try to get a little sweet and savory on the plate:

Our third P-town fixture is The Red Inn where we traditionally go for Happy Hour drinks (it’s got a terrific view) and where we often wind up eating dinner.

This year, though, my friend Justin Chapple turned us on to a spot that was an instant favorite and certain to be at the top of the rotation next year: Pepe’s Wharf.

As you can see: the view here is unimpeachable, and the food is also top notch. Plus, they have a drink here that — shocker of shockers — is even more addictive than Frosé: it’s Fraperol. That’s right… basically a frozen Aperol Spritz. (The bitterness helps temper the sweetness better than Frosé.)

Justin recommended I get the colossal shrimp, and they didn’t disappoint.

And the coconut cake caused a fight between me and Craig, but let’s not get into that.

Otherwise, we’re big fans of Pop & Dutch: a sandwich shop on the island’s west end.

Here’s my green goddess chicken salad on a brioche bun.

And every day, when we wake up, we go to Kohi Coffee for a cold brew and a view.

Really, though, Provincetown is about the nightlife. We saw many a wonderful drag show: highlights were Dina Martina’s (if you’ve never seen her show, you must) and BenDeLaCreme’s “Ready To Be Committed” which had us in stitches. Turns out, Ben went to high school with our friend Jonathan and we all got to hang out with Ben after the show:

Our favorite place to drink in P-Town is definitely Gifford House: on the top floor you have a porch and a piano bar where Billy Hough enchants with his covers of songs by St. Vincent and Depeche Mode; downstairs you have a cavernous space where I may or may not have attended an underwear party. (What?! It’s possible.)

The most essential bite in all of P-Town, though, is definitely a slice of pizza at Spiritus after a night of revelry. Spiritus is where everyone congregates when the bars close. And the pizza is actually very good (or is that the alcohol talking?):

What else? You’ve got to trek to the beach. You should take a bike ride through the Beech Forest (though I opted out this year). Dinner at Strangers & Saints is also very good, especially if you get to sit out front and watch the people go by on Commercial Street.

Mostly, though, you’ve just got to get a group of friends together and go to P-town.

Next year’s trip can’t come fast enough.

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A Tale of Two Lasagnas

Hi, so we’re going to Provincetown next week and I’ll be off the grid and I wanted to leave you with one more post before I go. Here’s one about two lasagnas.

Our friend and neighbor Kyle had a birthday last week and I offered to cook him a dinner. I could tell he was excited about the idea of a meat lasagna, but one of the guests didn’t eat pork, so I had two options: 1. Disappoint Kyle and make a big vegetarian lasagna (no meat!); or 2. Make TWO lasagnas, one meat, one vegetarian. I’m thinking, by the title of this post, you’ve already figured out which path I chose…

The funny thing is: I was afraid that two lasagnas would be wayyyyyy tooooo much food. I was using Ina recipes (natch) (do people still write “natch”? I always cringed when I saw it, I don’t know why I’m doing it) and they both fed 8 to 10. We were only 6. What was I thinking?

Well, in the back of my mind, I figured: it’s never a bad thing to have too much food. You can send people home with leftovers! And whatever people don’t want, we could eat the next day or freeze. Too much food is a good thing.

And guess what?

PEOPLE ATE SO MUCH LASAGNA.

Either I’m friends with a bunch of greedy eaters or — more likely — there’s no such thing as too much lasagna. There were even lasagna groupies watching me in the kitchen:

(That’s Yoshi, Kyle’s dog. He and Winston are best friends.)

For the record: the meat lasagna was the more popular of the two. It was 100%, entirely eaten.

And before you ask, here you go: the meat lasagna recipe (it calls for turkey sausage, but I use pork) and the vegetarian lasagna recipe.

Here’s everyone at the table, before they ate over FOUR POUNDS OF CHEESE.

Sorry that pic’s a bit blurry: I think my lens was smudged.

For dessert, I made one of my favorite all-time recipes: this flourless chocolate cake. It’s so easy and so good. Here’s our friend Jerome helping me whip cream for it:

(Always make your guests whip the cream by hand: it’s interactive and makes it taste better because they see how much work goes into it.)

And here’s the birthday boy with his cake:

Happy birthday, Kyle!

That’s all for this week, folks. I’m off to P-town: I’ll be back on the blog again after the 14th. See ya!

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The Mind-Blowing Quesadilla at Salazar

I was just about to tell you about this quesadilla at Salazar in Frogtown here in L.A. — I’d just posted the picture — when the room started wobbling and the pictures on the piano started rattling and Winston gave me a worried look and I realized I was experiencing my first feel-able L.A. earthquake.

Wow, that was unsettling! I do feel a little woozy: it’s hard to talk about quesadillas. But I’m going to soldier through, just for you.

There was a period in my life when I disavowed brunch. We were living in New York and we’d go to this place, I think it was called Good(?), and we’d wait for an hour and then spend a fortune on eggs, toast, and coffee. I said to myself: “From now on, we’re just eating brunch at home!” and ever since then, basically, I make the eggs, toast, and coffee myself.

But every so often, you just want to get out and experience the world on a Saturday. We live in Atwater Village and our outdoor brunch options are pretty minimal, which is why Salazar is so great. It used to be impossible to get into (it was the hot restaurant of the moment, when it opened) but now it’s settled down a bit and we go there quite often on the weekends: it’s pretty much my favorite brunch spot in L.A.

Plus: we can bring Winston! (Not pictured: Winston.)

All of the food at Salazar is pretty great. Their guacamole is top-notch:

And they have horchata, which you can add coffee to and agua Frescas that you can add booze to. Here’s a booze-less watermelon agua fresca:

But we are here today to talk about Salazar’s quesadilla, which is easily the best I’ve ever had.

What makes it so good? Well: the flour tortillas are made in-house and they’re fluffy and fresh, almost like savory pancakes. But flakier and crispier. Actually, forget the pancake metaphor: they’re more like flatbreads.

And then it’s stuffed with a filling of your choice (I chose “pollo asado”) and lots of cheese and presented with two dipping sauces, one a rough, roasted kind of salsa, the other an avocado dip. Here it is, once I cut into it:

It’s a massive event, this quesadilla, but it rivals all of my favorite carb-heavy meals in L.A.: the pizza at Mozza, the pasta at Alimento, the soup dumplings at Din Tai Fung.

So do yourself a favor and, if you live in L.A., treat yourself to a quesadilla at Salazar.

I survived an earthquake just to tell you about it.

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Taste The Rainbow Chard Frittata

Craig and I have a routine we do on Mondays. He pours a glass of wine and asks, “Want some?” and I say: “I don’t drink on Mondays.”

It’s not that funny, but it happens almost every Monday. “I don’t drink on Mondays.” It’s basically my catchphrase. I say it because I do drink wine on weekends, and frequently on nights that aren’t Mondays, but on Mondays I give my body a break. That was until yesterday.

A new friend asked me out for Happy Hour drinks and not wanting to be a party pooper, I decided not to text back “I don’t drink on Mondays” and, instead, I met him at a bar near my apartment and had two $5 Old Fashioneds.

Man, they were strong! I can normally hold my liquor, but these got me very sauced very fast. When I got home, I realized I needed to eat dinner and Craig was at a dinner with different friends (probably drinking, even though it was Monday).

I quickly recalled that I had rainbow chard in the refrigerator from the farmer’s market and I had just watched Chef Sarah Grueneberg* cook Swiss chard on Ming Tsai’s PBS show this past weekend, so I decided to follow suit. (*She was so good on TV, she should have her own show.)

I sliced the stems into thin slices and cooked them, along with an onion, in lots of olive oil in a non-stick skillet.

Here’s where things got dicey: I sliced all of the leaves and then added them to the skillet with a big pinch of salt and a splash of water, stirring everything around, and covering for a bit.

Yeah, I know, that was a lot. But give me a break: I was tipsy!

Miraculously, that all cooked down — I added more salt and lemon juice as it went along — and then I added six eggs that I beat with a fork, along with more salt and pepper.

On top of the eggs, I crumbled big chunks of goat cheese and then — once the edges were set — I popped the whole thing under the broiler.

Only took a minute or two before the top was set and there I had it: a beautiful rainbow chard frittata with goat cheese.

I sliced a few wedges for myself and served it with a big piece of seeded sourdough bread from Cookbook in Echo Park.

This frittata was so good; one of the best I’ve ever made. It just tasted so green and deep and the goat cheese gave everything a perfect tang.

Not to toot my own horn, but I’m pretty proud of myself for making this in the state I was in.

Maybe I should drink on Mondays after all.

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The Miracle of Mustard-Brown-Sugar Salmon

Sometimes you encounter a recipe that’s so simple, it’s not even a recipe, it’s a mere idea… a notion. Such was the case when Sam Sifton linked to this recipe for “Roasted Salmon Glazed with Brown Sugar and Mustard” in The New York Times Cooking newsletter.

Listen how easy: are you ready? Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Mix mustard and brown sugar together. Put it on well-seasoned salmon. Roast. Eat. The end.

You think I’m kidding? Okay, check it out.

Here’s the brown sugar and the mustard (I used grainy Dijon) that you mix together in equal parts. Make as much as you want and adjust it according to your taste (spicier, sweeter, etc).

Line a cookie sheet with foil and take two equally sized pieces of salmon and lay them on there, skin-side down. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and then slather on your mustard brown sugar mixture (admittedly, I used a lot. But that’s just how I roll.)

Into a 400 degree oven it goes. I used a probe thermometer to make the cooking time easy: when the salmon hit 130, I took it out. (About 20 minutes.)

Meanwhile, I’d blanched and shocked some green beans and, no I didn’t toss them in pesto: I tossed them with olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper, and then sprinkled them with Dukkah from Botanica because they needed a little kick. (Winston agreed.)

I also mixed some thick Greek yogurt with a splash of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, salt, pepper, and lots of chopped herbs (dill, tarragon, parsley).

And then I just lifted the salmon from the cookie sheet on to the plates (leaving the skin behind; if you like crispy skin, this might not be the recipe for you. Or you could start it in a skillet, I suppose, skin-side down, and slather the mixture on and finish in the oven? The sugar would probably burn, though.)

Behold!

This dinner was such a hit. Craig LOVED the salmon. He did very loud “mmmmms!” and several days later he (unprompted) asked: “When are you going to make that salmon again? It was so good.”

So there you are: a simple recipe that’s not even a recipe. Just memorize it. Got it? There you go.

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Lots of Broccoli Rabe, A Little Pasta

As much as I like cooking for other people, I REALLY like cooking for myself. It’s a chance to really tap into how I’m feeling in a particular moment, what I’m craving, and then to give myself exactly that.

There’s an actual an art to knowing what you want (believe me, I talk about it a lot in therapy). And one thing that I almost always want is pasta. If you’ve been following me for any period of time, you’ve probably noticed that I make a lot of it. Why pasta? Why is that my thing? I think it’s a blank canvas deal: you can dress pasta up any way that you want. Craving meat? Make a meaty pasta. Craving cheese? Make a cheesy pasta. And on Saturday night I was craving vegetables, so I decided to make a veggie-heavy pasta.

Craig was still in Palm Springs (at a film festival) so I had the night to myself. There was broccoli rabe leftover from the Three Smoke Alarm Sausage and Chicken incident, so I just pulled that out of the fridge and got to work.

Step one: hack the bottoms off of the broccoli rabe because they’re tough.

Then you just chop up the rest into big chunks.

Set a big pot of water on the stove, salt it heavily (I pour directly from the box), and bring to a boil.

Then in a large skillet, add a big glug of olive oil (let’s say 1/4 cup) and 6 to 7 cloves of garlic thinly sliced. Throw in a few anchovies, they’ll add so much flavor. Crank up the heat and add a big pinch of red chile flakes.

Once the garlic starts to turn golden, add all of your broccoli rabe at once (careful: it’ll sizzle!). See lead pic.

Meanwhile, drop your pasta into the pasta pot. Because I wanted a higher ratio of vegetables to pasta, I used only half a box of fusilli.

Stir your broccoli rabe all around so it gets coated in all of that delicious oil. Then add a ladleful of the salty pasta cooking water and cover your broccoli rabe pan.

The timing should work out so that when your pasta’s cooked, your broccoli rabe will have wilted down into this.

Isn’t that crazy how much it cooks down? Taste it here: doesn’t it taste AMAZING? (Mine really did. Bitter and salty and deep.)

Lift your pasta (still al dente; a minute less than package directions) into the pan with the broccoli rabe.

Stir all around with another ladleful of pasta water on high heat until the pasta absorbs all of that flavorful liquid.

Off the heat, add a big pile of grated Parmesan (1/2 a cup or so?).

Stir that in and here’s where you really start tasting and doctoring. I think I added lemon zest here (you can kind of see it in the picture if you squint), black pepper, salt, lemon juice, until it tasted so good, it was almost surreal.

Into a bowl that went and there I was in my happy place: in front of the TV with pasta (mostly vegetables!) watching Wine Country on Netflix. I wish the same kind of happiness for you.

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A Summery Steak Dinner

Sometimes people ask me if I barbecue and I say “no” and when they ask “why not?” I say: “Because I don’t really like my backyard.” And it’s true: we share one with our neighbors in our fourplex, and they’re all very nice, but it’s not very private and it also kind of looks out on to a gas station. So the idea of being back there for a long time with a pair of tongs and a brewski doesn’t really excited me much, even in summertime.

But that didn’t stop me last night from “grilling up” some steak. (“Grilling up” in quotes because, ya know, I wasn’t really grilling.) This dinner really was a triumph, if I do say so myself; I was welcoming Craig back from the Palm Springs Shorts Festival, where he spoke on a few panels. He was already glad to come home (Palm Springs is 105 degrees right now), but with this dinner he was even gladder. Let me tell you how I made it.

First things first: I bought two rib-eye steaks from McCall’s Meat and Fish. I recommend rib-eyes for home steak-making because they’re so laced with fat, they’re hard to screw up. (A leaner cut of steak can more easily turn tough.)

Take the steaks out of the fridge to come to room temperature while you’re prepping the potatoes.

Okay, the potatoes: listen how easy. Preheat your oven to 425 and open a packet of small red and white potatoes and put them in a cast iron skillet. Take a head of garlic and WHOMP it on the board so it splits into lots of little cloves. Throw those cloves, skin still attached, in with the potatoes and then glug on olive oil. Really, you can’t add too much here: think of this as potato garlic confit (but if I had to guess, I’d say 1/2 a cup). Sprinkle with lots and lots of salt and pepper.

Pop into the 425 oven and shake every so often; in 45 minutes (or up to an hour), the potatoes will start to shrivel, grow tender inside, and the bottoms will get crispy. Here’s what they look like when they’re done:

Make sure to hit them with more salt at the end (a lot of it falls off into the oil while cooking).

As for the garlic, you’ll serve that up with the potatoes and then you and your co-steak-eater can pull the garlic out at the table and marvel at how creamy and garlicky it is.

Now, while those potatoes are cooking, you can make a horseradish sauce for your steak. Behold the components:

You’re going to ask me “how much of each?” and I’m going to say: “As much as you want!” Seriously: start with about 1/2 a cup of sour cream. Then add big dollops of horseradish and mustard, stir around, and taste. Do you like it? Does it need more pop? Add more horseradish. Chop up a bunch of chives and stir those in too.

Now for the final bit before the steak: herbs. I bought a bunch of herbs at the farmer’s market yesterday morning — parsley, tarragon, chives — and I chopped a bunch of them up to sprinkle on everything at the end. I recommend you do the same.

As for the steak, it’s really this simple: take your biggest cast iron skillet, put it on a burner, and crank up the heat to high. While that’s blasting away, take your steaks out, pat them dry, and sprinkle them with an indecent amount of salt and pepper.

When the pan is very, very hot, you can add a little splash of grapeseed oil or other neutral oil (NOTE: I once told people to do this and someone wrote to me that their oil caught on fire! That person had their pan too hot; so don’t go crazy getting it hot, or do go crazy getting it hot and just don’t add oil. The fat in the steak should keep it from sticking).

Add your steaks and don’t touch them. You should hear a loud sizzle and you need to let them sizzle away like that for about two minutes; then you can peek underneath with tongs and if they’re GOLDEN BROWN (not at all gray, we’re talking GOLD) it’s time to flip them over. I forgot to take a picture when this happened, but it’s in my Instagram stories, so here’s a screenshot:

[Note: that knob is melted from the time I made 300 latkes. Now I think of it as a latke souvenir.]

At this point, you can add butter, garlic, and thyme to the pan and start spooning it over the steaks, basting it with the fat while it finishes. I thought I was going to finish in the oven, so I put the garlic, butter, and thyme on top thinking it’d all melt together:

But then I stuck a thermometer in and saw the steaks were already at 135 (medium rare) so I just took them out of the pan and let them rest on a plate for a good ten minutes.

The final thing that I did was that I took some lettuces from the farmer’s market (I buy raddichio and little gem leaves from a bulk bin and fill a bag each week and it’s kind of perfect) and tossed them with olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper.

The final plate had the steaks — which I sliced against the grain, once rested — the potatoes and the salad, all sprinkled with lots of herbs. And I served it at the table with the horseradish sauce and a Bordeaux recommended by Lou of Lou Wine Shop who said it would taste like blackberries. It did.

So no, I didn’t get to stand outside like Tony Soprano, watching ducks float around in the pool while grilling steak. But I did make a summery steak dinner that hit the spot in all the right ways and I didn’t have to look at a gas station while I made it.

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One Mac and Cheese To Rule Them All

I’ve found it. I know you’ve been looking for it, but it’s here, you can end your quest.

My friend Diana makes the best mac and cheese that I’ve ever had. Not too long ago, I asked for her recipe and she told me it’s Martha Stewart’s as posted on Food52. I made it soon after for our friends Harry and Chris as a housewarming gift and they declared it the best mac and cheese they’d ever had.

I made it for our friends Jonathan and Ryan for Jonathan’s birthday (see lead pic) and they both said it was the best they’ve ever had. And I made it last night for our friend John’s birthday and he and his husband Michael and their son Miles also swooned:

What makes it so good? For starters, there’s a lot of cheese. Over a pound of sharp white cheddar and half a pound of Gruyere.

(I recommend buying it whole like this and shredding it in your food processor. It’ll taste better.)

Then there’s the “sauce” that hold it all together: it’s over a quart of whole milk, thickened with flour and butter, that you flavor with nutmeg (grate it fresh; I can’t believe Ina uses pre-ground! That’s so chilling), cayenne pepper, salt and pepper. You add a bunch of the cheese and par-cooked macaroni.

Then you pour that into a baking dish and top with even more of the cheese (I add whatever Parmesan I have to the topping mixture, just for a little extra zip).

But that’s not all! If that were all, it would just be a very good mac and cheese, not the one MAC AND CHEESE TO RULE THEM ALL.

Here’s the deal: you take six slices of white bread, cut the crusts off, and cut what’s left into cubes. You toss those cubes with butter and put that on top of everything.

What does that do?

It makes a crunchy topping that puts this mac and cheese over the top and makes it the best you’ll ever have. My little trick is to broil it at the end to get it extra dark and crispy.

So here it is, folks. The only mac and cheese recipe you’ll ever need. Maybe if you’re nice to me, I’ll make it for you someday. Otherwise, here’s the link again.

Happy mac-ing!

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Three Smoke Alarm Chicken, Sausage, and Broccoli Rabe

As far as arrivals to one of my dinner parties go, last night was maybe the most dramatic of all time. I was making a chicken and sausage dish from Nancy Silverton’s under-appreciated cookbook Mozza at Home (I seriously consider it one of the best cookbooks to come out in recent years) and I’d cranked the oven up to 450, despite the fact that some of the liquid had spilled on to the oven floor. Well! That liquid sent PLUMES of smoke out of the oven, so much so that two things happened: all four smoke alarms in our apartment started going off; and the air became noxious with the scents of vinegar and burning. Which is exactly when our guests arrived.

Craig’s Aunt Liz, Uncle Chris, and Cousin Katie were great sports about the whole thing. They quickly helped us open all of the windows; they carried the children out back (the children being our dog Winston and Katie’s dog Ruthie); to help fan the air around the smoke detectors so they would stop beeping.

When things calmed down, we all got to appreciate the Meyer lemon tart that Katie brought for dessert (Amanda Hesser’s recipe):

As for the dinner, it actually came out okay. Here’s the concept: you brown a bunch of sausage in a pan and then, in that sausage fat, you brown chicken thighs. (McCall’s, my butcher, only sells thighs attached to the legs, which was part of the problem. Made the pan too crowded.)

Then comes the good stuff: in the pan with all of the brown bits from the sausage and chicken, you add lots of garlic and spicy, pickled peppers (I used Peppadews), then deglaze with white wine, red wine vinegar, and some of the Peppadew liquid.

That’s when I encountered some trouble. I had to add all of the meat back in, cover the pan, and stick it in the oven. It was kind of a Noah’s Ark situation with chickens and sausages vying for space.

I also used more sausages than I was supposed to. I just wanted to make sure there was enough food for everyone! (And everyone ate everything, so I was right.)

So, yeah, that went into the oven with the lid, the liquid spilled over, and the plan to remove the sausages after an hour and finish in a 450 oven so that the chicken could get glazed and bronzed was foiled by all of the smoke.

Still: I rallied and removed the sausages and finished the chicken on the stove top, on medium high heat with the pan half-covered.

Here’s the genius part of the recipe (and it’s truly genius): when you remove the chicken, you use all of that rich, spicy, vinegar-y liquid to cook broccoli rabe.

As for plating, I cooked a bunch of polenta in a pot and doctored it with lots of butter and Parmesan.

The final plate was a well-balanced dish that would’ve been a lot prettier if, again, I hadn’t crammed so much meat into a tiny pan.

Look at all of the happy people gathered around the table.

Just goes to show you: it’s not how much you mess up, it’s how well you recover.

Still… once an amateur, always an amateur.

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Toss Your Beans in Pesto

There’s a lot of treachery when it comes to substitutions in recipes. “Hide sweet potatoes in the brownies, your kids will never notice!” “These zucchini noodles taste just as good as real noodles but with half the calories!”

Me? I’m all for transparency when it comes to the things that I cook. And that’s why I recommend tossing your green beans in pesto. You’re not pretending that the green beans are anything they’re not — “If you close your eyes, they taste just like French Fries!” — what you see is what you get.

I’m pretty sure I got this idea from Lidia Bastianich (I watch her show religiously on PBS every Saturday). Here’s what you do: first you make a pesto.

I make mine by tossing a handful of walnuts from the freezer (about 1/4 cup; I keep them in the freezer so they don’t turn rancid) into a small skillet and I toast them until they’re fragrant and golden brown. I put them in a food processor with four fat cloves of garlic and pulse with some salt. Then I add handfuls and handfuls of something green — basil leaves, arugula, even carrot tops would work — about 4 cups total and I start pulsing that along with about 3/4 cup of olive oil that I drizzle in as it’s whirring.

At this point, your pesto won’t taste like much: that’s why you have to adjust with lots of salt, lemon juice, and about 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of freshly grated Parmesan. Pulse that all in and taste. It should be a “whoah” moment when you’re finished.

And then you just blanch and shock some green beans or runner beans. (I realize that the title of this post implies, like, white beans: and you can do that too.) The first time I did this, I did it with haricot verts from the farmer’s market.

I dropped them in rapidly boiling salted water, let them cook for 2 minutes, and then shocked them in ice water. I drained them very well and then tossed with the pesto.

I also added a little more olive oil, lemon juice, and salt just to make the beans pop. They were incredibly good.

Then, the other day I was at Cookbook in Echo Park, and I saw these gorgeous runner beans.

So I did exactly the same thing with them: I blanched them, shocked them, and tossed them with pesto. I served ’em up with seared swordfish and a lemon wedge, with lots of pesto to spoon on top of the fish (I know, I know, cheese and fish, but who’s watching?).

These were both tremendous dinners that were mostly healthy and very, very summery.

So don’t trick your dinner guests into eating anything. Be honest and toss your beans in pesto. They’ll thank you for it, I guarantee.

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