Sunday dinner

I was passing a leisurely Sunday afternoon when I remembered that I had a pomegranate in my kitchen. I cut it open and began to eat from mankind's most salutiferous fruit, and my whole evening was transformed into a night of la gourmandise. I wish I had some pictures of my Sunday dinner, but as I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm not a good photographer, and some meals are in such a hurry to be eaten that they escape even the quickest shutter's regard.

I decided somewhere into my pomegranate that its little pomegranate-colored seeds would be an aesthetically pleasing garnish to my gin and tonic. The color and textural contrast with the lime wedge worked perfectly, and the little seeds were left floating and bobbing around in the glass at the will of the little carbonation bubbles that attached to them. I didn't taste the seeds, of course, because their tough membranes would not permit any of the juice to mix with the drink. I did swallow some whole, however, and the novelty of that experience was quite enough novelty for this cocktail traditionalist.

My meal, which could not have been any more impromptu (I had no dinner plans at all before cutting open that wonderful pomegranate), started with little fried balls of mashed chick peas, chopped spinach, garlic, basil, and zucchini. As a "surprise," I rolled a little morsel of fresh mozzarella into each ball. The balls compliment a portion of wild-caught salmon fillet baked over a bed of cherry wood and seasoned with grey sea salt, fresh cracked pepper, and fresh lemon juice. I drank a young (but not nouveau) Beaujolais wine.

This meal is mentionable not because it was a true gastronomic rarity or a great show of culinary prowess, but because it was carefully composed on-the-fly, largely out of ingredients that were lying around on my counter, much like that wonderful pomegranate, my muse of inspiration.