Right now our farmers' markets are flooded with a plethora of colorful chile pepper pods, and since September 15th through October 15th is National Hispanic Heritage Month, it's the perfect time to explore these beautiful and flavorful members of the capsicum family. Fortunately, Ginger Rapport of the Beaverton Farmers Market just sent out a primer in their current newsletter!

One of the ingredients that almost all Hispanic cuisines have in common is chile peppers.

Chile vs. Chili: According to Chef Mark Miller, author of the The Great Chile Book, the generally accepted convention is that "chile" refers to the plant or pod while "chili" refers to the dish made from meat and chiles. The name pepper is a misnomer that has existed since Christopher Columbus encountered capsicum plants and erroneously thought that he had found the plant that produces black pepper, which has no relation to capsicum. However, the name pepper is still used interchangeably with chile.

The chemical in chile peppers that gives them heat is capsaicin which is technically a neurotoxin. It stimulates the adrenal glands to release hormones, which theoretically creates an energy rush. The fiery sensation you feel also triggers the brain to produce endorphins, natural painkillers that promote a sense of well-being and stimulation. They can also make you sweat, which is your body’s natural air conditioner. This may explain why chiles figure prominently in cuisines in and around the tropics.

Depending upon whether you like them hot, mild, or somewhere in between, you will want to make informed decisions when purchasing chiles. The first thing that you should know is that the heat level in a chile is rated on a scale known as the "Scoville Heat Index." Invented by Wilbur Scoville, it ranks chiles in order from mildest to hottest in Scoville Heat Units (SHU), with zero being the mildest and the hottest being over a million. In general, the smaller the chile, the hotter it is. Below is a guide to the most common chiles found at farmers' markets. Scoville rankings* are included for each. Most of the heat is located in the seeds and white ribs inside. Removing the seeds and ribs, using only the flesh of the chile ,will give you all of the flavor and less of the heat.

Keep in mind that you should use gloves when handling the hottest peppers to avoid irritating your skin. It is important that you do not touch anything, especially your face—we know this from experience—before disposing of the gloves and washing your hands thoroughly.

Other peppers you will find in the market:

Padron Peppers: Scoville 500-2,500. Originally from Spain, they are harvested young and small, they typically have no seeds. This makes them mild, perfect for eating whole. Farmers tell us that about one in every 12 will be surprisingly hot and there is no way to know which one packs the extra punch, but take a nibble of the very tip to get an idea of how hot it is. Prepare by sautéing in olive oil until it is blistered and serve sprinkled with salt.

Shishito Peppers: Scoville 50-200. Popular in Japan, these are very similar to Padron peppers. Serve them sautéed with a drizzle of soy sauce and sesame oil. Very tasty in tempura.

Habanada: Scoville 0 (yes, zero). Bred by well-known organic plant breeder Michael Mazourek of Cornell University, these exceptional snacking peppers have all of the fruity and floral notes of the habanero without any spice (even the seeds are sweet and add to the flavor).

* Scoville rankings are often given in a range because varieties and growing conditions vary.

Photo of peppers from BFM newsletter, courtesy Shannon Feltus, Urban Farm Foods.

Before Blue Apron and Hello Fresh, there were Hamburger Helper and Swanson's frozen dinners. Even before that, when I was growing up, when my father didn't have time to hunt down a brontosaurus à la Fred Flintstone, my mother made do with Campbell's cream of mushroom soup and an arsenal of Lipton's dehydrated products. Spanish rice, tuna casserole and pot roast were her go-to dinners, egged on by the women's magazines of the day like the Ladies Home Journal that gave busy homemakers tips on "quick dinners your family will love!"

Tamale pie was one of those dinner solutions, though in the days when most Americans considered spaghetti sauce "spicy food," its call for the addition of chili powder—actually a spice mix containing paprika, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, oregano and maybe cayenne—was a bridge too far for many. But my dad loved him some zing, so my mom would occasionally pep up her dinner rotation with chili powder-inflected goulash or tacos with hot sauce.

I'd been looking for a tamale pie recipe for those times when I'm feeling a bit of nostalgia for the casserole dinners of my childhood, and recently a friend shared one that brought back a flood of cornmeal-scented, cheesy memories. Updated with a few adaptations using local cornmeal and pasture-raised beef, locally grown and roasted tomatoes and some tangy sharp cheddar from Organic Valley, it fit the bill perfectly. I hope it will for you, too!

Tamale Pie

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 onion
2 poblano peppers, chopped in 1/4” dice
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 lbs. ground meat (beef, chicken or turkey)
2 c. roasted tomatoes
2 c. corn kernels
1/2 c. chicken stock
2 tsp. ancho chile powder
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 c. cornmeal
1 c. grated cheddar or jack cheese
Salt to taste

Preheat oven to 350°.

Heat oil in large skillet over medium high heat. (If using a cast iron skillet, you can bake the casserole in it, as well.) When it shimmers, add ground meat and sauté until the meat is browned. Add onion and sauté until tender, about 3 minutes. Add garlic and pepper and sauté until softened, about 5 minutes. Add chile powder and cumin and stir briefly, then add tomatoes, corn kernels and broth. Bring to a simmer. Salt to taste.

While meat mixture simmers, bring 2 cups water to a boil. Slowly add cornmeal, stirring vigorously to prevent lumps. Continue cooking and stirring until it becomes quite thick. Add 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste. Stir cornmeal mixture into other ingredients. Put mixture into casserole (if you are using a cast iron skillet, you can bake the casserole in this). Sprinkle cheese over the top and bake about 30 minutes.

My family loves jam—Dave's homemade sourdough toasted in our old-school two-slice toaster is most of the reason—so this time of year I make a lot of it. And I'm talking about gallons of the stuff, enough to last us until the fruit ripens again next summer. So far this summer alone I've made raspberry, marionberry, strawberry, blackberry and two kinds of plum jam, with Dave's special citrus marmalade rounding out the selection.

I'm not confident enough to start playing around with spices to my repertoire, and I do love the forthright flavors of the fruits all by themselves. There are those who make exotic combinations like plum cardamom or apricot chanterelle, both from my friend Jennifer Bright, my polestar for preserving ideas—see this recipe for Prune Plum Jam with Fennel Seed for a taste. (Her blog Culinaria Eugenius, from her previous life in Eugene, is a trove of recipes and inspiration.)

This summer I did have a breakthrough when I ran across a blog called Divas Can Cook by Monique Kilgore, which she describes as centering on African-American Southern Cuisine. Her recipe for strawberry jam without pectin describes a technique calling for combining the fruit with sugar, warming it to melt the sugar, then bringing it to a rolling boil until it reaches 220 degrees. Done!

For me this eliminates the "will it set" problem of either runny preserves or a set that is too hard (and probably overcooked), plus the hassle of the plate-in-the-freezer, is-it-done guesswork. I've now used her technique with all the fruit jams I've made so far and they've all been exactly the right not-too-runny, not-too-thick consistency we love—Goldilocks would be so pleased! So thanks to Monique for setting me on the right path.

Fruit Jam

Adapted from Divas Can Cook by Monique Kilgore

So far I've used this technique to make strawberry, blackberry, marionberry, raspberry and plum preserves with excellent results.

1 lb. fresh fruit
1 1/4 c. sugar
1-2 Tbsp. fresh-squeezed lemon juice

Combine fruit with sugar and lemon juice in a large pot or Dutch oven. (If you have more than one pound of fruit, I use the same proportions as above for sugar and lemon juice.) Allow the fruit to sit and macerate for 15 minutes, then place over medium heat and simmer for 15 minutes until the sugar melts completely. (Kilgore mashes the fruit at this point for an even consistency, but I like my jam to have some texture so I skip that step.)

When the sugar has melted, turn up the heat and bring the fruit to a rolling boil and continue cooking until the temperature of the jam reaches 220 degrees. At that point transfer the jam to clean glass jars. If you're freezing the jam, simply allow it to cool to room temperature and transfer to your freezer. If you want shelf-stable jam, process the sealed jars in a water-bath canner following the canner directions.

Love figs? Get my recipe for a spectacular Balsamic Fig Jam that is amazing with cheeses or on toast.

This week's newsletter from the Beaverton Farmers Market is all about the colorful, luscious pears you'll see lovingly displayed in vendors' market booths, and I thought this one was so simple and uncomplicated that it deserved sharing here.

Decadent Pear

"Marketgoers love his apples, but they also love him for his amazing pears," wrote Market Master Ginger Rapport of Thompson Farms' Lynn Thompson. "Lynn is always welcoming and was happy to share his favorite pear recipe which he lovingly calls 'Decadent Pear.'"

4 sweet red pears
4 Tbsp. of brown sugar
4 Tbsp. of butter
4 strips of bacon, fried until crisp then crumbled

Halve the pears and hollow out the centers.

Spoon 1/2 tablespoon each of butter and brown sugar into each half, and microwave them for a minute to soften the pears.

Top with crumbled bacon and broil for a couple of minutes to crisp up the glaze.

Waaaaay back in 2017, I began writing about the violations at the famously notorious and now-shuttered Lost Valley Farm. It was later sold to the massive Easterday farming operation before that collapsed, as well. In what turned out to be a prescient warning, I quoted an op-ed by Dr. Nathan Donley, a senior scientist in the Portland office of the Center for Biological Diversity, who wrote:

“The new Lost Valley [Farm] operation will generate as much waste as a small city that will be stored largely in open-air lagoons, then disposed of on fields. Without adequate oversight, there can be no question that every time the state approves a new factory farm it will be opening the door to dangerous health risks—not only for workers but for all those families unfortunate enough to have no choice but to breathe the air around those facilities.”

Tellingly, the problems began when the new owner of the former tree farm, Greg te Velde, cleared the land and started construction of the facility before it was even permitted. Despite that big red flag, permits to operate were issued by the state Dept. of Agriculture (ODA) and Dept. of Environment Quality (DEQ). 

Originally permitted to milk 30,000 cows, it was considered a state-of-the-art facility, but due to the erratic actions of te Velde, it never came close to housing that number of cows and was closed due to criminal charges against its owner and hundreds of violations of its permits.

In a 2019 post about the subsequent sale of the property, I asked, "Who would be crazy enough to buy a facility that will require millions of dollars to clean up and more millions to install a new irrigation system…with some 47 million gallons of liquid manure still remaining onsite—which one source estimated would fill 71 Olympic swimming pools?"

Well, that turned out to be the Easterday family, who renamed it Easterday Dairy, then pulled the plug on their plans after four years of what can only be called Shakespearian-level drama. A partial list includes:

• A massive fraud operation dubbed "Cattlegate" perpetrated by Cody Easterday, scion of the Easterday family enterprises, in which he claimed to be feeding 200,000 cattle owned by Tyson Fresh Meats but, in fact, the cattle existed only on paper and were created to cover up Easterday's losses on the commodities market.
• The death of Cody's father, wealthy cattleman Gale Easterday, who died shortly after the fraud was revealed when he drove his car the wrong way on the freeway near his ranch, running head-on into an 18-wheeler hauling Easterday potatoes.
• Many of the Easterday businesses declared bankruptcy in 2021 and most of the family’s massive farm and ranch empire was auctioned off. 
• Cody was sentenced to 11 years in a federal penitentiary in California in 2022 for the fraud against Tyson.
• The ODA handed down a notice of noncompliance in April of 2023 to Cody's son Cole, who was put in charge of the dairy after his father's scam came to light, detailing more than 60 violations ranging from fertilizer spills to irrigation runoff to misapplications of manure on the dairy's property.
• Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) reported in August of 2023 that Cody Easterday and his wife owed the Internal Revenue Service more than $12.5 million in personal taxes, which has issued a lien against their assets.

In early 2023 the Easterdays reached an agreement with the former landowner, Canyon Farms, which is managed by Fall Line Capital, a California-based venture capital firm, in a $14 million lawsuit over how the land was being managed. In mid-August of that year it appeared that Easterday Dairy and Canyon Farms had come to an agreement to sell the property back to the California-based company.

OPB reported that in April of this year, Fall Line had asked to decommission the site as a Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO). According to OPB, "while ODA has granted the request [to decommission the plant], three monitoring wells at the site still show elevated nitrate concentrations above 'background limits' or [has] nitrate levels from before the site was permitted as a CAFO. [The ODA's] Stapleton said the owner is required to bring the wells back into compliance and report monthly samples to ODA."

According to Tarah Heinzen, an attorney for Food and Water Watch, the industrial dairy should never have been permitted in the first place since it is located on a federal Groundwater Management Area (GWMA). "This is an area where people are exposed to unsafe drinking water in part because factory farms and other big ag polluters are contributing nitrates to an already polluted aquifer,” she said. “It [did] not make sense to allow a new source of nitrates into a groundwater management area.”

Even though nitrates are universally acknowledged as extremely hazardous for humans to consume, current nitrate levels in monitoring wells in the GWMA are well over federal maximums. Despite decades of remediation efforts, levels have not shown any decrease and, in fact, the entire aquifer in the area on the banks of the Columbia River is now contaminated. Decades of inaction on the part of regulators has caused residents in the affected counties to sue polluters in federal court.

"The ODA is requiring Canyon Farms to bring the monitoring wells below background limits, yet Oregon has a self-imposed goal to bring nitrate levels in groundwater management areas to seven milligrams per liter or less. The background limits for two of the wells are 15 and 19 milligrams per liter respectively," according to OPB's reporting.

“They need to require that the nitrates are lowered to a health-based limit of seven milligrams per liter, not the so-called 'background levels' that are currently in the plan,” Heinzen said. “We want to see this actually achieve results that are safe for public health and those who might be impacted in their wells down-gradient of this operation.”

The ODA has not yet clarified why it isn't requiring Canyon Farms to bring nitrate levels to the lower levels in its goals.

It seems that Dr. Donley's warning back in 2017was prescient, indeed.

Read "Why I'm Quitting Tillamook Cheese" about mega-dairies in Oregon and "Big Milk, Big Issues for Local Communities" about the real costs to our state of these industrial factory farms.

Photo of Lost Valley cows from ODA; photo of Cody Easterday from Capital Press; photo of Cody at his sentencing from KUOW.

It was like a tingling between my shoulder blades that I couldn't quite reach. The niggling thought in my brain had been amorphous at first, as elusive as a phantom, but it had the unmistakable flavor profile of the homemade gochujang from my friend Denise's family.

It was even a little scary, a crossing of lines if you will, kind of like the kimchi risotto that I made during the pandemic, trying to use what was in our pantry so we didn't have to make a trip to the store. But with this there wasn't that excuse, since I had everything on hand that I would need. Plus, really, the likelihood of an inedible culinary disaster was remote—my family will pretty much eat anything, exclaiming "tasty!" as they chow down.

So, to cut to the chase, an attempt at making gochujang mac'n'cheese had been on my mind for awhile. Sure, I've made various iterations of the classic cheesy noodle casserole from versions laced with salmon, Dungeness crab, pimento cheese, even one with a Tex-Mex twist. But a Korean-inflected version somehow seemed like a bridge too far—call me a drama queen, but it gave me the willies.

Maybe it was the idea of combining cheese with the chiles, fish sauce, sesame oil and miso in the gochujang. But we'd been making kimchi quesadillas—with cheese and the pickled, chile-laced cabbage—for lunch since I'd been making my own kimchi. What was there to be nervous about?

When I ran across a mention of a panko, gochugaru and sesame oil topping that would give the top a nice crunch, suddenly the clouds cleared, the sun came out and all seemed right with the world. I'd still caution the curious to be aware that this is not your mother's mac'n'cheese or anything that Annie or Mr. Newman would put in a box, but it's pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Gochujang Macaroni and Cheese

For the topping:
3 Tbsp. Panko
1 Tbsp. gochugaru
2 Tbsp. toasted sesame seeds
1 Tbsp. toasted sesame oil
1/2 tsp. salt

For the casserole:
1 lb. dried pasta (we like penne or rigatoni)
4 Tbsp. butter
4 Tbsp. flour
1 Tbsp. garlic, minced
2 c. milk
8 oz. sharp cheddar cheese, grated
8 oz. cream cheese
3 Tbsp. gochujang
Salt and pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil.

While water is heating, combine the topping ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside.

Over medium heat, melt butter in medium-sized saucepan. Remove from burner and add flour, stirring to combine. Place saucepan back on burner and cook on low heat for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add garlic and stir briefly. Add milk gradually, stirring until it begins to thicken, then add cheese in handfuls, stirring after each addition until melted. Add cream cheese and stir until sauce is thick and creamy, then stir in gochujang. Add salt and pepper to taste. (The sauce should be slightly saltier than you'd normally make it, since when combined with the pasta it will tend to make it taste less salty.)

Add pasta to boiling water and cook until al dente. Drain and put back in pasta pot, add cheese sauce and stir gently to combine. Transfer to baking dish, sprinkling the topping mixture evenly over it. Bake in 350 degree oven 30 minutes.

The following popped into my e-mail in-box and, with his usual tell-it-like-it-is directness, Bruce Bauer—longtime readers know him as my (much) younger brother—made the big announcement:

"This is a tough email to start so I’m jumping in the deep end and letting you know that after an incredibly rewarding, at times frustrating, yet so f*cking fulfilling 25 year run here at the wine shack I’m going to be selling VINO and retiring (apparently I’m older than I think I am 😬). I've gotta admit I'm feeling a bit out of my element with the impending change, but also excited in so many ways. Now I hear y’all going, “But what about us?,” and I just want you to know I’ve found a great buyer, someone I’ve known for years in the business, who couldn’t be more perfect to take over and take VINO to the next level."

Why am I posting about my brother's wine shop on this blog that's about local food, you might ask?

Well, without his inspiration I might well have never started Good Stuff NW, much less become a writer. You see, I was a freelance advertising art director at the time, helping clients with their branding and marketing and just dipping my toe into this new medium called the World Wide Web. It was 2006 and my baby brother was on a whirlwind tour of France and Spain, writing about all the amazing food and drink he was stumbling across via a platform called Blogger. Needless to say, his always-engaging writing was a draw, of course, but so was the idea of this easy-to-use new medium. (You can read more about my writing journey here.)

But back to Vino.

He'd always been a crazy smart kid who had an uncanny knack for relating to all kinds of people—I've consistently said he got all the "nice" genes in the family—so when he started a career as a lumber broker I thought, "Good for him, he'll make lots of money and be secure," while the big sister part of me was thinking, "He's so much more talented and creative…I hope he's happy."

Fortunately that only lasted a few years, whereupon he co-founded Shakers Café in the the early 90s in the nascent, not-yet-named Pearl District in Northwest Portland. Smashingly successful with lines out the door for breakfast and lunch—its tagline "If Your Mother Could Cook" perfectly summed up its take on homemade classics—he also began broadly exploring what would become his passion for lesser-known European, American and, particularly, Northwest wines.

He eventually sold the café, launching his first wine shop on Southeast Hawthorne called Portland Wine Merchants, which was followed not much later with the opening of County Cork, an Irish-themed pub on Hawthorne—coincidentally (and somewhat spookily) also the site of our paternal grandfather's moving business back in the 1930s—which eventually relocated to Northeast Fremont.

Bruce sold the Hawthorne wine shop to his business partner and opened Vino in the Sellwood neighborhood, which just before the turn of the millenium was a quiet street populated by antique stores and not much street traffic. He quickly drew in a crowd of regulars, fans from his Hawthorne shop as well as appreciative neighborhood folk drawn to his affordable selection, extensive knowledge and lack of pretense on the subject, who were very excited to have a place to gather on Fridays for wine tastings.

The move to its current location on Northeast 28th wasn't without some fraught moments—moving to a promising new neighborhood but leaving the community that had built up around the shop was not easy—but it proved to be both timely and prescient. The street soon exploded with notable small restaurants, bars, a food cart pod and many small businesses, with Vino benefitting from the increased street traffic as well as the new outdoor courtyard for tastings.

As Bruce wrote in wrapping up his e-mail, "It’s been amazing and I can’t say strongly enough how much better my life has been because of you guys and what you helped VINO become. Thank you for coming along for the ride!"

Photo of yours truly at a Vino wine tasting many moons ago courtesy Laurie Harquail.

If you have a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) subscription to a local farm, you're probably getting weekly updates from your farmer about what crops will be available and what the season might look like going forward. A CSA is a great way for us city folk to have a connection to the land outside the paved boundaries of our lives, support a local small farm and to get a sense of the season from ground level. The bulletin below is from my CSA farmer, Aaron Nichols of Stoneboat Farm in Hillsboro, and this week he gave an excellent insight into this very unusual end-of-summer weather.

I hope you've all been enjoying the last weeks—they sure feel like fall out here.  I don't remember the weather changing so seriously this early in August before, certainly not with enough rain that we don't have to irrigate for a week. It looks like we'll see it heat up (though not too much) over the next few weeks and our summer crops will certainly appreciate it.  

This last week we were able to take advantage of the rain to get our biggest fall and winter salad plantings in—they take up a good amount of the space we'll be growing in over the winter and it's nice to see them all planted! We have a van-full left to plant next week but those will probably be in by the end of the month—having the longer-growing salad in by the end of August is a goal most years but not one we normally meet! We also planted our last round of kales, broccoli, and cabbage.

The greenhouse is looking pretty empty of growing things now, though it's currently drying down the shallots—they're nearly done which is good because a whole lot of onions need to get in soon! We managed to get some potatoes in the ground while the soil was mostly dry mid-week, and before it started to rain again today. The rain is pretty nice for the newly seeded and newly planted crops we have out there—they all look good. It's also got us a new flush of weeds!

The cool weather and the rain did cause a few problems, most notably for the corn. Our careful corn planning is now way out of whack with the last corn looking healthy, but still far from being ready, and the current corn is falling over from the wet soils and winds over the weekend making for worse pollination and fewer ears. It will be back but isn't loving the mid-60 degree days!  Our tomatoes weathered the storm better than the corn but did have pretty slow production as did most of their relatives—eggplants, peppers, etc.—but they'll all be happy next week with the warmer weather.

The fall things look good though: broccoli as early as next CSA and cabbages will probably be in at just about the same time; kale and cauliflower are not far behind that. We have carrots now and likely next week. Before October I think we'll have some leeks in the CSA and we'll certainly have more kinds of winter squash sneaking in there. Next week's CSA should feature some fun potatoes—all purples and fingerlings.

Many local CSA farms have winter season subscriptions, and Stoneboat Farm will be posting its subscription for winter shares in the next couple of weeks. You can also read more about Aaron and his work with his North Plains community to preserve farmland from development.

I know, I know, calling a particular drink "the best cocktail" is hyperbole on the scale of saying one religion is the true path and everyone else is going to H-E-double toothpicks. And there are going to be comments like, "Whaddaya mean..." and "You're fulla..." But, doggone it, it's my favorite and I'm not afraid to say it.

Now, I've had lots of other great cocktails. After all, there is such a thing as due diligence in these matters and I'm all about fair play. Martinis, Manhattans, mojitos, lemon drops, G&Ts, sidecars, toddies...I could go on. But the Negroni is the one I always come back to as my touchstone, especially as made by my favorite bartender.

And it's not for everyone. You have to have a taste for the bitter (Campari) along with the sweet (vermouth). And the perfect accompaniment is a twist of lemon, though many practitioners are trying to substitute orange peel—in my opinion giving the drink a cloying oiliness rather than the zing that lemon rind contributes.

So if you're ready to try one, here's the recipe that we've adopted as our own.

Our House Negroni

A good friend of mine described the Negroni as "the perfectly balanced cocktail when made correctly." I've got to agree. The richness of the gin, the bitter-sweetness of the Campari, the balancing acidity of the vermouth. Measure it out if you have to, free pour if you're confident enough, just make it. This is a great old-school drink that originated in the 1930's, and is making a comeback today. Big ups for this very refreshing adult beverage.

1 part Gin
1 part Campari
1/2 part Sweet Vermouth
1/2 part Dry Vermouth

Fill your cocktail shaker halfway with ice, dump in the booze, shake then strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with a twist of lemon.

A note on the gin: I love Beefeater and Taqueray, but with this drink I actually prefer the less assertive flavor of a Gordon's Dry Gin or a similar mid-range gin. Also, if you look in a vintage bar guide, it will invariably say one part sweet vermouth with no dry vermouth. But I was shown this half-and-half method by the bartender at Bix Restaurant in San Francisco many years ago—a great "must stop" bar for you martini fans—and this rounds out the flavors perfectly. Cheers!

It's high summer. Temperatures are soaring and no one wants to heat up the house cooking dinner. You could whizz up a blender of chilled soup—check out my favorites by clicking here—or do what we do: Set up an outdoor kitchen! All it takes is a camp stove and a camp table and you're good to go.

We've set up ours on the patio just outside the kitchen door, the better to access that all-important fridge, plus water and utensils. Our trusty two-burner Coleman will boil a pot of water for pasta on one burner while cooking up the almost-instant sauce (below) on the second burner without having to break a sweat.

Whether you can stroll out to your garden bed and pluck your cherry tomatoes right off the vine or pull out a pint of little red orbs from your farmers' market stash, all you'll need is garlic, a tin of anchovies and olive oil to complete the dish. It's so simple you could whip it up while your guests sip gazpacho from tiny glass cups, but whether you choose to do that or just toss it in a bowl and put it in front of your family with a salad, I guarantee it'll be a dish you'll be pulling out again and again in tomato season.

Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes, Garlic and Anchovy Sauce

1 lb. pasta
3 Tbsp. olive oil
10 cloves garlic, peeled and very roughly chopped
1 tin anchovies in olive oil
One pint of cherry tomatoes
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes
Salt to taste
1/4 c. Italian parsley, chopped
Grated parmesan, or a 50/50 blend of pecorino and parmesan, for serving

Boil a large pot of water for pasta.

Just before the water comes to a boil, start the sauce by heating the olive oil in a deep frying pan over medium-high heat. When it shimmers, add the chopped garlic and sauté until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the anchovies and their oil and mash until the anchovies dissolve, then add the whole cherry tomatoes and red pepper flakes.

Add the pasta to the (now) boiling water and cook until al dente. Continue cooking the sauce until the tomatoes burst and give up their juices, then reduce the heat to low until the pasta is done. Drain pasta in a colander and place in a heated serving bowl. Pour the sauce over the pasta and sprinkle with some of the parmesan.