Welcome to Fummer: Time to Make Pasta With All the Good Stuff
Go big or go home at the farmers market
September is a weird, magical time. You can go to the beach and pick apples in the same day. Kids are back in school, but you’re still wearing flip-flops. The weather feels like summer, but there’s the slightest chill to remind you that the hottest days of the year have passed and leaves will soon start falling. Meanwhile, the produce continues to pop off at an alarming speed.
Welcome to Fummer. Not to be confused with “bummer,” Fummer is actually my favorite time of the year. In fact, September might(?) be my favorite month, which is saying something for someone who loves the changing of all seasons.
And when September comes, you’d be remiss not to make a big old pasta dish using up everything that’s still good (and right in the world) at the farmers market. Notably, those things include: corn, basil, and sungold tomatoes (more on that in a minute).
This week, I made
’s spaghetti with sweet corn pesto—the cover star of “Cooking in Real Life,” her excellent cookbook that I regularly pull out when I’m stumped after going a little crazy at the farmers market and need to turn whatever I bought into an actual meal. I first came across Lidey from her recipes in NYT Cooking and later found out that she got her start as our queen ’s assistant—even helping Ina get on Instagram. Dream job.
Okay, back to the pasta. This thing has all the elements of what you want to sit down to eat in the middle of September. If you’re like me, you try to cram in as much summer produce as possible into every meal, but there’s also a part of you that’s hankering for something heartier like pasta.
Lidey’s recipe uses a food processor to puree the corn sauce, which yes, is an additional step and takes a little bit more time. I rarely make recipes that have extra steps like this because I’m just not a fussy gal. But I gotta tell you—I think this recipe is worth it. It’s creamy but not too creamy. And the corn is so sweet when blended up that honestly it needs very little else.
I have two very small tips for this recipe. The first is to reserve extra pasta water for emulsifying the sauce when the pasta gets added. I found that I needed some extra liquid to really get things going and make the sauce smooth. And the second is that bucatini pasta would be an excellent swap for spaghetti if you can find it. I could not find it. But bucatini is my favorite pasta shape because:
The hole is fun.
The hole means there’s more surface area for pasta to cling to.
The elusive sungolds
Time to talk tomatoes. If you can find them, you should absolutely grab some sungold tomatoes right now.
Lidey’s recipe does not call for sungold tomatoes per se, but I saw these at the farmers market and of course couldn’t resist.
For the uninitiated, here’s a little background on the magic of sungold tomatoes. Sungold tomatoes are sweet and small, making them particularly good for pasta because they cook—and subsequently burst—quickly. These tiny tomatoes are exceptionally flavorful and a unique find at farmers markets in New York during the summer.
Sungolds signal early fall to me for some reason. For one, the color reminds me of fall. Sungolds also encompass everything that’s great about a tomato: they’re juicy, acidic, good for pretty much anything, and fleeting. Sungold tomatoes remind me that—like all good things—summer ends. 😭 Who knew that tomatoes could be so deep?
If you want another sungold tomato pasta recipe in your back pocket, I like to riff on ones that simmer tomatoes with garlic and onion. The quick sauce can then be blended up.
has the recipe for a good one here, and has a delicious one, too.
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SCOOP: I was in Mercado Central—a specialty Spanish food store in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn—a few months ago where I presume some of the olive oil in this video was purchased! An NYT Cooking producer (?) working on this very segment was in the store explaining the concept of the shoot to the shop’s owner over a slightly dramatic and panicked phone call. She needed to buy olive oil that could be tested by the one and only New York Times—now! On a Sunday afternoon no less!! She apologized for a quick turnaround. Fair enough. Specifically, the producer (??) was looking for olive oils of different colors to demonstrate how color impacts quality—a particularly tough task since a lot of olive oil is sold in colored glass bottles.
Regrettably, I left before a resolution happened. I don’t know why. I’ve been patiently holding on to this piece of gossip since then, and it’s the juiciest scoop I’ve had in a while. You’re welcome.
For about a year, I’ve been unable to keep basil alive. This spring, I bought a giant bushel of basil, and all of it was dead within a day.
But a little trick from
has effectively brought my basil back from the dead. After buying it, I cut the stems a bit, place the ends in a small vase of water, and put a plastic shopping bag loosely on top of it. Supposedly the plastic bag creates humidity? I don’t know, but somehow I now have beautiful basil.
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While I’m not technically reading it YET,
’s new cookbook “Good Things” comes out this week!Of course I expect the book is filled with many delicious things to eat, but Samin also has so many thoughtful ideas on what food means to people and why people cook at home. ICYMI, read what she has to say about the new book here!
Did you know that the Petco in Manhattan’s Union Square has a photo booth? Now you do.
See you next week when I **think** we will begin cooking through
’s first cookbook, “The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook!!”