In the summertime, I’m usually all about the simple food. The amazing fruits and vegetables practically prepare themselves for dinner, and a typical weeknight menu will look something like this: BLT, Caprese Salad, Sauteed zucchini on toast, pasta with tomatoes and olive oil, and another BLT (I really like BLT’s). But sometimes the occasion calls for a little more sophistication. Something that’s a little more exotic, that requires some more thought, some more layers of flavor. But at the same time, you don’t want to lose the wonderful casualness of summer dining — the feeling that every meal should be eaten outdoors and barefoot.
When I saw this recipe in last month’s food and wine, I knew I had found my summer dinner party dish. The prep is incredibly simple – no marinating required, no fancy cooking. And the flavors are fantastic — complex, bright, nutty, and utterly satisfying. The shrimp are intensely flavorful from the miso marinade, while still tasting of shrimp, the scallions add a savory hit, and the slaw has wonderful crunch — even the water chestnuts add a nutty flavor that I never realized water chestnuts possess. And despite all these layers of flavor and texture, this is still, at its heart, a sandwich, perfect for eating barefoot in the back yard.
[Read more →]
Tags: grill·sandwiches·shrimp·Summer
Somehow I blinked and it’s mid August. Labor Day is in sniffing distance, the days are getting shorter, the stores are full of sweaters, and I seem to have missed summer. Every year I have a mental list of things that I will do in the summer. Swimming in a cold pool, then lying in the sun until my swimsuit is dry, then jumping back in. Going on the ferris wheel at the pier. Sitting in my garden as the sun gets low, drinking Pimm’s Cups and chatting with good friends. And here it is nearly September and there are so many things still on my list.
But one thing I have done is enjoyed the summer produce. I love the berries and the peaches, the watermelon and the plums. But nothing screams summer quite like corn and tomatoes. These vegetables, so anemic and disappointing if you venture to eat them fresh during any other time of the year, bust out into full, sweet glory in the summertime. More than anything else, summer is eating corn, spread with butter, each sweet juicy kernel bursting in your mouth. And summer is the smell of red, ripe tomatoes, the juices dripping down your chin.
This pie is summer. I saw the recipe last year, when it was printed in the dear, departed pages of Gourmet, and filed it for later. Later is now, because this pie is phenomenal. Sweet crisp corn and juicy tomatoes, bound together with creaminess and cheddar cheese, and if that wasn’t enough to tempt you, the pie crust here isn’t a regular old pie crust, but buttermilk biscuit dough, rolled thin. This pie is the taste of summer camp, of fireflies, of jumping in a cold lake and sweet months of vacation. This pie is the summer I’ve been missing.
[Read more →]
Tags: buttermilk·corn·Tomatoes·Vegetarian
This is not, as you may have divined, one of those recipes that yields beautiful food. Each bit is not an aesthetic delight, and this is not going to grace the cover of any food publication that I know. But what it is is this: deeply, deeply delicious. And EEEASY. So easy that just writing easy was not sufficient.
When Deb over at Smitten Kitchen (which remains to this day on my list of most inspiring food blogs wrote this post about this raspberry gratin I was intrigued. I love variations on berries and cream, and this, with the caramelized sugar, is really the poor man’s creme brulee (or given the price of raspberries on the open market, the very very rich man’s creme brulee.
Now I LOVE raspberries, but I hold them in such reverence that dimming their flavor with (really, a lot of) sour cream seemed like a bit of a cruel fate. But then, I was visiting one of my favorite vendors at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market and their crazydelicious (and very reasonably priced) Tra-Zee peaches called out to me. A ripe peach is delicious and exquisite but not quite the valuable commodity that fresh raspberries are. And nobody can deny that peaches and cream are a classic pairing. And besides, this dish is an excellent way to use those perfect ripe peaches that may have gotten a little squished or bruised on their way home.
[Read more →]
Tags: easy·peaches·sour cream·sweet·weeknight
