PPP

Today I'm cooking on autopilot.

The downside to processing most of our Summer harvest into fully cooked and/or concentrated forms is that I don’t always have enough time to prep for weeknight dinners. My fridge door offers less and less guidance as July fades into September, and I am often forced to improvise. As a result, I’m cool, I’m carefree, I’m wHiMsIcAL, I’m in free fall. But with years of obsessive cooking under my belt, I have a built-in emergency system called PPP which stands for pasta, porridge, panzanella— the three things I can pretty much always swing with what’s on hand. We ate pasta on Saturday, porridge last night and tonight, you guessed it! Panzanella.

I’ve already halved sungold tomatoes and set them aside to marinate in oh, how do I even describe it? An amalgamation of like, three or four different vinaigrettes whose dregs I kept pouring into new batches. Along the way there was a chili crisp, a lemon, and something that resembled a nutritional yeast Caesar. E also added lots of mustard and honey over the weekend to make it creamy. Later I’ll throw stale barley porridge sourdough from the freezer in to the oven with olive oil and mushroom seasoning until it’s GBD, then add it to the tomatoes for a good half hour or more to soak up all the punchy liquid. To serve I’ll add Greek feta, scallions and lots of mint. On the side, a raspberry lime Spindrift.