I wait all year for the weather to warm up and the evenings to lighten, for the fresh tomatoes, zucchini, berries and stone fruits to appear at the grocery stores and the farmer’s markets. I have a deep love for autumn in New England, and spring, once it finally arrives, brings its own delicate, luscious beauty.
But summer is the season of abundance here – utterly bountiful and all too brief. We are luxuriating in it, savoring it, swimming in the golden light pouring through the windows from before breakfast until well after dinner.
In the winter I make comforting, substantial dishes: enchiladas and manicotti in deep casserole dishes, pots of soup stirred and simmered on the stove. But in the summer, the cooking is easy, quick and light, starring whatever fresh produce I’ve recently brought home.
I eat a handful of berries with my breakfast, tuck a nectarine into my bag for an afternoon snack. We make fruit salad with whatever’s on hand (the only rule: no melons). I alternate between my two favorite summer teas: blackberry sage and ginger peach. They both taste like long-ago mornings at the coffee shop, a hot mug held between my hands on the speckled green counter, the aroma from the day’s first pot of coffee filling the air.
The dinner rotation these days is simple. Some nights I boil a pot of water, throw in some pasta, toss it with tomatoes and zucchini or spinach or bell pepper, grating Parmesan on top or stirring in a swirl of creamy ricotta. We love pasta year-round, but in the summer you barely have to fuss with whatever’s going in it.
On slightly cooler nights we dare to turn on the oven, pulling out the pizza stone J gave me for Christmas, topping a store-bought crust with creamy rounds of mozzarella and bright slices of tomato and vegetables. J opens a package of crumbly goat cheese and dabs it around the edge with his fingers. I grind a bit of pepper on top. We pop it in the oven for 10 minutes, long enough for the mozzarella to melt and the goat cheese to turn slightly crispy.
Some nights, I whip up Jenny Rosenstrach’s yogurt-honey-garlic-lemon marinade, and we stick a few chicken pieces in it overnight. Cooked on the stove and then shredded, it is perfect with warm sheets of naan, topped with sliced baby tomatoes and a generous dollop of hummus. I slice a bell pepper into crisp ribbons and pile them on a plate; we dip them into the hummus too.
And every week, there is some variation on Burrito Night. We make rice in the rice cooker and J chops the chicken, then coats it in chili powder and black pepper. I slice and mash a few avocados with lemon juice and store-bought salsas for guacamole, and then we try not to eat it all while waiting for the chicken and rice to finish.
We carry everything out to the patio, and we drink lemonade and eat chips and burn our mouths with the spiciness. If we are sick of burritos or simply out of chicken, we make zucchini quesadillas, grating the zucchini into a heap and sauteing it with cumin and chili powder.
If we have a bit more time and inclination, we chop chicken and a pile of vegetables to make a curry. Our two favorites: Mango Chicken Curry from Shauna Niequist’s new book Bread and Wine, and an old recipe from Real Simple, featuring jalapenos and peaches. Simple, spicy, still starring fresh produce, and delicious.
What are you cooking this summer?
I love cooking this time of year, so much. I LOVE that yogurt marinade from DALS, and also rely a lot on rice noodles for salads (you can just “cook” them in warm water for a few minutes!), salad dinner, which involves potatoes, tuna/trout, green beans, and lettuce, and anything grilled in the summer.
Because we have a garden, we are eating lots of green beans – slow simmered for hours, squash casserole, sliced tomatoes, new potatoes. Impatiently waiting for the okra. Lots of cucumber-tomato-Vidalia onion salad…my summer favorite! Meats are grilled…pork chops, steaks, chicken, burgers. Silver queen corn. mmmmm. I’ve made loads of strawberry jelly, blueberry jam and my newest thing…spiced plum butter! Blackberries are in season…oh my! We, too, tend to cook some pasta and throw in whatever vegies I’ve just picked. Easy peasy summer meals!
Yum! I’m eating whatever is in my CSA box. So far that means making kale pesto for pasta and pizza, Indian saag, lots of salads and stir fries. I just got a ton of tomatoes so I’m hoping to make Joy the Baker’s Tomato Cobbler with Blue Cheese Biscuits sometime soon.
The only rule is no melons.
HEAR HEAR!
Shauna’s Mango Chicken Curry is delish! I hate the smell of curry, so I was nervous when one of the girls from our Bread and Wine group made it. I was blown away by how yummy and not at all offensive it was!
Ooh, your summer sounds delicious. I feel a little on the outs, though. I adore melon. Musk, not water. 🙂
Reblogged this on emmeunrestrained and commented:
Oh, yum! What’s that street address again? 😉
Why ‘no melons’? 🙂
Reblogged this on The well-read redhead and commented:
I’ve never re-blogged a post before, but I thought I’d try it out. It was either that or write about all the luscious summer foods we’ve been enjoying through our CSA box and add quotes from Katie’s blog. She has already put into words how I feel about the abundance of beautiful, fresh summer food in this post from her blog Cakes, Tea and Dreams.