In honour of the seasons, we’ve whipped up a little compliation from the summer lunch archives:
The French Cafe Salad with its endless cast of rotating ingredients kept me occupied for the better part of the last summer, with farmer’s market potatoes, tomatoes and green beans being the stars of the show. Other potentials for this enduring favourite include:
greens
spinach
parsely, basil, mint, dill or chives
superfresh chunks of feta
tomatoes
green beans
asparagus
avocado
green olives, kalamatas, little sundried ones, nicoise (ahem)
walnuts
punkin seeds
pecans
pears
roasty veggies of any sort
lemon sole filets
baked salmon
garlicky shrimp skewer
strips of crisp chicken from the barbeque
As of August 2006, I was also hacking thru an endless forest of zucchini using every magic transformative trick in the book on those glossy green giants. In slightly less miraculous, dragon-fighting style cookery, my scone renaissance was also one of the chapters of the summer that I’ve sadly turned the page on. When making these, I remember sticky white-flour scones that we begged for as kids, especially the ones that featured little flecks of trashy cheddar.
Sun Dried Tomato Semolina Scones
2 cups boiling water
a dozen sundried tomatoes
1/2 cup white flour
1 1/4 cup that’s a mix up of spelt, whole wheat or rice seems to usually work for me
1/2 cup semolina flour or cornmeal
1 TBSP sugar
1 1/2 teas baking pow
3/4 teas sea salt
1/2 teas baking soda
2 teas dried basil, or just throw in some fresh
1/4 teas crushed up flecks from some old dried chili that you’ve left on the counter
1/4 cup chilled butter, cut to small pieces
1 cup buttermilk
1. Soak the tomatoes in water till squidgy, drain (reserve water for some kind of italian cooking project?) and chop
2. oven should be at 425
3. measure flours into a bowl and add sugar, baking pow, salt, soda, basil and chili flakes. cut in butter to make a coarse pastry meal. add tomatoes and buttermilk and stir till combined.
4. turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead lightly 5 times. roll out between 1/2 inch and 3/4 of an inch then stamp out some scones with an upturned wine glass.
5. bake on a buttered sheet for about 15 minutes or more till browned
We’ll discuss fancy summer salads to pair with romance, mad schemes and crisp summer wine guzzling at a later date. Teasers: the great feta-heirloom tomato-watermelon-mint combo as well as the somewhat related, less known, but no less wonderful avocado-grapefruit-prawn-lime salad.
