Balsamic Watermelon Salad

I was super busy this weekend, guys.

I had to find sunscreen, unfold a chair, sun, flip, sun, flip, and look at between four and five trashy magazines. Less than a month into city residency and I was so excited to have my first beach weekend away. Understandable, of course, except that less than a month ago I was LIVING AT THE BEACH.

I always want what I don’t have. Because God gave me curly hair, I spend a lot of time straightening it out. I think I want my food until I see yours, and the best looking boys have always been those who want nothing to do with me. The coast, accordingly, is only as enchanting as it is miles away. When I get to Heaven, I’m sure I’ll spend half my time planning weekend trips away from paradise.

Food is the same way, isn’t it? Would seasonal ingredients be as special if their supply wasn’t fleeting? Would watermelons taste as sweet without the anticipation of them popping up at roadside stands in June? There are some foods that are widely available year-round. For example? Beets. Beets are, to most people, literally sickening. Watermelon, conversely, tastes like candy. And that’s my point.

Last weekend, I had this salad at Canoe here in Atlanta, and the next day had secured the ingredients necessary to recreate it at home. When the waitress announced it as part of the specials, my parents and I literally debated who’d get to order it (I won) and almost did the unthinkable by ordering more than one of a dish. If I can’t convince you to have watermelon, feta, and balsamic in all their sweet, salty, tangy glory at least once this summer, what kind of lawyer am I? It’s not beets! Case closed.

Grilled Chicken and Corn Wraps

I can explain. Hmm. Rising food prices? Food prices are rising, are they not? Would you believe that I was kidnapped? What about a story that involved a shark? How about a shark riding an elephant? But what if the shark was on fire. Big, giant, orange flames. No?

What if I told you I’d been out of the country for two weeks, had moved to a new city, and had left one job and started another. Gosh, I did all those things? That totally explains why I’m so tired! Things! They have been happening! One of those things, sadly, was not the cooking. Nor was it the blogging. My apologies.

For three weeks now I’ve been living in Atlanta and working at a brand new job. In sum, I am exceedingly happy; no longer treating “how are you” as a rhetorical question, happy. I am GREAT, seriously, how are you? Are you also GREAT? Because if you’re not, you need to get GREAT, because it is something else. Not that I’ve made a great many wise decisions in my day, but taking this job and moving to this city is up there with things like deciding to study abroad, not marrying anyone I went to high school with, not eating those berries that one time, and getting DVR. I may have spent most of my life on a dirt road, but I’ve never felt more in my place than I do on these busy streets.

On Friday nights, we can walk to the new bar in town and have cocktails with bitters and basil and lavender soda (lavender soda!). On Saturdays, I have to decide which farmer’s market to visit. If I’m still alive come Sunday at 11, the best meal of the week is peddled in hundreds of incarnations across three counties. Weekdays, of course, are another story, a story about long hours and a story that involves shameful little use of my new gas stove or convection oven and far too many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Somebody’s got to pay for a lavender soda lifestyle, though.

Summertime is upon us like a suffocating cloud here in Atlanta. The heat is all anyone can talk about. Between the sun and the asphalt and the mirrored skyscrapers we are basically walking around like roasting, wilting snap beans - though, as a delicate Southern flower, I am physically able only to glow. I am always cold, and don’t mind baking on hundred degree days at all. But something about the constant hum of the air conditioner seems at odds with pre-heating an oven or setting pots on four open flames. For housewarming, my parents bought us an electric grill, and in three weeks I have near about worn it slap out. Turkey burgers, hot dogs, chicken breasts - convenience foods done in fifteen minutes or less between work and bed. On this lazy, humid Sunday, though, it saw its first proper use.

This month’s Martha Stewart Living Magazine is predictably full of $4 and fifteen minutes’ worth of pretty pictures, one of which is of this most perfect light chicken wrap. Nothing says summer like sweet corn, whether it be in the aisles of your produce department or along either side of the dusty road clear to each horizon. This is the simplest of Sunday suppers - chicken with some lime, cilantro, cool yogurt, and warm peppers, not a single pot or pan dirtied; and supermarket corn, which will have to do. As much as these bright lights and big buildings do have to offer, nobody’s come by with a crate yet this season.

Sugar Cookies

I have made good-looking sugar cookies before.

See? Those are kind of pretty right? I made them this past Christmas. I put on Love Actually, sat down at the table with a glass of wine, and iced those little snowflakes one by delicate one.

As holidays require themed sugar cookies, I set about making some this Holy Saturday. The first roadblock was the inability to pay good money in my hometown for an egg-shaped cookie cutter. Please identify a single household object I could use to cut egg-shaped cookies, because short of welding one myself, I was at a loss. I dabble in a few things, but recreational metallurgy is sadly not one of them.

Furthermore, the serenity of my apartment icing factory was many miles away. Four people, two dogs, and three cats does not foster patience or precision. It fosters madness. In Mama’s kitchen, there’s an almost foreign language spoken. For example, “this one was broken,” means “I intentionally broke this one, and now I am eating it.”

Basically, there are some really decent excuses for these cookies. When the Easter egg cookie idea failed, I decided apparently on neon monogrammed amoebas, perfect for your next Christening Brunch on Fremont Street. I think the pastel lavender sits nicely atop the shocking Clemson orange, don’t you? What a hot mess. They are frightening.

Lucky for the Chicken Littles, they tasted just as good as the pretty ones.

Poulet Provencal

At first glance, you might think this is a chicken recipe. FALSE. This is not a chicken recipe. This recipe is about tomatoes.

The tomato is a queer bird for me personally, because I am totally and completely disgusted by them in raw form. Not only can I not stand the raw flesh itself, I cannot tolerate the acidic tomato slime getting all over the rest of my otherwise nontoxic food. As a former waitress, I allow myself to be a victimized diner without much complaint, but the failure to 86 tomatoes is grounds for a hissy fit. A tomato sandwich is my own personal Hell.

It is so bizarre to me, then, that with the application of one simple element - heat - my taste for tomatoes changes completely. I love tomato sauce, I have a near-sick relationship with ketchup, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE roasted tomatoes. As much as I loathe raw tomatoes, I simply adore them cooked in almost any way, shape, or form. The fact that tomatoes are both one of my least and most favorite foods in the whole world is only one of many food eccentricities that doubtlessly drove my mother insane for eighteen years.

To me, then, the slow-roasted tomatoes are the shining star of this dish. They get soft and absorb all of the chicken and garlic and onion and herbs de Provence goodness. After one bite, I had this psychotic impulse to quickly pluck them all out, stick them in the blender, and puree them into the best marinara sauce man has ever known. I didn’t, but that sauce would’ve been epic.

Do serve this with lots of crusty French bread. It requires bread, because the best part is, in the words of my grandmother, “sopping the pot liquor.” French people everywhere just died just a little.

Irish Soda Bread

I guess some people don’t know about the marvelous world of Quick Bread, and assume that anything in loaf form requires yeasting and kneading and fire alarms and waking up on a cold tile floor covered in flour.

Maybe that’s why people at my office seem so impressed by something that was made after half a bottle of wine and while on the phone literally the entire time. You barely even have to be awake for this.

I won’t tell if you won’t tell.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Turkey Chili

Lest anyone ever mistake me for a food snob, please know that I had lunch from Wendy’s three times last week. A baked potato, small 99 cent chili, and a large Diet Coke is, like, perfection to me. Just writing about it basically guarantees that I’ll have to eat this tomorrow. And lest anyone think I’m a normal person, I do put ketchup on my potato. I love ketchup, and I love Diet Coke y’all. Me and preservatives, we’re real tight.

The only thing this has to do with anything other than the fact that I’m kind of low rent is that it inspired me to cook some chili, which is BETTER than the fast food version, ha! Mine has turkey and is therefore presumably healthier, and it has cocoa powder, which imparts this serious depth of flavor and makes it sort of rich and smokey and almost beefy, oddly enough. Now if I could just get my boss to install a Diet Coke fountain, we’d be in business.

Frozen Yogurt; Frozen Shrikhand

This time last year, I was in Los Angeles for a conference. I’d never been to LA before, and basically my number one priority for my free time was to stalk celebrities. I planned well in advance exactly how it was all going to go down. I’d been reading US Weekly long enough to know the exact addresses I needed for running into famous people. I was not leaving the state of California without seeing someone of at least soap opera-level notoriety.

At the top of places to visit/evade arrest was Pinkberry. Have you heard of it? You may not have unless you’re the kind of person who regularly tivos Entertainment Tonight. Or, you may have also heard of it if you’ve ever had a conversation with me, because since this trip, I CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT IT. Pinkberry is this chain of stores that sells frozen yogurt, but not like TCBY frozen yogurt, but tart, live bacteria yogurt. Pinkberry calls itself “soft swirls of chilly bliss with a distinct pouty peak.” Does that make you about want to pass out with desire!? They have two flavors - plain and green tea (and now, apparently, coffee) - and all sorts of fun toppings, like Captain Crunch:

Celebrities LOVE Pinkberry, and patronize it a lot, because it is trendy. But you guys. It turns out to be trendy for a reason, and that reason is that it TOTALLY ROCKS MY FACE OFF.

Guys, we didn’t even see a single identifiable celebrity at the Pinkberry and I did not care. My yogurt was plain with raspberries on top, and I seriously, seriously considered permanent relocation after the first bite. No wonder everyone loves the West Coast. They have these delicious yet very healthy bowls of happiness for sale. Why don’t we have this?

Several months after I got home, I saw this recipe for “A Frozen Yogurt Recipe to Rival Pinkberry’s Recipe” on 101 Cookbooks, made it, and basically freaked out and lost my mind. IT WAS TWO INGREDIENTS AND IT WAS THE SAME!!! Since then I’d estimate I’ve made homemade Pinkberry…um…30 times? I’m actually totally ashamed for not having told you about it sooner. It should’ve been my very first post. You deserve better, and I am so, so sorry that you may have gone without it for this long due to any fault of mine.

When I made yogurt this week, I decided to try something different. I took a tip from a commenter and made frozen shrikhand, which is a traditional Indian dessert of this kind of thick, strained yogurt with saffron, cardamom, and pistachios. Soooooo pretty, I thought, all yellow and speckled with green. Tasty, oh yes, particularly if you love cardomom and saffron like I do. Interesting, very.

Good as the plain old white, tart original? Heavens no.

Thomas Keller’s Favorite Simple Roast Chicken

There are a lot of things that go on in other people’s kitchens that I simply do not understand. For example, anything involving a whole animal is a complete mystery to me and frankly frightens me quite a lot. I appreciate meat that has been processed by people who ensure that it is devoid of anything that could kill and/or embarass me.

Hence, when I stared at this chicken I’d bought to roast, sitting all cold and clammy and complicated on my kitchen counter, I sort of had a mild panic attack.

First of all, there was the matter of “trussing” the chicken. I had to google “truss” to figure out what those triangle house frame things have to do with poultry. I was in luck here, as my chicken came “pre-trussed,” and looked rather like a really accomplished Boy Scout of America had wrapped and secured it with some complicated knots. Score.

Then I panicked because I remembered that birds often have bags full of body parts in their cavities for some reason. I called my mom to ask whether my bird had a bodyparts bag. She suggested that I look inside the cavity, which was a ridiculous proposition as this would require untrussing the pre-trussed chicken and then re-trussing, an activity for which I thought we had previously established I had no skills.

WHAT A DILEMMA. This reminded me a lot of a Game Theory class I took in college. I sat staring at the chicken for…maybe days? Minutes, at least. Finallly I pulled the strings off and felt around in the belly, where I found nothing but sad, cold emptiness, and the last of the chicken’s dignity. I then had to look up, literally, “how to truss a chicken.” Luckily there are a surprising number of instructions and videos on this very issue on the internet. Tell me what I would’ve done here in 1985.

Thank GOD in Heaven that the actual cooking part of Thomas Keller’s Favorite Simple Roast Chicken is not hard or scary in the least. Involved is (1) salt and pepper, and (2) heat. The result is, besides AWESOME-tasting, really impressive and satisfying. It’s the perfect thing to make for company, as you can throw it in the oven and then be sitting around on a chaise lounge drinking wine and painting your nails when they arrive and say something like “Are you hungry at all? I have a bird in the oven.” It all seems effortless and really basic and organic and you seem totally calm and collected until someone actually wants to eat it. May I suggest “how to carve a chicken.”

Nutella Linzer Sandwich Cookies

Well, hello Lover.

You know, it occurs to me that Ferrero might just be the most fantastic company in the history of the world. That’s because Ferrero manufactures, among other divine confections, both Nutella AND tic tacs. Okay. Try to think of two better things in the world than Nutella and tic tacs. Specifically, orange tic tacs. I’ll give you a minute.

NO! You can’t do it! If you could, you are wrong. There are no two better things. Not even two puppies.

Having determined that Nutella is one of the two best things in the world, it follows that a sandwich cookie with Nutella filling must be one of the best cookies in the world. The “bread” of these sandwiches is Dorie Greenspan’s Linzer Cookies. The innards, of course, are all pure, unadulterated chocolate hazlenut goodness.

I actually made these to send to my little sister for Valentine’s Day, but then last week happened and I was too sick to make it to the post office. It’s for the best really, as these are really not Little Girl cookies. Children don’t like chocolate. They have no taste for it. It may even be poisonous to minors, like to dogs, or like honey to babies. I’m pretty sure I read that somewhere.

No, these cookies are Sophisticated. I say that because they are not too sweet. I say that because they’re actually a little spicy. I say that because I kept them all for my grownup self and sent out ten boxes of Girl Scout cookies instead.

Soy Masala Chai

I write to you now from my deathbed, and I must tell you that it’s not exactly what I expected of my ultimate demise. Aside from a brief moment late last year when I fully expected to die in New Orleans’ French Quarter, I always sort of envisioned expiring old and in my castle high upon a cliff. Then, of course, my survivors would drift me out into the Mediterranean on a flaming raft, the only suitable burial for a woman of my accomplishments (accomplishments to be determined).

Alas, here I lie, on this markedly uncomfortable deathbed: a couch literally bought off of a guy with a truck in the Big Lots parking lot. That is all your tax dollars will allow a sick civil servant. My mother is several states away, attending to her other child who is not, mind you, shivering and without the strength to even change it from Guiding Light to Oprah at 4 o’clock.

As is often the case in life, then, my welfare is up to me and me alone. I haven’t had an appetite in awhile, but it dawned on me today that a hot chai would be the perfect thing for a person with the flu. It’s warm, it’s soothing, the spices open the sinuses, and the honey works magic on a scratchy throat. The pharmacy ought to hand out these little chai sachets with every bottle of Nyquil. I’m feeling better already! Maybe I don’t need to finalize these will revisions after all. My apologies to whoever had their eye on the couch.