Back in May, I did a double-take at a local branch of the state farmers’ market.

There. They. Were. Local tomatoes. In May, mid-May, mind you. Local tomatoes in time for Mother’s Day. I made fresh salsa to go with the green chile frittata we gobbled down for brunch that day, and I felt as if I had conjured up a bowl of rubies to sprinkle over the eggs.

North Carolina farmers have gotten sneaky, and brilliant. They’re growing tomatoes in dirt, as usual, but sticking them in greenhouses, where they get warm and tall waaaayyy earlier than the typical tomato season. Now, I had my doubts, but hell, these tomatoes taste good and they come from farms right around the corner. I’ve run into a mushy one or two, but overall, I’m convinced. Let the Cherokee Purples and German Johnsons come in the spring. I’ll just eat more of them.

Sunday dinner this week featured some of these puppies. Never mind that my own tomatoes are still hanging on their plants, a tangly backyard jungle of scratchy leaves and hard, green knobs. The wonderful people who made the food for our wedding introduced me pulled a similar trick. We got married last June - early June, mind you - and amid all the guests I was very happy to see local tomatoes, these greenhouse tricksters, accompanied by generous drizzles of olive oil, fresh chevre and cool circles of cucumber, a reinvented, earthier, more summery insalata caprese.

We sat on our front porch, the day falling around us, plates in our laps and margaritas at our feet, sopping up the pink juices with stray grains of orzo, toasted almonds, roasted red peppers and grilled lamb. Happy summer, and happy tomato time.

Tomato, Cucumber, Avocado and Chevre Salad inspired by Celebrity Dairy

As with other simple, spare recipes, it’s important here to use the best ingredients you can find. To me, this salad is highly addictive during the summer, when it’s too hot to think about my oven, as avocado green as it is..

Serves about four

1 to 2 fresh, local and ripe tomatoes, heirloom varieties if you can find them and if it suits you
1 avocado
1/2 cucumber
young, fresh chevre, crumbled and sliced to your taste. I’ll leave the amount up to you, but be generous to yourself.
good quality extra virgin olive oil
freshly ground pepper
sea salt
finely chopped fresh basil, to your taste

Slice all the vegetables. Arrange in layers on a plate, alternating tomato slices with cucumbers and avocado. Crumble chevre over the salad. Drizzle oil and basil over the salad, then season with salt and pepper.

Any minute now, summer will continue with its regularly scheduled programming. The sunny, sweaty 95-plus days will dawn like clockwork Sunday through Saturday, interrupted by the occasional afternoon thunderstorm for variety’s sake.

But this past week, North Carolina has been positively gloomy. A heavy, fog-colored blanket settled over the sky sometime on Monday. It’s been punctuated by an hour here or there of roaring thunderstorms, or quiet, persistent drizzles. We’re living without gutters right now as we work on the outside of the house. With the windows and the heavens open, it sounds like a monsoon.

Finally - a full week later - I think it’s lifting. There is definitely a patch of blue larger than a pair of pants hovering somewhere to the south. I haven’t been complaining, though. We needed the rain - things vegetable, animal and mineral needed it, to be precise - and this cool, rainy week has felt like a long, easy drink of water. In mid-June, in the South, this is an unexpected gift. Man, it still feels like May around here, and when the heavens open up, you could swear it was April.

Even during a summertime diet of Greek yogurt and strawberries and wildflower honey, tomatoes, chevre, basil and olive oil, and the occasional splurge on sockeye, there are times among all the heat and the bounty that just cry for a cozy bowl of comfort food.

Kelly first made this pasta for me in the winter, and I swore he had performed some sort of black magic over the saute pan. I don’t know what my dear boy thought his first Christmas with my mom and sisters, a day when he was bombarded with food-related gifts (except for the tequila-related gifts, dotted with a few poker-related gifts. We are just all about sin, we are). He received not one, but two cookbooks - Rick Bayless’ Mexico - One Plate At a Time and Patricia Wells’ Trattoria.

We’ve used both quite a bit, splashing them with salsas and oils, but if I had to favor one, I may admit to leaning toward Patricia. This recipe is reflective of her style and the entire book - food made with humble ingredients that meld into something more than the sum of their parts. Blame it on the amount of oil olive this time. It means the eggplant takes on this quality that is suspiciously carnivorous, almost wickedly meat-like. The fresh mozzarella goes in at the absolute last minute, so that the cheese is just on this side of melting.

It’s a dish that will only get better as summer moves on, and as the eggplants and tomatoes explode into their annual abundance. And guess what? It’s damn good cold, too.

I had to drive a lot for work this week, once to the mountains, and once the other direction toward our state capital, and always, always in a thunderstorm. On Monday, I skidded into the kitchen yowling like a wet cat, soaked from head to toe and clutching a melting paper bag of groceries. Luckily, supper was ready. Oh, honey, you’re so nice to come home to.

Penne alla Siciliana, or Penne with Eggplant, Tomatoes and Mozzarella adapted from Patricia Wells’ Trattoria

Serves about six

Though the original recipe calls for using rigatoni, Patricia Wells prefers gemelli, those tiny twists of pasta twirled into doll-sized braids. You can also use ziti, fusilli, or what we always seem to have in our pantry, penne.

3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 small onion, minced
3 garlic cloves, minced
sea salt
one 28-ounce can peeled plum tomatoes in juice or one 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes in puree
1 firm medium eggplant, cubed and not peeled
1 pound dried pasta such as gemelli or penne
2 cups fresh mozzarella, cut into small cubes
dash of red pepper

In an unheated skillet large enough to hold the pasta later on, combine 1/4 cup of the oil, the onion, garlic, and a pinch of salt, stirring to coast with the oil. Cook over moderate heat just until the garlic turns golden but does not brown, about 2 to 3 minutes. If using whole canned tomatoes, place a food mill over the skillet and puree the tomatoes directly into it. Crushed tomatoes can be added directly from the can. Add the red pepper, and stir in to blend, and simmer, uncovered, until the sauce begins to thicken, about 15 minutes. Taste for seasoning.

In another larger skillet, cook the eggplant: heat the remaining 1/2 cup oil over moderately high heat. When the oil is hot but not smoking, add the eggplant and cook until lightly colored, about 5 minutes. The eggplant will soak up the oil immediately, but allow it to cook without added oil, keeping the pan moving to avoid scorching. Season generously with salt.

Add the eggplant to the tomato sauce and keep warm over very low heat so that the eggplant has a chance to absorb some of the tomato sauce. In a large pot, bring 6 quarts of water to a roiling boil. Add 3 tablespoons salt and the pasta, stirring to prevent it from sticking. Cook until al dente, tender but firm to the bite. Drain.

Add the drained pasta to the tomato sauce. Toss. Cover and let rest off the heat for a minute or two. Transfer the pasta to warmed bowls and sprinkle each serving with the mozzarella, tossing it a bit to combine and encouraging it to melt. Serve at once.

I probably went a little over the top last week, singing New Orleans’ praises. But the passion hasn’t cooled. I miss walking all day long down streets I’ve never been on. I miss the predictable pattern of fair weather in the morning, washed away by a fierce afternoon storm. I naturally miss being on vacation.

Most of all - and I know this sounds odd - I miss that fabulous burger.

The solution is to roll up my sleeves and make my own burgers, but this doesn’t always mean that they had to be made out of beef. In fact, because of the following recipe, sometimes my burger gets trampled by a lighter alternative, a juicy circle of ground meat laced with herbs and apples and pepper, almost like the savory inside of a sausage, just flattened out a tad and mellowed out with a smear of melted cheese. I know turkey burgers get a bad rap. For most of them, it’s probably deserved. You try to be good to your body, so you replace ground beef with turkey, slap the meat into some patties, toss them on the grill. Minutes later, the moist meat has turned into dense, dry hockey pucks. “They’re delicious,” you say to friends. You know you’re lying.

Burgers made with poultry are of course different. They need to be coddled a bit. Because the meat contains less fat, you want to be extremely careful cooking them because they’re more likely to dry out. That’s why this recipe is genius. Add a gloppy mixture of milk-soaked bread, and it seems that problem goes out the window. Add carmelized onions and apples and herbs, and you may find yourself declaring turkey the new Angus, a poor man’s Kobe. Without lying.

Turkey Burgers with Apples, Onions and Thyme adapted from Sally Schneider’s A New Way to Cook

Serves 4

2 slices (about 2 ounces) white bread (sandwich, or ciabatta, or the stale end of a day-old baguette works well), torn into small pieces
3 tablespoons low fat milk
2 teaspoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup finely chopped yellow onion
sea salt
1/2 medium apple finely chopped, about 1/3 cup
1 1/4 teaspoon minced fresh thyme
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 pound ground turkey
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1 teaspoon olive oil

In a small bowl, soak in the bread in the milk, about five minutes. In a small nonstick skillet (this is important to caramelize the onions), melt 1 teaspoon butter over low heat. Add the onions, sprinkle lightly with salt, and toss. Cover and cook until the onions have released their juices, about 5 minutes. Uncover, increase the heat to moderate, and cook, tossing occasionally, until the liquid has evaporated and the onions are golden brown, 10 to 12 minutes. Add the remaining butter, the apple, and thyme and cook, stirring frequently, until the apple is soft, about 4 minutes. Sprinkle with the lemon juice and remove from the heat.

In a medium bowl, combine the turkey, soaked bread and the apple mixture, another pinch or two of salt, and the pepper. Toss well with your hands. Shape into four 3/4-inch patties (don’t make any thicker, or the outside will dry out before the inside is cooked). Place on a baking sheet and refrigerate.

When you are ready to cook the burgers, preheat the broiler. Brush the burgers lightly with the olive oil. Broil 4 inches from the heat for about 5 minutes. Flip the burgers, then cook on the other side for about the same time. Serve at once on toasted, crusty buns.

These are excellent with a slice of melted cheddar on top, and the Zuni Cafe’s puckery, pickled red onions, which I finally got around to making (don’t wait as long as I did). The original turkey burger recipe calls for sage instead of thyme, which transforms them into meaty, juicy partners for a generous crumbling of good blue cheese and carmelized onions.