If every season had just a few adjectives—descriptors lined up neatly like labels—spring would be fresh and fall would be crisp and winter would be icy or white. But summer…summer would be soft.
The nights feel hazy already, swollen with warmth and humidity. Around 7 PM, the sky is gold and pink and lavender over the water, even more golden still as it sinks and saturates the shoreline of Shelter Island in sunset. The lilacs are just starting to bloom, and at dusk, the world seems to exhale its breath. The scent of flowers is everywhere. The faint noise from the open-air restaurant and bar down the street is a happy babble of distant music and laughter. I can see the scene: Glassware clinking as servers set down frosty pink cocktails and plates of seared scallops and local oysters on ice and burrata oozing over toasted sourdough slathered in fig jam.
Now that I think about it, I amend my label. During the day, summer isn’t soft at all. It’s hot and electric and blazing. It’s neon bikinis and the dazzling turquoise rectangle of a swimming pool and the thwack of flip-flops on asphalt and orange beach towels on the sand. It’s the sharp, almost violent zing of seltzer bubbles on your tongue and the stickiness of frozen lemonade on your fingers. It’s the juiciness of biting into a ripe peach while you stand in bare feet in the grass by the farmers’ market stand—a sensation so lush and sensual it almost makes you blush.
And maybe this is what makes summer so alluring. Maybe it’s the juxtaposition. The muted romance of the evenings against the blazing, blinding brightness of the day.
The way one blurs into the next—the day melting into dusk melting into night. The way your skin holds the heat of the afternoon long after the sun is gone, like the day is a gold coin you clutch in your pocket, the memory that close and that scorching.
Maybe that’s why I like the golden hour best. The slow time just before dinner. Happy hour. Cocktail hour. Freshly-showered-with-wet-hair-sitting-at-the-kitchen-island-hour. Icy gin & tonics with mint hour.
There’s still daylight, and it won’t get dark in earnest for a few hours.
If you’re at home, your mom might be standing at the counter washing a colander of sugar snap peas, pinching the stems off each one, popping a few in her mouth as she works. Your dad is probably sitting in one of the swivel armchairs, the striped one, swirling a bourbon & OJ in one hand. Your sisters are likely all in the kitchen too, one in pajamas, one still in her t-shirt and jean shorts, a faint sunburn pinking her upper arms.
The air might smell like melting cheese and yeast—a pizza in the top oven. A kale salad with toasted breadcrumbs and almonds ready on the table.
Or there’s quiche and biscuits and a “Ma salad”: chopped iceberg and cucumbers and pickled beets and grated cheddar and hard-boiled eggs all tossed in a vinaigrette shaken up in an old balsamic vinegar bottle.
Since it’s summer, and the days stretch long and languid and hot, it might just be leftovers: buttered brown rice and hunter’s chicken sticky with sauce.
Or maybe you’re not at home, you’re in some postcard dream of a summer vacation: the wind-blown beaches of Chappaquidick or dangling your feet off the edge of a sailboat in Nantucket Harbor or drinking citrusy IPAs on the rocky shoreline overlooking Pemaquid Point. Or someone’s backyard: the smell of charcoal drifting from the grill, the canopy of trees overhead as lush and green as the lawn, kids running in and out of the half-open screen doors to the kitchen where someone’s tossing the pasta salad with sun-dried tomatoes and chives and someone else is pouring a pitcher of absolutely too-potent sangria that you’ll all regret in the morning.
In any of those scenarios, part of what makes the early evening so good is the anticipation of what’s next: sitting down to dinner, and then of course, dessert. (This is not at all specific to summer, but summer desserts are specifically excellent.)
By summer desserts, I mean largely things that we could certainly eat all year round but that hold a particular and distinct pleasure if eaten in the warm night air. Ice cream cones, for example, and anything with ripe fruit falls squarely into this category.
Blueberry pie; peach cobbler; this bizarre and absurdly good dessert my mom used to make with whipped cream over sliced peaches, frozen solid then topped with brown sugar and quickly broiled; raspberry ricotta cake; strawberry shortcake; and so on. Those are the ones I like most—along with blueberry crisp, which I firmly believe to be a woefully underrated cousin of the much-better-loved apple crisp.
It’s the same idea and method here as apple crisp, though blueberries will get soupier than apples do—so I like more topping so soak it all up. Highly recommended to douse it all in thick heavy raw cream.
Note: You can double this recipe and bake it in a 9” x 13” pan (I like to use a glass Pyrex one). If you do that, I’d recommend making 1.5x the topping.
Blueberry Crisp
Makes one 9” pan
For the filling
5 to 7 cups fresh blueberries
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
juice of 1 lemon
For the topping
3/4 cup (159g) brown sugar
3/4 cup (85g) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (45g) rolled oats
1/2 cup (57g) roughly chopped pecans
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
8 tablespoons (113g) butter, softened
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
For the filling: Toss together the fruit with the flour, sugar, and lemon juice. Set aside.
For the topping: Mix together all the ingredients except for the butter. Using your fingertips, work the butter into the mixture until crumbly.
Spoon the fruit mixture into a buttered 9” square or round pan. Bake the fruit for 20 minutes, then remove from the oven and spread the topping in an even layer over the fruit.
Bake for an additional 40 to 50 minutes or until the topping is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling.