And sometimes you don’t. An idea for dinner, that is. It sounds odd, coming when the fields of the midwest are at their most bountiful, producing innumerable varieties of colorful, ripe produce. Mother Nature is providing to her fullest.

But Mother Nature threw us a curveball this week, in the form of 90ºF+ day after 90ºF+ day. Consequently, the Magic Chef, usually my ally in turning the weekly farmers market haul into various kinds of delicious, has become my bitter enemy and I avoid turning him on at all costs. Indeed, I absolutely refuse to give the Magic Chef the time of day. But there are still the vegetables sitting in the crisper drawer, begging for some transformation that I feel powerless to effect as Martha and I stew in our air-conditioningless apartment.

While the Magic Chef has betrayed me with his apartment-heating ways, a steadfast friend — one that stands by me in hot and cold — stepped to the fore: my Benrinner Mandoline. Even though I spend a lot of time cooking, I am really not much of a kitchen gadget person — you’ll rarely see me endorsing gear on this blog. That said, everybody should have a mandoline. Its uses are many, not least among them when you’re completely out of ideas for dinner you can pull out all your vegetables and just start slicing. Shredded purple cabbage? Beautiful! Fine julienne of carrots? Not if I don’t get to do radishes too! Green peppers? Well, I don’t really like them raw, but slice them thin enough and who can tell the difference? As my salad bowl began to fill, an idea started to form in my mind.

A purple cabbage, a half onion, a green pepper, several carrots, a couple of radishes and an ear of corn later I decided this was going to be a vaguely Asian salad, so I set about putting together a dressing of garlic, ginger, peanut sauce (in fact left over ají de mani from last week), soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and olive oil. Six tomatoes withering in the heat on the counter made a natural vessel for the salad, just as their pulp was a nice addition to the vegetable roster. To top it off, I happened to have some five-spice pork aspic sitting in the fridge from bánh mì — the kind of thing you save because you should but have no idea what you’re going to do with.

And that’s the great thing about no ideas — sometimes they turn into something else.

Perhaps you hadn’t noticed, but I haven’t been posting much lately. This is mostly for positive reasons: fun and interesting social engagements, steadily progressing training runs in anticipation of a marathon in October, excellent meals eaten outside the home, all working together to spare you of my culinary musings.

Related to the aforementioned activities or not, I’ve also been feeling a little blah about cooking lately. I’m still putting food on the table most nights, but it has mostly seemed pretty automatic — nothing quite interesting or delicious enough to share. I was uninspired.

Inspiration, happily and frustratingly, comes at unexpected times. So it was this afternoon, in a moment of distraction from the tasks at hand, I allowed my RSS reader to direct me over to the latest post on our friend Brett’s blog Trout Caviar: Grilling the Market. Whether it was the picture of a beautifully charred carrot or Brett’s call for simplicity in summer preparations, something about his post got my wheels spinning again.

My mind jumped immediately to dinner, where suddenly a pasta with some kind of onion, summer squash and cream sauce — most definitely blah food — started to take on a more interesting character. For one thing, pasta was out: no need for imported starch when a bowlful of market new potatoes sat underutilized on the counter.

The summer’s first squash could still be used, accompanied by some of its first carrots. Given our current urban living situation, grilling was not a possibility; luckily, roasting can also develop those deeply browned surfaces I was after. A quick dressing with olive oil, vinegar, market parsley and garlic, and plenty of salt and pepper was all that was needed to showcase the best of the season.

I read fifty to one hundred food-related blog posts in any given day; most of them are discarded with the spin of a scroll wheel. Sometimes though a post comes along like Brett’s that changes what I’m doing in the kitchen — and even my outlook on this blog. It’s enough to inspire someone to write a post.

Roasted Summer Vegetable Salad

• 1# golf-ball sized potatoes
• 5 or 6 small summer squash
• 10-12 small carrots
• 3 small onions, sliced
• 2 T butter
• 1/2# flavorful sausage, cooked and sliced
• 4 oz goat cheese

Dressing

• 1/3 c olive oil
• 2 T apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup parsley leaves, minced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 450ºF.

Cut the potatoes in half and place in large microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high for 8 minutes, until starting to become tender. Toss potatoes — careful, they’re hot! — in ample quantities of olive oil, salt and pepper. Don’t wash the bowl just yet. Arrange the potatoes on a sheet pan, cut-side down. Roast 20-30 minutes, until cut-sides are deep brown, just about to burn.

Meanwhile, cut the squash into 1″ chunks and place them in the bowl you tossed the potatoes in. If your carrots are pencil thin like mine were, you won’t need to peel or cut them; thicker carrots can be quartered. Toss carrots and squash in bowl, adding more olive oil, salt and pepper as necessary to make everything good and moist and seasoned. Turn the contents of the bowl out onto a sheet pan and roast in the oven 3o minutes, until the surfaces start to brown. It’s probably a good idea to flip these veggies around about halfway through the cooking so both sides get brown.

Heat the butter over medium-low heat in a small skillet and add the onions. Cook until greatly reduced and deep brown.

While the vegetables are roasting prepare the dressing by combining all the ingredients. Salt and pepper should be added to taste; given the quantity of vegetables, you may need more salt than expected. Add in the sausage (I used the beef, bleu cheese, and Surly Bender sausage from Clancey’s Meats & Fish).

As the vegetables are done roasting/caramelizing, add them to the bowl with the dressing. When all is ready, toss the vegetables well. Top with crumbled goat cheese and serve.

In mid-nineteenth century Italy, as power passed from one faction to another fighting to control the unification of the country, many lower-class people — ever ignored by political elites — resorted to brigantaggio, or brigandage, both as a means of securing a living and a form of resistance against occupiers foreign and domestic. In the United States today, the brevity of the Wikipedia article alone suggests the extent to which this movement has been forgotten. But where memory fades, food can preserve, and as we are talking about Italy it is only appropriate that the memory of the brigantaggio be preserved in its very own pasta shape: cappellacci dei briganti (brigands’ hats).

I discovered this shape while browsing through Oretta Zanini de Vita’s excellent Encyclopedia of Pasta, published last year in English by the University of California Press, which I received from Martha for Christmas. After introductory essays covering the significance of pasta in Italy and the methodology of her research, Zanini jumps into a comprehensive, alphabetically organized listing of pasta shapes, both home and factory-made. Many of the descriptions are accompanied by sketches, although as this is not a cookbook — something the author and translator both insist upon — the level of detail provided is generally insufficient to reproduce the pasta at home. Cappellacci dei briganti did feature a sketch, however, as well as the following description of how to make them:

The flour is sifted onto a wooden board and kneaded long and vigorously with a few eggs, water, and salt. The dough, which should be firm and smooth, is left to rest, then rolled out with a rolling pin into a very thin sheet. An inverted liqueur glass is used to cut small disks from the sheet. Each disk is wrapped into a cone around the tip of an index finger and the edge sealed, then one side is folded back like the brim of a hat. They are air dried and then boiled in plenty of salted water. (64)

Between the distinctive sketch and the intriguing history, I couldn’t help but try to make some brigands’ hats at home.

I started by making my all-purpose pasta dough, using a technique from Cook’s Illustrated. First, I put two cups of flour in the food processor and pulsed it a few times to distribute the flour evenly. I then added three eggs and allowed the machine to run until the mixture was granulated. To finish the dough I add water teaspoon by teaspoon with the processor on until it comes together in a single mass. Then I kneaded the dough a few times, shaped it into a ball, and let it rest in the refrigerator for a half hour. I suspect this method, utilizing a food processor instead of a hundred-year-old flour-soaked board, would be upsetting to Zanini and her sources, but it’s a clean and fast way to produce reliable pasta dough.

When the dough had rested long enough to be workable, it was ready to be divided in quarters and passed through the pasta machine (another gift from Martha, from a few years ago). Using a small wine glass, I cut circles out of the thin sheets of pasta.

The next step, which sounded so easy in the description from the Encylcopedia, required quite a bit of trial and error. Eventually I figured out exactly where to put my index finger — slightly off from the center to get a slanted cone — and how much of the dough needed to be folded over itself in a triangle to form the cone. This is definitely a place where fifty years of pasta-making experience — as opposed to 5 minutes of reading a book — would have paid off.

With a slightly off-center cone to work with, folding the brim of the hat was more straight-forward. The long part of the cone is simply folded up. The only trick to this was initiating the folds with the piece of pasta upside-down; trying to do it from the side resulted in a slightly crushed hat. Although I suppose in the line of duty, a brigand’s hat might get a little out of sorts.

After using all my dough to fill two sheet pans with hats, I boiled them for just under five minutes.

Anybody a little familiar with the Italian ways of pasta knows that at least as important as its shape is the sauce it’s served with. For cappellacci, nothing but a lamb ragú will do. Luckily, Clancey’s was able to provide a beautiful piece of lamb for a slow braise in a sauce consisting mainly of tomatoes canned during the height of the season last August — which tasted mercifully of summer and not botulism.

Though the brigands of Italy are long defeated and perhaps even forgotten, their hats — transformed into pasta and covered in a delicious ragú — deserve to live on.

Eighty degree weather notwithstanding, I can’t shake the feeling that summer is soon to end and that a short fall will in no time at all be heralding in dark, cold winter. But as far as the farmers’ market is concerned, these fears are unfounded: fall might be around the corner, but there is still an abundance of ripe summer produce. In fact, with eggplants and summer squash, tomatoes, onions, red peppers and herbs all in season now is the time for ratatouille, the Provençal vegetable stew.

When I am looking to make French food, I always turn first to Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking (I am inordinately proud of my first American edition—thanks Mom and Dad), a shining example among the many books that treat the subject of French cooking. On ratatouille, David says:

There are any amounts of versions of this dish, the variations being mainly in the proportions of each vegetable employed, the vegetables themselves being nearly always the same ones: aubergines, sweet peppers, onions, tomatoes, with courgettes sometimes being added and occasionally potatoes as well. Some people add mushrooms, but this is a rather pointless addition because they get completely lost in the mass of other vegetables. Garlic is optional, but the cooking medium must be olive oil.

To make a dish of ratatouille sufficient for about eight people, the ingredients are 3 medium-sized onions, 3 large aubergines, 3 large sweet red peppers, 3 courgettes [zucchini], 4 large tomatoes, 2 cloves of garlic, a few coriander seeds, fresh or dried basil if available, or parsley, 2 coffee-cups (after-dinner size) of olive oil. (242)

The first thing was to deal with the eggplant (ahem, aubergine) and summer squash, specifically with their overabundance of moisture. To get rid of some of their extra liquid, I sliced 3 long, spindly japanese eggplant and 4 thin, bright-yellow summer squashes into 1/4″ rounds on the mandoline (easily my favorite new kitchen tool this year). I then tossed them with a teaspoon of salt and spread everything out on a cooling rack set over a sheet pan to drain (you can also use a colander, but I feel spreading the vegetables out over a cooling rack helps them to drain more effectively). After an hour, I pressed the vegetable slices firmly with an absorbent towel to push out as much moisture as possible. A soggy ratatouille won’t do!

With the eggplant and squash prepped, I was ready to start cooking. I first sautéed three sliced onions in a generous amount of olive oil (not quite as generous as two teacupfuls, after-dinner or otherwise) until the onions were soft but not browned. To this I added the eggplant, squash and 3 finely chopped bell peppers. I cooked this mixture covered over medium-low heat for 40 minutes.

While the eggplant, squash, peppers and onions were stewing away I peeled and seeded 10 roma tomatoes (I had heirlooms from the market but it seemed a shame to cook them) and chopped them fine. Per Elizabeth David’s suggestion I also ground up a few coriander seeds and added them to the tomatoes. After the prescribed 40 minutes of cooking, I added the tomatoes and coriander to the pot with the eggplant, squash, onions and peppers and let it cook, mostly covered, for another 20 minutes while the tomatoes softened.

After the hour of cooking, I used a spoon to try the broth that had developed. What an amazing taste of late summer! The broth was rich, earthy and even very sweet. The vegetables really required no additional seasoning, but I added a little salt to brighten the flavor even more.

Just before serving, I mixed in 1/3 cup of basil chiffonade and 1/4 c of minced parsley. I only just realized that David suggests using one or the other, but really, who could choose?

One essential accompaniment for eating ratatouille is plenty of crusty bread to use to mop up all the juices. Given the farmers’ market theme of this lunch my dining companions and I were happy to indulge in a delicious and culturally appropriate pain de campagne from Brett of Real Bread.

And while I couldn’t bear to cook my heirloom tomatoes, neither could I resist eating them immediately. They were typically sweet, acidic and tomato-ey in a salad with cucumber and goat cheese. I added a little olive oil and vinegar, but the tomato juice itself is dressing enough.

Ratatouille is such an ideal dish for this time of year. For one thing, it is a good way to use all that zucchini/summer squash and eggplant that you are feeling so guilty about not eating yet. More importantly, it is a dish of great simplicity that depends entirely on the quality of its ingredients. For some people French cooking has the reputation of being highly technical and focused on transforming raw ingredients into something entirely new—the English used to accuse the French of inventing sauces as a way of disguising bad ingredients buried underneath. But French cooking understands—along with many other culinary traditions— that dishes will only be as good as the ingredients they started with. For something as straightforward as ratatouille, the phrase “garbage in, garbage out” very much applies. Luckily, the produce available in farmers’ markets right now is about as far from garbage as you can get.

There’s really a lot in ratatouille’s favor: it’s simple, it’s hearty, it’s full of flavor, it’s even vegan! About the only downside I can think of is that it can only be made at this time of year, when the peak seasons of its various parts coincide. All the more reason to enjoy it while you can.

After my surprise at seeing squash and brussels sprouts at the Midtown Farmers’ Market last week left me anxious about the coming of the end of the growing season in Minnesota, it was nice to notice this week that in spite of the appearance of these late-season vegetables the summer growing season remains in swing. There’s still time left to get some of the most beautiful produce this state has to offer.

Every time we arrive at the market I worry that there won’t be any more tomatoes. Not this week, though: we got our mixed heirlooms and Sungold tomatoes from Honey Creek Farm, and picked up some romas for sauce purposes. I found summer squash with the most intensely-yellow skin I have ever seen and long, flawless Japanese eggplants whose deep-purple color made me think of royal robes or red wine. Multicolored peppers can be had for a fraction of what they cost at the supermarket the rest of the year. Everything is getting bigger, too: huge heads of broccoli and cauliflower, baseball-sized potatoes, and for $2 more fennel than I normally eat in a whole year. Everything seems to be at its peak of ripeness and beauty—this is the time of year to be at the market.

And as if the amazing produce wasn’t reason enough to go to the Midtown Farmers’ Market, it was also Scandinavian day! We sampled some Danish Æbleskiver with Martha’s parents—our guests for the weekend. Juan and Linda were initially drawn to the æbleskiver for their similar size and shape to buñuelos, a Colombian cheese bread.

Like spherical pancakes, the æbleskiver were light and fluffy, dusted with powdered sugar and served with strawberry (as opposed to, say, lingonberry) jam.

Only in Minnesota!

The abundance of the summer season can be quite exciting, but also daunting. I try my best to make a plan each week after my trip to the farmers’ market about what I am going to do with all my produce, but given the quantities sold at the farmers’ market and life rearing its ugly head, a few vegetables slip through the cracks: a half pound of green beans here, some cucumbers there, you know what I mean. Maybe you’ve even had to face the shame of discovering rotting vegetables at the bottom of your crisper drawer. Those vegetables gave up their lives for you and you’re just going to throw them out?!

One solution is to cook all this stuff before it gets old but—and I’m sure I’ll be disavowing these words come February—a person can only eat so many steamed fresh green beans. For me, when nature’s bounty becomes a little too much to handle, I turn to pickling.

Maybe you’re thinking, “whoa,  pickling is too much to handle!” I’m not talking about your grandma hauling out the canning jars and putting up the whole winter larder (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). Given the limitations of my stove and storage space there’s no way I could sterilize or properly seal a bunch of jars. But with refrigerator pickles, quick pickles that need to be stored cold, there’s no need to sterilize the containers or vacuum seal them: it’s just produce, spices, vinegar and you’re all set.

I had three particular overabundances to address: a bag of green and yellow beans that was two weeks old, a large bag of cucumbers that I had no chance of finishing, and the rest of the summer slaw from earlier in the week (which, obviously, was not dressed).

With all those vegetables stuffed into clean jars it was time to add spices. I don’t believe in using a recipe when making pickles; instead, I just put together a collection of what I vaguely consider pickling spices. With the beans I put in a few sprigs of fresh dill, a split jalapeño, a few crushed garlic cloves, coriander seeds, mustard seeds and peppercorns. Same drill with the cucumbers, except instead of mustard seeds I used caraway. For the cabbage I put in chinese five spice along with garlic and peppercorns. I usually prefer to use whole spices for pickling but my five-spice was ground; I don’t think it will be a problem, though those seeds floating around the jar are pretty.

At this point the pickles are ready to be, well, pickled. For this, pickling solution is required. I usually do a combination of two parts vinegar to one part water, with about two tablespoons of salt and ¼ cup of brown sugar if I’m looking for sweet pickles, as was the case with the cabbage. Vinegar choice definitely makes a difference here: I have had some excellent pickles made with champagne vinegar and I bet balsamic would give interesting results. Being economically minded above all, I usually just use pure white vinegar, a gallon of which can be obtained for less than a dollar. It tastes fine.

After a quick boil to dissolve the salt and sugar, the solution can be poured in the jars to cover the produce. With a short cooling they are ready to be lidded and put in the refrigerator. 24 hours later and the pickles are ready to eat. I think food safety experts might say pickles last refrigerated up to a month, but I have eaten pickled rutabaga that was over 3 months old and did not die, so proceed at your own risk. It probably won’t be an issue anyway, because after you try the first of your homemade pickles (trying my pickled cucumbers on a burger, for example, sent me into a fit of joyous expletives) they won’t last much longer at all.

If you haven’t seen it already, read the New York Times “Refreshing by Definition” on the essentials of summer cocktails. Lots of our favorites are there: mint, basil, lemons and limes, cola (specifically Coca-Cola, of course), and a muddler (thanks Mari) for all that mint and basil. Just as we’ll be using summer’s fruits in sorbet throughout the next few months, the “essentials” also offers up melons, peaches, and others for use in cocktails.

To their essentials, I would add varied bar/glassware for serving. What’s a liquid without a container, anyway? A puddle. That’s what. Below is a quick roundup of easily accessible glassware for summer entertaining. Whether you shop online, downtown, or at the mall there should be one that works for you. Of course, sticking with what you have is also a great option. Our handblown blue glass tumblers from Cuenca, Spain are a favorite of mine.

Short or tall, there are a lot of good choices out there. If you like blue glass, Crate&Barrel can satisfy for only $1.95 per with their Cobalt Glass family. Also on sale is Pottery Barn’s Rustica Barware, which comes in sets of six in a choice of colors (including blue). For those who like to buy handmade, check out Vital Home on Etsy for some fun screenprinted bicycles on the side of your cocktail, also available in tumbler size. Getting a little fancier and a little more Scandinavian, try these delicate iittala Aino Aalto tumblers (available online and at Finnstyle in downtown Minneapolis) which come in a number of great muted colors. Finally, they may be clear, but West Elm’s recycled glass drinkware has that greenish, coke-bottle coloring inherent in thick, recycled glass and perfect for serving any mojito or margarita.

Living in a city with an IKEA (as opposed to the nearest one being 2 [2006-08] or 6 hours away [2005]) can be dangerous. I may or may not have been there twice in the last 14 days. I didn’t see any of these items when I was there last week… so they must be just coming in to stores. It’s about time they got some new napkin patterns!

Solig paper napkins, $0.99—$1.99

Dyning hammock in assorted colors, $29.99

I’m interested to see what the Dyning hammock is like in person. For its price, it would be lovely if it were light and squished up small so as to be camping-friendly.

And the trays! There are several new trays also part of the Solig line; the price is right too. We have one tray at home with a great black and white striped pattern, a gift from Sarah, that makes for fun food presentation. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to have a couple more?

Solig trays: Left, $7.99; Right, $4.99 each

Lastly, I almost forgot, there are new bags. I still like my ’05 beach bag best… mostly because it was purchased at IKEA Florence and because it’s just generally awesome, but these are pretty great patterns too. Below are the Solig gardening bags in three colors at $2.49 each and the new Solig beach bags at $1.49 each. This is why IKEA=Love.

All images: http://www.ikea.com/us/en

**Update: If you’d like to see the catalog pages check out AT’s “sneak peek” of the summer line.