Hi Reader, Every August, I have the same conversation with myself."How many tomatoes did I really need?"The honest answer is never the one on the counter.Here's what happens when tomato season hits: a friend presses a bag into your hands. A farmer's market vendor insists you take "just a few more." You convince yourself you'll make one salad, just one, and suddenly your kitchen looks as though the San Marzano mafia has taken over.I love this problem.Tomatoes ripen fast and unforgivingly. Miss...
3 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, Every year around now, someone leaves zucchini on my doorstep. No note. Just zucchini, the way other people get left flowers.My neighbor's garden has clearly turned on them, and the only humane response to a zucchini glut is to spread it around before it spreads to you.I have stopped resisting. A good zucchini summer is a fun problem to have, because zucchini works just about anywhere: shredded into a cake, sliced into a gratin, grilled in slabs, folded into pasta, fried into the...
6 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, My freezer in late July is mostly ice cream. I am not going to pretend otherwise.Somewhere between the gelato I made because I bought a machine and refuse to let it sit idle, and the popsicles for when it is too hot to want anything else, there is barely room for a bag of peas.There is something about a homemade frozen dessert that store-bought never quite matches. You know exactly what went in it, you can make it as rich or as light as you want, and it tastes like the specific...
8 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, Some July evenings, turning on the oven is the last thing the kitchen needs. It is too warm, the day was too long, and a 400-degree box running for an hour only makes the room worse.Those are the nights I do not cook so much as assemble.A good no-cook dinner is not a sad dinner. A platter of cold shrimp, a bean salad with real bite, a watermelon-and-feta plate, bread and good butter, and you have fed people properly without raising the temperature of a single room.For the next hot...
13 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, Cherries are the ones I eat standing at the counter, spitting pits into my hand, telling myself I will save some for a tart. I rarely do.Plums and apricots hold longer. They keep for days in the bowl, soften over the better part of a week, and make the best baking of the summer if I get to them in time.This is the short window when all three overlap. Cherries at their dark, sweet peak, plums turning jammy, apricots gone soft and honeyed, all in the market at once.The cherries go...
15 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, I have opinions about fried chicken, and I have had them challenged at more than one family table where everyone else also had opinions.Buttermilk or no buttermilk. Flour or cornmeal. Cast iron or a deep pot. Plain or Nashville-hot enough to make your eyes water.Every version is a slightly different argument about crunch and seasoning and how much heat is too much, and I am happy to make all of them to find out. Rules Before Rankings Brine or buttermilk-soak first, no shortcuts. A...
17 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, For most of the year a tomato is a sad, pink, mealy thing I refuse to buy. Then for about six weeks in summer it becomes the best thing in the kitchen, and I build half my meals around it.A real July tomato, still warm from the garden or the market, needs almost nothing done to it.That is the whole point of tomato season. It is the one stretch of the year when the best thing you can do to your food is get out of its way. Good salt, good oil, maybe some torn basil and a slab of...
19 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, Here is a small confession. After years of grilling all summer, I got bored of the condiments before I got bored of the food.The burger was great. The squeeze bottle of yellow mustard next to it was the same squeeze bottle it had been since I was a kid.So one rainy afternoon I made my own mustard, and it was so much better and so much easier than I expected that I have been quietly making my own condiments ever since. Mustard, ketchup, a barbecue sauce or two, a hot sauce for the...
20 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, For most of the year a tomato is a sad, pink, mealy thing I refuse to buy. Then for about six weeks in summer it becomes the best thing in the kitchen, and I build half my meals around it.A real July tomato, still warm from the garden or the market, needs almost nothing done to it.That is the whole point of tomato season. It is the one stretch of the year when the best thing you can do to your food is get out of its way. Good salt, good oil, maybe some torn basil and a slab of...
22 days ago • 2 min read
