Summer cooking

Summer sautes are definitely the easiest to pull together. It's a lot like most Chinese food where you just cut up a bunch of stuff and then toss it all together at the last second. In this case, I can't specifically remember what was in this one, but I know there was a sweet pepper, pole beans, and shitakes topped with parsley and some squash blossoms.

Along the lines of quick and easy, hanger steak is one of the faster ones. Chimmichurri is a quick pull-together too, but I like to let it marinate as long as I can. Then there's the saute from above (ah, we can see some asparagus in there too) as well as some parboiled and then sauteed potatoes (a mixture from Burge) and then some English peas which we bought at YDFM which I love. And then a sliced Hennessey tomatoes.

Those asparagus were from a dinner last week. During the summer, I try to be really good about not throwing anything away. We try to never throw anything away anyway, but in the summer, we pay a premium for it so I really try to keep it on top of mind. It's kind of like knowing the name of the animal you are eating. It's more personal. You want to make sure you don't waste it.

Small loot from the market today. We have a lot of things left from last week still. A couple tomatoes and corn from Burge. And Chinese eggplant and an Italian eggplant from Hennessey. Plus an Atlanta Fresh mozzarella.

I'm going to use the Italian eggplant and the mozzarella in a small eggplant parmigiana tomorrow. We have a lot of tomatoes that need to be eaten. I know it's not really a good use of heirloom tomatoes to make them into a sauce, but it's worse to throw them away or put them straight into compost.

Lunch after the market is one of the hardest meals in my mind. I'm usually kind of tired and I typically don't want to break into things I've just purchased so I have to dig around to find things to make. Ideally, we shouldn't have things left over on Saturday, so it's a challenge.

Last week, I was reading through Gwyneth Paltrow's My Father's Daughter. That book is pretty impressive when it comes to talking about a range of foods that are accessible to children that I wouldn't have thought were, but I'm learning that children are really only subject to what foods they have when they are little and aren't born with the mac and cheese or chicken finger only mentality unless they are given one.

Anyway, I didn't intend for that segue. There was a recipe for panzanella in Gwyneth's book as a good way to use up good bakery bread and I thought about that leftover pain au levain in the fridge. Add in a windowsill lined with ripe heirloom tomatoes, and it seemed perfect. So I cut up the bread and baked it with olive oil, salt and pepper. After they were toasty, I put them into the bowl and cut up the tomatoes, tossing them on top so I could be sure they would soak up all the tomato juice. Then a generous addition of basil from the garden, s+p, some evoo from il bel cuore, and mixed it all up. Not bad for a quick lunch.