Cooking
Hetty Lui McKinnon has just the recipe for this time of seasonal change.
I’ve done my best in these missives this summer to highlight all of the season’s seemingly endless bounty. Corn, tomatoes, watermelon! Zucchini, too! But there has been a glaring omission, I hate to say, and that’s eggplant.
O eggplant, is it too late to wax purple about you? Eggplant would surely answer, if it could, “Of course not, I’ll be hanging around another few weeks.” So let’s make up for lost time with Hetty “Purple Pro” Lui McKinnon’s grilled eggplant with herby lentils and turmeric tahini. This sunny dish walks the fine line between summer and fall as its earthy lentils lend autumnal gravity to those evanescently tender eggplant slices. It’s almost as if summertime was saving the best for last.
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Grilled Eggplant, Herby Lentils and Turmeric Tahini
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But don’t think for a second that I’m done with tomatoes, especially because the most magnificent ones are really only now turning up in the Northeast. To keep the party going I’m giving Eric Kim’s tomato curry a spin. Adapted from a recipe by the cook and farmer Julius Roberts, it’s made with a base of whole spices tempered in oil and simmered in coconut milk with onions, ginger and fresh chile. Meanwhile, small ripe tomatoes are roasted until soft, then plopped into the fragrant, golden gravy along with fried curry leaves and cilantro. It’s an absolutely stunning mix of rich colors, plush textures and vivid flavors.
A bit less polychromatic but equally stunning is Vallery Lomas’s recipe for roasted chicken thighs with hot honey and lime. This piquant banger packs a punch using only a handful of pantry ingredients, which imbue it with fiery, sweet and citrusy notes. Serve it with some sliced tomatoes or cucumbers dressed with lime juice and the chicken drippings. Five-star brilliance doesn’t get easier than this.
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