By Lynne Rossetto Kasper
Scripps Howard News Service
Dear Lynne: We are stumped. We need a really easy lunch menu for our hot, humid apartment. We have no air conditioning or access to a grill. Everything we come up with requires the stove. Any ideas? — Hungry But Steamy in Dayton
Dear Hungry: This sounds like my old apartment, but there is a solution. With fresh cheeses and summer produce in their prime right now, add a new idea from Italy and you are set.
Think out a menu by breaking it down into two or three star dishes and several frills. Frills are things people can play with, like a variety of breads or flavorings or condiments.
I tasted two dynamite star dishes at the mountain farm of cheesemaker and art restorer Emma Martini — cantaloupe salad and fresh goat cheese with green herbs.
For frills you have fresh herbs for topping the cheese, whole-grain breads and crackers, olive relish, cherry tomatoes, sliced salami and a fruit pie from the farmers market. Pour a white Italian Tocai from the Friuli region, or a bubbly Prosecco, and have iced fruit juices.
A melon tip: Pick a ripe, sweet melon by trusting your nose and your fingers. Go to the nickel-sized round at the end of the melon. Press for a little give, indicating ripeness. Sniff for sweet, honeylike scent. If there's no scent, don't spend your money.
Cantaloupe Salad with Black Pepper, Oil and Vinegar
(Insalata di Melone)
— Adapted from The Italian Country Table (Scribner 1999), by Lynne Rossetto Kasper.
Ingredients:
half of a 2-1/2- to 3-pound ripe cantaloupe, seeds removed
several pale green inner leaves from a head of curly endive or frisee
Dressing:
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp. good-tasting extra-virgin olive oil
2 tsp. white wine vinegar
2 tsp. snipped fresh chives or scallion tops
2 thin slices Italian salami or soppressata, cut into thin strips (optional)
Preparation:
With a melon baller, scoop out 1-inch balls from the melon and turn into a medium bowl. Line an 8-inch white serving plate with the greens.
Sprinkle the melon with salt and pepper to taste. Gently toss with the oil, then the vinegar. Spoon onto greens, scatter the chives and optional salami over the melon. Taste for seasoning and serve.
Serves 4 to 6, doubles easily
Dear Lynne: Any ideas for nonfat, salt-free corn on the cob? — Health Nut from the Corn Belt
Dear Health Nut: Purists say if the corn's good, nothing is needed. Then you have we baroque types who believe more is more.
Try this: Play the opposite end of the flavor spectrum against corn's sweet, creamy character by seasoning with acid and spice. Roll hot cobs in a blend of fresh lime juice and hot red pepper flakes, or a milder sweet-hot chile sauce. The acid and the heat will nudge corn's creamy sweet flavors onto center stage.
Dear Lynne: What's wrong? I add liquid to melted chocolate and it turns into hard clumps that won't melt. — Stymied from Napa
Dear Stymied: Chocolate is a wily devil. One innocent move on your part and it goes berserk.
Those lumps come from two extremes — too high heat or too little liquid. Slow heating in a bowl over hot, not boiling, water (never over direct heat) and an instant-reading thermometer will put you in control. Milk and white chocolates scorch at 110 degrees F. Semisweet and bittersweet burn at about 120. Also, take care when melting, since a little steam in the chocolate can seize it up as well.
Which leads to your problem. The starches in chocolate bind up when a little liquid is added, but they become soft, happy sponges with more moisture. The formula for you is a minimum of 1 tbsp. liquid for every 2 ounces of unmelted chocolate.
(Lynne Rossetto Kasper is host of "The Splendid Table"(r), Minnesota Public Radio's national food show. Find recipes, station listings and more at splendidtable.org, or 800-537-5252.)
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