A long, sweaty weekend, one of the rare astonishingly hot days in San Francisco, and I’m just way too far from the beach. Ty was getting heatstroke in Laguna Seca with Valentino Rossi, and I wanted to keep myself busy…so I baked.

Well, first I ate and socialized: Jonas and Melissa came to town, and I found myself nominated once again to be social coordinator (hilarious, really, when one thinks about how socially backwards I really am). But first, dinner.

I made a bargain with some folks at work, many of whom live in lovely homes with yards in the steamy South Bay: Bring me the fruit from your tree, and I will make you treats. From Cara I got a bag of Meyer lemons (which immediately turned into lemon bars); from Jin a bag of the most enormous Eureka lemons I have ever seen. All organic, naturally, and I swear, these things are as big as Nerf footballs. I couldn’t even carry home the entire bag at once.

The lemon biscotti (image lifted
from Leite’s Culinaria)

Jin’s lemons became lemon biscotti, as I had some citron vodka in the house. Crunchy but disappointingly not so lemony, despite the vodka, zest, and lemon oil. Round two went into an enormous batch of lemon curd (I know, I’m not terribly creative). Jin claims to love lemon curd, fortunately, so I’m hoping the jar I gave him won’t go to waste; the rest was split between a gift for Angus and a good-size scoop still waiting in the fridge for my spoon. Tonight the lemons would also become dinner.

I had crème fraîche leftover in the fridge from Kevin’s brunch, so I finally got to try Amanda Hesser’s recipe for pasta with lemon, crème fraîche, and arugula, with spinach in lieu of the arugula. (You can find the recipe in Cooking for Mr. Latte, which despite the precious title is actually a fascinating, witty, and saliva-inducing read. Don’t miss the almond cake.) It wasn’t nearly as puckery as I’d feared, since I wasn’t using Meyer lemons; but the creaminess and slight tang of the crème fraîche was set off nicely by the sweet spinach and bite of the pasta — quite wonderful, really.

The quickie dinner gave me time to eat and plan drinks in honor of the last-minute Jonas and Melissa visit (Nihon, as usual), which thankfully we kept early, so I was up in time to hit the farmer’s market the next morning.

Keeping a really long weekend story short for the moment, the market led to gift-certificate spending at Williams-Sonoma, then a well-deserved, if sweaty, nap and a lovely steak and panzanella dinner for one. Later, drinks again, this time at Medjool, until all the buttheads showed up and we had to flee to Doc’s.

Yesterday? With all those egg whites in the fridge, I had to get to work, and despite the junglelike feel of my kitchen…yep, angel food cake (it’ll go nicely with the lemon curd!). So maybe it is strange to wake up and bake a cake on a Sunday morning for no one in particular, and it’s certainly irresponsible to keep the gas on for an hour when power is at a premium, but you can’t beat a light dessert in the dead of summer.

Which is why I finished the day by making lemon sorbet.

These last few weeks have been so busy, I haven’t even made time to call my mother, and my eyes are now so sunken I look like I’m 60. My boyfriend Zinedine Zidane got himself thrown out of the World Cup finals, but I couldn’t be upset when my want-to-be-adopted homeland of Italy took the trophy home, and they lit Rome on fire. (I love Roma, but it looks even better with firecrackers.)

In any case, the cooking bonanza began. In unintended deference to the French soccer captain, or perhaps in honor of Ty’s favorite part of Barcelona, the Crepe Man, I’ve been on a serious crepe kick.

Ty’s favorite:
The crepe man

July 4th, Independence Day, I was manning the fort at home, watching the Italy-Germany game on the Spanish channel, with the 30-second delayed ESPN feed going on the computer, and developed a burning urge for blintzes. I had already made some ricotta, which would last only another day or two, so why not? I lifted a recipe for whole-wheat crepes from the Williams-Sonoma site, and off we went. Blintzes with sweetened ricotta, lightly hit with some cinnamon, then pan-fried in butter. Yum. And so good for me, too.

A batch of crepes produces about 10, which means leftovers! In a self-proclaimed masterwork of refrigerator scavenging, I put together Wednesday dinner with bits and pieces from the fridge: A bit more ricotta made pink with some bolognese I’d frozen a few weeks earlier, mixed with some spinach, then wrapped in crepes and baked like cannelloni — or, more accurately, crespelles — honoring my newly championed Italian boys.

My crepe obsession (which likely started when I was six, and Mom and Dad first took us to The Magic Pan) went a little nutty when Traci and I decided to throw a birthday brunch for Kevin at my house. I don’t give parties much, and when I do, I go a little overboard. OK, fine, a lot overboard, but it’s always fun to cook like a maniac for a week, and plans menus, and arrange invites, and crepes! It was a brunch, after all.

When I see our pal Chris’s photos, I’ll recap the menu. (The man is a photo genius, and he snapped shots of the food! I’m hoping for lessons.) But the crepes were key:

Blintzes, of course. I made a rather dry batch of ricotta, so I mixed that with about half as much cottage cheese plus powdered sugar, a dash of cinnamon, and egg. (I hate cottage cheese, by the way, but if used creatively and very well seasoned, it actually makes a brilliant cream sauce, and lightens some heavy cheese concoctions beautifully.) The honey-wheat crepes came straight from my Tyler Florence book, Real Food, as did the fig-orange compote I served alongside. A hit.

The pièce de résistance, however, was Tyler’s smoked salmon torte. I blew a rather large wad on about a pound of smoked salmon, which was by far the toughest part of this misleadingly complicated-looking dish.

To construct: Spread a buckwheat crepe (a fantastic recipe, by the way) with a thin layer of softened cream cheese, then a layer of salmon. Top with another crepe and some cream cheese and sprinkle with chopped red onion, capers, dill, and ground pepper. Repeat about 5 times, then chill, wrapped in plastic in a springform pan and topped with a plate. Just before serving, I spread a last layer of cream cheese on its top and decorated the “cake” with extra onion, capers, and dill. Because the cream cheese had set in the fridge, the torte proved astonishingly easy to slice, so the layers stayed intact — and with all those fixins, how couldn’t it be good? Ty polished off the leftovers before nightfall.

Snack of the day, when no one’s around to protest, and you want something quick but delicious:

Slice a nearly ripe peach in two and remove the pit. Rest each half on its backside and cover it with a spoonful of crumbled Gorgonzola. Run them under the broiler, or even in the microwave, if you’re feeling really lazy. When the cheese is melted, your peach is warm, and you’re ready.

You’ll have a hard time restraining yourself from gobbling the whole thing up in under a minute, but why not? You don’t have to share.