Posted by Blake Royer, July 31, 2008 at 4:00 PM
When summer produce peaks, the best way to celebrate is to do as little cooking as possible. Conveniently, summer heat is also a good impetus to avoid, at all costs, the oven or anything related to stewing, braising, or roasting. Trips back from the farmers' markets often just require a large salad bowl, olive oil, and lemon juice. When cooking does occur, it's usually just to boil water for pasta.
This recipe follows these important summertime rules. It's a twist on the straightforward pasta-with-pesto dish, but summer corn sweeps in to add morsels of sweetness, while zucchini brings crunch, and bacon provides a full savory flavor. It's a nice change, and deliciously light—omit the bacon and add olive oil for an even lighter outcome.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, July 25, 2008 at 2:30 PM
I couldn't agree more with Anna Pump, author of this week's Cook the Book selection, Summer on a Plate, who believes that "sweets are an essential part of the day...if you serve a fabulous, knockout dessert, chances are your guests may not remember what they had for dinner. Desserts always bring smiles to the table, and no matter how full people claim they are, there always seems to be just a little bit of special space left over."
Today’s recipe is for a classic fresh peach tart. A simple, butter cookie crust is par-baked and then spread with apricot preserves; filled with juicy, sliced peaches; and scattered with crunchy almonds. Anna suggests serving the tart with ice cream or whipped cream. I think it would also be divine with strawberry sorbet.
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Posted by Joshua Bousel, July 25, 2008 at 10:15 AM
I currently hail from Astoria, NY, where it's impossible to take a step without hitting a Greek restaurant. It didn't take me long to find an affinity to the cuisine indigenous to my neighborhood, and after being a resident for six years and counting, there have been more than a few extraordinary discoveries.
But none get me quite as much as halloumi, a salty hard cheese made of goat and sheep's milk that comes to life when grilled or pan fried. After cooked, I usually enjoy this cheese with a dash of lemon juice or stuffed in a pita with tzatziki and all the toppings, but I heard that Cypriots particularly like halloumi with watermelon—and that idea had "perfect summer salad" written all over it.
There really isn't much to grilling halloumi, just slice and slap it on a hot grill until it blisters, then it's done. It's best while still warm, so I made sure to have the watermelon cut, tossed with chiffonades of fresh mint, before heading to the grill with the cheese.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, July 10, 2008 at 2:00 PM
recipe courtesy of Tom Kearney at The Farm on Adderly
- makes 1 quart -
Ingredients
Soup
3 cups fresh, shelled English peas
1 cup chopped white onion
8 tablespoon canola oil, divided
1/4 cup white soy sauce (use a scant 1/4 cup of regular soy sauce if you can’t find white)
Crab Salad
8 ounces Peekytoe crab meat (or other fresh crab meat)
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
Zest and juice of 1 lime
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon mayonnaise
Drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Procedure
1. To prepare the soup, blanch the peas in a large pot of boiling water for about two minutes. Immediately shock them in cold water. Drain and set aside.
2. In a medium sautée pan over medium heat, sweat the onion in four tablespoons of the canola oil.
3. Combine the peas and the onions in a blender. Add 3/4 cup water and the soy sauce. Blend until combined. With blender still running, slowly add the remaining four tablespoons of canola oil. Chill in the refrigerator until ready to serve. If soup thickens, stir in a little extra water to loosen.
4. To prepare the crab salad, in a medium bowl, stir together the crab, garlic, lime zest and juice, lemon zest and juice, mayonnaise, and olive oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
5. Serve the soup in large bowls, garnished with a heaping spoonful of crab salad in the center.
Posted by Lucy Baker, July 9, 2008 at 12:00 PM
The following recipe is from the July 9th edition of our weekly recipe newsletter. To receive this newsletter in your inbox, sign up here!
This recipe for Avocado-Cucumber Soup, excerpted from Serves One by Toni Lydecker, actually makes two 1 cup first course servings. But I could certainly eat the whole batch myself, paired with a multigrain roll, as a full summer meal.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, July 8, 2008 at 3:00 PM
I look forward to floral, plump, perfectly ripe summer tomatoes all year long. And now that the season is finally here, I'm not about to let a little Salmonella scare stop me from enjoying them. Are you?
For this week's Magazine Recipe Review I prepared the Tomato Bread Salad with Olives and Mint from the July/August issue of Everyday Food. It was delicious—you should try it. Trust me. And just to quell your fears, here is a list from the FDA of all the tomato-producing places that have not been associated with the outbreak.
This easy salad came together in minutes and made for an incredibly satisfying lunch. The key is to use the best quality ingredients you can find. To that end, I replaced the hoagie roll with a hunk of ciabatta (I thought it would hold up better against all the juices), and broke out the good olive oil. Don't skimp on the pepper, and definitely use freshly ground. The intense, contrasting flavors are what make this dish so interesting: the briny olives against the refreshing mint, and the juicy tomatoes alongside the crusty bread. The light lemon vinaigrette adds a bit of tang and ties everything together perfectly.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, July 7, 2008 at 4:45 PM
We got this summery side dish from the Summer Shack Cookbook, a wonderful book that the fiancée and I have not been able to use that much. It's all about cooking East Coast seafood on the beach, and after our move to the Midwest, we've been really struggling with the concept. Though I did use it last year, I honestly forgot we had the book until the fiancée pulled it out to look for side dishes. When she called out this recipe for Portuguese salad, I didn't really know what it meant. What did a New England cookbook have to do with the Portuguese? Turns out there are many Portuguese descendants in New England, and a lot of them were fisherman.
But none of that is truly important because the dish that results from a New Englander's take on a Portuguese salad is essentially glorified gazpacho that hasn't been diced to bits. It's tasty—the cucumbers cool the sweet roasted peppers, and the bright vinegar balances it all out. It's certainly not a hard salad to love and it made a great side for the grilled steaks we paired it up with.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, July 7, 2008 at 1:15 PM
I don’t think I had ever heard about sesame noodles before I came to New York City. Maybe they were on the Chinese menus in Houston and my family was too excited about egg rolls, spare ribs, fried rice, General Tso, and beef with broccoli to notice. Maybe they were put in front of me several times and my childish disdain for cold noodles of any kind led me to turn up my nose. But in my adult life I somehow became aware that a delicious and highly craveable dish had slipped past me, and my interest was duly piqued.
After trying a couple of dud recipes, I found one that I like in The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. That might not seem the likeliest source for an excellent sesame noodle recipe, so please speak up if this looks wrong to you. This is one of the rare cases where I do not have a specific memory or Platonic taste ideal guiding my experience of a home-cooked dish (which is nice sometimes, because you get to enjoy what you’ve prepared for what it is rather than despair over what it is not). Cold sesame noodles make a great lunch on a hot day and are also good to take on car, train, or plane trips.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, July 3, 2008 at 4:50 PM
This week for my magazine recipe review I wanted to tackle a classic, American summer dessert perfect for the 4th of July. Initially, I had my heart set on baking the Red, White, and Blueberry Shortcakes from the July issue of Bon Appétit. What could be more festive or color-appropriate? But after careful consideration I decided against it. While the recipe seems spectacular, it also looks time-consuming and a bit labor-intensive when it comes to assembling and serving the shortcakes. The 4th is all about spending time outside with family and friends, not indoors in a hot kitchen. I wanted to make something as quick and easy as it was delicious.
Nectarine-Raspberry Crisp with Spiced-Oatmeal Crumb Topping, also from the July Bon Appétit, fit the bill. The ingredient list was short and the preparation simple—even the nectarines are left unpeeled. Fruit crisps and crumbles are incredibly homey, comforting, and honest. They also travel well, so if you’re a party guest as opposed to host this Independence Day, a crisp would make a perfect pot-luck dish.
This version turned out unbelievably juicy and syrupy, with just the right balance of sweet and tart flavors. The cardamom in the crumb topping provided an unexpected note of spicy complexity, enlivening the standard cinnamon-oatmeal combination. While it may not consist of flag-inspired hues, this crisp will definitely dazzle—especially when topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
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Posted by Sarah Wolf, July 3, 2008 at 12:45 AM
- serves 6 -
Adapted from Bobby Flay's Boy Meets Grill
Ingredients
2 medium zucchini, halved lengthwise
2 medium yellow summer squash, halved lengthwise
2 Asian eggplants, halved lengthwise
2 medium red bell peppers, stemmed, seeded, and quartered
2 medium yellow bell peppers, stemmed, seeded, and quartered
2 medium red onions, quartered
1 basket cherry tomatoes (12 to 16)
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 tablespoons finely chopped oregano
1/4 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
Procedure
1. Preheat a gas or charcoal grill to medium high.
2. Place the zucchini, yellow squash, eggplants, bell peppers, onions, and tomatoes in a large, shallow pan or baking dish, add 1/2 cup of the olive oil, and toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Grill the vegetables for 5 to 6 minutes with the grill uncovered, turning halfway through the cooking time. Remove the tomatoes, cover the grill, and cook the remaining vegetables until almost cooked through, about 2 minutes. Put the tomatoes in a large bowl.
3. Transfer vegetables to a cutting board and chop coarsely. Combine them with the tomatoes, add the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil, garlic, oregano, and parsely, and add salt and pepper. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, July 2, 2008 at 4:30 PM
I should have known that our new little grocery store in Chicago wouldn't have fennel. The fiancée and I had been planning a crazy sardine pasta, having been inspired by the New York Times recent article about 11 healthy foods, but once the fennel was missing, the recipe quickly fell apart. We decided to make something simple instead using the availble decent looking asparagus and incredibly cheap lemons. I didn't have an exact recipe, but I knew that could find something to do with all of these ingredients.
I'm not sure how I found Robin Robertson's recipe for pasta with asparagus and pine nuts, or why the source seemed like a good one, but I was drawn to the addition of the pine nuts, an ingredient I had ready-to-go in the pantry. We didn't have as much pasta as the recipe called for, nor any fresh dill, resulting in a dish that was mostly asparagus and lemon with some pasta mixed in. I'm not sure if that would have worked or not. This simple recipe turned out really well—it was fresh and light, and a perfect summer dinner.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, July 2, 2008 at 12:00 PM
The following recipe is from the July 2nd edition of our weekly recipe newsletter. To receive this newsletter in your inbox, sign up here!
This recipe for Blended Peach Creams, excerpted from Margaritas, Mojitos, & More, is the perfect treat for a hot summer afternoon. Fresh peaches, nectar, milk, and cream are blended into a whimsical beverage reminiscent of that favorite ice cream truck dessert.
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Posted by Blake Royer, July 1, 2008 at 4:30 PM
While at the market this weekend I picked up a giant handful of garlic scapes, the rather beautiful garlic flower that looks a bit like a pig's tail—they were too inexpensive and attractive to pass up. I knew I wanted them in a pasta, but I didn't know how it would play out. I read about grilling them or treating them like asparagus by chopping into 1-inch lengths and sautéing in butter, but the simplest and post popular scape pasta seemed to be tossed with pesto.
But what would I put in it? In the end, I decided to keep the variables fixed and blend together scapes, pine nuts, Parmesan, and olive oil. I also sweated a little red onion in butter over low heat to develop a sweet oniony base for the pasta, which I hoped would bring out that side of the scape's flavor.
But the resulting dish wasn't all that I'd hoped. The subtle flavor of the pine nuts was lost, and too much oil was required to get the pesto to the right consistency—even then, it was nowhere near as smooth as the basil-based pesto Genovese. The pesto itself had too much hot garlic bite. Maybe I should I have cooked the scapes first, or blended them with an herb to soften the edges? I'm open to suggestions.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, June 27, 2008 at 5:00 PM
I picked up some strawberries up at the Clintonville Farmer's Market and I just couldn't wait to get them home. Real strawberries—the ones that come in early summer—taste so much outlandishly better than what you can find in the grocery store. I wanted to make a dish that would highlight them, but they taste so wonderful by themselves that I was worried that any interference would ruin their natural goodness.
And I was right. The strawberries were delicious and the dressing was fine, but it was hard not to be disappointed by this Whole Foods approved recipe for spinach and strawberry salad. First off, the recipe only called for five strawberries, which made for some meager picking amongst the spinach. We saved the salad with the addition of some crumbled blue cheese—it went better with the dense spinach than the light and fruity vinaigrette.
Any one else have some great strawberry salad recipes that better showcase the delicious fruit?
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Posted by Lucy Baker, June 20, 2008 at 1:30 PM
Traditional Latin American ceviche can be made from a wide array of fish, including shark, sea bass, sole, shrimp, octopus, and even mackerel. Marinated in bright citrus juices and garnished with ingredients such as corn, avocado, and fresh peppers, ceviche is the ultimate summer first course to enjoy with a cooling pisco sour.
In today's Cook the Book recipe, excerpted from Screen Doors and Sweet Tea, Martha Hall Foose updates classic ceviche with a bit of Southern soul by incorporating catfish into a mixture of lemon, lime, cilantro, and jalapeño.
To make sure your ceviche is properly marinated, check the fish. It should be opaque and have a texture similar to that of poached fish. Martha recommends adding 1/2 cup of chopped green olives for a briny flavor.
Serve with popcorn, tortilla chips, or on top of mixed greens.
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In addition to excerpting a recipe each day this week, we're giving away five copies of Screen Doors and Sweet Tea. Enter to win here.
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Posted by Joshua Bousel, June 20, 2008 at 11:15 AM
The massive heatwave two weekends ago released my summer urge to head to the beach, and I had a lovely beach excursion all planned out for this past Sunday. I woke that morning to a dreary rainy day, not the beach weather I was expecting. Through my disappointment I decided if I can't get to the beach, I'll bring a part of it to me and headed out to my fish monger to pick up something I could throw on the grill.
While fish is no stranger to my grill, I am admittedly not much of seafood eater, but am on a road to changing this. When looking for a piece of fish to cook, I wanted something hearty, not overly fishy, and that would stand up to being grilled. My fish monger recommended the striped bass as the freshest fish of the day meeting my requirements. I grilled this up with a light rub and topped it with a roasted salsa, working in flavors I really enjoy to put me on track to being a serious seafood eater. Even though I would have preferred this with a fresh, cool salsa (although roasting isn't a bad idea with this salmonella scare we got going), the rub/salsa combination ending up being the perfect compliments for the fish. The spicy rub brought out the taste of grilling, while the acidity of the salsa balanced nicely with the seafood flavor, and the whole thing left me exclaiming, "Why haven't I eaten this more often?!!?!?" Now I've found my anticipation to hit the waves has been replaced by excitement over my next adventure in grilled fish.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, June 13, 2008 at 12:45 PM
I’m about to type a cop-out phrase that I would immediately cut if I were editing someone else’s work: I don’t know if I can find words to express how I feel about strawberry shortcake. What keeps coming to mind is Buddy’s gleeful, innocent enthusiasm in Elf: “Smiling’s my favorite!” Strawberry shortcake’s my favorite, no contest, and I look forward to it all year long. Properly made it offers purer pleasure than any other food I know. It is luxury, it is summer, it is bliss.
Strawberry shortcake is not a towering, gloppy affair, nor should it ever involve Cool Whip, a little boat of grocery store sponge cake, or out-of-season strawberries. It is a biscuit (preferably a cream biscuit) split in half and topped with barely sweetened sliced strawberries and whipped cream. It looks appealingly homey, but its balance of flavors and textures is simply elegant. It melts in your mouth and tastes ambrosial. It’s easy to make and, despite what the cookbooks say, still pretty good the second day. Lindsey Shere’s recipe is a thing of beauty. If you say you don’t like strawberry shortcake, I say either you hate strawberries (and who are you?) or you’ve just never tried the real thing.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, June 6, 2008 at 4:15 PM
So I messed up, which is kind of disconcerting with a recipe as straightforward as this one for iceberg wedges with Roquefort dressing. Essentially, you combine all the dressing ingredients in a bowl and serve it on the lettuce. Easy enough. But it wasn’t until halfway through the salad that I realized I had substituted yogurt for mayonnaise, and that was probably why the salad felt so light. Healthier does not always mean tastier, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed the salad. I’m still trying to figure out how it happened.
The original recipe, sans yogurt, comes from Peace, Love, and Barbecue, a book I’ve been dying to explore. Jeffrey Steingarten’s intro starts with the line, “This is the last cookbook you will ever need.” But since I have no grill or a place to use it, I’m left picking out side dishes for my imaginary barbecue cookout, which is a sad exercise. The sides are great, but without a huge slab of slowly smoked meat next to it, context might be lost. I’m sure the original with mayonnaise is the proper way to go, but if you just need a little crunchy summer salad to not weigh you down, then I think my interpretation is worth trying.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, June 4, 2008 at 12:45 PM
If, like me, you live in a small city apartment, turning on your oven in the warmer months can be unbearable—the whole place heats up like a sauna. And even if you live in the spacious suburbs, who wants to slave away in a hot kitchen on a steamy night?
Today's Cook the Book recipe, excerpted from The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper, is made up entirely of raw and precooked ingredients. No oven, no stove, no microwave needed. Fresh tomatoes are whirred in a food processor with lime juice, red onion, jalapeño, and spices, and then heaped on top of bowls of cucumber, avocado, and shrimp. Think of it as a no-cook stew.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, June 3, 2008 at 3:15 PM
I loved grilled vegetables almost as much as I love grilled meats. But finding the perfect marinade can be a challenge. It has to be distinctive while at the same time complimentary to the main dish. And it has to be effortless—when the warm weather hits, who has time to scour markets for obscure spices to be used only once or twice? Above all, a good grilling marinade must be versatile enough to stand up to all of summer's bounty, from spring asparagus to end-of-the-season zucchini.
For this week's Magazine Recipe Review I prepared the Grilled Zucchini and Summer Squash from the June issue of Everyday Food. To be honest, I was intending to make something else, but last Saturday night the grill was going and I realized that I had all the ingredients for this simple dish on hand—and when it comes to building a repertoire of great, no-fuss recipes, isn't that always a good sign?
For this dish, sliced zucchini and yellow squash are tossed with a simple combination of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, oregano, salt and pepper. After grilling, the vegetables are dressed with the reserved marinade for an added boost of flavor. The results were terrific. The extreme heat of the grill intensified the mild flavor the vegetables and caramelized the balsamic vinegar. While I’m not usually a fan of dried herbs (why not use fresh?) the oregano added a lovely, mild aromatic note. Best of all, this recipe is extremely flexible. We made it again the next night with mushrooms, and drizzled the last bit of marinade over ears of corn.
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Posted by Dorie Greenspan, August 30, 2007 at 2:45 PM
Okay, this really isn't about baking, but it is about dessert, so I hope you'll cut me some slack. I'm also hoping that once you get a taste of this sundae, you won't care that you didn't turn your oven on this week.
The sundae is a gently tweaked peach Melba, a dessert of peaches, raspberry sauce, and vanilla ice cream, created by world famous chef Auguste d'Escoffier, in honor of the opera singer Nellie Melba. I hadn't made one in years—make that many, many years—but we'd been getting such great peaches this summer that I found myself reprising lots of tucked-away favorite recipes. Of course, once I made this, I made it again and again, reminded of why some dishes become classics: they're just so good.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, August 8, 2007 at 4:30 PM
At the farmers' market this weekend, I ran across some bright, fluorescent-hued spuds unlike any I’ve encountered before. Sure, I’d had red potatoes before, but for some reason I had missed red and purple potatoes that were red and purple throughout. I also picked up some boring little white ones to round out the rainbow. I wasn’t quite sure how they would cook up, but I didn’t much care. I had already decided I was going to make a potato salad, and nothing much was going to get in the way.
I tend to find potato salads needlessly complex, so I was happy to find this vinegar-based one in Jasper White's Summer Shack Cookbook. It’s nothing really more than potatoes tossed with a vinaigrette, topped with some parsley and salt and pepper. I suppose you could use any vinaigrette you’d like. But this simple one from the book worked well. Oh, and those boring little white ones looked awfully plain, but they sure did taste the best.
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Posted by Ed Levine, August 6, 2007 at 1:45 PM
Corn salads are one of my favorite dishes to serve in the summer, when freshly picked corn is readily available just about everywhere. Eric Gower's is particularly full-flavored and zesty, perhaps because of the habanero pepper he throws in. If habaneros scare you, substitute a jalapeño or an ancho chile, which are both much milder. Make sure that, no matter what chile is used, you remove all its seeds—they're where much of the heat is concentrated.
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Posted by SaraBir, September 12, 2006 at 1:19 PM
My friend Bryan asked me for suggestions for utilizing the abundant crop of tomatoes in his backyard (he lives in California, where tomatoes lazily ripen into the early fall). I told him to can them, but not everyone has the energy or equipment to do that. In the meantime, you can always eat lots of fresh tomatoes. It’s your last summer fling.
This pasta dish came about from my last visit to my parents’ house. They had corn on the cob, beautiful beefsteak tomatoes, and fresh basil in dire need of use, so I threw them all together for a simple but flavorful pasta dish. Juicy tomatoes help make the sauce for the pasta, so don’t use plum tomatoes for this. If you don’t have fresh corn, use frozen, which is often superior to out-of-season fresh corn.
Ingredients
(Serves 4)
1/2 pound uncooked pasta (spaghetti, linguine, or fettuccini)
3 to 4 large, ripe tomatoes, cored (the more tomatoes the better)
2 to 3 cups fresh or frozen corn kernels (thawed if frozen)
2 cloves garlic, very thinly sliced crosswise
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 bunch (three cups loosely packed) basil, thinly sliced
4 to 6 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
Procedure
1. Put a large pot of salted water on to boil and cook the pasta according to package directions.
2. Meanwhile, chop the tomatoes. Place in a large bowl and set aside.
Toast the corn in a heavy, dry medium skillet over medium-high, stirring occasionally, heat until you see charred spots on the corn, 2 to 3 minutes. Add toasted corn to tomatoes.
3. In a small skillet, heat the garlic and olive oil over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the garlic is a light golden-brown (do not allow to burn). Pour over corn-tomato mixture. Stir in the basil and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
4. When the pasta is al dente, drain it quickly, allowing some of the cooking water to cling. Add pasta to tomato-corn mixture, toss with the feta cheese, and season to taste with more salt and pepper.
Note: You can substitute Parmesan cheese for the feta, if you wish.
