Family Dinner with JP

Easy weekday meal, perfect for the summer! Plus - totally cheap! I made this meal for $7, and I got two servings out of it. I think the first time I ever had grilled lemon, it was used in a cocktail at Del Campo. The smoky, citrusy, sweet flavor of the lemon, grilled to a slight char over an open flame, was used to accentuate the Limonada Sucia to perfection. It wasn't until a subsequent trip, celebrating multiple life successes of three friends, that we tried out ALL of the grilled Latin American meats. With the giant platter of delicacies (steak upon steak upon steak) was a large portion of grilled lemon halves. Life changing. Truth is, this recipe is simplicity unto itself. This is the perfect way to grill for a weeknight, with just enough pop to make it special. For those who don't know, adding an acid to finish any entree is the quickest shortcut to making your food go from good to great (or at least fooling people into thinking you did something more complicated t...

When I first moved in by myself a few years ago, I had a lot to restructure in my life. Not the least of which was: how do you take a recipe designed for 2-4 people, make it for one, and not eat the same meal 3 times a day for the next week? Ready to give up and just eat Lean Cuisine, my dear friends Justin and Dre got me the perfect housewarming present: Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking For One , by Joe Yonan. I have to admit, for a while there I'd see the book staring back at me from the coffee table and I'd swear the cover actually read "How to Eat and Die Alone." Thankfully I got over it, and found some amazing recipes within. I based this recipe off of Joe's recipe for "Potato Chip Tortilla with Shrimp." Yes. I know. Growing up a good Taco Bell fearing American, "tortilla" was a flat round thingy made of corn or flour. And what the hell do potato chips have to do with anything? Sounded a bit like the recipe on the b...

I was in middle school, hanging at my best friend's house with the neighborhood kids. One boy, George, showed up at the house with a tomato in his hand. He asked for the salt shaker, and proceeded to eat the whole thing like a piece of fruit. I thought he was gross. And then I tried it. Wow. A good, fresh, ripe tomato is one of life's simple pleasures. Which is why the concept of fried green tomatoes confused the hell out of me. I mean ... fried = good as an almost universal truth, but why a hard green tomato. I chalked it up to a cultural thing I'd never understand, like driving SUVs or eating okra. I first tried this recipe for fried green tomato "sandwiches" a few years ago, shortly after I discovered the joy of Boursin. Its gone through a variety of changes. In my original recipe, I actually breaded the tomato slices with panko and used one to top off the sandwich. I think the open-face version is more fun (because you can make two, meaning more B...