Damon Lee Fowler

One of the things that gets Southerners through our infamously steamy summers is the abundance and almost endless variety of fresh produce that thrives in that moist heat. And while not all of it can be eaten right off the vine like a cucumber, melon, or tomato, it doesn't take much cooking to bring out the best in it.

One of my favorite ways to do that without having a kitchen meltdown is to cook the vegetables very simply and use them as a sauce for pasta. From artichokes to zucchini, if it grows in their gardens, Italian cooks have found a way to pair it with pasta. In Emilia-Romagna, their justly-famous velvety egg pasta, cut into long tagliatelle or fettuccine noodles, is frequently sauced with green peas or fava beans.

The idea is lovely with our native butterbeans (lima beans to some of you—but don't try to argue the point with a Southerner). Simply enhanced Read More 

It's cobbler season, when the fruit is at its peak and so is the heat and humidity. The last thing anybody wants to do is go in the kitchen, never mind a kitchen with an oven turned on. Still, Southern cooks will brave the heat for a cobbler just about any time, and after all, we don't have to stay in the room with it while it's baking.

This year cobbler season came just after I'd discovered that there was an actual, positive culinary reason for cinnamon-flavored whiskey to exist: it's the perfect flavoring for a lot of summer fruit, especially blueberries and stone-fruits such as peaches. Read More 

The up side of summer storms is that they often cool things down and offer some relief to that relentless, sticky Southern heat, however temporary. The wake of that tropical storm that blew through Virginia this week, however, has brought nothing but more withering heat and smothering humidity.

There's just so much cooking one can do under those conditions, and what little I have been doing involves things that I don't have to stand over, or that are in and out of the pan in a hurry: that cold summer squash puree from last month, cold minestrone finished with a spoonful of pesto, my grandmother's salmon cakes, Mrs. Randolph's whole okra that's done in four minutes and best enjoyed at room temperature, quick pasta sauces like zucchini sautéed with garlic and oil, and, of course, those lovely, cooling composed salads like salmagundi and salade nicoise.

But most composed salads require at least some cooking and for beating this heat, the ones on my mind now are those that don't require any cooking at all.

A favorite of those that has refreshed my appetite and gotten me through more oppressively hot summer afternoons than I can count Read More