☀️ Summer Recipes — Light Dishes & Cocktails

The street food of Mexico's Baja California coast: strips of white fish in a light beer batter, fried crisp and piled into warm corn tortillas with shredded cabbage, a lime crema and fresh salsa.

⏱ 45 min · 4 serves

Catalonia's pa amb tomàquet — toasted bread rubbed with garlic and the cut half of a ripe tomato until the pulp soaks in, finished with olive oil and salt; breakfast and tapa all over Spain.

⏱ 15 min · 4 serves

A 1980s highball of vodka with cranberry and grapefruit juices built over ice — tart, pink and easy to drink, the drier, grapefruit-sharpened cousin of the Cape Codder.

⏱ 2 min · 1 serves

The Galician tapa of small green peppers blistered in hot olive oil and showered with flaky salt — most are mild and sweet, but every so often one is fiercely hot.

⏱ 15 min · 4 serves

Old-fashioned still lemonade — lemon zest muddled with sugar to release its oil, steeped in hot water and finished with fresh juice and cold water, so it tastes of the whole fruit rather than just its sourness.

⏱ 20 min · 6 serves

Greece's summer coffee, born at the 1957 Thessaloniki fair — instant coffee shaken hard with sugar and a little water into a thick, stable foam, then topped up with ice, cold water and milk.

⏱ 5 min · 1 serves

The Punjabi yoghurt drink — ripe mango blended with cold yoghurt, milk and a pinch of cardamom into a thick, chilled glass that tames a hot curry or stands in for breakfast.

⏱ 5 min · 2 serves

The Bulgarian summer drink in a jar — whole sour cherries in a light syrup, sealed in June and opened in winter, drunk chilled with the fruit spooned from the glass.

⏱ 60 min · 12 serves

Córdoba's cold tomato cream — ripe tomatoes, bread, garlic and olive oil blended so thick it holds a topping of chopped egg and jamón; denser and simpler than gazpacho, and served properly chilled.

⏱ 30 min · 4 serves

Rapana, the large sea snail that settled in the Black Sea last century, sliced and fried in butter with garlic and white wine — a seaside tavern dish cooked hot and fast, because rapana toughens if left too long in the pan.

⏱ 27 min · 4 serves

A summer Bulgarian moussaka in which fried courgette slices take the place of potatoes, layered with minced meat cooked with tomato and baked under the classic set topping of yoghurt and eggs.

⏱ 110 min · 6 serves

Bulgaria's spoon sweet of small green figs — blanched twice to draw out their bitter milk, then simmered in syrup with lemon until glassy and whole, and served by the spoonful with a glass of cold water.

⏱ 170 min · 20 serves

The farmhouse dessert of the Limousin — whole black cherries baked in a thick, vanilla-scented batter somewhere between a pancake and a custard. Leaving the stones in is traditional: they add a faint almond flavour, so warn your guests.

⏱ 55 min · 6 serves

The no-cook breakfast that makes itself — rolled oats soaked overnight in milk and yoghurt with chia seeds until they soften into a creamy, spoonable pudding, then topped with berries, nuts and honey.

⏱ 10 min · 2 serves

Squid rings in a crisp breadcrumb coat, fried for barely two minutes so they stay tender — a staple of every Black Sea seaside restaurant, served with lemon and garlic mayonnaise.

⏱ 30 min · 4 serves

Light Bulgarian meatballs of minced chicken with grated courgette, spring onion and dill, baked on a tray instead of fried so they stay tender and juicy without any frying oil.

⏱ 70 min · 4 serves

Whole sea bass stuffed with lemon and parsley, grilled until the skin chars and crisps, and dressed at the table with olive oil whisked with lemon, garlic and parsley, the way the Black Sea fish restaurants serve it.

⏱ 31 min · 2 serves

Fresh, uncooked rolls from southern Vietnam: rice paper wrapped around prawns, pork, rice vermicelli, lettuce and herbs so the pink prawns show through, served with a hoisin and peanut dipping sauce.

⏱ 70 min · 4 serves

Thailand's best-loved dessert, eaten in mango season from April to June: glutinous rice steamed and soaked in sweet, lightly salted coconut milk, served with ripe mango, a spoonful of thick coconut sauce and toasted sesame.

⏱ 45 min · 4 serves

The American summer lattice pie — sour cherries thickened with cornflour and sharpened with lemon and a drop of almond, under a woven butter crust. Baking until the juices bubble thickly through the lattice is what makes it set.

⏱ 155 min · 8 serves

The Southern summer dessert — juicy spiced peaches baked under spoonfuls of soft, buttery biscuit dough that rise into a golden, cobbled crust. A short head start in the oven gets the fruit bubbling, so the topping cooks through underneath.

⏱ 60 min · 8 serves

Large ripe tomatoes hollowed out and filled with minced meat and rice cooked with their own pulp, onion and dried mint, then baked until the tomatoes slump and the rice swells in the juices.

⏱ 110 min · 4 serves

A late-summer Bulgarian stew of chicken and young okra in a tomato and onion sauce, the okra first soaked in vinegar water so the pods stay whole and the sauce silky rather than slimy.

⏱ 115 min · 4 serves

Filo layered with grated courgettes, sirene, eggs and dill and baked until crisp — the summer banitsa Bulgarian cooks make when the courgettes come in faster than they can be eaten.

⏱ 80 min · 8 serves