I’ve been in a cooking funk lately. No matter how hungry I may be when I come home from work, I just can’t seem to motivate myself to do any real cooking. Tonight I had scrambled eggs for dinner. Yesterday was bread with cheese. The night before was leftover green beans, a side dish I had made the night before to go with absolutely nothing else. And before that, it was this week’s Cook the Book recipe, David’s Cherry Tomato Crostini with Homemade Herbed Goat Cheese. So it would seem that this group is the only thing getting me into the kitchen lately. Does this ever happen to anyone else? Let’s hope it passes soon.
Well, anyway, let’s start with the homemade herbed goat cheese. I did manage to find goat yogurt without too much searching and I started this recipe by setting the yogurt to strain. Considering that it was greek yogurt, I was surprised to see that I still had quite a bit of water drain out. While this was happening, I also made the oven-roasted cherry tomatoes. This is an old favorite which I make fairly often. Depending on my mood I’ll either use Nigella’s “moon blush” tomatoes or Dorie’s classic version. David’s version was equally delicious and also quick and easy to put together.
So far so good and so far quite easy. So you can imagine my surprise when I ran into trouble with the crostini of all things. Or rather, lack thereof. Somehow I hadn’t noticed that the bread my husband had sliced up for his breakfast was the ciabatta I had bought for this recipe. Surely I’ve mentioned before that all the stores here in Germany are closed on Sundays. So… how to make crostini without any bread?
I started poking through my cupboards and my cookbooks to see what else I could come up with. And don’t ya know it, that Dorie came to the rescue in the form of her supper easy corn pancakes.
Turns out, corn pancakes were the perfect substitute in a pinch and made for a very summery light Sunday dinner on the balcony. I’ll have to remember this dish next time I’m in a cooking funk because this recipe was easy enough not to feel like real cooking and yet satisfying enough to feel like a real meal.