This is a recipe borne from that very situation. This recipe gets all fancy and uses fiddleheads since they're in season in New England late spring, but it'd be almost as delicious if you used small bits of broccoli.

Ingredients:

• 1 box of pasta (I prefer penne or gemelli)
• 1/2 lb fiddleheads (or sub finely chopped broccoli)
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 2 vine tomatoes
• 1/2 lb fresh mozzarella cheese
• the last bit of a container of olives packed in oil and spices
• black pepper
• kosher salt

Dice the tomatoes and cheese into small cubes.

Steam the fiddleheads by placing them in a pot (ideally in a steaming basket, but I don't have one..) with ~1/2" of boiling water for 2 minutes.

Boil the pasta according to the package directions. Once it's done, strain the water out in a colander and rinse the pasta in cold water to stop it from cooking further. Toss the pasta in the oil and stuff from the olive container, then add the rest of the ingredients. Add a couple good punches of salt and pepper to taste. Stir everything to combine and enjoy on a porch with some rose or vinho verde. Happy summer!

I'd picked up a few mussels from a store a few weeks ago, only to arrive home to find I was out of white wine, which is what I'd need to make the canonical Moules Marinare recipe. I poked around the kitchen and picked up the next best thing -- a bottle of Narrangansett beer. Since the beer wasn't going to contribute quite as much flavor to the recipe as wine would, I figured I should amp up the rest of the ingredients to keep the whole thing punchy. Enter ginger and bacon. Let's roll!

Ingredients:

• 1.5 to 2 lbs mussels, cleaned and debearded
• 4 strips of bacon
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3-5 tablespoons ginger, minced
• 1 tomato, coarsely cubed
• 2 bottles Narragansett beer (you could also fancy it up with a Belgian ale or a lighter brown ale, if you like) - that's one for the mussels, one for you!

First, put the bacon in the bottom of a stock pot on very low heat. You want to extract the maximum fat possible from the bacon without burning it, as it'll provide the goodness foundation for the rest of the recipe. Allow it to cook for a few minutes until browned on the bottom, then flip it. Let it cook until it's browned on both sides, then remove the bacon from the pot and reserve.

Add the ginger and onion to the stock pot with the bacon grease, and cook it over low heat for about 5-7 minutes, enough time for them to get soft. Add garlic and cook for another 1-2 minutes.

Add the tomato and beer to the pot and raise the heat to high, allowing it to come to a boil. Once boiling, dump the mussels on top, cover the pot, and allow to steam for 5-6 minutes. Dump the mussels and liquid into another pot or container, then back into the pot to coat them with the gingery goodness. Just before serving, dice the bacon you'd reserved earlier and sprinkle on top.

After chowing down on the mussels, use some crusty bread to sop up the ginger/beer/bacon liquid, which will exhibit nearly illegal levels of goodness. Cheers!

Now, in my house, it's become tradition to celebrate birthdays with what we've affectionately deemed a "shot cake," which means any old cake with shot glasses on top with a bit of high proof liquor floated on top of something more palatable which are lit and extinguished in lieu of candles.

Then it hit us: why not use the shot cake as inspiration and create a cake that ITSELF was a cocktail? Indeed, there was no reason not to try, and the Sazerac cake was born. The goal in the cake was to create a dessert that would be close to the spirit of a Sazerac cocktail without simply being a cake soaked in liquor.

The resulting cake is evocative of a Sazerac, but is still unmistakably a dessert. (Personally, I think it could stand a bit more absinthe and Peychaud's to make the flavors more pronounced, even.) If you're looking for a twist on the usual type of dessert, give it a try -- or try cakifiying another classic cocktail and get back to me -- I'd love to try a Negroni cake.

Cake ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 1/4 cups unsalted butter, warmed up to room temperature
• 2 tablespoons grated orange zest
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 5 large eggs
• 2/3 cup rye (or bourbon)
• 1/2 oz Peychaud's bitters
• 1 tablespoon absinthe
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 extra orange, for twisting + garnish

Icing ingredients:

• 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 4 cups confectioner's sugar
• 1/2 oz Peychaud's bitters
• 1/4 cup rye (or bourbon)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and butter two shallow 9" cake pans.

Beat the sugar, butter, and orange zest with an electric mixer (or just a lot of stirring) until it's smooth. Add eggs one at a time, mixing continuously so the mixture keeps a creamy texture throughout. Still mixing, beat in the rye, bitters, and absinthe. Add in the flour slowly and continue to mix until the batter is battery-seeming enough, then distribute it intwo the two cake pans. Put them in the oven and bake for 45 minutes.

In another bowl -- the frosting bowl --  mix the butter and shortening, then add in the booze and bitters while continuing to mix. Add the confectioners' sugar while mixing until the frosting is frosting-y enough. Place the bowl in the fridge while the cake bakes.

After the cake is done, let it cool in the pans for about half an hour at room temperature. Remove one of the cake halves (the less attractive one, preferably), and place it on the bottom. Top it with frosting, then stack the second half on top and frost it as well.

Garnish with an orange twist and serve. Optional: make a shot-glass sized Sazerac on top. Instead of rinsing with absinthe, float it on top and ignite it in place of candles. It's birthday time!

My favorite discovery amongst those abundant and diverse vegetables has been beets. I'd never really paid all that much attention to beets before this year -- I'd have the occasionally, but never looked to them for a delicious meal. Meaty, sweet, and colorful, beets make for a solid backbone of a meal.

I invented this cole slaw-ish recipe while trying to come up with a savory, spicy take on the ordinary beet salad, and I'd say it worked out pretty well. The vinegary, smoky spiciness of Mexican Valentina hot sauce is the defining note, backed up by the savory sweetness of honey, the depth of ginger, and the tang of mustard and vinegar.

If you're looking for an alternative to the same old leafy salad, please to give it a try -- you won't be disappointed.

Ingredients:

• 4 large (~3.5" diameter) beets, quartered
• 1/2 head of cabbage
• 1/4 cup Valentina hot sauce (acceptable substitution: Chipotle Tabasco sauce)
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• one large piece of ginger, diced
• 2 tbsp whole grain mustard
• 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 3 tbsp honey
• salt and pepper

Place the beets in a large saucepan and fill with enough water to submerge. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer and allow the beets to cook for about 20 minutes, or until they're tender. Remove the beets from the water and wait for them to cool.

Mix hot sauce, ginger, olive oil, mustard, honey, and vinegar and whisk to combine.

Cut the cabbage into thin strips and place in a bowl. Add a few pinches of salt for flavor and to draw out the moisture a bit. Peel and cut the beets, which have hopefully cooled to a temperature that won't terribly burn you at this point, and add those to the bowl. Add pepper to taste (be generous -- this makes it extra tasty!), then pour the dressing mixture over the salad and toss thoroughly.

Allow it to sit for a bit in the fridge to cool down and to let the flavors (and colors!) combine. That's a damn tasty salad.

The theme, as mentioned in our other, better theme-matching entry, is "Brown, Bitter, and Stirred," which this second cocktail isn't really in the spirit of. That said, it still turned out pretty delicious.

The Old Martinique

• 1 1/2 oz Rhum Clement VSOP
• 1/2 eyedropper (about a barspoon) Bittermen's tiki bitters
• ginger beer (Barritt's)
• mint sprig, for garnish

Stir the rum and bitters in a pint glass on ice. Strain into a coupe or cocktail glass, then top off with ginger beer. Garnish with a mint sprig.

This drink actually started close to the theme, as we tried out variants on a basic rum Old Fashioned. (Incidentally, the Clement, tiki bitters, and a few drops of simple syrup make for a delicious drink.) Drawing inspiration from our experiments there, the sweltering heat on Sunday, and from the deliciousness of the Old Cuban, we figured "hey, why not top that off with something bubbly?"

The result is somewhere in between an old fashioned and a mild Dark and Stormy. It's hardly brown, it's hardly bitter, and it's only stirred in the beginning.. but it sure is good. The drink starts with ginger, allspice, and cinnamon on the nose, followed by buttery vanilla flavors and the zing from ginger and carbonation in the ginger beer on the finish. Refreshing and delicious!

Oh, and there's a video for this one too, although there's a barking dog in the middle of it that makes it unintelligible -- our outdoor studio needs some tweaking, but it's good for a laugh at least:

Justice Kitchen: The Old Martinique Cocktail from Anthony Roldan on Vimeo.

The occasion for all this is Mixology Monday, a monthly-ish cocktail party where bloggers create and share recipes based around a theme. This month's theme is "Brown, Bitter, and Stirred," the signature drink order (and blog title) of Lush Life Productions' Lindsey Johnson. I'd been a long-time admirer of Mixology Monday and figured this was a great one to start with. On Sunday afternoon, Andrew Rausch and I teamed up to work out a couple cocktails we could enter into this week's fun, and here's the result:

The Beretta Cocktail

• 1 1/2 oz mezcal (Del Maguey Vida)
• 1/3 oz Fernet Branca
• 3/4 tsp Amaro Meletti
• 3/4 oz sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica)
• 2 dashes orange bitters (Regan's)

Stir ingredients together in a pint glass with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass or coupe, then flame an orange peel on top. Garnish with said orange peel, and enjoy the smoky bitterness.

For this drink, we were inspired by the Smoking Gun cocktail, as seen in Imbibe Magazine a while back. The Smoking Gun has a badass name, two incredibly assertive base ingredients (scotch and Fernet Branca), and it is delicious.

We figured we'd amp up the Italian ingredients a bit (thus the Beretta name), and started off with a super strong mix of mezcal and Fernet that was a challenge to sip on. To sweeten things up a bit, we added in a bit of Amaro Meletti and Carpano Antica, which balance out the bitterness while still contributing rich flavors.

After that, the drink was missing a little something. Two dashes of Regan's orange bitters sweeten and brighten up the nose of the drink a bit, and the flamed orange peel really brings the orangey and smokey flavors together.

The resulting drink is pretty badass -- it's smokey, orangey, and pungent on the nose, then aggressively bitter at first sip with the menthol of the Fernet and smokiness of the mezcal, followed by the milder chocolate and licorice notes from the vermouth and Amero Meletti, and finishing with a lingering bitterness that leaves you hankering for another sip.

It was close to 90 degrees in the room as we were mixing up the drinks, which was hardly an ideal environment for a digestif-ish bitterness bomb. Still good, but I could see this cocktail being very at home on a blustery fall evening after eating a hearty meal.

Still curious? Watch Andrew mix up the drink in Justice Kitchen's first VIDEO entry:

Justice Kitchen: Beretta Cocktail from Anthony Roldan on Vimeo.

There are a couple conflicting theories about the proper way to make gazpacho -- the first (and more traditional way) is to finely blend all the contents, resulting in a sort of V8-esque soup, and the second is to coarsely chop all the vegetables, ending up with sort of crispy vegetable salad drowning in tomato juice. I'm a fan of both approaches, but I always prefer a hybrid approach. We're going to dice all the veggies as if we were going to make a coarse gazpacho, but then blend only half of them. Sneaky!

Also, rather than starting with a tomato juice style approach, I like to take a Bloody Mary-ish approach to the liquid portion, giving the whole thing a bit more of a substantial backbone and complementing the tomato flavor with the acidity of lime juice and savoriness of Worcestershire. Mmm!

Bear in mind that gazpacho is also pretty freeform -- the combo of vegetables I'm about to describe makes a tasty dish, but experimenting with different flavors can yield equally tasty or tastier results!

Without further ado, let's get down to it:

Ingredients:

• One 48oz bottle tomato juice (I use Whole Foods 365)
• 6 tomatoes
• 2 cucumbers (peeled or unpeeled, your choice)
• 1 medium-sized red onion
• 1 green bell pepper
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 0-4 jalapeños, depending on your spice tolerance
• one small bunch cilantro
• 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup lime juice -- either pre-made or the juice of two limes
• 3 tablespoons hot sauce
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Chop the tomatoes, pepper, and cucumbers into about 1/2" cubes. Coarsely chop the red onion. Cut the cilantro leaves and upper portion of the stalks into small pieces (cuts about 1/2" apart) and discard the bottom portion.

Finely chop the jalapeños, if you decided to use them, and mince the garlic cloves.

Reserve half of the vegetables in a container, and place the remainder in the bowl you plan to use to hold the gazpacho in.

Add the red wine vinegar, olive oil, lime juice, hot sauce, and Worcestershire sauce to the bowl. Add in half the tomato juice from the bottle, and blend with an immersion blender until large chunks of vegetables are no longer visible. (If you don't have an immersion blender, you can also place everything in the first part here into a blender or food processor, then put it in the serving bowl afterward.)

Add in your reserved veggies and place the whole bowl in the fridge for some time between two hours and two days -- the longer it sits, the more the flavors will meld, resulting in a more flavorful gazpacho.

Serve with toasted bread (I did it with some grilled brioche and it ruled!), alongside a main course, or just slurp it out of tupperware in the fridge for a midnight cooldown. Yum!

If you buy pre-made dough, it's also super quick. There's something super satisfying about making your dough from scratch, to be sure, but on a weeknight, when you're making a bunch of pies, or when you're just lazy, store (or restaurant!)-bought dough is nice. When making pizza - or just about anything - I tend to overbuy and end up with too much dough. And what to do with it the next day? I'll tell you what: breakfast pizza.

So next time you have pizza assembly leftovers (or just want a kick-ass brunch food!), check it out:

Makes one breakfast pizza, enough to feed four people.

Ingredients:

• 1 large pizza dough - I used one from Bertucci's, who will sell you their dough for real cheap!
• ~8 slices bacon, about 1/2 lb
• 3 eggs
• 1 medium onion, chopped into thin slices
• 1/2 cup pizza sauce - I used Dave's Fresh Pasta's arrabbiata sauce
• 1/3 lb mozzarella cheese
• black pepper
• kosher salt

Of course, like any pizza, you can play with these toppings as much as you want.

Start by preheating your oven to 500 degrees. Fry up the bacon in a cast iron skillet until it's on the soggy side of done -- it'll finish up a bit in the oven. Pull it and pat it extra dry with paper towels -- you don't want grease to sog up your pizza. Once patted dry, cut it into small pieces.

Roll out the dough and put it onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  (If you don't have any parchment paper handy, a lightly floured baking sheet will do. Parchment paper saves time on cleanup, though!) Sparingly spread the tomato sauce out on the pizza, then top with onions, cheese, and bacon.

The crown jewel of the breakfast pizza is of course the eggs; there are two ways you can do it that will both work great, but it depends what you're aiming for. I did both, in the name of science.

Option A - the sunny side up: If you're lazy and like runny eggs, the best thing to do is just to crack the three eggs on top of the pizza, then put it in the oven; they'll end up sunny-side-up by the time the pizza is done.

Option B - the scramble: If you want something more solid, start a nonstick skillet over low heat with a teaspoon of reserved bacon grease. (Or oil, if you're feeling lame.) Whip the eggs in a bowl, then add to the skillet once it's warm. The goal here is to have very, very lightly cooked eggs -- liquidy, but just starting to solidify:

Once they're this done, dump the liquidy eggs on top of the pizza; they'll be solid enough not to leak everywhere, but done enough to have a thin layer of delicious eggs on your finished product.

Sprinkle salt and black pepper on top to taste.

Throw it in the oven for 10-12 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Pull it out and enjoy!

Kogi serves awesome Korean/Mexican fusion food - think Korean spicy pork tacos (pictured above) and quesadillas (pictured below). There's also a sweet street food take on it - also on the menu are Korean beef sliders smothered in jack cheese and sesame-flavored mayo. No boundaries here, just creative combinations of bold flavors in the service of awesome food.

Filled with cheese, pork, and covered in a sesame salsa verde that's equal parts savory, refreshing, and tangy. Amazing.

Even better, despite the chef winning  a Food + Wine best new chef award, the priciest food clocks in at just $7.

It's living proof that creative, awesome food doesn't need to be pretentious, rare, or expensive. Basically, there's no excuse not to eat delicious stuff all the time. And that is seriously just.

When it was all over, we took home a double rack chop and a leg roast. We decided to cook the rack chop that night, aiming to feed three people. To stretch the ~ 3/4 lb of meat out and make maximum use of all the bone, fat, and connective tissue, we decided on a two-part approach. We would braise the rack chop in delicious spices, reserve the meat, and use the braising liquid to make a risotto.

And it was delicious.

Ingredients:

• double rack chop of lamb, about .75 lb
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons rosemary, dried (but you could use fresh for extra credit!)
• 1 tablespoon black pepper
• olive oil
• kosher salt
• 1 cup chicken or beef stock
• 2 leeks, chopped into half medallions
• .75 lb mushrooms, chopped into thin slices
• 1.5 cups dry white wine, we used Alandra box wine, which is delicious and cheap
• at least 2 cups of water, maybe more
• 1.5 cups arborio rice
• .25 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Take your rack chop, drizzle on the olive oil, and rub it with black pepper, salt, and rosemary.

Start a small dutch oven or stock pot heating up on medium heat. (If you're using a dutch oven, also heat up your oven to 300 degrees.) Once it's warm, add the butter to the pan and stir as it melts. Once it's just beginning to smoke, turn up the heat to high and sear the rack chop for about 2 minutes a side.

Once it's nicely browned, add the chicken stock, 3/4 cup of white wine, and 3/4 cup water to the pot. It will be noisy and there will be steam. Once the liquid is boiling, bring heat down to a simmer and cover the pan. (If you're using a dutch oven, cover it and pop it in the oven.) Let the meet braise for two and a half hours -- after an hour or so, flip the rack of lamb to submerge the other side.

After the lamb flakes apart with a fork, sample a little bit because your kitchen will smell so damn good that you'll have been thinking about doing just that for the last hour. Take the lamb out of the pot, pull the meat off the bones, and reserve the meat.

Also reserve the braising liquid, which will now contain a bunch of delicious lamb juices and fat -- we'll be needing it shortly. Add a bit of olive oil to the pan and cook the mushrooms over low heat for about 5 minutes or until soft. Deglaze the pan with 1/4 cup of white wine and scrape everything into the braising liquid.

Heat up a separate pot (we used a wok, but any large saucepan will do) and add in the remaining butter. Once melted, add in the leeks and cook over low heat until they start to get soft. Add in your arborio rice and a dash more olive oil and stir over medium heat for a few minutes to coat the rice with oil and butter.

Add in the remaining wine to the pan and stir until it is absorbed by the rice.

Slowly add the braising liquid to the pan about 1/4 cup at a time, stirring until it is absorbed. Continue to add liquid, stirring to absorb, until the rice is soft but not mushy... okay, al dente. I wasn't going to say it, but you made me. Add in the lamb meat, mushrooms, and cheese and stir for another minute to combine.

Serve with a crispy cucumbery salad and a glass of rosé.