If you've ever tasted an ice-cold glass of limoncello on a hot summer day, you know how amazing this Italian liqueur can be. Mixed into a sangria with fresh fruit, it's quite possibly even better. This sangria is all of summer captured in one delicious pitcher.
Sweet corn is all well and good, of course, but sweet corn simmered with milk and butter? Well, that's another heaven entirely.
Here is a slow-cooker version for this much-loved party side dish. Throw everything in the Crock-Pot for a few hours, then take it directly to the buffet table. You're a hero and you hardly had to do work at all.
Save the heavy kugels for another Shabbat and make this Middle Eastern-inspired couscous dish instead! Summer isn't complicated. A summery Shabbat dinner shouldn't be either.
This recipe is the result of farmers market gluttony. The tiny red potatoes were just too good to pass up. Then the green beans somehow ended up in the bag as well. And saying no to sweet corn was really out of the question. What to do but toss everything with brown butter and serve it for dinner?
I have peer pressure to thank for my newfound love for homemade almond milk. Two of my friends have been making it for months, and I've been regularly treated to their exclamation-filled exchanges about its incredible creaminess, mellow milky flavor, and all around superiority over store-bought. I finally got to try a glass for myself a few weeks ago, and in this case, peer pressure definitely wins. This stuff is good. Really good. And once they showed me how easy it is to make for myself, I may never drink store-bought again.
Summer baking sounds like a contradiction. Who wants to turn on the oven when the temperature tops 90 degrees in the shade? On the other hand, the anticipation of fruit pies, cobblers, and tarts at the end of a meal make it worth heating up the kitchen. I found that making a quick tart with puff pastry is the perfect compromise on a hot summer day, and it ends Shabbat dinner on a delightfully sweet note.
This is chicken salad for the mayonnaise-hating crowd, although even if you happen to think mayonnaise is perfectly delightful, this is a nice alternative. It's got crunch, color, and a tangy dijon vinaigrette. Plus, it goes really well with some slices of bacon. Just sayin'.
This is the dish my guests were most enamored of during our summertime Shabbat dinner (it is always the simplest things, right?).
It's inspired by the Jewish Roman recipe, concia, which is hundreds of years old. The Jews of Rome knew their way around summer vegetables — including zucchini, which they sliced, fried in olive oil, then marinated with chopped fresh herbs, garlic, and vinegar. The zucchini browns and turns silky, almost creamy, in its olive oil bath. And the herbs (I use parsley and basil) and garlic lend wonderful flavor and freshness to the finished dish.
One last salsa recipe for the month of July. This was a tester favorite — it went fast at the party we took it to. It's not spicy at all, although you can increase the heat by adding a jalapeño or two. It's mostly sweet, cool, and refreshing, with snappy red peppers alongside the juicy pineapple. Those who love a good salty-sweet combination will like this with extra-salty chips.
One of my favorite strategies for moving outside the box of the standard Shabbat dinner menu is to look to the global canon beyond the Eastern European standards I grew up with. The Jewish cuisines of Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East — all warm-weather climates — are particularly ripe with summer cooking inspiration. This chicken dish, for example, is often served on Shabbat by Moroccan Jews, but it was delightfully unfamiliar to me when I first started making it.
Zucchini, fresh herbs, and ricotta — wrapped into a lightly grilled, bite-sized snack — it doesn't get a whole lot better than that. This is peak summer produce at its finest, with cheese (because cheese makes everything better).
Sometimes there are so many reasons why we should DIY instead of buying pre-made goods at the store. From being more cost-efficient to making things healthier, building your own homemade pantry might seem to be more hands-on, but it sure has its perks. Even something as commercialized as marshmallow cream can be made better and tastier at home. This marshmallow fluff recipe proves just that.
Every summer since I can remember, we drive the back roads to the beach. While the highways are much faster, we'd miss out on one of the best parts of the trip if we took them: pit stops at farm stands. Sampling from the trays to pick the best plums and juiciest peaches is as much a part of our family tradition as our yearly week at the beach together. And now, so is this stone fruit sangria.
I recently discovered that ice cream cake is a surprisingly divisive topic. When I asked friends and readers whether actual cake belonged in ice cream cake, the responses were severely split. Of course! said some. Absolutely not, insisted others. It turns out, you see, that many, many people were raised on the Dairy Queen and Carvel ice cream cakes, which are nothing but pure and cold ice cream, with chocolate cookie bits in the middle, and a luscious layer of whipped frosting over it all.
So today, dear readers, for those of you who dream of nothing more than recreating this childhood memory at home, perhaps with your own homemade ice cream, here is a step-by-step recipe to let you do just that. How to make an ice cream cake — it can be even better than DQ's, if you can imagine that.
This vibrantly hued red pepper and marcona almond dip is a perfect way to start a summer meal. It’s not too heavy, yet it manages to pack a major flavor punch. Spoon it over homemade flatbreads and naan, or dunk roasted potatoes into it. (For those more virtuous than I, it pairs well with an abundance of fresh vegetables.) Any leftovers can be spread onto a sandwich or slathered over grilled meat. The sky is the limit!
The only thing that makes a warm, chewy chocolate chip better, in my humble opinion, is a scoop of ice cream wedged between it and another cookie. Sure, ice cream is wonderful, and so are cookies, but together they make a Very Important Dessert, one that requires some strategy to assemble flawlessly. But who said important things are easy? It pays to go the distance here, people.
And in my not-so-humble opinion, there is only one right way to make a great ice cream sandwich. There are many wrong ways, but only one that will give you perfect ice cream cookie sandwich bliss. Listen up, and attend closely; your ice cream sandwich is calling.
“Zoodles” may be a silly name for this dish, but I don’t think zucchini noodles are going anywhere anytime soon. And that’s definitely a good thing, because it’s that time of year when gardens everywhere are overflowing with the green stuff. Zucchini noodles pair perfectly with all of summer’s bounty, especially this zesty pistachio-parsley pesto — you’ll want to put it on anything and everything! I'd say it's a match made in warm-weather heaven.
Chocolate chunks, chopped walnuts, and banana chips — once I got the idea in my head to make a cookie version of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream, I couldn't stop obsessing. With all the ingredients in my cupboard, why prolong the inevitable?
