So much good food

Yesterday was a celebration of vegetables, as I was knee-deep in fresh ones and needed to start clearing a path in the fridge. I made a Hakurei turnip, celery root, leek mash with ricotta and parmesan as well as a pan of roasted Romanesco broccoli in a mint-lime olive oil drizzle. Nothing to write home about but solid, comforting and healthy nonetheless. I admit that T made a turkey sandwich to go alongside. Whatever!

Isn't that a striking vegetable? Each floret makes me think of the golden mean in brassica form. Spectacular.

The veggie hash reminded me of best-case mashed potatoes.

Tonight we enjoyed the short rib ragu that I made in NM (and have often cooked) and love. I never serve mine on polenta, but rather a wide noodle like pappardelle or, tonight, mafaldine, another ribbon-type pasta.

Delicious.

Serious Sunday dinner

With our blackberries from this morning I made a huge jar of straight-up blackberry jam for Jack as it's his very favorite ever; with the rest I made blackberry-sage jam which is divine. Blackberries just really groove on the herbalness of sage. I'm still tasting that blackberry-peach-sage crisp I made last month! Mamma mia! I mean, just LOOK at this color!

T and I had an afternoon date -thank you babysitter- at the gym, hardware store, grocery and to deal with the fact that Percy had escaped, made himself at home in a lovely family's yard about 18 feet from ours, been identified via the easy lure of turkey (then she could read his tag) and then found by the kids and babysitter who were likely racing around the neighborhood yelling "Percy" at the tops of their lungs.

It is always something!

Around 5p, a plum tart started siren-calling me, and so I made one. Actually, I was still jamming so made T make the crust and then finished it off. He's a very good cook though he loooves to cut corners which sometimes works and sometimes definitely doesn't. In any case, while that was cooking, I: roasted some celery root and this time did NOT drop the damn pan; made a fab-o raw kale salad with dried cherries, toasted walnuts and an assertively garlic dressing; and cooked the sirloin that T had just rubbed with salt, pepper and rosemary (I bought it this morning at the FM). T also got fancy and made a garlic soy sauce for it. Very '80s but good. We lit candles, sat and ate outside, Coravin'd two glasses of excellent Cabernet and may call it a day soon. Sunday, Sunday, the last of August. When did that happen?

Roasted celery root! Yogurt-tahini dressing! Chard!

Why I've never oven-roasted celery root before is beyond me, but doing so results in a fabulous, new way of enjoying this root veggie. I peeled and cubed one celeriac bulb, tossed it with olive oil, salt and a mince of herbs and roasted it on a baking sheet in a 375 or 385 oven. Truly delicious. Did Mark Bittman recently mention working with celery root in this way? If so, he was right to suggest this method. Not a fab pic, but definitely a fab product.  Oliver and I went to the market today after his school let out because he HAD TO HAVE cinnamon graham crackers. That kid eats graham crackers like it's his job so at least the cinnamon option provides some variety. In any case, I came across this stunning bunch of chard and had to buy it. Also, I assumed I might finally get around to making one of the many flagged recipes in Jerusalem, and Yotam likes chard. Isn't this a show-stopper bunch? Nature's fluorescent spectrum can't be beat.

It turned out that I lacked time and energy for and at least one ingredient from every recipe under consideration, so I ended up making a chard stew of sorts with sumac, tomatoes, potatoes and an unreal yogurt-tahini dressing. I will post that recipe tomorrow and suggest putting it on everything from falafel to bread to steamed potatoes and dipping other veggies in it with abandon!