This morning, I stepped outdoors and, for one shining second, my pores and skin skilled an ephemeral shiver. It wasn’t precisely chilly out — extra just like the mid-70s — however as a refreshing breeze blew my means, I felt that tiny chill, and I stated to myself three of my favourite phrases: Fall is coming.
I do know, I do know. Autumn continues to be technically a month away. And right here within the Mid-Atlantic, by the point you learn this we’ll be again into the mid-90s. However I caught a whiff of the season to return — my favourite season, arms down — and began dreaming of the meals that will likely be again on my desk as soon as the shorts return in storage and the jackets come out.
As a gardener, I’m normally trying forward, anyhow, fascinated about what vegetation can thrive after they germinate and sprout in a number of weeks, and I begin to plan my cooking round them. Whenever you reside someplace that will get this sizzling within the summers (increasingly of the world because the planet warms), one of many nice seasonal cooking ironies is that at simply the second you’re most excited about consuming salads, it’s absolutely the hardest to develop salad greens. My lettuces bolted and turned bitter a month in the past, however I’m eyeing the calendar for the correct time to start out sowing new rounds of lettuce, spinach and arugula seeds for a fall bounty.
Till then, in fact, I purchase greens on the grocery store, and have been making salads that get heartier by the week. One I can’t cease making is from the inimitable Jeanine Donofrio’s newest guide, “Love & Lemons Easy Really feel Good Meals.” It combines spinach with roast broccoli, apple (or pear), pumpkin seeds and dates, drizzled in a superb curry French dressing. The dressing, punchy with garlic and ginger and curry powder, will get a contact of sweetness from extra dates, and makes the salad as applicable for particular events as for any given weeknight. One of many (many) instances I’ve made it was after I was searching for one thing to serve alongside a giant pot of lentil soup for a colleague’s latest going-away celebration, and it labored wonders.
Broccoli and spinach really feel like seasonless substances, however the apple — whereas accessible any time — clues you in to the concept that this salad could be notably welcome in not solely the season we’re in, however the one which’s on the horizon, able to provide the chills you’ve craved all summer season lengthy.
