Tomatoes

It's peak tomato season! Go out to the farmers market or farm stand and buy them and eat them before tomato season ends! With a little mozzarella, basil, balsamic, and olive oil you can have the most amazing salad. I <3 p="" tomatoes="">

And these are from our garden, which did really well this year! We had tomoatoes, snap peas, cucumbers, zucchini, green beans, strawberries, eggplant, and more hot peppers than ever. Keep an eye out for a Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce - coming to the blog soon and it's incredible. 

Thai Style Grilled Corn

First off, I apologize for my very long absence! I had an amazing summer home with baby, and while I was still cooking, I was not good about taking pictures and documenting. Promise to get better! We have the world's most adorable and sweet baby and now that she is a wonderful little sleeper, I have plenty of time to make dinner once she's down. 

Jamie got me a the amazing cook book of one of my favorite restaurants, Pokpok, and I've loved everything I've made so far. Some of the recipes involve a whole slew of impossible to find ingredients (although anything can be found on the internet!), but some are very simple, like this corn recipe. We love, love, love summer corn and usually just eat it on the cob with butter because it's so good that way. If you're looking for a change of pace with your later-summer corn consumption, this is the way to go. The coconut milk with sugar and salt is so simple but amazingly tasty (I want to put it on everything) and the squeeze of lime give it a little zip. We had it one night with spicy Thai cucumber salad and Thai-style skirt steak, and another night with grilled veggies. Yum!

Saltine Toffee Chocolate Peanut Ice Cream Sandwich

This is such a treat - a fancy, grown up ice cream sandwich. They're incredible messy (especially if you don't let them firm up enough) but oh my goodness, they are so good! I saw this recipe on Smitten Kitchen and had to try it. Yum! The saltine/toffee/chocolate/peanut combo is amazing and so crunchy. If you want want to go through the trouble of making the sandwiches, you could also just crack it up and sprinkle it liberally over vanilla ice cream. It's addicting. I recommend making these the day before you want to eat them so they have a lot of time to firm up in the freezer - makes them a lot easier to eat. 

Ingredients:

36 saltines

1/2 cup butter cut into chunks

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/3 cup dark chocolate chips

sea salt (or kosher salt if you don't have sea salt)

2 cups vanilla ice cream, slightly softened

Big handful roasted peanuts (or any other nut of your choice)

Strawberry Blueberry Crumble

Yum! This is a delicious and easy summer dessert. We used strawberries and blueberries, but it would be great with any mix of fruit. The crumble topping is delicious and it's so easy because you don't have to make crust - the whole thing takes about an hour start to finish. The baking soda in the crumble is from Smitten Kitchen. It really makes it puff up and get nice and crunchy. Will definitely make this again, maybe in individual ramekins. 

Gluten Free Plum Torte

One good thing about the end of summer is that it's time for plum torte! The little Italian plums come into season and this amazing dessert can be whipped up in a little over an hour. It's so good. The plums are tart and the torte is buttery and cakey. You can read the torte's history here. I've put this recipe on the blog before, but this time I tried it with gluten free flour. It was my first foray into gluten free baking and I was surprised - it was actually great! (A girl in my office is gluten free and can never eat any of the snacks I bring in so I wanted to make one she could eat.) I wouldn't choose it over regular flour, but it was surprisingly fluffy and nice. 

BBQ Chicken

Yum! I tried out the New York Times style of watering down the BBQ sauce to 50/50 sauce vs water. This is supposed to make it so the flavor slowly concentrates and caramelizes without burning. It's great! I made my own BBQ sauce, but you can either make your own or just use store-bought. 

Ingredients:

8 pieces of chicken (ideally 4 thighs and 4 drumsticks)

1 cup BBQ sauce mixed with 1 cup of water

salt and pepper

Directions:

Heat up half of a charcoal grill to medium heat and leave the other half without coals. (On a gas grill, leave one burner off.) Season the chicken with salt and pepper and put over the hot part of the grill. Cook for 15 minutes, turning every 5 minutes or so, and basting continuously with the watered down BBQ sauce. After they are brown, move them to the other side of the grill and cook them there for another 15-20 minutes until cooked. (Peek inside and make sure it's no longer pink.) Finish them up over the hot coals for another couple of minutes, basting with sauce. 

Raw Tomato Pasta Sauce

Tomatoes are so, so good right now, I'm eating them as much as possible. I usually make raw tomato sauce like this, but this time I took one big tomato and grated half of it on a box grater and chopped up the other half. The shredded part makes a nice, juicy base. I added some olive oil, a capful of balsamic vinegar, a drizzle of honey, fresh pepper, a big pinch of red pepper flakes, one grated garlic clove, and some basil. Mix it all up and let it sit for 10 minutes to a couple of hours. 

Nectarine Shrub

I tried the shrub recipe with nectarines (instead of blackberries) last weekend - yum! It's also the most beautiful color, a bright pinky peach. I topped these with a little soda water to lighten them up. 

Tomato, Watermelon, and Feta Salad

I had tomatoes and watermelon and thought they would make a great, light summer salad with a little feta to add saltiness and some dukkah for some extra flavor. This was super refreshing and light and would be perfect for a hot weather lunch.

Ingredients:

Ripe tomatoes, thinly sliced

watermelon, rind removed and thinly sliced

red wine vinegar

balsamic reduction

olive oil

salt

feta

dukkah*

Curry Corn

This is amazing! Make this ASAP! I would eat this all summer. Wow. I don't know why I never thought of curry and corn before. The sweet corn and the spicy fragrant curry make a great mix. I cleaned out my cabinets this week and reorganized all my spices and when I saw all my curry and Indian spices, I thought I'd try them with summer food. I finished off the corn with a smattering of nigella seeds (an Indian spice that tastes a bit like toasted onion) but don't worry if you don't have any - it'll still be great. 

Blackberry Shrub

This is such a great fruity but not-too-sweet summer cocktail. I saw the Bon App's Shrub Recipe and given my propensity for vinegar, I could resist. You can use any ripe summer fruit. I chose blackberries because they're Jamie's favorite. They were so light and delicious, and dangerous because you hardly taste the alcohol. Don't let the vinegar scare you. No one knew there was any vinegar in them until I told them how the cocktails were made. Can't wait to make them again, and try with another fruit! Maybe nectarines??

Grilled Porgy

I bought some porgy at the union square market and grilled it up last week. It's cheap, easy, and very tasty. It was so fresh and the olive oil/lemon/herb mix is a perfect accompaniment. 

Ingredients:

1 small porgy, less than a pound

1 small spring onion, cut into quarters (using part of the green shoots)

olive oil

lemon juice

fresh oregano, chopped

fresh parsley, chopped

salt and pepper

juice of 1 lemon

1/4 cup olive oil

Grilled Green Beans and Garlic Scapes

I love garlic scapes in the early summer. The other night, I cut them into pieces about the size of green beans and grilled them with green beans and served them together. Yum! The garlic scapes are sweet and tender and the green beans are fresh and crunchy. Great mix!

Pretty Salad

Want a really quick way to make a simple salad really fancy and beautiful? Top it with nasturtiums. They're perfectly edible and taste a little bit like watercress. This is some fresh lettuce from the garden and I tossed it with dressing then put some nasturtiums on top. Easy and so pretty and colorful. 

Strawberry Balsamic Pie

I love pie season. Some people think it's in the fall or winter, but for me, summer pies are the best. I love a good lattice-topped berry pie (strawberry rhubarb is my reigning favorite). I've been wanting to try this recipe from Four and Twenty Blackbirds but kept forgetting about it during the short strawberry season. Not this year! I finally remembered, bought a bunch of strawberries from the market, and made this delicious pie. It's so good! Even the drippings that come off the pie onto the cookie sheet taste like wonderful, sophisticated fruit roll ups. Strawberries and balsamic go so well together, and the little tiny bit of pepper is not obvious but gives the mix a tiny kick. I used my new favorite cornmeal crust, but you can use regular crust, too (or store-bought if you want - I recommend Trader Joe's). 

Rhubarb Galette

I had a little pie crust left over from making strawberry rhubarb pie last weekend, so I made a little galette. Galettes are great when you either don't have a pie tin/plate, you only have a little pie dough, or you want something a little more rustic You also get a little extra crust, which is always tasty. This one was great. It's a little sweet, tart, and the dough with the cornmeal makes such a flaky crust. I served it with some fresh strawberry ice cream and is was an amazing, summery dessert. 

Grilled Lobster

This is such a great way to do lobster. The cutting them down the middle while they're alive is a little awful/creepy/terrifying. I had Jamie do it, but I think you can ask a fishmonger to do it for you, too. The combination of the herb butter and the smoke of the grill gives the meat an excellent flavor and seems to concentrate the flavor, too. Definitely want to make this again!

Rhubarb Chicken

This is amazing! I can't believe I've spent 27 years only eating rhubarb in sweets. This sauce is incredible and tart and flavorful and I'm making it again ASAP. The New York Times had a great video to go along. I used just chicken thighs and modified it for 2. I recommend you go pick up some rhubarb and chicken and whip this up tonight. 

Serves 2

Ingredients:

3 chicken thighs

olive oil

Salt and pepper

1/2 tsp thyme

4 scallions, thinly sliced (dark green parts reserved)

1 clove garlic, ideally fresh spring garlic, finely minced

1/4 cup white wine

2 tsp honey

1 cup chopped rhubarb 

Directions:

Salt and pepper the chicken and sprinkle with thyme and a little olive oil. Let it sit all day/overnight if you have time (refrigerated). 

Heat a little oil in a skillet on high and brown the chicken all over, about 10 minutes. 

Summer Dinner: Grilled Steak, Fairy Tale Eggplants, and Garlic Scapes

Isn't that so pretty? I bought garlic scapes and fairy tale eggplants at the Union Square farmers market Monday night for dinner. I love eggplants and these little guys are so pretty and aren't bitter at all. Dinner was simple and summery and delicious - I'd love to have people over and serve the exact same thing. The eggplants were soft and tender and the scapes were sort of like a garlickly asparagus.

Easy Spicy Grilled Snap Peas

We have an abundance of snap peas and I've been trying to think of new ways to cook them/eat them. They're so good when they are raw and have a nice crunch, but that's a little limiting. We were grilling last night, so I took a couple of handfuls of snap peas and tossed them with olive oil, a little minced garlic, salt, cayenne, a little cumin, and a pinch of sugar. Jamie grilled them for about 5 minutes. They were warm and crunchy and a little charred with a great sweet, spicy, fresh flavor. Such a nice way to serve them, and an excellent side dish.

The dogs were interested in the snap peas.