This traditional American summer classic is best made with very fresh peaches when they are in season in August and early September.
Be sure to buy them where they are grown! As with most fruit, the riper a peach gets, the softer it gets, so tree-ripe fruit is hard to pack and ship. Peaches shipped from Georgia or elsewhere are typically picked somewhat underripe, and then gassed with ethylene in a warehouse to "ripen" them artificially.
This handsome drink is complex and flavorful, suitable for hot nights or cold ones.
Lucien Gaudin was a world-champion fencer in the early 20th Century, winning awards from 1905 to 1928, including four gold medals and two silver medals in the 1924 and 1928 Olympic games. In the 1920s and 1930s, new cocktails were invented for all sorts of pop-culture references. Most have long since failed the test of time, but this tasty gin-and-Campari concoction remains a winner!
This heavy pastry is middle-eastern. I have been told it is Armenian, Greek, Lebanese, and Turkish. Whoever invented it deserves a prize!
This is sweet, but not super-sweet. It's great with tea or coffee after a light middle-eastern dinner in the summer.
The original fall classic!
I like this best early in the season with Yellow Transparents, and late in the season with Northern Spy, Golden Russet, and Baldwin apples.
We did it again. The weather forecast was promising, so the VP Engineering surprised us with a shiny new gas grill!
The Software Developers and the QA crew had at it, with a little help from the Technical Writers, Marketing, and two industrious interns. Our CSA share came in that morning, so we had a lot of "raw material" to work with.
This was our biggest pot-luck lunch so far, maybe thanks to the creative energy unleashed by that grill. Some of it was competitive energy, and some was just the joy of sharing something delicious with our friends.
We had:
This is a fine accompaniment to Grilled Scallops.
I had some egg yolks on hand, so I made this Mayonnaise up to accompany a lot of summer dishes, mostly chicken salad, grilled chicken and white fish, and fresh farmers' market vegetables. It's really good!
This is easy to prepare in an electric mixer. This recipe makes quite a lot!
Sous-vide cooking is a technique, not a recipe. The principle is to cook a piece of meat slowly at a carefully controlled temperature no higher than the final cooking temperature of the interior of the meat. This results in supremely tender meat.
The steak cooked in the homemade cooker below reached an internal temperature of 131 degrees Fahrenheit after an hour and 53 minutes in the cooker.
A simple cooler for the summer, the Highball is just any spirit served in a tall glass with ice and soda.
There are many types of highballs, including the venerable Gin and Tonic, the Moscow Mule, the Cuba Libre (and its degenerate cousin the Rum & Coke), all the various Collinses...the list goes on longer than the summer does.
Made properly, this has only a jigger (an ounce-and-a-half) of liquor and the rest is ice and soda, so it's an easy way to relax on a lazy summer afternoon without getting drunk.
It's not illegal to add a touch of triple sec or other liqueur and a dash of bitters, and then you unlock a whole realm of classic cocktails repurposed as summer coolers!
I invented this for my sister at her request on the occasion of a big birthday. Like her, it is three parts Irish to one part Italian, with a little bitters to balance the natural sweetness...
Her friend Lesli called it a blonde Manhattan, and that's a pretty good description. It's a summer-weight cocktail made with Irish Whiskey and Carpano Bianca Vermouth (that's a bianco vermouth, not a dry or a sweet vermouth).
This is a light and refreshing version of the traditional Bread Pudding to enjoy after a summer cookout with family and friends!
This easy and delicious Burgundy-style recipe is no trouble at all to prepare. The chestnuts can come from a jar, so it's just a matter of adding stock and wine and braising for a while.
The dish is a fine accompaniment for beef or some savory roast pork dishes, and it is a classic accompaniment for roast goose.
Of course you could make this with fresh chestnuts, but the chestnuts in a jar work really well. You can get them at Whole Foods and sometimes at Trader Joe's and other high-end grocery stores. I get them at Ed Hyder's Mediterranean Marketplace in Worcester, or at Micucci's in Portland.
We had an excuse for another of our famous potluck lunches at Actifio, so we did it!
This menu was vast, as usual. I think we had 36 contributions, almost all of them home-made or made in the office (we have a pretty good kitchen!)
I don't have all the recipes, but I have a lot of them:
Fiddleheads are an exceptionally simple and exceptionally seasonal dish, great for a spring brunch.
After steaming them and chilling them, you can do all sorts of things with them. They are decorative, but they have enough flavor to be the vegetable accompaniment to a significant spring meal (maybe with shad roe?).
This dish is simple to prepare and delicious!
It takes longer to preheat the oven than it does to cut and prepare the onions for roasting - it really is simple.
These can be served hot or cold, and they are fine served cocktail-party style with toothpicks and small plates. The flavor is rich but complementary to many savories.
I served these at a wine tasting event at the Old Colony Club. They went well with a good Cabernet Sauvignon and a good Merlot.
