La cuina de Catalunya: snails in a spicy tomato sauce/Cargols amb salsa de tomàquet picant.

Snails in salsa arribata

Back when spring was easing into summer, I really didn’t fully appreciate just how much we had planned in the first few weeks of the season, and here we are in the middle of July. One thing I resolved on doing this summer was to spend some time revisiting my favorite Catalunyan dishes since we wouldn’t be making our biennial trip over to Europe this year, what with us buying a house and me buying a new car, but with everything we’ve been up to it’s been awhile since we could devote a couple of days to anything more fun than a typical weeknight meal.

With a weekend looming on the horizon with no plans but our own, I decided to give us a chance to relax and give ourselves a mini Caldes d’Estrac vacation, at least with food if not in beach time. Rosado would be poured, caftans donned, and my hope was each dish would bring us back to those warm days we would spend along the Mediterranean coast.

Escargots in the style of Galatiore’s, inspired by our epic first-time lunch there.

Escargots à la Bordelaise in the style of Galatoire’s

Back in November I did a very silly thing. I had this Amazon gift card that had been sitting on my desk for months, and for the life of me I couldn’t decide what to get with it. This was mainly due to the fact that I felt very uncomfortable about the circumstances in which it came to be in m possession, so I could never figure out what exactly should I get. I immediately dismissed all things practical because that’s no fun, and so I was toying with adding a couple of books to my cookbook collection or maybe getting a heavier kettlebell.

Instead, I ended up getting a used copy of Galatoire’s cookbook that was in very good condition and a cast iron snail pan.

4.19.15: appetizer. (Mimi Thorisson’s almond mussels.)

Almond Mussels

It was a couple of weekends ago now on one of the few lazy Sundays we’ve had in a while and I was completely lacking any inspiration on what to make for dinner that night. I knew we were going to have steak because Michael had been letting one dry out for a day or so in the fridge (not so much dry-aging but just letting some of the moisture of the steak soak into a paper towel–it does make for a really good at-home slab of beef) and so really I needed to think of what could go well with that. Neither pasta nor bread/toast felt right for that night, so I started flipping through A Kitchen in France and immediately landed on Mimi Thorisson’s almond mussels.

Hummus kawarma from Jerusalem: A Cookbook and checking in.

Hummus Kawarma from Jerusalem: A Cookbook

Given everything that’s going on in my newly-adopted city, it feels frivolous to post about food and recipes as if everything is awesome which is why I’ve been a bit quiet around here. It’s definitely been a surreal few days, from meeting Bryan Voltaggio and getting his latest cookbook at the Orioles game on Saturday to then being detained for a bit towards the end of the game, and then of course the events from earlier this week. You can still feel a little tension in the air, even around my neighborhood–everyone is trying to look out for everyone else and make sure they’re doing OK, which seems to be the dominant. Being as new to the city as we are, I feel ill-equipped to write about it at length, but here are some really thoughtful, interesting perspectives from people who understand the city and its dynamics far better than I do.

Of all of the positive pictures that have begun circulating on the internet as the city both cleans itself up and continues to protest, this lady (and the others who were burning sage along with her) has been giving me all of the feels as I write this. 

Winter citrus pasta as inspired by Franny’s in an effort to ignore the cold for a bit.

Spaghetti with Mixed Citrus and Parsley

Well, I hope you’re happy, you who yearn for fall and start pinning pictures of pumpkins and sweaters and boots on Pinterest in JUNE and/or have excited countdowns for the start of football season. It might seem irrational to blame a certain group of people for the bitter cold and varying degrees of snow outside, but someone has to take the blame for this and I’m going to aim it at anyone who hopes for summer to come and go quickly and for fall to start immediately after Labor Day. Because the more hype there is around all things autumnal, the more likely we seem to be destined to get a brutal winter. I know I really shouldn’t complain because for the most part we’ve only been dealing with brutal cold while our friends in New England have been getting terrifying/downright absurd levels of snow, but the average high here for this time of year is supposed to be in the mid-forties.

As I write this, the current temperature is SEVENTEEN, and we’ll be lucky if we get into the high twenties today. I’m all for hygge and coziness and the like, but at some point I’d also like us to move closer in the direction of springtime.

Holiday cocktails and appetizers and the concept of hygge (shrimp fritters and charred lemon gin sparklers).

Charred Lemon Gin Sparklers with Shrimp Fritters

So Thanksgiving happened, it’s now December, we’re moving very soon, and I may be feeling a wee bit stressed about it. The movers come next week, and I’ll be home on the packing day working while they box up all of our stuff. In the meantime we’re trying to get all of our things organized as best we can and cleaning everything as much as possible. We’re at the point where I’m simply anxious to be there so I can do things like quickly register my car and get a parking pass for the neighborhood as well as the more fun tasks of organizing all of our stuff and getting a few new pieces, but we still have a bit of a ways to go before we get to that stage.

06.29.13: an English summer salad via Hawksmoor at Home.

English Tomato Salad from Hawksmoor at Home (The Manhattan [food] Project)

In my continuing campaign to prolong summer while it is still summer and protect us from Fall Creep, I humbly submit this salad as evidence that it’s far too soon to be wishing for pumpkin lattes and fucking sweaters. This salad is summer. It’s delicious and nourishing and it will not taste nearly as good at any other time of year as it does now, and therefore you should make it immediately. Incidentally, since today is the last Wednesday in August, it is officially La Tomatina: a festival in Buñol, Spain that is essentially a town-wide tomato fight. Most of us can’t be there in person to participate in the festivities, so why not use it instead as an excuse to splurge on some fantastic heirloom tomatoes?