It was 88 or 90 degrees or so today. Saturday, we were wiping our brows as we ate cake at an outdoor wedding in the southeastern Pennsylvania countryside. But I am determined to make fall happen. Tomatoes, I loved you deeply, but your time has come. One of the joys of is eating seasonally is that is it delicious at the all the right times and places - usually. Last week, it felt right to be eating butternut squash, roasted and wrapped in pasta ribbons, sprinkled with toasted hazelnuts and Fontina and shallots. We had the air conditioning on last night as we ate supper, a lusty, creamy red lentil soup shot through with the loud clear voices of fresh ginger and curry. It’s an experiment for a client, and I have to say - humbly, quietly, of course - that it turned out well. There isn’t a drop of cream or milk here, and you’d never know it. This is a soup that is far more than the sum of its humble parts, a soup that would muscle out lobster bisque and she-crab concoctions, I dare say, and wipe their bowls out with a slice of homey bread or even better, sunset-colored sweet potato yeast rolls.

I’ve had a hard time deciding which recipe to give to you folks, and so it is - you get two.

I almost was able to ignore the tell-tale tickling in my throat that forecasts another sign of cooler weather. The Cold came on sneakily, as Kelly and I watched The Office (in our office! on our computer!) between the soup and a few gingersnaps for dessert. Maybe it’s this squirrely weather that’s causing a disturbance in the force. All I know is that I am chugging down Emergency C and Throat Coat. And at lunch today, I could temporarily breath deeply and even smell. A miracle. A panacea. A balm in Gilead. Curry will clear things right up, and ginger too. I can feel this bugger on his way out of here.

Holiday-time Sweet Potato Yeast Rolls

These are the rolls with which my family sops up Thanksgiving gravy. Once baked, they freeze beautifully and fall apart in pretty little triangles.

Yields 18 rolls

3 tablespoons sugar
1/4 ounce package active dry yeast
2 large eggs
1/3 cup milk
½ stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus additional melted butter for brushing the rolls
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup mashed roasted sweet potatoes
1 ½ cups all purpose flour, plus extra for kneading
1 ½ cups whole wheat flour

In a small bowl, stir together 1 tablespoon sugar and 1/4 cup warm water, sprinkle yeast over the mixture and let proof about 5 minutes or until foamy.

In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, remaining 2 tablespoons sugar, milk, butter, salt, sweet potatoes and the yeast mixture until combined well. Stir in 3 cups of flour, 1 at a time and turn dough out onto floured surface.

Knead dough, incorporating as much of the remaining 1 cup flour as needed to prevent dough from sticking for about 8 to 10 minutes or until smooth and elastic. Form dough into ball and put in well-buttered large bowl and turn it to coat with butter. Cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for 1 hour, or until it is double in size.

Turn dough out onto floured surface. Cut off pieces about the size of a walnut and form into balls. Place three balls into each of 18 muffin tins and brush the tops with melted butter. Let rolls rise, covered loosely, in a warm place for 30 to 45 minutes, or until they are almost double in size. Bake rolls in pre-heated 400F oven for 12 to 15 minutes or until they are golden.

Lusty Curried Red Lentil Soup

Yield: Three to four servings

It is important that you get the ginger very finely ground, almost into a paste, because it is incorporated into the soup late and any chunks will not cook down. I like to use a mini food processor that came with my husband’s dowery. I used to laugh at it, and flash a big knife. No more. It saves a lot of chopping time when I’m cooking for clients and using ginger or garlic.

1 ½ to 2 cups dry red lentils
4 ½ cups vegetable stock
2 cups water
½ red onion, minced
1 carrot, peeled and minced
1 stalk of celery, minced

a dollop of plain yogurt (non, low-fat or full fat) per bowl

Thai red curry paste, onion powder, cumin, salt, pepper, and fresh, very finely grated ginger to your liking. (I used about two teaspoons of ginger, and a generous dollop of curry)

Melt ½ tablespoon butter in a medium-sized stockpot over medium heat. Add onion, and when it turns translucent add carrot and celery. Cook, stirring occasionally, until fragrant and soft, about ten minutes. Add vegetable stock, water and lentils. Cook for about 30 minutes until lentils are very soft. Puree in blender or puree in pot with immersion blender. Return to pot, then season with curry, onion powder, cumin, salt, pepper, and ginger.

Before serving, add yogurt.

This soup gets even better the next day, but you may want to add some water as you warm it up to thin it out.

Setting up a business, of course, is a lot of hard work. I planned on the meeting with Important People, such as accountants and small business experts and the like. I planned on Regulations and Rules, a Logo and Marketing, though I’m still no expert on these things and learning as I fumble along. What I hadn’t planned for is all the recipe testing. I know how to cook, I scoffed. That will be the easy part.

Wrong. First, I can safely say that until two week ago I had never had the occasional to sear sea scallops, then stow them in the fridge for a quick dip in the cool air, then gingerly re-heat them in the microwave. I repeat, I have never done that to scallops. Who would? What kind of crazy person does that?

Me. I’ve also further tortured them by searing them, then freezing them. That explains why - like a pregnant mother-to-be obsessed with thought of watermelon in January - I sent my honey running to Whole Foods before they closed to procure a single, lonely sea scallop (at $2.34 no less - yikes!). If I was a sea scallop, sweet and dainty and delicate, I’d stay far, far away.

A side note: Kelly and I don’t usually eat this way, with this planning, storing and freezing, all this stowing things to eat away for the winter, or just a rough day when we both land, with a thud, on the back door at 8 p.m. I want to hire myself now. I’m not just saying that. I’ve heard of personal chefs who end the day doing what they’ve saved the rest of the world from - calling in take out. Oh no. I’m not going into business to end up like that every day.

But you know what? Most things have turned out okay, much to my surprise, even that sea scallop. It turns out you can freeze a lof of things just fine without compromising much. Which is good, because while I am going to be cooking and stowing away food in the freezer and fridge for my clients, I do not want to become a Casserole Queen. It’s too nice to eat sea scallops.

My chef coat came today, crisp and crackling out of its plastic shell, with “The Good Fork” embroidered in cloudy gray script on the left breast pocket (Daniel, my neighbor, asked if I was in school when I came galloping up to his front door to show off…sort of!). My clogs arrived last week. Friday night, I’ll pack my knives and my pans, and Saturday morning I’ll head to the market and then cook for my first client. Gasp! Egads!

In between, there has been a wedding and a float down a lazy, low brown river with cans of cheap beer, rollercoasters and corn on the cob, and roasted pork, and ice cream sandwiches and wheat beers with orange slices and vodka tonics infused with rosemary, and a few trashy movies. Now we’re moving into a season of caramel apples and smarty-pants foreign films on weekday evenings. We are moving into a season of homework, folks.

I like mine, though. I am so excited about cooking for people the way I love to eat. I am so excited to take care of them and feed them well. Hopefully I can keep doing the same for myself.

Luckily, I’m pretty easy to please. Sure, I like purple potatoes and fancy cured meats and zucchini blossoms, fava beans and cornichons and mussels and lots of oysters on the half shell, but at the end of the day, our at home summer supper is sort of an endless variation on a theme.

So here is it is, the September-late August rendition of a tomato salad, inspired and pirated from the witty, wonderful pastry cheftress Dorie Greenspan, which was in turn lifted from Dan Barber, the chef at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. The last of my backyard tomatoes, still sweet and juicy, paired with silky peaches, basil, sea salt, pepper and just a slick of good olive oil. Maybe a slice of proscuitto, if it is on hand, just for some more salty contrast. Lord. We slurped down our third plate of this in the last few weeks this evening, with deep bowls of corn chowder on the side.

I feel silly giving you all a recipe…but protocol requires it, I suppose…

Take one largish tomato, slice thinly and arrange on a plate. Do the same with a ripe peach or two (no excuses this time of year if you live in most of the United States. I just know you can track down a localish peach and have the patience to let it ripen for two or three days on the kitchen counter. The same for Herr Tomato). Chiffonade a few basil leaves. Sprinkle on the peaches and tomato. Drizzle very lightly with good olive oil, dust lightly with sea salt and pepper and a few thin slivers of proscuitto, if it happens to be around. Don’t put too much effort into this salad, even though the calendar says it’s back to school time and all that. We can still hang on for a few weeks.

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.

We’ll be New Orleans-bound in a few days, and I’m trying to use up what we have in the fridge. Well, and the garden.

I’ve been quite fussy about my mesclun, giving it a long, cold drink of water every evening. This is my first shot at growing delicate leafy greens. A few weeks ago, they were a palm full of speckish seeds. Trouble is, this North Carolina spring has been fickle - chilly, then blazing hot, then freezing. We turned the heat off, giddily, only to have to crank it up again the first week of May. Now, it’s off for good. I hope. The weather this week has stayed solidly in the 70s, sunny and dry. But I have this gut feeling that the mercury will creep up while we’re gone next week. My pretty ruffle of green will deflate like an ironed shirt on an August day. There’ll go our salads.

In the fridge I found the remains of last Saturday’s farmers’ market haul: some young radishes, small, with the just a hint of heat in their crispy white flesh, and half of a tangy white goat cheese crotin from Goat Lady Dairy . I snipped some greens from the garden (for very tiny salads; microgreens, how chic are we), grabbed some sea salt, olive oil and a shallot from the pantry, and some good butter from the fridge, et voila, ten minutes later - supper. Radishes with butter and salt, salad, cheese, bread. Waste not, want not.

This is one of my favorite vinaigrettes. It’s snappy and tart, but also one of the quickest if you have shallots and champagne vinegar already on hand - and you really should. They’re indispensable friends to salads, and this time of year, you’ve got to treat your salad right.

Shallot vinaigrette makes enough for two good-sized salads, maybe more

About two tablespoons minced fresh shallot
2-4 tablespoons of good olive oil
4-5 tablespoons of champagne vinegar (depending on your taste)
Salt, pepper and brown sugar, to taste. Mix vigorously with a whisk to combine.

On another note…if you’ll have any recommendations for your beloved beignet, or your crawfish crush, let me know. We’re also heading toward Mobile, taking a swing at oysters on the Gulf Coast, then zipping over to Louisiana’s southwest corner for cracklin’ and boudin. Memphis (dry-rubbed ribs) and perhaps Oxford will come a little later in the week.