Portobello burgers with grilled sweet potato fries

The very best sweet potato fries we've made were these, on the grill. Slice sweet potatoes for large fries, toss with olive oil, salt, paprika, and cumin, and grill. Then grill portobello mushrooms, which you have sprinkled with olive oil in which you have mashed rosemary. Add sliced jack or cheddar cheese, and serve on home-made whole-wheat buns. Assemble the burgers with sliced red onion, home-grown tomato, and home-made bread-and-butter pickles.

Prawn-and-cheese kabobs

Begin by shelling and deveining the large prawns. Carefully slice a small red onion into large pieces. Rinse a basket of large cherry tomatoes. Cut one package of the wonderful-tasting but expensive halloumi cheese into cubes.

Assemble skewers, alternating the various ingredients. Heat up your grill, and cook the kabobs until the prawns are pink throughout. The cheese might just start to melt, but it holds to remarkably high temperatures. Meanwhile, dress arugula in lemon juice and olive oil.

Divide the salad between the plates. When the kabobs are cooked, transfer them carefully (so that the softened cheese does not come off) on top of the salad. Serve with red wine or retsina.

Hiking in Sibley Volcanic Regional Park

We've often hiked in Tilden Regional Park, the beautiful public park up the hill from Berkeley, and we have occasionally hiked into Wildcat, the park one step north of Tilden. But, living in Berkeley, it's easy to forget that Tilden and Wildcat are only two of many wonderful East Bay Regional Parks. In particular, almost the entire ridge, whether it is the top of the Berkeley, Oakland, or other-town Hills, is parkland.

Needing a walk one afternoon in July, we took the nature trail in Sibley. It was almost equal to Tilden in beauty, and comparatively deserted. Here's a short slide-show from the hike, or click it to go to the web-album:



After the hike, we came home and made pizza with tomatoes, mushrooms, and arugula.

Grilled summer squash and sea bass with pesto

By now, I am almost two months behind in posting meals, but I'll try to catch up soon. For my birthday, I received a gas-fired barbecue, and many times in July we ate outside. For our first grilled dinner, we cooked summer squash, and then sea bass, and we topped the sea bass with a pesto of garlic and parsley and thyme from the garden.

Lemon bars

S's sister is a terrific baker. We were recently treated to some of her desserts, and I was particularly impressed with her lemon bars, a dish I always fail at hopelessly. She gave me her recipe, which I have reproduced below — I have not yet had a chance to try it, but I look forward to doing so.

For the crust:

• confectioners sugar ½ cup (sifted)
• flour (sifted) 1½ cup
• unsalted room temp water ¾ cup

350°F. Butter 9 by 13 inch baking pan.

MIX: Sifted confect. sugar, sifted flour, unsalted butter. It will take a while but beat on low speed until smooth sticky dough forms.

Put dough into pan and press down evenly into the bottom. ∼½ inch up sides. Bake ∼25–30 minutes until deep golden brown. Rotate so evenly golden.

Filling:

• sifted flour ½ cup
• sugar 2¼ cup
• lemon juice 1 cup + 2 tbsp
• lemon zest grated (from any size lemon but I use medium to small)
• 6 large eggs, 1 large egg yolk
• 1 pinch salt

Sift flour, whist sugar, add lemon juice, zest, stir to dissolve sugar. In separate bowl whist eggs, egg yolk, and salt (helps relax protein). Add eggs to lemon misture, whisk.

When crust ready, pull out oven rack, pour lemon mixture directly into pan, REDUCE to 300°F, cook 30–35 min until custard not wobbly.

Soft tacos with ground meat and guacamole

We've made tortillas before, but without a press, corn tortillas are a pain. So instead, we bought organic tortillas from the local supplier "PrimAverA" at the Berkeley Farmers' Market. Keep the tortillas in the fridge. Before eating, set the tortillas in the steamer for five or ten minutes to moisten. Alternately, brush tortillas with oil, layer in a glass pan, cover tightly with foil, and bake for twenty minutes.

For the meat, mince onion and garlic, and saute with some chili powder and paprika in just a little oil. Remove sausage from its casings, dice, and add to the saute. Last winter we had some sausage from Riverdog, which rendered a lot of fat when cooking. This sausage is from Highland Hills Farm, and was extremely lean.

For the guacamole, wash and chop half a bunch of scallions, and mash to a paste with some salt in a large stone mortar and pestle. Add also a small amount of garlic to the paste, and then squeeze in the juice of one lemon or lime. Add a hint of paprika. Then mash in the flesh of two ripe avocados. Adjust the salt. Stir in the other half bunch of scallions, chopped, and, optionally, some diced fresh tomato.

Hard at work

Rigatoni with beet greens, sausage, and white beans

Pizza with tomatoes, basil, and mozarella

Scallops; campanelle with onions and morels

Bring water to a boil for pasta.

Begin by coarsely chopping a large white onion, and sauteing in copious amounts of browned butter. Add washed whole morel mushrooms, your favorite spices (salt, papper, thyme, taragon). Once onions are soft, remove most of the sauce to the serving bowl for the pasta.

Salt the boiling water and add the pasta, and, as always for perfect pasta, set the timer for two minutes less than the package instructions.

Brown some more butter in the same pan, and, when it is hot, sear the outsides of some large bay scallops. Be sure to buy them dry-packed — most scallops are "wet", which means they are packed in a soapy-tasting liquid to keep them plump longer.

Plate the scallops. Drain the pasta.

If necessary, brown even more butter, and return the onions to the pan. Add cream and white wine, and reduce briefly, making some sort of stroganoff. Toss with the pasta. Finally, deglaze the pan with white wine, and pour the jus over the scallops. Enjoy!