This is summer finger food — a big pile of shrimp that you peel and eat with your fingers only needs lots of napkins. Shrimp stay juicier when grilled in their shells, and the short marinating time heightens their character. Serve them hot, warm, or lightly chilled with Cucumber Stick Salad.
Iced coffee is a deliciously refreshing way to enjoy your favorite coffees in warmer weather.
Fresh summer greens and bits of sweet red pepper dot rice the color of a sunset — this is one good-looking salad to bring to the table, or to pack away for a picnic. In fact, I first tasted it when a Spanish friend brought it to one of our “Shakespeare in the Park” picnics in New York. It’s indestructible enough to go almost anywhere. Can be made hours ahead and chilled, but serve the salad at room temperature.
Sweet, tart and snappy with healthy shots of hot sauce, and grilled to near potato chip crispness, in our book the chicken wing approaches celestial perfection. Neither light meat nor dark, they are a coupling of both, and nothing pulls in flavor and crisps up in cooking quite like wings. It’s that wonderful proportion of luscious skin to meat and bone.
Eggplant, so good on its own, is also a culinary chameleon, absorbing herbs and spices to become any number of different dishes. In Romagna, palm-sized slices are steeped in garlic, basil, parsley and olive oil before grilling over hot coals. Eaten either hot or at room temperature, this is one of those simple, but ultimately satisfying dishes that goes with almost anything and is so good eaten on its own.
When our great-grandparents didn't want to bother with the mess and fuss of doing ice cream in hand-cranked ice cream freezers, they used ice cube trays and did this stirred version. No equipment needed and the ice cream tastes just swell.
Close to a homemade ginger ale but with more of a nip, this is a formula for an icy spiced drink made to order. Simple Syrup is steeped with fresh ginger and fresh lemon juice then mixed with sparkling water for an effervescent kick. To mellow that kick out, turn it into a punch by adding a little light rum, then relax. Drink it over ice with lemon slices and, if you like, halved stalks of lemongrass as stir sticks.
A lovely thing about this dish is that it can be a meal for vegetarians or carnivores alike, and nothing says summer like eating with our fingers. Eating outside means we have permission to pick up all sorts of things — from chicken wings and hot dogs to these lamb–and vegetable–filled rollups. This is the way it works: Set out a pile of lettuce leaves, a pile of fresh herbs, some ground chile, a bowl of store-bought chickpea dip (hummus), and some instant chive-yogurt sauce. Heap the grilled vegetables on one platter, the cooked lamb on another.
This has been a go-to salad for longer than we remember. Chinese in origin, it takes on nearly anything from the grill. Pair it with Smoky Salmon Steaks, Corn on the Cob with Chile-Lime Dip and, of course, Ginger Hoisin Summer Shrimp.
Cool fresh lime juice, sugar, and red wine over ice make one of the best summer coolers we've had in a long time. Our thanks to Nan Bailly and Sam Haislett of Alexis Bailly Vineyard in Minnesota for sharing this recipe, which they found in a newspaper.