Simple Summer Food by Celia Wakefield

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It's another appearance by our own Celia Wakefield, here with more utterly delicious and not too tricky recipes you can use to impress your friends at your summer soiree - or just nosh from the sofa with the A/C turned high and a good show streaming.

 

I can’t believe that half of 2023 has passed already, are you wondering where it went? However lets not look back on the past but consider how we can enjoy summer. Julia thought it would be good to think about easy food to take on picnics, to barbecues, to Shakespeare in the Park or any other excuse for a meal outside. 

 

 

 

 

Looking back over June we had more activities than we had had in the previous three years, one of which was a Grandma shower. Yes, really. Normally we don’t think of a shower coupled with becoming a grandma other than possibly being the person who is hosting the event. But this shower was given for my friend, Thora, whose daughter, Hayley, living in Colorado, had just delivered daughter number 3, Alexandra Hope. Thora, now living in Maine, did not go west for the birth but her neighbors decided that as she was missing all the fun they would throw a shower for her. We met in a local wine bar and had a lot of fun. 

 

But this is the back story to one of the recipes - Spaghetti with fresh pea pesto. Scott, one of the guests, is a baker and had brought adorable homemade real icing cupcakes. I knew he could help me with one or two food issues and he did. I was planning an afternoon hangout with my memoir friends and was thinking of new teatime/drinks and nibbles ideas. Scott suggested among other ideas that toast squares with a fresh pea / cottage cheese mix was delightful and refreshing particularly as this was pea shoot time. I had pea shoot from my local farm stand and it all sounded delicious. However the hangout had to be rescheduled for a later date and I mentally filed that idea.

 

Forward to the Fourth of July, family gatherings. Barbecues and pie. Julia and I were discussing the differences in dessert between the USA and UK. Pie is definitely President in the USA followed by ice cream, and in the UK pudding probably rules. Pudding is a generic term for what may follow ones ‘mains’. Or as my beloved apparently said to his mother one day at dinner, “what’s for sex?” Meaning, what was for seconds, which might have been a pudding such as rice pudding, or perhaps an apple pie or even jelly, i.e. Jello. 

 

I decided to go UK for the dessert I would take to the Independence Day gathering, and make my Fourth of July pavlova, which I think I did for JRW a year or so ago. Well, the weather outside was frightful and had been for several days. Meringue is tricky enough when everything is low humidity but a damp day? No thank you. It’s important to pivot, which I did, and made my Fourth of July Eton mess, or as Julia said, call it an Eaton Mess after a town in NH. And that is what I made. 

 

The best thing about a Mess is that you can either bake or buy the merinques (I won’t tell and guests won’t know.) The morning of the Fourth I baked the Aquafaba meringues, the recipe of which was published on JRW in March this year. Then before we left the house, we prepped the local strawberries, whipped the cream with a little creme fraiche, broke the meringues into bite sized pieces and mixed them into the cream, together with cut strawberries and blueberries. I decorated the top with whole strawberries and the dessert was very well received.

 

Fourth of July Mess (taken from the English Eton mess, and no-one seems to know where this recipe originated.)

 

Ingredients:

Pint of heavy cream

1/4-1/2 Cup cream fraiche (optional)

Large punnet (basket) strawberries preferably local

Small punnet (basket) blueberries 

2 Cups Meringues broken up into bite sized pieces 

 

Method:

Wash if necessary and hull the strawberries taking out the nicest ones to decorate the top and cutting the rest into slices

Beat the cream to soft peaks adding the creme fraiche is using, in spoonfuls

Break up the meringues and mix gently into the cream

Add the strawberries and mix 

Like several of my recipes both of these recipes have amounts that are approximate. 

 

Fresh Pea Pesto for Pasta (that’s a lot of P’s)

This recipe is my combination of my new friend, Scott’s, idea for nibbles together with a recipe from Susan Spungen’s book VEG FORWARD , which I found in Katie Couric's site, and influenced by David Lebovitz, who was talking about Susan and her wonderful vegetables in his newsletter.

 

Ingredients

 

2-4 oz pasta per person

1-2 Cups Cottage Cheese

2 Cups frozen peas, defrost half of the peas

Garlic or garlic scapes dependent on what is available:

3 cloves of garlic either roasted or peeled, covered with olive oil and microwaved in a covered container for 2 minutes dependent on your microwave. I start with one minute.

1/4-1/2 cup of scapes cut into 1/4” pieces, covered with olive oil and microwaved.

2 Cups approximately snap peas, (snow peas should work if there are no snap peas available)

Pea shoots and tendrils - whatever you have

Fresh herbs if you have them; mint, parsley and basil are all good 

Salt, pepper and Trader Joe's chili lime to taste

Good squeeze of half a lemon

Grated Parmesan Cheese to serve

 

Method:

Microwave the garlic or scapes and drain keeping the olive oil in which they were cooked

Blanch 1 cup of snap peas together with 1 cup of frozen peas

Run under cold water and hold

Put the cottage cheese into the Food Processor and whirl, stopping several times to scrape down the sides until the mixture is smooth and silky

Add the uncooked (defrosted) peas together with the uncooked snap peas and pea shoots and tendrils (hold a few for decoration), then whirl till mixed in

Taste and add seasonings, but save the lemon juice for the end

Add the blanched peas, snap peas and the cooked garlic/scapes and whirl

Add the olive oil if the mixture is too stiff and taste again

Add more seasonings if necessary as well as a squeeze or two of lemon juice

If the mixture is still too stiff add some pasta water a spoon at a time till the consistency is to your liking

Cook the pasta and mix it together with the pea pesto. Sprinkle with parm. 

 

Buon appetito!