Summer

Strawberry Shortcake seemed to always mark the beginning of summer when I was growing up.

Although we get strawberries almost year round in California, they always taste best in early summer. We always made our “shortcake” with biscuits.

This is a pretty foolproof method. When you stir slightly cooled melted butter into cold buttermilk, the butter will clump.

Although this might look like a mistake, it's one of the secrets to this recipe.

Blueberries are intense. Intense color that stains your mouth purple. Intense sweet and tangy juice so rich it almost tastes like wine. Unlike other fruit, such as apples, they don't even need vanilla or cinnamon to give them a boost. They are the boost. The intensity of blueberries make them a nice kind of accent to other dishes, like in a fruit salad or a salsa. They are also great as polka dots in pancakes and muffins but a little trickier in pie. Just too intense. That's why I love blueberry tarts.

When you pick a bucket full you end up with about four pounds, which is a lot of blueberries! I called my mom for a recipe for a blueberry tart. This particular one uses three cups of blueberries and combines them with a sour cream filling that bakes up like a custard. Plopping blueberries into a custardy base, a pastry cream or clafouti seems like the right way to handle them.

I am hopeless when it comes to pie crust. I just don't have the pie crust mojo. So I rely on recipes with graham cracker crusts, and press-in crusts. This recipe has a crust that is no fail. Really. I swear. I'm going to use it as my default pie crust from now on. My mom cut the recipe out of a newspaper over twenty years ago so I apologize for not being able to attribute it properly. I have simplified the instructions somewhat.

Gazpacho, what a perfect name for a chilled soup. Ever since hearing of the exotic "gazpacho," I have been intrigued and perplexed by its very foreign name. I came to learn that the soup's roots lie in Andalusia in the southern region of Spain. Gazpacho originated as a cold soup of stale bread, garlic, oil, and vinegar. Once tomatoes were brought from the New World and added to the traditional recipe, the summertime soup became even more refreshing. Over the years the soup has transformed, sometimes omitting bread, and in some tomato-less variations including almonds, cucumbers, and grapes. When I tried gazpacho for the first time, I realized what I had been missing and what I had misconstrued as foreignness was just my lack of knowing how incredibly simple it is to make.

With no cooking involved, all that is needed are fresh vegetables, a good sharp knife, and a blender. I've attempted to make gazpacho before but haven't always been successful with achieving the right vegetable combination or the texture. It's entirely about having that just-so touch witth the blender.

To some, May means the Kentucky Derby. To others, the start of the summer growing season. To many backyard chefs, May is the start of barbecue.

Barbecue used to be a very regional thing. One area might mean pork while another means beef. Some barbecue chefs prefer to smoke, some to grill, and some to braise.

There are passionate arguments about dry (a spice rub) vs. wet (cooking with the sauce), and even the ingredients in a sauce, whether the meat is cooked in it or not.

I like to barbecue, and I don’t like to get drawn in to one technique over another. No matter the method, barbecue is just good food. 

I’ve made a tasty POM pomegranate juice barbecue sauce for pork baby back ribs. The sweet spice of the sauce is a nice balance to the salty, tender rib meat.