I have a confession. Until this year, my basil crops have been pathetic. The plants, tenderly nestled in the garden in the spring, produce an embarrassingly small harvest. Sure, I have enough to cook with during the summer — to tear into fresh tomato sauce, to tuck into sandwiches, and to adorn a tomato and mozzarella salad — but I never have enough for pesto. This year is different. This year I have made pesto, and I know it will delight me all winter long.
I say this is a confession because nearly everyone I know grows basil without trouble. Green thumb or not, the leafy herb overtakes their gardens to the point that my neighbors, my sisters, and my friends grumble that they won’t “possibly be able to eat it all!” I go along with them, never admitting that my own basil plants barely grow higher than a flowerpot. I smile and nod — and then look forward to eating garden-grown pesto at my sister’s house during the cold months. Not mine.
This year, I planted the pesto is yet another spot in the garden. It rained and rained in the early part of the summer and the herb seemed to love the moisture. Before I knew it, I had big, healthy plants, bursting with aromatic green leaves. Pesto time!
The great thing about pesto is that a little goes a long way. I have frozen most of it in half-pint measures, about half of which is perfect for a large bowl of pasta. This way you have leftover pesto to indulge in for a few days. It’s great dolloped in soup, spread on sandwiches or (another confession) spread thickly on crackers and eaten over the kitchen sink.

When we were kids, my mom made spaghetti pretty often. Who could blame her? She had eight children! I always loved these spaghetti dinners partly because the pasta was always accompanied by buttery, garlicky bread and a big green salad. Mom made her own sauce, which she simmered on the back of the stove for several hours — and no, there’s no Italian heritage on either side of my family, but my mother was from a generation that cooked everyday and didn’t think much about how long something took. It was what it was.
But those days are over! I don’t think I have made spaghetti sauce for decades. I know how and would enjoy the time spent in the warm, aromatic kitchen but with commercial brands of Italian sauce so good, why bother? I sometimes “doctor” them up with a little extra chopped garlic, oregano, red wine or red wine vinegar and olive oil. I sometimes don’t. These sauces are great on strand pasta and also when you want to make a casserole such as lasagna or stuffed shells. I pour mushroom-flavored sauce into a skillet of ground beef for a quick, sloppy joe type meal, or cheesy Italian sauce into a casserole of ziti, broccoli, and cooked, chopped chicken. The possibilities are, as they say, endless. Quick, healthful meals. Even my mother would approve!

What can I bring? I asked my host for a small dinner party last Saturday. Oh, just bring some wine, she answered. But I persevered and suggested cookies or, hey, here’s an idea, how about deviled eggs? She pounced on it. Yes! Please do! I love deviled eggs. I do, too, so was happy to oblige. Since we had to travel with the eggs that evening, I sliced them through their “equators” so that I could prop them up in the actual egg carton. Usually they are cut lengthwise, but my decision not only made transporting them easy, it also was a rather whimsical way to serve them. Even my host’s young sons seemed intrigued. Need I say that the eggs disappeared in a flash? Everyone likes deviled eggs, I guess.
This experience, and the Julie and Julia film in theaters now, leads me to think that there is nothing new under the sun, at least when it comes to food. There are just recycled ideas that might be given a modern twist, or perhaps unfamiliar ingredients that over time become good friends. If you’ve seen the movie, you, like me, probably itch to cook some good, old-fashioned (but not out-dated) French food — or you might want to recreate a dish you recall from your childhood. Like deviled eggs. Go for it!

August always surprises me. Just as summer gets going, bam! Here it is. The last month of the season. I have to keep reminding myself how much I love September and October, and how incredible the farmer’s markets will be from now until mid fall. Right now they are bulging with peaches, nectarines, corn, tomatoes, greens, pole beans, and herbs. Soon they will have squash, even more greens, mushrooms, cauliflower, broccoli, melons, apples, pears, and Brussels sprouts. Good markets offer fresh eggs, handmade cheeses, preserves, and pickles. Some sell free-range chickens, lamb, pork and beef. You can get lost wandering through one — and end up buying far more than you actually need! This past weekend I couldn’t resist the green and white pole beans piled high in baskets. After topping and tailing them (trimming them), I sautéed them in a little chicken stock and then seasoned them with some chopped thyme, butter, and salt and pepper. Easy and delicious — and they disappeared very quickly at the dinner table.

Here in the Northeast we are worried about our tomato crop. Not only are we having a particularly soggy, cool summer, but there is a blight afflicting tomatoes — the same one, they say, that did in the potatoes in Ireland many years ago. This renders the tomatoes that make it to maturity just that much more precious. Our basil is not diseased, however, and with all the rain, is happily blooming. Like the tomatoes, it could benefit from more sunshine, but it’s there for the picking and what better to do with it than make pesto? Especially as we don’t have a lot of tomatoes to pair with it? Instead we can toss the pesto with pasta or potatoes. I think I will stretch the tomatoes I get by chopping them up and making salsa with onions, chiles, basil and cilantro, all from the garden. Fresh salsa and jarred salsa verde and roasted corn salsa are guaranteed to make a summertime Mexican-inspired feast totally delicious.

I love my skillet. It’s johnny-on-the-spot for quick meals that don’t heat up the kitchen, something we all appreciate during these overheated months of the year. Summer is not the time for braising — whether you do so in the oven or on a burner — but a family’s gotta eat! Grilling is great and I love it, but there are nights when it’s too hot, too rainy, or I am just plain too tired to venture outdoors and fuss with it. Ta da! Enter the skillet!
I like to pan-cook fish fillets, boneless chicken breasts, thin-cut pork chops, scallops, and ground beef or turkey. One of my favorite skillet meals is chicken with tomatoes and basil, perfect for this time of year. I start by heating a little olive oil to brown the chicken — which takes seconds — and then finish cooking it with additions of chicken broth. Once the chicken is browned, I toss some chopped summer tomatoes into the pan, a squeeze of lemon juice and maybe a dash of soy sauce, a little ground pepper and finally, basil leaves from the garden. By now the chicken is done. Once it’s removed, I cook the pan sauce — what is left in the skillet — for a few more minutes, perhaps boosting its volume with some more broth and stirring it to blend all the good flavors. Spoon it over the chicken and your done. Delish!
Here’s a trick I learned recently regarding skillets and sauté pans. If you have a big one, one that measures 12 or more inches across, use it to cook pasta. The water comes to a boil quickly and you won’t be tempted to break the pasta to make it fit. Oh? the difference between a skillet and a sauté pan? Skillets have sloped sides; sauté pans have straight sides so that when the pans are shaken the food bounces off the sides and back into the pan. For quick skillet suppers they can be used interchangeably.

I confess. I really like pools, especially private backyard pools with pretty flowers around them and comfortable lounge chairs. Now, I don’t have one but I do have a few friends who do and they are kind enough to invite me for a swim now and then. Of course, one of the best things about these afternoon outings is the food. Yes. The food. Sure, the sun, the water, the luxury of it all are lovely, but the snacks are welcome, too. After a few hours of dipping in and out of the pool, reading or chatting while drying off and getting ready for the next swim, I am ready to eat. Nothing fancy, mind you, but something easy such as tortilla chips and a spicy or mild salsa or a salsa con queso. Or, if we’re in the mood for sweets, some Pepperidge Farm cookies and lemonade. Don’t you love summertime?

Where I live it’s been raining. Every day. We usually get a lot of rain around here but not every day and not day after early-summer day. Yes, the gardens are lovely and green but the weeds are running rampant and it is only now beginning to feel like summer. Here it is, nearly July 4, and I am just beginning to grill in earnest. And anyone who has followed my blog knows how much I like to cook outdoors!
So, this weekend, when the sun finally emerged, I went to town! I put several types of mustard on the table: yellow American-style, smooth Dijon, and spicy brown mustard filled with mustard seeds, and made a big bowl of coleslaw. I then grilled sausages — both spicy and mild, some made from pork and others from turkey. All delicious. Before I put the sausages on the grill, I tossed on a lot of sliced red and yellow bell peppers and onions, already drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled generously with pepper. While the sausages cooked through, the peppers and onions softened and caramelized.
Near the end of grilling, I browned a bunch of hot dog rolls on the grill, cut-sides down. Everyone chose the sausages they liked, nestled them in the rolls and slathered them with mustard. The peppers and onions and the coleslaw were for topping the sausages or eating alongside. It was simple, but it was a feast and such a welcome respite from the soggy days of June. Ahhh! Summer. Finally!

I don’t know about you, but for me, the juicy, ripe strawberries I can find in the stores and farmer’s markets are a spectacular treat. Where I live, this is the time of year they are in season and so for a few short weeks we have access to plump berries that, while not as mammoth as those available other times of year, are bright red through and through and actually taste like they are supposed to. Add the affordable raspberries at this time of year and you might think you had dreamed you were in a celestial berry patch!
As much as I like these berries over cereal in the morning, I especially like them for dessert. Here’s my newest discovery: sweetened Greek yogurt. I like this better than whipped cream. I look for one of those premium brands of Greek yogurt popping up in the supermarkets and buy a full-fat or 2% version (it’s yogurt! How bad could that be?) and then whisk in a few tablespoons of powdered sugar. Next come puff pastry shells, heated gently in the oven and then filled with a mixture of strawberries and raspberries and topped with a healthy dollop of yogurt. Sublime!

Last weekend, the farmer down the road had a bumper crop of spinach and offered to leave me some for dinner that night. I arrived home later in the afternoon to find a harvest tub (the size of a standard picnic cooler) on my doorstep, overflowing with just-picked spinach. I immediately abandoned the idea of grilling chicken so that I could devote my time to the spinach.
Instead, I baked the chicken pieces in a tasty dressing of lemon juice, chicken broth, olive oil, garlic, and a little soy sauce and then set about washing the spinach. As luck would have it, the leaves were pretty free of grime and grit and so a good soaking in the sink was all they needed. I cooked up some chopped garlic and olive oil in a large sauté pan, added a little chicken broth, and then, over medium heat, cooked about half of the spinach. I can’t deny I got pretty tired of standing at the stove, watching the leaves wilt — my family and our friends were on the porch laughing and visiting — but the final result was totally worth it. It was the best spinach I had ever eaten and certainly ever cooked. I guess what they say is true: nothing beats fresh-from-the-farm produce!

My friend David makes the best chimichurri sauce I have ever tasted and this past weekend I was gratified to see it on the dinner table — dark green and shining with a slick of oil. Its presence also meant that David was grilling steak and as he is a very careful cook and one of the best grillers I know, I smiled in happy anticipation. For some folks, hamburgers and pickle relish herald summer; for me it’s chimichurri and steak. I guess that means my tastes have become a little more sophisticated over the years — although don’t get me wrong: I love hamburgers and pickle relish, too. It doesn’t get much better than a hamburger on a bun, generously seasoned with salt and pepper and topped with relish, tomatoes, sliced red onion, and a lettuce leaf. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water.
In case you don’t know what chimichurri sauce is, it’s a fresh condiment with origins in Argentina, where they love grilled meat and eat an astonishing amount of it. While there are numerous variations, a typical chimichurri is made from parsley, garlic, lemon juice or vinegar, olive oil, and a little minced fresh herbs. A spoonful of the pungent sauce goes a long way and makes grilled steaks, chops, chicken or any other meat taste divine. Here’s a recipe; the only tricky part is chopping the ingredients nice and small:

Chimichurri Sauce

Makes about 1 cup

3/4 cup minced flat-leaf parsley
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 1/2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice or red wine vinegar
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme or basil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Mix the ingredients together in a small bowl. Cover and set aside at room temperature for at least 1 hour and up to 2 hours. Chimichurri sauce does not keep well.

Now that the days are warm, it’s time for grilling. For me, that deserves a big, loud “Hooray!” I have been known to grill in freezing-cold January with snow on the ground, and as delicious as the food tastes, it’s far more fun when the weather is balmy.
I use a gas grill most of the time, although I prefer how food tastes when cooked over charcoal. If this sounds contradictory, bear in mind that I totally appreciate the convenience of the gas grill: switch it on and you’re good to go. Yes, propane is flammable, no doubt about it, but since the mid 1990s, manufacturers have been required to install additional safety features to grills to minimize the possibility of gas leaks, which are rare in any event. The propane tanks are sturdy and safe, although you might want to replace one that is more than 3 or 4 years old, mainly for peace of mind.
When I haul out the coals to use the charcoal grill, I use a chimney to start them, which is close to foolproof and produces red-hot coals in about 20 minutes. (My problem — which you might share — is impatience. If the recipe says to cook something slowly, I inevitably don’t wait long enough for the coals to cook down.)
Delicate foods such as vegetables and fish do fine on the gas grill, and I actually prefer it for them most of the time, but I have found that meats do best over charcoal. This is because a hot coal fire reaches temperatures higher then 500°F., and the blazing heat sears the meat quickly, caramelizing it and sealing in the juices. Nothing beats a charcoal-grilled steak, and hamburgers and lamb chops are pretty darn good, too!
When you grill over charcoal, you have to fiddle with the fire, add more coals when they cool down, and move the food around on the grate as a way to “adjust” the cooking temperature. With gas, you just turn the flame up, down, or off.
When you come right down to it, it’s a matter of personal preference. Both kinds of grills are awesome. So, buy some meat, chicken or fish, make a killer marinade with oil, chicken broth, lemon juice, garlic and herbs, and enjoy these early days of the grilling season!

I don’t know if this is the case at your office, but at mine a number of us start to get restless about noon. Is it lunchtime yet? Who is running out to pick something up? Who is brown bagging? I have read that as the economy worsens, increasing numbers of office workers are bringing their lunch from home. Makes sense to me. Who can afford a $5 or $6 dollar sandwich everyday? Talk about adding up fast!
I have good trick when it comes to making the office lunch that much better: Keep a supply of condiments on hand to jazz up the meal, whether it’s a salad from the office cafeteria or a sandwich you bring from home. These items should not require refrigeration or take up much space. Think about small containers of kosher or sea salt, a portable pepper mill, a little bottle of good olive oil and another of red wine vinegar. Mustard does not require refrigeration, and a smear of Dijon on a piece of great bread makes a sandwich all the better. Ditto for a drizzle of vinegar or olive oil over the bread or over a salad — and what a good way to control calories rather than relying on the prepared dressing from the salad bar. Perhaps you and your co-workers can pitch in to create an office pantry, share the cost and the job of re-stocking. Finally, be aware that some foods are not appropriate for the desk drawer. You don’t want to keep cookies, crackers, or anything else that could attract pests such as mice!
A relaxed lunch does wonders to ease the stresses of the normal work day. Join your office pals and eat together, or if that’s not possible, try to put the mouse aside and eat in peace at your desk. Here’s a novel idea: read the paper or a magazine as you eat and truly escape the office for a few minutes!

When I wrote a blog on bread pudding last January, a lot of folks asked for a recipe. I am afraid I let it slide! But I have finally gotten around to coming up with an easy recipe for chocolate bread pudding that I think everyone will like. You can substitute 1/2 tablespoon of cinnamon for all the cocoa powder (omit the chocolate chips). If you do, try this with cinnamon-raisin bread. Yum!

1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
4 to 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
12 slices high-quality white bread
1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, optional
4 large eggs
2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream (you can cut this in half and just use more milk)
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1. Butter an 8-inch square baking pan (a brownie pan).
2. Mix together the sugar and the cocoa. Butter 1 side of the bread slices. Layer the bread, buttered sides up, in the prepared pan, starting with 4 slices and overlapping them slightly. Sprinkle with a third of the sugar-cocoa mixture and then with the chocolate chips. Continue to layer the bread and sprinkle it with the sugar and cocoa.
3. In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs with the milk, cream and vanilla until smooth. Pour over the bread and set aside for about 30 minutes to give the bread time to absorb the milk mixture.
4. Bake in a preheated 325°F. oven for 50 to 55 minutes or until the pudding is puffed up, a small, sharp knife inserted in the center comes out clean and the pudding is steaming hot. Let the pudding cool for about 15 minutes to give it time to set. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream — or not! This is also delicious served cold.
Serves 6 to 8.

With all the excitement of spring — blue skies, renewed energy, and summer around the corner — I find it a little discouraging that the food is not more inspiring. Oh, sure, I love the peas and asparagus, the spring greens that show up in the farmer’s markets and the promise of freshness to come, but there is nothing to compare to the thrill of summer’s peaches, berries, corn, and tomatoes or autumn’s squashes, sweet potatoes, apples, and pears. So, what is a seasonally leaning cook to do?
Make soup, of course!
I can begin with some chicken broth and from there make all sorts of pureed soups — think fresh pea and watercress flavored with mint; smooth, light asparagus; and carrot flavored with ginger — and light vegetable soups made with tiny peas, small cubes of potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, and the spring’s more delicate mushrooms. I also love a light curried broth as the base for a fish soup, or a chicken noodle soup brightened up with peas, carrots, and asparagus. Soup is just right for these still-cool evenings, served with a lively green salad and some artisan bread. Who needs more?