Feast Your Eyes

Hot days, white cotton dresses, ice cream, and strawberries are forever laced in my memory of childhood summers, when I'd go with my grandmother to her church's ice-cream social. And when I spotted blogger fakeginger's strawberry-cheesecake ice cream, it got me thinking: Whatever happened to the ice-cream social, that vaguely Victorian ritual of summer? A good place to start is to mix up a batch of this strawberry-cheescake ice cream (get Amanda's recipe here), get funky with it, and make pumpkin, crunchy buttermilk, or taffy-apple flavors. Invite a bunch of people over, and let it flow.

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Popovers just sound like good-time food. Their name hints that any minute they're going to jump off the dessert plate and do a flip. And these relatives of the Yorkshire pudding are so light, doughy, and yet crispy on the outside, they probably could do a few pirouettes if given half a chance. However, the popover is made even more of a good-time Charlie when you add a coconut cream filling, put a dollop on the crown, and add a generous handful of fresh blueberries. See norwichnuts' Flickr stream for the recipe for the coconut cream, and a Kitchen Daily recipe for basic popovers.

And if you're more partial to the airiness of a cream puff over the more solid popover, try this recipe.

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Pick your own or just take your pick at the market; it's all about berries right now. Beginning today, we're going to do a four-day run of berry desserts that we found around the blogosphere, and that beckon us to hit the berry patch.

Ricotta cream (a simple mixture of ricotta cheese, a couple tablespoons of honey, and a dash of vanilla extract blended in a food processor) makes a sweet pillow for inky blackberries. The balsamic vinegar and sugar syrup drizzled over the top is a nice spike of flavor, but the berries (strawberries, blueberries, whatever you choose) will survive very well without it. Either way, it's a great riff on berries and cream. See a recipe for this dish here.

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Here's what I call gutsy: Take a food you've never eaten before, and instead of making it into something simple and traditional, just to see if you'll like it, make something really out there and weird. Weird in a good way. That's what blogger habeasbrulee has done with this fava bean and cherry salad. Huh? I mean, there's Middle Eastern ful, and there's a soup, or there's a side of favas with a spritz of lemon. But this adventurous soul, who'd never tasted a fava, sautéed the beans in ramp butter (!), added sweet cherries and minced preserved lemon, and claims the salad is delicious. OK, I'm game. See her post for more. For more recipes featuring fava beans (none of which involve ramp butter), see this Slashfood post.

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Blood-red on the inside, dusty white on the outside, the Elephant Heart plum is a variety you may want to get to know. With a flavor like berries and a meaty texture, this is a plum that begs you to eat it unadulterated but, as blogger dessertfirst did in this recipe (adapted from Emily Luchetti's A Passion for Ice Cream), layering it beneath a fluffy, sweet cornmeal cake gives it panache. Top that cake with a ruby-red plum sorbet, and those Elephant Hearts become unforgettable.

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An appetizer that's lush, combines four food groups, and that you can dip? Sold! As fig season intersects with the height of steamy-weather cocktail-party season, this is one cool customer you want at your shindig. Blogger eddybles blankets the figs with mint and prosciutto, and serves them on bamboo skewers for easy picking. Get the recipe here. The rich dip is made with goat cheese, star anise, white wine, shallots and cream. If you feel the dip is overkill, just skip it and the figs stand beautifully alone.

And because it's the season, try this Kitchen Daily recipe for figs stuffed with gorgonzola.

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Zucchini Madness, Day Two, finds our old friends scooped out into boats, which the zucchini seems built for. They make the ideal edible longboat bowl.

You can stuff these big boys with a simple sauté of the zucchini flesh, onions and garlic, and top them with bread crumbs and bake; add a little cheese and herbs, as in this recipe, or, as blogger adashofsass does, above, load them up with a spicy turkey-and-black-bean chili and cheese combo, for a southwestern flavor. (See the recipe here.)

Run out of ideas for the bushels of zucchini you may be harvesting or find at the market right now? Browse these zucchini recipes from Kitchen Daily, for frittatas, pancakes, breads, salads and a whole lot more.

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Zucchini is the garden's gift that keeps on giving . . . and giving . . . and, well, enough already. We love the bright orange blossoms peeking out from under the vines, and get excited by the first squash, and then, after we've eaten about 30 of them, we run out of ideas on how to prepare them. So today and tomorrow I'm featuring a couple of recipes that will make you fall in love with those omnipresent veggies all over again.

Blogger everybodylikessandwiches keeps it simple, with her recipe for this pasta dish. She uses sliced baby zucchini, which she sautés in olive oil with garlic, chili flakes and fresh peas, then mixes in salty crumbled feta and fragrant basil and mint leaves. And a squeeze of lemon makes it pop.

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Aloha, hot dog fans. Grab a lei and a mai tai, and get yourself in a Waikiki state of mind. This Hawaiian hot dog recipe, from blogger Rachel at coconut&lime is based on actual fruit-topped hot dogs that the birthplace of our president calls delicious. Mango, pineapple, red onion, jalapeño and lime juice create a chunky salsa for the topping, followed by a drizzle of spicy, vinegary jalapeño-lime sauce.

It's not your ballpark frank slathered with mustard from Yankee Stadium. And why would you want it to be when you're in the state of pineapples and mangoes? Got a regional frank recipe you want to shout out? Let us know in the Comments section.

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It's all about the crunch in this salad of fresh snow peas and baby carrots, tossed with an Asian-style dressing of rice-wine vinegar, ginger and sesame seeds. The same brilliantly colorful combination gets treated to a miso-tamari dressing in this recipe.

If the sweet snap of snow peas rings your bell, try Kitchen Daily contributor Adeena Sussman's snow-pea and tofu sauté with a buttery soy-vinegar glaze, a riff on Philippine-style adobo.

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