Summer

Summer is coming to an end, and as I'm having trouble saying goodbye, I'm comforted by all the beautiful produce still available in the farmers' markets this late in the season. Last week I visited the Tucker Square Greenmarket at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 66th Street. They are a compact market with about six or eight small yet bounteous stands. I couldn't help but notice all the fruits: last-of-the-season white and yellow peaches and a few early varieties of apples, such as honey crisp. But what really caught my attention during this visit was a crate full of beautiful green and yellow zucchini. That's when I immediately decided on making this recipe for vegetable tian.

A tian is technically a name for a type of French earthenware casserole commonly used in the region of Provençe. But the name "tian" also carries over to the meal cooked in the earthenware container. This vegetable tian is possibly one of the simplest recipes that can be made especially with an abundance of late-summer vegetables like zucchini, squash, eggplant, and tomatoes. Similar to a gratin, this casserole features layers of thinly sliced vegetables artfully assembled together, topped with Swiss cheese, and baked until tender and brown.

The farmers' markets here in Southern California are amazing -- you can find dates, figs, guavas, kumquats, passion fruit, persimmons, and pluots, but rarely do you see humble blueberries.

I grew up picking and eating fresh blueberries every summer back in New England. Why, I wondered, are they so hard to find in California?

The problem is dirt. Apparently blueberries like to grow in highly acidic soil and Southern California has alkaline soil. This presents a challenge to growing blueberries in Southern California (which explains why most the of the blueberries I buy at the market are from Washington).

New England's acidic soil is perfect for blueberry bushes. I don't know what was better, marching along rows of blueberry bushes, basket in hand, with blue lips and fingertips or standing in the kitchen watching my mom use my very own fresh picked berries to make sweet blueberry buns with lemon icing, old-fashioned double crust blueberry pie, or a loaf of hot blueberry-corn bread (that went straight from the oven to my mouth).

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.

I always think of avocado as one of my top summer foods. On wheat bread with goat cheese and tomato, alongside a quesadilla, on toast, or smashed with a fork into guacamole, avocados at their prime are just the best!

I have been obsessed with the combination of avocado, orange, and raw fish (this recipe may have started it). Usually, we keep the fish plain, with microgreens, avocado, maybe citrus, and a simple dressing, but I decided to take a stab at a tartare with this recipe.

Now I’m not 100% sure if this technically counts as a tartare – it might have poke leanings (feel free to enlighten me!), but whatever it is, this Asian-inspired dish is the perfect appetizer for a warm summer evening!