Summer

With my garden laden with cherry tomatoes this year, I've tried to come up with different solutions for using them in recipes besides eating them raw as fast as they ripen. Last year I made cherry tomato salad, but even then the plants were so abundant that I fed my coworkers with tomatoes for weeks upon weeks. This year, my cherry tomatoes are the only ones that haven't been affected by the blight, which has caused havoc on farms in the Northeast. Some farmers have now resorted to burning their crops. Luckily the disease hasn't been so drastic in the small scale. This year I'm keeping all the tomatoes to myself.

For me each raw cherry tomato is a burst of powerful summer flavor, but with a bit of cooking, they are even better. One of the best ways to get the maximum flavor from vegetables is by roasting them. Roasting cherry tomatoes concentrates their flavor so that they taste almost like sun-dried tomatoes. In this recipe, I roast them with the addition of garlic, oil, red pepper flakes, and vinegar. The balsamic vinegar brings out a layer of savory sweetness while the other ingredients create a simple and very tasty sauce. There are no long hours of cooking sauce on the stove top required. Once the pasta and roasted tomatoes are combined, the addition of fresh herbs releases perfumed aromas and pungent flavors. It's truly a very satisfying and quick-to-make pasta dish.

Cheese and tomatoes go together like, well, pizza.  But sometimes you don’t want all that bread.  Sometimes you want something satisfying, fresh, that’s hot and quick.  Insalata Caprese is great, but when I want something a bit more substantial and warm I make Scamorza Affumicata alla Griglia.  

Or grilled smoked mozzarella topped with seasoned cherry tomatoes.  It’s the easiest dinner ever.

Take a few cherry tomatoes, cut them in half and toss with good extra virgin olive oil, salt, the pepper of your choice (I love Aleppo pepper) and some oregano (I have a bunch of dried Sicilian oregano that I use by crumbling a bit into the bowl.

From the LA Times

You know summer's here when your cocktail looks like a snow cone. Or a lassi. Or an ice cream float. Or a fruity soda pop that comes in a glass bottle, complete with bubbles and twist-off cap.

A wave of new cocktails that hew toward the playful not only puts us squarely in summer but also is helping to make L.A.'s cocktail scene uniquely its own.

The snow cones at Son of a Gun on West 3rd Street are tiki-inspired crushed-ice cocktails served in paper cones that rest in julep cups. A new cocktail menu at 1886 Bar at the Raymond in Pasadena features bottled fizzy cocktails. And at Pour Vous, the French-themed bar that opened on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood two months ago, the menu is punctuated with lassis and parfait look-alikes and drinks that resemble something from your favorite juice bar. What's up with all the fun drinks from serious bartenders?

"Our cocktail culture really reflects an evolution," says Lindsay Nader, part of the Pour Vous team that helped realize a novel take on French-inspired drinking. "There are [craft cocktail] pioneers in New York who are still kind of stuck in this rigid way of working and creating. They aren't breaking free of the handlebar-mustache, buttoned-up attitude. In L.A., we're moving out of that era, it's anything goes, we're having fun with cocktails and stripping away some of that seriousness."

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From the LA Times

Peaches and nectarines are kissing cousins. In fact, maybe closer. Plant a bunch of peach pits and a few of them will actually sprout nectarine trees, and vice versa. It used to be said that the difference was that peaches had fuzz while nectarines didn’t. But in supermarkets today, that’s hard to determine since many of the peaches have been mechanically de-fuzzed.

Generally, the flavor of nectarines is lighter and a little more acidic, almost lemony, while peaches are richer and muskier. Ripe nectarines can make you gasp with pleasure, but a great, perfectly ripe peach will make you fall to your knees. Still, you can use them interchangeably. What’s good for the peach is good for the nectarine.

How to choose: Check the background color. Ripe fruit will be golden, not green. Mature fruit that hung on the tree long enough to develop full sugar will have a distinctive orange cast. Always with peaches and nectarines, trust your nose: fruit that is ripe and delicious will smell that way.