So to avoid making the Cuban style pork (read: I am sometimes lazy), but to make it taste like a Cuban Pork Sandwich, I’ve taken a few liberties.

Organic Roast Pork Loin
Cornichons, diced
Sweet onion, diced
Deli-style seed-included mustard
Cilantro (fresh)
Sharp white cheddar
Bread of your choosing cut in 1/2 inch slices

Sautee in olive oil the diced cornichons and onions, along with salt and pepper. Once soft and hot, add mustard to make it a wet concoction. Do yourself a favor and don’t taste this on its own.

Assemble like so: Bread, cheese, cilantro, pork, cornichon & onion mixture, bread. Throw it in the panini machine. If you don’t have one, wrap it in foil, put your oven at 350, and put it in there with an oven-safe skillet over it to push it down.

I served it with pan-fried plantains.

Wheat Bread
Organic Roast Pork Loin slices
Raw Pumpkin Seeds
Mixed “Rainbow” Microgreens
Swiss Cheese slices
Deli-style mustard
Green Fig Jam (in this case, from Liguria)

Throw it together, stick it in the panini machinie.

Sometimes simplicity is all you really need for dinner. I found some gorgeous pink peonies, and the following at Berkeley Bowl and made a dinner for two in the garden:

1/3lb Pierre Robert Triple Creme Brie (a full flavored, super creamy brie with a slight funk, France, Cow’s Milk)

1/3lb Petite Basque (a creamy but light on the tongue and slightly sweet white cheese from the Basque area that borders France within Spain, made of Sheep’s milk)

1 demi baguette from Bay Boulangers (Cole Valley location here in San Francisco), sliced and toasted in the panini machine

1 pluot, sliced
1 green apple, sliced
1 yellow peach, sliced

Recently I have been making pancakes a lot (by request of a certain man). Here’s the best pancake recipe for two people or three large pancakes that I have discovered/altered/come up with.

DRY:
1 C flour
1 T baking powder
3 T sugar
1 tsp salt

WET:
1 egg
2/3 C milk
zest of 1 lemon
1 1/2 tsp cider or sherry vinegar
1-2 T sparkling water (plain or citrus flavor) or ALE/BEER
1 T sour cream, creme fraiche, or heavy whipping cream (sour preferred)

Whisk dry ingredients together, whisk wet ones seperately. I use rough measurements using my eye and/or an actual large table spoon. This recipe is pretty forgiving. Combine the wet and the dry, adding the sparkling water last. Cook on medium to medium low heat to get a nice even color. Flip when sides have firmed up away from the pan and there are bubbles/holes in the batter on the skillet.

I sometimes add fresh blueberries; the best time to do this is immediately after you put the batter on the hot skillet. They are delicious in this and make the pancake require very little syrup if any at all.

There is also now a buckwheat flour and almond milk version of these pancakes.

Also, I made Tonno Carpaccio con Yuzu again as summer is upon us, and took a new, much more appealing photo which is now posted on the entry.

There is an amazing market down the street from where I’m living in San Francisco these days. Their produce can be viewed as “on its way out” or “perfectly prime.” I choose to focus on the latter and take advantage of rock bottom prices–a few days ago I found organic raspberries for $1.59, and they were gorgeous, tasty, and not freakishly large. They regularly have zucchini at such a low price that for one, I end up paying about 13 cents. They have whole packs of baby spinach twice the size of the ones at the regular grocery for $1.25. I am obsessed with the possibilities.

Lately, they have had beautiful, beautiful heirloom tomatoes. I picked the best of them and made a simple salad, even slices of the different colors with Himalayan pink salt (flaked variety), fresh cracked pepper, good olive oil, a dash of good balsamic vinegar, and fresh basil julienned on top.

Then, I realized I had a tupperware full of  home made chicken stock left from the last time I made chicken & dumplings. I threw it in a big pot to melt, added some rinsed white beans from a can (it was last minute, or I’d have soaked dry ones), and started chopping into equal, small pieces a carrot, small zucchini, round yellow squash, half a Vidalia onion straight from Vidalia, Georgia (my grandma sends us these every year), some gorgeous green beans, and finally, removed the kernals from a fresh stock of white corn. If I recall, I also chopped up the remaining bits of tomatoes from the heirloom salad into small pieces and added them as well. I threw it all in some toasty olive oil and sauteed it with salt and pepper until it was soft but not squishy.  I reserved it to add to the soup when it was fully heated with the beans.

What really made the soup delicious and different, though, aside from having such cheap, tasty, gorgeous produce from my neighborhood corner store, was that I took a hint from San Luis Obispo’s Buona Tavola Ristorante that I’ve known of for years: add a lump of pesto to the center of the bowl.

I make a batch of pesto just about every week these days (the BF likes to eat it for lunch when I’m at work), and this time I had some that contained basil, olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh garlic, and almonds. It was perfect and brought the whole soup together into tasty, tasty deliciousness.