The morning of every job I press my whites to stiffness, scrub myself, push my hair into a manageable twist and get ready to give everything I’ve got to make sure the food is delicious.

Last night: bruschette w/President butter and paper thin radishes w/sea salt and smoked salmon. Homemade piadine that I made with the rendered fat from slab bacon, stuffed with dressed arugula leaves and tiny lardon.
For the first: i Gnudi.
We could have stopped right there. 3 bundles of fresh baby spinach leaves (15 oz) sauteed in butter w/sprigs of marjoram and then squeezed until you can’t squeeze anymore. Chop it up. Add 3 egg yolks, a cup of whole milk ricotta, a flurry of nutmeg–I always have a nutmeg and grater in my bag; you never know–salt, pepper, and a handful of Parmigiano Reggiano. Add 1/3 cup of flour and not one bit more.
Drop walnut sized balls of the spinach mix into a pan of sifted flour and shift it around in your hand so that the flour clings to the outsides. Brown the best butter you can get your hands on with fresh sage leaves. Boil the gnudi in small batches until they float to the top of a pan of boiling water. Remove to plate, and then toss them when they’re all ready together, with the sage butter.
For the main: fresh artichoke hearts tossed w/fingerling potatoes and leeks w/a marinated (dijon, a lovely olive oil, lemon zest, heads of garlic, leeks, bay leaf, thyme sprig, parsley sprig and teeny weeny bit of peppercorns) and seared chicken breast roasted on the bone, and then bones pulled off before slicing/serving. Not too early in the season for cherry tomatoes to be made into confit to sit on top.
For the salad: pan fried asparagus w/arugula leaves, nicoise olives, shavings of parmesan and crostini.
Dessert just kept coming. We started with sorbet. Strawberries smelled like red sugar; I smashed a pound and a half of them with a sugar syrup of 4 T’s water and 3/4 cup of water and then added 2 teaspoons of syrupy sweet aged balsamic (if you need the stuff to be thicker/sweeter, reduce it for a minute in a sauce pan.) Squeeze in the juice from half a lemon or more. Taste for sugar and acid. Pour it into a shallow pan and this is the best part, stir it with a spoon every 30 minutes 3 times. After the second time, puree the whole thing until smooth and creamy. I made brutti ma buoni, a bowl of cut fruit, a plate of enormous black grapes and tiny saucers of passed sweets: French glazed prunes, miniature coconut cubes and candied ginger.
You can’t help but hug somebody after that.

1. You can’t leave any of them in the bottom of a refrigerator drawer and expect them to improve.
2. If you start with quality, you won’t be as tempted to leave them in a refrigerator drawer.
3. Improvements can be made

My man started out fine and remains fine. The dirt out back was a bleak misery but has been nurtured, cuddled and caressed back to life w/fat juicy worms and compost. The haircut isn’t working flat out. Cutting my hair w/whatever scissors I can find in the junk drawer is over.
I have never met a good zucchini in this country. They are either bitter and nasty or bland and tasteless. I buy them because I hope in vain that they’ll be everything I know they can be and then leave them to whither because I know they’ll do nothing but leave me wanting.
Yesterday though, I won the battle. I sliced 3 cloves of hefty garlic cloves into paper thin slivers and sizzled them up in olive oil with flat leaf parsley. I peeled two strips of lemon zest from the pith underneath and threw that in with a few red pepper flakes. 3 zucchini in a small chop. Salt and pepper and then SUGAR! Only a little a bit, only a tiny scream of it, plus a solid squeeze of lemon juice gave me enough agrodolce zing zang to make the zucchini worth eating. I pounded a few tablespoons of pignoli w/sea salt, ripped arugula leaves from the garden and tore them up. When hardly half a box of orchiette were al dente, I added them to the zucchini w/the pignoli, the arugula leaves, a few tablespoons of the pasta’s cooking water and a good handful of parm. regiano.

Chicken marinated with cloves of garlic, thyme sprigs, parsley, cilantro, fresh ginger, slivers of lime, and olive oil, roasted at 400 til just done, cut into chunks and served on a slice of green apple, garnished with a south indian coconut curry dipping sauce (saute 1 onion til delicious with 1 clove garlic and knob of ginger; add pepperoncino, and enough to fit in the palm of your hand when you cup it of each: cumin, coriander, cardamom, and a bit more of fennel–smash all of those in a mortar and pestle–add a can of Thai coconut milk and let it simmer. Taste for salt and lemon juice.)

Seared tuna sliver topped w/tomato chutney of canned, seeded smushed tomatoes, sauteed onion, fresh ginger, parsley, thyme, coriander seed, pepperoncino and finished w/bit of butter and squeeze of orange and lemon

Flank steak cut on the bias and then into bite size bits garnished w/lime, ginger, soy mayo (be sure to use best quality olive oil when you make this or if you don’t have use grapeseed oil. You don’t want the oil to overpower) After steak is seared on both sides, rest on wooden spoons and rub w/chile pepper, thyme sprigs and give a squeeze of lemon

Tiny crab cakes made with fresh lump crab, 1 egg per pound, dollop of homemade mayo, bit of chive, shallot, fresh thyme and parsley and the outsides only dusted w/flour. 1 hour in the fridge, then saute in butter and olive oil.

Braised then roasted Cauliflower flowerets onion, shallot, cumin and crushed almond (thank you Mr. Oliver)

Bowls of cherry tomatoes and cut radishes

Bowls of homemade shoestring potato straws w/sea salt and rubbed lemon zest

Dates stuffed w/ever so slightly sweeteened mascarpone, lemon zest

Pass the trays w/loads of love and encouragement of a good appetite