Summer Cooking Notes
Simple formulas for fresh, beautiful meals when you’d rather be outside
Dear Reader,
Pull up your seat at The Kitchen Table. To me, summer cooking is an exercise in getting out of the way. This is not the season for fussing! This is the season for freshness, flavour, colour, and a little bit of speed so we can spend more time in the sun.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, summer is linked with the Fire element: joy, connection, expression, and pleasure. I want my cooking to reflect that intuitive playful quality, making food that lets the season speak for itself with very little interference from me.
Here’s What I’ve Been Eating!
Grilled Proteins
Almost anything feels summer worthy once it hits the grill. Sausages, chicken thighs, flank steak, shrimp, and tofu are my current favourites, and they can all become the centre of a meal with very little effort.
Use a bright marinade — I’ve been especially obsessed with Alexis deBoschnek’s lately— or serve with a sauce, add something fresh, and you’re done!
That can look like chicken thighs with new potatoes, and a heap of garden lettuce, shrimp with cucumbers, herbs, rice noodles, and nuoc cham, or sausages with blanched beans and mustardy potatoes. Simple, but not boring.
Boiled + Blanched Things
At this time of year, I’m boiling and blanching constantly because it’s quick, and doesn’t require a ton of energy or foresight. Mostly new potatoes, peas, green beans, and eggs. These work as independent sides, parts of bigger salads, or the building blocks of a meal that comes together in minutes.
When the mood strikes, I’ll cook the entirety of my haul in salted water, cool them in an ice bath if necessary, and store them in the fridge so that I have cooked vegetables at the ready that I can serve cold, room temp, or bring up to warm.
A Niçoise-ish salad is one of my favourite summer dinners: potatoes, green beans, eggs, tuna or salmon, olives, soft lettuce, tomatoes if they’re ready, and a good dressing.
My signature side of the season is even simpler: boiled new potatoes and peas with lots of salted butter and freshly cracked black pepper. Perfection in a pot!
Crunchy + Raw
Now that we are in heat wave territory, raw foods make sense again.
Young lettuce leaves are served with pretty much every meal either as a side salad or the base of a bowl. Sprouts get piled onto avocado toast. Carrots and cabbage become slaws. Cucumbers and radishes get sliced and salted and served as crudités, tucked beside eggs and toast, or added to noodle and bean salads.
This is one of the easiest ways to make a meal feel abundant without cooking another thing. The crunch does half the work!
Sauces That Save Dinner
In summer, I want flavour without needing to stand over a stove. This is where a good sauce becomes extra valuable. It can recontextualize last night’s leftovers, give extra oomph to salads, or make a bowl of vegetables and grains feel composed. If you have a sauce in the fridge, you are never that far from a meal.
The ones on rotation for me right now are:
