Published May 13, 2026 Updated May 13, 2026
No one asks for perpetual winter. Few yearn for infinite fall or eternal spring. But how many songs, movies, books are dedicated to the idea of endless summer? (Answer: A lot.) It’s only human to anticipate those long, languid days, when it’s OK to be a bit idle, to channel your innermost desire to be a lizard sunning itself on a rock.
Advertisement
While summer technically lasts a little more than a quarter of the year, the time to grill outside, indulge in perfect peaches and dreamy heirloom tomatoes, or just eat a hot dog, sand in your hair, feels fleeting. You want to make every bite count. You can think of the recipes inside, assembled by New York Times Cooking editors, as 24 ways to capture the season. We consider them our summer bucket list, our must-makes, full of bright produce and opportunities to be outside. Make as many you can, at your own leisurely pace, before the sun sets on the season.
Senegalese sauce rof is often used on fish, but Yewande Komolafe uses it on grilled steak in two ways: as a marinade, then spooned over top as a dressing. Its bright ingredients (onion, serrano chile, garlic, lemon zest, scallions and parsley) counter the steak’s earthy quality.
Recipe: Grilled Steak With Sauce Rof
What if I told you that you could have a potato salad that’s actually light and fresh, rather than heavy? You can! Melissa Clark’s version, calling for just four ingredients, lifts a normally earthy classic with lemon, scallions and mint. It’s also secretly vegan, so it can sit out longer than those mayo-based recipes.
Recipe: Lemon Potato Salad With Mint
Advertisement
This is the kind of recipe you wait all year for, the perfect way to put heirloom tomatoes and ripe in-season peaches to use. Here, Alexa Weibel tames their sweetness with whipped goat cheese. A little bit of grilled bread, smoky and crisp, would turn the whole thing into the dreamiest of al fresco meals.
Recipe: Tomato and Peach Salad With Whipped Goat Cheese
Cucumbers are the ultimate summer cooler, so crisp and fresh. When paired with ginger and lime, both sharp in their own ways, they’re transcendent. Ashley Lonsdale, this recipe’s author, salts them until their excess liquid drains concentrates their flavor, and that’s the bulk of the work. The rest is as chill as the dish itself.
Recipe: Ginger Lime Cucumber Salad
Pasta salad can be, well, just pasta salad. But Dan Pelosi makes the mayo-based dressing work for him, tossing it with Parmesan and anchovies and brightening it with lemon. The kale here is a perfect addition. It becomes increasingly tender as it sits, a mellow counter to the crunchy panko topping.
Recipe: Kale Caesar Pasta Salad
Advertisement
You may not think of fish tacos as something to pack for the beach or the park, but let this recipe from Rick A. Martínez prove you wrong. Fillets get rested in a garlicky-citrus marinade before they’re blasted with high heat and paired with a homemade pico de gallo. After all that, they’re yours for the taking, ready to be refrigerated and carted to wherever you like.
Recipe: Salpicón de Pescado (Spicy Citrus-Marinated Fish)
In-season tomatoes are powerful enough to cut through rich pimento cheese, a blend of Cheddar, cream cheese, mayo, the requisite pimentos and spices. Kia Damon has you throw together a batch of the dip, then tuck it into soft white bread for a simple summery lunch with just the right amount of creaminess and acidity.
Recipe: Pimento Cheese and Tomato Sandwiches
You don’t need a grill to yield the charred flavor of this Mexican favorite. Here, the kernels are blackened on the stovetop before they’re paired with mayo, crema, cilantro and lime — the bright flavors it shares with its cobbed sister, elotes. Do as the recipe’s author, Kay Chun, suggests, and toss any leftovers with pasta for an easy, breezy summer meal.
Recipe: Esquites
Advertisement
It can be argued that no summer is complete without a burger, and Kenji López-Alt has opinions on what makes a great smashed one. They should have “lacy and crisp” edges and be “so thin that they shatter when you bite into them.” For best results, he uses beef with 20 percent fat and cooks the patties quickly over high heat. How they’re topped is up to you.
Recipe: Smash Burgers
Icy grapes are a gift on a hot day, a kind of alternative to Popsicles. Zaynab Issa draws on South Asian and Mexican culinary tradition (and channeling the grocery store favorite Fruit Riot), adds lemon zest, sugar and chile flakes to deepen grapes’ sweetness. Keep them in the freezer, where they’ll last for up to six weeks, ready for you all season.
Recipe: Sweet and Salty Frozen Grapes
Zainab Shah shortcuts traditional versions of this dish by quickly pan-frying eggplant rounds, instead of salting and simmering them, before laying them onto a tart, cooling bed of yogurt. But nicest of all, it can be eaten cold, so you can prep it, chill it and take it where you need to go.
Recipe: Borani Banjan (Afghan-Style Eggplant in Yogurt)
Advertisement
On a warm day, there’s little more as welcoming than a cooling dinner. This vegetarian main from Hetty Lui McKinnon puts peanuts first and foremost: employing peanut butter in the rich sauce and roasted and salted nuts as a topping. Use whatever crunchy raw vegetables you have on hand here; they’ll be especially nice against the tender noodles.
Recipe: Cold Noodle Salad With Spicy Peanut Sauce
Christian Reynoso lightly dredges chicken breasts in flour to cook them on the stovetop and pair them with fresh, summery tomato and basil. Capers and red wine add a welcome briny tartness to the sauce, which is ready to be paired with crusty bread or rice.
Recipe: Tomato Basil Chicken Breasts
In-season zucchini and corn maintain their seductive fresh bite in Dan Pelosi’s hearty pasta, full of quick-cooking ingredients. Prep all the add-ins as the pasta boils, then merge them in the pot before showering them with basil and mint for a full-flavored 30-minute dinner.
Recipe: Linguine With Zucchini, Corn and Shrimp
Advertisement
Two steps and six ingredients, that’s all this no-cook recipe from Eric Kim requires. A spicy gochujang sauce contrasts the cooling tofu, while sliced scallions give it the right amount of crunch. Do as Eric recommends and double the sauce. It’s a great topping for green vegetables, especially those with a little bite: broiled broccoli, fresh lettuce or chopped cucumber.
Recipe: Chilled Tofu With Gochujang Sauce
“A celebration of summer” is how Vallery Lomas describes this Cajun-style side, full of fresh corn, tomatoes and butter (a.k.a. lima) beans. The andouille sausage and shrimp add heft, but if you’re leaning vegetarian, feel free to leave them out. It’s memorable enough without.
Recipe: Succotash With Sausage and Shrimp
Yewande Komolafe has you make your own suya spice, a blend of peanuts, ginger, paprika and onion and garlic powders, then whisk it with more fresh garlic and ginger. Rubbed into bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, left to sit (up to overnight), it infuses the meat, which is grilled and paired alongside sweet nectarines and fresh scallions for a dish that’s sweet and smoky all at once.
Recipe: Suya Spiced Grilled Chicken Thighs With Nectarines
Advertisement
Grilling fish in a foil packet has a few upsides: It lets you prep ahead, prevents a mess and cooks the fillets gently in their own steam, taking on the flavor of whatever they’re packaged with. Here, Yewande Komolafe pairs salmon with a coconut cream-infused sauce. A packet of green beans cooks alongside, to be tossed with a summery mix of raw corn and tomatoes for an unforgettable — and unforgettably easy — party main.
Recipe: Coconut-Dill Salmon With Green Beans and Corn
Salty feta tempers sweet watermelon in Eric Kim’s simple salad, which takes inspiration from the Mediterranean. A hearty splash of balsamic accentuates those flavors, as does a little basil. With just four ingredients, it’s a testament to doing more with less.
Recipe: Watermelon and Feta Sala
Fresh summer blueberries anchor Clare de Boer’s clever cake, which channels the best parts of a cobbler (the tender batter and jammy fruit) and a muffin (the crunchy top). A blend of yellow cornmeal and almond flour not only adds flavor and texture to the batter, but it also makes this cake gluten-free.
Recipe: Blueberry Spoon Cake
Advertisement
Vaughn Vreeland describes these bars as Key lime pie’s boozier, saltier cousin, and boozier they are, with a hearty pour of tequila and a couple of tablespoons of orange liqueur. A crust built on saltine crackers keeps them — as the name promises — delightfully salty. Could a margarita alongside enhance the experience? Only one way to find out.
Recipe: Salted Margarita Bars
Be the star of your park picnics and potlucks with these not-too-sweet bars from Genevieve Ko. Salted butter and flaky sea salt balance the marshmallows for a slightly more sophisticated take on the grade-school classic.
Recipe: Rice Krispies Treats With Chocolate and Pretzels
Without all the excess water of their bigger grocery-store counterparts, tiny summer strawberries pack an abundance of flavor. (It doesn’t hurt either that their diminutive size makes them especially cute.) Here, Samantha Seneviratne boils them down to further concentrate their flavor, then uses that mixture to coat fresh berries. That mixture fills a shortbread crust and gets topped with billowing whipped cream.
Recipe: Fresh Strawberry Pie
Advertisement
Whether you call it a mangonada or a chamango, use fresh or frozen mango, or serve it with or without alcohol, this staple of Mexican summer is ready to cool you down on a hot summer day (which will be here sooner than you think). Best of all, you can keep Daniela Galarza’s thirst-quenching take in the refrigerator, ready to top with chamoy and Tajín whenever a craving strikes.
Recipe: Mangonada
Advertisement
Yotam Ottolenghi’s fresh recipe delivers everything you want from the classic side dish, plus bright lemon and crisp cucumbers.
Yotam Ottolenghi is a food columnist for The New York Times Magazine and the author of multiple cookbooks. He is the chef-owner of five Ottolenghi delis in London, as well as the NOPI and ROVI restaurants.
Published May 13, 2026 Updated May 13, 2026
Until very recently, I didn’t know that white jeans are considered by some in the United States to be acceptable only between Memorial Day and Labor Day. I’d been wearing mine all winter.
It first struck me as one of those things that exists simply because it always has, handed down with great conviction. Food is full of these.
Don’t eat oysters in months without an R. Swallow a cherry stone, and a tree will grow inside you. Add oil to pasta water to prevent the noodles from sticking together (it just makes everything slippery and stops the sauce from clinging). I grew up with the notions that drinking water after eating watermelon wasn’t good for my tummy and that chocolate would give me acne.
Some of these are obviously nonsense; others have some justification. The wearing white-rule, on reflection, probably made sense when it was introduced: Before air conditioning and moisture-wicking fabrics, wearing white in summer kept you cooler. On the partly paved streets of the early 1900s, winter mud splashes must have posed a serious problem.
The oyster rule has a similar rationale. Before refrigeration, oysters spoiled in warm weather — hence the warning to avoid eating them in months containing an R, which neatly skips the summer. Now, oysters travel cold from boat to plate, the spoilage risk far reduced, and I still feel a little hesitation ordering them in July. Something in me has absorbed the rule without quite absorbing the reason for it.
Which is, I think, true of many rules: The instruction lingers long past the logic, and eventually the logic gets left behind altogether.
Which brings me to potato salad.
I’ve been thinking about what potato salad actually does — what job it performs and why it’s always there alongside the grilled things, without anyone really questioning it.
It’s the only thing on the table that does something different: a cold and creamy counter to all that heat and char. So many dishes work this way. Their whole reason for existing is a function, a solution to a problem. Gravy exists because roasted meat loses its fat and moisture in the oven and needs them put back. The lemon wedge alongside fried or grilled fish is just acid cutting through fat, one of the simplest moves. Once you fall in love with the solution, you stop seeing it as a solution at all. The rule, again, outlives the reason.
Potato salad is just one way to solve the problem. Hearty potatoes lend themselves to being prepared ahead and absorbing flavors; you can make your salad the day before, it gets better as it sits, and by the time everyone’s standing around with their plates, it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to. It’s a very good solution, but not the only one.
This salad uses chickpeas instead. They can also work because chickpeas are creamy in a way that potatoes are, but they’re lighter. They hold dressing, and they don’t turn to mush if they sit out. The end result is still creamy, dressed in Greek yogurt, mayo and mustard, and still built for a table in the sun. I like to spoon over a salsa of lemons roasted until blackened at the edges, tossed with cucumber, sweet dill pickles, jalapeño and a great deal of fresh dill.
Chickpea salad, dressed this way or any other, could and should become an unchallenged fundamental for all summer garden parties. I can easily see a time when people will just take it for granted. I already do.
Advertisement
Published May 7, 2026 Updated May 7, 2026
Ah, May.
To kids, the month is a thrilling wind-in-the-hair downhill race toward summer, freedom and possibility. For parents, it’s also a race, but the gasping, out-of-breath kind, toward a finish line that feels like it keeps moving farther and farther out of reach.
Every commitment that seemed like a great idea in September culminates, making our Google calendars look like someone scattered confetti all over them: school concerts, sports banquets, dances, recitals, tournaments, graduation ceremonies, shopping for teacher gifts, not to mention summer child care and vacation planning. All are worth celebrating — but when concentrated into a single month, it’s a lot.
The Holderness Family, known for their online parodies, even produced a video about the month, calling it Maycember, because its festive mayhem can rival that of December. “But without all the fun cookies and twinkle lights,” the song goes. It went viral.
And then there’s dinner. How can you meal plan, shop and cook when time and energy levels are abysmally low, when you’re, well, dunzo? For that, there’s what I call the dunzo dinner, a.k.a. a dead-simple meal for when things pile up.
I asked seven parents, recipe developers, a reporter and a photo editor, what they make for their families when they are absolutely dunzo, but still want to get something cheap, delicious and mostly nutritious on the table. They delivered seven delightfully speedy, real-life recipes you can turn to on your busiest days that’ll make everyone happy.
The blurbs below have been condensed and edited.
Advertisement
Samantha Seneviratne, recipe developer and mom to Artie, 8, Brooklyn, N.Y.
I could eat pastina, the simple Italian pasta shaped like stars, with chicken broth, egg yolks and Parmesan, every day. (In fact, I’ve gone on weeklong pastina benders when I’ve been deep in work and unwilling to go to the grocery store.) It’s fortifying, comforting and tastes like a hug. My sometimes tricky-to-feed son loves it, too. Is it soup? Is it pasta? Who cares! It’s a slurpable supper that takes mere minutes to make. The only downside is no veggies. But I’ve come up with an easy solution. While it’s not traditional, shredded cabbage adds flavor and nutrients without signaling “vegetable” to the kids in your life. It becomes meltingly tender when simmered with the pasta and gives the soup a mild sweetness that goes beautifully with cheese and butter.
Recipe: Creamy Cabbage Pastina
Ready in 20 minutes
I do a lot of fridge-leftover potlucks. I have one other single girlfriend with a kid, and we do that thing where I’ll say, “I have some potatoes.” And she’ll say, “Well, I have this,” and then we just get together and cook it all up.
I don’t do birthday parties. I once got Artie a piñata and stuffed it with candy. We strung it up in my parents’ house, inside. And then my parents and I just watched him go at it. He took all the candy, and he was so happy. That was way better than a birthday party.
Melissa Clark, columnist, recipe developer and mom to Lee, 17, with husband, Daniel, Brooklyn, N.Y.
I always keep sausages in the freezer. Quick to defrost, seasoned and ready for your pan, they are a boon for those crazy-busy nights. In this recipe, I roast them with cumin-scented chickpeas, then shift to broiling, so everything gets a little crisp at the edges. I love to throw in some spinach during the last minute of cooking so it can wilt into silky ribbons. The extra veg eliminates the need for a salad, turning this into a one-pan meal.
Recipe: Roasted Sausages With Chickpeas and Spinach
Ready in 20 minutes
I buy treats. I stock my fridge with washed vegetables and my pantry with beans. Then, I’ll get some special things, whatever the favorites are of the moment. I keep those on hand because not only do they help you get through it, they’re also good to bribe a kid — even if your kid’s 17. They’re still susceptible to a Crunch bar.
My kid gets leftovers for lunch every single day. When I make dinner, I section off a part of it before we even sit down, and I put it in a container, and then all I have to do is heat it up and throw it in the Thermos.
Advertisement
Brett Anderson, Reporter and dad to Oscar, 11, and Julius, 9, with wife, Nathalie, New Orleans
I came up with this idiosyncratic recipe when Oscar, our oldest son, was a pescatarian. It’s so good that it remains a weeknight staple, even though Oscar eats meat again. Most of the prep can be completed while the water is coming to a boil and the oven is heating. I like to serve it with a simple coleslaw, which I often have premade in the fridge, and store-bought Mexican salsa verde.
Recipe: Halloumi and Sweet Potato Tacos
Ready in 20 minutes
Keep a shared grocery list. If my wife, Nathalie, says something out loud, I say, “Add it to the list!” Because I go to the grocery store a lot, and I can’t think of anything off the top of my head.
Our lunches are not Instagram ready. I’ll do hot lunches for them, but it’s usually beans or a leftover thing. Otherwise, I actually have a position on this: I feel like they need to know that sometimes lunch is just a sandwich.
Kevin Pang, recipe developer and dad to Liam, 10, with wife, Anne, Chicago
There is such a thing as a noodle emergency — when hunger strikes at an inconvenient hour and the only remedy is a bowl of noodles. Instant ramen is an obvious solution, but most of the seasoning packets that come with those noodles can taste artificial and too salty. The solution in our house? Ditch the soup powder, keep the noodle brick and use cream cheese as the base of a luscious sauce that enrobes each strand. The result isn’t quite cacio e pepe in a Roman trattoria, but this nine-minute dish is your “break glass in case of noodle emergency” savior.
Recipe: Cream Cheese Ramen
Ready in 9 minutes
I buy gift cards when my brain is still functioning in March. Instead of spending $100 on gift cards in May for the teachers, I buy them in $25 increments.
We have a shared public calendar, and we’ve learned to incorporate our departure time, and not just when the event begins.
Pati Jinich, recipe developer and mom to Alan, 26, Sami, 24, and Juju, 19, with husband, Daniel, Chevy Chase, Md.
This salad is a take on a dish that my mom used to make when I was growing up in Mexico City. It’s soft potatoes, sweet carrots, snappy peas and satisfying bites of chicken in the most flavorful chipotle mayo dressing ever. I cook it at least a couple of times a month, and, since it keeps beautifully for up to five days, there’s almost always a batch waiting in the fridge. You can serve it alongside crackers, pile it onto a tostada, or wrap it in a flour tortilla with shredded lettuce. It’s fabulous tucked into a bolillo or baguette for a satisfying torta — but in my mind, nothing beats eating it by itself in a bowl.
Recipe: Chipotle Chicken Salad
Ready in 20 minutes
Batch cooking saved my three boys growing up. Like my mom, I made chicken broth on Sunday or Monday, because it gave me a full batch of cooked shredded chicken that’s cheaper than buying a whole rotisserie chicken. I would whip it into a chicken salad or use it in chicken tinga. I also like making a big batch of pinto beans or black beans, called frijoles de olla, and a bunch of rice. I also always make four batches of vinaigrette, and use it a thousand ways.
Bread things for picky eaters. My middle one was a nightmare. From when he turned 3 or 4 until he turned 12, he would eat only hot dogs, rice and chocolate milk, but then I realized that I could bread things — chicken, shrimp, fish — and he started eating it. Now he eats everything, but it was torture for a while.
Advertisement
Brigid Ransome Washington, recipe developer and mom to Luke, 11, and Noel, 9, with husband, Joseph, Raleigh, N.C.
On weeknights when I’m in the weeds, a tiny can of diced green mild chiles is the key that unlocks a fast, satisfying meal for my family of four. After searing boneless, skinless chicken thighs, I deglaze the pan with those chiles, along with a can’s worth of tap water, and make a deep, bright, bracing sauce. That simmering sauce flavors and softens the kale leaves and black beans. My 9-year-old daughter prefers this recipe with shrimp — frozen or fresh — and it’s easy and affordable enough that I can make both versions on the same night. (She looks forward to the leftovers.)
Recipe: Chicken and Kale Hatch Chile Bowl
Ready in 20 minutes
In May, if something comes up, I automatically say no, because I already know it will be crazy in two weeks. If I don’t get you in April, I’ll get you in June.
Every Mother’s Day, I tell my husband that I don’t want brunch. I don’t want breakfast. Just leave. I just want to be in the house by myself for an extended period without interruptions. No distractions, no noise. “Do you want food?” Nope, I’ll feed myself. Just go. Those have been the best Mother’s Days.
Gabriel H. Sanchez, Photo editor and dad to Diego, 6, Felix, 3, and Ava, 5 months, with wife, Kelly, Woodbridge, N.J.
Keeping meals quick and fun can mean the difference between a relatively chill evening and pure chaos in my house, so these quick-cooking sliders are a great way to feed my three kids under 6. To make them, roll ground beef into small meatballs, then press them into three-inch patties and give them plenty of seasoning before cooking. A large 12-inch pan can handle an impressive number of these patties, which helps to keep cleanup to a minimum. Toasted Hawaiian rolls offer a sweet cushion for the burgers, which are finished with a melty blanket of cheese and your favorite toppings (we make caramelized onions ahead of time to garnish along with dill pickle chips). They’re great served alongside baked French fries or potato chips, a quick meal that’s always a perfect match for my little ones’ tiny hands.
Recipe: Cheeseburger Sliders
Ready in 20 minutes
Let them pick the soundtrack that transitions them to dinner. My middle kid loves the color purple, so he’ll always choose purple records, and my oldest is becoming really enthusiastic about hip-hop and rap music. He likes A Tribe Called Quest, which is a unique dinner soundtrack, but it brings them out of the screen time. Now, they’re sitting at the table and bobbing their heads and enjoying their dinner. My wife and I look at each other, and we’re like, “Is dinner happening smoothly right now?”
Make a schedule, but
Advertisement
A Good Appetite
Melissa Clark roasts chicken in the same tray for a hearty, low-fuss spring dinner in 45 minutes.
Melissa Clark prefers thick asparagus to pencil thin ones but will happily eat what she can get.
Published May 7, 2026 Updated May 7, 2026
I wait all year for local asparagus, and this spring’s pining went on longer than usual. A cold start to the growing season in the Northeast stalled things. And while this is true for all produce, asparagus is especially sensitive to nature’s chilly whims.
Last weekend at my neighborhood farmers’ market, only a few vendors had stalks on offer.
Greg Swartz, an owner of Willow Wisp Organic Farm in Damascus, Pa., said that his asparagus harvest had been about 20 percent of what it normally is for this time of year.
“Asparagus is a soil thermometer,” he said. “You can tell the soil is cold it is by how slowly it’s growing.”
This has meant that, instead of my usual early May asparagus binge, I’ve been more thoughtful about how to cook the first verdant stalks. Should I steam them and gloss with butter? Sauté them with ramps? Or roast them along with some kind of protein that I can lay on a sheet pan and throw into the oven at the same time?
I decided on roasting, which combines the ease of a one-pan meal with the coziness of a warm kitchen that’s still welcome right now.
There are two ways I approach roasting asparagus alongside a protein. The first is to choose a protein that will roast in the same amount of time as the stalks — usually 10 to 20 minutes depending on how high the heat is and how thick the spears are. This works best for relatively speedy ingredients like fish, meatballs and sausages. But slower cooking ones, like bone-in chicken parts, will benefit from a head start in the oven.
For this recipe, I begin by roasting a seasoned, cut chicken on a sheet pan by itself. This gives me time to trim the asparagus and slice up some scallions, which I add to the pan after 15 minutes.
Piling the whole bunch of asparagus into a mound next to the chicken lets me fit everything on one pan. And then the stalks on top get a little golden while the ones underneath stay bright green and tender. As the chicken skin crisps, it releases its fat into the pan, further seasoning everything. Finally, I drizzle it all with a lemony dressing spiked with coriander and garlic for a sharp, bright tang.
Asparagus season might be spare this year, but I plan to enjoy every green bite.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Alongside a pickle-filled salad and walnut truffles for dessert, David Tanis’s recipe is prime picnic fare.
By David Tanis
David Tanis writes a monthly cooking column for The New York Times. Though he has had a long career as a chef, he has always been a passionate home cook, and is well known for serving simple, rustic food, family-style. He is also the author of several cookbooks featuring seasonal cooking.
Published May 6, 2026 Updated May 6, 2026
With the weather warming up, it’s time to get into picnic mode, which basically means taking every available opportunity to eat outdoors. Somehow, everything always tastes better consumed in the open air on a fine day. For this menu, suitable for lunch or dinner, everything can be prepared well in advance. Best of all, it’s all quite easy to transport.
To start, I’ve prepared a salad where pickled beets and eggs star. Well-seasoned pickled vegetables are extremely popular in Greece and Turkey, and my recipe incorporates hints from Pennsylvania Dutch traditions. It’s also dead simple.
You make a well-spiced, sweet-sour brine and simmer beets in it till they’re tender. Peeled hard-boiled eggs pickle in the same ruby-red brine. They go in for a bath and emerge with a colorful, pink-rimmed exterior. Both ingredients benefit from a night or two in the fridge, so make them whenever you have a chance in the days before the picnic. They’ll keep a week or more and only improve. I like to serve them split open on a crisp lettuce leaf with spears of fresh cucumber.
Then, for a portable main course, think savory pastry, specifically a phyllo-wrapped pie. Like Greek spanakopita, this recipe features a hearty green filling; but rather than spinach, it’s chard, accompanied by softened leeks, creamy ricotta, salty feta and heaps of chopped dill. It’s delicious warm or at room temperature, and while you could bake it in a rectangular pan, it’s far more impressive in a round.
Phyllo is a forgiving medium. If you tear a sheet by mistake, it’s easy to patch together, and no one will be the wiser. And, as long as your ingredients are not too wet, you’ll have a crisp, flaky, golden result. If you wish, you can assemble the pie a day in advance unbaked, then pop it in the oven a few hours before serving.
Advertisement
A nutty, not-too-sweet take on truffles ends this meal. It’s based on a friend’s recipe for chocolate-dipped Greek truffles, but with some changes: I wanted to simplify the process and put the emphasis on walnuts, adding walnut oil and orange liqueur for richness. To finish, they may be rolled in coconut, dusted with cocoa, or both.
For this picnic, if you brought a chilled bottle of wine to accompany the meal, go one step further, and bring a Thermos of hot coffee or tea to go with dessert.
Advertisement
A trip home to Trinidad and Tobago and a mother’s passion fruit juice renewed a young chef in training.
By Brigid Ransome Washington
Published May 4, 2026 Updated May 4, 2026
Two years into studying at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., I still felt adrift. Attending had been a leap — I’d left behind my home in Trinidad and a relationship — and, while some of the institute’s rules and conventions had managed to steady me, my biggest anchor remained the food of my island.
After an internship but before the final leg of my program, I returned home to see an old roommate get married. Touching down at the airport, I was welcomed as one of the country’s own. No longer a visitor, a stranger, an outsider or an immigrant, I was home.
At my brother Reynold’s place in the heart of Port-of-Spain, I slept for a full day. Rest was more restful in a country where I didn’t always have to wrestle. When I awoke, I made a beeline to Hot Shoppe, a small roti shop that serves the most silken dhal puri skins. My brother ordered his favorite: a curry chicken buss-up-shut, served with flaky paratha, stewed Chinese long beans (bodi), ethereally smooth pumpkin talkari spiked with geera (roasted cumin), aloo and channa amped with “slight peppa,” and a thump of mango achar. I had something I’ve enjoyed ever since I was a child: a boneless chicken mini roti with a banana Solo (a flavored soft drink).
I took the first bite, and pieces of the roti, filled with ground yellow split peas fell into my lap like saffron-scented fairy dust. For my brother, it was normal lunch on a Wednesday, but, for me, it held the magic of being in one’s country, even if that belonging was temporary, even if it presented as an illusion.
When we left Hot Shoppe, I told my brother how different Indo-Caribbean cooking is from the classical dishes we were tasked to replicate at school, expounding on how Trini-Indian food embodies lightness and sprightliness, something that couldn’t be replicated by exacting recipes in my classes.
Reynold could tell that the thing I needed most wasn’t to relive parts of what had caused me many sleepless nights. Disabused of the desire for any more school-related details, my brother simply said, “Yuh home now, sister. Like yuhself.”
Shortly after, I left for Tobago, Trinidad’s smaller, pristine little sister isle, an ecotourist’s dream, where locals and international visitors came to party, and where my mother now lived.
My childhood home in south Trinidad had outgrown my mother. A litany of issues — a leaky roof, nuisance neighbors — had accrued and soured her on our flat house, which she had once loved. Rather than contend with the barrage of problems, she wisely chose to sell it and move to Tobago.
Part of me wished that she'd kept our house. I would no longer have access to our grafted Julie mango tree, the moody crotons or the passion fruit vine that snaked along the chain-link fence on the sunny side of the house. As a little girl, my mother would place their seeds in the hollow of my hands, hopeful that as I grew I would always thirst for more.
I arrived at mum’s cute-as-can-be cottage, and there it was, a jug of passion fruit juice waiting for me, made the way I remembered, the way her mother made it — with a squeeze of lime juice and a dash of Angostura bitters. It was refreshing, redolent and somehow managed to taste of this new home, our old home and my grandmother’s home in Siparia, one that I never had the opportunity to experience, all at once. It embodied the people who had gone before and, when my mother made it for me, I was able to walk directly into the line of sight of a granny that I’d known only through stories and sepia-toned photographs.
That’s a recipe’s power: In a simple five-ingredient juice — passion fruit seeds, water, sugar, lime and bitters — death, in some small measure, itself dies. This was not just a quaint gesture on my mother’s part to welcome me.
Served in a faded pink plastic tumbler, this passion fruit juice offered lessons of geography and family traditions, politics and pleasure, slavery and survival in which no syllabus or game plan was necessary. There wasn’t a quiz that could calibrate how much passion fruit juice taught me. It was my past, present and future, and it was delicious.
The morning I had to leave Tobago, mum woke early and made mesada roti, a leavened flatbread, and her version of “baigan,” a quick-cooking eggplant stew zapped with garlic and curry powder. The simple dish defined island life; I’d eaten it most mornings growing up, and I’d almost forgotten about it.
With closed eyes, I took a big spoonful.
This was the food of my life, made from the hands that had given me just that. After emotional goodbyes, my mother and I hugged and allowed the silence to say the unspeakable: I was returning to “the world’s premier culinary college” knowing that the meal I’d just had could never be matched.
This article is an excerpt from “Salt, Sweat & Steam: The Fiery Education of an Accidental Chef” (St. Martin’s Press, 2026).
Advertisement