The roasted squash salad above was my first foray into autumnal eating. I roasted an acorn squash along with a fennel bulb, and tossed it with salad greens, mustard vinaigrette, and goat cheese. I was super into goat cheese for 2 weeks in September. I’m more into blue cheese at the moment.

I continued on my roasting kick and decided to roast a whole cubed eggplant. Then I mashed it up with very thinly cut raw garlic, basil, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. It was so great! I loved eating it on crackers.

More recently I’ve been crazy for hazelnuts especially in combination with fall fruits. The salad above was salad greens, herbs, apples, toasted hazelnuts and a mustard vinaigrette.

And this one was red leaf lettuce, thinly sliced red onion, thinly sliced pear, toasted hazelnuts, and my new favorite simple vinaigrette which is just champagne vinegar, salt, pepper, and olive oil. Sometimes I add some honey if my greens are bitter and could use some sweetness. I am totally into champagne vinegar!

So in short this fall I’m into roasting, hazelnuts, and champagne vinegar. What about you guys? Do you have any fall favorites?

• 2 tablespoons plain yogurt
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• juice from 1/2 a lemon
• chopped dill
• salt and pepper

Combine all ingredients and drizzle on top of the salad of your choice.

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Red cabbage is so beautiful, it seems almost too brightly colored to be natural. Plus it tastes good and is nice and crunchy so it’s easy to add to whatever. I bought a head of it a while ago and I’ve been slowly slicing my way through it and making various salads ever since. The one pictured above was my favorite. It was red butter lettuce, shredded carrots, sliced red cabbage, toasted walnuts, and this yummy dill dressing. I am almost afraid to get into creamy mayonnaise based dressing like this because they don’t seem very healthy but they taste so good…. like ranch dressing!

• good tomatoes
• olive oil
• salt
• pepper

Chop up the tomatoes into a pulp, you could pulse them in a food processor if you like. Try to retain all of the juice and put the whole shebang into a bowl.

Add a fair amount of salt and pepper to the tomatoes until it’s tangy and salty. Let it sit for at least 10 minutes at room temperature.

Whisk in olive oil (you will use about 2 parts oil to one part tomato slurry.)

Serve on top of the salad of your choice.

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Tomatoes have a lot of acid in them so I thought maybe I could use them as a base for salad dressing, instead of lemon juice of vinegar. It turned out very well, sweet and tangy and really tasty. It is my new favorite dressing to use on raw zucchini which needs a lot of extra flavor I think. Anyway, it’s a great thing to do with extra tomatoes.

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 sticks of butter cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1/3 cup cold water
• 3 tablespoons sugar

Combine flour, salt and sugar in a food processor. Pulse to mix these dry ingredients.

Add the butter and pulse for 5 seconds until the mixture looks like coarse corn meals and the butter is in pea sized pieces.

Add the water and pulse for 5 more seconds until it all comes together.

Remove the dough and knead it for a few seconds until it all sticks together. Pat the dough into a disk and refrigerate it while you cut up the plums for the filling.

Ingredients for the filling:

• 15 small plums
• 1/3 cup of sugar
• 1/4 cup of Demerara sugar

Pit and slice the plums into thin slices.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Roll the dough into a 13-inch circle and place it on a piece of parchment. Place the parchment onto a cookie sheet. Sprinkle the white sugar evenly over the dough. Starting 1-inch from the outside edge arrange the plum slices into a neat circle with the skin sides of the fruit all facing the same direction. Then make another circle of plums inside the first. Keep arranging the plum slices in this way until you reach the center and the dough is totally covered (except for the 1-inch rim of dough around the edge). Fold the 1-inch rim in towards the center until it meets the fruit. Sprinkle the Demerara sugar over the entire thing including the crust.

Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the fruit is bubbly and the crust is brown. Cool before eating.

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I always go a little nuts at the fruit stand at the farmer’s market. This time I bought way too many plums so I decided to make a flat rustic tart with all of them. I actually assembled it, covered it in plastic wrap, and froze it for a couple of days. Then I just popped it in the oven when my pals were coming over, like a Mrs. Smith’s pie but fancy. I wanted it to be just barely sweet but in actuality it was a little bit too tart. Good thing we had vanilla ice-cream so it was no biggie. (I have since upped the sugar in the recipe.) Besides that  this was a total winner. The crust recipe is especially great, it’s easy to work with,  takes less than 60 seconds to make, and comes out totally light and flaky.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb tomatoes, halved
• 4 ounces stale crusty bread (I used a baguette) cut into 1/2-inch chunks
• 1/2 of a green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
• 1  cucumber, peeled seeded and chopped
• 1/2 cup diced red onion
• 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
• 2 tablespoons olive oil plus more for garnishing
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 tsp of paprika (plus more for garnish)
• pinch of cayenne pepper
• salt and pepper
• a cup of water

Squeeze the juice and seeds from the tomato halves into a mesh strainer and press the juice through into a bowl. Discard the seeds. Chop up the tomato flesh and add it to the juice.

Add all the ingredients except for the water to the tomato mixture. Mix it up and let it sit at room temp for an hour.

In 2 batches blend the mixture with the water in a food processor or blender and then push it through the mesh strainer.

Chill for another hour.

To serve drizzle the soup with additional olive oil, paprika and pepper.

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I wanted to make lunch but I didn’t want to go to the store. Just as I was deciding whether to have scrambled eggs and crackers or rice and cabbage  it dawned on me that I had all the ingredients to make gazpacho!

When I was a kid I used to eat a lot of gazpacho in the summer when I would visit my grammy in Connecticut. It came out of a red can and it was delicious. In later years she actually started making her own white gazpacho with sour cream and it was also delicious. This is notable because she wasn’t a very good cook so gazpacho was always the culinary highlight of my trip. (I don’t mean to talk badly about her, she was a great card player, a champion fisherwoman, and an all around hoot but cooking just wasn’t her thing.)

This is an actual no-cook soup which is always great in the summer and it’s the perfect time of year for all these ingredients. Plus, as I was whipping my batch up the smell made me think about my summers in Connecticut and that made me happy.

• 2 large egg yolks
• salt
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 can of tuna in olive oil, drained
• 1 can of anchovies in olive oil, not drained
• 1 tbsp capers
• 1 clove garlic
• pepper

Whisk the yolks with the lemon juice and a pinch of salt until well combined.

Combine the olive oil and canola oil and then whisk them into the yolk mixture a few tablespoons at a time. Make sure the oil is totally incorporated before you add more. Gradually the sauce will thicken as you add more oil. Congratulations, you have just made mayonnaise!

Place the tuna, the anchovies and the oil from the anchovies, the capers, and the garlic in a food processor along with 1/4 cup water. Bend it until it’s totally smooth. Press this slurry through a sieve into the mayonnaise and mix it into the mayo. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Spoon some onto a plate and top with sliced tomatoes, parsley, salt and pepper. Eat!

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I’m not much of a recipe follower (except when it comes to baking) but when I saw this dish in the new Canal House magazine I knew I had to make it. I’ve been big into tuna lately and I’m always into homemade mayo so I knew I’d love it. I want to put this sauce on everything now. I think it would be so good on poached chicken but it’s too hot to poach anything so I think I’ll just stick serving it with cold raw things for now.

It’s finally tomato season around here and I’m pretty happy about it. The only problem is that I go kind of crazy at the farmers market and get way too many tomatoes every time I go. But there are far worse problems to have. I will just have to make some spaghetti sauce and freeze it or something.

I’ve also been making this delicious gem a lot: a baguette with mayonnaise, salt pepper, and tomatoes. So good!

Throughout our trip I kept seeing women holding baskets full of these ultra bright half-moon shaped cookie things. And on our last day in town I finally bought a pack of them for myself. This picture doesn’t do justice for how bright they were. Anyway, they didn’t taste like much (kind of like a communion wafer) but I thought they looked so incredible, all day-glow with tiny pumpkin seed teeth.

Now that I’m back I’m going to start posting salads (and cookies and stuff) again soon. It is nice to be able to cook again!

Pretty soon two stone bowls arrived at the table, one filled with raw shrimp, cucumbers and red onions and the other the same but with scallops. The whole mix had been briefly but powerfully marinated in lime, super hot chilies, and lots of salt. This dish is called Aguachile and I have no idea why I’ve never heard of it before. How could I have gone for 32 years and never tasted this! It wasn’t  like a ceviche because the seafood hadn’t been “cooked” in the acid of the lime. The shrimps and scallops were still translucent and totally raw  but yet they still tasted powerfully of the spicy marinade. I can’t say enough about how good this was.

For our final course we had shrimp tacos. These shrimps were cooked with thin slices of guajillo peppers and wrapped in flour tortillas. I wished I wasn’t so full because I wanted more!

Then today, to further our seafood adventures we had lunch at a fancy spot right around the corner from our house, Contramar. This place is on every “best of” Mexico City list, and rightfully so. It was fabulous.

Like at Mi Gusto Es we started with tostadas. But these were a bit more upscale: spicy mayo, buttery thinly sliced raw tuna that had been marinated in lime and orange, crispy fried leeks and avocado. What more can I say, it was so so so so so good.

Then we had octopus and shrimp tacos (the filling is on the left) and another shrimp aguachile. In this aguachile the shrimp had been cooked in the acid of the marinade. It too was absolutely incredible, so spicy and fresh. It reminded me of Thai food in that way.

The octopus was so tender and spicy and it was exciting to put it inside of the tiny, warm handmade tortillas like this:

In the middle of this meal I actually looked at Rafael and said, “This is living!” as I took another sip of my Michelada.  And then I got this beautiful fig tart for dessert:

The crust tasted like a fresh Pecan Sandy, the filling like sour cream cheesecake, the figs like fruity sunshine… a great end to a great meal. I can’t wait to see what I get to eat tomorrow!

The rest of breakfast was really good too. I got huevos revueltos and they came with a side of refried beans and chilaquiles, much better than homefries in my opinion.

After breakfast we walked to Chapultapec park to go to the Anthropology Museum. It was a bit of a hike and by the time we got there we needed some refreshment so we bought 2 cokes and a water and sat outside for a bit. We went inside the museum, ready for some culture and found we didn’t have enough money to get in (and they don’t take credit cards)! If we hadn’t bought the stupid sodas we would have had enough! The ATM at the museum was broken and we were in the middle of the park, really far from a bank, so we decided to just walk back to our apartment and that’s when we saw these guys climbing up a pole outside the museum.

One by one four men dressed in bright red and white outfits climbed up this 100 foot pole and then sat in a square crows nest at the top. Once they were up there they seemed to be doing something with ropes as anticipation grew in the crowd below. Finally a fifth man climbed up the pole and sat in the middle of the crows nest. And then the four original guys gently slid off the railing head first attached by ropes around their waists.

The fifth man played a little flute as the crows nest slowly turned. The ropes were wrapped around the top of the center of the pole so as the crow’s nest turned more rope was let out and the upside down flying men got closer and closer to the ground. Once they were almost to the earth they each sat up in their rope seat and landed on their feet.

It was actually calm and peaceful to watch once you got over the shock of seeing them upside down in the air. After some interneting I’ve discovered that it’s an ancient Totonac dance and their proper name is the “Voladores de Papantla”. You can read more about them here. So even though we couldn’t get into the museum we still were able to see something really neat.

After we got back to our apartment it went from being a sunny beautiful day to a menacing storm in a matter of minutes and we were glad we made it home before the rain (this is a view from our deck). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, it’s 104 degrees in NYC right now so this is just perfect.

A few days ago we walked through the beautiful tree lined streets of Condesa on our way to lunch at El Califa, a very popular taqueria.

We sat outside and ordered 2 Sidrals. I love this soda, it’s apple flavored and is so refreshing. Lots of the restaurants we’ve been going to have served us sodas in cans so I was super psyched to drink the first Sidral of the trip out of a proper glass bottle.

Ok now on to the main event. The tacos were spectacular! What you see here are 2 steak tacos con queso (the dark ones) and 2 costras. Costras are pieces of meat surrounded in cheese and then fried on the grill and served on a flour tortilla. The cheese is crispy and tastes kind of like a parmesan crisp. I thought of my friend Nicole as I ate this magnificent thing. There was something about the mix of the flour tortilla and the crispy cheese that I knew she would love.

The bistec and ribeye con queso tacos were really the stars of the show though. They consisted of a thin slice of meat on top of a corn tortilla covered in Oaxaca cheese and grilled. The cheese was so dark but yet still melty on the inside. It was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.After lunch we walked around a bit more. I thought this old abandoned house was pretty although not very representative of how well kept up and fancy most of Condesa is.Even though we were super full we found an ice cream place, Neveria Roxy, and I got a cajeta cone. Mexican ice cream is kind of  mix between gelato and Edy’s. It’s stretchy like gelato but has a more sandy texture like Edy’s (or Dryers for my West Coast readers). Anyway, it was delicious. Next time I go to the neveria I’m going to get a guanabana cone!