Fregola. I dreamed up all sorts of reasons to justify my conviction that these chewy little guys were named for strawberries. Fregola sounds awfully similar to fragole, doesn’t it? I figured the Sardinians might enjoy switching vowels, much as Sicilians like to do away with final vowels altogether (prosciutt’, soppressat’): those crazy islanders and their alphabet play! The strawberries I had in mind were fragoline di bosco, the teeny tiny elongated berries–often no bigger than a fingernail–that release a musky drop of clear syrup at the stem end when squeezed; I could see how a plate of fregola in red sauce could call to mind a punnet of fragoline…

Picturesque association, but no dice. Fregola, it turns out, means urge or hankering; it can be used to refer to animals in heat. (The word “freak”, which once was interchangeable with “caprice”, comes from the same root.) Pairing this pasta with puttanesca sauce would mean putting “Whorish Lust” on the menu.

Something like a whorish lust is, in fact, what overcame me yesterday when I read this blog post. It immediately put me in mind of the fregola dish at Tempo, an oily and lascivious preparation that tosses the pasta in squid rings, pine nuts and a rich, vinegary-sweet sauce that’s like caponata minus the eggplant. If I had to exist on only one dish for the rest of my life, I would have a hard time choosing between Tempo’s fregola and raw beef pho; the one thing standing between me and a standing Friday night appointment with Tempo is everything else on their menu.

So it was with all the blind urgency of lust that I convinced my boyfriend, offering to take me to dinner at Blue Ribbon, that we were better off at Tempo instead.

I want to like Tempo, I really do: Frank Bruni did. Points in its favor:

- It’s within walking distance from my apartment.
- It takes Friday night walk-ins.
- In an era of $35 entrees, it offers a $32, three-course prix fixe.
- It serves wines by the quarter-liter: just the right amount to see a person through three courses.
- THE FREGOLA.

Tempo has great potential. It really only needs to do two things to capitalize on it:

1. Edit, or at least agree to rotate through, the massive menu. 11 starters, 14 mains (plus 2 specials) and 9 desserts is a lot of work for a kitchen, especially when each dish is plated with more bells, whistles, squeezes and drizzles than you can imagine.  The result is that Tempo does almost nothing (except THE FREGOLA) well. The concept and execution of the fregola tells me that there is an intelligent and creative mind behind the restaurant; the execution of everything else–I’ve eaten there with a fairly large party, and have been able to sample much of the menu–tells me that the kitchen is overwhelmed. And for what? So they can offer honey-roast butternut squash and sticky date pudding in late July? Edit!

2. Get a grip on the Moroccan notes that pervade and pollute a good part of the dishes. I don’t care if La Bruni praised the duck pastilla rolls in his review: I love duck and I love pastilla–a sweet and spicy phyllo pie from north Africa, rather like a chicken baklava–but Tempo’s tastes like a Chinatown egg roll smothered in hoisin sauce, dusted with enough confectioners sugar to ice a cupcake.

Onto last night’s meal (and further evidence that the Moroccan influence is inexpertly applied): I started with a chermoula shrimp salad (pictured below), which confused me, not only because of the very un-saladlike oil slick it left on the plate, but because chermoula is sort of like gremolata, and not at all like a spicy peanut sauce in which you might dunk chicken satay.

(My boyfriend had a soggy chopped salad. FAIL.)

The next course was the fregola, which not only lived up to two months of intermittent nostalgia and one afternoon’s violent craving, but even exceeded expectations. The textures of this dish are just beautiful: plump-to-bursting currants, rubbery squid rings, waxy pine nuts, and then the pearls of fregola themselves, a synthesis of all these textures. It came to the table perfectly seasoned and searingly hot, and I ate at least 40% more of it than I comfortably could.

(My boyfriend had the skirt steak special on a bed of panzanella. Bland steak, sour bread, absurd amounts of raw celery.)

I didn’t really want dessert after this, but if you’re paying for a three-course prix fixe, you might as well. The waiter wouldn’t let me order the pistachio gelato sundae and pretty much badgered me into getting the streusel cake (pictured, foreground); we compromised by putting a scoop of pistachio gelato directly onto the cake. For all that, there wasn’t a thread of streusel to be found on the enormously buttery cake: a fist-sized financier, really, and far too sweet to eat. My boyfriend got the deep-fried beignets, which are the fregola of the dessert menu: hot, fat pillows of exuberantly elastic dough, sanded with cinnamon sugar. I sank my teeth into one and moaned.

The next time a craving for fregola hits, I’m coming with a game plan: I’m going to bypass the entire appetizer section of the menu and ask for a plain green salad. That way, I can both avoid disappointment and save room for my beloved fregola and beignets.

Tempo
256 5th Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11215
(718) 636-2020

Today, I took a long, hard look at the décor of my new apartment and saw that it was strongly reminiscent of…my blog.

Really. My sofa is white, with orange cushions. My dining table is white, with red chairs. The walls are white (well, a pale beige), the wardrobe and the chest of drawers are white, and here and there are scattered square blocks of bright color. It’s almost as though tapping on one of my cushions will pull up a Recent Post.

I guess I’m just a one-aesthetic pony.

At least I’m trying to mix it up a little bit in my cooking. For reasons of economy, I was considering making egg salad for dinner. “I still have ten eggs in the carton I bought for salade niçoise,” I plotted. “If I use one of them to make the mayonnaise, I won’t have to go shopping at all!”

Then I remembered the horrible indigestion I got last night just from one hard-boiled egg, and thought better of eating four or more in one sitting. (Having just returned from an all-beef wedding reception in Massachusetts, my stomach is somewhat compromised.)

And so I made a delicate, chilled antidote to a full-throttle weekend.

Soba noodles are magic. Want to know why?

What happens when you cook pasta ahead of time and let it sit? Unless you think fast and coat it in olive oil, you end up with a clump that could clog the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. The only remedy is a dunk in boiling water.

Not so with buckwheat soba. It’s gluten-free, and comes untangled in cold running water. Which is awfully convenient, since one of the traditional ways to serve it is chilled.

My variation on zaru soba replaces the traditional soba tsuyu (a dipping sauce composed of soy sauce, mirin and dashi) with a pseudo-ponzu made with pink grapefruit instead of yuzu, a Japanese citrus fruit that’s hard to come by in Brooklyn. For flavor and texture, I’ve added dried shiitakes, reconstituted in a salty oyster sauce broth, and grapefruit supremes. Spring onions, sliced finely on the bias, top it all off. It’s a refreshing, practically fat-free summer salad; gently tangy and even a little bitter from the grapefruit.

I love to slice citrus fruits into supremes: it’s a bit fiddly, but once you’ve tried them stripped of their pith, there’s no going back. (Instructional video here.) If you’ve never had an orange or a grapefruit this way, imagine the sensual impact of peeled versus unpeeled grapes, times ten. With no sinew to stand between your tongue and the teardrop-shaped cells, each sac of pulp gives up its juice on contact.

Work over a bowl to make sure you catch all the juice. Even if you miss some of the flesh (I was especially clumsy today, since I lost my paring knife during the move and had to work with my French knife), squeezing the core of pith will ensure that not a single drop of juice is wasted. To me, the process of extracting the supremes to reveal the grapefruit skeleton is very nearly as sensuous as eating the bald segments themselves.

Chilled Soba With Grapefruit, Shiitake and Ersatz Ponzu–Serves 2

INGREDIENTS

2 bundles of buckwheat soba (a package typically contains 4-6 single-serving bundles)
1 grapefruit, cut in supremes and juice reserved
6 dried shiitake mushrooms
3 tbs oyster sauce
Small bunch scallions (green tops only), sliced thinly
1/4 cup soy sauce
Cold water

METHOD

Cook soba in boiling water according to package instructions (usually 6-7 minutes). Drain and immediately rinse under cold water. Cover and chill until ready to use.

Place mushrooms in small saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil and stir in oyster sauce until dissolved. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, or until mushrooms are completely softened. Drain, remove stalks and slice thinly. Chill.

Combine soy sauce and reserved grapefruit juice in a small bowl. Adding a little cold water at a time, dilute to desired flavor.

To serve, refresh chilled noodles under cold running water. Drain, and place in a shallow bowl with grapefruit supremes, mushrooms and scallions. Pour over grapefruit ponzu, or serve in a separate bowl, dipping each mouthful before eating.

(Salade niçoise my way, or, the second installment of Salads That Are A Lot Of Work To Make.)

Bon 14 juillet à tous–happy Bastille Day! This salade niçoise is my little way of marking a holiday that I’ve been celebrating since I first began learning French at the age of 4. My parents sent me to a bilingual school, which I attended all the way through highschool; I then went on to get a degree in French (and Russian), part of which I completed in Dijon. (MFK Fisher fans will appreciate my choice of city: it was based almost entirely on her description of the annual Foire Gastronomique, or Food Expo, which I succeeded in gobbling my way through in November 2003.)

You wouldn’t think there would be a lot of controversy about this classic salad, but the French have a way of squabbling over what can and cannot go into dishes that is quite unrivalled. In culinary school, my class kicked up an almighty ruckus after a written exam in which we were asked to list five ingredients that might appear in the salad: almost every student, myself included, had points deducted for items we had at some time or other consumed as part of a salade niçoise.

As my French chef-instructors (one of whom was actually raised in Nice) taught it, the salad included boiled potatoes and green beans, and omitted the cucumber, raw onion and artichokes called for by the “definitive” Larousse Gastronomique…whose version, incidentally, expressly prohibits the addition of boiled potatoes. Chefs Laurent Tourondel and François Payard can’t agree, either.

Well, I’ve been to Nice a couple of times, and here is how I like to make it.

I’ve often seen diners in New York turn up their nose at canned tuna in salade niçoise. This is unfortunate, because canned tuna is not only traditional to the dish–a grilled fillet is too dry to blend well with the other ingredients–but can be a beautiful preparation in itself. I’m not talking about Chicken of the Sea (which has its uses and is not to be snubbed), but imported ventresca (the toro of canned tuna) in olive oil, which costs a bucketload and melts in your mouth.

If it has to be Chicken of the Sea–which it does, with my budget–then I take my 99-cent can of albacore and make Eric Ripert’s (of Le Bernardin) tuna rillettes, which appeared in the New York Times in March as part of an article on making do. It’s one of my favorite things to eat, budget or no budget: bright, tangy and just a little sweet.

Nothing in this recipe is difficult, but it is all of it finicky. The key to a French-style salade composée is that each component be trimmed, cooked (if applicable) and dressed separately, meeting its cohorts for the first time only on the serving plate.

The ingredients in my salade niçoise:

- waxy potatoes, boiled and sliced into rounds
- green beans, trimmed and blanched in heavily salted boiling water
- green peppers, finely sliced
- Roma tomatoes, peeled and quartered
- hard-boiled eggs, quartered
- kalamata olives

I start with a bed of Boston lettuce, torn into manageably-sized pieces and lightly dressed in an emulsified vinaigrette I call “puttanesca”, because it contains capers and, in paste form, the anchovy fillets that traditionally complete the salad. Non-fragile ingredients can be dressed before being assembled on the bed of lettuce; the eggs, tomatoes and potatoes are placed on the lettuce before being drizzled with dressing.

Vinaigrette Puttanesca–makes about 3/4 cup

INGREDIENTS

1 tbs Dijon mustard
1 tsp anchovy paste
3 tbs red wine vinegar
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tbs capers

METHOD

In a medium bowl, whisk mustard, anchovy paste and vinegar until well combined. Slowly add the olive oil, whisking constantly until a creamy emulsion has formed. Stir in the capers.

P.S. If you’ve been following the gas saga, I now have a fully functioning stove!

This is an awful lot of work for a salad, I admit. But I was in the mood for something elaborate. Like, bust-out-the-mandoline-and-immersion-blender/push-through-a-sieve/use-three-different-pots elaborate. And it was worth every dirty utensil.

After more than two weeks of stovelessness and four appointments with the gas company, I finally have a semi-functioning gas range. The latest technician was able to turn on the gas, but found the pressure in the pipes so dangerously low that he left a certificate prohibiting me to use it. Two independent contractors later, I have enough pressure to power one burner at a time; the final appointment, scheduled for tomorrow morning, should put an end to my kitchen woes.

One burner out of four is not ideal, but it’s still a direct heat source. It was time to cook.

I’m delighted to report that my bundle of asparagus made it through its eight-day crisper bin ordeal relatively unscathed, thanks to a reader’s suggestion that I essentially treat it like flowers and keep it in water. After a bit of peeling (wholly unnecessary for such young spears, but I think they look so elegant peeled) and two minutes in boiling salted water, the asparagus was left to cool in ice water while I got to work on a sweet and sour double pepper sauce.

The pepper emulsion came out beautifully piquant, but I wanted an earthier flavor in there, too, to anchor the dish. So I shaved nearly half a head of garlic on my mandoline and slowly crisped the slices in olive oil.

I’ve written about my crisping method before, which works for all members of the allium family (shallot rings, slivered leeks, you name it). The key is to start with cold oil and maintain a low heat throughout: browning will be even and bitterness minimized.

I could just eat these by the fistful.

Cold Poached Asparagus With Red Pepper Emulsion And Garlic Chips–Serves 2 as a side dish or 4 as an appetizer

INGREDIENTS

1 lb. asparagus, trimmed of woody stalks (optional: use a vegetable peeler to lightly peel the bottom third of each stalk)
Salted water for boiling

For the emulsion:
2 roasted red bell peppers (either fresh or jarred), peeled, seeded and diced
1 small onion, minced
1 tbs sugar
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup + 2 tbs olive oil
Salt and pepper

For the garlic chips:
5-6 large cloves of garlic, sliced very thin on a mandoline
Olive oil for deep frying

METHOD

Bring salted water to a boil in a large pot, and cook asparagus until just tender. Drain and chill in ice water.

For the emulsion:
Heat 2 tbs olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Gently sweat bell peppers and onion until onion is translucent. Add sugar, paprika and red wine vinegar; allow liquid to reduce by half.

Remove from heat. Transfer to blender, add remaining olive oil and puree. Push emulsion through a sieve. Check seasoning. Chill.

For the garlic chips:

Place the garlic slices in a small saucepan and cover with olive oil. Place over a very low flame and allow the oil to slowly come to a boil. When garlic chips are golden brown, drain and place on paper towels to absorb excess oil.

To serve:

Drizzle emulsion over chilled asparagus, in individual servings or on large platter. Sprinkle with garlic chips.

Lately, I’ve asked myself how the World Wide Web would react if I were to turn the focus of this blog from food and cooking to the strange, slowly unfolding joy of combining mailing address and material possessions with one beloved other. A photo of him, aged a distant 24, is pinned to our fridge with a magnet painted to resemble a fried egg, and my MFK Fisher anthology is now sandwiched between the complete illuminated William Blake and Mark Elbroch’s Mammal Tracks And Sign; these facts are somehow moving and momentous. I am discovering a never-before-explored urge to tidy, and a thrill in preparing his evening meal that I believe is quite unrelated to any pre-existing enthusiasm for the culinary arts.

(Resist the urge to vomit, World Wide Web. I’ll get right back on topic.)

After a third visit from the gas company–which has left me still without functioning stove (day 12 now) and in possession of a document attesting to the “hazardous condition” of my gas pipes–the evening meal that so thrills me to prepare was prepared in a crock pot.

“You had a crock pot all along? Well, why didn’t you say so? We mightn’t have wasted all that time leaving commiserating comments about forbearance and creativity had we known you had a crock pot!”

Well, yes, I do have a crock pot. But it’s also July! In New York City! Would you want stew in July in New York City?

Tonight I bit the bullet and plugged in the beast. I cooked what I had in my fridge and larder: sweet Italian sausages in their skins, on a bed of carrots, onions and garlic. Frozen chopped spinach and canned chickpeas went in later, for heft; smoked paprika and dried chili flakes last of all, for depth and zing. Halfway through cooking, I found half a jar of roasted red peppers, so slivers of those went in the pot, too.

I simmered it all in just under half a bottle of cerasuolo (an Italian rosé) from Cantina Zaccagnini. I bought it after the gas men left, partly to braise with but mostly to console myself.

It’s a fairly nice rosé, to my palate. Of course, I may be succumbing to the alluring imagery of the word “cerasuolo” itself; it’s Italian for “cherried” and suggests, to this overgrown aficionado of children’s literature, Lewis Carroll’s Drink Me liquid:

“Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.”

Even at the hottest setting, the contents of the crock pot took three hours to come to the faintest of simmers. The result of extended cooking at such a low temperature was that each element of the dish had time to thoroughly infuse its bedfellows: the spinach and chickpeas tasted of sausage, the sausage tasted of the aromatic vegetables, and everything tasted of cerasuolo. Unfortunately for the readers of this blog, everything also looked like pigswill.

Hopefully I’ll be growing a bit more adept at cooking sans Maillard in the coming days. I may not have a choice.

So the gas man came back today for Round Two. I greeted him at the gate: “Boy, am I glad to see you!”

The basement was unlocked this time; so far so good. Then we made our way up the stairs to my apartment, to find that the genius who recently renovated the place had installed the dishwasher and sink in such a way as to completely prohibit access to the gas valve.

Now my landlord will have to send a workman to cut some sort of a hole somewhere, and I’m going to have to call National Grid again, whose staff will doubtless have been briefed on resisting my manipulative negotiation techniques. (If my landlord can be convinced to cough up, though–as well he should–it is possible to bypass the standard appointment allocation lottery.) Naturally, the usual delays will only be exacerbated by the upcoming Independence Day weekend.

Meanwhile, my asparagus is slowly losing its erection in the crisper bin, and I am thisclose to buying a pack of cigarettes.

(Welcome to my fridge.)

Moving in with my boyfriend has been riddled with obstacles, but they’ve been obstacles that I’ve met with good cheer–well, as much good cheer as can be summoned by a sensibility permanently set to “tempest in a teapot”, anyway. This morning, however, saw me in a faceoff with The Final Straw.

I haven’t had cooking gas since I moved into our new apartment last Tuesday. I waited one week for the gas man to come, and even scheduled my Fresh Direct (an online grocery company) delivery to coincide with The Big Day.

When the National Grid guy got here this morning, the basement door, which had been flung wide open every day since I arrived, was padlocked shut. My landlord wasn’t picking up his phone. With no access to the gas meter, the gas man packed up his tools and drove away.

Just as his van was turning the corner, my landlord returned my call and promised to be right over. I got the gas company on the phone and begged them to send their man back.

Not only was it too late, they told me, but the next available slot was on July 16. That is, two weeks from today, and a full twenty-one days since I’d first made the appointment.

At this point, I did what any self-respecting adult woman and food blogger would do: I started to cry.

“Please don’t cry, ma’am! Let me see what I can do.”

The operator re-emerged after six minutes of muzak to offer me an appointment on July 8. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than the alternative. As he rattled through the standard confirmation patter, one question stood out:

“Would you like the engineer to call you before he arrives?”

“Call me? I answered yes to that question when I made the first appointment! If your guy had actually called me, I would have been able to get my landlord to unlock the basement! I wouldn’t be crying on the phone with you, I’d be baking my third batch of patriotic cupcakes in preparation for the holiday bloody weekend!”

“He didn’t call you, ma’am? I’m so sorry that happened. Hold on just a moment.”

[sniffle]

“Once again, I’m sorry for the inconvenience. We will have someone at your house tomorrow morning.”

If it were 1998, I might imbed a MIDI file of “Ding Dong Merrily On High” and maybe throw in a couple of animated GIFs of angels blowing horns. Instead, you’re getting a Youtube link to the aforementioned hymn being performed by an outfit named Celtic Woman, who are sort of like a cross between The Corrs and the Playmate aesthetic, and not at all like any Celtic woman I ever met in my four years in Scotland.

While I’ve been writing this, my Fresh Direct delivery arrived. The corn, the cantaloupe and the sweet sausage will just have to wait until tomorrow. As for tonight’s meal, I guess I’ll have to suck it up and let my boyfriend take me out for dinner!

I apologize in advance for what is, in many ways, an unhappy post.

I know food blogs are supposed to be places of joy and light; of indulgent spouses, white-balanced photography and twinkly-eyed children with uncommonly adventurous appetites.

Well, I’m not one for writing to market, so get ready for some food blog chiaroscuro.

The truth is, since moving to my neighborhood, I find the grocery shopping options borderline depressing. I don’t say that lightly: I am an unusually supermarket-focused person, and, in my world, food purveyors might as well be mood purveyors. When I was studying in St Petersburg I lived far outside the city center, where Americans generally feared to tread, just to be near O’Kei, the experimental Walmart-sized supermarket that was being tested out on the Russian market. I did a similar thing last year when I moved to Red Hook, Brooklyn, the ghetto-by-the-sea made livable only by Fairway Market.

I now live in a part of Brooklyn called “South Slope” by realtors and “Greenwood Heights” by any New Yorker who’s ever looked at a map. My shopping options include an Associated Foods that feels, produce-wise, a lot like rural Guatemala, a Met Foods that puts out cuts of meat that are every shade of bruised but red, and a Key Foods that is not in itself unacceptable, but is far away enough that the commute is. Finally, a small, independent store across the street–Eagle Provisions–promises “Epicurean Delights From Around The World”.

Among these “Epicurean Delights” were a jar of eggplant spread I nearly choked on and the first product bad-tasting enough for me to call the consumer complaint hotline.

I could rant on and on, but, in the interest of maintaining my already slim readership, I am going to confine what could easily bloom into a pestilent epic on the scale of the titan arum to a list of three questions.

1. I called Bella Famiglia to tell them that their pomegranate-flavored sparkling water starts off with a suggestion of aniseed before erupting into an overpowering nose of B.O. I didn’t put it quite like that over the phone, but that is what it tasted like, and my first job right out of college was writing wine tasting notes so I know of what I speak, okay? I promised you a question, and here it is: does calling the hotline mean I have officially and irreversibly crossed into the ranks of the insane? (Partial answer: the hotline operator seemed to think so. I was transferred to a voicemail box and have not been contacted since.)

2. Marco Polo Mild Ajvar, Product of Bulgaria. So bitter I could almost feel my esophagus closing up. And this was the mild version. Whatever the full-flavor version tastes like, I feel certain that Hell seethes with it. Question: is it the store’s responsibility or the manufacturer’s? Am I justified in bringing that jar back to Eagle Provisions?

Update on Question 3, below: I am prone to fits of righteous indignation, but fortunate to have a boyfriend licensed by the state of New York to prescribe and administer large-dose chill pills. I wrote the blogger in question an e-mail saying that I was sure it was an oversight, and it turned out it was; it’s now been corrected.

3. I would like everyone’s advice on a matter of netiquette. It has come to my attention, via Technorati, that a blogger has all but reproduced one of my recipes. I would not go so far as to call it plagiarism, because I am acknowledged–though not by name–in one of the introductory paragraphs as a “fellow food blogger” and the “inspiration” for the dish, but I can’t help but bristle (more hurt than angry, really) when I read on to find my recipe reproduced almost word for word and presented as something she “put together”. My own policy when I am making other people’s recipes is to avoid reprinting the recipe altogether and link directly to the original (c.f. my post on Appetite For China’s Tea Eggs). If I have made any significant changes then I mention them, but do not insert them directly into cut-and-pasted text. What would you do in this situation? Let it go or write an e-mail?

Did I really say that the mango-blueberry galette was going to be the last thing I ever cooked in this kitchen?

Maybe it was nostalgia, maybe it was procrastination. In any case, and instead of packing, I hosted a little dinner for five last night.

The menu:

Chicken-shiitake meatballs with Chinese honey-mustard dipping sauce (a.k.a. the I’m-not-going-to-take-all-these-condiments-with-me-when-I-move-so-let’s-make-a-sauce sauce)

Orecchiette in peas and cream with crispy Serrano ham and griddled asparagus (a.k.a. orecchiette alla meat-is-expensive-so-you’re-all-getting-frozen-peas)

Stone fruit and goat cheese tart with crushed toffeed pecan brittle and lavender honey (a.k.a. the I-just-stiffed-you-on-the-meat-course-so-here’s-a-genuinely-luxurious-dessert tart)

Dessert was the real pièce de resistance, but I have photos of the first and second courses for the curious.

These little meatballs are studded with dried shiitake mushrooms that were soaked in hot water and then minced. They’re bound with just a little cornstarch, and have no breading at all. The dipping sauce is a basic honey mustard, with plenty of oyster sauce, a touch of sesame oil and a good kick of chili paste.

To make the sauce for the orecchiette: sweat chopped shallots in butter, add a bag of frozen peas and sautee until warm. Add heavy cream and ricotta and whizz to a puree with an immersion or upright blender. Push through a sieve, and the result is the prettiest, silkiest cream sauce you’ve ever seen. Serrano ham or prosciutto, fried to crisp shards in olive oil, adds texture and super-concentrated umami.

Finally, dessert: individual tarts of ripe peach and magenta plum with lobes of sharp, crumbly goat’s cheese.

I never thought I’d love making dessert as much as I do, because I don’t really have much of a sweet tooth. I don’t think I’ve ever ordered a chocolate dessert in my life. As I was saying (pontificating?) over a game of Chinese poker last night, it may be this very lack of sugar drive that makes me a more thoughtful pastry cook. My natural preference is for savory and acidic flavors, but I know that my guests expect an indulgently sweet ending to the meal. So I compromise by putting a range of flavors and textures on the plate–sweet, sour, salty, crunchy–in contrast to the chocolate-cake-with-additional-chocolate-sauce school of dessert plating. If I am making something as rich as a pot de crème, say, I try to serve some stewed or baked fruit and crisp caramel decos on the side. It’s fussy, but I feel happy when I can serve a really bountiful plate to my friends.

To balance the acidity of the fruit and cheese, I infused honey with dried lavender and drizzled it over the tart just before serving; goat’s cheese loves woody herbs like rosemary and thyme, and I think lavender has comparable bitter notes. I also made a really big block of pecan toffee brittle, partly to crush and sprinkle over the tart, partly to soothe the post-prandial munchies that tend to strike when wine is flowing. (It all got eaten.)

Peach, Plum & Goat’s Cheese Tarts with Lavender Honey and Toffeed Pecan Brittle–Serves 6

INGREDIENTS

For the tarts:
1 17-oz box ready-rolled puff pastry
6 oz goat’s cheese (the kind that comes in a log)
2 peaches, pitted and sliced thinly
2 plums, pitted and sliced thinly
1/3 cup sugar

For the lavender honey:
1/2 cup honey
1 tbs dried lavender

For the toffeed pecan brittle:
1 cup sugar
3 tbs unsalted butter
1 cup pecans
Large pinch salt

METHOD

For the tarts:
Thaw puff pastry according to package instructions. Unfold and cut into 6 4-inch circles or squares. Place on parchment-lined baking tray.

Slice goat’s cheese into 6 equal-sized medallions. Press one into the center of each tart base.

Arrange alternating slices of peach and plum in a flower shape. When tarts are assembled, sprinkle sugar over the top of each.

30 minutes before you are ready to serve, preheat oven to 400F. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Serve warm, drwith lavender honey and crushed toffeed pecan brittle.

For the lavender honey:
Place lavender and honey in a small saucepan and heat gently until honey starts to seethe. Remove from heat and allow to steep for at least an hour.

Discarding the lavender is optional. Before serving, warm slightly over the stove or in the microwave, for looser drizzling.

For the toffeed pecan brittle:
Place the sugar in an even layer in a large, thick-bottomed saucepan. Over a medium heat, allow the sugar to slowly dissolve. Stir occasionally if it seems that the heat is unevenly distributed.

When the sugar is completely liquefied, turn down the flame. Tilting and swirling the pan occasionally, watch for the color to change to a deep amber. At this point, add the butter and salt and stir vigorously until the caramel is of an even consistency. Add the pecans, stir to coat and transfer to a parchment-lined baking tray. Leave to set at room temperature.

When hardened, break off a small amount and crumble roughly for use as garnish. The remaining may be served alongside as “petit fours”, or kept in an airtight container at room temperature for 1-2 weeks, depending on climate.

Goodbye, little kitchen. You served me well.

If you’re looking for rabbit recipes, you’ve come to the wrong blog. Peanut Humes is my two-year old bunny, seen here in her official capacity as Fine Furious Life Copy Editor. I don’t let her have much input into the recipes: it’s always vegan this, raw food that…

One more reason I’m so excited about the new apartment is that I won’t have to keep Peanut in a cage anymore. She’s litterbox-trained, like a cat, so it’s only her expensive predilection for snacking on carpet that keeps me from letting her hop about unsupervised. Thankfully, the new house has hardwood floors, so I can relax.