Ask the Food Fairy!

I swear, it took me as long to come up with the one last recipe as it did all the others. Longer even. I just got hung up on it, partly because I am spreading myself a little more this week and there wasn’t as much money left to spend on that last dish. But I think the result is pretty stellar. Check it out: next week’s meals are up in the sidebar here and at the PeaceMeals website under Weekly Menus, and they are exciting.

I think the stuff in the basic $40 box is going to be very fresh and flavorful – there’s a lemon pasta, yams with honey and ginger, and some awesome spicy green beens, and it’s all organic. But I really outdid myself with the $60 premium box! Not only are there all the regular meals (including a very simple spicy sausage and grape dish that started out as a one-line suggestion in the New York Times last year), but for the very first time, there’s also a dessert – and an amuse bouche!!

The dessert is a no-bake summer fruit cheesecake, with a crust of gluten-free cookies (or graham crackers, I don’t know yet) and pecans. It’s ridiculously simple and I think it’s a great summer dessert. (Originally it said blueberries, but I don’t want to promise one fruit and then see something even fresher and better at the farmer’s market. What do they call that at fancy restaurants – chef’s choice? Farmer’s market cheesecake?)

The amuse bouche is tea-smoked lychees. This is also surprisingly easy: they’re cold-smoked, which means that basically all you do is toast some tea in a covered pot until it smokes, turn off the heat, and put the peeled lychees in there for a while to absorb the smoky flavor and scent. Then it gets served in a tiny bit of “broth” of the same tea, with maybe some little microgreens or something as garnish.

An amuse bouche is a tiny little bite of something to entertain your mouth and get it awake, excited, and ready for the meal to come – so a lychee is the perfect size, and it’s the perfect ingredient for what turned out to be a very “Asian fusion” box this week. There’s the tea-smoked lychee, there’s a savory-sweet-crunchy Korean dish with honey, soy sauce, and soybeans, and then there’s a Japanese-inspired noodle dish with kidney beans and such.

And chorizo, which is from Spain (or, possibly, spicy Italian sausage, which is firmer and from Italy), which is in what I would like to start calling “West Asia.” (As The Autobiography of Malcolm X will tell you, Europe is not a separate continent. It’s all political! (Well, literally.))

Anyway, it’s going to taste incredible. I look forward to trying it myself. Sadly (and awesomely) I will be at a conference from the 13th-18th, so I can’t buy myself a full battalion of groceries next week. On the other hand, there will always be more time to eat later!