Thursday, March 31, 2011

Summer in the City


In San Francisco, we take our summer where we can get it. Unlike the rest of the country, the months of June, July, and August are generally cold and foggy here. We run our heat and wear sweaters. Pictures in catalogs, or images on TV, showing people frolicking in bathing suits at the beach, or grilling on the patio because it's too hot to cook inside, seem like they're from another planet. It makes for a very grumpy city.

However, we do get sprinkles of summertime throughout the year: a few weeks in the fall, a couple in the spring, and sporadic days in the early part of the year, like now.

The thing is you never know when the warmth will arrive, or how long it will last. Sometimes the day starts out gorgeous and you're opening windows and unearthing flipflops. At 5:00, the fog and wind has rolled in, windows are clamped shut, and you're thinking about making beef stew for dinner.

What I do love about this is that it makes people deeply appreciate the nice days. When it's hot in San Francisco, everyone is out, riding bikes, walking dogs, picnicking, and even sunbathing (if you're at Dolores Park, at least). No one assumes tomorrow will be nice too, so they get out while they can.

Yesterday was in the high 70s and utterly breezeless. It was beautiful. For dinner, I thought it would be nice to skip the oven and minimize stove use. After watching a rerun of Ina Garten making pesto pasta salad, that's what I decided on, although with a few twists.

For one thing, I didn't want to make a salad--i.e. I didn't want to use mayo the way she did. I'm not anti-mayo but it didn't sound good to me with pesto.  I did, however, like the idea of something creamy balancing out the pesto, which I often find harsh. Here's what I did, call it a recipe if you like, although it was more making it up as I went.

I made pesto. I don't follow a recipe for pesto, so I have no measurements. This was garlic (two cloves is plenty for me), basil, walnuts, olive oil, salt, and--this I stole from Ina--defrosted frozen spinach to hold the green color, and a few tablespoons of lemon juice.

When the pasta was cooked I set aside a few spoonfuls of pasta water and tossed the hot pasta with 2-3 ounces of goat cheese to give it that creamy base I was looking for. Then I added the pesto, a little pasta water to get it to the consistency I wanted, some grated parmesan, about a cup of defrosted peas, chopped toasted walnuts, and a cup or so of halved grape tomatoes.

We opened up the windows along with a nice bottle of wine, and voila, a summer's dinner.

13 comments:

  1. Goat cheese is a genius touch in place of the mayo! Will definitely remember that next time I make pesto (I can't wait for summer myself, or even just spring, there's still snow over here!)

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  2. I agree with Connie, replacing mayo with goat cheese is the gourmet way (and might I add, the smarter way) to go!

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  3. Connie: Snow! My goodness.

    Jessica: Thanks, I think it turned out well.

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  4. pesto + goat cheese = happy times. nice innovation!

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  5. Goat's cheese and pasta, mm, perfect! Glad you got to enjoy a sunny day. I feel a little bit like that now with autumn underway. Because we never know when we're going to get a "good" day, we drop everything and head out to enjoy the sunshine every chance we get.

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  6. grace: thanks!

    shaz: definitely have to seize the day, right?

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  7. Sounds great! I make something very similar, only I use wilted arugula or spinach in place of the pesto. And I've been known to make a pesto pasta salad with mayo. It does sound weird, but it's actually really good.

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  8. camille: the mayo would probably be good--and I would have done it if I were more in the salad mode. But I was thinking warm pasta--no mayo. :)

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  9. I bet that goat cheese melted right in and tasted divine.
    Mayo would be good too, though. I liked her spinach idea.

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  10. Come summertime down here in PA, I'm going to whip up some of this pesto salad. I usually use pine nuts in my pesto, but the spinach and goat cheese sound yummy with it. Pics are very light and vibrant and sunny -- maybe like our summer MIGHT BE! For lunch today, I had some Swedish pea soup (light and veggie!) with a shrimp/cucumber/dill mixture as an open faced sandwich with homemade potato chips at a new cafe in PA called Birch Street. Very continental, but with a Scandanavian chef at the helm. Nice and summery too. MOM

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  11. Barbara: Yes, the spinach idea is a definite keeper!

    Mom: We'll have to try that place together next time I'm in PA! P.S. I usually use pine nuts too but happened to have a lot of walnuts on hand.

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  12. Delicious idea. And send some of that nice weather our way, would you?

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  13. oneordinaryday: would if I could!

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