Hello Friends,

My real highlight this week was being invited to someone's house for dinner. It's such a rare occurrence outside my immediate circle. I love seeing how people entertain, and it always reminds me that I tend to overcompensate when cooking for others. A dinner of a main dish and two sides, followed by a dessert someone else brings, is a wonderful reprieve, and you can actually have room for seconds (and maybe thirds) of something delicious. Planning simpler menus means you have the energy and interest to host people more often. We're watching too much performance in the outside world. We shouldn't need to perform at home.

These are the things flowering in my backyard: yellow and green cymbidium orchids, four different kinds of pelargoniums giving me lilac, red, coral and purple-pink flowers, and some fancy leaves, three varieties of yellow roses, white, blue and deep purple delphiniums, pink heuchera, white spires of renga lilies, blue-purple spikes of African Blue Basil, cream colored Japanese hydrangeas and varying citrus flowers. It's a chaos of color.

I know we've started the dining recs, but to be honest the one item I can't keep my hands off of for the past 2+ weeks is the loquat butter that Elina made from a haul of the fruit she got from the backyard trees at one of her daughter's play dates. The "butter" is thick and beautifully deep amber colored with a just sweet enough loquat flavor balanced with some lemon juice. I asked her how she made it and expected a saga of removing the outer peel and inner membrane, but no, she just took out the pits (to make Nespolino, the loquat liqueur), chopped up the unpeeled flesh, and cooked it down with sugar, then corrected the flavor with lemon juice. Once it thickened, she threw it in a blender to get it to the fantastic butter consistency. I'm wolfing it down by the spoonful. But I need to make a traditional lattice crostata before it's gone. So this is your nudge to plunder the loquats and play with them.

The Week's Dining Highlights from the GF Team

From Evan: I joined my bestie gal pals for a birthday dinner at Cosetta. I loved the Caesar, which is made of a mixture of gems and radicchios, so it can take a lot of dressing. So good. Everyone at the table enjoyed the house-made chile crisp dip for their pizza slices. Pizzas were all great, but I ate more than one slice of the Funghi. Of course, I loved the Chicken Liver all'Alimento. Thanks for bringing it to this menu Zach! But the sleeper may have been the Pressed Ice Cream Sandwich. a brick of vanilla ice cream inside a brioche doughnut with an olive oil glaze. I was too involved to take photos. Sorry.

From Gillian: The entire menu at RVR. But especially the tempura rock cod hand roll, and the grilled asparagus with pine nut furikake.

From Laryl: The marinated short rib at Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong.

From Elina: The Caesar salad at Beethoven Market.

Going to eat another spoonful of that loquat butter.
Evan

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