30 October 2020
I remember promising you two recipes a few weeks ago and now that the month is wrapping itself up, I thought I'd do just that.
CHOPPED SALAD
This one comes from the now-closed North Beach restaurant Rose Pistola which six years ago this month named an orange martini drink Andrea ala Orange after Uncle Vinnie's Andrea, who had unsuccessfully ordered a pomegranate martini and an appletini before the bartender came up with the idea of an orange martini.
Years before that a waiter kindly divulged the recipe to four us dining there but it's also in the Rose Pistola Cookbook.
Here's the Official Version:
Whisk together fresh lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil in a salad bowl. Season with salt and pepper and whisk again.
Crumble in some blue cheese and romaine hearts cut in half-inch pieces. Rose also adds some half-inch Belgian endive and watercress sprigs.
That's a little too much work for me. Here's what I do.
I grab a whole romaine heart for two servings and slice in quarter inch ribbons like I'm chopping down a tree, from the top to the bottom.
I put the shreds into a salad bowl and drizzle a good bit of olive oil over it. Then I squeeze some fresh lemon over it (not the whole lemon) and mix.
Lots of black pepper snows down on the dressed greens before I crumble a good bit of blue cheese over it and mix again.
That's it. Refreshing and satisfying, you will amaze your friends.
SPAGHETTI ALLE VONGOLE
This one is pretty simple and a favorite of those of us who like to eat out of cans.
Boil some water for the pasta (spaghetti, if you forget the name of the recipe). And toss the pasta in for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, mince some garlic and toss it into a frying pan with a slab of butter and some olive oil to prevent the butter from browning. Saute until you smell the garlic.
Pour in a can of clams with a little of the juice. Grind some black pepper (or lemon pepper if you're a show-off) over the clams. Don't cook them too long. Just a couple of minutes.
Grab the pasta with some tongs and move it to the frying pan with about two minutes left. It should absorb the liquid.
You can squeeze a little lemon over that as it finishes absorbing the liquid.
Transfer to warm plates (you can warm them over the pasta water as the pasta cooks). And tear up some parsley to sprinkle over the top.
More pepper at the table is nothing to sneeze at.
THE PATIENT
No real news to share about Joyce.
After Tyler suggested the Lidocaine wasn't necessary, Salwa asked Joyce if she wanted her to apply it. Better not to put anything foreign into the wound, Salwa thought. So that's the end of that.
Wearing the Ace bandage prevents the drape from curling up and sticking to her slip. It also seems to have reduced the swelling. So Salwa puts one Ace bandage on now.
Joyce hasn't been walking or eating much. And we haven't heard from the physical therapist, although Joyce hasn't contacted her either.
But she did get her Social Security and Medicare issues straightened out with a phone call blitz earlier this week. At least we both think she did.
And we confirmed with the Secretary of State that both of our ballots (and my mother's), which were all mailed earlier this month, have been received by county election official and are ready to be counted.
Boy, are they ready to be counted.