Side

Middle Eastern cooking is flecked with the cool pepperiness of fresh mint. Italian, and especially Sicilian, cooks include mint with zucchini, often in tandem with garlic and lemon. I find mint invigorating with all summer squashes and often make a dish where they (pattypan is particularly suitable) are cooked in olive oil with mint and the merest hint of garlic. It is very good with grilled fish.

2008 saw not only my usual terra-cotta pots of Striato d’Italia on the back steps but also a trailing variety known as Caserta, a pale fruit the color of mint ice cream, with darker stripes. The light-skinned varieties such as Clarion, Di Faenza, and the almost ivory Lebanese White Bush look particularly delicate and summery when sautéed in butter and olive oil with a handful of herbs thrown in at the last moment, the scent of late summer hitting you as you spoon over the pan juices. Perhaps that should be swoon. Squashes of every variety love a tomato. Occasionally you could argue they need it too. Late last summer, just as the beans were forming on the poles in the vegetable beds, I made a last-minute, rough-edged supper with little more than a few zucchini and a couple of tomatoes. It was done in fifteen minutes flat. There are many who would insist on skinning and seeding the tomatoes for this, but not only do I think it unnecessary here, it also means missing out on all their rich juices and scrunchy seeds.

Small squashes deep-fry particularly well, offering a refreshing, almost juicy contrast to the ethereally crisp batter. This is one of those recipes—pancakes are another—that I tend to make when there are just two of us, and we can eat our sizzling fritters at the stove while the next one cooks. I find I get a much crisper result if I don’t overcrowd the pan.

Young summer squashes of any sort grill rather well, but better if you salt them first, so that they relax rather than harden over the heat. As soon as they are lifted off the bars, I toss them in dressing, keeping them moist and silky. A side dish, and very good with mozzarella or feta.

This colorful, big-flavored tomato salad is something you could eat alongside rose-pink cold roast beef, but it could easily make a more substantial candidate for a main course with the addition of a few croutons or some slices of olive oil–drenched toast. The colors are important here if the salad is to look lively—I usually use a mixture of tomatoes, including little peardrop ones and yellow cherry tomatoes. I think it is worth adding that this is also good with cilantro instead of basil.

How a dish smells is important. It whets the appetite, brings us to the table, and opens up a host of pleasures. With coconut, cardamom, and coriander, this simple dish of baked tomatoes is heady and aromatic. It curdles a bit, but no matter. You will need some rice or bread to go with it. Creamed coconut, a block of pure dried coconut, is available at Asian markets and online.

Most Asian markets carry Japanese nanami togarashi seasoning. It is a mixture of ground chile, orange peel, spices, and sesame seeds. For this beef salad, it is simply a question of rolling the beef in the seasoning and searing it quickly in a heavy pan. The beef is barely cooked and is eaten thinly sliced, like carpaccio. There will be some left over for tomorrow. I cannot think of a better accompaniment for it than a simple tomato salad.

A good savory little number this, fantastic with all manner of roasts and grilled foods but equally worth making as a side dish for cool, almost liquid mozzarella or a bowl of basmati rice flecked with torn herbs.

A tomato’s flavor intensifies in the heat of the oven. All its sweet-sharpness comes to the fore. I eat these warm, sprinkled with a little herb vinegar, sometimes sandwiched inside a crisp and chewy baguette.