I always enjoy making a list of meals I want to cook for the season. I'm curious what's on your list for the summer. On my list:
Soup au Pistou
Gazpacho
Chilled cucumber soup
Corn soup
Pasta/orzo salads
Tomato sandwiches
Roasted vegetable paninis
Tomato tart
Zucchini tart
Roasted vegetable tart
Spanakopita
Ratatouille/vegetable tian
Thomas Keller's roast chicken with summer squash and tomatoes
Grilled fish with salsa verde
Ceviche
Fish tacos
Brisket tacos
Carne asada with chimichurri
Salmon burgers
Beet black bean burgers
Eggplant gratin
Ina Garten's lamb-stuffed eggplants
Lamb meatballs
Ina's flag cake and mocha icebox cake
Strawberry shortcake
Strawberry pavlova
Lemon tart
Olive oil cake
Canal House's apricot almond upside down cake
Hoping to get an ice cream maker!
What a great idea! Here's a list, some of which are duplicates of yours:
Strawberry shortcakes
Strawberry cake (making today!)
Rhubarb cake and/or galette
peach cobbler
lots of dinner salads: Greek salad, steak salad, panzanella...
zucchini fritters
fresh sweet corn: fritters, pasta, salad
"cheating" eggplant parmesan (roast eggplant slices, layer with sauce, top with cheese and crumbs)
pasta with fresh tomatoes
BLTs
ratatouille
grilling (anything)
shishito peppers
melons
just eating fresh berries by the handful
homemade ice cream (hope you get and enjoy your maker!)
batch cocktails (summer cocktail book)
I am planning a lot of dinner salads as well! I just made eggplant parmesan that way to kick off the summer! Also planning batch cocktails.
I’ve posted this a zillion times, but it is so good I do it at every opportunity. Sweat minced onion and garlic in a LOT of olive oil. Brush your slices of eggplant with it and grill them. Most of the oil will be gone. Make puttanesca in the same pan. For the puttanesca use diced fresh tomatoes, kalamata olives, capers, pepper flakes, anchovies (I use paste), and white wine (brighter than red). Barely heat it. Leave the tomatoes as close to fresh as possible. Layer it with the grilled eggplant and sliced mozzarella. Grate pec Rom on top. Heat until bubbly.
I love all the things on your lists! I especially look forward to putting up fruit and veggies from my garden: preserves, chutneys, pickles, shrubs, and cordials.
Ice cream
Roasted vegetable gratin
Corn chowder (maybe Ina's corn and lobster chowder)
Gazpacho
Vegetable fritters
I feel like such a slacker. My only thought was to make it through until the first day of school!
We ARE enjoying the Batch Cocktails book and will be making several of the recipes.
Vanessa, if you get an ice cream maker I can highly recommend the peach ice cream recipe for The Perfect Scoop when peaches are in their prime. It's so good.
In addition to smoking a brisket and making the usual sides for the Fourth of July, per the Texas Barbecue Code, I usually do pretty much the same things, following the progression of what’s in season. I’ll make clafoutis when the cherries look good. Street corn. Peach cobbler. Blackberry cobbler. Tomato pie. Crab cakes. Crab salad. We just had strawberry shortcake. Last night I canned green tomato pickle. We still have enough apricot almond marmalade that I can skip canning that this year.
As the Texas summer becomes almost too much to bear I’ll make gazpacho. There will usually be tomato aspic and cottage cheese in the refrigerator. Another summer favorite i learned watching Lydia is a salad of thinly sliced fennel bulb, celery, and onion, lardons of salami and cheese (I like pepper jack), some of the fennel fronds, and a citronette dressing.
As summer winds down I’ll do a zillion things with Hatch peppers. I hope I make it!
Also from Texas and planning on making brisket tacos this weekend using a Homesick Texan recipe.
This all sounds delicious!
So where are you now? I hope it’s someplace with great summer foods.
Actually still in Houston! We'll be visiting Austin this summer so I'm looking forward to some good food there!
We moved to Austin from Houston in 1989. Houston truly has one of the finest overall food scenes of any major city, but little Austin is working hard too. I love the barbecue here, Valentina’s being my favorite. I think the brisket is close to Aaron’s in quality despite being mesquite rather than post oak, but avoiding the lines tips the scale in Valentina’s favor. Plus the sides, especially the street corn salad, are amazing. The thing I miss the most about Houston food is the solid Chinese food. When I’m there I usually hit the Ambassador on Richmond, and after forty plus years Wendy’s cooking is better than ever. I also miss the total experience of Damian’s, like being in Moonstruck or some similar movie. Since this thread is about summer foods, I have to add a desire to make some Vietnamese wraps...charred pork, bean sprouts, shredded carrots, cilantro, mint, and cold vermicelli wrapped in leaf lettuce and dunked in seasoned oil with a little chopped peanut, a great summer dish I learned at the now long gone Vietnam Kitchen on Tuam.
how do you make the charred pork?
I’m not sure how they do it in a real Vietnamese kitchen, but it seems like small strips, smaller than typical fajitas, cooked until almost crisp. I’d think if you did it over charcoal you’d need a basket. Maybe just cooked a long time on a hot griddle or pan. I’ll check into it. When I make tacos al pastor, cooking pork chunks in achiote and orange juice until it begins to crisp, is close. I’ll look it up under bun cha.
Ok, a quick check reveals a fish sauce, garlic, rice vinegar, sugar, soy sauce marinade and cook on a griddle. I think my favorite version was probably done in a basket over charcoal.
Jello on my mind:
That layered rainbow jello mentioned on the BBQ sides discussion is something I've never made.
Poke cake - where orange jello is poured over a cake which is frosted with whipped cream after chilling.
Pink lady salad - jello/cottage cheese mixture.
I miss the jello salads the aunts used to bring to family events. My favorite was a layer of strawberries in jello and a layer of bananas but can't quite remember it. I still have a Jello booklet published when they had vegetable flavors as well as fruit.
1 down, 2 to go. The Pink Lady "Salad" - actually a dessert - I made today is just OK, not the WOW I remember. I may try it one more time, doubling the Jello to 2 small boxes and starting with only half the Cool Whip rather than an 8 oz tub. I found versions online that used whipped cream and I'm guessing those would out-shine mine.
What a good idea to think ahead for the whole season! Summer is short where I am, and it is easy to miss out on all the good produce. I found making this list so inspiring that I actually printed my list out and taped it to the fridge. Here is mine!
Desserts
Cantaloupe granita, strawberry hibiscus granita, Vietnamese coffee granita, and at least 1 boozy granita
Summer fruit with coconut milk and condensed milk (Hoa qua dam) from Vegetarian Viet Nam
At least 1 rhubarb dessert-probably Swedish rhubarb crumble
Generally eat as much melon as possible
Non-dessert
New to me
Gemista (stuffed peppers and tomatoes) from Cooking with Loula and/or
Stuffed peppers in olive oil from “Classical Turkish Cooking”
Spanikopita
Coconut dream fish from The Immigrant Cookbook
A fruit-based gazpacho
Pasta with broccoli, olives, and pistachios from “Sauces and shapes”
Russian salad from Verdura
Repeats
Focaccia sandwiches with roasted red peppers, feta, and zucchini alla scapece
Tasty rice noodle bowl from Vegetarian Viet Nam
Cold spicy buckwheat noodles from Koreatown
Corn on the cob-Mexican style
Aguachile de camarones from Latin American Street Food
Panzanella
Pisto from My Kitchen in Spain
Corn and poblano pepper soup
I love this! Maybe you start a quarterly one.
Carne Asada tacos
Grilled pizza
Bo Ssam
Hot pot
Fish tacos
Grilled tuna jaw
Anything that needs a sourdough starter
Crudités and dip
Pickled mangoes
Kbbq
Paella
Strawberry season is just over here but did make some Summer Berry Pudding with the Cook's Illustrated recipe with all strawberries. So good.
When peaches come in, my favorite cobbler from Dori Sanders:
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/e...
Nothing but corn on the cob with butter and fresh tomatoes for at least ONE meal.
Tomato Pie, Corn Maque Choux with fresh fish or shrimp, and Low Country Boil.
my summer plans: hope for summer produce! We had a long cold rainy late winter in Boston that went far into spring. Our local farmers market opened three weeks ago and I was thrilled to see rhubarb and asparagus and sorrel. I hope for more tomorrow. We won't get strawberries for another couple of weeks, if we are lucky given all the rain, and we won't get tomatoes or corn for 6 weeks at least.
I love cold soups, corn, and tomatoes, tomato pie is a my favorite dish ever.
Summer plans - buy a new smoker.
- Hot smoke salmon
- Try different recipes for smoked, low and slow lamb
Last summer I learned to make homemade jams, and this year I'd like to finally try my hand at proper homemade pasta. I also would like to learn to make rhubarb crumble so I don't need to drive 60 kilometers any more to get the best in our area!
For lemon tart I can recommend Raymond Blanc's recipe, just google it.
Up my smoothie game.
Better salads.
Up my smoked brisket game
Find a source for beef ribs and smoke those as well
I overdid it on fermenting a while back but now it's time to get started again. I was very pleased that some young guests from China that came to Thanksgiving liked my white kimchi. Chives are starting to blossom so I've scoured Pinterest for chive recipes. One suggestion was to add a half cup of snipped chives to salads so that's what I did last night. Thinking I might try a chive kimchi and a chive and parsley pesto.
If I don't do some notes now, I'll just serve same ol' same ol' all summer. Right now I'm thinking:
hot dogs with local beef/pork hot dogs (I had a hot dog bahn mi at a restaurant that was quite good)
Blueberry cake from King Arthur Flour's recent email
I will freeze more local corn because it made the best corn chowder in the fall
Stir fried asparagus and ground pork (local pork) is a new favorite and I'll transition to green beans when I have them in the garden
sour cream and chive drop biscuits
dried bean salads with fresh ingredients
Tomato Paella (NYT, maybe Mark Bittman?)
Hainese Chicken (definitely Bittman)
Asparagus Tart with sour cream and black pepper crust (Epicurious, made it once will have to make one more time before the season ends!)
Grilled peaches with balsamic vinegar
you reminded me, anything that involves peaches, blueberries, and corn, there are lots of savory possibilities and also desserts. I'm waiting until tomorrow to get I hope get local rhubarb at the farmers market to go into rhubarb desserts (DOTM here on Chowhound). I love asparagus in all preparations, but for the few precious weeks we have local asparagus, I just roast or sear and eat with an herbal fresh sauce of some sort.
A few weeks ago I canned green tomato pickle. Last night I roasted an eye of the round specifically because cold it is so good with green tomato pickle. We just had it for lunch with a little cottage cheese and a terrific tomato. Not bucket list cooking but very summery.
Tomato pie - had it for the first time recently and liked it
Chicken corn soup, Pa Dutch style, to freeze
Gazpacho and other chilled soups, both fruit and vegetable
Too many summer fruit desserts to list
Pickled okra, canned
Easy Gazpacho: 4 large peeled tomatoes, 1 cucumber partly peeled, 1 onion, 1 green pepper. (To peel tomatoes easily pour boiling water over them and let set). Chop all this one thing at a time in Cuisinart---keep them a little crunchy and don't process to mush. Add to big huge can or bottle of tomato juice. Season with 3-4 tablespoons each of olive oil and vinegar. Add salt, garlic powder, and CUMIN (essential). Keep tasting. This makes a lot. Keeps in refrigerator up to a week. Have it ice-cold on hot day. Is low-calorie and would be easy to live on in summertime. Just a terrific thing to have on hand.
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