Summer often rhymes with big gatherings. We want to see our friends and family, to share special moments, without complicating things with elaborate meals! In fact, it’s always the same: with 12 of us in the villa, we decide to keep the meals simple, and if we invite anyone over, it’s always “casual: salad and barbecue.
1- To “make a very simple salad”, you have to wash, peel, cut into small pieces, mix different kinds of vegetables and ingredients, and for 12 people, it takes a CRAZY amount of time!
2- To break free from the endless “tomato and mozzarella” or “Greek salad” meals, you have to think about it: 3 weeks of salads for lunch and dinner, you have to be able to sustain that over time…
3- And since everything is fresh, we abandon the idea of a weekly trip to the supermarket and are forced to make a trip to the market every two days with 10 kilos of fruits and vegetables at the end of each arm!
So when we hear Loulou, who admittedly does his part at the barbecue, announce to the ta, “I’m the chef all summer long!”, we’d love to throw that damn summer salad bowl right in his face!
1- Salads and/or grilled vegetables in 5 minutes flat!
Salads are light, tasty, and fresh, but for 12 people, they take too long to prepare!
We’re playing it smart with the fruit and vegetable cutter
It chops everything that passes through its grids into small or medium pieces! Tested and approved by Busy Women, the kids will fight over who gets to make the salads!
Tomatoes and cucumbers will be reduced to small cubes in less than 2 minutes…
We mustn’t forget the mandolprac ticeice
Combined with the amazing multi-functional mandoline, which slices tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes…, you are all set for summer salads!
And to top it all off, we love the vegetable peeler for tender flesh, which, in these times of malignant bacteria, will be very useful for peeling tomatoes!
Looking for inspiration for varied and easy-to-prepare salads?
Because we don’t want to eat cucumber tomatoes all summer long…
2. Barbecues all summer long
As much as we love barbecue food, we struggle to actually cook with it. Grilled chops, merguez sausages, chipolatas, ribeye steak, sardines… there’s no shortage of food to grill, but rather the best way to prepare it! A little marinade here, a side dish recipe to grill there! That’s all we ask for.
A perfectly executed barbecue!
Barbecue cooking is delicious and healthy, provided you follow a few simple safety precautions!
1. Don’t char your meat: nothing is worse than putting meat on a barbecue with still-glowing coals! Therefore, you must start your barbecue well before the meal begins so that the coals are glowing when you put the meat on the grill (allow at least 15 minutes). The meat should be at least 10 cm above the coals.
2- Don’t leave the meat out in the blazing sun for 15 minutes. It’s fine outside the fridge, but at home, in a room where the temperature isn’t unbearably high!
3 – Marinades are preferred: they protect meat from the toxic elements of barbecuing. Therefore, marinate your meat or fish in marinades made with oil, lemon, spices, or beer.
4- We are careful with the utensils we use for raw meat, which we do not use for cooked meat (plate, board, knife…)
5- Clean the barbecue between uses. This removes the grease that has formed on the grill and which risks falling onto the coals, leading to the creation of carcinogenic molecules!
3- Picnic-style lunches
On vacation, we have to provide meals 7 days a week, lunch and dinner!
So, while we enjoy getting together at dusk for a convivial meal, it’s sometimes (or even often) out of obligation that we have to cook lunch!
How about we switch to a “picnic” style at the table! Or even better, everyone in the garden, in the shade of a large tree, for a picnic on the grass!
We bring out crisps, ham, cherry tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, tabbouleh, cheese, nd everyone eats what they like.
We buy good, fresh bread for sandwiches, and we don’t forget the raw vegetables: cucumber, tomato, and lettuce leaves. A chicken and vegetable sandwich is good for your health (provided you go easy on the mayo), while we avoid sandwiches with rillettes or sausage!
Children are introduced to the art of Pan Bagnat!
We bake crottins de chavignol on slices of Poilâne bread.
A mixture of egg and tuna is enclosed in brick pastry sheets.
We wrap knaki sausages in ready-made puff pastry to make the very popular “sausage rolls”…
And we still keep a watchful eye on making sure the children are eating a reasonably balanced diet…
And to make life as easy as possible, we even buy pretty cardboard plates!
4- Melon at every meal
Melon is the perfect easy summer fruit!
First of all, it’s super easy to cut!
Secondly, it can be served as an appetizer, starter, or dessert!
It will delight everyone and can even be presented to guests.
Our ideas for dishes with melon:
– melon and shredded Parma ham (to be served classically with a wedge of melon and a slice of ham, or in a more original way with a cube of melon and shredded ham on a wooden skewer)
– Melon ball salad with basil and mozzarella balls (if you don’t have a melon baller, then cut the melon into cubes)
– melon salad, Bündnerfleisch (a change from Parma ham), feta
Our dessert ideas with melon:
– melon sorbet
– Strawberry and melon soup: make a strawberry coulis by blending them with lemon juice, a little sugar, mint or basil leaves, and 3 ice cubes, cut the melon into cubes in a bowl, and add the coulis
– Melon, strawberry, and raspberry salad.
5- Quick and fresh desserts
Fruit salads are delicious, but they take so long to prepare!
Red fruit and fromage blanc desserts
So we’re using a summer dessert trick: the white and pink verrine!
Make it once with the children, and then they’ll do it all by themselves.
- Ingredients:
- orange juice
- boudoirs or speculoos
- cottage cheese
- raspberries or strawberries
- sugar
- Recipe:
- Use fairly tall glass containers or fairly wide glasses.
- Put orange juice in a bowl, and soak the ladyfingers or speculoos in the orange juice.
- Sweeten the cottage cheese to taste.
- Rinse the raspberries or strawberries, cut the strawberries
- , then proceed layer by layer: a layer of ladyfingers, a layer of fromage blanc, a layer of raspberries, then repeat.
- Chill the verrines for a few hours and serve as a festive dessert!
You can also opt for red fruit ice cream mousse; i t’s super easy!
- Ingredients:
- Frozen red berries
- strawberries for decoration
- cottage cheese
- sugar
- 1 egg white
- Recipe:
- Blend the red berries
- Mix them with the cottage cheese and sugar to taste.
- Beat the egg white until stiff peaks form
- Gently incorporate it into the mixture.
- Pour the mousse into small glasses and chill for a few hours.
- When ready to serve, place sliced strawberries and a mint leaf on top of the mousse.
Quick and easy fresh dessert ideas with fruit
- faisselle or fromage blanc with seasonal fruit,
- natural melon
- memelon/raspberries, Melba / Strawberries, Melba
- ice cream, sorbet, and associated fruits
- Less fresh but just as delicious, seasonal tarts: buy the pastry ready-made and choose fruits that are easy to cook, such as plums or apricots, which only require a little washing and pitting!
