Shopska Salad, One-Pot Chard and Beans, and Cherry Sorbet

Cooking in the summer involves much more assembly than actual cooking.  Ideally, anyway.  It works out pretty well, because summer’s bounty generally includes sweet, juicy fruits and cool, crisp vegetables, which require little more than some chopping and seasoning to become complete dishes.  Like this shopska salad:

Tomatoes, cucumber, spicy red and green peppers (not from the panier but definitely in season), and diced Bulgarian sheep’s cheese, tossed in a garlicky vinaigrette.  It takes 15 minutes, and is great both as a side salad or as a sandwich filling – try stuffing it into pita bread!  Nick and I first had shopska two summers ago on our trip to Bulgaria, and I can’t imagine why I haven’t tried to recreate it before.  From here on out, it will be on my go-to list for summer salads.

Another new go-to dinner for summer will definitely be variations on this one-pot (ok, pan) meal of Swiss chard and beans.  Sure prepping the fava beans takes time, but now that I’ve gotten the hang of it, I don’t feel nearly as daunted by the task as I used to.  Other than that, it’s chop onions and sauté with chard stems.  Add garlic and tomatoes (I used one fresh and four quarters – aka one – sundried), then beans (fresh favas and a can of white ones, too) and chard greens.  Heat through, serve with bread.  If you’re the sort who has to have meat, some cured pork products would be excellent in there.  I was going to put in some smoked salt, but forgot until Nick came up with the same idea after we’d sat down and dug in.  Fortunately, it’s an easily remedied omission.

And I just couldn’t bring myself to turn on the oven to bake a pie.  So cherry sorbet it was.  I debated between recipes by David and Martha, and ultimately settled on Martha’s, even though it was technically more of a granita recipe.  I liked her addition of white wine, and I just so happened to have the tail end of a bottle lingering in my fridge.  We ate it after a long, hot day, and it was cool, refreshing, and tasted of nothing so much as fresh cherries.  The perfect ending to a summer day.

Apparently the fruits and vegetables in France take Bastille day off, too, so I won’t be getting a delivery this week.  See you on the 21st!

Originally published on Seasonal Market Menus.

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