down the line
conquering basil mountain, corn season, and a peach cake
Greetings, comrades. How’s everyone feeling? Staying cool and healthy, I hope? Is it as much of a shock to you as it is to me that we’re nearly halfway through August? The other night Jeff excitedly pointed out that the days were getting shorter (because he is a monster who apparently delights in my suffering), and the back-to-school ads are all over the place, because August is seemingly just a long Sunday night before September starts. It feels silly that this mentality still persists even as a thirty-something who has been out of school for many long years, but when you live someplace where winters are dark and long, it’s hard to ever feel like you get enough enjoyment out of the summer.
I am happy we’ve been enjoying some nice weather in a non-heat wave setting, though. I’ve been able to ride my bike without praying for death to take me, and turning on the oven hasn’t felt like a punishment for my crimes. I know I’ll soon have a lot of work to do as things in my garden begin to ripen or bolt, so I’m enjoying the relative lull and allowing myself a little laziness for the moment.
Summer can feel like a bit of a double-edged sword in terms of food— there is so much of it that is fresh, and needing to be made into things to eat and preserve and freeze, and at the same time my desire to cook for anything more than mere sustenance can be annoyingly low. It’s hot, there are other things I’d rather do to occupy my time, I simply cannot think of another thing to make with this boon of tomatoes, and what have you. So I sometimes feel guilty, in these months, writing this newsletter feeling like I have nothing interesting enough to share.
I tried so hard to find something new and fun to make with this week’s zucchini. I really did. But when nothing I found in my many cookbooks or recipe sites was grabbing me, I realised it was because I actually just wanted to eat the zucchini butter pasta again. If you haven’t made this yet, you will not be sorry when you do.
The secret that isn’t a secret is that eating butter is delicious. It makes me sad to think of the damage we did in the ‘80s and ‘90s by treating butter as a terrible, shameful thing, but I hope we all feel like we have a better relationship with it now, and can allow ourselves to enjoy it properly from time to time. I added kalamata olives again because it was so good this way the first time, and I had the full amount of zucchini this time around too which was nice. If you’d rather not make pasta, I think the sauce part of this could easily be used as a dip for some sturdy crackers or a spread for fresh bread. But if you do make pasta, don’t forget to save a bit of pasta water to reheat your leftovers (as always).
After buying a two-pound bag of peaches despite the fact that I cannot eat peaches raw, the clock was ticking on some sort of peached baked good. I landed on this peach upside-down cake (Melissa Clark has yet to steer me wrong), made in a 10” cast iron pan. I’ve made upside-down cakes a few times this way, using rhubarb or pineapple, and it’s always a win. A quick brown sugar caramel is established in the pan, and then the peaches are stirred in to layer across the bottom. The cake is an easy vanilla butter cake (I used oil because my butter was still frozen), and the top will get nicely browned in the oven, the bottom edges becoming crispy in the pan and lightly caramelizing the fruit.
It came out beautifully, and since you have to flip it out of the pan before the cake cools fully in order to stop the fruit from sticking, you can actually cut the cake and enjoy a slice while it’s still warm. This is definitely best the first day or two, because the crispy edges will soften with the moisture from the fruit and the cake will no longer have such a delicate crumb, but it’s definitely still edible after that if you keep it in the fridge. I still have another pound of fresh peaches left, though, and the cake’s almost gone, so watch this space for another peach treat next week.
Most of the year I feel pretty neutral about corn. Like sure, it’s pretty good. Regular. Nothing to write home about. But when local corn comes into season, I fucking love corn. Grilled is my favourite way to eat it, so I am always on the hunt for salads to make using grilled corn, or interesting compound butters to make for serving it on the cob as a side. The first cherry tomatoes from our garden are ready and we also got some lovely little orange ones on sale at the produce market, so I made a corn and tomato salad with lime, feta, mint, and basil (similar to this, just a little less basic). This made for a delightfully easy yet presentable dinner for a lazy Sunday, with the addition of a platter of hummus and some restaurant-style tortilla chips.
A happy accident with my produce delivery ended up with me getting a half pound bag of basil for $2.50— an amazing deal, but then of course I had to be responsible for essentially a throw pillow’s worth of basil. Since I’ve almost worked through my freezer container of vegan pesto, I figured I could make a new batch (after pep talking myself out of the house to pick up nuts at Bulk Barn).
I love this method of making pesto because it uses half pine nuts and half walnuts, meaning it’s slightly less prohibitively expensive to make a lot of it. Although I don’t use it much, this is one instance I will argue the effectiveness of plastic wrap: tightly covering the surface of the pesto once it’s in the container before freezing will help keep its colour intact, as well as prevent it from growing ice crystals if it’s in there more than a month or two.
We liked the pizzas Jeff made on the long weekend so much that we made them again, almost exactly the same. The crust wasn’t quite as puffy, maybe because it wasn’t as hot out, but they were still super delicious: one pesto base (we have so many pestos now) with sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, feta, and castelvetrano olives, and one spicy tomato base with salami and pineapple. I don’t bother to use so-called ‘pizza sauce’ for a tomato base; I just purée some canned tomatoes and add salt, sprinkling on a few chili flakes and/or herbs once I’ve spread it onto the crust, depending on what else I’m adding. For me it’s preferable to let the tomato flavour come through without overwhelming the taste of the other toppings, the way heavily seasoned pizza sauces can do.
A friend who lives in Toronto was in town and came by to eat the pizzas with us and try a slice of the peach cake for dessert. We spent at least an hour afterwards sitting at the patio table talking about Star Trek— an ideal evening, to be honest.
Media:
I enjoyed this piece about Stephen Satterfield’s approach to food stories. I loved watching High on the Hog and found his emotional storytelling, his way of telling both universal and highly individual narratives, extremely compelling (watch the show if you haven’t already). As Naomi Starkman remarks in the article:
“Stephen is interested in lifting other people up and using his platform to bring to life the voices of so many individuals. It's not just about him.”
Precisely: we don’t need another season of Chef’s Table. We need more people like him who are out there doing all they can to make sure the stories of people who otherwise might not be heard are told in compassionate and interesting ways.
Thanks for reading— if you enjoyed this newsletter, please smash that like button below, or share it with someone new! I like providing this to you for free, but it does still involve time and effort, so donations I can use towards cookbooks or future treats are much appreciated. And something a distressingly large number of people could use a reminder of this summer: no one wants to hear anyone else’s music at the beach.