Hand-thrown ceramics optional

We're getting fancy for you.

Sometimes you just want to make things special, you know? Maybe it was that I got to do the food for a friend's wedding reception (you know we broke out Grandma's gold-rimmed glassware for that party), or maybe it was the pepper/peanut stew a couple weeks ago, but y'all, I'm feeling downright cheffy lately.

SO: 
We've got your marbled cookies above: the sesamaretti, in which black sesame paste gets folded into amaretti dough, and they get kneaded together and rolled in crushed sesame brittle.

We've got stuffed peppers: little Italian frying peppers with wheat berries. Is there homemade ricotta in there, with citrus and black pepper? You know there is. And a nice bed of "sitting down" greens, gently stewed in pureed heirloom tomatoes (and herbs and garlic) till they melt.

And the salad: A little summer, a little fall, with field peas and eggplant, squash and mushrooms, and wood sorrel, a tart little green I haven't seen since my work life involved a LOT more beards, aprons, and forearm tattoos. (Mostly knives and pigs.)

It's not all magazine-style plating and chef's tweezers though. Beef minestrone is back! Just the thing to break you away from an indulgent fantasy and get that nose back to the grindstone.