You may not know this about me (though it is mentioned here), but ratatouille is one of my very favorite words. I love to trill the r and the whole concatenation of sounds just feels so marvelous tripping off the tongue. (And the movie was pretty fabulous, as well.) The dish itself has never held quite the same appeal, mostly because I shun bell peppers. But when candy-sweet cherry tomatoes, firm zucchini, lush basil and fresh garlic are flowing from the garden, and gorgeous Japanese eggplants are piled high at the farmers market, this humble Provençal vegetable stew definitely comes to mind. Here's my twist on a beloved classic.

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It's the last day of July. Summer is peaking! And I'm about to bid you farewell as we drift into the dog days of August. It's been strangely cool in these parts and the nights have been downright chilly, which makes for some powerfully good sleeping under a fluffy duvet. But the garden needs a lot of heat right now to keep producing—those tomatoes especially!—so I'm hoping it's just a blip. Speaking of the garden, ours is featured on Gardenista today; come for a visit here. Even if you don't have a vegetable-producing garden of your own, summer produce is abundant at farms and farmers markets. I stopped in at the Union Square market last week and came away with a big bag of red okra (I love it sliced and pan-fried, sprinkled with salt and cayenne pepper), another of English peas and 6 ears of sweet corn. These tastes really define the season for me and I can't seem to get enough of them!
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I don't know what to say about the school shootings. We all spent the weekend besieged by those images. I am haunted by the spectre of Adam Lanza—the skeletal face punctuated by wide, alarmed eyes, that strange sculptural cap of hair. Our president says that these tragedies must end, but that is a passive statement. We must end them. Through action. If you have not yet signed this petition, I urge you to do so, and make a contribution to the Brady Campaign as well, if you can.

Period. New paragraph. I haven't yet given you a list of my favorites from this year's crop of new cookbooks, and there were many. I did tell you about Naomi Duguid's wonderful Burma: Rivers of Flavor (my review is here). Andrea Nguyen's Asian Tofu is another excellent one. I look forward to delving into spicemaster Lior Lev Sercarz's newly published The Art of Blending. And I plan to attempt many more experiments under the tutelage of Sandor Katz's essential The Art of Fermentation. But for the sheer temptation of bold, bright flavors packed into relatively quick and easy recipes, I will be turning time and again to Yotam Ottolenghi's new book, Jerusalem, written with his business partner Sami Tamimi.
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The other day, when trawling the aisles of a favorite ethnic market in my quest for inspiring ingredients, I came across a package of brined grape leaves in the refrigerator section. It has long been my intention to try my hand at stuffing these, part of the tradition of dolma, the stuffed vegetable dishes prevalent in the cuisines of the former Ottoman Empire and surrounding regions such as Russia, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central and South Asia. In addition to grape leaves, onion, zucchini, eggplant, tomato and peppers are also stuffed with either a meat filling (lamb, beef or pork) or a rice- or grain-based mixture that often includes dried fruit and/or nuts. This summer I plucked handfuls of grape leaves off the vines at River Brook Farm, carefully blanched, rolled and tied them, then placed them in the freezer chest in our basement where they now languish, buried somewhere beneath the bags of golden raspberries, jars of shrimp stock and legs of goat. So I was quite pleased to find the ready-packaged alternative.
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More rain. Lots more. Enough that thoughts begin to turn away from corn salsas and tomato salads and toward cozier soups and stews. So the tomatoes and eggplant that have finally started trickling in from our late-producing garden inspired me to make a dish I'd never before eaten, much less cooked: moussaka. This Mediterranean eggplant-based casserole, eaten as far afield as the Balkans and the Middle East, comes in a few different versions, usually with ground lamb and tomato sauce, and sometimes with a topping of béchamel or custard (á la Elizabeth David, the seminal British cook). I've never been the hugest fan of shepherd's pie, but I thought this might be a slightly lighter and tastier variation on that general idea. I found a recipe online at Saveur, but it called for a layer of potatoes, which seemed a bit excessive (plus I didn't have any on hand), so I simply left them out. I also didn't have currants (I used raisins) or bell peppers (ick, in general), but the dish didn't suffer from the lack of either. Although the recipe does look like a lot of steps, it's actually a pretty simple process of making three distinct layers: fried eggplant; a garlicky lamb-&-tomato sauce with piquant spicing; and a rich, creamy topping. With a green salad, it makes a relatively easy and quite delicious weeknight dinner.
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Back in the 80s, I was among the many crazy for The Silver Palate cookbook. That carrot cake! The famed chicken Marbella! I loved how the book was larded with personal stories and little tidbits of miscellany  in the margins (marginalia?). I adore lists. The recipes seemed somehow both cosmopolitan and accessible, perfect for dinner parties in my starter apartment on East Broadway. When I read about author Sheila Lukins' untimely death from brain cancer recently, I was deeply saddened. And I immediately went out and got some eggplant, picked handfuls of fresh basil from the garden and made this dish—one that will remain forever in my repertoire. It's excellent with grilled lamb but since I don't really like lamb, I eat it with grilled fish or tomatoes with feta.
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