Chamillionaire is an Heirloom Tomato.

Late July cooking is like the hip hop hit of the summer. You know how it happens, somehow, every summer? From Will Smith’s “Summertime” to Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’ Dirty”, every summer has a hip hop hit. The soundtrack of a million suburban teenage memories. The impetus for unpremeditated and often ill-advised ass shaking from coast to coast.

What’s the upside of the summer hip hop hit? It’s simple, it’s straightforward, and it’s really, really good. What’s the drawback to the summer hip hop hit? You can not stand to hear it one more time by about July 17th. It’s not going away, there is usually no mid-season replacement. Radio DJs want vacations, too, and they programmed that song to repeat 500 times a day until they get up off the poolside chaise sometime in late August. The summer hip hop hit is here to stay, so you have to figure out something to do with it until it rains and you, once again, feel O.K. about listening to Belle and Sebastian.

Now replace the words ‘Summer Hip Hop Hit’ in the above paragraph with ‘Tomato Mozzarella Salad’, or ‘Grilled Zuchinni’, or even ‘Hamburger’. Summer is full of simple, straightforward, damn tasty food. Food that makes people get up off their be-hinds and stand around the grill waiting for whatever’s coming next. The problem is that summer food is simple, and, apparently, around forever. The local heirloom tomatoes haven’t even hit the market, and I’m already over it. There are going to be Red Peppers, Eggplants, and Cucumbers coming out of our ears from now until late September, so we need to figure out something to do that isn't tired.

As with the summer hip-hop hit, the answer, my friends, lies in the remix. So let’s break out our inner LCD Soundsystem, and tap that round tomato-ass for some fresh beats, before it’s too late and everybody is off the floor:

Rethinking Caprese:

One of the simpler methods for remixing a song is just to throw out some large component of the beat and replace it entirely. So why not get rid of that tomato? (Don’t worry, it’s not gone for good) Fresh Mozz. is rich yet light, and a perfect pallete for enriching and accentuating the more complex flavors of other foods. In this case, Grilled Sunburst Squash.

Sunburst Squash are medium sized, yellow with bits of green and look like flowers that filled in with vegetable-y goodness. They’re lovely, but they are zuchinni-like, in that they can use a little bit of charring and high heat to prevent them from becoming an undistinguished pile of steamy vegetable mush. Put a few strong grill marks on ‘em, however, and they are wonderful peppery little hot slices of yum. Also, sliced cross-wise, they make perfect rounds for layering with mozzarella, and isn’t that nice?

Grilled Sunburst Squash Caprese
One Squash per person.
One Brocconcini (medium sized mozzarella ball) per person
A few Branches of Basil
Tasty Olive Oil
Tasty Balsamic Vinegar
Some basic red wine vinegar.
Salt, Pepper, fingers, maybe some garlic.

(If your balsamic is cheap and harsh and untasty, you can simmer it with some black pepper and honey until it is tasty, but that’s a fussy thing to do, and you don’t have to. Just don’t be heavy-handed with the bad stuff)

Slice the squash into rounds, throwing out the nubbins from the tip and tail. Toss with a tablespoon or two of olive oil, a couple of torn up basil leaves, a few big pinches of salt, pepper, a small splash of red wine vinegar, and, if you feel like it, a little chopped garlic. Rub it all around so every slice gets some contact with the oil, and so the salt isn’t just hanging out in one spot.

Heat up your grill or grill pan or even broiler so it’s hot. Give it time. You want sizzle-on-contact.

Walk away from your heating grill et al. and slice the mozzarella into rounds. Set aside. Pluck the leaves off the Basil. Set aside. Take a sip of wine/beer/Shlitz/whatever. Set aside.

Now that your grill is very, very hot, toss on the squash. Give each slice a little space on the grill, so it doesn’t get steamed by its neighbor. Grill for about 4 minutes on one side and two on the other, or until there are some nice fat dark char marks on both sides, but the slice isn’t disintegrating into the grill or becoming charcoal.

Remove the squash to a platter, layer with slices of mozzarella and leaves of basil. Be pretty about it, if you want to be. Run over the layered dish a few times with a thin stream of olive oil, and maybe once with Balsamic, sprinkle with a small pinch of salt and a little grind of fresh pepper. Serve.

The heat of the grilled squash may melt the cheese a little, but who doesn’t like melted mozzarella?

Note: If the dish sits for too long the mozzarella will start to “weep” a bit of liquid. If you are making it for a crowd, or can’t serve it piping hot, just let the grilled squash cool to room temperature before you layer and dress it.

Later this week: Some things to do with those tomatoes . . .

Introduction

To get things started, let's be clear. This blog isn't about sex. Sex might come up - it always does - but the main focus of this blog is food, drink, conversation, and other happy fulfillments of the five senses.

Now that's out of the way, let me introduce myself. I'm a chef in Portland, Oregon. I spend five nights a week cooking dinner for a small clientele of generally happy customers at a postage-stamp sized restaurant in the suburbs. I spend almost all the rest of my time on those five days trying to think of ways to make those few people even happier, so that they'll tell their friends about their dinner and I'll have more people to make happy. On days six and seven I try not to think about the restaurant at all, and just try to make myself happy. Of course, this inevitably leads to cooking, which leads me back to the restaurant, but, Hey!, I have my job for a reason.

I wasn't always a chef. I spent my twenties in a misguided quest to practice law. Many years, applications, moves, tests, exams, briefs, and court appearances later I found myself about to turn thirty, practicing law in Los Angeles at a small firm where no one, including myself, noticed that I had no passion for my work. Well, almost no one. No one but my assistant, Dusty, but seeing as this blog isn't about sex, we won't be discussing him right now.

Women freak out about turning thirty. I'm not going to deny it. Clocks tick, skin deflates and begins to wrinkle, your ex boyfriends start dating women who are the age you were when they weren't your ex boyfriend. I definitely freaked out. I was in Los Angeles, the land of eternal youth. I wasn't thin. I wasn't prepared for surgical tampering. And I was surrounded by a city full of people who thought the point of going out to dinner was to be seen while not actually eating.

So I left. I quit my job, gave notice on my beautiful, spacious, centrally located apartment, stuffed everything into my car and left. I figured Portland was the only city left on the West Coast where one could afford to live while making no money. So I came here and I got a job in which I sliced a lot of onions. Then I got fired, because onion slicing, while good for the knife skills, doesn’t prepare you at all to cook dinner. Then I picked myself up and kept doing it – although, in the meantime I still got my license to practice law in Oregon, just in case, y’know?

Now I cook. And I love to cook. And I think cooking is easy, and sexy, and fun. Cooking seduces women. Cooking impresses your relatives. Cooking gives people one of the few excuses left these days to sit still and practice the art of conversation. Cooking and eating indulge one of the senses, taste, while titillating all of the others. Cooking, eating and drinking are sensual experiences that are easy to come by and, by sheer luck, need to happen every day. And I'm all about it. How food tastes, how it feels in your mouth, how it tempts you with smell, how it teases you with color, how you feel afterwards. I dig it, and I think there's no reason you shouldn't or can't love food as much as I do (or, at least, just a little bit), so why not share?

That's why I'm here. There will be stories. There will be recipes, but they won't have precise measurements, because precision makes me and you tense, and is completely irrelevant unless you're some nuevo Spanish chef who wants to make sea urchin foam. And you're not, are you? Most of all, there will just be a lot of food.

Welcome.