Calamari & Artichoke Soup with Garlic Crostini

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Artichoke & Squid SoupMany of my favorite dishes are the ones that have the ability to transport.  You inhale, take a bite, and suddenly you’re not sitting at your kitchen table anymore, you’re off exploring the world or being whisked back a couple of decades and remembering a dinner you ate half a lifetime ago.

This soup is one of those dishes; it’s a soup that transports.  As soon as it started to simmer, I breathed in, and thought, “ahhh…Italy”.  While it’s not a replica of any dish I’ve eaten on Italian soil, the smell of squid and artichokes bubbling away in white wine and too much/just the right amount of olive oil smelled so unmistakably Italian.  Immediately, I was flung from my dreary Minnesota kitchen, into the warm Mediterranean sun.  

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Spring Pea & Tarragon Risotto with Shrimp

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Spring Pea & Tarragon Risotto with Shrimp

I was about halfway through writing about mushroom-barley soup when it hit me: I am so, so ready for spring produce.  Suddenly the thought another brown meal seemed so unappealing.  All I could think about is how excited I am to have peppery greens from my garden, fresh herbs at my fingertips, asparagus, and peas.

But it’s not even March yet.  My garden is covered in a sad heap of snow, it’s still frigidly cold, and I’m at the point where I just can’t eat another root vegetable and I’m so over stew.  

Even though we’ve got a long way to go, I want to forget the sad reality that is late winter eating (at least for a night) and flash forward to vibrant spring flavors.  We’ll improvise with a bag of frozen peas and transform them into a beautiful green pea risotto.  We’ll jazz it up with fresh tarragon and top it with a few lemony sautéed shrimp.  It’ll be light, playful, fresh.  Hopeful, even.  I think we’re all ready for that.

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Grilled Calamari with Sweet Corn, Tomato & Basil Salad

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Grilled Calamari, Sweet Corn & Tomato Salad

The end of August always messes with me.  It used to be the pain of going back to school, now it’s the pain of losing access to my beloved summer produce.  This year it’s especially bad; even though it’s still hot and even though I just picked my first tomato a week ago, there’s that whisper of fall in the air.  I feel like I’m just getting started and it’s almost over.

But we shan’t dwell.  No, we’d best ignore the school buses practicing their routes, the saw bugs buzzing at dusk and dawn, the pumpkin-festooned covers of  magazines that have started arriving, and just go on and enjoy what we’ve got while it’s here.  We’d best make hay while the sun shines.

So let’s do this.  Let’s make another tasty salad jammed with summer flavors: ripe tomatoes from the garden, sweet corn, and basil.  It’s still too warm to cook indoors, so , obviously, we’ll have to put the grill to use.  Why don’t we add some calamari and take it from simple summer side dish to stunning summer entree?  Ready?  Let’s do this late-summer dinner dance.

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Scallops with Bacon, Peaches & Radicchio Slaw

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Sea Scallops with Bacon, Peaches & Radicchio Slaw

Summer 2013 will go down in the history of my life as the summer of the pig and the peach.  Let’s think about this–in the beginning of the summer, I became obsessed with chèvre-stuffed grilled peaches with prosciutto.  Then I moved on to nectarine (nearly a peach!) and bacon sandwiches.  Last week I grilled pork chops stuffed with bourbon and spice roasted peaches.

Am I sick of the combination?  Absolutely not!  I’m just getting started.

Sweet and juicy paired with salty-porky adds up to completely irresistible and today it’s going to be even better because bacon and peaches are teaming up with seared sea scallops to create the ultimate summer dinner trifecta.  Let’s get cooking!

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Grilled Baby Octopus with Tomato Confit, Potatoes & Chard

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Grilled Baby Octopus with Tomato Confit, Potatoes & ChardSending my boyfriend to the fish market is a lot like sending a kid into a candy shop. Only difference is, Matt’s got an adult appetite and his own credit card.  Allow him into the store and he’ll inevitably buy twice as much of whatever he originally went in for plus at least one grab-bag item.

Which is how I came to have a frozen brick of baby octopuses in my freezer.

I try to act annoyed, but truthfully, I’d be troubled if he actually returned from shopping with 2 respectably sized 6 oz. fillets of fish and nothing more.  It’s who he is and what he does. And I’m left to figure out what to do with everything.

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