Dinner in one hour: Salad Sunday.

Today, for a variety of reasons, I had just over one hour to make dinner. My daughter and her family were coming over, and we would have just an hour and a half together. I slid home from my writing group at about quarter to four. Our guests would be at the house by five.

Factors in my favor:

• I had all the shopping done.
• The historian had swept the floors and otherwise tidied up.
• I had previously cleaned off the kitchen table.
• The menu was straightforward: green salads with lots of things to put on it, including steak, and bread and butter, and peach crisp for dessert.

Here's how it went: 

(3:50) 1. I put fingerling potatoes and Romano beans into the oven to roast, with olive oil, salt and pepper, at 375.
(3:55) 2. I put a flank steak into a baking dish, covered with slivered garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper.
(4:00) 3. Peeled and cut up eight peaches into a dish. I tossed the peaches with a little flour and some sugar and cinnamon and cardamom. I grated nutmeg over that. Then I made a crisp topping: flour, cold butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and cardamom, all cut together so that the texture was pebbly, even sandy. Put that all over the top.
(4:15) 4. Made a cheese and cracker plate. Put it on the table.
(4:20) 5. Got out the mandoline, and sliced some Persian cucumbers and a yellow pepper into very thin slices. Put each into its tidy bowl. Put the bowls on the table.
(4:25) 6. Put a gorgeous rainbow of heirloom cherry tomatoes into a bowl, and on the table. Ditto kalamata and sundried olives, and ditto the last few marinated artichoke hearts--sliced, in a bowl, on the table.
(4:35) 7. Washed three beautiful heads of farmer's market lettuce. Spun it dry. Heaped into a bowl. Made my vinaigrette.
(4:45) 8. Moved the roast potatoes and green beans to the lower rack in the oven. Heated up the broiler to grill the steak.
(4:50) 9. Took out two balls of burrata and sliced them onto a plate. On the table.
(5:00) 10. Checked the steak. Still pretty pink. Lowered the temperature back to 375; put in the crisp, put the steak back in on the lower rack.

My daughter arrived with homemade rolls. I greeted the kids, put the potatoes and green beans into bowls, dressed the lettuce, sliced the steak, and put everything remaining on the table while the crisp baked.

Also, somewhere in there a dozen ears of corn got shucked and cooked. 

This was some of my finest fast-dinner work, I must say. I love cooking a dinner where I can linger over the preparation and where things take loads of planning and days to execute. I'm glad, though, for a dinner like this. It was fresh and abundant, and everyone liked it, just about, and while it took planning, it came together quickly. The adults could sit and talk, and I could hold Naomi while she smiled at me. Meanwhile the kids played with legos and sidewalk chalk, and Bruiser hoped, but not too obnoxiously, at the table. 

When it was over, and everyone who was leaving had gone home, and we'd put everything away, we watched Arthur & George, and Sherlock. And there is leftover crisp. 

The Megastore recommends.

an internet reenactment
of my breakfast.

1. Eggs for breakfast. Eggs and I had a parting of the ways, early in life. I had been a happy scrambled eggs girl, then one day I looked at my plate and the eggs upon it and thought, never again will your scrambles cross my lips, you curdled thing. And they did not, lo, not for many many years. Custard, yes. Quiche yes. Souffle, even--yes. But frittata, tortilla, omelet: no. Until one day I saw a plate of frittata pass me by at a restaurant, and I thought, okay. And from then on, eggs and I were friends again after forty years. I can't explain it, but this morning, after yet another long week, I dallied around in the morning with some juice and crackers--why crackers? because they were left over from a big event, and they were sitting on the table. But the moment came when actual breakfast had to materialize or the day would be compromised. There were green chiles in the refrigerator and cheese--leftover from the same event as the crackers--and a tortilla. Eggs, chiles, cheese scrambled up, the tortilla placed on the warm pan. That is a good breakfast, my friends. A breakfast like that will stand you in good stead all the day long.

lettuce. for a salad.

2. The contemplation of salad. Over the last month, I made and/or ate fattoush several times. It was so delicious. The first time I ate fattoush was at a lady-style luncheon at the Nieman Marcus on Union Square in San Francisco. It was as perfect as you might imagine a salad that Nieman Marcus would make, and so easy--a lemony dressing, lots of lettuce, this and that and feta and pita and olives and so on. Mint, cilantro, parsley.

Well, I happened to have a fair amount of leftover fattoush on two separate occasions, leftovers which I took to work and ate with relish. So today, when I was at the store, I thought about that fact, and bought lettuce and this and that and feta and pita and olives and so on. Mint, cilantro, parsley. Contemplating this future salad, which I will take to school and eat with relish, is highly satisfactory.

Talmudic scholar dad.

3. A very good movie. Tonight we saw Footnote,  an Israeli movie that hinges on a national award for Talmudic Studies, and a father and a son who are both Talmud scholars. This movie was mordant, funny, and sharp, and also startlingly sad. It was fully of great characters and two very fine performances. There's a scene, set in a very small conference room full of Talmudic scholars and a billowing argument, that is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. It also has a startlingly ambiguous and unsettled ending that the historian and I talked about all the way home. That's how good the movie was.

snippet of my freewrite.

4. Finding a weird freewrite that might, just might, become the basis of a poem. The actual writing of poems during this academic year has been so very sporadic it could make one weep. But here and there, a little writing got done, and tonight, the night before my writing group, stumbling upon this one freewrite I did back in the fall may prove to be the stumble that nets me a draft. Or not. The freewrite hinges on a story I heard on NPR about how bats and horses share some small piece of DNA. Morning will tell if it can be turned into something other than a piquant mess.