Food to Celebrate Midsummer
Written by Kate Petersen on June 21, 2008 – 7:55 am -In America, the summer solstice is considered the official start of the summer season. In Europe, it’s Midsummer Day, which makes more sense from a celestial standpoint.
This photo from Wikipedia (click for larger image) is of an analemma pattern, a multiple exposure showing the varying positions of the sun throughout the year. The summer solstice is at the upper left, the point marked (in Deutsch) “NO.”
Traditional folklore has always taught that midsummer is the time for celebrating weddings (the most fertile time of the year!), long hours of daylight, warmth, and an abundance of food.
Food — now we’re talking!
Yesterday I went to the local farmer’s market. We have several Saturday markets in the area, the street-festival kind where people bring their dogs and there are local musicians and chefs and lots of artists as well as fresh food, but we’re also fortunate to have a year-round, 7-day-a-week farmer’s market. This is the old kind, the truck growers’ market, the one where I went with my mother every couple of weeks to pick up pole beans and cucumbers for pickling and peas by the bushel for canning.
I bought baskets of zucchini, yellow crookneck squash, pole beans, tomatoes, onions. I bought a huge bunch of collard greens two hours out of the ground. I bought a cauliflower which probably wasn’t local but looked lovely. The small man with the brown face like a dried-up apple put my choices into bags, and as I paid him, he finally allowed his curiosity to surface.
“Are you a restaurant? How many people do you cook for, anyway?”
People don’t put food by anymore, I suppose.
Today I’m going to make one of my very favorite summer meals. It’s particularly appropriate, I think, for Midsummer’s Day, to celebrate the bounty of the season.
Grilled Summer Vegetables over Pasta
Gluten-free alternative is below.* 12 oz capellini or linguine*
* 2 small Japanese eggplants (or 1 medium eggplant)
* 4 tomatoes
* 2 medium zucchini
* 2 medium yellow squash
* 3 sweet Vidalia-style onions
* 8 ounces mushrooms, sliced
* olive oil
* 2-5 cloves garlic, minced
* 2 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped
* sliced black olives
* capers
* salt and pepper to taste
* grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano cheese1. Start a large pot of water heating for the pasta and start the grill. While the water and grill are heating, chop the eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, and squash into roughly 1-inch chunks. Quarter the onions.
2. Arrange the vegetables and mushrooms in a layer, cut sides down, along with half the garlic and basil on a large roasting pan. Drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat everything lightly.
3. Place the pan on the hot grill and roast the veggies for about 20 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, boil the pasta until done; drain.
5. Heap a pile of pasta on each plate. Top with a generous serving of the veggies and their juices. Each diner can add some of the remaining garlic and basil, olives, capers, salt and pepper, and grated cheese to taste.
Serves 4 generously.
*Gluten-free alternative: Instead of pasta, serve the vegetables over cooked polenta or grits.
Other suggestions (not vegetarian): Grill boneless chicken breasts after the vegetables have cooked; thinly slice the chicken and add to the veggies over the pasta.
Total time: about 30 minutes
Yum! What’s your favorite summer meal — or family/cultural tradition?
Posted in Food, Recipes |
4 Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
My grandmother and parents loved what they called “stewed tomatoes”, and it was basically several fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped (or a storage jar of tomatoes) heated in a saucepan until cooked, with slices of bread (or rolls) added near serving time and stirred.
Of course, my grandmother always grew strawberries so we had lots of strawberry shortcake with pastry crust and home milked cream. She grew Ozark Beauties, so the picking season was pretty long.
And Kentucky Wonder pole beans. I’ve never seen so many green beans in my life! They liked to let them get quite mature so that the seeds had some size on them, but they still qualified as snap beans if you went to the trouble to string them carefully. Warmest regards, Doc.
Stewed tomatoes is one of my comfort foods. I add a dash of sugar to mine.
Love those pole beans too. I can’t find them here though.
Stewed tomatoes are wonderful. I haven’t had them in years, but they were one of my favorites when I was a kid.
One of my faves: green beans cooked — okay, overcooked — in good fatback with tons of sweet onion.
Also, green beans cooked with tiny new potatoes.
Fresh spinach cooked and served with vinegar.
Freshly picked tomatoes with salt and mayo.
Or what I’m having now: freshly picked raspberries with just a touch of sugar.