Garlic and pine nuts, currants and onion take the ubiquitous tomato-mozzarella salad into new territory.
The yams are best at room temperature and improve with several days in the refrigerator.
My first bowl was in Paris 30 years ago. It brought instant devotion. Hot steaming broth with wafts of ginger, anise and clove, slick rice noodles, slices of rare beef, and flanking the bowl was a plate of what is called "table salad" (sa lach dia in Vietnamese), a heaping platter of additions, like fresh herbs, bean sprouts, greens, lime and chiles—this is the essence of North Vietnam's Pho (pronounced "fuh") soup. Entire restaurants are built on this one dish and all its variations.
Slices of crisp fall apples and fresh basil leaves lend a whiff of the season to this classic sandwich.
The smaller fennel bulbs at our farmers markets tend to have a more pronounced licorice flavor that pairs nicely with the tang of good tomatoes.
Ingredients
Note: Have everything cut and ready, but mix just before serving.
This big, dramatic, open-face fruit tart looks like it just came off the set of an Italian country magazine shoot. Better yet, it’s nearly no work. Bake the crust ahead when summer temperatures are cool. Whenever you feel like serving the dessert, slather it with the ricotta-mascarpone cream (done ahead as well) and top it with the fruit and herbs. Any single fruit or combo works, but ripe melons and stone fruits with berries are a favorite.
We've all had those post-farmers'-market moments when, while unloading your goodies, you remember that you actually bought three pounds of zucchini in an optimistic moment and now what the heck are you going to do with it? Well, this is what.
Meat loaf is one of those dishes that can take on so much, like vegetables, leftover mashed potatoes, the end of a bottle of wine from the weekend, a bit of stale bread.