I know I can’t be alone when I say that being in the kitchen in the summer is a drag. It’s hot outside, I don’t need it to be hot inside, too. And since it’s Utah, where central air is not especially common inside homes – they favor swamp coolers here – it is frequently already hot inside anyway so the last thing I want to do is make it hotter. I prefer to flavor my food with kosher salt, not beads of sweat.

Gross.

Anyway, like most people we move to a great deal of low-maintenance cooking in this wretched heat, like grilling or things that cook quickly, and especially things that can be served cold, like this fantastic pasta salad from the June/July 2010 issue of Cooking Light. It is everything you could want in a summer dish – bright, sunny notes from the fresh dill, the tang of lemon, the smooth, silky bite of cold orzo and the crunch of crisp red bell pepper and cucumber. And the best part? I listed nearly all of the ingredients right there. The full recipe is, as usual, behind the cut.

I know, too, that it’s been a long time since I’ve updated. I won’t apologize for it, since I was using that time well, or promise that I will update more frequently, because you can see that’s worked out so well in the past, so instead I will encourage you to subscribe to my RSS feed so that you’ll get the updates whenever I do get around to posting them.

And you don’t want to miss the chocolate peanut-butter cookies coming soon!

Lemony Orzo-Veggie Salad
adapted from Cooking Light
(yields four 1 1/4 cup servings)

You will need:

3/4 cup uncooked orzo (get the bronze-die cut, it’s worth it!)
1/4 tsp lemon zest
3 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 large clove minced garlic
1/4 tsp honey
1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup diced English cucumber (these are frequently marketed as seedless, longer than standard cucumbers, and might be wrapped depending on your store)
1/2 cup diced red bell pepper
1/3 cup thinly sliced green onions
1 Tbsp chopped fresh dill (Utahns: Sunflower Market is great for fresh herbs)
1/2 cup (2 ounces) crumbled goat cheese (optional)

Cook your orzo as the package recommends, but don’t salt or oil the water. Drain and rinse with cold water, drain again and place in a large bowl.

While the orzo is cooking, combine lemon zest, juice, olive oil, salt, garlic, honey and black pepper in another bowl, whisking well to get them all together and full of deliciousness.  Pour over your cold orzo, stir well to coat. Add cucumber, bell pepper, onions and dill, and toss gently again to coat veggies. Sprinkle with the goat cheese, if you like that sort of thing. Crumble cheese are not my thing. Stick your head in the bowl and enjoy.

Just kidding. It’s for eating – so eat!

The thing with copycat recipes is you are never sure how close they’re going to get to the real thing. For instance, Food Network magazine had a copycat recipe for the OG’s salad dressing, which we all know is basically the best part of going there. I was all set to enjoy a delicious salad, my tastebuds were dancing with anticipation, then I took a bite and drowned in a deluge of disappointment. (raise your hand if you were embarrassed for me upon reading that!) It was good, don’t get me wrong, but when you are expecting a particular flavor and embark upon finding that flavor, when it doesn’t arrive it just feels a little cruel, that’s all.

I think with some tweaking this could be very close, but as it is, it’s delicious. I don’t think anyone would be too disappointed with the results and it’s moderately low-effort to achieve.

Lemon Cream Cake

For the cake itself, you have two options. One, buy yourself a box of white cake mix. I am not a snob about these things. If I want something to be foolproof and tasty, I go with the box because I cannot be trusted to bake well from scratch. Besides, Duncan Hines yellow butter cake with no frosting makes a delicious breakfast. Don’t judge me.

The second is to bake from scratch. I have struggled with this repeatedly, and the recipe I’m going to share with you is the closest I’ve come to how a cake should be. I overbaked it so it was dry, but that’s because I’m an amazing baker, not because the recipe is crap.

Vanilla Cake
adapted from Betty Crocker.
(this will make 3 9" rounds or 2 9" rounds and 12 cupcakes)
2 2/3 c. all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder (2 for 3500+ ft)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 c. butter or margarine, softened
1 1/4 c. sugar
2/3 c. milk
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
4 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease (with shortening or butter, this is not an ideal application for pork fat) and flour your cake pans and/or line muffin pan with cupcake liners. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Whisks are great for this.

In another bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, cream your butter and sugar together until fluffy. Turn speed down to medium and add in flour, milk, eggs and vanilla. Adding flour works best in sections because when it collides with the force of the beaters, it explodes into an hour of cleanup. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Keep beating for 2 more minutes and then section evenly into your pans.

Recipe says to bake 25-30 minutes. It may be high altitude but at 25 minutes, mine were overdone. I would start checking after 20 minutes. If a toothpick comes out clean, it’s done.Let sit for 10 minutes, then turn out of pan and let cool on a rack.

Lemon Cream
(adapted from Meemo’s Kitchen)
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
2 c. confectioner’s sugar
4 tsp. lemon juice
Zest of 1 lemon
1 c. heavy whipping cream

As stated, this requires two bowls. I am a chronic recipe follower so I did as mentioned and whipped the cream in a stand mixer and the cream cheese with a hand mixer, but I think in the future I’d whip the cream first and store it in another bowl, then use the stand mixer again to beat the cream cheese. Anyway.

Combine the cream cheese and the confectioner’s sugar with a mixer until smooth, then mix in the lemon juice and zest.

In another bowl, whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Fold whipped cream gently into cream cheese mixture.

It’s – dare I say – a piece of cake from here on out. For the cake, be very generous with the frosting on your middle layer(s), throw on the top layer and frost until covered. For the cupcakes, apply however you’d like. I have a giant star-shaped piping tip I use with a ziploc to do mine.

Cool in the fridge for 3 hours before serving, and keep in the fridge after that as well. This is a cake best served cold. Enjoy!

Also known as lemony fish with greens and taters, which is why I do not work in marketing. The actual recipe calls for escarole, but after going to 5 grocery stores in search of it, I made do with curly endive – escarole is endive though a different and supposedly less bitter variety. I read that radicchio is virtually indistinguishable from escarole in taste but I had this awful fear that the red color of it would bleed onto the fish and that just did not sound appealing to me at all. Anyway.

For those of you who don’t actually like seafood – like me – tilapia is a very, very mild fish. If it’s the fishy flavor you hate, you would be fine eating this. If it’s the texture of fish, you’re hosed, don’t make it. If you can, though, it’s got nice protein content, not to mention low mercury content.

Tilapia with Endive/Escarole and Lemon-Pepper Oil

You will need:

–1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
–12 oz baby fingerling potatoes, halved
–4 cloves of garlic, smashed (I used five because I’m a rebel)
–1 bunch curly endive OR 1 head escarole, torn into pieces
– Kosher salt and ground black pepper
–1 1/4 lb tilapia fillets, patted dry
–2 sprigs fresh oregano, leaves torn, or a couple shakes of dry oregano if you (like me) were unwilling to spend 3 bucks on fresh oregano that will just go bad in your fridge
–Juice of one lemon

Heat up 1/4 c of that oil in a large skillet – and I do mean large. 12" or bigger. (so many things that could be said here….)

When the oil is warmer, put your potatoes in cut side down, to get them all brown and tasty on le bottom. The garlic should go in too. This process should take you roughly 5 minutes. My oil was not optimal temperature when I put my potatoes in so it took longer for them to crisp up a bit. Plus they stuck to my pan. How that happened with a freakin’ lake of oil coating the bottom of the pan, I’ll never know.

They really do look like fingers. I’m going to put a big bowl of them smothered in ketchup outside for Halloween. Looks aside, they are creamy and delicious on the inside and worth getting. Once they’re done, add your endive/escarole.

This may take some work, I had to stuff mine in there pretty good since I only have a 12" skillet. It does however wilt down relatively quick once you add 1/3 cup of water and cover with a lid, which you should do once it’s all in there. Give it another 5 minutes or so to steam and soften up.

While that’s happening, get your fish dried and seasoned with salt and pepper. After the 5 minutes is up, place the tilapia on top of your now-wilted greens, cover and steam for 5 more minutes or until the fish is cooked through. (5 minutes should do it just fine)

While the fish is cooking, whisk together the remaining 1/4 cup of oil, the lemon juice, a bit of salt and a healthy dose of black pepper. If you are feeling adventurous (and aren’t breastfeeding/pregnant) I think a glug or two of a dry white wine would go great in this. I don’t ever feel adventurous with a new recipe – and I’m nursing – so I don’t know if that actually tastes good, I only know that the flavors, especially combined with the bitterness of the greens and the relative sweetness of the fish, should balance nicely with the addition of a little wine.

Getting the now-cooked fish off those greens can be tricky. I tried tongs first and that was really dumb of me, I should have learned that lesson from the Dover sole a few weeks back. Fish and tongs – shredded mess. Make use of your slotted spatula here and lift the fish onto the plates. Serve with the greens, dig some of the potatoes off the bottom of your pan, drizzle with the lemon oil and bon appetit.

It should be noted that while this is a tasty dish, I did not like the endive. In the interest of fairness though, I am not overly fond of wilted greens, particularly dark greens as they tend to be bitter and unpleasantly textured for me. That’s just personal though and Warren, who likes basically any kind of green raw or cooked, thought it was good.

Though I am calling this recipe mine, it is comprised (like most recipes) of pieces of others. These shells actually belong to a recipe for Pecan Delights that my dad sent me 3 years ago, which are ridiculously tasty, but I’m the only one in this household who likes pecan pie. (it’s wrong, I tell you. Just wrong.)

Tart shells:
1 standard muffin tin
1 stick of butter
1 cup of flour
4 oz cream cheese
1 Tbsp. sugar
Pinch of salt (fyi, a pinch is generally 1/8 tsp)

Cream the cheese and butter until fluffy, then add the sugar, salt and flour.

Mix well and divide into 12 equal parts. Place each part inside muffin tin and conform to shape.

Bake at 350F for 15 minutes, reduce temperature to 250 and cook for 10-15 more minutes. Remove from oven and place on cooling rack. I let mine cool for very nearly half the day, as I wanted them at room temperature before filling, but a quick visit to the fridge would accomplish that much faster.

(for what it’s worth, my idea of 12 equal parts was to spoon up some and roll it into balls that looked roughly uniform. remember, though, that baking is a science and theoretically we should all be weighing each ball to make sure they are equal. i should also be drinking 8 glasses of water a day, exercising and spending less time on the internet though, so balls to that. Roughly uniform size it is!)

Deviating from the recipe, after I shaped the shells I used some egg white to wash the edges, because I like that glossy look on pastry dough. It’s personal preference though – if you want to do it, just put an egg white into a bowl, beat it a little, and brush it on with whatever you have handy that can perform the function of a pastry brush. In my case, it was a cheap paintbrush from an unopened package of watercolors. Hey, it worked for me.

Another thing worth noting is that since I’m adapting this recipe – the original bakes with a filling, and I just want the shells – mistakes were apt to be made and they were. You need to poke holes in the bottom of the shell with a fork and/or fill with pie weights/dried beans, otherwise the centers will puff like any puff pastry will when the steam can’t escape or isn’t weighted.

Blackberry sauce: (adapted from Mark Bittman’s fruit sauce recipe in How To Cook Everything, which I totally need to buy)
1 c blackberries
2 Tbsp butter
1/4 c sugar
1/8 tsp arrowroot powder

Melt butter and sugar over medium heat until syrupy but not browned.

Add in your berries and continue simmering for 2-3 minutes (I let mine simmer for closer to 5-8 with no harm done) or until berries are soft and juice has given way.

Smash berries with the back of a spoon or ladle into a fine mesh sieve to gey all the juicy goodness out and discard the remains. I deviated from the recipe here because I was unhappy with the thickness of the sauce. I knew refrigeration would give it a little more bulk but I was still afraid it would be too thin, and I think I was on target there.

I took about 1/4 cup of the juice out after it had cooled a bit and made a slurry with the 1/8 tsp of arrowroot powder (it’s a pure starch like cornstarch, but with a finer texture, more neutral flavor, and generally plays a bit nicer with food than cornstarch does – feel free to wiki it!) and added it back in, chucked it back over medium heat while whisking for a few minutes, and then took it back off to cool again. This gave me a more pleasing texture and thickness, but I still put it in the fridge for about 3 hours.

After everything was cooled to my satisfaction, I took the blackberry sauce out of the fridge and once again using those handy toddler spoons placed about 1/2 tsp of the sauce in each of the tart shells, spreading it around so that the surface was covered. Placed the shells on a plate, covered with foil, back into the fridge while I whipped up – quite literally, actually – the lemon cream.

Lemon cream: (adapted from The Love Bite)
Zest of 2 Meyer lemons
2 tsp lemon juice
8oz cream cheese
1 c confectioner’s sugar
1/4 c heavy whipping cream

(You’ll notice there are no process-of pics for the cream. Yeah, I was making dinner at the same time and, uh, forgot. You try multitasking at 7 months pregnant. My brain, it doesn’t work so good. )

In a stand or with a handheld mixer, whip the heavy cream, cream cheese and lemon zest until combined and fluffy. Add the confectioner’s sugar and whip to combine. Add the lemon juice and continue whipping for 2-3 minutes. Texture should be light and rich. Chill in the fridge for 2-3 hours for best results, or freeze for 20 minutes. Basically, you want it to be cold and a bit firm. Once your cream is appropriately chilled, grab your tarts, your cream and a ziploc bag/piping bag and tip and prepare for fun. If you’re using the piping bag you already know what to do, else you wouldn’t own a piping bag.

For the rest of us, there’s a Ziploc sandwich bag with the corner cut off – I cut mine at about 1/4". Add some cream in there (just a note, I had a ton left over, if you’re only making 12 consider halving the recipe), seal it up, cut off your corner, squeeze the air out from the top down, and pipe the cream onto the blackberry sauce however you see fit.

When you’re done, take a bite and see if you like it. If you do, have another. If you don’t, there are always friends, neighbors and relatives to foist them on. You could garnish with a little more zest, or with candied lemon peel, or a mint leaf, or any other type of thing, if you were so inclined.