something about the recipes in the ny times sunday mag really entice me.  over the years i’ve made a slew of them and some have become my classic go-to’s.  like ’my’ flourless chocolate espresso cake that tends to wow the (adult) masses.  this recipe i seem to remember was from an older man who was a legend in the music industry and loved to bake – or ‘my’ rigatoni with white bolognese from a 2002 article by amanda hesser where she speaks of eating at a friends home in italy.  i’ve made it countless times to rave reviews.  and there are others…

so when the massive paper arrives each week, cary knows where i’m headed – current events loser that i am.

and last week was a little answer to my prayers.  the aug. 19 ‘the way we eat’ article was zucchini driven and i was needing to come up with a cool thing to do – that wasn’t ratatouille – with the three green tubular beauties i’d gotten from my last weeks csa share.  i even used a yellow squash – just so there’d be one less. 

(in the meantime, the eggplants are restless – again – not to mention the peppers – AND i just picked up my csa share this morning – and – well, i am starting to become the vegetable fairy leaving squash and cabbage behind me for all the good citizens of nashville.  it’s fun to be a fairy.  i guess.)

so what happened was i made this twice in two days.  i made it twice because i made a mistake.  i used a big loaf pan.  she called for two small ones but it still didn’t fill my one large one.  so i had what could have been this squat terrine on my hands – and no more zucchini.  of course this was temporary because of the ‘today’s csa haul’ and guess what?  yep, i got more zucchini’s.  so out came the mandoline and for the second day in a row i focused on carefully slicing while intently repeating the mantra, “respect the mandoline… respect the mandoline”.  it helps.  try it sometime.  ok, honestly, cary saw me doing it today and got so fearful/panicked/terrified that the man went and laid his very own life on the line and insisted on taking on the danger himself.  chivalrous?  i would say so…

and because i am determined to never follow a recipe to the letter, i also decided to add a layer of some soft chévre.  the sauce was a quick mix of my wonderful stokes blushed tomato mayonnaise, some sherry vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.  that and a baguette and we called it dinner.

delightful to look at.  lovely to eat.