Ingredients
A moutabel dip is a must on the Eastern Mediterranean mezze table. A traditional Syrian specialty, it was usually made with eggplant, but nowadays there are a variety of moutabels, such as beet, potato and zucchini.
In my own personal food awards, frittatas win medals in these categories: Quick; Easy Supper; Vegetarian Entrées for All Tastes; and Everything That's Good About Eggs. In that last one, frittatas are to be commended for their ability to be both sturdy and tender at the same time, and for their willingness to be delicious at room temperature or even cold.
Sprinkle some salt on a slice of watermelon and its flesh contracts to subtle firmness, its aroma blooms, and its flavor crescendos. If that's what a few scattered crystals can achieve, imagine what lavishing that slice with the unerring saline expanse of a salt block will do to it: fragrant, sensual, symphonic.
A mix of yellow and red cherry tomatoes works well on bruschetta, as do juicy beefsteaks. Use white bread: a robust white Italian bread like Pugliese makes the best crostini.
This potent Indian soup is known as kadhi, but there’s very little agreement on kadhi other than that it’s a sort of sour and spicy vegetable soup, made with plenty of buttermilk and fragrant with Indian spices and as hot as you like to make it with chiles.
New potatoes and fingerlings roasted in salt have an extraordinarily pure flavor and creamy interior. Place the dish of potatoes buried in salt on the table (on a trivet) with a serving spoon, allowing guests to dig the potatoes themselves; pass little bowls of unsalted butter or creme fraiche, cracked coriander seeds, and snipped fresh chives on the side for guest to dress them as they like. This is also a great way to dress simple boiled potatoes. Leftover cracked coriander makes a surprising, instant seasoning for all sorts of dishes.
This salad says summer and is a foil for the steak. It is a simplified version of one I ate recently in Spain.
Slices of cool fresh peaches are served in wineglasses with a nectar-like wine syrup and surprisingly concentrated flavors. This is one of the more intriguing fruit desserts you’ll taste, and there’s nothing to it merely peaches, sugar, wine and an interesting technique. Some country people still use this old trick for making decent fruit taste better and superb fruit luscious. Macerating sliced peaches with sugar permeates them with sweetness and concentrates their flavors while drawing out their juices and turning them into a nectar-like syrup. Then, marinating the fruit in wine releases still more tastes, because certain flavors are soluble only in alcohol. Farmers may not have known the science of this technique, but they knew a day of steeping in sugar and wine in a cool cellar gave the family splendid fruit for after supper.