It's the end of summer, and if you're gardening you have an excess of home-grown tomatoes still to use before they get mushy. Even if you don't have a garden, local tomatoes should be plentiful and cheap at you nearest farmer's market. If you also happen to have some all-butter puff pastry in the freezer, one of the easiest meals you can make is an easy French-style tomato tart.

Like some of my other recipes, this is more of a "kit", because there's really only two ingredients in this recipe that aren't substitutable: the homegrown tomatoes and the butter puff pastry. So, before we get to the instructions, let's go through some of the others:

Puff Pastry: You really want all-butter, or at least part-butter, puff pastry for this. We load up on the Trader Joe's frozen pastry during the winter holidays (the only time they have it); if you didn't, the rest of the year you pretty much need to grab the overpriced Dufour. You can make this with shortening-based puff pastry like Pepperidge Farms, but it won't taste quite as good, but it's still better than no tart at all. You could, of course, make your own but that changes this from a quick weeknight dinner to a major effort.

The Trader Joe's pastry comes conveniently in two 9oz squares, which makes for two nice square tarts. Dufour comes in a single 14oz rectangle, which could be either one really big tart, or cut into two for two more modest ones. For the Dufour, which is thicker and creased, you'll want to roll it out a bit.

Cheese: this recipe requires two cheeses, a soft cheese to put on the base, and a hard cheese to grate over the top. The soft cheese can be almost anything soft and mild, as long as it's not too wet: drained and blotted ricotta, chevre, farmer cheese, neufchatel, cresenza, or a mild camebert. For most cheeses, you want around 6oz per square foot of tart. You could also use a little creme fraiche, but spread it very thin since it's rather wet.

The hard cheese is easier; just 4oz of Comté, Gruyère, parmigiano, or similar cheeses, grated fine.

Tomatoes: This tart can be made either with large tomatoes, sliced 1/4" thick and shingled (photo above) or with cherry tomatoes, sliced in half and packed in, cut side down (photo below). Either works equally well, so use what you have the most of. The important thing is that the tomatoes be fresh and picked ripe.

Herbs: chives, parsley, thyme, or marjoram could all work with this tart, or a mixture. Use what you have access to -- as long as it's minced or cut fine.

In the tarts pictured, I used Black Sea Man sliced tomatoes, sungold cherry tomatoes, Don Froylan requesón cheese for the base, grated DOC Comté cheese, and minced fresh chives.

Now, on to the recipe.

Simple French-style Tomato Tart

• 14-20oz frozen puff pastry sheets
• Either 2-3lbs of large slicing tomatoes, or 2 baskets cherry tomatoes
• 6-9oz soft, but not wet, cheese (see above)
• 3-4oz hard grating cheese
• 2-3 tbs minced herbs
• Salt and pepper

A day before, put the puff pastry in the fridge to thaw.

Heat the oven to 375F with fan, or 400F if you don't have a fan.

Unroll or unfold the puff pastry. Use a rolling pin to gently roll it flat. If it's more than 1/4" thick, maybe roll it out a bit to stretch it. Place it on a baking sheet, and carefully cut a square or rectangle about 1/2" from the edge of the puff pastry, and only about 1/2 way through it (depth of about 1/8" inch). You should end up with a "frame" around the edge which will become your crust. Dock the center rectangle using a fork or a docker (if you have one).

Spread the soft cheese over the center rectangle, making a very thin coating -- thinner the wetter the cheese is. Sprinkle 1/2 of the herbs over the soft cheese, and grind a little pepper on it. If the cheese is unsalted (such as ricotta), sprinkle a little (1/4 tsp) salt as well.

Put it into the oven for 12-16 minutes, or until the frame/crust around the edge puffs up and gets browned on top. If doing two baking sheets because you have two pieces of puff pastry, then remember to swap positions on them after 5 min.

Take the cheesy pastry out of the oven and allow it to mostly cool, 10-15 minutes. Carefully cover the cheesy center with the tomatoes. Sprinkle them lightly with pepper, and then with the rest of the minced herbs. Finally cover the tomatoes with the grated hard cheese.

Place the tart back in the oven for 5-7 minutes, or until the hard cheese is melted and the crust finishes getting crisp and brown.

Allow to mostly cool before slicing. Enjoy with a French green salad.

In honor of BridgetownBites Salad Week and the fact that my porch thermometer reported 100F today (it's still 88F at 7pm), I thought I'd make two salads for dinner, neither requiring any heating at all, just cutting, washing, and marinating. Each also requires one obscure ingredient, but hopefully you can still make use of them for your own heat wave days.

When we have a heat wave like this, I don't want to turn on the stove, and I also don't want to go outside to the grill. So I look for dishes I can prepare which require no heat. Salads top the list, of course, and I could just do a green salad. But in the middle of summer, I can be more creative. Also, the heat wave already killed my lettuce.

I also wanted to take advantage of some produce I had. First, we'd recently been to Walla Walla and brought back a bag of their famous sweet onions (it's the season). Second, Nathan the Watermelon Man started deliveries this week, so I had a delicious Hermiston watermelon. This led to a Persian onion and barberry salad, and a Greek watermelon salad.

Persian Onion Salad

This onion salad comes to us from Naomi Duguid's Persia, with my usual tweaks, of course. It's a very traditional Persian salad, usually served to accompany grilled meats, but delicious on its own if made with sweet onions like the Walla Wallas. I don't recommend making it with regular brown onions except as a topping for meat; without real sweet onions, it would be too sharp to eat by itself.

The obscure ingredient here is dried barberries. These are a staple of Persian cuisine but only found in good Middle Eastern markets here in the US. Fortunately, I live near one. They are quite tart, so if you can't get them, try unsweetened dried cranberries, chopped. The recipe also requires the spice ground sumac, but most major supermarkets carry that these days.

The onion requires a bit of sitting, so start this recipe early.

• Two large Walla Walla, Maui, or Vidalia sweet onions, about 2lbs
• 1 Tbs or more kosher salt
• 1/2 to 2/3 cup dried barberries
• 1 tsp dried mint, or about 2 Tbs chopped fresh mint
• 1 tsp ground sumac
• 2 tsp sherry, champagne, or cider vinegar

Halve, peel, and thinly slide both onions. Layer them in a colander with a sprinkle of kosher salt over each of 4-5 layers of sliced onions. Let sit in the sink for around 1/2 hour. Soak the barberries in 1 cup cold water for the same period of time.

Drain the barberries. Put the sliced onion in a large bowl, fill it with cold water, mix it around, and drain. Then put the onions back in the bowl, fill it with cold water again, and let sit for another 15-20 minutes. This should remove most of the salt and any sharpness from the onion. Then drain the onions, maybe even drying them on a towel.

Toss the onions, barberries, mint, and sumac together. Drizzle over the vinegar. Let sit for a few minutes, then serve.

Greek Watermelon Salad

This type of salad will be more familiar to many readers. I got it from Diane Kochilas Meze years ago when it was less familiar to Americans, and have made it ever since. It's a very tasty salad, and a great way to use up leftover watermelon. Do use quality watermelon, though; if yours is bland or too watery the salad will be meh.

Kochilas' recipe includes a traditional, and hard to find, ingredient that most American recipes leave out: barley rusks. These add a strong, earthy flavor to balance the salad, and absorb the excess watermelon juice. The salad really isn't the same without them, so they're worth mail-ordering.

• Around 3lbs peeled and cubed watermelon
• 2 oz barley rusks
• 1/4 of a large (or 1/2 of a small) red onion, peeled and minced, around 1/2 cup.
• 2 Tbs chopped fresh mint
• 8-12 oz mild, creamy feta cheese, cubed or crushed
• black pepper
• 1 Tbs red wine vinegar

Crush the barley rusks, breaking each rusk into 4-6 pieces. Put these in the bottom of a large serving bowl. Cover them with the watermelon cubes, and then pile the feta, mint, and onion on top. Sprikle with black pepper, and drizzle the vinegar over.

Leave the salad 10-15 minutes for the watermelon juices to soak into the rusks. Then toss thoroughly. Some of the feta will break up during tossing, which is desireable. Serve.

I hope both of these recipes give you some options for dining during a heat wave, too. Have a good Salad Week!

A little while ago the Washington Post taste-tested various "fake bacon" products -- which I'm hereafter calling "facon" -- with some surprising results. They decided that supermarket-standard brand Morningstar Farms (see endnote) was actually pretty good, and worked as a reasonably convincing facsimile of fried bacon.

This was doubly surprising for me. Morningstar Farms first came out with a facon back in the 80s, just as my family had transitioned to keeping Kosher. We tried it immediately, and were treated to strips that tasted like we'd simply cut up the box and fried it instead.

So, I had to try this.

We bought a box of the Morningstar. The strips come in a tightly-packed stack, and uncooked have a texture like chewing gum strips. I was dubious, but I put several strips in a pan with some vegetable oil and fried them. They cooked much faster than the instructions suggested; I was taking them off the heat in less than 2 minutes per side. I'll try cooking them on lower heat next time.

Once they cooled enough to eat, my bacon-loving sweetie tried a bite.

"That's disturbing," she said.

"Bad?" I asked.

"No, these really taste like some kind of bacon. Super-thin sliced, burnt bacon. But bacon."

"Well, I did burn them a little."

My ability to judge was limited, simply because I haven't had fried bacon strips in over 20 years. They did, however, taste better than cardboard.

Note that Morningstar's facon is not vegan; it includes egg whites.

In summer, what does one do with fried bacon? Make a BLT, of course. Although since it's fake-bacon, I guess it's an FLT.

FLT

Per sandwich:

• 3-4 strips of Morningstar farms fake bacon
• 1 brioche bun, foccacia roll, or other soft sandwich roll, or slices of thick country bread
• 1 small-medium slicing tomato, or 2 slices from a big tomato
• 1 large or two small leaves of soft lettuce
• Mayonnaise or similar spread

Fry the facon according to the instructions on the box. Let cool and drain on paper towels.

Split your roll, and lightly toast it. Spread both sides with a thin coating of the mayo.

Arrange the facon slices overlapping to cover the bottom of the roll. Put the slices of tomato on top, followed by the lettuce, folding or tearing it to fit. Cover with the roll top.

Eat alongside some chips or tater tots.

Notes and variations:

FLTA: peel, pit, and slice 1/4 to 1/3 of an avocado. Put this on the bottom of the roll before adding the facon.

Spreads: mayonnaise is traditional (or vegannaise if you prefer), but I tend to prefer spreads with a little more flavor, such as dijionnaise, aioli, or (in the case of the FLT in the photo) a mild sweet onion mustard.

It's better to make your FLT when tomatoes are in season.

History Note: Morningstar Farms originated as the vegetarian foods venture of President Warren Harding's Seventh-Day Adventist, sanitarium-owning cousin Dr. George Harding in 1939, because he believed that a meatless diet helped calm psychotic and neurotic patients. This venture was so successful -- owing in part to WWII meat rationing -- that Harding was able to buy up most of his competitors. The Adventist Church still owns a large part of MorningStar. It is not determined whether President Warren Harding ever ate a soy steak.

It's now late summer, and if you have a vegetable garden like I do, you're festooned with a glut of tomatoes. Maybe you've already made gazpacho, fresh tomato sauce, Turkish salad, and more tomato things. The tomatoes keep coming in from the gardent.

It's time for something French: a tomato tart.

This recipe is pretty simple, but it does require some gourmet ingredients. It also requires you to be comfortable working with puff pastry. Since the ingredients are so critical here, some notes on them before the recipe.

This tart is really much better with all-butter puff pastry, which I realize is hard to find in the US. I used Trader Joe's, possibly the only butter puff pastry in the US that is both good and affordable, but is sadly only available seasonally (and not in summer). This recipe is sized for TJ's 18oz box of puff pastry (which comes in 2 squares). If you're using Dufour's 14oz box, or some other brand, you'll need to scale accordingly. And, if all you can get is palm-oil-based puff pastry, use it anyway -- or made your own rough puff.

The cheese I used was homemade, a Neufchâtel-style cheese I made from some raw milk a friend gave me. You won't have this, so use chèvre, ricotta, camebert (rind removed), or a similar soft cheese with mild flavor. The cheese needs to be very soft, but not too wet, so if you do use ricotta or farmer cheese make sure to drain it or press it dry.

This recipe also uses olive tapenade. French tapenade is generally very mild flavored and that's what you want here. If you can't get any, then just puree a cup of pitted ripe black olives (not canned). Another option is actually mustard; French tomato tarts often feature it instead of the tapenade.

French-style tomato tart

• 18oz fridge-temperature puff pastry
• 8-10 oz soft mild cheese (see blog post)
• 2-3 oz olive tapenade
• 6 to 8 medium tomatoes or 4 to 6 large tomatoes
• 2 tsp fresh thyme leaves, or 1 tsp dried
• 1 oz finely grated Comte, Gruyere, or Parmigiano cheese
• Fresh ground pepper
• Olive oil for drizzling
• Baking sheet(s), sharp knife, baking parchment, pie weights, rolling pin, spreading spatula

Heat the oven to 375F with fan, or 400F if you don't have a fan. Spread out the puff pastry on top of baking parchment, using one sheet of parchment for each square if using the TJ's pastry. Flatten it out a bit using the rolling pin.

Using the point of a small, sharp knife, cut around 1/8" deep square/rectangle around 1/2" from the edges of the pastry. You're making a box for the filling, where the edge of the pastry will be the "crust". Use a fork or a dough docker to dock (make indents) all over the pastry inside the box. Cut some more parchment to fit the inside of the box, place it on the pastry and pile pie weights on it to keep the center of the pastry compressed.

Bake for 15 minutes. The edge portion should puff up and the pastry should be very lightly browned and dry. If the pastry is still "wet" and the parchment won't pull free, give it another 3-5 minutes. Let cool for at least 15 minutes.

Spread the center of the pastry with the cheese and the tapenade. Which order you spread them in depends on their relative softness; you want to spread the softer thing on top.

Slice the tomatoes around 1/4" thick and cover the cheese with the slices, slightly overlapping. Sprinkle the thyme leaves across the top, along with a little ground pepper. Evenly cover with the grated Comte or Gruyere, and drizzle with a little high-quality olive oil.

Put the tart back in the oven and bake for another 12-18 minutes. It's done when the pastry finishes browning, and the tomatoes soften just slightly. Do not overcook, as it will turn into tomato/cheese soup.

Remove from the oven, slide the tart onto a cooling rack, and allow to cool for at least 10 minutes. Slice into squares. The tart can be eaten warm, but is easier to handle at room temperature. It does not reheat or freeze well; allow left overs to come to room temperature and eat them that way.

Serves four as a light meal with a green salad, or 6-8 as a first course.

I dunno about where you are, but where I am it is super-hot out. Peak of 105F (41C) today. Appalingly hot weather and peak tomato season mean one thing to me: gazpacho. It's a delicious summer dish that requires no heating anything, and is best eaten slightly chilled.

I've shared my regular gazpacho, but this time, with the sungold tomato plants making a bid to take over the entire backyard, I wanted to make something slightly different: golden gazpacho. Almost like the regular, but with a very different color and a more subtle taste.

Like the other recipe, though, this is all about the peak summer produce. Don't make this with off-season imported produce, you won't enjoy it.

Golden Gazpacho

About 2oz leftover stale white bread
1 clove garlic
1/2 large sweet yellow onion, peeled and thinly sliced crossways, about 3/4 cup
1 yellow bell pepper, roughly chopped
1 large or 2 small lemon cucumbers, roughly chopped with peel left on
1 pint of sungold tomatoes
1/2 to 1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white pepper
1-2 Tbs quality Spanish olive oil
1 1/2 tsp sherry vinegar

Taste the sliced onion. If it's sharp, then put it in a bowl of cold water to soak for 15 minutes, and then drain.

Cut the bread into dice and put it and the garlic cloves in a food processor. Pulse until the garlic is minced and the bread broken down into crumbs.

Add the bell pepper, onion, and cucumber. Run the food processor until it breaks down to a "chunky salsa" consistency. Add the sungold tomatoes, salt, white pepper, olive oil, and vinegar. Run until the vegetables are almost, but not quite, pureed; you still want them to have a little texture.

Let sit for the flavors to blend. Taste, and add more salt, oil, or vinegar if it needs it, or even a little sugar if your tomatoes weren't that sweet. Serve, accompanied by bread and Spanish cheese.

Substitutions: the sungolds could be replaced by around 12oz-wt of ripe yellow heirloom tomatoes, diced. If you don't have sherry vinegar, use champaigne or white wine vinegar.

Now that tomatoes are finally coming into season, it's time for some pasta salad that really makes the most of summer produce. It also has the advantage of being a dish that only requires boiling a pot of water, but no other cooking, which is going to be welcome to a lot of y'all contending with heat waves.

The "warm" part of this recipe is that we usually serve it somewhat warm, rather than cold. It's a bit better that way. But if you're dying of heat, it can be eaten cold. The important part is that the past be dressed while still warm, so that it absorbs the dressing.

What's below is less of a recipe and more of a set of guidelines, because you have a lot of flexibility in what you put into your salad. There are lots of tips to make it better, though, and read below the recipe for notes on ingredients. Also, these guidelines make a large portion because this pasta salad makes excellent leftovers.

warm pasta salad

The Pasta

• 1 lbs (500g) short curly pasta
• 1 large pot boiling well-salted water

The Dressing

• 1-4 cloves garlic, whole peeled OR 1 Tbs roasted garlic paste
• 3 Tbs quality red wine vinegar, plus more to taste
• 1/2 cup quality olive oil, plus more to taste
• 2 Tbs minced fresh herbs, OR 1.5 tsp dried herbs
• 1/2 to 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 to 1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper

The Cheese

• 8-11oz flavorful semi-soft Italian cheese.

The Veggies

The trinity of required veggies:

• 1 to 1.5 lbs ripe tomatoes or cherry tomatoes, diced or sliced in half
• 5-8oz bell peppers or other sweet peppers, diced or sliced OR roasted and peeled sweet peppers, chopped large
• 6-10oz cucumbers, peeled if needed and diced

Plus none to a few veggies from this list:

• 1 cup diced sweet onion
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions
• 1/2 to 1 cup chopped fresh herbs
• 1/2 cup olives, pitted and halved or sliced
• 1-2 Tbs capers
• 1 cup fresh snap peas
• 1-2 cups blanched green beans
• 1/2 cup sweet peas, steamed
• 2-6 young carrots, peeled and sliced, either raw or blanched
• 8 oz grilled, roasted, or steamed asparagus, cut into 1" pieces
• 8-12 oz grilled, roasted, or fried summer squash, cut into 1/2" pieces
• 4-6oz diced marinated artichoke hearts

Equipment: pasta pot, colander, very large salad bowl

Instruction

Heat the pot of pasta water. If you don't have roasted garlic, then peel the garlic cloves and blanch them in the water for 1-2 minutes. Cover the pot and push it aside; you're not ready to cook the pasta yet.

Make the dressing. Mash the garlic with the salt and vinegar, using a mortar & pestle, minichopper, immersion blender and cup, or just a fork. Add the olive oil, ground pepper, and the herbs. Whisk together until blended.

Dice and prep all of the vegetables, piling them in a large bowl. Put veggies you want to treat gently, like cucumbers, herbs, and tomatoes, on the bottom, and put veggies that could use a little heat, like onions and peppers, on the top. Finish with the diced cheese.

Now you cook the pasta. Use the maximum time listed on the package; since this is a salad, you want it a bit more done than al dente. Drain the pasta, and immediately dump the still very warm pasta on top of the ingredients in the salad bowl. Drizzle it all over with the dressing, and then start gently tossing until all of the ingredients are mixed.

Taste it. Add oil, vinegar, salt, or pepper as needed.

Let sit for at least 10 minutes for flavors to blend and the pasta to cool. Then serve. Makes 4-7 dinner servings, or dinner for two plus 2-3 leftover lunches.

Ingredient Notes

Pasta: you want a short, "curly" pasta for this, such as such as strozzapreti, fusili, rotini, cavitappi, radiatore, or mafalda (as pictured). Farfalle will also work, and his is a great use for flavored pastas. Tubular pasta like penne and rigatoni, or small shapes like elbows or orzo, do not work well because they don't hold the dressing.

Cheese: you are looking for a semi-soft cheese that has distinct flavors but is not too strong. Flavored cheeses, including smoked ones, work great. Italian cheeses that work include scamorza (smoked mozz), marinated mozzarella, provalone dulce, fontina, asiago, caciocavallo, or young pecorinio. You can also use cheese curds, particularly garlic cheese curds, and manchego or gouda also can work. Plain mozzarella gets lost in the ingredients. Cheddar and feta are a bit too salty, and blue cheeses are not a good idea. If you're vegan, use vegan cheese such as Vegan Smoked Mozzarella, Babybel plant-based, or Just Like Smoked Provalone.

Veggies: At a minimum, the salad needs tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. The salad benefits from adding a few other veggies, either cooked or raw, and you don't want any specific veggie to be too strong. Strive for variety and balance, like onions and one kind of bean, or squash and olives, or herbs and peas. You're looking for 5-7 cups of diced veggies and cheese, total.

Herbs: appropriate herbs include basil, oregano, parsley, cilantro, chives, and thyme. Herbs should be chopped roughly for the salad, and minced for the dressing.

Believe it or not, one of the things we do when we stay in a small town vacationing is visit the local library. And in exceptionally nice cases -- and the library in Eastsound is exceptionally nice -- the library offers "guest cards" for a fee that let visitors like me check out a few books. The Orcas Island library did, and we did. This is how I got my hands on a cookbook called For Cod and Country.

I'd been looking for a fish cookbook since it's salmon season in the San Juans and I was able to pick up some super-fresh salmon of several varieties. This book wasn't particular to West Coast seafood, but it had an advantage over the other fish cookbooks I looked at: it divides its recipes by season rather than by type of seafood, so I had a bunch of "summer" recipes all in one place. Most of them were for other fish, but I could adapt them to salmon, including this one. Even more importantly, many of he recipes were easy, one-pan meals. Including this one.

The salmon I cooked here is the so-called Ivory Salmon, which is King Salmon with a mutation so that it is white-fleshed rather than orange/red. This mutation only occurs in around 1 in 25 fish, and the Native Americans eat most of them, so you're probably not going to get your hands on any unless you're here in the Island Northwest. It's also milder-flavored than regular salmon, so you're actually looking for a fatty, mild salmon, or even another fish such as lingcod, barrimundi, rocfish, or even halibut. Because of the preparation, it needs to be a skin-on filet between 1/2 inch and 1 inch thick.

Also, the cherry tomatoes must be ripe summer fruit; the recipe will suck if you use those flavorless winter "grape" tomatoes. Once you've sourced your fish and your tomatoes, though, the rest is easy. It's so easy, in fact, that I've written it in Good First Recipe style, so if you're an experienced cook, you can skim the super-detailed directions.

Not that it doesn't require attention! Your total cooking time here is less than 20 minutes, but you should plan to spend that entire time in front of the oven, so that you don't burn anything.

one pan salmon with cherry tomatoes and garlic

• 1lbs to 1.5lbs mild salmon, lingcod, or similar fish (see above), skin-on filet pieces of uniform thickness
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 3-4 large cloves garlic, peeled and sliced thick
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 10-13 oz cherry tomatoes, whole (see note)
• additional salt and pepper for fish and tomatoes
• 10.5" to 12" cast iron pan, or other broiler-proof pan
• apron and oven mitts

Place an oven rack to bring the top of your pan within 3" of the broiler flame/element. Heat the broiler while you prepare the ingredients. Put on an apron.

Cut the salmon into individual portions, and rub each portion with a little of the olive oil, just enough to coat, around 1-2 tsp of the oil. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper on both sides. Set aside. Wash, stem, and completely dry the cherry tomatoes.

Pour the rest of the olive oil in the pan. Scatter the garlic slices across the bottom of the pan. Put the pan under the broiler for 3-7 minutes, until the oil is hot and the garlic is starting to brown. You'll probably need to pull it out each minute starting at minute 3, since broilers vary a lot. If the garlic isn't starting to sizzle and brown by minute 5, see if you can turn up the broiler or move the pan closer.

Take the pan out of the oven, place on the stovetop or a trivet, and -- carefully standing back -- dump the cherry tomatoes into the pan. This may spatter a bit, so oven mits wouldn't be a bad idea. Lightly sprinkle with salt and ground pepper. Put the pan back under the broiler for another 2-4 minutes, checking every minute starting a minute 3 like you did with the garlic.

The tomatoes are done when some of them have burst and all of them look slightly blistered on top. Even a little charring is good. When they're done, pull out the pan again and place the salmon portions, skin side up, distributed evenly around the top of the tomatoes. Put the pan back under the broiler for another 5-10 minutes, depending on the thickness of your salmon and how hot it is. The salmon will be done when the skin is browned and starting to blister.

Pull the pan from the oven and put it back on your heatproof surface. Slide a large spatula under the tomatoes beneath a piece of salmon, and invert the whole thing onto a diner's plate, with salmon on the bottom and tomatoes (proably stuck to the salmon) on top. Add a few more tomatoes and spoon over some juice and oil. Do the same for the other diners, distributing any extra tomatoes and juice that are left.

Serve with a salad, or corn, and some bread to mop us extra tomato juice.

You want ripe, summer, small-medium round cherry tomatoes for this, such as sungolds or sweet 100s. You need enough tomatoes to loosely cover the bottom of the pan, so check this before you start cooking, and use more tomatoes or a different size pan.

Gazpacho is probably the ultimate hot-weather meal; a cold, chopped tomato soup, usually served with room temperature sides, it's great when your AC isn't keeping up, and really can't be eaten on a day that isn't hot. Besides, for your tomato gazpacho to be good, you need garden-fresh produce. Winter gazpachos are better made from almonds and garlic.

I don't make any claims to "authenticity" in this recipe; this is my mother's recipe, and she's from Wisconsin. But it's easy and tastes really good, which is more important, after all.

The quantities of the various vegetables below are rough guides, and should be read more as ratios between the ingredients than exact measurements. You have quite a bit of leeway, as long as you make sure there's more tomatoes and peppers than anything else. For the chopping, you really need to use a food processor, so that you can get the right fine-minced texture. Blenders and food grinders will create a puree, which simply won't be as enjoyable to eat.

The main recipe does use a little heat to temper the garlic and onions, but see the notes for how to make a heat-free version.

gazpacho Berkus

• 1/2 lbs sweet or red onion
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• 2 tsp smoked Spanish paprika
• 2 Tbs high-quality olive oil, then 3 Tbs more
• 4-5 oz bread, crusts removed
• 1 lbs to 1.5 lbs ripe red sweet peppers (bells, Italian, etc.)
• 3 lbs ripe summer red tomatoes
• 1 lbs cucumber
• parsley, about 3/4 cup chopped and loosely packed
• 2-3 tsp sherry vinegar
• 1/2 to 1 tsp salt, plus more
• 1 ripe avocado

Peel and roughly chop or slice the onion. Peel and slice the garlic. Heat 2 Tbs of the olive oil in a small pan, and saute the garlic and onion until they soften (this is to take the "bite" out). Add the paprika, cook for around 20 seconds more, then take off heat and let cool.

Next you're going to be dicing a lot of vegetables before they go into the food processor. In order to get a nice even chop in the processor, you'll want everything to be about the same medium-small size, like a 1/2" cube of tomato or a 1/3" thick slice of cucumber.

Cube the bread. Core the peppers and cut them into large dice. Core and cut the tomatoes into large dice, making sure to capture the tomato juice running off the cutting board (pour it over the bread cubes). Peel and slice or dice the cucumber. Chop the parsley.

Put stuff in the food processor in this order: bread cubes, onion & garlic mixture, everything else. You'll probably have to do 2 or 3 batches, so divide things up accordingly. Add the remaining 3 Tbs olive oil, 2 tsp sherry vinegar, and salt. Pulse the food processor until the mixture is reduced to a very very fine mince, but stop short of pureeing it.

Taste to see if you want a little more sherry vinegar or salt. Let sit for 15 minutes for the flavors to blend.

Serve topped with a little diced avocado. Accompany with slices of bread topped with Manchego or other Spanish cheese. Serves 4 as a main course, or up to 8 as a first course.

Notes: To make a heat-free version, slice the onion, and soak it in cold water for at least 2 hours before making the recipe, or lightly salt the onion and the toss it with a little of the vinegar and leave it for 20 minutes. Only use 1/2 clove garlic, mashed, and 1 tsp paprika if you're not going to cook it.

You can use charred and peeled red peppers in this and that gives it a little extra flavor. The bread is just here to stabilize the soup and keep it from being too watery, so gluten-free bread should work fine.

Keeps in the fridge for up to a week as leftovers. Do not freeze, as the water will separate out.

You ready for the easiest recipe, the appetizer/side dish that will rock the rest or your summer, the thing you want to make next now that tomato season is here? Our Catalonian friends have a treat for us: pa amb tomàquet, or pan con tomate, or just "tomato bread", this is an irresistably delicious five-ingredient self-assembly dish. Have it for breakfast! Have it with cold vermut or rosé on the porch at 5pm! Have it with every meal!

Amazingly for such a simple recipe, many online recipe sources nevertheless screw this up, probably because they're trying to account for substandard ingredients. Don't do that! This is a dish for tomato season, when the tomatoes are ripe and juicy. Also grab some high-quality Spanish olive oil (it's OK, you'll use a tiny amount, it'll last a long time) and some good bread. The bread needs to be something that has large holes and is firm and chewy, like a baguette, cibatta, sourdough loaf, or pain de campagne. This is also a good recipe to bring out your fancy sea salt for, you'll actually taste it.

One of the things that makes pan con tomate so easy is that each diner assembles it for themselves. So this is not so much a recipe as a set of assembly instructions.

First, split or slice your bread, and grill or toast it lightly. You want it to be firm without browning.

Then, put out on the table:

• several pieces of the toasted bread
• several garden-fresh ripe tomatoes, cut in half
• a few large garlic cloves, peeled and cut in half
• one bottle of high quality Spanish olive oil
• some salt

Each diner then makes their own pan con tomate, using these steps:

1. grab a piece of bread
2. rub the cut top of the bread with the cut side of a garlic clove
3. rub the bread with half of a tomato (or a whole one if they're small) until all the tomato pulp is rubbed into the bread (this is why you need those large holes)
4. drizzle it with olive oil, maybe a teaspoon
5. sprinkle on some salt
6. eat!

That's all there is to it. If it sounds underwhelming, try it first -- if you like tomatoes at all, you'll be delighted. And if your sweetie is like mine, you'll be eating pan con tomate until summer ends.

There is a brief window in the middle of the summer, when the snap peas are producing their last pods before they dry up, and the early tomatoes and corn start to come in. It's during that week or two that you must -- simply must -- make this salad. Here in Portland, that window is now, so don't wait on it.

The salad is a variation on a caprese salad that was the single good recipe we got out of a vegetarian magazine subscription a relative gifted us. While most of the other recipes were brown-things-for-health, this one was delightful and we've been making it every summer since.

I mean what I said about only doing this during the right couple of weeks in summer; the salad will not work with winter tomatoes, starchy corn, or frozen snap peas. Ideally, make it out of your own garden.

snap pea, tomato, and corn salad

• two ears sweet corn
• 1 lbs ripe cherry tomatoes, or small salad tomatoes
• 1/2 lbs snap peas (around 1 1/2 cups)
• 8-12 basil leaves
• 6 oz fresh, water-packed mozzarella, such as bocconcini
• 2-3 tsp high-quality, "fruity" olive oil
• 1 to 1.5 tsp balsamic vinegar
• fresh ground pepper
• a few pinches of salt

Strip and blanch the corn, either by steaming or in the microwave. When it cools, cut the kernels off the cob and break them up in a medium salad bowl.

If using cherry tomatoes, cut them in half. If using salad tomatoes, dice them into large (1/2") dice. Remove stems and strings (if any) from the snap peas, and cut them in half. Mince or chiffonade the basil. Cut the mozarrella into 1/2" or smaller pieces.

Toss all this together with the corn in the bowl. Drizzle the olive oil and balsamic over the top, add several grinds of pepper and a few pinches of salt, and toss again, gently. Let sit for 15 minutes, then serve.

Serves 4 as a appetizer, and 2 as a main course (with bread). Leftovers will be OK in the fridge for a couple of days, but let them warm to room temperature before eating.

Notes: because it uses such small quantities, this salad is a good place to use fine, expensive oil and vinegar. Ideally, use real balsamic, the kind that comes in tiny costly bottles. It's also a good target for any fancy sea salt you have around. Do not use "paste" tomatoes such as Romas, because you need the acidity from sharper tomatoes. Vegan Adaptation: substitute diced avocado for the mozzarella.

To steam corn in the microwave, strip the ears and them wrap them in plastic wrap. Microwave in bursts of 30-40 seconds until they get really really hot; usually 2-3 bursts does it. Cut off the plastic and let them cool.

It's late August, which means pepper season. For many folks, it's also Oh-God-don't-you-dare-turn-on-the-oven-in-the-house season, which makes it challenging to prepare stuffed peppers at the height of pepper ripeness, when they are best. Believe it or not, it was that temperature in San Francisco this weekend, so I devised a way to do Greek-style stuffed peppers entirely on the grill.

Note that this recipe involves having the grill going for a long time, so make sure you have plenty of fuel. Also think about what else you could grill while you're stuffing the peppers (e.g. corn, tuna, beets, etc.). Also, see the notes at the bottom about the ingredients.

bulgur-stuffed grilled peppers

6 ripe bell peppers
1 1/2 cups fine-ground bulgur wheat (#1)
4-6 summer squash, around 2 lbs
1 medium onion, chopped fine, around 1 cup
3-6 cloves of garlic, chopped, around 1 Tbs
2/3 cup minced mixed herbs
12oz crumbled feta cheese
olive oil
salt
grill, foil, grill tools, fine sieve

While prepping the onions, garlic, and herbs, heat up the grill. Dump the bulgur in a fine sieve, and rinse it in cold water, tossing to wet it all. Leave it suspended in the sink to drain.

Put the summer squash on the grill. Make a foil packet and seal the onions and garlic inside, mixed with a little olive oil; put this on the grill as well. Turn the squash every 3-4 minutes, until mostly cooked and starting to blister and burn. Take everything off the grill, and let cool for 10 minutes. If using a gas grill, turn it down to low.

Cut the stem out of each pepper, making sure to keep the sides and top "shoulder" intact (this is harder than it sounds). Reach inside with your fingers or a melon baller and remove any remaining seeds and pith.

Combine the drained bulgur, herbs, and feta cheese. Add the onions and garlic. Dice the cooked squash small (about 1/4"), and mix that in as well. Add 2 Tbs olive oil, and salt to taste. Stuff the peppers with this mixture, pressing down to pack them full. You may have some stuffing left over; it makes a nice salad if left to sit overnight.

Turn the heat on the grill back up. Place the peppers over indirect heat and close the lid for 10 minutes. Check them, and turn any which are blistering on one side. Cook for another 10 minutes or so, checking them as necessary. They are done when the peppers are blistery/burnt all around and the stuffing is crusty on top.

Serve hot, and give diners sharp knives to make cutting them easier.

Peppers: you want ripe bell peppers for this, such as red, yellow, or purple peppers, not green ones. Select carefully for peppers with four-lobed or five-lobed "square" bottoms so that they will stand upright on the grill. This recipe is for 6 medium-to-large peppers (about 3.5"); if you have very small or very large peppers, adjust the pepper/stuffing ratio.

Herbs: mince together any two or more of the following fresh herbs: flat-leaf parsley, oregano, dill, thyme, or mint. If you're short on fresh herbs, mince 1/2 cup parsley and add 1 tsp each dried mint and dill.

What's the difference between a pizza and a flatbread? Well, one is a meal for $20 and the other is an appetizer for $15. Since these are appetizer-sized, I'm calling them flatbreads.

For those who haven't done grilled pizza before, here's how it works:

1. get the grill nice and hot
2. carefully lay some oiled pizza dough on
3. grill for 1-2 minutes, until the bottom is dry and has grill marks.
4. flip over and top with toppings
5. grill for another 4 minutes

The really important thing for grilled pizza is not to overload it; a soggy pizza will fall apart on the grill. Just put a few scattered toppings on, and nothing wet. This is one such, taking advantage of the second-crop asparagus.

grilled asparagus and halloumi flatbread

1 lbs refrigerated pizza dough
1 bunch asparagus, around 1lbs.
6-7 oz haloumi cheese
2 oz mozarella cheese
1/2 lbs plum or San Marzano tomatoes
1/2 cup olive oil
pepper

Heat up the grill. You're looking for medium-hot grill heat here, around 550F.

Grill the asparagus for 3 to 5 minutes (depending on thickness); you're looking for it to be parly cooked here, and lightly seared on one side. Take it off the grill and set aside to cool.

Slice the tomatoes into small, thin slices. Slice or dice the mozarella and the haloumi into small pieces, around 1/4" cube or smaller.

Divide the dough into four pieces. Roll each into a ball, then roll it out with a rolling pin until it's around 6" in diameter and very thin. Dock the dough so it doesn't puff up too much, using a docker or a serving fork. Paint both sides with olive oil using a basting brush.

Put the dough on the grill. You'll have to carefully lift it and drop it on with your fingers; the oiled dough is liable to stick to any pizza paddle. Close the lid and cook for two minutes; in that time the dough should be dry and puff up in little bubbles. Remove from the grill onto a platter.

Slice the grilled asparagus on the bias. Use thinner slices for thick asparagus, and cut long pieces for very thin asparagus.

Assemble the flatbreads. Flip the grilled breads over so the side with the grill marks is up. Dot each bread with the mozarrella. Add a few slices of tomato. Scatter 1/4 of the asparagus on each bread, and then top with 1/4 of the haloumi. Sprinkle with ground pepper. Do not overload the breads; you want a scattering of toppings, not a thick layer.

Slide each bread back onto the grill and cook for about 4 minutes. They're done when the edges are brown, the breads are stiff, and the haloumi has started to soften. Cut each into pieces and serve.