Foody Sundays

Last night Speedy & I had our favorite friends for dinner. It was a rainy day in Brooklyn so I got my run done early in the day before the sky opened up and spent most of the rest of the day cleaning and prepping for dinner.

I was going to make "easy summer vegetable tarts" to go with the toasted Israeli couscous salad I had made with fresh-from-the-farmer's-market veggies, but none of the three markets within walking distance (which had been curtailed by the drenching rain to a three-block radius) had the required puff pastry, so I had to improvise.

In case this has not become abundantly obvious, I am not an improviser. I like planning, preparing and reliability. After the puff pastry expedition failed, I was completely stumped.

It took me the entire hour of cleaning up the kitchen from the couscous explosion and the 20 minutes of vacuuming in order to make the apartment as hair-free as possible AND the whole hour-long walk with the dogs (by which time it had stopped raining) for me to decide what to do with the already roasted vegetables.

It came slowly: bread, um, yes-- bruschetta, mmmm... but something creamy, too....Ricotta! When I hit upon the balsamic reduction as the crowning finish I truly felt like a culinary genius.

Fortunately my friends are fairly easy to please and everyone loved the results, especially my special surprise for Speedy: her favorite Italian pignoli cookies that I mixed and chopped and processed by hand because we never replaced my cheapo food processor that broke during the brief period when we were making our own date-nut bars.

We ate the pignoli cookies with deep dark chocolate sorbet and sent the leftovers home with our friends lest we be unable to resist the allure of buttery almondy deliciousness and finish the batch for breakfast.

This morning Speedy let me get a brand new unbreakable food processor for my future pignoli cookie making efforts.