A July Menu

Swordfish, sungolds, stone fruit — a summer menu I already want to repeat

Hello! This is my twelfth monthly menu for The Dish, marking a whole year of experimenting with this format and documenting meals from my kitchen. And it won’t stop here; I’m excited to roll into another year of menu-designing. I want to keep refining the recipes, playing with the graphics, and maybe even start experimenting with a video component (on verra). On that note, I always welcome inspiration. If you have anything to share, I’d love to hear it.

This July menu was born from a weekend in Vermont with my parents, and from a fierce — and inconvenient, given our location — craving for grilled fish. Thankfully, the wonderful grocery store Mehuron’s in Waitsfield came through with a beautiful hunk of swordfish. Hallelujah. Most of the produce came from Nirvana (also known as the Middlebury Food Co-op), including peak-season sungolds and apricots and a fat, almost-bursting local tomato I picked out for the vinaigrette. When you’re working with this kind of summer magic, cooking becomes blessedly easy.

This was my first weekend visiting my parents since they officially became full-time Vermont residents. While I’m a little sad they’re now even further from Brooklyn, I’m elated to have more excuses to visit the Green Mountains. To me, there’s no better day than one spent tucked away up there — drinking coffee in the morning, walking in the woods, then cooking all afternoon until it’s time for a big dinner with family and friends. That’s exactly the spirit behind this menu.

Thank you, as always, for being here!

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A July Menu

Grilled Swordfish Skewers with Chorizo & Sungolds

If you take one thing away from this menu, let it be these skewers, inspired by this recipe by Eric Ripert. On the grill, the chorizo renders spicy, smoky heat onto the swordfish and sungolds, making the whole thing taste far more complex than it is to prepare. Another revelation: sweet summer sungolds, skewered and grilled whole. They may seem too delicate for grilling, but they hold up surprisingly well.