Burrata with salsa verde and weeds as found in Enrique Olvera’s Mexico From the Inside Out.

Burrata with salsa verde and weeds

With all of the traveling we’ve been doing in the last few weeks (two weekends ago we were in Philadelphia, and then this past weekend we were in Chicago), opportunities to cook fun stuff at home have not come as readily as they normally do for us. Since I had a half-day on Friday and could work from home for it, we decided that it would be the perfect day to make dinner at home rather than go out as is our usual wont and so I went about looking for something special to make. My cookbook flipping took me to Mexico From the Inside Out, and while I came up with a fun menu for that evening, what initially drew me in was a dish I had to make for myself for a decadent lunch: burrata with salsa verde and “weeds.” (More on that in a bit.) As soon as I hit the official office closing time I shut my laptop and headed out to take the commuter boat over the harbor to hit up both Whole Foods and a local Mexican grocery store called Cinco de Mayo to get the necessary supplies. The latter was perfect for getting tomatillos and blue corn tortillas and limes in bulk, while the latter had my burrata and a few other things I needed (like a ludicrous amount of cereal to bring to work).

Tomato salad with chili, black pepper, and cardamom from Madcapra’s via Cherry Bombe issue no. 7.

Tomato Salad with Chili, Black Pepper, and Cardamom

Recently The Kitchen Witch posted about how she likes to seduce late spring/early summer tomatoes by making punchy vinaigrettes, and her Kalamata olive one would be pretty fabulous if I liked olives more. But it reminded me of a recipe I had earmarked in the most recent issue of Cherry Bombe magazine in which you make a spicy oil to drizzle over tomatoes along with some lemon juice, cilantro, and sesame seeds and so a couple of weekends ago I decided I had to make it in the name of trying something that was new to me.

Spicy Sicilian Pesto for all of your pasta, pizza, and grilled meat needs.

Spicy Sicilian Pesto with Garlic Scapes

You guys, my ass is tired, both literally and figuratively.

We’re coming off a streak of weekends where we were either hosting guests or being guests ourselves, and while it’s been a lot of fun, it’s kind of sapped my inspiration for cooking. That’s not to say that we haven’t been cooking of course, but we’ve definitely relied on old favorites rather than new recipes, and I’m hoping that this upcoming weekend I can rectify that and spend some quality time with my cookbook collection. During this same time I’ve had some pretty intense workouts (this is what happens when you watch the kickass women in the Crossfit regionals) so there have been several days where I tend to walk like Frankenstein’s monster after getting out of my car or a chair.

Images from Baltimore, Memorial Day weekend edition with Franny’s cucumber salad.

Escargots from the Thames Street Oyster House, along with Cherry Bombe.

If I could pick any word to describe our holiday weekend, that word would be rejuvenating*. It was so nice to put in a half-day’s worth of work before the office closed, take care of some errands, and then go out and get some food on Friday afternoon. I was able to hop on the free commuter boat over to Harbor East and then headed eastward to Fell’s Point and it was so nice to feel the harbor breeze on my skin during that short ride. Grabbing a stool just about ten minutes before the kitchen would close for the rest of the afternoon, I quickly put in an order for escargots along with a small platter of oysters and clams. I had considered getting something more substantial, but it had been a hot walk over and the second I bit into one of those Delaware Salts I knew I had made the right decision because it was exactly what I had wanted. Paired with a nice white (and a rose with the escargots) and the latest issue of Cherry Bombe, it was the ideal relaxing late lunch. Incidentally, I also found a bunch of things I wanted to make in that issue, so if you’re at all interested grab it up immediately if not sooner.

Celebrating the return of rosé and caftan/vermut and stripes season with the ultimate mashup: homemade rosé vermouth.

Homemade rosé vermouth

Back when winter was finally starting to draw to a close, I had decided not to add on any new silly spring and summertime aesthetic to my arsenal, because between rosés, caftans, vermouths ans stripes I felt like I had more than enough to work with as it was. Both scratch that ever-present itch for the Mediterranean that I get once the temperature heats up but in different ways, and I felt that I had barely explored the possibilities of vermouth especially. Then, back in March when I was scrolling through my Facebook feed one evening, I came across a post from Food and Wine magazine and wouldn’t you know, it was a recipe for making your own rosé vermouth. Immediately bookmarking it, I then went to see if J.Crew happened to have any striped caftans (because why wouldn’t they?) and of course they did, and so I decided that this year would truly become one giant mashup of everything.

Nigella Lawson’s Tagliata for Two with boneless ribeye and grape tomatoes.

Tagliata for two (boneless ribeye with grape tomatoes with red wine vinaigrette and oregano)

The day after our big move down here, I sat down on our couch and turned on the TV to see what food programming Hulu had to offer that could satiate my normal ritual of watching Food Network no matter how much (or little) I liked the actual shows. Almost immediately I found Nigellissima–a love letter from Nigella Lawson to Italian food–and I immediately fell in love. Much like Made in Spain, she splits her time between being in Italy and back in her London flat for cooking, and every episode–all six of them–is as comforting and soothing to watch as you’d expect from a Nigella show.

El Quinto Pino’s vermouth cocktail with cava and Aperol.

Vermouth cocktails as inspired by El Quinto Pino

The first time we ended up at El Qunito Pino a few years ago, it was the culmination of a quasi-successful tapas crawl around Manhattan–we ended up tarrying long enough in the city to go there when it opened at 5, and we had a nice little last spread of snacks. I was able to finally try their famed uni panini (a small sandwich filled with sea urchin roe) and enjoy my first taste of pig’s ear. When we were in New York in January, our hotel was only a few blocks away from the restaurant (as over the intervening years the place had morphed from a tiny bar to a tiny bar now attached to a full-fledged dining room) so we took a chance on finding a few seats at the bar and went there for dinner on our first night.