Some people say it’s fall. Others argue for spring. In our opinion, the best time of year to cook and eat is summer, when the thick sea air seasons your French fries, when you race to lick ice cream that has begun its melt, when cool smashed cucumbers break through the heat. So we asked members of Cooking and Food staff to share what they’re most excited to eat this summer. Their dream recipe picks are below.
View and save the recipes here.
For me, summer means grilled oysters. 1
The oysters in Louisiana — I’m based in New Orleans — grow extra plump in the warm months, making them ideal for grilling. My colleague in Los Angeles, Tejal Rao, pairs them with a spicy butter made with Crystal Hot Sauce, my go-to. (I actually keep a bottle in my car, for fried-seafood po’ boys.)
Summer also means it’s time for the best local produce. The tomatoes that grow downriver are called Creole tomatoes, and when they hit the markets, usually in May, I begin the annual tradition of reminding myself that Julia Moskin’s best gazpacho makes the best gazpacho. 2 I can’t imagine facing the summer in the South without it.
I want Vietnamese iced coffee 3 for breakfast when it’s really hot out.
I want pie made with fresh fruit — peach pie, blueberry pie, blueberry peach pie, raspberry cream pie. And I want homemade ice cream to melt all over the top.
I want lobster rolls (the Connecticut kind with melted butter) near a beach somewhere, and a Thermos full of minty lemonade in a kayak, and mint juleps on a porch.
That first tomato sandwich of the season, 4 eaten sloppily, joyfully over the sink.
Here in the Deep South, where I’m based, my summer is like a long, delicious marathon.
The starting gun is that first round of spring field peas, with names like zipper and pink-eye purple hull. I simmer them with Vidalia onion and maybe a piece of side meat, then drizzle them with aioli.
Next come the peaches. I love to line them up across the counter, so many I feel as if I will drown in their juice and pie. 5 Then I get pummeled with tomatoes.
Last comes the okra, the real workhorse of a Southern summer. I cut it into matchsticks, toss it with seasoned flour, and flash-fry it. I slice it lengthwise and roast it hot for about 15 minutes with chunks of onions. I skewer and grill it and stir-fry it.
By the time the muscadines are heavy on the vine in late August, I’m exhausted in the best way.
Kimchi bibim guksu 6 is the dish I have on repeat all summer.
I stash a big batch of the spicy-sweet dressing in the fridge, then just have to boil some noodles and julienne some vegetables to serve it. On sweaty days, I skip the eggs but embrace whatever produce I have.
But I’m also eating corn on the cob at every opportunity, cucumbers every which way (raw, and in soups, salads and smoothies), and tomatoes at every turn (sliced, splashed with olive oil and fish sauce). I’m drinking all the seltzer but dabble in gin and tonics topped with a little granita or sorbet, and my summer highlight: negroni slushies to take to the beach.
I want a butterflied hot dog, 7 charred and covered in pico de gallo, preferably eaten on the beach.
I want ceviche with shrimp and scallops. I want pulpo straight off the grill. Pan con tomate! Panzanella! A summer pudding cake, dripping with fruit juices, for dessert. Do drinks count? I also want a watermelon agua fresca — or a mojito.
I want to eat all the cucumbers 8 — every which way.
But especially smacked into craggy shards and dressed in a fire-bright emulsion of gochugaru, fish sauce and sesame oil. If you’ve ever had a peak-summer cucumber picked straight from the garden, you know it can taste of lightly sugared water, sweet and savory. Sometimes, when they’re that good, I like to eat them simply salted, which drains them of their excess liquid, concentrating their flavor.
When it’s especially hot out, they’re the thing that keeps me going to the next meal. Luckily, they’re hydrating.
I can’t wait to make Tejal Rao’s fried chicken biscuits 9 with hot honey butter, wrap them in wax paper and take them to a picnic at the beach.
I can’t wait for strawberry shortcake, for watermelon, for peach cobbler. I can’t wait to smoke beef ribs all day in the sun, to eat fat slices of ripe tomato bathed in brown butter, to steam a mess of clams afterward, to eat the ribs at dusk. Summer!
At some point, Big Spritz got to me.
Or maybe it was Big Seltzer.
Either way, I love a drink that sparkles and effervesces. 10 So, all summer long, I will be either adding seltzer to whatever juice is nearby (grapefruit, lemonade) or pouring it over an aperitif (Aperol, Campari, Lo-Fi Gentian, Forthave) along with some sparkling wine.
I’ll just be sipping and eating cucumbers dipped in hummus. Sipping and dipping. Sipping and dipping.
I don’t think summer has truly arrived until the first brats 11 hit the Weber kettle.
Maybe it’s the nostalgia, but I almost always prefer packaged brands to fancy butcher-case versions. If any of my uncles are at the cookout, I won’t be let anywhere near the grill, but still, I’ll happily stand by, brown mustard in hand and at the ready.
Once the temperature hits 80 degrees, I lean heavily on no-recipe recipes to selfishly maximize my time in the sun.
And since I don’t typically have a huge appetite when it’s hot out, I find myself eating a lot of dips — baba ghanouj, guacamole 12 and white bean dip — with tortilla chips, pita bread or vegetables like jicama and carrots in lieu of bigger meals (sorry, Mom). All so I can be outside, a caipirinha in one hand, pita and dip in the other.
Chewy-edged, deep-fried plantains. Smoky, shopping-cart hot dogs. Esquites, 13 esquites, esquites!
Watermelon chaat. 14 Falooda in the backyard. Squeaky fresh artichokes with lemon and mayonnaise. Ripe mangoes 15 with chile and lime.
Intensely perfumed melons and soft, drippy-bottomed figs under slices of prosciutto covered with olive oil. All the berries, washed and dried and piled on softly whipped cream that’s sweetened with a little cane syrup. Green beans and green garlic, and that beautiful window when okra, corn and tomatoes are *all* at their best.
Burgers, grilled 16 over glowing embers, served at a favorite seasonal restaurant just off the highway.
A pie made with tart Michigan cherries.
My in-laws’ bulgogi, made out in the backyard as their tabletop electric grill gets a vacation in the summer. My mother-in-law’s naengmyeon.
Strawberries, sour cream and light brown sugar, a simple dessert I first experienced at Crabby’s in Belcoville, N.J.
A New Orleans snoball — Satsuma or wedding cake flavor. A cherry Merlin from the ice cream truck. A Black Cow from the A&W drive-in.
Fresh corn on the cob. 17 It’s actually quite good microwaved on high for a minute or two. Gasp. I know.
My dreamiest summer dish is a perfect watermelon, but just as good? A watermelon margarita. 18
All the homemade ice cream, served in a cone with chocolate sprinkles! (Dishes are for winter.)
Oh, and spiedies! A staple of barbecues and picnics for me, growing up outside Binghamton, N.Y., and an essential taste of summer.
There’s nothing quite like that first bite of a tostone. 19
It isn’t always effortless, eating outside in the summer, and that’s why I want the portability, durability and versatility of a crispy-crunchy-soft tostone.
What else do I long for? A needlessly elaborate cheese and charcuterie board, full of fruit and fresh berries from the market — I wait all season for the tiny Tristar strawberries that come late — and a spoonful of raw honey, drizzled over everything.
I want cold noodles 20 and smashed cucumber salad, packed away for beach trips alongside lots of salty snacks in other totes.
All that salt water makes me crave more saltiness, so if I pick up a corn dog from the boardwalk, I slather it in yellow mustard.
I want the thick rib-eyes my dad grills for family barbecues. Everyone — even the youngest grandkids — smushes the slices into freshly steamed rice so the juices run all through the sticky grains.
But most summer days and nights, I want sliced tomatoes and chilled silken tofu drizzled with a soy sauce-sesame oil mix and lots of toasted sesame seeds, tortillas filled with good things 21 from the grill, and lots of salsa for overstuffed burritos and tacos.
Salad for dinner!
On the laziest days, I can put together the chef Scarlett Lindeman’s tuna salad 22 at the last minute from pantry staples and the herbs growing on the porch. August means tomato-basil salad every night; when I am lucky enough to be sick of tomatoes, 23 a kale salad with lemon, Parmesan and almonds. And, always, grilled bread rubbed with garlic and drizzled with oil alongside.
I love fried seafood — catfish, 24 oysters, clams — in summer.
It makes me feel as if I’m by the water, even though I’m sitting in a dilapidated lawn chair on my neighbor’s driveway.
And I don’t know why, maybe because I especially like to eat them outside? But I love tacos 25 even more in summer than I do the rest of the year. I douse mine in hot sauce — pretty much any brand — heat on top of summer heat.
A hot dog and a beer.
Fried chicken and a beer.
Potato salad, like a giant tub of it.
Enormous soda fountain drinks with pebble ice,
A frozen piña colada 26 and falling asleep on the beach.
An icy Tom Collins — so cold my fingers go a little numb — that I’ll drink on the back steps, at twilight, while I watch my kids eat drippy cherry Popsicles on the swing set.
A just-right farmers’ market peach — it seems to me that the universe allows you one perfect specimen per summer — that I’ll eat at the park, the cool grass leaving crosshatch patterns on my bare feet.
Jerrelle Guy’s fresh strawberry pie 27 with a salty pretzel crust. I’ll make it with stunning-red berries in a vacation rental on the shores of Lake Michigan. There probably won’t be an electric mixer, so the whipped cream filling might be a little loose, but it won’t matter to anyone.
Produced by Krysten Chambrot, Kim Gougenheim, Genevieve Ko, Rebecca Lieberman and Emily Weinstein.
Special thanks to Wayne Kamidoi.
Photo Credits: Christopher Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks (Watermelon, Hot Dog With Pico de Gallo, Piña Colada, Best Gazpacho, Perfect Peach Pie, La Quebrada Spritz, Beer Brats, Esquites, Watermelon Chaat, Mango With Chile-Lime Salt, Grilled Hamburgers, Rice Noodles With Seared Pork, Carrots and Herbs). Gentl and Hyers for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop Stylist: Amy Wilson (Grilled Oysters). David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews (Vietnamese Iced Coffee, Juicy BLT). Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich (Kimchi Bibim Guksu, Tostones, Mission Burrito, Tacos al Pastor). Beatriz Da Costa for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Susie Theodorou (Smacked Cucumber “Quick Kimchi,” Watermelon Margarita). Michael Kraus for The New York Times (Fried Chicken Biscuits With Hot Honey Butter). Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini (Guacamole). Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews (Corn on the Cob With Old Bay and Lemon). Gentl and Hyers for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop Stylist: Pamela Duncan Silver (Scarlett’s Tuna Salad). Carol Sachs for The New York Times (Tomato and Pomegranate Salad). Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Liza Jernow (Fried Catfish With Hot Sauce). Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Erin Jeanne McDowell (Strawberry Pretzel Pie).
Source : food
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