This was my virgin couscous attempt, and I’m not quite sold. I think they cooked a tad too long, with a tad too much liquid. In fact, they were moist enough before adding the ¼ cup of lemon juice the recipe called for, but after a bit they soaked it all up. The Israeli couscous used here is a bit larger than the usual couscous. I used a recipe found online that called for fresh parsley, fresh rosemary, and fresh tarragon – only the rosemary was lacking from the garden, but the tarragon I had planted was so feeble I asked Andy to pick up a bunch of that too. Both the rosemary and tarragon are powerful additions, so use sparingly (I like a lot of flavor, but I might cut back on each in the future.) Along with chicken broth, some scallions, and salt and pepper, it made for a flavorful dish, perfectly complementary with the lemon rosemary chicken rotisserie that they had already cooked at The Fresh Market.

As for the couscous itself, I’m not head-over-heels in love just yet. Between this and the quinoa, I think I’d give the quinoa the edge. Of course, it may have been my over-cooking that ruined its chances, so I’ll try again in the future. The fact is, when it comes to supportive side dishes, I’ll always be a Filipino steamed rice queen at heart.

The two plates pictured here are the two dishes I made when my friend JoAnn visited early on in the summer. The season had just gotten underway, and everything was fresh and new. In honor of that, and to put this summer officially to bed, I made those dishes again. One is a simple plate of heirloom tomatoes, sprinkled with olive oil and white balsamic vinegar, then dusted with almond slivers and chives, and a liberal sprinkling of salt and freshly-ground pepper.

The other is a salad made of arugula and thinly-sliced fennel, dressed with a Dijon vinaigrette (that also utilized the magic ingredient – white balsamic vinegar). The original version had been topped with a grilled chicken breast for a more substantial meal, but on this day I wanted something lighter.

As much as I love the start of fall, I’m also hesitant to let this summer go. It was a good one, filled with friends and fun times, lovely stretches of heat and sun, and trips to New York and Boston. But this is the stuff of a more-detailed summer recap that will be coming up later. For now, enjoy the salad – one last time.

Last month I had an amazing pizza in the North End of Boston. It had a crispy, thin crust, a spattering of goat cheese, some figs, and a topping of fresh arugula. Not traditional by any means, but all the better for it. It haunted me, as much for its taste as for its simple rustic charm, and when I found a few similar recipes online I decided to try my hand at it.

Now, I’m not good with dough, especially pizza dough. It’s so… messy. And sticky. And it doesn’t ever do what you want it to do. I’m not one of those people who likes to “play” in the kitchen either. Aside from the occasional piece of pasta thrown at the wall (for what purpose again?) I don’t really mess around. So, rolling out the pizza dough was my least favorite part of this whole pizza-making process, and one I did rather poorly. I wanted thin crust, but this thing just puffed up like the stay-puffed marshmallow man. It wasn’t pretty – at least, it wasn’t quite what I was after. But that was the only part that didn’t work.

I assembled this version with goat cheese, some mozzarella (we had to use it up), figs, and arugula, but I added some bacon as well, and finished it off with something that, in my humble opinion, surpassed the original: a balsamic honey reduction that was both sweet and savory, and a veritable orgasmic explosion for the taste-buds.

There’s something about a wine or vinegar reduction that is magical. I don’t know the science of it, or why it works so well, but it’s sublime. And on a pizza like this, well, it’s beyond good. Obviously, it couldn’t quite recapture the exact alchemy of the North End original (that was truly a special event), but it came close, and brought me back to the freshness of a summer day, when a weekend in Boston was laid out before me, and I had nothing to do but soak it all up.

This dish was an eye-opener and educator for me. With it, I learned that curry is not a spice unto itself – it’s actually a combination of several spices – coriander, turmeric and cumin. I always thought curry was, well, curry. (Told you I was a novice in the kitchen.) I also learned how good tamarind and coconut milk tasted together – particularly when topped by fresh cilantro – and how easy and quick it was to cook a piece of white fish (in this case tilapia) in such a simmering sauce.

Baby steps, folks. One day we’ll look back on this and laugh, like one might at mistaking cilantro for parsley.

If you’ve seen ‘The Drowsy Chaperone’ you know that I did not make up the title of this post – some drunken diva did, which only makes me love it more. It works here, when one needs a spicier name than ‘Plum Crumble’ for the deliciousness you see before you. Since plums have been in season, I gave in and bought a bunch of the prune variety, and did the only sort of baking I do, which means a crumble. (I’ll never be a baker or a candle-stick maker.)

Next time, if there is a next time, I would opt for using the larger plums in this recipe, as the smaller prune plums were more work to prepare. A crumble is very forgiving though, hence its favored (only) status in my baking repertoire. I also loved how the rather yucky and non-descript color of the flesh and skin turned into this gorgeous vermillion shade during the baking process.

The recipe is from Martha Stewart, bless her heart (and I mean that in the Southernmost way) and it works quite well. For someone more versed in baking, I’m sure a crumble (or in Martha’s words an ‘oatmeal crisp’ – I’m probably wrong about the whole name, actually) is a joke. For me, it was a triumph. Give it a whirl.