There are times when my day job inhibits my blogging, since I have fewer occasions to cook and even less time to photograph, organize and write.  That’s my excuse for being offline over the past month.

I’ll begin with a simple supper in early December, a collaborative effort at that.  Barbara made an incredibly delicious and colorful salad, and I prepared a Tortilla Española from Penelope Casas’ excellent book, The Foods & Wines of Spain.  The book is over thirty years old, and I bought it used last year on Amazon.  It’s a real classic and chock full of great recipes.

I didn’t make note of all the things in Barbara’s salad, but here are some of the highlights:

• red leaf lettuce
• endive
• watercress
• fresh orange sections
• fresh raspberries
• feta cheese
• vinaigrette made with a raspberry infusion

The tortilla recipe is very straightforward, but it takes time, patience and superb ingredients (i.e. potatoes, olive oil, eggs, salt, onion).  The recipe is below, and if you look in the upper left of the salad picture, you can see a wedge of the finished product.

For the wine I selected a red wine from the northern part of Puglia, Alberto Longo’s 2009 le Cruste, 100% Nero di Troia.  Deep purple in color, rich and smooth in flavor, it completed the meal exactly as I had hoped.

One other colorful item graced our table that night: it was a red, black, and white glass bowl of intricate design and grace, fashioned by one of the glassblowers at MIT.  I purchased it at the annual sale event and am happy to have it in the home.