Though the thermometer reads 65 degrees and classes are in full swing, there's still over a week of summer left. Now is the perfect time to throw a big end-of-the-summer party or stay inside and whip up tropical recipes that bring sunshine to the mind and a smile to the taste buds. The next few recipes do just that, and are all simple to make in any apartment or dorm.
Watermelon, feta, and black olive salad
This salad comes by way of fabulous British food author Nigella Lawson's cookbook "Forever Summer," and it is incredibly refreshing. Though I've tweaked the amounts a bit and removed the parsley, it is still basically her recipe. It's also unbelievably easy and beautiful. The bright red watermelon, white blocks of feta, jet-black olives and dark green mint come together to make a very aesthetically pleasing dish. (Don't worry, it tastes great too!) I know the ingredients sound a bit odd together, but I trusted Nigella on this and you should too. This recipe is for a quantity of one, but you can of course make more. As with any salad, it's not so much about measuring but about making bite-size pieces and putting together as much as you feel like eating. I used canned olives and had no problem, but if you want to splurge on fresh ones, feel free, as long as they're not marinated. I have mint growing in a pot in my backyard, but you can find packed mint in the produce section of the grocery store. As the mint is used as the green leaf in this salad, it must be fresh, not dried.
Ingredients: a bit of red onionjuice of one limeabout 1/4 a seedless watermelon, cut into large bite-size chunksapproximately 4 oz feta cheese (I bought an 8-oz. block and used about half of it), also broken into large bite-size chunks1/3 can black olives, rinsed and drainedhandful or so of fresh mint1-2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Slice up a little bit of red onion into thin pieces about 3/4 of an inch long and put them in a small bowl. Pour over the lime juice and set aside. Put the watermelon chunks, feta chunks, and black olives in a bowl. Tear any large mint leaves in half, but use small mint leaves as is and sprinkle over the watermelon and feta to be used as the leafy part of the salad. Add in the onions and lime juice and pour over the olive oil. Mix gently with your hands so as not to crumble the feta, and dig in!
Piña colada white chocolate chip rum bars
These bars are just about my favorite recipe to make, ever. Not only is almost every ingredient a favorite food of mine (pineapple, coconut, macadamia nuts, white chocolate chips, and rum - c'mon, what more do you need?), but they're mind-bendingly easy and tooth-achingly sweet. However, they do have a downside: the ingredients can be expensive and hard-to-find. For that reason, I only make them for special occasions. It's especially good to make these bars for jointly-thrown parties where multiple people can chip in on their cost. What better recipe for an end-of-the-summer party? Regarding finding ingredients, I've found that Star Market in Porter Square carries everything except the macadamia nuts. (And the rum, obviously.) While they do have whole, salted macadamia nuts in the snacking aisle with the other Planters nuts, it's much, much cheaper to find a grocery store that has baking-quality nuts in the baking aisle. (The Stop n' Shop off the Mystic Valley Parkway carries these, but alas, they don't have dried diced pineapple.) Still, trust me: these bars are worth it. They come from Dede Wilson's amazing dessert cookbook "A Baker's Field Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies" (though they are bars, not cookies). If you can't find chopped-up macadamia nuts, the best course of action is to put the nuts in a Ziploc bag and go over them gently with a rolling pin - I say gently because you want chopped nuts, not decimated ones.
Ingredients:1 stick unsalted butter, cut into pieces to make melting easier1 1/2 cups vanilla cookie crumbs: Though it's cheaper to make these from about 60 vanilla wafers chopped to bits in a food processor, chances are you don't have a food processor in your dorm, so just buy the crumbs.2 cups (1 bag) white chocolate chips1 cup sweetened, flaked coconut: Make sure to buy flaked, not shredded, coconut.3/4 cup chopped unsalted macadamia nuts: If you can't find unsalted, it's no big deal.3/4 cup diced sweetened dried pineapple1 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk: Don't confuse this with evaporated milk; there is a big difference.2 tablespoons rum: You can use dark or golden rum, but not white.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Put the butter into a 9 x 13-inch baking pan and put it in the preheating oven to melt. When the butter has melted, mix in the cookie crumbs and pat down into an even layer on the bottom of the pan. Place the white chocolate chips, coconut, nuts, and pineapple (which you may have to tear into slightly smaller pieces) into a large bowl and combine evenly. In another, smaller bowl, stir together the rum and condensed milk. Spread half the pineapple mixture in the pan over the crumb layer, pour over the condensed milk, and then sprinkle over the rest of the pineapple mix. Bake for about 30-35 minutes, or until turning slightly brown on top and brown on the edges. The middle will probably be loose; that's fine. You can bake these bars shorter or longer depending on how mushy or firm you want them to be. Cool the pan on a rack and cut into bars of whatever size you desire. And that's it! It probably takes longer to find the ingredients in a store than to make these bars, and I guarantee it takes longer to find them than it will to eat them, because they are just that good.
Rumaki
I first heard of rumaki through my good friend, Tufts junior Lauren Vigdor, who made it for a Hawaiian-themed birthday party. Rumaki is an hors-d'oeuvre of Japanese or Hawaiian origin, and it's fabulous finger food for parties. It consists of water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, marinated, and broiled. Some traditional recipes for rumaki include sliced chicken livers along with the water chestnuts, but we'll leave that part out.
Of course, it goes without saying that anything wrapped in bacon (except chicken liver) is going to be delicious, but water chestnuts are particularly good. They're easy to find in canned form in the ethnic or Asian foods section of just about any grocery store, even Star Market in Porter Square. (A side note: if you have a car, try going to the Stop n' Shop off the Mystic Valley Parkway to get your groceries; it's cheaper and has a much better produce section, though its organic section is sadly lacking.) Rumaki is also easy to make in large quantities, since you can fit lots of it into a single dish to put in the oven, so consider it for your next party. Feel free to increase this recipe as much as you want, as cooking time (as long as it all can fit under the broiler) will remain the same.
The marinade for this recipe is, like most marinades, an inexact science. Choose which ingredients sound best to you. If there are spices you like that aren't included, use them. Ginger is the only absolute necessity to the marinade, and I used quite a bit of that. You may add anything you want, although I would encourage Asian and/or Indian spices (such as turmeric and curry) and discourage the Franco-Italian spices (such as thyme, rosemary, etc.). Absolutely do not use any salt, as the soy sauce is already quite salty. I didn't measure, but rather just stirred things together in a bowl and periodically tasted. That's probably how you'll get the best marinade as well. Before beginning, put your toothpicks in a bowl of water to soak for a bit so that they don't burn or catch on fire in the oven.
Ingredients: 1 can water chestnuts (about 25-30), drained and rinsed1 package bacon: I used Oscar Meyer center-cut bacon, but it also can be a good idea to use low-sodium bacon, because of the high quantity of salt in the soy-sauce based marinade.soy sauceorange juicebit of lemon juicebrown sugarassorted spices: I used ginger, Madras curry powder, garlic powder, and pepper
Cut each strip of bacon in half and wrap each half around a water chestnut. Secure with a toothpick. Place all the bacon-wrapped chestnuts in a single layer in the smallest possible baking dish - you don't want the rumaki on top of each other, but you want them to be sitting in the marinade, so if they're in a huge roasting pan, you'll have to make way more marinade than you need. For the marinade, pour a decent amount of soy sauce into a small bowl. Add some orange juice and a squirt of lemon or lime juice if you want. Then add your spices and about a tablespoon, more or less depending on taste, of brown sugar. Pour the marinade over the rumaki. Your chestnuts shouldn't be drowning, but they should be nicely covered and be sitting in a little puddle of marinade. Let sit for at least an hour, more if possible, and then put under the broiler on high for about 10 minutes, or until the bacon looks done. Serve with the toothpick in.
Mango mojito
After those incredible pineapple bars, you're probably going to be a bit thirsty. A traditional mojito consists of mint leaves, lime juice, sugar or sugar syrup and rum being muddled together before filling the glass with ice and club soda. These mojitos, however, are like no other I've ever seen. They use peach schnapps in addition to rum, lemon instead of lime, only a bit of club soda, and they're shaken in addition to being muddled. Confused? I was too, but just give it a chance. The recipe comes from France - specifically, from Xavier the bartender at Red Z on Rue Perriè re in Annecy. He made my roommate Tanya and me these mojitos one night during the Tufts-in-Talloires program this summer. Before coming back to the States, I got the recipe from him, and I'm giving it to you all now, completely unaltered (save for figuring out how much rum was in "six centiliters"). These must be made one at a time, unless you have a very large cocktail shaker. If you have straws, they'll make drinking it easier.
Ingredients:mint leaves: Xavier didn't give any amount, but I used 12-15 small leaves. If you have larger ones, use about 8-10. You'll need more mint than in a normal mojito to still be able to taste it against the mango.1/4 a lemon 1-2 shots of rum: A secret - some people will insist on using white rum for mojitos. I'm no bartender, but I'd never heard of this requirement until this summer, nor had I ever followed it, and I've read quite a few mojito recipes. I'm not saying you can't, but I will say that I think it's a ploy on the part of Bacardi to force people to buy multiple types of rum. My absolute favorite rum of all time is Rhum Barbancourt, which comes aged four, eight, or 15 years. (They're all great, though the 15-year-old "Estat Reserv?©" is the best, of course.) I tend to use that only for special occasions, though, so you can use any regular non-spiced rum for this.1/2 shot peach schnapps1 spoonful of sugar (optional - some brands of mango nectar are sweeter than others)mango nectarclub soda (optional)
Put the mint in the bottom of your shaker and add the sugar, rum, and peach schnapps. Squeeze the lemon quarter above the shaker to add in the lemon juice. Peel two or three small strips from the lemon rind (make sure to peel shallowly so as to only use the outer yellow part, not the bitter white pith) and add that in as well. Muddle the ingredients all together with a spoon (or if you happen to have it, a muddler). Add in 3 or 4 ice cubes and fill the rest of the shaker with the mango nectar. Shake vigorously. Normally, mojitos are stirred, not shaken, but mango nectar is so thick that you'll want to shake it with ice in order to thin it down a little bit and make the mojito more thirst-quenching. Take the top off the shaker and pour, unstrained, into a tall glass. Top with a splash of club soda if you still find it too thick, stir, and enjoy!
CORRECTION: Due to a production error, four recipes for the article "Summer doesn't have to be over yet" and the article "A professor who lives down the hall? You bet." in the Features section of the Wednesday, Sept. 13 edition of The Daily were not displayed in their entireties.
