Summer

Everyone has their favorite recipes. Whether they come from dogeared books or handwritten on yellowed paper or even crinkled laser print-outs, these recipes become favorites in the kitchen and almost become a part of us. I have several that I rely on regularly but none as much as this recipe. It’s a key player in my arsenal of recipes that first appeared in the July edition of Gourmet Magazine from 2006. I remember making it three years ago and completely falling in love with it.

A simple pasta dish of angel hair and the best, ripest tomatoes you can find (heirlooms work perfectly!) make for a really simple supper because there’s no cooking involved except for boiling the pasta. And in the dead of summer the last thing anyone wants to do is turn on the oven or stand over a stove cooking for an hour. That’s why this is such a perfect recipe that I’ll usually make weekly from now until the end of August. It tastes like summer.

It’s pretty foolproof and it’s all about technique here. Two-thirds of the super-ripe tomatoes get diced while the rest get grated with a box grater using the large holes. Pulp, juice and chop make the sauce here and the addition of lemon juice and salt give it that zing. I’ve made it with and without the sugar, that’s mostly a matter of personal preference. The recipe also says it can be made 2 hours in advance but that’s about it. It’s meant to be enjoyed relatively quickly.

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.

Of all the fabulous and quirky names out there such as aubergine, brinjal, melanzane, and egg apple, we had to go with "eggplant." It's such a dull name to describe such a singular vegetable. (Botanically, it's a fruit, but we all use it as a vegetable, so let's go with that.)

Why "eggplant"? Apparently some 18th century European cultivars resembled goose or hen's eggs, so planters called them "eggplants."

Eggplants have a long history. They are native to India where they were first cultivated over 4,000 years ago. During the Middle Ages Arabs introduced eggplant to the Mediterranean region. Eventually European explorers introduced eggplant to places such as Africa and North America. Today China, India, and Egypt are the world's leading producers of eggplant.

Eggplants are available year-round in most major supermarkets, but they are best during August-October, their prime growing season. So here are some tips on how to select, store, and cook with eggplant:

Red currants, the beautiful ruby red berries pictured above, make the perfect tart jelly. Growing in grape-like clusters on small bushes, the fruit has become a rarity in the United States. Mistakenly thought to promote a tree disease, currant bushes across the country were systematically uprooted in the early 1900s, and production was prohibited for many years.

Currants are high in vitamin C and taste tart but pleasant when eaten. Commonly red and black currants are made into jellies. In fact black currant jelly or jam is very popular in England. I remember that while studying abroad in London, no matter how hard I looked, I could not find Concord grape jelly for my peanut butter sandwiches, so black currant jelly became my unusual but greatly liked substitute. Red currant jelly is practically the same color as black currant jelly, so after making this you really won’t tell the difference.

Every year we pick every last red currant berry off the small bushes in my parents’ yard and make jelly. It has been a summer tradition since I can remember. I really appreciate that we have the berries available at our fingertips.