The Fuzzy Chef & Friends

I fell in love with ceviche when my family moved to South Texas when I was 10 years old.  I suppose that I already liked all kinds of seafood from the previous four years in Florida.  I still adore ceviche today, and am very happy that San Francisco has several Peruvian restaurants which specialize in it.

Since it was nice and warm today and I spend the day working in the garden, I decided to make some ceviche for myself.  Based on what Gus the Grumpy Greek Grocer had available (shop Haight Street Market!), I decided to make mango-tuna ceviche, and was very happy with the result.   This is not the fiercely acidic, otherwise flavorless whitefish ceviche of your local burrito joint.  Here, the tuna and avocado give you a fatty unctousness, punctuated by the citrus bursts of mango.  Click more for the recipe.

Tapas, Spanish small plates meant to be eaten with sangria, also have the advantage of being relatively easy to make and often preparable in advance.   The Tortilla Española is probably the quinessential tapa, and one of the easiest.

I just got a request for this again on the bulletin board, so I thought I'd post it to make it easy to find. This is a non-traditional hummus, but very tasty and popular. I created the recipe by improving one I got out of The 30-Minute Vegetarian Gourmet in 1991, and have refined it over the 80 or so times I've made it over the last 17 years. In fact, this version is slightly different from the one I posted on CooksIllustrated 3 years ago.

This recipe makes about a quart of hummus. It keeps in the fridge for 7-10 days and freezes reasonably well, though, so there's no reason not to make a bunch and save some for later.

If you're like me or Barbara Fisher, you're currently rollicking in the bounty of late-season tomatoes.   In San Francisco, at my local market (Haight Street Market), we can buy vine-ripened heirlooms for $2/lbs.  Since my wife loves tomatoes, I've been coming up with creative things to do with them.  The above picture is one such: a recipe my wife calls "The Boccontini".