Friday miscellany: tomatoes, a good book, ice cream with friends

On a slow friday when you're practically the only person in the office, there's no reason not to do an impromptu blog post. This one's a little of a mish-mash.

First: tomatoes. I think whoever packed our produce box this week doubled up on heirloom tomatoes, because we were supposed to get 2 lbs. but we must have gotten upwards of 4. We're thrilled, but that's a lot of tomatoes for two people. So far, lots of sliced tomatoes and tomato salads. When I was a kid, my parents would eat tomatoes like this in the summer and it practically made me gag. Now, though, as an adult, I'm down with raw tomatoes. Tonight I plan to stop on the way home to pick up some fresh mozzarella to go with. There's no way it could really compare to the burrata I had at Osteria Mozza in April, but I'm sure it will do just fine.

Second: I'm reading an interesting book right now, which eventually may get its own posting. It's called Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee. The author was abandoned by her parents in Korea at the age of three. She was found wandering the streets and was soon adopted by an American family from New Orleans, where she spent the next 15 years eating and learning to cook traditional Cajun food. The story traces her life from Korea to New Orleans to Sweden and then to France. It has recipes, but it's mostly about her strange and, to me, interesting life of travel, family, eating, and ethnic identity. I like it. Hopefully a more clever review in the coming weeks.

Third: a delicious dinner at Eos last night with two old friends. Almost everything was great (minus some supersalty brussels sprouts) but the real winner was their homemade ice cream. We got the sampler (lychee; mint chip; Vietnamese coffee; candied ginger; and white chocolate with peanut brittle) but Cee and I agreed that we also had to get an extra scoop of their salted caramel, which we politely battled over. I'm sure it's not the first time ice cream has come between friends.

Oysters, ice cream, wine, and good company: find me a better Thursday night!

A little bowl of soup

What's better than making soup? Nothing, I tell you. It involves my favorite parts of cooking (chopping vegetables and stirring) and none of the things that cause me anxiety (worrying if meat is over or underdone, fretting because something didn't rise). Unless you're completely inept, soup pretty much always turns out just right.

I like that it enables me to satisfy my compulsively thrifty side by using up old vegetables. I also like that all the action happens in one pot. You get a nice rhythm of chopping, stirring, sauteing. You can be as involved as you like, tasting and fixing as you go, or you can wander off and check your email while your lovely little soup simmers and reduces and deepens.

Every since I got an immersion blender a few months ago I've been going to town with it. We've eaten all sorts of brightly-hued pureed soups, from asparagus to purple cauliflower. For a non-gadgety person, I'm pretty sold on that thing. But my favorite and most frequently-made soup is minestrone.

I use this basic recipe from Giada de Laurentiis. I'll change it up depending on what's in the house, and I usually add more tomatoes than she calls for. Sometimes I throw in some stubby little macaroni and sometimes I don't. Two things I love about this recipe are 1) the way pureeing some of the cannellini beans thickens the soup perfectly and 2) I get to use a few of my parmesan rinds I've been squirreling away in the fridge.

The husband shakes his head whenever I get to the end of a block of parmesan and gleefully pull out the special square tupperware reserved just for cheese rinds. I know he thinks it's weird. But these little nubs of salty goodness enhance almost any soup. I'll add them to all sorts of things but I'm especially pleased to make an example of a recipe that specifically calls for one.

Last night was a soup night. And in a short while, it will be a soup lunch.

Bake a cooky, eat a cooky

Sometimes I'll get a deep, almost obsessive need to bake something. I'll get an idea in my head and I won't be able to stop thinking about it until I make it. This might happen with a particular cake recipe, or a batch of cookies. Sometimes I'll have a recipe swirling around in my little hungry dog brain for weeks or months until I all of a sudden just HAVE to make it.

I've got a couple in my mind right now that are on my short list, whipping themelves closer to the frenzied day I must drop everything to make them: Melissa Clark's blood orange olive oil cake and a raspberry buttermilk cake from a recent Gourmet. Also, alfajores, which I've been mulling over since last fall when I had one for the first time. Someone in my office went to Argentina and brought back a boxful. Since the, I've been dreaming of dulce de leche.

These are all on the to-do list. But sometimes I get an immediate craving that cannot be ignored or postponed. Like this past Sunday, I was overcome with an urge to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

This is a bit unusual for me. In general, I like chocolate chip cookies unmarred by oats, nuts, or other bits and pieces. And I'm not really an oatmeal cooky kind of person; they often seem either too soft and bland or too hard and brittle; plus, they often are full of raisins--yuck. But for some reason I got the urge for these and once I mused aloud to the husband, "Do you think I should make some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies?" I realized I'd get nothing more than a stony stare until they emerged golden, crispy, and chewy from the oven.

So, I whipped up a batch from Baking Illustrated in no time, swapping cinnamon for nutmeg, reducing the sugar, and adding a splash of Penzey's divine double vanilla. Hand-delivered one to the husband as he watched the French Open. I ate one, pleased with how speedy it had all come together.

The cookies were good, but I baked them too long. It called for a baking time of 22-25 minutes and I went for 22 right off the bat. They looked perfect but the longer they cooled, the crisper and harder they got. Too crisp.

Also, as often happens with me when I bake, once I ate one, I was done. Savory things tend to hold my interest longer. But once I bake a cooky and eat it, I'm ready to move on. So, the rest of the cookies were pawned off to friends that evening.

Incidentally, in our house we spell cooky with a y and not an ie. Makes it seem like both a noun and an adjective: That cooky is so...cooky. I realize this is a mistake and not an alternate spelling. But, one thing nice about not having kids is you don't have to explain why you're purposely doing something the wrong way. You just do it because you feel like it. Plus, you can curse freely.