Meals for mid-August

Happily, it also means some of the larger squash are beginning to appear – red kuri/onion squash were on market stalls and in allotments near me this weekend, although I’d counsel that you want to leave them for a while to cure and sweeten.

So yes, mid August is courgettes and tomatoes, with sweetcorn and then squash just round the corner. As if the spread below (captured yesterday) wasn’t enough of a prompt to centre lunch on love apples**, I also found myself with half a loaf of nearly stale sourdough…

… more in just a minute on an inevitable - if atypical - panzenella.

*how is it ‘mid’ already?!

**the French used to call tomatoes “pommes d’armour”… which tbh sounds much better than “love apples”

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Before we get to the panzanella, last week’s conchiglie, chickpea and courgette recipe went down so well that I thought I’d point you to a few more ways to cook up your courgettes.

Start with this old post, which proposes a variety of courgette-centred side dishes.

Per my book On the Side, I think that the best way to cook is to make (or think about making) something interesting from the vegetables you have hanging around, and build out from there. What might’ve been the afterthought becomes the inspiration or the theme for a meal.

In that hyperlinked post are a couple of ideas that’d take (say) your chicken, beef or lamb in an East Asian-ish direction (a courgette and edamame salad with a miso dressing; or charred courgettes over gochujang mayo); and then a couple with more of a mediterranean vibe, such as the tomato and courgette tian pictured above, and fennel seed, dill and lemon braised courgettes below.

If you make a big batch of these braised courgettes, then you could use a mass of them as the base for some thick yoghurt, poached eggs and brown butter. Just a thought. (Watch the video)

I also recommend treating little-to-mid sized courgettes like cucumbers and ‘snake-cutting’ them, before marinading in a soy-tahini-chilli oil dressing and serving along sized numbing Uyghur-style lamb skewers, per this recipe post.

Or a more recent offering in the shape of this basil oil courgette puff tart over on the Guardian Feast App.

A quick tip of the hat towards August’s plums.

Out of season supermarket plums are one of my pet peeves (hard, flavourless, the very opposite of juicy). But the next two weeks or so offers the best window for genuinely excellent plums - ideally pick them yourself or grab from a proper greengrocer, although you might also get lucky at a supermarket. And if you find yourself with, say, a kilo, scatter with 5 tablespoons of sugar, a couple of very finely diced stem ginger pieces (halve the plums if they’re bigger than a walnut). Roast at 200C fan for around 20 minutes until puffy but still hold their shape. Decant with all juices into a smaller vessel, then refrigerate and enjoy with yoghurt for breakfast over the next few days.

OR make a plum and tarragon puff tart with ginger nut crumble – this recipe is 6 or 7 years old but is still on the Waitrose website, and one of my favourite easy desserts ever, I think.

You’ll need some chilli crisp for the panzanella recipe. I’ve mentioned this list before, but my favourite brand is Red Panda. Obviously there’s Lao Gan Ma too, the OG (for many of us). Also very much worth a try: Woolf’s Kitchen, and the crispy shallot version of Mama Yu’s chilli oil.

The stale bread I mentioned at the top shouldn’t really have been stale. I’d bought it only the day before. But its dry, close crumbed state was predictable given it was (a) via Ocado; (b) Gail’s.

In fact I’d wanted it that way, because I had a few crouton-led dishes in mind; and the Gail’s rosemary and potato sourdough is particularly good for that purpose (and no other).

I know that in a traditional panzanella the bread becomes soggy and soft from all the juices, oils and vinegar. But I have a soft (crunchy?) spot for bread that’s just been fried with anchovies and oil and so is crisp-edged and chewy.

Capers, olive oil and red wine vinegar are essential. But rather than basil I went with a handful of flat leaf parsley (only the thickest stems picked away and discarded), and another of chopped fresh mint. Perhaps a slightly offbeat herb to mix with tomatoes, but it works particularly well against the zip, buzz and crunch of crispy chilli oil.

A big, big spoonful of cottage cheese to make it a meal – and to also provide a cool, creamy, tangy respite to the punch of tomatoes and their generous seasoning of fresh herbs, salt and chilli.

Very good. Give it a go.