The Food Maven Diary
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Summer Recipes
I went to a business meeting the other day at the Park Avenue apartment of a lovely and very accomplished couple. The conversation turned, as it always does when I'm around, to what and where we like to eat.
I figured: Park Avenue. Children grown and gone. Social. They probably eat out every night.
"We never go to restaurants," the woman said when I asked her where she liked to eat. "We eat home or at our friends' homes."
I thought, "How fabulous! I wish I could get away with proudly saying I eat at home."
I'm finding people are very disappointed in me now that I can't comment on the latest hot restaurant. It really irks them that even though I spent 37 years as a food critic eating in the newest, hottest, whateverest restaurants, and reporting on them in Long Island Newsday, then in the New York Daily News, then on the radio, I am now very happy – no, overjoyed -- to eat my own food at home. It tastes better. It's quieter, even with the TV on. It's much less expensive. I can afford to drink better wine. It's healthier even when I am not being concerned about health. And meals don't take up nearly as much time, yet they are more relaxing. Funny, my friend Fred Plotkin has developed the same sentiment this summer. (By the way, his "Italy for the Gourmet Traveler," the best food guide there is to the entire country of Italy, has just been revised, and is about to become available on Amazon.com.) I just heard Fred say on Faith Middleton's Connecticut public radio show (WNPR) that now that he eats at home, even with the time he has to spend on shopping and cooking, he has more time to devote to his other favorite pursuits, art and music.
I'll admit, when you eat at home, someone has to do the dishes. But I feel that's a small price to pay.
On hot, trendy restaurants: They cool off in short time, then become of no consequence whatsoever.
On being a restaurant reviewer: It's no bed of creamy mashed potatoes. Most new restaurants are irritating, and new does not mean good.
So what have I been cooking? You will laugh. Because I have been concerned with my health – well, my weight – this summer, I make a huge pot of minestrone on Saturday, with vegetables I have bought at the Greenmarket. I can recycle it several times during the week, ladling out as much as I need for that meal and, in a smaller pot, reheating it with rice on one night (I add a little extra water and cook the rice right in the soup), pasta another (also cooked in the same pot), beans (pre-cooked or canned) another. One day I like to re-season it with lots of chopped fresh basil. If I haven't included tomato in the original soup, on another day I might add some chopped fresh tomato, then let it cook a bit longer – or not. I used dill recently to great affect. The soup didn't taste Italian anymore. Dill is not an Italian flavor. But it was very good.
My basic minestrone recipe is already here on The Food Maven website. Just click on the word or put the word "minestrone" in the search box. Don't be slavish to the proportions. I'm not. A few weeks ago, when stringbeans looked particularly good, I used double the amount listed in the recipe. I often use more cabbage – it so sweet this time of year. Everything is more or less. And much of the time these days I don't add canned tomatoes to start. The soup is excellent as a vegetarian soup – made without broth, just with water. But in that case, I like to add a Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano rind. I save them in the freezer when I have grated all the cheese off of them.
I know that hot soup doesn't seem, on paper, very appealing when the weather feels as hot and steamy as the soup itself, but minestrone is also excellent at room temperature. Try it, you might like it.
Still, some people will eat only hot soup or cold soup, which is why my sister requested I make a cold soup for a family barbecue that she had last weekend. It was such a big menu, I thought minestrone was a bit too much. It's a meal in a bowl. And since I don't love to eat things like cream of asparagus soup or cold avocado soup, I get no joy in preparing them. I do like a garlicky, chunky gazpacho, though, and I have frequently considered having a party centered around my making gazpacho in front of everyone in my biggest mortar and pestle, which is the way gazpacho was originally made and sometimes still is.
I decided on a classic Vichyssoise, however, a cold soup no restaurant makes anymore, not since the world became cream phobic. The recipe is in Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food. It's one of the "more than 100 legendary recipes." Vichyssoise is really nothing more than elegantly pureed (and cold) leek and potato soup, and it was created by chef Louis Diat, a Frenchman from the city of Vichy, although, at the time he created the soup, he was working as the kitchen executive of the New York City Ritz-Carlton Hotel. There's a small story here, but you'll have to read it in the book. The tidbit I like the most, however, is that during World War II, when the French collaborationist government was called the "Vichy regime," after the new Nazi capital city of France, there was a movement here in the United States to rename this already classic American soup.
Cold soup! I do also love Eastern European cold fruit soups. There, my maternal Russian heritage is showing. But I wouldn't start a meal with fruit soup. To me, it's too sweet for that. A good fruit soup can be a light meal unto itself, however, with a dollop of sour cream. I probably like it best as an afternoon snack. It's what I order when I sit at the Russian café, Tatiana, on the boardwalk in Brighton Beach. Cold fruit soup can be dessert, too. My favorite fruit soup recipe is also already on The Food Maven website. Just click on summer fruit soup or put those words in the search engine, click, then scroll down to the second reference where you will see in bold face the words "fruit soup."
There are other wonderful summer recipes on my website.
Try Summer Pudding, the famous English dessert of layered white bread and sugared berries.
Or Blueberry Buckle, a very simple, favorite New England cake, great topped with vanilla ice cream.
Or Nika Hazelton's Garden Vegetable Soup, a recipe that makes a fabulous vegetable soup without a liquid.
Or, if all you can do is drink in this weather, check out Red Fruit Wine Punch, a change from Sangria, but similar in idea.
Someone I know (who remembers?) was recently elegizing about a Farro Salad she or he had in some trendy restaurant. I held my tongue, but I wanted to say, "That's nothing new. The recipe you think is so creative has been on my website since 1999." My version is from Anna Klinger, the chef-owner of Al Di La, the now well-known restaurant here in Park Slope. I just bumped into Anna at the pharmacy and told her this story, whereupon she told me that the salad is back on her menu.
To make a long story ever so slightly shorter, there are many summery recipes on The Food Maven website. Take advantage of them. Check out the Food Maven Index. Use the search box. And stay cool if you can.
