Too Hot to Cook!

By Sandy Hu

In San Francisco, summers are usually cool, so rarely is it too hot to cook. But elsewhere, temperatures are rising and no one wants to be chained to a stove.

My favorite no-cook summer meal is a salumi platter – hot copa, prosciutto, mortadella or other cured meats, plus some thinly sliced ham, all arranged on a wooden board or platter with one or two cheeses, some peperonicini or cornichons, roasted red peppers, sliced cucumber and a baguette or two with a good Dijon mustard. While it’s a delicious, no-fuss appetizer for company, a salumi platter can also make a welcome light supper on its own.

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Chill out with an Apricot Piña Colada

By Sandy Hu

Summer is a time for fruity drinks – preferably gussied up with a fancy garnish and sipped through a straw. If you have a blender, it’s easy to whip up delicious, Fresh Apricot Piña Coladas in minutes. Serve each drink immediately because the ingredients will separate upon standing.

Fruits are not uniformly sweet, so you may have to adjust the recipe with more simple syrup, depending on the quality of your fruit. Use simple syrup Instead of sugar to sweeten because sugar will not dissolve readily in cold liquids.

To make simple syrup, just combine equal parts of sugar and water and boil gently for a minute or two until sugar is dissolved. Store any leftovers in a glass jar, refrigerated, up to a month. You can use simple syrup to sweeten iced tea, sangria, lemonade and other cold drinks.

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My Life in Recipes

By Marilyn Hunter

While searching through my recipe box the other day, it occurred to me that this little wooden box is a metaphor of my life. Every well-worn recipe tells a story, a snapshot of a particular time in my life – times when I’ve been up and times when I’ve been down.

There are recipes for celebrations (my favorite chocolate cake) and recipes for difficult times when I craved comfort food (mac ‘n’ cheese and pot pie). I can think of a recipe that has accompanied almost every milestone. These recipes tell my life story, and if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a recipe must be worth a million.

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A Week of Chicken

By Lori Powell

My go-to find for a quick weeknight dinner is rotisserie chicken. When it first became the rage, all you could purchase was a whole bird that was pre-seasoned. Now you can buy just a breast or half a chicken that is organic and unseasoned.

I usually go for either the half or whole bird and then transform it into many weeknight dinners. When most of the meat is gone from the bones, use the carcass to make chicken soup or a flavorful chicken broth, including some of the meaty leftovers.

So instead of my usual recipe format this week, I thought it would be more useful to give you some ideas for what you can make from a rotisserie chicken for your quick-fix weeknight dinner.

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Peas in a Pod

By Katie Barreira

Whether from a childhood Halloween costume, grocery delivery service, or maternity outfitter, we’re all familiar with the concept of peas in a pod. But for all this anthropomorphizing of the charming vegetable, how often do you actually see a pea in its pod?

There are snow peas, the flat, slightly crescent shaped legumes common in Asian stir-fries, but like green beans and sugar snap peas, these pods can be consumed shell and all. Then, there are the lumpy bags of crystallized peas found in the freezer section. But, once upon a time, there was such a thing as a shelling pea, a long, waxy-skinned pod, lined with vibrant green orbs.

In the movies, shelling or garden peas (as they are commonly known), play a starring role in porch scenes where Southern women hull away the afternoon. This week, I came across a literary reference to shelling peas, which sent me straight to the farmers’ market.

“I love how you can snap a pea’s stem and pull the string and how it leaves a perfect seam that opens easily under your thumbnail. And then you find those sweet, starchy peas in their own canoe of crisp, watery, and almost sugary pod.”
-Gabrielle Hamilton, Blood, Bones & Butter

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