From tabouleh to backyard bouillabaisse, cool food for summer

A good kitchen should be sufficiently remote from the principal apartments of the house, that the members, visitors, or guests of the family, may not perceive the odour incident to cooking, or hear the noise of culinary operations.”

—Mrs. Isabella Beeton, Book of Household Management (1861)

A simple backyard bouillibaisse - recipe below. (photo by Joe George)

I work as a professional cook. This is virtually all I have ever done. Those who have spent any time in a kitchen, professionally or not, know that the dog days of summer can be unforgiving in the humid Northeast.

I know no one who enjoys cooking in a hot kitchen. Personally, I anticipate the summer months with a sort of trepidation. If it’s hot and sticky outside, it is even hotter and stickier in the kitchen. The heat in a kitchen on a hot summer’s day is all-encompassing and inescapable; it fills every pore of your body. Trying to escape the heat is like trying not to get wet when submerged in water.

There are plenty “hot kitchen stories” I could tell, such as the time a prep cook passed out on the steamy dish machine, or the chef who would not allow lights on in the kitchen during August because it created extra heat. But one of my favorites is when I witnessed the heat from the other side of the kitchen door.

I was on holiday with my sisters in New York City. It was during a heat wave and the temperature was in triple digits. Like most tourists, we plotted our days by determining which air-conditioned café, store, or museum we would go to next. I, of course, couldn’t help but think of the cooks that were working through it.

One particularly sweltering afternoon (the high, I clearly remember was 106F), we had lunch in a café in Greenwich Village. Because the dining room was packed, the hostess sat us very close to the kitchen. So close, in fact, that when the door was kicked open by a plate-burdened server, it would hit my sister’s chair. Most would consider this a terrible table, but I enjoyed the location because each time the door opened it offered me full view into someone else’s kitchen.

The view was one that I knew well: a sweltering kitchen amid the chaos of one of the busiest times of day. As I sat eating my croque monsieur and drinking icy chardonnay with beads of condensation on the glass, I caught glimpses of cooks drenched with sweat. The chef stood in the middle and had a towel draped limply over his shoulders. The temperature, I thought, had to be 120 degrees. He put plate after plate of food in the serving window and barked orders to anyone within earshot. I could see his face red and glistening, and at one point our eyes met and he gave me a look that said, “What the hell are you looking at?” I relished the cool of the air-conditioned room, knowing I would be in a similar position soon enough. I sipped the chilled wine slowly.

There are many ways for the home cook to avoid the heat of the stove on a hot day. The most logical thing is not to use your kitchen at all, and cook outside. Cooking outside has its merits and is not limited to grilled foods; everything from roasted chicken to pasta, and even bread, can be made outdoors. Our early settlers knew this; it was commonplace for New Englanders and Quebecoise to have two kitchens: one indoors and the other outside, often sharing the same chimney.

I have put this concept to the test on more than one occasion. On a fanatical impulse one summer I built an outdoor oven of bricks, mortar, and topsoil. Another time my son and I cooked a small pot of bouillabaisse in our backyard. We simply dug a shallow pit, started a fire, and set the pot on to boil. It was so easy to do and was some of the best fish stew that I’ve ever had. Bouillabaisse, along with its cousins, gumbo, chowder, and zuppa di pesce, were undoubtedly all cooked outside in the early days. So too was the classic pot au feu—loosely translated, a pot on the fire.

If cooking outside is not a viable option, then the best way to keep the kitchen cool is to keep things simple. And keeping it simple does not necessarily mean boring or plain; there are plenty of interesting foods that can be prepared with little or no cooking, and many recipes can be prepared ahead of time, before the heat of the day sets in.

Personally, when I think of summer cooking, I am drawn to the cuisines that are indigenous to warmer climates, particularly those that surround the sun-drenched Mediterranean. The food is light and often served chilled or at room temperature, and meals healthfully incorporate a substantial amount of vegetables, fruits, and grains. This is best summed up, I think, in the opening paragraph of the aptly titled Summer Cooking, written by the inspirational food writer Elizabeth David in 1955. “By summer cookery I do not necessarily mean cold food; although cold dishes are always agreeable in summer. At most meals, however hot the weather, one hot dish is welcome, but it should be a light one, such as a very simply cooked sole, an omelette, a soup of the young vegetables which are in season—something fresh which provides at the same time a change, a new outlook.”

As I type these words it is that vague, unpredictable yet inevitable lull that occurs between serving the appetizers and the soup course of a banquet. It’s a midsummer Saturday night and humid as hell. There’s a 10-gallon stockpot simmering a couple feet behind me, along with various other pots and pans. I feel beads of sweat running down my back. I look forward to a cold glass of wine at the end of the shift, but mostly I pine for my makeshift backyard kitchen.