Sunday Lunch: If you can't stand the heat. . .

Hot times in Andalucia

We make a big deal about heat in the kitchen in summertime, so much so that you’d think cooks all over the world are expiring from heat exhaustion. And maybe some are, but others are quietly focusing on how to cope, how to survive. In the Mediterranean, folks cook early in the morning, before the day starts to warm, and serve the food room-temp at lunch. Another Mediterranean piece of survival worth imitating is the afternoon siesta, when it’s too hot to do anything but rest in a quiet room with the shades drawn against the sun. So the workday starts a little earlier and runs a bit later, but it’s the somnolent pause that refreshes in the hottest part of the day that keeps everything going.

For cooks, it’s fine to focus on dishes that require no cooking at all, i.e., salads, but, pace Emily Nunn and her Department of Salad (q.v. here: emilynunn.substack.com), the world can only exist on raw salad greens for just so long before the palate calls for something warm and filling.

Cortonese kitchen

If you stop to think about it, quite honestly, most pasta dishes can be prepared so quickly that a lot of heat is not required. Pasta itself cooks in minutes. We’re not talking oven-baked lasagna or Greek pastitsio, but the kind of pasta that boils in a pot of water in less time than you can tell your beads, and gets drained and sent to the table before you can even say: A tavola non s’invecchia mai!* Keep the sauce simple and fresh and save the long-cooked ragùs for January. Gather friends around a table on the kitchen porch, put a big bowl of pasta alla pantesca in the middle and pour the wine. A salad from the Department of Salad (see above) will go very nicely with this, one you can make ahead of time in the cool of the morning.

*”You never grow old at the table:” Italian proverb.