Easy Summer Food
Simple Recipes for
Sunny Days
By Sharon Cochrane
Easy
Summer Food: Simple Recipes for Sunny Days is a compact
joy. This squat book contains beautiful pictures and gives
the impression that a lot of care went into its presentation
and organization. However, opening the book at random, you
may find a recipe that has you questioning the validity
of the title. The paella, for example, lists sixteen ingredients,
and one recipe has you kneading dough (and giving it time
to rise) to make a pretty basic pizza Napoletana. Hardly
easy, by many people’s standards.
Yet
simple recipes are mostly the norm in this book, and a few
are so basic that their inclusion hardly seems necessary,
as is the case with fried squid roman-style which has a
basic flour-and-egg breading and little else. But the book
has its inspired moments too, such as clam packages with
garlic butter cooked in foil on the grill. The gorgeous
simplicity of taking an easy, well-known dish that’s
nearly always steamed and transferring it to the grill was
a bit thrilling. In fact, many of the dishes are exactly
what you would hope for in warmer months. We liked the combination
of the creamy avocado and salty prosciutto so much in the
avocado salad that we added even more of both. A squeeze
of lemon to sharpen the vinaigrette and a glass of Riesling
to accompany the dish seemed to lower the temperature of
the room on one warm summer night. The salad has already
become a regular part of our summer repertoire.
The miso-broiled cod, on the other hand, could have been
a little more flavorful, despite the appealing combination
of ingredients for the marinade (soy sauce, sake, honey
and miso paste). Still, one could hardly complain when an
appetizing and healthy meal sits before you in the time
it takes to boil rice. The cod took exactly eight minutes
to broil, just as the book claimed, and the recommended
bok choy stir-fried in the last few minutes completed the
meal perfectly.
In
addition, we appreciated the way the table of contents was
so thoughtfully broken down. We have a tendency to eat less
meat during the summer, and this book placed “fish,
meat, & poultry” in a chapter all together, instead
of separating them out, as most recipe books do in a way
that has become out-of-step with the changing American diet.
Instead, the table of contents boasts such chapters as “Grilling,”
“Dips & Breads” and “Picnics.”
The latter we especially appreciated since we are always
on the lookout for tasty, portable foods for the picnic
and barbecue social events that are inevitably a part of
these months.
No
need to labor away in a kitchen on a hot evening. Easy
Summer Food lets you take advantage of
summer by utilizing the ingredients of the season and minimizing
your time cooking to allow you to enjoy the warm, blooming
world outside your kitchen.
Reviewed by Christine Landry
(Updated:
11/11/08 SB)
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