Yes! Back in the kitch! Delish!

1) The Knick is such a fabulous show. My Cinemax-oriented prayers were answered because, indeed, a Knick played last night and waited patiently for us on our DVR. 2) Inglourious Basterds is a great film. Is Christoph Waltz not a brilliant actor? He is so simultaneously charming and full of shit. Love.

3) It was so great to make a real dinner once more. This rapini so floats my boat, and these shrimp -from my Shrimp Tacos- are fab as a stand-alone dish.

Pecan pesto, rapini with vin cotto

I am simply baffled by Pokémon. It has swept into our lives suddenly, furiously, and Jack is positively besotted. Oliver is not far behind. Cards and HPs and types and evolutions and powers...it seems Pokémon could be infinitely studied and played but I just don't get it. And the show is the worst. Just the absolute worst of anime. Naturally the boys beg to differ, but not since Bob the Builder have I felt a "passion" of theirs was so utterly vapid. Good for summertime I guess! In any case, dinner. In Wrightsville Beach a few weeks back, I bought some pecan oil brought up from Louisiana. Now, it is not lost on me that I've never bought pecan oil while at home, in Louisiana, but I saw it, was struck with a home-based yen, bought it and tonight made pecan pesto.

Pecan oil is exceedingly mild but it's a nice enough foundation if you also add actual pecans in some manner. I toasted a half cup of pecan halves, picked a mixed cup of basil and parsley from the yard, blended all that with some grated Parmesan, said pecan oil, some lemon, salt and a bit of garlic. These darling annelli, ring-shaped pasta I bought at Piazza in Easton back in May, paired wonderfully with the pesto; the sauce got caught up in the tiny rounds, like muck in your car hubcaps but good, which made each bite that much more intense. Nanny's favorite pasta was ditalini; annelli look like ditalini that have each been sliced in half.

Alongside, because I feel I've been terribly delinquent in the dinnertime veggie-making business as of late, I made my Rapini with Vin Cotto (you might recall it was featured on Food 52 as both a Community Pick and highlight of Weeknights with Jenny). It is so flipping good. The vague or overt bitterness of the greens (vague if you use broccolini but overt if you use rapini) is countered by the sweet tang of the vin cotto (cooked wine though I use balsamic vinegar instead of wine), and the little shocks of seared/charred/caramelized garlic are sublime.

My day

Readers, today was lovely. Has been lovely. As it stands, my dear hubs is opening a 5 putt Tokai for a celebratory nightcap. Years ago when we lived in Amsterdam, we traveled through Eastern Europe and had a hell of a time in Budapest. If ever you go, please, please dine at Cafe Pierrot if it's still open. Up on a hill, beautifully appointed, we ate at it two days in a row, and then our dear friends dined there a couple years later with similarly rave reviews. When we discovered it, Hungary had just joined the E.U. and we had such an interesting conversation with our waiter who felt hopeful yet truly concerned that Hungary would lose some of its sense of identity by becoming part of a larger, heterogeneous whole. It was definitely a stage of transition in Budapest; some streets were dolled up to the nines, others still unpaved, pre-now as it was then. The train station was totally shady. I'm a seasoned traveler and like a bit of mystery but this place was "get me out of here" wild. God, those days seem like eons ago, another life, a totally different one. In any case, my birthday breakfast with friends was amazing. Foodie friend C went to town, and the spread was ridiculously good. I'd purposely held off on eating a thing before I headed over, so by 9:15a, I was ready to chow. And did. Homemade granola, lemon curd, ginger scones, cinnamon-sugar breakfast puffs. And she'd called together a posse of my dearest pals. Wow. Then to a massage, some pick-ups and drop-offs, a pedicure, the most irritating trip to the market EVER and then home to cook. Because I wanted to.

Rapini with vin cotto: insane! Dates stuffed with mascarpone and goat cheese, wrapped in prosciutto, broiled and then sprinkled with chopped marconas and more of the vin cotto? Terrif! Truffle Tremor cheese with melba crisps? I can't speak!

Thank you to everyone who wrote such sweet Happy Birthdays to me today!