It is not just that you want to avoid adding additional heat to your home during summer. Skipping the oven and the stove for meals during the dog days also ensures a mere modicum of effort. Because the last thing anyone wants to do during summer is spend unnecessary time feeding oneself.
Bean Salad Marbella
The best bean salads are adventures in contrast. This legume-centric take on chicken Marbella combines prunes, capers and almonds with a plucky vinaigrette of red wine vinegar, maple syrup and Dijon mustard. In the interest of ease, choose whichever canned beans suit your fancy. (Get your recipe)
Everything Bagel Cottage-Cheese Dip
Cottage cheese: very much not just for breakfast! Acquaint your crackers and crudités with the pleasurable versatility of this savory dip. Bring out the premade everything bagel seasoning dip, or make your own. Stir it into cottage cheese, along with capers and scallions. Make the dip a day ahead or so, if you like. (Get the recipe)
Greens-and-Beans Sandwiches
Mashed beans are mixed with a sesame-scallion sauce then stacked with fennel, planks of feta and chile-spiked cucumbers on rye bread. Zip, crunch, salt, lushness — satisfaction in no time. (Get the recipe)
Raw Thai Citrus Crunch Salad
The dressing does the heavy lifting in this vibrant tangle of zucchini, carrots, cabbage and red bell pepper. You whir together soaked cashews, dates, lime juice, chile, ginger and garlic, then toss it with the uncooked vegetables. The result is both light and rich, precisely how you want to be satisfied when the scorching weather heckles. (Get the recipe)
Strawberry Malt Icebox Cake
Seven ingredients and many hours in the fridge are all this no-bake recipe requires. The cake anchor is dozens of vanilla wafer cookies layered with whipped cream laced with malted milk powder and strawberry slices. No muss, no fuss, all summertime deliciousness. (Get the recipe)
Sugared Melon with Cardamom and Mint
A sublime melon needs nothing further than a fork and your mouth. Then you go and toss it with turbinado sugar, salt, and smashed cardamom, let it sit for an hour or so and realize: Oh, now that is a whole other kind of delicious. (Get the recipe)
Tomato Tonnato
No, not toh-may-toh, toh-mah-toh. Toh-may-toh, toh-nah-to. Tonnato being the absurdly delicious — and absurdly simple — sauce of tuna, mayonnaise, capers and anchovies. Tradition dictates, in its birthplace of the Piedmont region of Italy, that tonnato is served with thin pieces of veal. Here, the lush puree is mounded on a plate, then topped with sliced ripe tomatoes, black sesame seeds, basil and flaky salt. (Get the recipe)
Wedge Salad with Tahini Green Goddess Dressing
The “green” comes from a glut of basil, cilantro, dill and parsley. The dressing’s base is mayonnaise and sour cream, along with the traditional addition of tinned anchovies and the untraditional — and inspired — inclusion of tahini. The wedge salad never saw the tahini coming and will never want to bid it goodbye. (Get the recipe)
Bright salads, luxurious fruit desserts and a standout dip
