Summer

To be honest, I haven't been feeling very inspired in the kitchen lately. I've been busy with lots of things including travel, and when I'm home I've been trying to eat the food in the freezer since it is on the verge of overflowing. But yesterday I was at the store and I found local king salmon on sale and some beautiful white corn. I thought about the mango I had and just like that, a plan came together.

Sometimes ingredients speak to you and the lightbulb goes off. I diced the mango to serve with dessert a few nights before but it was firm and a little too sour. That's not good for dessert but it's excellent for salsa. The salsa can be used with chips, with roast chicken or scallops. It's actually pretty good without the tomatoes too. I was a little undecided as to which way I preferred it, so try it both ways and you tell me which you like better!

This recipe has a lot of parts, but you can make the salsa and the sauce for drizzling ahead of time. You can even use already cooked salmon if that's what you have on hand. Even though it's cooked on the stove and not on the grill, it really tastes like summer--the fresh corn, tomatoes and salmon look like summer too. Here's to a little summery inspiration!

I’m not sure why I love throwing summer garden parties so much. It may be because I like to cook barefoot, or because using china and silver in the yard seems both reckless and retro…It may even be because I still love Ricky Nelson’s 1972 “Garden Party” song…even though it’s not about a real garden at all. But the biggest reason is probably because, for a cook, garden parties are the easiest to throw.

Cold dishes like Almost Orzo are welcome on warm summer nights… And grilled vegetable dishes are fine hanging around for a couple of hours without being chilled or re-heated… Even some meat dishes can sit for a bit before being served.

Which means you can make almost everything ahead, set out a bountiful spread on the buffet table as the guests arrive, and then enjoy the party, rather than work it.

There was a time when the closest I would get to an eggplant was at an Italian restaurant when rounds of it would be coated with a thick layer of breading and fried to crispness, then smothered in rich tomato sauce and lots of cheese. But even at that, I'd still run across some very distasteful eggplant.

Oh, I've come a long way since those days. I've discovered fresh, locally grown eggplant.

I've found there are many varieties of eggplant, from basic globe eggplant to long thin Japanese eggplant to tiny Fairy Tale eggplants. Skin colors vary from white, to deep or light purple to striped or variegted. They can be small, round, long, slender, plump or pear shaped. While some eggplants are more tender, some have thinner skins, and some cook more quickly, none hold their shape very well during cooking and all have mild flavor. They all seem to turn delicious when they are roasted or grilled, baked or sauteed.

When Jeff watches t.v., it’s typically one of three types of shows: sports (he’s a guy), nature/science programs (he’s a doctor), and cooking competitions (I’m stumped). He’s not so much into instructional cooking shows, though he doesn’t mind Giada’s Everyday Italian (he’s a guy). What he really likes are the cooking competitions, like Top Chef and Iron Chef America.

One night last summer, we saw a particularly inspiring episode of Iron Chef featuring Bobby Flay, Jeff’s second favorite chef after Cat Cora (he’s a guy; Jeff, not Cat, that is). We like Bobby’s creativity and the way he makes ordinary grilled food seem chic.

So the following day when I went to the library, I checked out a couple of his books, including Grilling for Life and Boy Gets Grill. They were mixed in among a 4-foot high pile of cookbooks (including many baking ones) that caught Jeff’s eye when he came home.

Picking through the pile like he was looking for the perfect apple among many bruised ones, he paused upon seeing Bobby’s books. “Hon, why do you have two Bobby Flay grilling cookbooks?” he asked. “Because he’s the guy you really like on Iron Chef, so I thought I’d check out some of his recipes,” I replied. “So, are you planning on just reading them or actually making something from them?” he asked.

“Making something. Why else would I have gotten them?” I said. (Though we both instantly realized the flaw in that argument—for the next three weeks, the closest thing those baking books would come in contact with is dust.)

“But hon, we don’t have a grill,” he said delicately. “I know we don’t have a grill, but we will some day,” I said.