Cook, Host, and Pour Like a Pro all Summer Long

Growing up in Sydney, Australia, distinctly shaped my worldview on summer cooking and entertaining. A Southern Hemisphere summer meant eating a mango for breakfast while standing over the kitchen sink to catch the drips, a colorful array of salads and burnt snags (sausages) on weeknight rotation, buckets of chilled prawns and tinnies (cans) of cold lager for Christmas lunch on the back patio, and fish and chips rolled up in newspaper on the beach for Sunday dinner, no cutlery required. No single meal required much effort, instead summer heralded the start of what I call assembly season.

Assembling requires far less effort than cooking. Whether you’re shredding a store-bought rotisserie chicken into some salad leaves and veg for lunch, cracking open a selection of quality canned anchovies and sardines and serving them with antipasti and sourdough for a snack dinner, or making a cheat’s soft serve ice cream from frozen bananas and little else to beat the heat, assembling means ease, and ease is the name of the game all summer long.

We’ll be channeling this easy, breezy vibe as much as humanly possible this season. Anything that we can make ahead and chill is a huge win, whether it’s pack-ready salads, stocking the freezer with no-churn ice cream (you know, for that impromptu ice cream social), or cold dips that can go straight from the fridge to the table. For those moments when actual cooking is necessary, we like to opt for quick grilling cuts like pichana, or slap a bratwurst on a hoagie with kraut and call it dinner.

Your liquid refreshments can be equally uncomplicated. These smart, delicious portable drinks that can be made in minutes to take to a party are a far cry from the boxed wine and sweet hard cider of my youth. (Fun fact: Boxed wine was invented in Australia.) Pre-batching large format cocktails is always an excellent option and so is keeping a bottle of Campari on hand at all times, given its versatility in so many seasonal spritzes and drinks.

Just remember, no matter what your mother may have told you, eating fruit over the kitchen sink is a perfectly acceptable summer breakfast.