One half of this summer was sustained by a great deal of indulging - gelato, aperol spritzes at 2pm, panini con polpo (octopus sandwiches laden with long cooked greens and silky stracciatella), cornetti con crema (italian croissants with custard cream), valdostane (flaky pastry sandwiching cooked ham, a thin slice of mozzarella, mild tomato sauce), shepherd's pie and pints, full Irish breakfasts, steak au poivre, pork rillette, duck with orange. This led to the second half of the summer relying on simplicity. Especially coming back from Italy – where the use of delicious olive oil, crunchy sea salt, and some type of vinegar are the only condiments really needed to compliment the seasonal vegetable, fruit, fish, or meat that is being enjoyed – So most meals that I cooked in the following months tended to stray from fussiness. 

Then, in August, my parents and I go to the North Fork of Long Island where we spend eighty percent of our time sitting on the beach, the other twenty percent driving to farm stands, cooking, and eating. The produce is abundant and beautiful, and by August the corn (my favorite summer food item) is bright yellow, sweet, and the kernels are practically bursting with starchy juiciness. 

One afternoon, my dad and I drove to one of my favorite farm stands – Sang Lee Farms, a spot that historically grew exclusively Korean produce for wholesale markets, but has since expanded into producing all kinds of beautiful produce for all kinds of markets. They have a dip they sell at Sang Lee called Ginger Scallion Dip, it’s creamy and slightly sweet and super savory and has all kinds of ginger in it – crystalized, raw, maybe even pulverized??!! and I’ve been eating it during the summer with thick slices of raw kohlrabi for as long as I can remember. Anyway, we got a half-pint of dip, some radishes, baby yellow tomatoes, and little lunch peppers and sat at a picnic table and munched. It was a wonderful little blip of a moment.

These first two photos were taken in Puglia; It was so hot there. There’s something I quite like about the heat slowing down a meal. You’re too hot to eat anything too rapidly, so lunch becomes a deeply prolonged event of nibbling, chatting, lots of chilled wine, and wiping away sweat. One morning while driving through a barren sandy little town called Ceglie Messapica, we stumbled on a small tent set up with wooden crates filled with finger sized trumpet mushrooms, little tomatoes in various shades of deep yellow, deep purple striated with green, bright reds, succulent lemons with their leaves, slender fennel bulbs, wavy beans, furry peaches and waxy plums – I mean, just dreamy. Anyway, the gentleman working at the stand helped me – his dialect that six months of Italian immersion did nothing for – and we drove back to the house with a large brown paper bag of goods. The above photos (and a few meals not pictured, pasta fredda, late afternoon snacks, etc.) are what yielded.

Then in late August, sweet Roisin came out for a weekend and we went raspberry picking. There was the one side of the raspberry bushes that held all the dangling berries that are the deep reddish pinkish color we’re used to, which seemed to attract the majority of raspberry pickers, and then to the right there were the apricot colored or even blonde berries… I was hesitant at first, but in the back of my mind I knew that I had seen these lighter colored raspberries at some point somewhere. After trying one, I decided these mildly saccharine berries were totally worth taking home, I imagined them all on top of a pavlova with lots of lightly sweetened cream, or on a fragrant olive oil cake with a dollop of creme fraiche. Their varying tartness poking through to remind you about their brightness – equally in color and in flavor.