If you're Russian, you love pelmeni. Fact. Instead of opening a bag
that's been in the freezer for who knows how long, we decided to make
them from scratch. Turns out, it's surprisingly easy.

The dough is 3 parts flour to 2 parts egg plus a splash of water to
keep the dough moist. After kneading, let it rest for 30 minutes. For
the filling, we went with beef with grated onions, garlic, salt,
pepper, and paprika.

Once dumplingified, drop them into salted boiling water for about 6 minutes.

And now for the family secret: top them with sour cream mixed with
Russian mustard.

(download)

Click here to download:

Pilmeni_Russian_meat_dumplings.zip (1.08 MB)

Grilled pizza is magical. It takes about 15 minutes (10 of which are
prep) and the results are consistently delicious. The order of
operations for a grilled pizza is critical. First, stretch it out on a
well-oiled sheet pan. Then, throw the dough on the hot grill and wait
for the first side to get a nice char. Flip it and throw on your
cheese. Wait a minute for the cheese to melt, then spread the sauce.
In this case, I made a walnut, basil pesto. Once the underside is
crispy, take it off heat and enjoy.

In case you're wondering, this was store-bought fresh dough. Making
dough is easy enough, but why bother?

Rustic, simple cooking is so amazingly satisfying. The other day, I
picked David Tanis', Heart of the Artichoke. The first recipe I
flipped to was his, very un-British, version of beans on toast. It
couldn't be easier: take dry cannellini beans and boil them for two
hours with some garlic cloves, salt, chili flakes and rosemary. I
didn't have rosemary so I opted for fennel seeds. When the beans are
ready spoon them over some toasted bread, sprinkle with parsley, some
more chili flakes, a little olive oil, and eat. I finished it off with a good squeeze of
lemon.

While some people might break in a new grill with a steak or
burgers, I decided to grill off some bacon for a delicious bacon,
lettuce, avocado and tomato sandwich. The BLAT is maybe the only time
that I will willingly smear mayo on a sandwich, or anything for that
matter. I was inspired by this Men's Health (health?) recipe.

If you're in SF, you MUST get some Dirty Girl Farms early girl
tomatoes. They are amazing and won't be around much longer.

Dang that's a good sandwich.

Few things in this world are as delicious as fresh, in-season creamed
corn. I had a serious hankering for some today and found a great Thomas Keller recipe on Epicurious. I pretty much made it word for word.
My only substitution was using heirloom shell beans instead of favas.
This recipe is a bit more involved than my usual fair. It took about
an hour start to finish. Well worth it.

I've been cooking this meal at least once a week for about a month. It never gets old. Start to finish it takes under a half hour, probably closer to twenty minutes if you're a master multitasker. The eggplant recipe comes from the fantastic Momofukufor2 blog. I made the kimchi a little while back and, after about a month sitting in the fridge, it has become markedly more delicious than after the first week or two. Put the two together over some fried rice, throw some scallions on top, pour the remaining glaze over everything, and eat it up.

On a recent episode of the Good Food podcast, a
chef described a really simple succotash made from fresh corn, cherry
tomatoes, summer squash, onions, and olives. He may have said
something about beans, but I've selectively forgotten that part. This
dish couldn't be simpler. Roughly chop the ingredients, toss them in a
pan with some olive oil, salt and pepper. Done.

I'm not a barbarian, so of course there's a runny egg on top.

Last week, I stumbled on Alisa Burke's Sweet and Savory Peaches recipe. If ever there was a photo set that got my mouth-a-waterin', this was it. With stone fruit peaking at the markets right now, the timing couldn't have been better.

On my weekly trip, I picked up some nectarines and a bunch of basil. Whole Foods had some awesome La Quercia Prosciutto Americana. After wrapping them up, I busted out my panini grill and threw these bad boys on. Absolutely delicious. An ear of yellow and white corn rounds everything out. Late summer on a plate.

Here's a great video about La Quercia and their awesome prosciutto: