Go for the gold: A Sweet Summer Spread

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David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Wednesday, July 7, 2021

A Sweet Summer Spread

Sam Sifton

Good morning. Here’s the report from where I sit: David Tanis is in The Times this week with a sweet summer dinner menu (above) that I think you could make this evening if you’re not too exhausted by [gestures] all this. It’s for a cherry tomato salad with green beans, chickpeas and feta followed by lamb patties with fried onions and a tahini-yogurt sauce and an apricot tart with pistachios for dessert. Make that meal tonight or some night soon, and I reckon it’ll leave you feeling elegant, a restaurateur in your own home.

Yewande Komolafe, meanwhile, brought us a neat new recipe for muhammara chicken sandwiches that offers excellent instruction in both poaching chicken and making the spicy red pepper dip that adorns it. And Kay Chun weighed in with a new recipe for vegetable noodle salad with sesame vinaigrette. She uses angel hair pasta as the base, which usually makes me cringe because the noodles clump up so easily, but Kay’s sly: She snaps the strands in thirds before cooking, and the broken pasta makes the salad really scoopable. Give that a try.

The corn near me is about knee-high out of the ground, but I’ve got people around me clamoring for early ears. So I picked up a dozen that I think came from New Jersey? They were pretty grand for elotes, and for this grilled corn with jalapeño-feta butter.

You could make spicy cucumbers with yogurt, lemon and herbs tonight. Or mayo-marinated chicken with chimichurri. (Or both.) You should try these red chile pork brochettes at some point. And it’s never, ever, a bad time to make and eat fish tacos for dinner. I’ve been doing that lately with scallops and shrimp, regular as a metronome. It’s one of my summer delights.

Of course, you could also just look in the fridge and see what’s hanging around in there, and what it brings to mind. For instance, the other night I had a bunch of grilled chicken thighs left over from a barbecued chicken session, and I shredded them into a bowl with some chopped celery and a big dollop of crema for a free-form chicken salad. It was a no-recipe recipe for a dinner of some distinction, especially next to the last of the baked potato salad my pal Derr had brought to dinner the night before. Take inspiration from what you have on hand! My guess is: You’re a better cook than you think.

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Now, it’s nothing to do with grilled eggplants or shirred eggs, but I read between the lines of my colleague A.O. Scott’s review of Steven Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move” on HBO Max and was rewarded with a pleasant hour and 55 minutes in front of a screen.

Also in The Times, I think you’ll want to read Alex Vadukul’s poignant, sad and beautiful obituary of the artist Hash Halper, who drew chalk hearts on the streets of downtown Manhattan. He died last week at 41.

I’m still laughing at how Sam Richardson’s character in “The Tomorrow War” calls J. K. Simmons’s character “Conspiracy Santa.” That’s a fun romp, on Amazon Prime.

Finally, new music to play us off: Faye Webster, “I Know I’m Funny haha.” Listen to that, and I’ll be back on Friday.