Introducing You Panzanella Meets Caesar

I often find myself in a situation where I don’t have much choice about what I can eat. I write and test certain recipes, try specific street food, visit particular restaurants. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying that sometimes, it’s a real novelty to be able to cook whatever I ruddy well feel like. The freezer is stuffed with the ragus and dhals I sweated over on a summer’s day, waiting for autumn when they’ll thaw in a pan after a long day at work, and defrost onto the pages they were destined for.

This salad came about because I was desperate to get as much summery food as I could into my body all at once. I needed the refreshment that only a big bowl of different coloured plant bits can bring, and then while making it decided it was nothing without carbs and a creamy dressing. You can take the girl out of winter.

Panzanella meets Caesar

This is –  you’ve probably guessed already – a hybrid of the Italian bread salad panzanella and Caesar Cardini’s crisp classic. I’ve come up with a dressing which is loosely based on the latter in that it contains anchovies, and a splash of buttermilk for creaminess. Yes I was mining the depths of the fridge. I’ve given quantities for the dressing but not so much for the vegetables as I can’t really remember. Come on though, it’s a salad. Just eyeball it.

For the dressing:

2 garlic cloves, smushed with a tiny pinch of sea salt
3 anchovies, also smushed
1 inch square of Grana Padano or Parmesan, grated
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2-3 tablespoons buttermilk

For the salad ingredients (although it’s good to mix it up with whatever you have, as long as you keep the bread and capers):

Tomatoes, chopped
Cucumbers, chopped
Spring onions, sliced
Green beans, blanched
Stale sourdough bread, torn into pieces
Capers (a tablespoon?)

Mix salad ingredients. Mix dressing ingredients. Combine together. Ta-da!

Wednesday Finds: Cinnamon Quinoa Breakfast Bowl

On Wednesday morning Mike and I checked out The Perseids. At midnight we hopped in our car and drove down a deserted ghostly highway to make our way past the edge of the city to where the water laps the shore. We spread out our blanket, I tucked myself into Mike’s arm and we let our eyes adjust to the blackest of nights – thank you, new moon. It took a while, but we saw two giant shooting stars together and two tiny ones, separately. I would have lay out there forever but somehow I missed the memo on how you’re supposed to dress in the middle of the night in summer. After a while my shivering became too apparent to ignore so we headed home. But it was a blast and they’re still on so we might just head out again tonight.



If you saw what I eat for breakfast every day, you would be so bored. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my daily eggs & avocado, but lately I’ve been trying to switch things up just because I think change is good every once in awhile. Especially if that change means another excuse to smother things in peaches.

This one is inspired by all of those beautiful breakfast bowls of oatmeal that I see all over the internet. You know the ones – they’re chock full of colorful fruit and other various superfoods. They’re so pretty that they make me wish I liked oatmeal… so finally I had this idea to make a sweet non-oat quinoa bowl for breakfast.

This base of this recipe is the quinoa that is lightly sweetened by cooking it in almond milk with a few cinnamon sticks. It’s this simple: Almond Breeze + quinoa + whole cinnamon sticks. You could also get creative with your spices. Nutmeg, cardamom, and/or vanilla bean would all be welcome here.

To your spiced quinoa, add whatever seasonal or dried fruits you like. Obviously, peaches are my thing right now, the raspberries are for Jack because they’re his favorite. For crunch, I topped these with toasted almonds and coconut flakes.

I’m going to give you two options of how to serve these bowls because Jack and I both have different preferences. Because I have a thing about mushy food, I like my quinoa bowl best served pilaf style, leaving my quinoa fluffy. (it can be served warm off the stove or at room temp if you’ve made it in advance). Jack prefers his porridge style – hot with plenty of almond milk to soak into the quinoa. So to each their own…

Sweeten the deal by drizzling a little maple syrup on top.

Adobo Eggplant Quesadillas & Nachos

I often get questions about how to cook eggplant. My favorite and most foolproof method for non-spongy eggplant is to grill it. (If you don’t have an outdoor grill, you can use a grill pan on your stove). I grill mine simply with olive oil, salt and pepper, and a squeeze of lemon or drizzle of balsamic; I then serve it with some arugula or sliced tomatoes.

But I’m in love with this recipe for grilled eggplant quesadillas that comes from my friend Erin (of Naturally Ella)’s new book The Easy Vegetarian Kitchen. The spices are so flavorful and the eggplant bulks up the quesadillas in a meaty-but-not-meaty sort of way.

I know that so many of you are fans of Erin’s as well, so I’m sure lots of you already have her book, but if you don’t, put it on your list. It’s a super handy vegetarian guide to cooking with what you might have available seasonally or on hand. There are 50 base recipes and 3 unique versions of each. So pretty much any vegetarian meal you might want to make, she has a recipe for. Everything is made with whole grains and with fresh seasonal produce in mind.

I modified her quesadilla recipe just a tad. I mixed her spice rub with olive oil and used it as more of a chile sauce to brush onto the eggplant after I grilled it. (This kept my grill pan a little cleaner). I served the remaining sauce on the side of the finished quesadillas…  Jack gave this meal two speechless thumbs up. Because that’s how he says “this one is really good” as he stuffs the next quesadilla wedge in his mouth.

I have an obsession with nachos. When they’re done right, I think they’re the perfect food: hot and crispy corn tortilla chips, melty cheese, and all the toppings. I like my nachos fully loaded – seasoned ground beef, avocados or guacamole, salsa, sour cream, green onions, cilantro – I want it all. Even though I’m obsessed with the perfect nacho, I’m so obsessed with nachos in general that I’ll take whatever I can get.

Truth: I’ve even been known to eat just tortilla chips with melted “cheese” on top. A couple of years ago, when Mike and I were in Madrid, I was overcome by an intense craving for nachos. Luckily, they had tortilla chips at the store right around the corner from the Airbnb we rented. There wasn’t any shredded cheese, but they did have some squares of unidentifiable queso and jars of “American” salsa. My need for melted cheese on tortilla chips was so great that I didn’t care that the whole thing was questionable. And hells yeah that plate of Spanish nachos hit the spot.

That memory kind of makes me miss Europe. It goes to show that it’s the random things in life that are completely memorable, like making microwave nachos in your European apartment. Yup, we could have gone out for cervezas (claras for me!) and jamon at midnight, but sometimes, it’s those down home things that really matter, especially when traveling.