It’s serious corn and tomato season, which always reminds us of the amazing Mediterranean-inspired late summer meal chef Sara Jenkins made for us in our very first issue.
We’re not even exaggerating: In fact, our boyfriend had literally broken up with us two days before we visited her at home, and by the end of this meal, we’d forgotten about it. Gone from memory! Good riddance! Now that’s the power of food. And Sara Jenkins when paired with fresh produce.
Jenkins, of course, is now best known as the chef behind the porky sandwiches at Porchetta in the East Village, back but then her excellent pan-Mediterranean cookbook, Olives and Oranges: Recipes and Flavor Secrets from Italy, Spain, Cyprus, and Beyond, had just hit bookstores.
Using her own windowsill herbs and whatever was in season, Sara made us a Sunday afternoon meal inspired from her book, which is in turn inspired by her own life. Living and cooking first in Florence, Italy and then at I Coppi and Il Buco. (Read all about it here.)
Two of those dishes really blew our minds. Or actually they all did, but we only scored recipes for two of em: an insanely creamy, earthy corn risotto made with fresh kernels, fat hunks of bacon, Carnaroli rice and broth infused with the cast-off corn cobs, and an addictive Cretan-style bread salad, made with the dried barley bread the Greeks call rusks, super-ripe heirloom tomatoes, Gaeta olives, sheep’s milk feta and plenty of silky olive oil. This is the food you want to eat right now, people! So check out those two recipes right here.
