Weeknight Kitchen

My daughter loves zucchini (courgettes). When she was very little, she collected some leftover change, saving it until she had a little pile of coins. I was surprised. My daughter is a princess and has everything she needs. But she showed me her savings and told me, “Daddy, I want to buy zucchini.” So that Sunday, my sacred no-work day, we headed to our favorite farmers’ market, Danilovskiy Rynok. I taught her how to pick out the best produce, and then we came home and made these oladyi, something between a pancake and fritter. Since then, they’ve become a staple in our home and we’ve even put them on the menu at both White Rabbit and Gorynich, where they’ve become bestsellers.

Big Islanders have a habit of reversing certain words and phrases, especially with food. We call it chicken barbecue; other islands call it barbecue chicken. Same for “ice shave” vs. “shave ice” and “broccoli beef” vs. “beef broccoli.”

Consisting of fresh green pea puree topped with crunchy and flavorful corn, peas, pea tendrils, radicchio, and herbs, dressed in oil and grainy mustard and topped with crumbled ricotta salata cheese, this salad is creamy, cool, crunchy, salty, sweet, and fresh-tasting all at once—a sort of concentrated dose of summertime. Thanks to its crisp textures and summery flavors, it makes a super accompaniment to grilled steak, chicken, sausage, or seafood, and it tends to go over like gangbusters at a barbecue—just brace yourself for enthusiastic praise and recipe requests.

Ingredients:

This gluten-free cake is simple to put together and so pretty. You can use virtually any fruit (think apricots in the summer or figs in the fall) to sit atop, but I love the sour rhubarb, as it marries so nicely with the sweet almond-flavored cake. I grow a small patch of rhubarb in the yard, but it's not the most successful crop because it prefers a cooler climate to Santa Barbara’s. Luckily, it’s available at our farmers market. It’s a perfect celebration of spring, and the positioning of the rhubarb on top looks like a woven basket when it’s put together.

 My mother often made this kofta during a time when we used to host family dinners for upwards of thirty people. Ground meat—better if it wasn’t too lean—was ordered from the butcher. An enormous dish of meat topped with tomato slices was brought to the ferran, the community oven. This was the only oven big enough for the pan my mother used. She served her kofta with French fries or spicy potatoes, though they are good with flatbread, too.

Love cheesy eggs? Then this recipe is for you! Mayo stands in for pasta water to give these eggs the extra-creamy richness that you usually find in traditional Cacio e Pepe. Using two different grating methods for the cheese allows some of it to melt while some stays firm, providing a variety of textures. I give my preferred ratio of cheese and mayo to egg in this recipe, but play around and add more or less depending on how rich you’d like these to be.

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the shrimp, then sprinkle on the cumin, chili powder, salt, and pepper. Cook the shrimp on each side for about 3 minutes, until no longer pink.

This is our spin on a classic American tuna salad. It can be enjoyed plain, with crackers, on a sandwich, or over a bed of crisp lettuce as a salad.

Crisp fried cauliflower. A soft creamy purée. The toothsome crunch of toasted seeds.