Another way of looking at arugula

I'm an impulse buyer at the farmers market. No question about it. I will go with a plan, with a list, with good intentions. Then I see what's there, especially at this time of year and, as Olivia sang once "there go all of my defenses." If you saw the size of the bags that I bring back on prime days (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday), you would swear I was the old woman who lived in a shoe. No, it's just Annalena getting swept away by the power of produce.

That's cute, isn't it? Well, last week, it happened around salad greens. See, when the weather gets blisteringly hot, as it had, salad greens don't do well. So there was a shortage. And immediately after it got cool, they came back, in force. And, cutting through much foliage, there I found myself, with a huge bag of rucola, or rocket, or wild arugula, or whatever you want to call it. And it was beginning to look onery. Salad was not in the future, so a little thinking was in order.

It was lunch time. And since I have now totally embraced my hatred of brunch, I was determined to do something with it. I had spoken to the ever patient Guy about a pizza today, but in the frenzy of getting things cooked for my wolfpack, I forgot about that, and had no pizza dough ready. BUT... I had a huge loaf of bread with fresh herbs in it that I had made yesterday (Annalena has started making one enormous loaf, rather than smaller ones. What they say is true. The bigger loaves hold their flavor better. Dont ask me why. I don't know. They just do). I also had more cheese than a government storage depot could ask for. Toasted cheese sandwiches of some kind seemed to be in order. Of course, now being the healthy person she is, Annalena knew we needed some vegetables. Arugula, cheese. Hmmm.

(By the way, does it bother any of you that she/I switch from 1st to 3rd person and back in these blogs, sometimes even in the same sentence? Let me/her know, m'kay?).

One more element then came up. The first of the field tomatoes are here. You will appreciate, kind reader, that this is an opportunity that must not be passed up, so there were tons of cherry tomatoes of various colors and shapes abounding. Yesterday, some of them went into flounder and tomato pasta sauce (look for it. It's on this blog). Tomatoes and arugula make appearances in, for example, veal milanese, where tomatoes are cooked gently, and served with raw argula atop a veal chop. They also make appearance together in my pizzas, where the tomato is in sauce form, raw arugula goes on top, and then some prosciutto goes on top of that.

I had too much arugula to mess with that. So, gentle reader... I cooked it. It was, if I do say so myself, pretty terrific. I recommend it. I'm going to give you the full treatment here, with the toasted cheese sandwich idea, but make the veggie combination for whatever you like.

First, toast your bread. Get some good bread and cut , say, four thick slices. Annalena does not own a toaster or a toaster oven, so she toasts her bread by turning the oven to broil, and putting the slices about 3 inches from the flame, for five minutes. While this was happening, I put about 3 cups of cherry tomatoes, whole, into a big pan with some olive oil and salt. When the tomatoes began to sizzle, I covered the pot. This allows the tomatoes to sweat and burst. It doesn't take long. Then, I added a whole lot of fresh wild arugula. The greens wilted immediately. I covered the pan again, to let them cook down even further, and get softer. In five minutes, they were done.

While this was happening, I put the bread slices onto a baking sheet, covered them with slices of cheddar cheese and melted it. When that came out, the cooked tomato/ arugula mixture went right on top. And you know what? We had one helluva good lunch.

If you can cook food like this - and you can- who needs to run out for brunch. Try it some time.