Cooking
Yotam Ottolenghi’s iced, berry-dotted loaf cake is a summertime New York Times Cooking classic.
Good morning! Tejal here, filling in for Sam.
I did more cutting back and clearing ground than planting in the garden this year — some years are like that — but my husband grew two kinds of blueberries. The plants were small and did unexpectedly well in Los Angeles. With our modest harvest, we could top a single batch of lemon ricotta pancakes, freeze a half-batch of blueberry cream Popsicles or make one gorgeous blueberry almond and lemon cake.
I love an almond cake — with cherries, with chamomile, with orange zest — but a tender, lightly frosted almond cake spangled with fresh blueberries? There was no better way for the harvest to go.
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Blueberry, Almond and Lemon Cake
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It makes me a bit sad to walk by the blueberry plants now and see how bare they are, but we’ve fully turned our attention to stone fruit. Yesterday, for the baby’s lunch, I cut a Baby Crawford peach and some fresh cold tofu from Meiji, tossed them with a little sesame oil, lime juice and some herbs. In this house, we love a savory fruit salad!
Hetty Lui McKinnon’s beautiful, customizable peach, cucumber and mozzarella salad is particularly dreamy. And once you’ve made the dressing — a mix of sweet and spicy gochujang, mellow rice vinegar, olive oil and maple syrup — you’ll want to make it again and again. If peaches aren’t on your kitchen counter, you can swap in nectarines, apricots, plums or even a nice mix of all three.
If fresh fruit isn’t handy but you want to revel in peaches all the same, you can make Nicole Taylor’s delicious peach and molasses chicken using jam from the pantry to season bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. And Eric Kim has a recipe for roasted chicken thighs that uses tangy apricot jam.
If you’re collecting eggplant, maybe it’s time for a big batch of eggplant Bolognese, for which you cleverly brown eggplant and mushrooms together instead of meat? Though if you love anchovies, I’d steer you toward Melissa Clark’s eggplant and tomato pasta with anchovy bread crumbs, which is exactly what I feel like eating right now. This steamed eggplant, another great recipe from Hetty, is still a favorite of mine, particularly when long, slender Japanese and Chinese eggplants appear at the market.
Head to New York Times Cooking to browse more recipes — you’ll need a subscription to read them all. And please reach out for help if you run into any issues and someone will get back to you: cookingcare@nytimes.com. See you on Friday!
Tejal Rao is a critic at large for the Food section and contributes regularly to The New York Times Magazine. More about Tejal Rao