Even more so than corn on the cob swabbed with butter, when summer comes, I look forward to sweet, nubby corn salads loaded with vegetables and a zesty dressing.
We often overlook the bell pepper, which bestows an uncanny, slightly smoky sweetness to a dish.
Ingredients
Each summer, Johannes Sailer—chef at Les Abeilles in the Provencal village of Sablet—creates an all-tomato menu. One year he opened the meal with this stunning soup: all red, all fresh, all full of honest tomato flavor. This liquid blend of tomatoes, seasoning, top-quality olive oil, and vinegar makes you fee as though you are drinking your salad!
A mere tablespoon of cream turns fresh tomato soup into swoon material. Don't cook it in, add it at the table.
Eggplant gets kind of mushed up as it cooks in the hobo pack, which actually turns out to be a good quality, particularly if it’s getting mushed up with tomatoes and garlic.
This recipe's inspiration was Chinese chef Susanna Food of Philadelphia. When we interviewed Susanna, we were struck by her lack of rigid culinary rules. She interprets the traditional Chinese palate with modern Western ingredients, boldly mixing balsamic vinegar with soy sauce, or rosemary with dried yellow soybeans. Surprises fill her books. For instance, did you know that fresh corn is used often in the northern regions of China?
Never seed tomatoes for this or any other sauce. Much of the tomatoes flavor is contained in its center, in the pulp and gel that surround seeds and even possibly the seeds themselves. The flavor difference is dramatic.
This is a basic vinaigrette only instead of being cold, it's mixed together in a medium hot pan, which intensifies the flavor of the tomato and the sweetness of the shallot. This is a great sauce for white fish, halibut or cod or tilapia (and would do wonders for the ubiquitous boneless chicken breast). But it also it works well with boiled new potatoes, salt cod, or a combination of boiled new potatoes, or other root vegetables, and salt cod or smoked trout.