A Vegetarian Repast for Two

My husband and I keep strange hours compared to most people. We both work at home: he on a start-up, and me working on that and other projects. We usually arise fairly early to a construction crew outside of our window, the Irish foreman screaming obscenities at his Hispanic crew. (His charm wore thin months ago. Such a joy to wake up to someone bellowing “What the f*ck are you doing?!?!?!”) We then make the long commute to the living room, stopping by the kitchen to throw on a pot of coffee. The day kicks into gear, and I try to get in a few errands and a trip to the gym before it closes at 11:00 p.m. We’re rarely never in bed before 2:00 a.m., and it’s not unheard of for me to start cooking after 10:00, or for us to eat dinner after midnight. I suppose it’s our European and want-to-be-European blood.

One of my favorite parts of the day is when we finally sit down to eat together, laptops set aside for at least an hour. We’ve taken to eating at the coffee table instead of the dining table, and check out of the day by watching Travel Channel downloads from iTunes. We talk about how much we loved living in Europe, where we want to travel next, how we want to see Machu Picchu, that Montevideo looks like our kind of town, what we’d give to be eating seafood in Lisbon right now.

Unless someone is coming over, these meals are usually simple: lots of salads, maybe something thrown on the grill. Luckily we tend to eat fairly light, because eating at midnight is not so good for one’s midsection. After this week’s trip to the farmers’ market, I made one of my best late night dinners in a long time: stuffed zucchini blossoms, watermelon salad, and a green salad. We spread it all out on the coffee table (incidentally, coffee tables are called smoking tables in Hungary, which I find amusing as hell), and just ate tapas-style.

A Simple Dinner. (c) Finom. Photo by Molly Hovorka

A bottle of cold, white Burgundy completed the meal, letting us pretend, just for a bit, that we were in the Mediterranean somewhere, and not in foggy San Francisco.

The green salad was nothing special: just a way to use my new bag of mixed greens from the market, and a few veggies I still had on had from last week. I thinly sliced some fennel, chopped up a yellow pepper, and let that marinate with some lemon juice, olive oil, chopped garlic, a chopped shallot, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper while I got the rest of the meal ready. Right before serving I tossed all of this with the greens, and the result was a crunchy, zingy, fresh salad.

Watermelon Salad. (c) Finom. Photo by Molly Hovorka

Watermelon salad is one of my favorite dishes. It’s colorful, it’s sweet, and it’s salty: what’s not to love? It’s also incredibly easy to make. Just cube some watermelon, toss it with some cubes of feta, and sprinkle with toasted pine nuts. I added a few torn leaves of basil and mint, and drizzled just a bit of olive oil on top. This is also a good salad to make if you are having people over, because you can play around with the ingredients to artfully arrange them. Three dramatic cubes of watermelon, three cubes of feta, a shimmer of oil — I’ve seen this kind of presentation in high-end restaurants and it’s ridiculous how easy it is to coax ooohs and ahhhs out of people with it. So colorful, so minimalistic!

Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms. (c) Finom. Photo by Molly Hovorka

The pièce de résistance of this meal, however, was the stuffed zucchini blossoms. I’ll admit right now that I hate making these things almost as much as I love eating them. If you are ever in Italy and see them on the menu, just order and eat as many as you can, because you have to be some kind of nutjob to make them at home. Either that, or you have highly developed fine motor skills and the patience of Job. You see, these blossoms are delicate. They tear easily, practically if you just look at them. And if you tear them too much, all of the delicious stuffing that you put in them will come out.

I do have one trick though. Cookbooks will tell you how careful you have to be opening up the blossoms from the top, but this is bullshit. You can’t open them without tearing them because the tips of the blossom are all stuck together and the blossom rips immediately when you try to get it all untangled. Instead, I take the if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em approach, and rip the blossom ON PURPOSE. I make a straight tear from the tip almost-but-not-quite to the base. With the blossom opened up this way, it is easy to get the filling inside, and then you can fold the blossom back together, and give it a little twist to close up the tear. Once you dip it in a beaten egg, dredge it in flour and S&P, and drop it into hot olive oil for a quick fry, the stuffing tends to stay inside.

As for the stuffing itself, you can use whatever you want: soft mozzarella, ricotta, anchovy, anything that sounds good to you. My favorite is Laura Chenel goat cheese mashed with crushed red pepper flakes, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper. It’s a lot of work for about two minutes of pleasure, but as we say in Europe, there is no pleasure without suffering.

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