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No Heat Required

8 years ago by

No Heat Required

It’s so hot here in NYC. I mean blaaaazzinnnngggg.

As you may know I have been using Blue Apron, and it’s completely changed the way I eat at home, but a lot of the meals require high heat! When you live in a tiny city apartment and your kitchenette is in your living room, it’s too damn hot to use the oven or even the stove top!

Since I’m on this cooking kick, I have been looking for recipes that aren’t going to steam up my apartment. Here are my top 5! Do you have any to add??

1. Sesame-Ginger and Cucumber Soba Noodles

Soba noodles cook even faster than pasta, so that’s minimal stove time AND nothing else requires heat. Perfect!

2. Caprese Salad

So simple but so delicious! This recipe doesn’t call for lemon but I always add tons of lemon and a fresh loaf of bread.

3. Spring Summer Rolls

The wrappers need to be heated a tiny bit but nothing major. One of my favorite things to eat in the summer.

4. Italian Style Tuna Sandwich

A tuna sandwich might sound basic but my parents used to make them this way when I was a kid. It is anything but basic.

5. Zucchini and Fresh Corn Farmers’ Market Salad with Lemon-Basil Vinaigrette

This also requires no cooking at all and corn in the summer is just plain wonderful.

7 comments

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  • A/C is rare in the south of France, and it’s very hot (but dry. you know it isn’t the heat; it’s the humidity!). We tend toward cold dinners:
    –melon with ham like Serrano/Bayonne/proscuitto
    –a big composed salad with lots of crunchy greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, boiled egg, hard sausage, cheese, even nectarines. Whatever’s in the fridge.
    –tomatoes stuffed with tuna salad. We like to cut up a nectarine or apricot to mix in with a little mayo.
    –gazpacho!

  • Love these suggestions! Thanks xx Elle

  • Get an electric pressure cooker – Instant Pot is extremely popular. I have one and use it ALL the time. Allows you to cook hot foods without much open heat.

  • L’été chez nous le taboulé est roi. Il en existe des ready-to-eat dans le commerce mais c’est si simple à faire que je le prépare moi-même:
    – faire tremper 1 tasse de couscous dans une tasse d’eau tiède un peu salée
    – laisser refroidir, remuer un peu avec une fourchette pour séparer les grains
    – ajouter du jus de citron, de l’huile d’olive, des tomates coupées en petits morceaux, des pignons, de la menthe ciselée, des raisins secs, un peu de fêta, saler et poivrer, des dés de concombre. Bien mélanger et mettre au frais pour quelques heures. Puis manger. Plat complet et délicieux, encore meilleur le lendemain.
    Bon appétit

  • Rice noodles are even better than soba when it’s hot because they just require lukewarm or kettle-boiled water to go from dry to ready to eat.

  • I make a caprese-inspired, almost no heat, salad, this way:
    Assemble in a pretty bowl the following:
    1-2 good-sized farmers market (organic is nice) tomatoes cut in chunks
    6-10 heirloom cherry tomatoes, halved
    2 handfuls fresh basil torn into pieces or snipped with sharp kitchen scissors
    4-5 large leaves of dinosaur kale, clipped from garden, snipped into strips
    1 peach half, slivered
    12 whole milk mozzarella ciliegine, from TJs are fine, halved
    2 slices of good french bread – toasted – this is all the heat involved
    smear bread with cut garlic clove, and tear into chunks
    Good balsalmic vinegar, good olive oil mixed half and half, spooned over
    sea salt, pepper
    *Nirvana*

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