cruddy cooks + brilliant food

=great dishes, if and only if(is there a mathematical symbol for that, Eleanor do you know?) the cook barely touches the ingredients.
Although I am pretty decent in the kitchen, when it comes to fruits and vegetables I don’t mess with them much. In fact, I love most veggies uncooked, and would rather eat salads undressed and fruits by themselves if the quality is high.
My CSA deliveries are yielding great things these days, so why mess with them? Why gild the lily? It’s like putting butter on butter. Wait, I would probably do that. I love butter. Almost as much as I love Mark Bittman, whose “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” managed to convince me to play with a couple of the things I got delivered this week. First up was a strawberry and arugula salad. Basically just the berries, some balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper. I played around with the proportions but got the idea from Bittman’s book. The results:

Perfection. Actually perfection to the nth degree.