The colors of summer

Although San Franciscans are largely deprived of good summer weather (as I write this, our heat is on and I'm wearing wool socks), we do enjoy good summer produce. Scratch that: we enjoy great summer produce. The vibrant shades of red, yellow, and green that have been appearing in our produce box recently have put me in a salad kind of mood.

The fact that these salads often accompany wintery dishes doesn't bother me. Last week I made a cheery tomato and cucumber salad to go alongside a roasted pork loin and creamy grits. The salad provided a dash of brightness to an otherwise muted palette.

To everyone's delight, over the weekend, we had one day of startling heat, up into the 90s. We'd invited our friend Alby over for dinner and I was a bit undecided on what to make. Most of what I cook is rather cozy, since the weather year-round allows for it. On the few hot days we enjoy each year, I never know what to make; apparently my cooking style is very reliant on the oven, as well as on boiling pots of pasta water. Our infrequent heat waves shed light on why people in other parts of the country (and state) grill during the summertime.

Unfortunately, we have no grill and a backyard that is tough to get to anyway--you must go down some rickety stairs and through the garage, shimmying by the cars parked tandem-style. It's not conducive to a laid-back BBQ. So I decided to make one of my go-to company dishes, chicken roasted with cherry tomatoes, honey, and rosemary.

This dish requires the oven for about half an hour. I figured I should do everyone a favor and minimize the heat for everything else I was going to make.

Using a vegetable peeler, I made ribbons out of zucchini and yellow squash, tossed them with a bit of salt, then set them in a colander to drain for about 5 minutes. Then I rinsed and dried them gently in a kitchen towel.

I composed a dressing of rice vinegar, canola oil, lemon juice, dijon, sugar, salt and pepper. Then I tossed the squash with the dressing, throwing in some lemon cucumbers and chives.

The result was a very pretty and refreshing salad, if I do say so myself, and a hit at the dinner table. And to my surprise the leftovers survived a night in the fridge and were a good accompaniment to our sandwiches the next day for lunch (fried egg for the husband, roast pork for me). I suggest you try a little zucchini ribbon salad for yourself, while the vegetable is in season and some people's gardens overflow with it. It was quite delicious.

Mark Bittman's coffee cake, with blueberries and cardamom

Somehow during a run to Trader Joe's last weekend, we ended up with an extra basket of blueberries. I think it might have belonged to the guy in front of us. We already had picked out a pretty hefty 32-oz basket of berries and were not looking to filch anyone else's. But in the barely controlled chaos of the checkout line, a stranger paid for the basket and we discovered it when we got home. Sorry, buddy. But I'm sure there's some kind of natural balancing that happens at Trader Joe's. He probably got somebody else's Tasty Bite.

I froze a trayful of the blueberries and we've been munching handfuls of them all week, but stirring in my little Hungry Dog brain was the desire for something more satisfying. A little blueberry coffee cake with a crunchy, cinnamony topping.

This morning, I hunted around for a coffee cake recipe for which I had all the ingredients (I am not the kind of devoted morning baker that will make a trip to the store for a recipe--I must have all ingredients on hand to make something for breakfast). Lots of recipes I came across called for sour cream or buttermilk or plain yogurt, none of which I keep around. Finally, I went where I should have gone all along--to Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.

Now, readers, I have some mixed feelings about Mr. Bittman. Well, not about him. I think he is a great writer and I like his approach to food. But I do not always have the best luck with his recipes, particularly his baked goods.

In any case, I figured that armed with this knowledge I could make the best of the situation. His coffee cake recipe calls for milk, which I had, and not much in the way of flavorings other than cinnamon and walnuts. I decided to add cardamom to the cinnamon mixture, as well as to the batter. I think cardamom is an incredibly underused spice and goes very well with most berries. And of course I added the blueberries, tossing them in flour so they wouldn't sink.

The recipe was a bit strange. First you stir together the topping, pretty standard, although I did opt for the food processor so the butter would clump a bit--a trick I learned from Baking Illustrated. Then you make the dough, which calls for whisking together the dry ingredients and then stirring in cold cubed butter with a fork.

Ok, what?

I knew a pastry blender was needed and so pulled mine from the back of a drawer. But I wondered what an inexperienced baker would do. I don't think a single fork would do the trick. You could do the two knives thing in lieu of a pastry blender, but not a single fork.

Anyway, then you pour in an egg and some milk and mix it up. At this point I added the berries. It then says to pour half the batter into the pan. Here was another failure of the recipe. The batter came nowhere near to pouring. It was super sticky. I dumped about half of it in a giant glob into the pan and spread it out messily with my fingers. Then I sprinkled half the sugar-cinnamon mixture over it, spread over the rest of the dough, and finished with the remainder of the topping. I stuck it in the oven and wandered off to see what the husband and the dog were up to.

Well, the cake turned out just lovely. I guess I should have more confidence in Mr. Bittman. He is a professional, after all. But I still maintain that the recipe was a little weird.

We each ate a good-sized piece, and then I left to hang out with a friend for awhile. When I returned, another chunk of the cake was missing. The husband looked at me and shrugged.

"I took a nap and woke up with a sweet tooth," he said. Another reason I love this man.

The cake was also popular with Frances, the other hungry dog. I busted her nosing up to my piece when I set it down on the table.

Can't blame her for having good taste.

When you need a little snack

This may be hard to believe, but I am not a huge snacker. This seems at odds with my food-obsessed nature, but it's the truth. I guess I've never liked most snack foods all that much and I find them pretty easy to resist. I'd rather spend my indulgences on wine or dessert.

Sometimes I do like to fix a little something before dinner, though, if we're sitting around and getting a little hungry but not so hungry that I feel like cooking yet. My favorite thing to have in these cases is cheese and crackers. On the cracker front, I am pretty flexible. I can certainly appreciate a fancy cracker (I like those thick-cut olive oil and sea salt ones) but I can also throw down on some Triscuits. I am a little pickier when it comes to cheese. One I really love is d'Affinois, a French double-cream cow's milk cheese similar to Brie. I was introduced to this cheese about six years ago and since then have always preferred it to Brie. It's incredibly creamy and has a lovely, fresh flavor.

My favorite cheese, though, hands-down, is Cowgirl Creamery's Mount Tam. If you have never had Mount Tam, stop reading this silly blog and get thee to the creamery. Or if you don't happen to live within driving distance of Pt. Reyes, you can find this delightful cheese at Whole Foods. I love this cheese so much I don't let myself buy it unless I have the excuse of company coming over. Otherwise I go a little crazy. I also like their Red Hawk, but it's a little pungent.

But when there's no Mount Tam to be had, I bake some pita chips and whip up a little puree of cannellini beans. The chips are super simple--cut some pita bread into whatever shapes you like, toss with olive oil, coarse sea salt, and pepper (the key is to press the salt into the pitas) and bake for 18-20 minutes at 375 or 400, tossing once. I do them on convection, because it gets them nice and crispy.

The puree is easy too. I struggle with what to call this--bean dip is reminiscent of the weird peel-top refried stuff that shows up at Super Bowl parties, and hummus doesn't do it justice. I think hummus is OK, but often I find it a little on the gritty side, and too garlicky. Cannellini beans make a much creamier dip, and I vastly prefer the flavor. Garbanzo beans always taste like can to me, no matter how many times you rinse them.

What I do is rinse two cans of cannellini beans really well. Then I throw them in the food processor with some chopped rosemary and pulse it a little. After that I add the juice of two lemons, olive oil, and lots of salt and pepper. You can add as much or as little of anything as you like. I try to lean on lemon more than oil, but I never skimp with salt. Salt makes or breaks the puree.

Of course, you could add anything you like to this--garlic, or other fresh herbs. I tend to make it the same way because I always have lemons, oil, and fresh rosemary on hand. I like that in spite of its humble ingredients, this emerges a rather elegant snack, one I often serve to guests. What they usually say is, "Did you make this hummus? It's amazing!" I always want to correct them and say it's not hummus, it's a white bean puree. But I suppose that's not being a very gracious host. So I just load up a pita chip with the creamy, herb-flecked puree and nod and smile. Who cares what it's called, anyway? If it tastes good, that's what matters.