Sharmila on Food

Here come’s the summer

It’s so gorgeous, even my lazy cat wants to go outside.

We Brits do love our weather chat don’t we?  Whilst cliche-tastic, you can’t help but feel a million times better when the sun is shining.  I always feel London properly comes to life in weather like this, and can’t help but think this can be a really great place to live.

Blazing sunshine and heat also has a big impact on how we eat.  If it carries on like this, I’m pretty sure I won’t be eyeing up any stew recipes for a good few months.  Whilst I do like meat, I generally find myself being less interested in eating lots of meat when it’s this hot too.  Which is a good thing if you consider all the amazing vegetables that spring to life at this time of year.  I can’t wait to start eating a ton of different broad bean dishes come June.

A perfect example of this switch in eating is the salad I made for my lunch yesterday. A simple jumble of chargrilled courgettes, cherry tomatoes and the most fantastic mozzarella di bufala, all brought together with a lovely lemon dressing.  Simple as, but so much more than the sum of its parts.  Chargrilled courgettes are something I eat a lot of in the summer.  Courgettes can often be pretty uninspiring, but the chargrilling brings out more flavour, and also saves them from turning to mush.  I invariably use them in a Nigel Slater recipe from the Kitchen Diaries, that I’ve been making for years.  The dressing is as simple as lemon rind, lemon juice, olive oil, seasoning and basil leaves all combined together.  I went even more minimal than this, just opting for the lemon, olive oil and seasoning this time around.

As with many light, summer dishes, the quality of the ingredients is often paramount.  I lucked out with the cherry tomatoes from my Riverford veg box (I think letting them sit on the window sill for a week also helped).  However, if you know your tomatoes are going to disappoint, leave them out.  There are few things worse than flavourless tomatoes (well, there are many things, but I’m ignoring the weighty stuff like death and and suchlike).

On a summer dessert tip, I’d been wanting to make the coffee granita with whipped cream from the last Observer Food Monthly.  I love coffee, and as I get older, I really appreciate the taste in desserts (oh, and in espresso martinis, but that’s another issue entirely).  The recipe is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/16/nigel-slater-simple-summer-recipes.  It is one well worth making.

I didn’t bother with using mineral water (I don’t buy the stuff, and I’m perfectly happy with tap), and it still turned out great.  This is easy peasy, save for having to spend a bit of time mixing in the ice crystals.  It is also incredibly delicious.  The cream cuts through the icy coffee taste beautifully.  In fact, it ends up tasting like a non-alcoholic espresso martini (there I go again), which is definitely not a bad thing.  I have more in the freezer.  I know what I’m going to be indulging all of this week.