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Here’s the deal: Grilled cheese sandwiches are an easy, satisfying lunch that ANYONE can do with any bread and any cheese. It is about technique. There will be no recipe. I’m here to walk you through it with some straight talk and some downright lousy photography.

The supplies you’ll need are as follows.

• A non-stick pan
• A lid for said pan (it doesn’t have to be an exact match – a plate would do in a pinch)
• A spatula
• A sandwich or other sharp knife (I happened to use a buffet-style slicer but that was because the cheese I was slicing was an ENORMOUS, Costco-size block)
• Sandwich bread (doesn’t matter what kind)
• Cheese
• Butter

Ok. Here we go:

First you preheat your non-stick pan over medium heat. While you do that, slice up some cheese (I tend to use cheddar, but really any good melting cheese will do.) and place it on your sandwich bread. You don’t want to go TOO thick, but really, it isn’t all that important. Don’t grate it. I mean, you CAN if you’d like, but if you do this right its one less thing to wash at the end of the day. You’re going to use the knife for a lot of this anyway. Back to work.

Place another piece of sandwich bread on top. Slap a pat of butter (say that out loud… its fun!) into your pan, swirl it around to coat the pan and wait until it has melted completely. Add your uncooked sandwiches and flatten them with the palm of your hand. (No, I wasn’t being a glutton… this is for me AND our 17 month old son.)

Cut another pat of butter and spread it on the still uncooked side of the sandwich.

Next comes the trick. COVER THE PAN with a lid. The idea here is to allow the heat that is trapped in the pan to melt the cheese as the bread in contact with the pan browns.

Now how long you cook this per side really depends on your stove. You will have to fiddle with your sandwiches and maybe even the heat settings. This will appeal to those of you who habitually mess with your food as it is cooking (usually a really bad idea). Check from time to time to see how the bottom of the sandwich is doing. If it looks like the image below (but not blurry… unless you forgot your glasses), flip and press down on the sandwich with a spatula. Slide the sandwiches around the pan a little to ensure even butter coverage and recover for a few more minutes – checking occasionally that the cheese has completely melted.

When the sandwiches are done  (a good sign is if some of the cheese has oozed out and is sizzling away in the buttery pan) remove to a cutting board, wait 30 seconds to a minute to ensure that all the cheese won’t run out, and cut in half. Pickles and chips go really well with these if you are so inclined. Or tomato soup – ‘tho I’d go with half a sandwich in that case. Milk would be the beverage of choice.

A simple, basic tomato sauce for pasta is one of those recipes, like a vinaigrette, that everyone should have available in their back pocket for an easy dinner. The one here is not necessarily for a work-night (considering the simmer time), but with a few tweaks, it can go from a simple red sauce to a meat sauce to a puttenesca in no time flat.

Basic Tomato Sauce

2 24-28 oz. cans of CANNED TOMATOES (just about any variety, but unsalted and at least one of them should be whole tomatoes)
1 tbs TOMATO PASTE
1 medium ONION, diced
2 cloves GARLIC, sliced thin
2 tbs OLIVE OIL (extra virgin, if possible)
2 tbs WINE or BALSAMIC VINEGAR (in the version I just made I used SHERRY, since it was what I had around – what you use will affect the taste of the end result, but that’s just part of the fun)
2 tsp DRIED BASIL
2 tsp DRIED OREGANO
2 tsp DRIED THYME
a sprinkle of RED PEPPER FLAKES
1 pinch SUGAR
2 heavy pinches of KOSHER SALT
4 grinds BLACK PEPPER

In an enameled dutch oven (not uncoated cast iron) or medium sized pot, heat olive oil until just shimmering and add the onions, one pinch of the salt and the sugar . Cook until the onions turn translucent, 6-10 minutes depending on your stove and cooking vessel. Add tomato paste and cook for another 2 minutes. Add garlic and wine and cook until the wine is mostly absorbed. Crush the canned tomatoes by hand as you add them to the pot – be careful, there’ll be a tendency for them to spit all over the place, so you can either do it down in the pot or pre-crush them in the can. Add all of the herbs and spices (including the 2nd pinch of salt and black pepper). Reduce the heat to a simmer and stir occasionally for anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half – you’ll know it is done when it looks thick enough to coat your pasta. At this point you can either serve as-is or take a stick blender to it and make it as smooth as you’d like.

And that’s it.

No… wait… that’s not right (and it was either this or a Michael Jackson PYT/BLT joke that was in there somewhere… consider yourselves lucky). At any rate, summer tomatoes are a heavenly departure from the softballs that decorate the off-season supermarket shelves. Yes, the season is different south of the border, but they can’t ship ripe since they’d bruise and rot in transit. Generally they are exposed to ethylene to speed reddening and then shipped before they are actually ripe, which leads to bland, uninteresting tomatoes. A shame, but considering how much of a staple they can be in the American salad and sandwich repertoire, you do what you can. But the summer brings wonderful things and it becomes a whole, new ballgame.

So when our CSA released the first of the season, I had to think of a way to celebrate our bounty. Sure, a caprese salad, with fresh mozzarella and basil is a fantastic thing, but for those of you who know my wife and her addiction to cured pork, you know there was only one way to go.

Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato Sandwich
(per sandwich) 

2 slices BREAD (whole wheat or white only please)

1 fresh, in-season TOMATO, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds

2 rashers thick-sliced BACON

1-2 LETTUCE LEAVES

1 tsp MAYONNAISE

KOSHER SALT

freshly ground PEPPER

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Arrange BACON on a cooling rack, placed inside a foil-lined half-sheet pan. Place in the oven and cook until the BACON is fully cooked, 15-25 minutes depending on your preference – I like mine on the well-done side. While your bacon cooks. Spread MAYONNAISE on each slice of bread and follow that with a sprinkle a pinch of KOSHER SALT and several (4-6) cranks of PEPPER. Place one slice of TOMATO on one side of the sandwich and sprinkle lightly with a little more SALT. (I know this seems like a lot of salt, but seriously, there’s mayo and bacon on it too – you going to worry about salt intake here?) On the other side of the sandwich, add LETTUCE. When the BACON is finished, let cool a little, then dry on paper towels and cut into thirds. Place BACON on the sandwich, close the sandwich and mash down lightly. If you don’t, you’ll have a hard time holding it together.

Cut on a diagonal and enjoy with your favorite side and beverage. We had herb roasted potatoes and beer. A lovely summer dinner.

One of the easiest ways to get dinner on the table quickly is a stir-fry. Or it can take a while… it really depends on how you want to go about it. I like to marinade my meat (sounds dirty… really isn’t) for at least 30 minutes in the spices and sauces that I intend to flavor the dish with, but it isn’t entirely necessary. For a chicken stir-fry I tend to favor boneless, skinless chicken thighs as they have a lot more flavor and moisture than chicken breast, and they tend to stay moist, even in the high heat environment of a wok. Speaking of, it is best to do this sort of thing in a steel wok, as you can toss the ingredients really easily. You could do it in a chef’s pan, but they tend to be of a denser material and have a flatter bottom, one makes heat transference a little slower (really not the point here) and the bottom can lead to uneven cooking. That aside, this week in our CSA box we received a nice portion of scallions (or green onions for those of that bent) and our first carrots of the season. I usually use a lot more vegetables in a stir-fry, but in this case, I wanted to showcase the mild oniony flavor of the scallions and the sweetness of the carrots.

Chicken Stir-Fry with Carrots & Scallions

5 boneless, skinless CHICKEN THIGHS, cut into bite sized portions

1 large bunch SCALLIONS, cut on the bias

4 medium sized CARROTS, cut on the bias

1 thumb sized piece of GINGER, peeled

1 small GARLIC CLOVE, also peeled

2 tbs MOLASSES

2 tbs low-sodium SOY SAUCE

2 tsp RICE WINE VINEGAR

VEGETABLE OIL

1 tsp RED PEPPER FLAKES

1 tsp GINGER POWDER

1/4 tsp GARLIC POWDER

2 tsp CORN STARCH

1/4 cup CHICKEN/VEGETABLE BROTH or WATER

In a small bowl, marinade your CHICKEN THIGHS in 1 tsp VEGETABLE OIL, 1 tbs MOLASSES, 1 tbs SOY SAUCE, 1 tsp RICE WINE VINEGAR, the fresh GINGER and GARLIC (grated), the RED PEPPER FLAKES. Set aside while you prepare the vegetables. Cut both the CARROTS and SCALLIONS on the bias (diagonally to create oblong slices).

Preheat your wok for at least 5 minutes over high heat. Add a splash of VEGETABLE OIL and swirl it around inside your wok. When the oil starts to shimmer, toss CHICKEN THIGHS and their marinade with 1 tsp of the CORN STARCH and add to the wok. Cook, tossing often, for around 6 minutes. Remove from the wok and add more VEGETABLE OIL. Add CARROTS and cook for 2 minutes. Add the rest of the MOLASSES, the BROTH, SOY SAUCE, VINEGAR, GARLIC and GINGER POWDERS, and CORN STARCH. Cook until the CARROTS are slightly softened and the sauce has reduced to almost a glaze. Add a little more VEGETABLE OIL to the pan and add the SCALLIONS. Toss for 2 minutes and add the CHICKEN back into the wok. Toss until well combined and the glaze you made with the carrots has evenly coated everything. Serve over rice.

A riesling or gewurztraminer would be lovely with this, as they are with any Asian-style or similarly spiced food.

A roasted beet is a lovely thing. A little sweet, meaty, and, well… red. Or orange, if that’s the way you roll. Certainly the taste isn’t all that different. They’re very easy to prepare, these lovely things, and can be used in a lot of different applications. I like to chill and cut them into “rustic” chunks and toss them in salads with, oh, let’s say toasted walnuts and goat cheese… or orange sections — that’d be good. Or you could slice them up and serve with steak. Beef loves a good beet. You could also pickle them, make borsht, or just serve with dill, sour cream and some potato pancakes (though the sour cream would turn pink). The one down side, and, believe me, there is only one, is that your hands, cutting board, shirt — anything that comes in contact with them will stain. Its just something you have to deal with. And it is worth it. If you’ve got an hour or so where you can just be around the house it is something that mostly takes care of itself. Just don’t fold your whites directly after you are done.

Unless you really like pink.

Roasted Beets

1 bunch of BEETS, greens trimmed off and saved

1 tbs OLIVE OIL

KOSHER SALT

Preheat your oven to 375 – 400 degrees. Wash the BEETS and lay them on a large rectangle of aluminum foil. You could also use a glass baking dish — just use something that won’t stain or you will toss after cooking with. Toss BEETS with OLIVE OIL and salt and roast in the oven for 1 hour. Remove from the oven and let sit until the BEETS are cool enough to handle. Using your fingers, pinch off the skins and use as you see fit.

This week in our CSA box we received some interesting things. Among them, garlic scapes, beets and Swiss chard. Garlic scapes were all the rage a year or so ago… the food blogging world just wouldn’t stop talking about them. If you happened to miss it, garlic scapes are the immature garlic plants. They’ve a mild, garlicy flavor that works well in many recipes, most notably a garlic scape pesto (thanks, Adam Roberts). Since last year I found it a challenge to use up all of the things I got in the box so I figured I’d use the scapes in a sauce with some of the other vegetables.

Penne with Hearty Greens

2 cups WHOLE GRAIN PENNE

3 SWEET ITALIAN SAUSAGES (if desired – this is perfectly good without)

1 cup GARLIC SCAPES 

1 bunch of SWISS CHARD or other hearty green, such as KALE, de-stemmed and cut into ribbons

the GREENS from one bunch of BEETS (save the beets for something else)

OLIVE OIL

2 tbs BUTTER, unsalted

1/4 tsp RED PEPPER FLAKES

1/4 tsp freshly ground NUTMEG

1 cup TOMATO SAUCE (whatever relatively plain one you like or, ideally, homemade)

SALT

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and bring a pot of water on your stovetop to boil. In a small baking dish, place GARLIC SCAPES and toss with SALT and a drizzle of OLIVE OIL. If you are using SAUSAGES, place them atop the scapes. Put the baking dish in the oven and cook for 1 hour. Meanwhile, prepare your GREENS and CHARD by stripping the stems and slicing into thick ribbons, around 1″ wide. When the SCAPES and SAUSAGES are done, cut the SAUSAGE into rough chunks (around 1″ square) and cut the SCAPES as finely as you can – but not pureed. While you cook your PENNE according to the manufacturer’s instructions, place a large saute/chefs pan or medium sized dutch oven over medium heat and add one 1 tbs BUTTER and a good lug of OLIVE OIL. Add SAUSAGE and SCAPES and cook for a minute. Add GREENS and CHARD in bunches along with a big pinch of salt, being aware they will wilt down a lot. Add second tbs of BUTTER, NUTMEG and RED PEPPER FLAKES. Cook until wilted. Add TOMATO SAUCE and let simmer until your PENNE is done. Toss PENNE with sauce for 1 to 2 minutes and serve.

You can certainly do this sauce without the tomato sauce, but I’d add another tbs of butter and a 1/4 cup of the pasta water to bring the sauce together. Fresh tomatoes would be good too, but I’d add them just before the pasta so they don’t loose all of their integrity (also add some basil… tomatoes LOVE basil).

In our CSA box this week was a bunch of rhubarb. Rhubarb’s a funny veg, tart and almost inedible unless cooked down with something sweet — classically in a pie with strawberries. But considering our first, farm fresh strawberries don’t arrive until next week (jealous?), and rhubarb can get rubbery really quickly, I wanted to do something with it now. Last year I tried a rhubarb cake that was submitted to the farm’s website some time ago and, although delicious, it was a bit tart for my tastes. So I decided to play with it a bit, adding the blackberry preserves I’d been using in my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to the vegetable mixture and lemon zest and sugar to the batter. I also left out the milk… mostly because I forgot, but I figured it wasn’t too bad a mistake as it made the cake a little more like a crust — which can’t be a bad thing.

Blackberry-Rhubarb Upside Down Tart
Adapted with thanks from a recipe by Jackson Heights CSA Member, Carolyn Kaylor

4 cups RHUBARB (chopped in 1/2″ pieces) 

3 tbs BLACKBERRY PRESERVES

3/4 cup SUGAR for filling plus 1 tbs SUGAR for  batter

1/2 cup FLOUR 

1/2 cup ALMOND FLOUR

1 tsp BAKING POWDER

1/8 tsp SALT 

1/2 cup BUTTER

1 tsp VANILLA EXTRACT 

zest of one LEMON

2 EGGS 

Preheat oven to 375F. Mix the RHUBARB, PRESERVES and 3/4 cup of SUGAR and set aside. Mix FLOURS, BAKING POWDER, 1 tbs SUGAR, LEMON ZEST, and SALT and set aside. Cream the butter, add the wet ingredients, and then add the flour mixture. Grease/butter a 9×9 pan and put the rhubarb/sugar on the bottom, then add the batter on top. Bake for 35 minutes or until golden. Serve plain or with vanilla ice cream — either for dessert or, like we did, for breakfast.

Today starts our CSA share. CSA, for those who don’t know, stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It means that  at the beginning of the year you buy into a share in a farm’s harvest and then get a box of produce every week during that year’s harvest. You also have to work a little. In our CSA, you volunteer to work for the organization by helping out on the distribution end in some way, whether it be by manning the distribution center from time to time to transporting any leftovers to charitable organizations to any number of jobs. Part of the fun is that you really never know what you’ll get until it is posted online by the farm itself – in the case of the vegetables and some fruit, Golden Earthworm Organic Farm out in Jamesport, Long Island. The rest of our fruit share comes from Briarmere Farms in Riverhead. We’ve been a member of the Forest Hills CSA for three years now and absolutely love it. In this post and many to follow I’ll be writing about what we get and what I’ve done with it. It can be a wonderful challenge and sometimes you get to try things you’d have never tried if you were just walking through the produce section of your supermarket. It is awfully fun and it is great to know you are eating some of the very best food around.

The first thing I made with our haul this week was a recipe I found online that was a variation on a standard French child’s after-school snack. Breakfast radishes on toast with sweet cream butter and salt. Now as lovely as that is… the recipe that follows turned out to be a really nice variation.

French Breakfast Radish Bruschetta
adapted with thanks from Poor Girl Gourmet

1 tbs sweet cream BUTTER

1 tbs EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL

1 clove GARLIC, coarsely chopped

6 FRENCH BREAKFAST RADISHES, sliced thinly – green tops trimmed of their stems and cleaned well

2 1/2-inch slices of CIABATTA bread

additional sweet cream BUTTER for slathering onto the bread

kosher SALT

freshly ground BLACK PEPPER

Heat the BUTTER and OLIVE OIL in a large saute pan over medium heat until the butter melts. Add the GARLIC and RADISH GREENS. Saute until greens are wilted, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat.

Toast or grill the BREAD to desired doneness. Remove from the heat and slather that additional sweet cream BUTTER on the warm bread. Top each slice of bread with 1/2 of the RADISH GREENS. Arrange RADISHES over top of the radish greens, SALT and PEPPER to taste.

Serve along side a nice salad. I used some mixed salad greens we got in the CSA box tossed with a sliced macintosh apple, bacon and a bacon vinaigrette. If you are very good I’ll let you know how to make that. It went VERY nicely with the white merlot that Bella Vita Vineyards out in Peconic, Long Island. Hmm… that made it a fairly (not completely) locavore style meal, didn’t it?

EDIT: And speaking of farms… check this out. What if the White House Garden was planted with subsidized crops?

Messing with baking recipes is a dangerous thing. You can’t just swap out ingredients with impunity, you really have to do your research. Thankfully there’s the internet. We ran out of boxed cookies late last week and I’d been sending Ian off to school with graham crackers, which he really does enjoy, but I wanted to bake some cookies. I’d originally thought to make the standard chocolate chip cookies that I wrote about back in the first post, but Spring is here and I wanted to do something a little different. And since orange and chocolate go so very well together… well…

Orange Cocoa Chocolate Chip Cookies

3 2/3 cups all purpose FLOUR

1 ¼ tsp. BAKING SODA

1 ½ tsp. BAKING POWDER

1 tsp. coarse SALT, such as kosher

2 tbs. Dutch Process COCOA

the ZEST of one ORANGE

2 ½ sticks unsalted BUTTER, softened

¼ cups BROWN SUGAR

2 cups plus 2 Tbsp. granulated SUGAR

2 large EGGS

2 tsp. ORANGE EXTRACT

1 standard bag of your favorite CHOCOLATE CHIPS

Preheat oven to 350°F

In a medium bowl, combine FLOUR, BAKING SODA, BAKING POWDER, SALT, COCOA and ORANGE ZEST. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment cream BUTTER and SUGARS until very light and fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Add the EGGS, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the ORANGE EXTRACT. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Reduce the mixer speed to low; then slowly add dry ingredients, and mix until just combined. Add the chocolate chips, and mix to incorporate. Cover two baking sheets with Silpats or parchment paper. Set out as many cooling racks as you have. Using a small to medium-size ice cream scoop, scoop mounds of dough onto the baking sheets (you should be able to fit 12 cookies per sheet), making sure to space them evenly. Bake until golden brown , around 20 minutes. Carefully transfer the cookies directly onto the cooling racks — they will be quite soft but will firm up as they cool. Repeat the process until you have run out of dough.

Every once in a while I look in the “something special” case at the butcher’s counter in the supermarket. Frustratingly enough, the one butcher we had in the neighborhood went out of business not too long after we moved in, so there’s usually nothing interesting to cook. This time, cruising past, I saw a cut of lamb I’d never seen before. It was a steak created by cutting a cross-section of a leg of lamb. I love lamb. Actually, I love any meat with a strong flavor and a little gaminess to it. Usually this kind of food waits for a special occasion, but the only one coming up is my birthday, and making my own birthday dinner seems a little silly, so it is being made just because. So there.

Yogurt Marinated Lamb

a nice cut of LAMB, such as shoulder chop, leg steak (which is what I used) or rib chops would be fine

for the marinade

1/2 cup WHOLE MILK YOGURT

the JUICE and ZEST of one LEMON

1/2 tsp MARJORAM (fresh if you can get it)

1 tsp OREGANO (again, fresh if you can get it)

1 GARLIC CLOVE, crushed

SALT

PEPPER

SALT and PEPPER one side of your LAMB. In a small baking dish (9″ x 9″) add a tablespoon of the YOGURT, then place the LAMB, seasoned side down. SALT and PEPPER the exposed side and then dollop the rest of the YOGURT, the crushed GARLIC, LEMON ZEST and JUICE. Use your hands and make sure the LAMB is completely covered. Let marinate in the refrigerator for 2 hours to overnight. Alternately you can do this in a large zip top bag. Remove the LAMB from the refrigerator to bring to room temperature your grill (or your broiler*). When it has warmed sufficiently, place the LAMB on the hot side of your grill and cook for 6-8 minutes on each side depending on how done you like your meat. Do not futz with it. You want a nice caramelized crust on the thing. Remove from the grill to a plate and cover with aluminum foil for 10 minutes to let the meat rest. Divide amongst your serving plates and enjoy.

* If  you are using the broiler, cook the LAMB for 6 – 8 minutes per side and then remove to the plate to rest.

Enjoy with a nice, full-bodied red wine (such as a ciro rosso or an aglianico, a cabernet sauvignon would be too strong here, but a zinfandel (not white) would probably work) and whatever side you’d like. I made a simple salad with lettuce, tomato, goat cheese with a lemon marjoram vinaigrette (to bring some of the marinade flavors in a fresh form to the plate).