Henry James said it most succinctly: “Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” Words that call up long, languid days; afternoon picnics in the bee-loud glade beneath the chestnut trees in a Tuscan garden; late-night suppers on a trattoria terrace in sleepy Rome; children chasing fireflies through a Maine twilight while their elders dip bread crusts into the last of the pasta sauce; sunny mornings at the beach foraging for clams, lobsters, mussels, and crabs; bare feet curling into the warm earth of a friend’s garden as he plies us with tomatoes and cucumbers, sweet and spicy peppers, fresh beans and early corn. “Take, take,” he says, “it’s too much for me, it’s summer’s bounty.”
Summer in New England, summer in California, summer in Italy, summer in far-off, upside-down Australia—wherever summer happens, it’s a brilliant time of year as gardens, farm stands, and produce markets alike explode in a dazzling selection of gorgeous vegetables. And we want them all, tossed on our plates of pasta, one after the other or in sensational combinations. The earliest harbingers of this seasonal abundance fade away in the bright warmth of early July, and asparagus, fava beans, and peas are banished as zucchini, eggplants, and tomatoes march into our kitchens; then the drowsy heat of high summer arrives, bringing with it sweet corn, grilled and grated into pasta; tiny new beets, new potatoes, and sweet peppers in rainbow colors; skinny French haricots and flat green romano beans, and our favorite, fresh shelling beans, whether cranberry, cannellini, or any of the myriad heirloom beans, adding a healthful note to robust pastas.
Roasted, steamed, grilled, sauced, pureed, or chopped, raw summer vegetables brighten up the pasta menu. Sometimes, cruising a farmers’ market or a roadside farm stand, we snatch up just one or two fresh greens that catch our eye and simply toss them into a frying pan together with a healthy glug of olive oil, a bit of garlic and onion, some salt and pepper, to make a spontaneous pasta al orto, pasta fresh from the garden. Whenever we can, we add from that other summer sweet spot, the bright array of crisp fresh herbs, foraged in the wild, cultivated in gardens, or carefully nourished in pots on city window ledges. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and of course thyme, but also basil, summer savory, delicate chervil and chives, cilantro, mint, and tarragon—not all of them, not all at once, but each one or two will find a role to play in the kitchen, enhancing the flavors of the summer vegetables we love.
Thinking about herbs reminds us of basil and inevitably of pesto. We aim to convince ambitious cooks to try at least once to make real old-fashioned Pesto Genovese (here), using a mortar and a pestle. The texture is surprising, almost unctuous in the way the sauce coats the pasta. But don’t restrict pesto to the basil–pine nut version we know best, the one that goes so well with a combination of pasta, potatoes, and green beans. Once upon a time, the Ligurian original from Italy’s Riviera was made with walnuts and parsley instead—a splendid idea to try. And we love the brilliant pesto from Trapani on the west coast of Sicily using Sicilian almonds, basil, and tomatoes (see here), traditionally served over intricately curled busiate, a regional favorite. In Tuscany’s Arno valley, a friend makes a great pesto using wild fennel greens and pistachios—California cooks might forage for wild fennel growing in abandoned plots in that state where the wild plant emigrated centuries ago from its Mediterranean homeland. Or just use your imagination and combine fresh herbs with nuts (hazelnuts also work well) in a food processor and beat in olive oil until the mixture is the right consistency. Add a little cheese, a little garlic, maybe a tiny pinch of chili pepper, then toss with pasta hot from the pot and serve it up immediately. Summertime in a bowl!
Eggplant is another harbinger of summer, roasted or grilled and tossed with tomatoes and mozzarella, or charred into a sweet-smoky filling for ravioli. It’s true, eggplant is in supermarket produce sections year-round, but nothing beats the fresh flavor of eggplant right out of the garden—something you won’t get from supermarket varieties that have been chilled and shipped thousands of miles. (Refrigeration is not good for this summer favorite.) Zucchini are ubiquitous throughout the year too, but their blossoms, pale and delicate, are purely a summer treat.
If you’ve been thinking about eating less meat (and who hasn’t these days?), summer is an ideal time to amp up your vegetable consumption—with so very many vegetables to choose from, meat won’t even be missed. But it’s also a perfect time to practice being a locavore—maybe not for every meal, nor even for every day, but once in a while take up the challenge of eating nothing that hasn’t been grown within, say, a fifty-mile radius of your house. Impossible? Not really, not with the burgeoning of farmers’ markets all over the country.
The warm, days of summer call naturally for lighter meals so it’s also a time when we crave fish and seafood. Our Maine holidays always include lobster—it wouldn’t be summer in Maine without it—but other types fit summer menus too, even those that are in abundance all year round. Seafood means lightness, as in alluring seafood pastas made with clams or lobster or sweet white fish sparked with tart lemon and fresh herbs.
So much of summer cooking is about quick and easy—quick in order not to heat up the kitchen, easy in order to get back outside in the sunshine—but we’re also passionate about two slightly more complex summertime pasta dishes that we think are spectacular, especially for summer entertaining. One is Cuscussù Trapanese (here), the Sicilian dish that’s a takeoff on North African couscous but easier and fun too, with its range of seafood. The other is a great tradition from Catalonia, on Spain’s east coast, where Mediterranean seafood stars in a brilliant version of paella—but paella made not with rice as usual, but with fideos, or Spanish pasta (see here).