Summertime Food Groups

With Apologies to the USDA

I am tempted to say, Summer is about food! but a quick reflection makes me realize that I can confidently say this about any season. Probably because we always have to eat.

This summer I have been working actively on frugality which means the food groups of summer are as follows: quick desserts, beans, and rice.

At the cafe I manage, one of the first things I did was replaced the jarred lemon curd with an in-house version. It’s so much brighter, and at the rate we go through it, the preservatives in the bought version aren’t a plus. However, I never made lemon curd at home that much. In fact, let me say this: I am just getting into desserts. Now, I will most likely never take on a Bûche de Noël but dessert is my weakest area culinarily speaking so I want to work on it. Also, our daughter is into dessert and I feel better with her mixing things without heat (batters, etc) than over heat.

For the Fourth of July we were invited to spend the day at our friends’ house — they have a son a year younger than our daughter, so they make for good playmates. I was told I didn’t have to bring anything, which is an advantage of being invited by a couple in the restaurant industry, but I just can’t. Having locked in my lemon curd recipe over the past few months, I decided to make a parfait.

Our daughter eats a lot of fruit, but also gets a bit tired of whichever fruit she is eating before she’s finished. I save the odds and ends and make jam. This was already made and in the fridge. I whipped up a batch of lemon curd and made quick whipped cream in the food processor. Some store-bought shortbread later, a parfait was born.

(l) parfait (r) labneh and cherries

My other common dessert move is macerated fruit over labneh. Yogurt is absolutely fine, I just like taking the extra step of straining it; it ends up very rich which is great for a simple fruit topping. In this case, I had cherries that I pitted, tossed with a minimal amount of sugar and a kiss of vanilla syrup. This was for our friend’s weeknight visit. If you start macerating your fruit and straining your yogurt before anything else, dessert will be waiting for you when you clear dinner. Plating is super easy — if you can do mashed potatoes and gravy you can do this — and garnish with a bit of mint.

(l) Beans and greens (r) Beans and greens ;)

In addition to our CSA from The Root Down, this year we expanded and got a bean share from Buttermilk Bean located in the Finger Lakes. While I have a preparation for beans that is oven based, I like that in the summer they cook up just fine on the stove top. Additionally, fresh beans cook up pretty darn quickly after an day-long soak.

The two dishes pictured were taken a few weeks apart from the same batch of beans. The beauty of the freezer is that I really only had the stove on for a long time once and got multiple meals out of it.

First photo is of beans and sausage in broth with pickled fennel, peppadews, and shallots. The second photo ups the frugality game: white beans with rosemary and onions, radicchio, spinach, stale baguette, pepperoni, pecorino, fermented red pepper and smoked paprika paste. The stale bread soaks up all the broth — simple and delicious.

(l) fritters before frying (c) salad with carrot fritters and buttermilk vinaigrette (r) leftover rice cake

I like frying food in the summer. The windows can be open to help mitigate lingering odors and it is also a very quick method to cook nearly anything. Fritters and other fried things are also a great way to clean out the fridge.

Our CSA has buried me in carrots. Our daughter won’t eat them (she is still bragging about the one piece of cucumber she ate 18 months ago) and one can only have crudite so many times.

The fritters are simple. Shred your veg, season it how you may, and then add just enough flour to bind. You can use whatever type of flower you like. If you are heading to the Himalayas, chickpea flour works great and adds protein. I generally use rice flour, but have certainly used AP flour as well. If you are worried it won’t bind, add an egg you crazy so and so.

Here’s my ranch/buttermilk vinaigrette recipe:
Blend together
1 tbsp Dijon
1c buttermilk
2 garlic cloves, micro-planned if you have it
1 lemon’s worth of juice
Slowly drizzle in:
1c of grapeseed or other neutral oil
Decide how thick you want it:
1/4-1c of mayo
green herbs
s+p

Like beans, rice is cheap per pound and you can make a bunch of it once and then use it in a multitude of applications. When I was in college I worked at a country club and one day for shift meal the chef used leftover risotto to make cakes. I learned over time that risotto al salto wasn’t his idea, but goddamn I still think about those cakes. He has gone on to work for Wegmans and is pretty high up in the region — I ran into him recently. I suspect the run-in put this idea back in my head.

This was white rice. Korean style white rice, so pretty starchy. I had a good amount of grated queso fresco in the fridge, the aforementioned carrots, peas in the freezer, and fresh onions.

Putting it together was pretty simple. Cold rice in a bowl, cheese, sauteed veg (carrots, peas, onions), pecorino, salt and pepper. From there, it was just a matter of portioning them out into cakes, frying them, and serving them on a bed of tomato sauce. I admit, as a house we have bought into the superiority of Rao’s tomato sauce. Yes, it is more expensive than most tomato sauces, but it is available at Aldi’s. Also, it really is a good tomato sauce and since we are in the between times of mass tomato harvests and me having used up all my freezer sauce, it’ll do just fine.

That’s it. That’s my report on some summer cooking. Thanks for reading.