Stone Fruit Caprese

A standout caprese starts with great fruit. You need ripe tomatoes to weep juices, which then mingle with grassy olive oil and milky cheese to make your dressing. Basil adds freshness, black pepper and flakes of sea salt add crunch, and that’s it, a perfect combination. But if the stone fruit options are looking better than the tomatoes at the market, you can use them instead. They’re similar in flavor to tomatoes, but need cajoling to relinquish their juices. By letting sliced fruit macerate with salt, sugar and lemon juice, their fruitiness becomes more electric and their juices pool on the plate. Start with fruit you can smell and pair it with equally quality ingredients. Caprese is more about shopping than cooking.

20 min

Greek Salad

While diner-style Greek salads made with chopped romaine, crumbled feta and often grilled chicken have become ubiquitous in American restaurants, a traditional Greek salad, or horiatiki salata, is a simpler affair. An assembled salad of large-diced vegetables with Kalamata olives and sometimes capers, this salad has no greens at all, and the feta is served sliced on top of the salad rather than crumbled and tossed into it. A traditional Greek salad dressing usually consists of olive oil and red wine vinegar; this recipe adds garlic and oregano. To make the salad into a satisfying vegetarian main course, throw in a can of drained and rinsed chickpeas.

15 min

Cold Tofu Salad With Tomatoes and Peaches

Sweet, savory and refreshing for summer’s hottest days, this is the salad to make when tomatoes and peaches are at their prime, on the verge of bursting. Inspired by Italian caprese salad and Japanese hiyayakko, it features juicy, ripe wedges of peaches and tomatoes seasoned with flaky salt, which draws out their juices to mingle with soy-balsamic dressing and creamy silken tofu. Top the salad with a shower of fragrant basil and mint, a nod to the shiso that often accompanies hiyayakko, and a few cranks of black pepper. Be sure to spoon the umami-rich dressing (the best part!) over the tomatoes, peaches and tofu so that it pools at the bottom of the serving platter. To get vegetarian recipes like this one delivered to your inbox, sign up for The Veggie newsletter.

20 min

Classic Caprese Salad

This classic summer dish doesn’t get any simpler or more delicious. Use different-colored heirloom tomatoes for the prettiest salad, and buffalo milk mozzarella for the best tasting one.

15 min

Country Panzanella With Watermelon Dressing

Consumed plainly or with a salt sprinkle, fresh watermelon conjures warm-weather memories. In the U.S. (primarily in the American South), master gardeners are growing heirloom (seedful) varieties: sugar baby, jubilee and Georgia rattlesnake. In Apex, N.C., Gabrielle E.W. Carter is the new steward of the property once owned by her maternal great-grandfather, where she grows herbs, tomatoes and watermelon. As a multimedia artist, she is documenting the food ways of Black families in Eastern North Carolina and preserving cooking traditions using fruits and vegetables straight from the garden. Crimson-flesh watermelon transforms the classic panzanella with a balanced sweetness. Using a coarse grater is essential in achieving a vibrant, textured dressing. Bocconcini can be substituted for feta cheese in this salad, which pairs well with festive mains like dry-rub mushrooms and spicy tamarind pork ribs.

30 min

Kale Salad With Apples and Cheddar

For a kale salad to be successful, use the most tender kale you can find and cut it into very thin filaments or chop it very finely (or both). Curly kale and Russian kale are more tender than black leaf kale. This is inspired by a wonderful salad I tried recently at the New York restaurant Northern Spy.

5 min

Creamy Lemon Pasta

This Creamy Lemon Pasta is an ode to the sweet, fragrant lemons that grow all along Italy’s Amalfi Coast. It’s a signature dish of L’Antica Trattoria in Sorrento. Get the recipe at Food and Wine.

20 min

Sweet Cinnamon Tamal

Baking a single large-format tamal may not be traditional, but it produces a similarly tender, moist, barely sweet cake with pudding vibes.

Cinnamon Baked Doughnuts

Schlutzkrapfen – pasta filled with spinach and ricotta

This semi-circle shaped pasta is typical of the Trentino-Alto Adige region of north Italy and is filled with spinach, ricotta and potato. Tossed with nutty brown butter and topped with Grana Padano cheese, this moreish dish is well worth making pasta from scratch for.

Butternut Squash Polenta | Epicurious

Butternut squash melts into the polenta as it cooks for this creamy make-ahead dish. Once transferred to a baking dish, pressing chunks of creamy Fontina cheese into the polenta ensures that once baked it will be full of gooey pockets of cheese throughout.

Mustard, Kale and Cheddar Pull-Apart Bread

These mustardy monkey bread rolls boast lots of cheddar cheese and garlic, making them ideal with soup or pasta.

3 hr 5 min