The Daily Special (Potato Roesti with Broiled Caprese)

Sometimes, I can't help but snap pictures of food before I sit down and eat. The pictures are never as good as the food, since I'm unwilling to let my meal get cold (or wilted, or soggy, or whatever) while I angle for the best shot. (This pictures looks a bit too much like a starfish for my taste, but maybe that's because I was recently at an aquarium, so I've got sea life on the brain.) In any case, I thought I'd add a little series to my blog featuring what's coming out of my kitchen on occasion.

I cook a lot differently than I used to. I used to have a vision and then do anything and everything to get what I needed to make it happen. Since I've starting getting CSA shares rather than shopping at a grocery, I see things differently. Now I look at what's in my kitchen and try to find interesting (or quick, or healthy, or gluttonous or... depending on my mood) ways to prepare it. It's a bit of a logic puzzle, and while I miss the "other way" from time to time, this method is a bit more natural, and results in far fewer trips to the grocery. Today my objective was to make a potato and a tomato feel like a meal. I think I'm pretty clever to have come up with this dish, which couldn't have taken more than 30 minutes to prepare (if that.) Next time I hope I'll have better mozzarella on hand. That's the downside of the "cook with what you've got" philosophy, I guess.

A funny story about potato roesti came to mind as I was cooking. The summer of 2007 was the summer of the potato. A very large sack of potatoes (so big I could hardly drag it) mysteriously appeared in the grass outside of our apartment. The potatoes seeming fine (hey, we were in northern UT, practically ID!, they had to be good, right?), and our budgets not, the entire orchestra nourished themselves from that burlap bag for the better part of the summer. One evening, I made potato roesti after potato roesti, running them upstairs to a party. I bet I used 30 lbs. that night. It's a shame the potatoes didn't come a few pounds of butter, too.