Summer is the best of time of year to cook and eat, by far, with its hissing grills, saltwater-seasoned beach picnics, stone fruit dripping with juice, vine vegetables brimming with flavor and pastel cones of melting ice cream. I love it.
In honor of the season, we’re unveiling the Summer 100, the New York Times Cooking recipes we think you should put on repeat for the next three months. We’ve selected our favorite salads and desserts, recipes for the grill and ones that don’t require cooking at all, and dinners, of course — like the shrimp scampi below.
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Let me know what you’re cooking now and what you’re excited to make in the months ahead. (For me: sour cherry pie, served warm, with a collapsing scoop of vanilla ice cream.) I’m [email protected], and it’s always good to hear from you.
I’m also making:
Grilled sausages, onions and peppers; baked salmon; lemon soufflé French toast.
1. Summer Shrimp Scampi With Tomatoes and Corn
Are tomatoes and corn at their peak? Not yet. But start making Ali Slagle’s delicious recipe now and you’ll have it nailed come the point in summer when the produce is perfect. To be honest, this dish is nearly as good right now, thanks to that garlicky butter sauce. You don’t need to serve this with pasta, but I certainly would.
2. One-Pot Chicken Meatballs With Greens
Yasmin Fahr’s new recipe is already racking up five-star ratings and glowing comments. I’d serve these meatballs and their lemony pan sauce over rice, and I’d probably use ground dark-meat turkey if I could find it, for even more flavor.
3. Charred Bok Choy and Cannellini Bean Salad
Hetty Lui McKinnon’s new salad recipe arrives with an excellent ginger-maple dressing you can turn to all season long. This dish makes an ideal warm-weather dinner with cool soba noodles. Shrimp or chicken could be a nice addition, if you’d like, though neither is necessary.
4. Pepper-Crusted Flank Steak
This beautifully simple steak recipe from David Tanis is the one you need to start off summer. The black pepper here shouldn’t be pre-ground — that won’t taste as good. Instead, crush your peppercorns with a mortar and pestle, or adjust your pepper grinder so you get big coarse bits of pepper when you twist. (You could also aggressively smoosh the peppercorns on a cutting board with the side of a knife.) David serves this with a green bean and cherry tomato salad — add his French potato salad and a bottle of rosé, for Francophile flair.
5. Spanakorizo With Jammy Eggs
Hetty’s take on Greek spinach rice includes a nontraditional egg — a sunny burst of yolk amid the green. You pack a lot of spinach, scallions and herbs into this pot, and then it’s all served with a flourish of feta.
We wrote a cookbook! “Easy Weeknight Dinners: 100 Fast, Flavor-Packed Meals for Busy People Who Still Want Something Good to Eat” comes out on Oct. 8. Preorder it now.
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