Hot weather cooking

melon, pineapple, cucumber and then more melon

Introduction

spicy watermelon salad with pineapple and lime (NYT Cooking gift link)

I’ve had a sociable time in the last fortnight and all my meals out were hits.

One Club Row for my younger daughter’s birthday where she stalked the booking system until she could book a table for six and between us we ate almost the whole menu. Our table was opposite the pass so we could all watch the food coming out and could see it looked good. It lived up to the reviews: buzzy, fun, good food, and excellent, relaxed service.

Photo above courtesy of my elder daughter as mine are terrible and here’s a few more. And we had the table from 6.30pm to 9,15pm which led to a more leisurely meal than when you have to leave within two hours.

One Club Row; a night to remember

Brasserie Zedel where I went with a very old friend on a Tuesday lunch time. It was quiet and we could eat the prix fixe and catch up without being disturbed. Some of the best value in Central London.

Brasserie Zedel prix fixe and the view sooth from Piccadiily

And the Elder Press Café in Hammersmith for breakfast with my friend Angie of Changing Pages here on Substack. She writes thoughtful, joyous and uplifting posts and her (en) Rich List in her last post had me compiling one of my own. It’s good to remember that things that make us happy don’t need to cost a lot of money. A walk along the River Thames is one of mine as well as more prosaically, a bag of stuff by the front door to go to the charity shop in my constant war against clutter.

Banana bread with home made almond butter, raspberry jam at the Elder Press

I want to write about easy-to-make hot weather food this week as the current heatwave shows no sign of abating. We’ve been living off salad after I went to Suffolk a weekend or so ago and came back with a whole lot of smoked goods from Pinneys of Orford. I make a jar of vinaigrette and one of mayo which I keep it in the fridge and use as a basis for dressings.

Smoked chicken with lemon mayonnaise,

Smoked trout, avocado and cucumber with yoghurt, lime and chives,

Smoked salmon bits and avocado with lemon vinaigrette

I haven’t wanted to cook anything that is fiddly or takes a long time. At Christmas I bought a subscription to New York Times Cooking, which I love and their spicy watermelon salad with pineapple and lime (gift link) was a big hit. I used half a small watermelon from Waitrose which cost £3.50 and is more manageable for two people. It means I won’t have a mouldy melon dripping in the fridge.

It makes a change from Nigella Lawson’s watermelon, feta and black olive salad which I have been making since she first published it. With the rest of the melon, I made Diana Henry’s melon, cucumber and feta salad, published here in House and Garden.

Recipes

Mark Diacono caught the hot weather vibe with his three realistic recipes for no-cooking in the summer heat in the Sunday Times with Mexican prawn cocktail, mackerel escabèche, and passion fruit, grapefruit and pomegranate ceviche.

How to throw a dinner party on a boat, with recipes from Mitch Tonks in the FT. I’m not going on a boat anytime soon but I like the idea of simple food such as charcoal-grilled monkfish with braised courgettes and salsa dragoncello.

Diana Henry in the Telegraph with summer dinners with minimal effort. She suggests tagliatelle with courgettes, peas, feta and dill, Parmesan-crusted chicken fillets and roasted vegetables with beans and mojo verde. Rukmini Iyer had a linguine with courgettes, trout, lemon and dill. Is the courgette glut about to start? Mark Hix explained how a near disaster dinner turned into a memorable meal and the pork medallions with courgette and courgette salsa fit my criteria of quick and easy.

Nigel Slater’s mint and watercress tzatziki, with nigella flatbreads.

Nigel Slater in the Observer where the recipes appear online on different days of the week and not necessarily a Sunday, grilled chicken, harissa paste, cod, peas and tarragon, cherry focaccia and mint and watercress tzatziki, with nigella flatbreads. This is the first time I’ve ever made flatbreads, bread not being my forte, but they worked out well and of course, the dough rose really quickly in the hot weather. I used the rest of the tzatziki as a base for Honey and Co’s lamb in cumin salt rub with chive yogurt dressing and flatbreads from Waitrose Weekend. There was also roasted peppers & red onions with warm pomegranate dressing and baby gem wedge salad with sesame dressing, crispy onions & garlic. Also a no-churn peanut butter ‘ice cream’ with caramel sauce

This week, it was the turn of Diana Henry’ recipes in Waitrose Weekend for a summer meal with butterflied leg of lamb with aubergine, roast tomatoes, mint, honey, and preserved lemon relish and pistachio cake with berries and scented cream. I am putting this in here as I have requested that my family make it for my birthday. That’s not for a while but it pays to plan in advance.

Books

Dolci Italiani by Ursula Ferrigno

five Italian cake and dessert recipes in the Times including a simple but good looking peach and pistachio slice

The Frozen Peas Cookbook by Samuel Goldsmith

in the Telegraph with recipes for chicken caesar salad, ricotta, pea and pesto tart, salmon and pea pasta bake, one-pan steak with mushrooms, peas and greens, and mash ‘n’ pea fish pie

Cooking With Vegetables by Jesse Jenkins

in the Independent with recipes for smashed cucumber caesar, miso-glazed courgette and kimchi pasta puttanesca

Flavour Heroes: 15 Modern Pantry Ingredients to Amplify Your Cooking by Gurdeep Loyal

in the Guardian with recipes for mango chicken schnitzel with lime-leaf smashed peas and Balinese mango pork crispy rolls

Travel

Ten chefs choose their favourite UK restaurant dishes in the Telegraph including Rick Stein who chose ‘a twice-baked soufflé of crab with thermidor sauce served in battered red Le Creuset gratin dishes – brown and warming and fragrant with delicious crab from Riley’s Fish Shack in Tynemouth’. Once cooked, they’re covered with crab bisque and baked again until they’re blistering and wobbly.

I am not likely to go there in the near future but I do want to make this sometime and think I could probably work out the recipe from their list of brown and white crab meat, milk infused with clove, onion, garlic, bay, thyme and tarragon, with butter, flour, eggs and plenty of mustard and Cayenne pepper.

A gourmet guide to the Isle of Wight in the FT

The 15 best restaurants in Edinburgh and in Glasgow in the Times and in Glasgow in the Independent

Europe

How not to summer in Marseille in the FT

Dieppe in Normandy in the Times for a car free break, taking the ferry from Newhaven

A local’s guide to the best eats in Turin in the Guardian and a guide to Puglia in the Telegraph, (gift link)

Maybe next year with the increasingly hot weather, I won’t want to go to Provence and will prefer Finland, land of the Moomin ‘ in simple, off-grid cabins on small dreamy islands.’

An insider’s guide to the prettiest little Portuguese city you’ve never in the Telegraph heard of Coimbra, Portugal’s third largest city after Lisbon and Porto