Seasonal Foods

Apropos the summer cooking post and thread:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/dining/22mlist.html?em

At the end of June, I asked you all for your summer food suggestions. Here's the round-up (plus a few extra):

1. Salads
   We can move beyond typical salads (lettuce drenched in dressing) to look at chopped salads, bean salads, fruit salads (sweet or savory), potato salads, and pasta salads. Some of these can be made in large quantities that will keep for a while. Salads can easily become a main course, and they don't need to be raw. Quickly seared (or grilled) meats and vegetables work well for making a hearty entree salad. If they cook quickly, it isn't going to get too hot.
2. Grilling
   Yes, your grill gets very hot... but it is outside and shouldn't heat your house up. There's a reason we like to grill in the summer.
3. Stews and Braises
   Crimfan notes that a crockpot won't really heat up your kitchen. I'll expand that to include all sorts of low-and-slow cooking. We normally think of braises and stews as cold weather food, but (particularly if you skip the pile of root vegetables) they can certainly work in the summer as well. Think chili. A rice cooker is another tool that works well in the summer.
4. Raw, Fermented, or Cured Foods
   Consider meals that don't require cooking at all: bread, cheese, and fruit is a classic. Gazpacho. Sashimi. Carpaccio. Salamis. Pickled vegetables. Yogurt. There are many options.
5. Dips
   Thick tzaziki. Hummus. Babaganouj. Add something to dip such as raw vegetable, bread, or tortilla chips. Olives and cheeses might be appropriate as well. Also consider raitas, chutneys, salsas, guacamole...
6. Lessons from this past weekend
   When we were in South Carolina last weekend, my brother's best friend's wife and her mother (who are Guatemalan) made a ceviche variant. The end result was a gazpacho-like mix of chopped tomatoes, onions, and cilantro with cooked shrimp. A quick and dirty way of approximating this would be to take a mild salsa, add some fresh cilantro (and maybe a can of diced tomatoes), and some precooked shrimp (or uncooked shrimp that you've marinated in lime juice and/or vinegar). They served it with crackers, but a thin-sliced baguette would have been even better. You can easily substitute (or add) other sorts of seafood.

   We also had plenty of bagels this past weekend. I think my parents brought over 4 dozen bagels with them (for six people over about four days). Bagels with cream cheese, smoked salmon, and sliced onion and tomato is a classic. Variations are easy: add capers, substitute smoked trout for the salmon, try sliced/grilled vegetables with a bit of olive oil...

Image by Paul SapianoSummer has hit.

Hard.

It's been hitting 90ºF regularly for the past week. I'm not a fan. Today I ran by the new farmer's market after work. I picked up my beef order from Toohill ($1/lb oxtails? Sure!) Last week, I'd grabbed a pound of their ground beef ($2.95) and it was incredibly flavorful, so I put in a big order this week for a variety of cuts (Tri-Tip, Beef Back Ribs, the aforementioned Oxtails, and some other bits). Unfortunately, it was hot enough that I didn't even want to shop the rest of the market.

That's not the only way that the heat has been altering my diet. Our kitchen doesn't have air conditioning, which makes summer cooking interesting at best... and miserable at worst.

Does anyone have any tips for cooking in the heat? Respond in the comments. If I get some good ideas, I'll post them.

The Problem: You've heard the hype about local, sustainable food, but you can never get yourself out of bed in time for the weekly farmer's market... and you don't know where else you can get products from your local farms.

There are three main ways to improve your cooking:

1. Improve your cooking techniques.
2. Improve your judgment in the kitchen.
3. Improve your ingredients.

Which one do you think is easiest?