Moorish-style Chickpeas with Spinach; Crostini with Smoked Salmon and Red Onion; Tomato Bread Salad (Panzanellla)

Sometimes, worlds collide. Since I didn't have much time for a mid-weeknight meal, I abandoned my usual routine of at least trying to maintain a country/culture of origin theme for each dinner. This one turned out being an amalgamation of three: Spanish - Italian - Jewish. The trick of the Spanish chickpea dish is to saute some day old bread in olive oil with garlic and, when browned, mash it to a paste. Added to the chickpeas and spinach, it gives a nice flavor and serves as a thickener. A tomato bread salad from the day before is decidedly Italian. To round it out, we had some leftover smoked salmon and basically made crostini using the ingredients you might find on a bagel at the neighborhood Jewish deli. 

Baked Tomatoes Stuffed with Tuna; Pickled Mushrooms

The CSA has been coming through with heirlooms, as well as an array of smaller tomatoes. I used up this week's batch by slicing off the tops, removing the pulp with a grapefruit spoon, and mixing it with tuna, parsley, shallots, and bread crumbs. I then simply stuffed the hollowed out tomatoes with the mixture, sprinkled with bread crumbs, and baked for 30 minutes at 350 degrees F. On the side, some mushrooms that I had picked for 24 hours and a plate of prosciutto di parma and parmigiano reggiano.

Faux Fried Chicken Two Ways

 Every once in a while, K gets a hankering for fried chicken. When she does, I pull out a faux fried chicken recipe by Cat Cora which uses buttermilk. I could only manage to choke down one piece - chicken is really not my favorite - so we had plenty of leftovers. The next day, I put the meat from the bone and finely diced a few of our CSA stockpile of potatoes to make a chicken hash.

Tomato salads on the side for both meals... gotta love August.

Baked Figs with Gorgonzola, Walnuts, and Prosciutto; Penne alla Puttanesca

I relied on two celebrity chefs to come up with a way to use up some fresh figs and the first heirloom tomatoes of the season, which we found at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's for a remarkably good price.

As spelled out in Mario Batal's Simple Italian Food, quartered figs stuffed with a mixture of gorgonzola, walnuts, and parsley and baked in a 450 degree over for 8 minutes make a great appetizer.

One might think it strange to rely on an Englishman for a pasta alla puttanesca recipe, but Jamie Oliver has a real knack for doing justice to traditional Italian recipes - usually adding a special little twist that enhances, not detracts from, the familiar. His step of adding crushed basil, lemon juice and lemon zest to the tuna and letting it marinate for a ten minutes before adding to the sauce is, as Jamie might say, "brilliant." His recipe comes from one of his early must-have books, Jamie's Dinners.