Eric and Nicki's wedding; an Oleana reception

Today our friends Eric and Nicki were married in a beautiful, simple ceremony in the rose garden in the Fens.



Nicki's brother read an e.e. cummings poem; the vows made everyone cry; the unexpected ice-cream truck musical accompaniment (with this tune) made everyone laugh.



And then we headed to Cambridge for the reception at Oleana.

Though the sky threatened rain, we didn't get a drop, so we could sit among the fruit trees and herbs on the patio.







Lunch was served family-style, which meant we got to pass around plates and share with new friends.

The appetizers included spinach falafel with tahini, yogurt, and a creamy beet sauce:



Lamejun (think Middle Eastern pizza) with haloumi and grilled peaches:



and an amazing, airy buttered hummus wrapped in something I'd never had before: basturma, a paper-thin slice of air-dried beef. It was fantastic.



And then the mains, also served on sharing plates: salmon roasted in fig leaves with plums,



Beautifully pink, tender lamb,



and simple, delicious sides.





For dessert, there was plum tart in a buttery crust with a lovely almond-milk ice cream.



By the end of the meal, I was running out of steam, so we headed home, happy with thoughts of amazing food, great company, and true love.



Oh, and the realization that we really, really need to eat at Oleana again soon.

Friends who have food

When a friend of mine was going through cancer treatment, he told me, "When you have cancer, you really learn who your friends are ... who have pot." Apparently his diagnosis prompted various acquaintances to suddenly offer him herbal remedies.

In my case, my friends know my body is a temple (this is always funnier when said while holding a martini) so instead of offering drugs, they tend to my needs with food.

Here are a few of the lovely things that have arrived in the past couple of months:

From Eric and Nicki, an insane amount of homemade ice cream and frozen yogurt. Best flavors are the roasted banana, the anise, and the coffee. But frankly they're all delicious, as is evident by the fact that I ate most of them before I remembered to take a photo.



From Mary D., a deeply decadent Nutella-chocolate torte, topped with — get this — white-chocolate-dipped hazelnuts. Oh yeah.



(Also Italian custard, rice pudding, and a vanilla pound cake of extreme awesomeness):



From Amy, some fabulous truffles with a nice crisp chocolate coating and a buttery interior:



From Mike, a thick Middle Eastern yogurt drizzled with olive oil and a fresh, bright baba ganoush:



From Robbin, a selection of goodies from the Chefs Cooking for Hope fundraiser, including addictive candied lemon slices:



and this:



Maple. Bacon. Cotton. Candy. Smoky and sweet as it melts on the tongue.

From my cousin Deborah, a Harry & David hamper — Moose Munch FTW!



From my dear mother-in-law, Puerto Rican comfort foods and some colorful candy:



And then there were all the lovely non-food gifts I've had: books and hats and flowers and toys and jewelry, not to mention the much-needed emotional support in the shape of emails, cards and phone calls, or the visits from friends that lift my spirits and make me feel normal.

I said it before about The Boy and I'll say it again about my amazing friends and family: I am a very, very lucky girl.

Brunch at Marliave: almost completely healthy

Recently we realized that while weeks of torrential rain suggested the world was stuck in spring, time was nonetheless creeping inexorably toward the end of summer. And with that realization came the awareness that we'd done very little al fresco dining.

So one suspiciously cloudless Sunday, we went into Boston for brunch at Marliave.

We ate at Marliave when it first reopened last year; this was the first time we'd been able to sit out on the patio.

A less optimistic diner might say the patio is marred for being down a narrow side-street with a view of trash cans and the back of the Omni Parker hotel. But its location also means you get the rare experience of sitting outside a restaurant in downtown Boston in relative peace: no traffic, no pedestrians.



Marliave has a nice cocktail menu, with simple ingredients used wisely. Here's the Waterloo (Bombay Sapphire, champagne, lemon, sugar):



But don't worry; cocktails aside, we had a very healthy lunch. The Boy went for prosciutto-wrapped figs stuffed with blue cheese (with salad! See, salad!).



And I got the deconstructed Niçoise, which was small but perfectly formed, every ingredient joyfully at the peak of its flavor:



So, see? Healthy. Salad.

Okay, so we had dessert. The Boy had the Boston Cream Pie (light and airy, yet rich and decadent).



And I tried scoops of the ginger and lavender ice cream. They were good, but for my preference not explosive enough; I was hoping for pepper in the former and bright floral in the latter. Still, pretty.



And that was it. A reasonably healthy brunch. Vegetables, etc.

What? Hiding something? Me?

Oh, okay. There may have been an appetizer. The rarebit.

It may have involved a small amount of cheese and just a sprinkle of bacon.



There may have been a need for thick slices of toast to mop it up.



(Quick, over here! Salad!)

Estragon, Boston: my new tapas addiction

On Friday I discovered a new talent: I can see into the future. Not very far, admittedly, but still, I had a vision that sometime around the beginning of 2009, I will be feasting on an entire pig's head.

The cause of my pignostication? The menu at Estragon, the South End's newest tapas place, which features the porcine cranium as one of its signature dishes. Apparently it comes with all the parts attached: tongue, eyes, ears (the bartender particularly recommends the muscles at the back of the neck). Sounds like the perfect way to spend a doubtless freezing January birthday, don'tcha think?

Friday night's dinner was not quite as decadent, but still lovely. We started out at the bar. As our dining companion Tim is a regular visitor to Estragon's adjoining deli, Las Ventas (he recommends their manchego-jamón serrano sandwich), we were treated to plates of thin, delicate jamón, an incredible tortilla española flavored with lemon (genius!), and a dish of fried, paprika-dusted chickpeas that the Boston Globe's review accurately refers to as "chickpea crack"--it took serious restraint to eat a dainty handful at a time, because my instinct was to grab an enormous fistful and shove them in my face.

We also got to watch the sangria machine:



The one downside to Estragon was the noise level; between the roomful of happy diners and the cranked-up music, it was hard to have a conversation. But just as we finished fighting over the last dustings of chickpea crack, our table on the sidewalk patio opened up and we were led outside to relative peacefulness.

And then we ate more: shrimp in garlic butter; a giant scallop finished with almond cream; tender cod cheeks; another plate of jamón serrano and manchego; veal sweetbreads; and a dish of peppery housemade sausage that was so good, we ordered an encore.

And then to dessert. There were only three choices, so we got one of each: a dense, moist chickpea poundcake with grilled peaches, a lovely version of traditional flan, and a trio of ice creams--honey-thyme, salted caramel, and turrón. I'm not usually a gelato girl, but once again, it was hard to share. Give me an unlimited supply of Estragon's fried chickpeas and this dessert, and I'd follow you into battle. (As long as you didn't mind that I'd weigh 300 lbs.)

And there were all kinds of tapas we didn't get around to trying: the calamari with blood sausage, the beef tongue, the frogs' legs, the roasted eggplant with chorizo, and of course the sea urchin and foie gras sliders.

It looks as though Estragon's menu is still evolving; a steak-and-quail egg dish Tim had tried previously was no longer listed, and the menu on Estragon's website is not quite the same as the one we saw. Which means we'll probably need to make a return visit sooner than January.

Oh well.

Cool as a cone of cucumber

Yesterday I went to venerable Boston-based ice-cream store JP Licks on a hunt for El Diablo, their rendition of chocolate-chili gelato. I didn't find it--doubtless a seasonal flavor--but instead came away with something from the other end of the flavor scale: cucumber.

Yep. Cucumber ice-cream.

I wasn't sure what to expect; being mostly water, cucumber doesn't exactly pack a punch--no exuberant berry burst or deep coffee complexity. And I remembered trying the green tea ice-cream at Christina's, in which that ingredient's subtle flavor was completely overpowered by the richness of the cream, and guessed that this would be similar.

(To Christina's credit, this was more than a decade ago, before the whole "let's start throwing all kinds of crazy stuff into the churn!" concept had really caught on. I'm sure it's much improved since then.)

In line to pay at JP Licks, too impatient to wait until I'd picked up a spoon, I swirled my tongue surreptitiously across the top of the ice-cream. It tasted just like ... cucumber. Perfectly crisp, refreshing cucumber. The cream was sweet, but not overly so. Just enough to heighten and enhance the cumber-ness.

After a few legitimate spoonfuls, I realized it was most comparable to a good melon ice-cream: light and fresh without being cloying.

After a few more, I started to wonder what to pair it with. In the same way that Vosges's coconut-curry ice-cream would (I'm convinced) work with roast chicken, this flavor called out for a few thin slices of jamon serrano.

But I'm still not sure how to match up these two food groups in a sensible way.

Oooh, another option--slightly less insane--would be a chunk of zesty lemon cake. Maybe lemon-ginger.

Or of course lavender; we know how well the two ingredients pair in my favorite cocktail ...