Every year I take the month of August off from the blog and social media (well, mostly) so I can get in a little extra relaxation and outdoor time, which means this is the last week I'll be posting for a while. With that in mind, I have several juicy posts lined up for you over the next several days, jam-packed with images and ideas to get you even more fired up about these halcyon days of summer. Today I sat working by the open window as a storm rolled in, the gusts of wind carrying a spray of rain and the scent of crushed tomato leaves, fresh mint and ozone, and I took a moment to inhale deeply and remember that this is not forever. The day will end, the month will end, the summer will end...and all this lushness will be just a memory whose green contours will sustain us through the bone-chilling weeks that now seem so distant. So let's make hay while the sun shines, my friends, and not squander any opportunity to do whatever we like best: dangle feet off a dock, loll in a hammock, deadhead the roses, scream for ice cream, play Marco Polo, read in the shade of a big tree, go clamming, count the fireflies, and cook, cook, cook (eat! eat! eat!) the incredible bounty that is exploding all around us.
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I have always had a passion for beets. Never a picky eater, I enjoyed these somewhat polarizing purple root vegetables from an early age. I can still remember the thrill of seeing my pee, subtly pink, circling the bowl. In college, I seemed to be the only one helping myself to Harvard beets, a sweet-tart staple of the dining hall salad bar. Although beets are now widely embraced as part of the unavoidable farm-to-table syndrome, they rarely make an appearance in our home as they are one of the few things for which my husband simply does not care. With their assertive color and distinctive earthy sweetness, they're not exactly the sort of thing you can just slip into a dish. Although I may roast a few on occasion for my own consumption, I am not in the habit of adding them to our morning juice or recreating the divine beet crumble from The Fat Radish. So you can imagine my delight when G urged me to go ahead and make that borscht I was daydreaming about. Not that I needed his permission, but it's kind of lonely to cook up a whole pot of soup and then have to eat it alone. Cooking for one is a very specific thing that lends itself more to simple pastas, elaborate salads and the occasional pot pie, don't you think?
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Today was one of those days when I was filled with a great love for New York City. The energy is always particularly high around the holidays, the streets filled with tourists, the shops crowded and a bracing chill in the air. I was walking up Central Park South, watching dogs chasing squirrels in the park, enjoying the lovely vistas, when I came upon the sweetest sight: a couple of chefs from the Ritz-Carlton feeding the carriage horses fresh carrots (greens and all) from a big market basket. So delightful, especially since I always get a pang of sadness when I see those horses gussied up in that cheesy frippery they really don't deserve. (I think I read Black Beauty just a few too many times as a girl.) Anyway, it was an especially New York-y moment—unexpected, extravagant, poignant. And it was the perfect set-up for an exceptional day that included lunch at A Voce, a facial from the incomparable Claudia Colombo, dinner at Nougatine, A Free Man of Color at Lincoln Center, and a night at The Jane.
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Chaats are Indian snacks and appetizers, a sort of street food that is widely welcomed indoors as well. In India, there are restaurants that specialize entirely in chaat. When I told our driver in Jaipur that I wanted to eat chaat from a street stall, he raised his brows in horror and whisked G and me to an air-conditioned restaurant where we sat amongst Indian families and had delicious sweet-tart-spicy-crunchy treats accompanied by cooling lassi. Chaat is Hindi for “to taste,” and mostly consists of small dishes, often easy to eat by hand or off banana leaves on the street. As with Indian cuisine in general, chaats are quite diverse, with many regional specialties, but quite a few are fried, like pakoras and samosas, and some are stuffed breads. Dipping sauces and raita are key to the whole experience.Many of these dishes are flavored with chaat masala, a combination of spices that varies from person to person and place to place. I buy mine pre-made (Kalustyan’s yet again) and it contains salt, amchur (mango powder), musk melon, cumin, black pepper, pomegranate seed, coriander, mint, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, chile, caraway, ajowain (a relative of coriander), cloves, hing and bay leaf. Hing? you ask.
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Have you been to Txikito yet? As its name indicates (a Basque version of  the Spanish "chiquito," which means tiny), this Chelsea restaurant has only a few tables, and you'd be lucky to grab one on any night (or at lunch). Chefs and owners Eder Montero and Alexandra Raij turn out some wonderful regional Spanish food that takes me back to the years I spent in that beautiful country. My father was a professor of Spanish literature and, every seven years, would take his sabbatical there. I attended the 4th and 10th grades in Madrid, and went back for two semesters off when I was in college. I fell in love with the place, the people, the food, the language. Some of the dishes at Txikito work upon my memory in the way that Proust's madeleine did his: the fat, silky white asparagus of Navarra; the crisp croquetas with their centers oozing creamed cod or chicken; the boquerones, subtly saline white anchovies; but, most of all, the ensaladilla rusa. (Little Russian salad, supposedly invented by a Russian in the late 19th century.)

I used to eat this delightful version of potato salad, a classic Spanish tapa, almost every Sunday morning when I lived in Madrid in my twenties. They served it at a little café right on the edge of el rastro, the big flea market. The most outrageous punks would go there, flaunting their sky-high mohawks, tight leathers and scary piercings. I remember feeling super cool, kicking the sawdust on the floor, smoking my Marlboro reds and taking leisurely bites of this rich, creamy salad. Txiquito's version—potatoes, peas, carrots and bits of green olive bound together with homemade mayonnaise and mounded atop a salty layer of oil-cured tuna—takes me right back there.
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