Summer

The best thing about this time of year is the abundance of fresh ingredients available at the Farmer's Markets and roadside farm stands.  Freshly harvested arugula is widely available right now, which makes me almost giddy, I love it's peppery flavor.

This dinner or lunch comes together in minutes which works perfectly for my schedule at the moment.  It's a very summery dish with little to no effort going into making it.  Not to mention it's very light on the calories.

Enjoy it with a refreshing glass of white wine while sitting on the patio enjoying family and friends.

And I’d say, “Yech.”Or at least I used to. I’m not sure when the exact transition from terrible to tantilizing took place, but I can assure you it’s a food miracle. As a child, if any part of a raw tomato touched my plate, I couldn’t eat the item on it. The pulpy, soft texture, the runny pink juice – don’t even get me started about the seeds – was all like garlic to a vampire. The only thing that was (and still is) worse – the pickle.  (How could they do that to the cool deliciousness of the cucumber?)  But, I digress. You seriously could have tortured me by forcing me to take a bite out of one. I would have given up every secret I had before I ever put one in my mouth.

The tomato was my friend as long as it was cooked. Pizza, spaghetti, even salsa (I know it’s raw, but spices count for a lot) was enjoyed with pleasure.  Gradually as I made my way into the world I became more embarrassed by my food quirks and stopped picking them out of things. If I could order something without the tomato, say a sandwich, I would. Though I didn’t like it I hated wasting a “perfectly good” slice I wasn’t going to eat.  However, as I became more and more addicted to big, bountiful salads – inevitable for anyone who moves to California where there’s fresh produce year-round – I found leaving the tomato out was a much harder request.

Since over here we've been eating too many bbq ribs, hot dogs (yum), hamburgers, and mac n cheese, we thought we'd feature recipes of our other favorite summer bbq dish: salmon, bbq'd and otherwise, which was partly inspired by the graavlax and potato pancake recipe in Patricia Wells' new cookbook Salad as a Meal.

 Patricia Wells' Salmon Gravlax

Lomi Lomi Salmon

Smoked-Salmon and Cucumber Rolls

Patricia Wells' Salmon Gravlax with Potato Parmesan Galettes

Salmon Croquettes

Alan's Grilled Salmon

Crispy Pan-Seared Salmon with Sautéed Fiddleheads

Maple-Glazed Wild Salmon

Pomegranate Broiled Salmon with Garlic-Smashed Potatoes

A simple pasta is a life saver. How many nights are you rescued from eating out of a box just because you know how to throw together a good simple pasta? First tip: Don’t just rely on tomato sauce to coat the pasta. I love good sweet, milky ricotta and when I’m at a store where I can find it I tend to go overboard and buy a bit too much. So it’s ricotta on toast for breakfast, ricotta with fruit for lunch and ricotta as the “sauce” for a quick seasonal pasta.

In this dish I started with ricotta, then saw I had some pesto, added a couple of tablespoons of that, then added some crunchy sweet baby tomatoes and slices of green onion. While I was waiting for my pasta water to boil I discovered a couple of tiny zucchini with flowers attached and an ear of corn that needed to be used up. So I cut the niblets off the corn, sliced the zucchini in half lengthwise and shredded the flowers with my fingers.