Ladies and gentlemen, your friends in LA are not okay. The near constant sun for which we are known has retreated this year, leaving us with weeks and weeks (months! Can’t remember what sun feels like!) on end of gray, mono-cloud, foggy, sad skies. I see you whining about the summer heat (from London for fuck’s sake!) and think of what do you speak? I see bare shoulders and legs in photos from friends in New York, from clients off in Italy, even from my friends in the goddamned Pacific Northwest. And yet. I am sitting inside a coffee shop, in mid-June, wearing jeans and long sleeves. I feel like a tortured (Parisian) artist. If someone doesn’t step in soon, I will have to begin writing poetry and absolutely nobody wants that.
Check on your Angelenos, that’s what I’m trying to say.
But. The calendar says it’s summer, so for summer we’ll cook. If the sun’s not actually shining yet, I will make it feel that way in my kitchen come hell or high water (come hell or morning haze didn’t have the same ring to it). If the sun hasn’t forgotten you, wherever you are, then good for you and you should also cook like you’ve flung the doors open, kicked your shoes off, and don’t need to take vitamin D in pill form. Here’s what I suggest, based largely on what you’ll find at the farmer’s market:
Tomatoes
Farro with blistered tomatoes and orecchiette with cherry tomatoes and burrata; classic tomato & mayo sandwich and penne alla checca. Caprese salad, of course, a fresh corn and cherry tomato salad with red onion and mint (above), oooh a Panzanella yummm, and this one-dish baked orzo sorta-ratatouille. And my all-time favorite steak salad which is best with bright, bursting, ripe red tomatoes.
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