The problem: With all the gorgeous local produce coming into the Greenmarket, all you want to do is have a dinner party. But with the heat and the humidity, the last thing you want to do is to subject your friends to the sauna-like conditions of your a/c-less kitchen. (Do you have a/c in your common areas? Then you don't feel my pain and you don't need my help, lucky bastard.)

The solution: You need foods you can cook ahead and serve at room temperature. Besides, at a dinner party, when you don't have an in-house cook (which is probably the case if A. you read my blog and B. you don't have a/c, pobresito), the goal is to get out of the kitchen and into the dining room with your guests. It's no fun to have to listen to the conversation while chained to the stove. Here's an elegant summer menu that's light, colorful, incredibly easy, impressive, and will get you out of the kitchen.

On the table: French breakfast radishes with fatty French butter and sea salt
First course: Bruschetta
Entree: Slow cooked salmon with blanched asparagus and lemon
Fresh strawberries with whipped cream

Slow cooked salmon

I got this recipe from the Chez Panisse Cafe cookbook. It's an incredibly easy, set it and forget it kind of recipe that tastes a lot fancier than it has any right to taste. It'd be great to bring to a party since it requires no reheating.

4-4.5 lb. salmon fillet (wild king salmon if you can afford it)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Handful of basil leaves
1 lemon
2 shallots

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Put a pan of water on the lowest rack of the oven to humidify it. Spread some olive oil on the bottom of a baking sheet. Place the fillet on the baking sheet. Rub it with olive oil, salt and pepper. Chop a handful of basil leaves, zest a lemon, and thinly slice 2 shallots; scatter over the fillet. Place in the oven and bake carelessly for 1 hour. Press the fillet with your finger -- it should be firm but still moist. Let cool to room temperature.

Serve with cold blanched, peeled asparagus (1 1/2 minutes in a sea of boiling salter water, then chucked into an ice bath), sea salt, and lemon wedges.

I served this at a dinner party chez nous last night. Our first course was bruschetta two ways using recipes from the Babbo cookbook (the chickpea and olive paste recipe can be found here; the other one, which was also shockingly good, was made with cubed roasted beets, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil leaves, chives, and parmigiano reggiano shavings). The second course, a rich lemon risotto, was delicious, but a mistake to try and make in our hot apartment. It was a bit of wishful thinking on my part. I'll post the recipe for you anyway, because La Doug said it was the star course of the evening.

For dessert, our strawberries came from the Yuno Farm stand in Friday's Union Square Greenmarket. I had originally planned to make a strawberry rhubarb cobbler, but these strawberries were so supremely sweet and perfect, it would have been blasphemous to fuck with them. All they needed was a quick rinse in the colander and a big bowl of chilled whipped cream.

To my friends whom I owe dinner (I'm looking at you Winnie and Chris), my dinner party season has just begun. You're invited over next, I swear.