Hot weather dinners - your favourites

Okroshka

Just enough V8 to enable the blender to handle tomatoes, cukes, peppers, onion, garlic, olive oil, Sherry vinegar, salt, and pepper. I am ok skipping the bread. I leave it slightly chunky and drink it from small Duralex glasses.

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But they are not great here most of the year… although I heard yesterday from Boa Vista in Apple Hill that they’re in “full harvest mode of their vine ripe tomatoes. Medium and larger size now available”, so I need to get down there.

But for the rest of the year… anybody use canned SM tomatoes for Gazpacho? Always have them on hand, and LUV the juice for Bloody Marys (way better than V8). Would have to open way too many cans for enough juice… so what about just throwing the whole can in the vitamix?

When really nice tomatoes are not available, we use Camparis or grape tomatoes. Both have good flavor.

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It’s been quite hot in NY here, lately, too. When the summer heat is sapping the life out of us we will often do a vegetable as our “main” and cold stone fruit or melon to go with it. We recently made Smitten Kitchen’s green beans with almond pesto for the first time and have repeated it several times. We’ve also put the pesto on grilled zucchini, along with the tomatoes the recipe calls for. We will be making variations of this all summer long.

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Last night’s dinner was cheating street corn (coated in a slurry of Duke’s, Sriracha, and lime and grilled outdoors), Caesar salad, and a small banana shake for dessert made from an extremely ripe banana.

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I like to grill kabobs and serve fresh sides. Greek salad, some sweet corn, and some cool drinks. I love kolsch beer on hot days. Mind you, I love in a place that rarely gets to 95, let alone the 115 my mom lives in in Phoenix.

Made summer rolls last night. A bit labor intensive but with a spicy peanut dipping sauce perfect for a hot night. No pics we ate them before I thought of it. These weren’t my best effort. I tried a dif method that looked easier which was to mix the julienned carrots, cukes & noodles etc together like a salad. Usually I have all my neat piles of veg and layer them in individually. The results were a looser roll, still delicious but messy.

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I freestyled a cold cucumber yogurt soup and was very happy with it today in this blistering heat.

2 cucumbers
Clove of garlic
Backyard herbs: basil, some oregano, and a handful of lemon verbena
Squeeze of lemon
Rice wine vinegar
Good olive oil
Greek yogurt
Salt and pepper

Blend in blender, chill.

Next experiment: cold beet soup with homegrown beets I pulled up today!

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