We are coming in to high summer here, and finally! High 70s during the day and high 50s at night is just where we like it. Now if we could just get an inch of rain every Sunday night between midnight and 5 AM, followed by another week of solid sun that would be just about perfect.
This week: 2 Beefsteak Tomatoes – PF 1 English Cucumber – PF 1 bunch Spinach – CO 1 bunch Parsley – CO 1 head Romaine Lettuce – CO
Here is a slight variation on the sausage and Swiss chard sauteé so common in our house. This recipe calls for a base of creamy polenta underneath the asparagus and Swiss chard available in such abundance this time of year. As noted below, and as recounted so memorably in Bill Buford’s Heat, the polenta only improves from a long, slow cooking time. Also, if you’re going to the trouble of making polenta, you might want to double the batch, and use it as a base for any number of sautées, polenta cakes, or the like through the rest of the week.
It always seems strange to me to credit such an elemental combination as stuffing squash with meat, apples, and onions, but this recipe from culinate.com does it as gracefully as any I’ve seen. You can’t go wrong with this. Hold the sausage and go 1.5x on the vegetables if you want to take it vegetarian.
If Google search results are any indication, potatoes with swiss chard are an Italian favorite, and one combination I had never considered before! This recipe is just one of many interpretations of this pairing out there, so if you should like this recipe (or even if you don’t) keep searching, there are many more like it out there!
Odds are you have nearly everything for this dressing in your house already. There is no comparison between this and the storebought stuff and it takes no time at all. Win-win!
Gold nugget squash is a dry, sweet squash which makes for a rich, silky soup when puréed. It is quite dry, so you may find that you need to add a little more broth than this recipe calls for (or whipping cream, if that is how you roll). This recipe comes from the consistently excellent Smitten Kitchen. As Perelman suggests below, you will certainly want to bake the gold nugget and scoop out the flesh rather than trying to peel it’s tough outer rind. I would substitute the gold nugget for the acorn in the recipe below, rather than using all Gold Nugget.
This recipe for an Asian Pear salad was adapted from chef Nathan Lyon’s recipe posted via Food.com. The only real change is the substitution of 1⁄2 head butter lettuce for the baby (beet/spinach/arugula) greens. There’s nothing too innovative about the inclusion of blue cheese or toasted pecans here, either, but the dressing, nuts, and blue cheese are just the thing to bring together the sweetness of the pears and the bite of the radicchio. This recipe doubles readily for larger gatherings.
This is an endlessly adaptable recipe, subject to what you have in abundance in the fridge and pantry at the moment.
This recipe combines three things that nearly everyone enjoys – fire, fruit, and balsamic glazes – and one thing that nearly everyone can stomach if it is surrounded by the first three – summer squash. I kid! There is nothing not to love in this charming little warm summer salad recipe