Mid-summer treats

In high summer, dinner tends to get later and later so it is not surprising that meat takes a back seat at this time of year, in favour of colourful vegetable dishes, fish and pasta.

Not only are they easy on the digestion, but easy on the cook, in that they are simple to prepare and quicker to cook. Often the dishes can be broken down into separate components, some of which can be cooked early in the day before it gets too hot.

Salads are, of course, the perfect food for summer, but occasionally one wants a cooked dish, or perhaps something slightly more elaborate if you are entertaining friends. Today’s dishes meet that need, some egg-based, some fish and some pasta, and all of them using plenty of vegetables.

For the omelette cake I took inspiration from a traditional English recipe, a quire of pancakes, but developed one early summer weekend in Gozo when we were entertaining friends and when vegetables were at their plentiful best.

Another recipe is based on a classic dish of Catalunya, fideuada, in which the pasta is cooked in broth and served with allioli. The method, however, is more like that for a risotto, and sounds very bizarre. It is an extremely unusual and delicious dish, and I highly recommend it.

The crudités are to be dipped in the mayonnaise and eaten in the fingers, adding to the communality of the pot. Authentic Catalan allioli requires nothing more than garlic, crushed in sea salt in a mortar, to which is added, drop by drop, olive oil, until the two cohere into an unctuous, opaque, golden green mass.

Impressive if you get it right, frustrating if the mixture splits. I suggest a compromise of good quality mayonnaise, preferably home-made, into which you stir plenty of crushed garlic.

I always tell myself that there is little inclination and time to make a pudding every day, and, at home, fresh fruit generally finishes most of our meals, although one might be forgiven for being sceptical about that, given the size of the ‘pudding’ chapter in my Modern Classics, and the fact that the same book also has a whole chapter devoted to fruit and one to chocolate, for even more dessert recipes.

In truth, desserts are wonderful in their scope for inventiveness. Why do one thing with an apple, when you can do three things, such as award-winning patissier François Payard’s pomme, pomme, pomme when he was at Restaurant Daniel; apple crisp, apple sorbet and apple crumble.

How about white pepper ice-cream with bananas and passion-fruit, or liquorice ice-cream with poached pears? Or fruit soup, chocolate millefeuilles with caramelised chicory, basil-infused panna cotta, crisp fig napoleon with grape sorbet, and mango sundae with chilli-macadamia nut brittle.

Today’s peach tart can also be made in individual versions, and if you have the patience you can dry thin peach slices as crisps to accompany the dessert, as well as peach sorbet or ice-cream.