Yo!

/

Oh my goodness, peeps, I am fully salivating over both our wine and this tomato dish from The Runaway Spoon, a food52 cook who also hosts her own great site. I mean, look at these tomatoes candying away. Meanwhile a goat cheese-ricotta blend is baking in the oven and baguette slices are toasting.

To celebrate our fun date night, we also pulled out these tasting glasses T gave me when I lived in NYC. You fill the stem which meters out the perfect amount of wine such that you can turn the glass over onto its side and it doesn't spill. We got out our tasting wheel- in case you care we smell/taste dust and licorice in this wine and love both- which harkens back to our first trip together; to Napa in 2002. Wow!

Gotta go get the baked cheese out. I cannot wait to stuff myself silly.

Ricotta tip, Moroccan carrot salad, Brunello

/

I like Sara Bareilles- do y'all listen to her music? She's a Norah Jones type... The ricotta is beautiful and reminded me to issue a tip: don't sub whipping cream for heavy cream. I think the carrageenan prohibits the curds from coming together. I made this mistake last week when the market was out of heavy cream, and while the flavor was still pretty good, my result was more like ricotta slurry. So just FYI in case any of you are on your way to homemade ricotta.

I just put together this carrot salad. It's so easy and so flavorful- carrots, fresh ginger, lemon juice, honey, cinnamon, EVOO, s & p. Yum. I'm going to get on the Baked Ricotta with Candied Tomatoes once we get the kids to bed. In the meantime, the carrot salad is resting as its flavors muddle together, and we opened an '01 Brunello that we brought back from Montalcino some years ago. It's decanting now but initial tastes were delicious.

Hope everyone is doing well.