We had heat. We had sun. We had days off from school. We also had a canceled vacation, crushing workloads, a debilitating neck injury for my husband.
In short, summer was not.
During the dizzying free fall of summer vacation the last 10 weeks, I turned to the food that took little time, little effort, and even less thought. Easy, seasonal, beloved by the kids. Gazpacho. Grilled salmon. Corn omelette. Pesto. Corn on the cob. Caprese salad. Padrons. I took comfort in the repetition, found relief in the routine. In the blur of anxiety, pain, distraction, these meals were some of the only things I could count on. They didn’t exactly save our marriage, but they helped get us through one of the roughest patches we’ve had in years.
Now, too quickly, the kids are back in school. But I’m grateful for the warm September ahead, for the kids’ good spirits, for my husband’s improving health. Also, Caroline and I have a book on the way.
I guess I feel about recipes the way some people feel about mountains. It’s there in front of you, so why not give it a shot? There is really no pressing need to make nutella (you could push it and say there’s no pressing need to eat nutella, but I won’t go so far), but when you find a recipe that looks so easy, and promises a result so delicious, why not? Besides, it’s summer. And in summer, we say yes.
1 cup hazelnuts
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup powdered sugar
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3-4 tablespoons vegetable oil
Preheat the oven to 350. Spread the nuts on a baking sheet and toast them in the oven for 10-11 minutes, or until fragrant. Wrap them in a kitchen towel and rub them to remove the skin; use your fingers as they cool and do the best you can — it won’t all come off. Let the nuts cool.
Grind the nuts in the food processor until smooth, about 3 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients and continue blending until smooth and spreadable.
This keeps at room temperature for three days, apparently, or in the fridge for two months, but we wouldn’t know.
Marion Cunningham’s death last month has had me thinking about the importance of voice in cookbooks. Her voice was the best combination of brisk and encouraging. Reading her cookbooks filled you with confidence that you could make the recipe at hand. The cookbook of hers that I use most, The Baker’s Dozen Cookbook, offers step-by-step instructions for some of the most daunting tasks in the kitchen (pie crust, meringue, buttercream) and makes them all seem eminently doable. Her cookbooks are not, like Elizabeth David’s or Julia Child’s, ones with which I curl up to read on a foggy day, they are ones that push me into the kitchen to cook.
That’s the welcoming tone in Top Chef finalist Antonia Lofaso’s new The Busy Mom’s Cookbook. Her goal is to get families together for meals, and her unpretentious but satisfying recipes work well to achieve that goal. As she writes in her introduction, “It could’ve been Rice-A-Roni with scrambled eggs, or a big dinner I helped my mom or my dad make. Either way, it was very important to my parents that we all sit togethr and share meals when I was growing up. They demonstrated to me how people learn about family and community through food.” It sounds like somehow Chef Antonia has already read Lisa’s and my book!
There’s not much I need to say about the recipes except that they work and they taste good, from coriander roasted cauliflower to caramel-almond popcorn. There’s a good range of recipes for vegetarian dishes (veggie sushi rolls; quinoa-corn salad; lasagna) and recipes kids can make (lemon crepes; mini frittatas; hummus). I love the movie night section (which offers that popcorn recipe, fondue, smoothies, chicken wings and more) and especially the section titled Multi-Meals, in which each dish (roasted chicken; oven-roasted broccoli; brisket) connects to another dish you can make out of the leftovers. All of it is written in the kind of warm, approachable tone that reminds me of Marion Cunningham’s writing, which is about the highest compliment I can offer.
Leave a comment (with your email address) by August 15th to enter a drawing for a free copy of the book!
It’s not summer without the ice cream machine in steadyuse.
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 cups half and half
1 cup heavy cream
2 teaspoons peppermint extract
4 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate
Beat together the eggs and sugar until thickened and pale yellow.
Meanwhile, bring the half and half to a simmer over low heat in a large, heavyweight pan. Slowly beat the hot liquid into the eggs and sugar, then pour back into the saucepan and heat over very low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened. Don’t let the mixture boil or the eggs will scramble (yuck). Remove from the heat and strain into a clean bowl. Allow the custard to cool slightly, the add the cream and peppermint, then chill for several hours or overnight.
Once you’re reading to make ice cream, stir the custard and freeze in your ice cream machine. While that’s churning, melt the chocolate, and then when the ice cream is very nearly done, slowly pour the melted chocolate into the ice cream while the machine is running. Keep the machine running a minute or two longer to spread the chocolate threads throughout the ice cream. Eat immediately, or pack into a freezer container to harden.
I grant that this post is a little silly. I know for most folks zucchini blossoms are more of a rare summer treat than something you’re looking for new ways to prepare. They are too fragile to find in grocery stores, so you really need either to grow them yourself or look for them at a farmer’s market, where they aren’t cheap. And once you have them at home, well, when they are so tasty dipped in batter and fried, why look any further?
But I was taken by Melissa Clark’s recent NYT column about zucchini blossoms, in which she points out what we really all know: once you batter and fry something, especially something as delicate as a zucchini blossom, the prevailing flavor disappears in the larger sensation of salty crunch. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but, maybe there’s another way?
And also, I’d bought a bag full of the flowers expecting friends for dinner; their plans changed but my sense of urgency about getting to the blossoms before they wilted did not. So I figured two preparations would be the best way to handle the bounty.
As we sat down to eat, the fog rolled in and it started to drizzle, but the sunny platter loaded with zucchini flowers brought a little summer into our evening.
