3 Easy Summer Dinners to Make When It's Too Hot to Think | Harrison Wallace

Hey friends, welcome back to the YouTube channel. I'm currently double fisting right now. Let me show you. Stupid. So I just finished working on a video for Milo's Tea and I made a Clover Club cocktail, which is like a gin, raspberry, lemon sort of a thing. It is so, so good. And then to balance things out, I made myself a little electrolyte mocktail with some coconut water, Milo's lemonade, and a little sparkling water. Gotta stay replenished, you know what I mean? Well, anyway, thanks for being here. We have a really fun video lined up today. I'm going to walk y'all through three incredible warm weather friendly recipes that are great for like summer entertaining, casual weeknight dinners, things you can make when you don't really want to think about cooking. You don't want to heat up your whole kitchen. You don't really want to grill. I got you covered. We're doing a sheet pan salmon noisseuse salad, where you cook all of the cooked elements together on the same sheet tray and then just arrange it into a big salad for a crowd. Also doing like a self-serve sandwich setup with two flavorful homemade mayos that you can use, yes, on a sandwich, but for like a dip, for your appetizers, what have you. Really versatile recipes that I go to all the time. And then I have an antipasto salad with little shards of pecorino cheese. It's a very basic, simple recipe. All it requires is some chopping and you can kind of keep it in the fridge, take it to a party, do whatever you need to do with it. It's so, so good. And then at the end, I have a little sweet treat bonus for y'all. And this whole video was really inspired by a question that I got a couple of videos back, which was ideas for warm weather entertaining. It has been scorching here lately. I was doing a grilling recipe, which I don't know if y'all have seen yet. It might be coming out next week, but I was grilling the other day and I was like, I can't grill after nine o'clock in the morning because I'm just drenched in sweat otherwise. I'm a very sweaty person. I don't like to sweat. I don't like to be hot. I don't like to be uncomfortable. Go figure. And I feel like living in Texas, we almost get the inverse of what people up north get with winters. Like I feel like people up north, they either like go somewhere else for the winter or they are just like locked inside for like, you know, four to six months out of the year. We kind of get the same thing down here. I really don't want to be outside this time of year. I want to be in the AC, under a blankie, watching the new season of America's Sweetheart's Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. I think that comes back next week and I'm so excited. I wore a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders t-shirt in a video recently and I got so many questions about it. I bought it at the airport. At DFW, there's like a little Dallas Cowboys store and they sell, you know, jerseys and hats and whatever. And they have a little like Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders section. I went in there looking for a specific t-shirt that has Reba on it. Couldn't find that but I did find this one and I'm going to be living in it the rest of the summer. But I digress. Let's go ahead and get into this video and then I'll meet y'all back here at the end for another round of Ask Harry where I'm answering more of your cooking and entertaining questions. And it's going to be a really fun one. So get yourself a drinky poo. Get yourself a little snacky. And let's have some fun. Hey everybody, welcome back to the kitchen. Today I'm going to be walking you through three incredible warm weather friendly dinner ideas. For me, for a dinner to be like summer friendly, it has to require minimal cooking and just be really easy to accomplish. Because when it comes to these like easy summer dinners, I just don't want to be thinking too much. So I've got three really great recipes lined up. We're starting with the sheet pan salmon niçoise salad. Then we're doing a build-your-own sandwich tray with two different kinds of flavored mayo. We've got a really delicious antipasto chopped salad that requires no cooking at all. And then we'll wrap things up with a sweet little bonus right at the end. So let's get into it. First up is the sheet pan salmon niçoise. A niçoise salad is like a composed salad that usually uses tuna but I like it with salmon as well. And you can use any kind of variety of vegetables and throw everything together on a big platter and just serve it to your guests. Or for like a really casual dinner for a couple of people. So I've got some other veggies over here. These look so stunning. I'm going to start with a garlic and herb compound butter that we're going to use to flavor everything. And then the cooked elements of the salad, like the roasted potatoes, the green beans, and the salmon are going to get roasted on the same sheet tray just to make this really simple, really achievable. All right, so garlic and herb compound butter. Let's start there. I'm going to start by mincing up three cloves of garlic. This whole line of the recipes is actually inspired by a question that I got a couple of weeks ago about kind of warm weather friendly, entertaining ideas. I was like, oh, we can do a whole menu of those. So it is about like, I'd say high 90s here on average already in early June. And grilling is wonderful. I love to grill, but gosh, if you don't get up and do it like before noon, it's too hot to think outside. So recipes like this is the stuff that I really tend to gravitate toward. You know, just the easier, the better. All right, chopping up a couple tablespoons of parsley. Y'all get on to me about scraping the board with my knife. I'm sorry. It's who I am. I'm also going to chop up some chives. I love chives. Probably my favorite herb, chives and tarragon. And some fresh dill. I love dill with salmon. All right, perfect. This is eight ounces of salted butter. Nice and soft. I pulled it out this morning. In goes our herbs, about two tablespoons of each herb and our garlic. And then just mash it together as best as you can. You can totally do this part a day or two in advance if you want it. My house is so cold. I feel like anytime I soften butter, it never gets totally soft enough. But all my friends will tell you, my house is absolutely freezing and I like it that way. There we go. Fork works a little better. Perfect. Okay, I'm just gonna set this off to the side and we can use this to season up our salmon, our green beans and our potatoes. Now we're gonna go ahead and start with the potatoes. I'm gonna do everything on the same sheet tray. We're gonna add things to the oven at different times to kind of cook things as they need to be cooked. You see what I mean? So the potatoes will take the longest, so we're gonna start with them. This is about three quarters of a pound of little baby yellow potatoes. Now I was gonna leave these whole, but I think I'm gonna chop them in half, looking at them a bit more closely. All right, potatoes on. To start, I'm just gonna do these really simply with olive oil, salt and pepper. I don't want the butter to burn. So for our potatoes, I'm gonna add the butter closer to the end of the cook time. I'm gonna go ahead and get my salmon out and get it seasoned up, just while I'm thinking about it. Beautiful. Just wanna check for any little pin bones and I think we're good. I'm gonna keep this piece whole. You could cut this into fillets if you wanted to. I'm gonna season it with a generous layer of salt right now because I want the salmon to be really flavorful. And then once it goes in the oven to cook, we'll top it with a big dollop of that garlic and herb butter. And this could just hang out until I'm ready for it. Perfect. All right, the potatoes have gotten about a 10 minute head start. So we are gonna add the rest of our ingredients. I've got a couple generous handfuls of fresh green beans here. Throw those on the sheet tray as well. Olive oil, salt and pepper on those. Perfecto. I'm gonna pat this dry with the paper towel just to get any kind of surface moisture off of there because of the salt. On she goes. A little black pepper. And then the main event, our butter. Do some big dollops on the green beans. Big dollops on our potatoes. Of course, all over this beautiful fillet of salmon. All right, back in the oven for about 20-25 minutes or so. All right, while that is all in the oven, we're gonna work on the rest of the elements of the salad. Starting with a super simple lemony vinaigrette. Y'all know I like to eyeball these things. We're gonna do about a third of a cup of olive oil. Time to re-up on my olive oil just about. I like a really punchy vinaigrette, so I do about equal parts acid to oil. So we're gonna do a combination of lemon juice and champagne vinaigrette. But I want to use the lemon zest as well, so I'm gonna zest this one first. There you have it, zest of one lemon right in. Let's get these juiced up. Well, okay, I know that I've, like, raved about this lemon squeezer in the past, but I broke one of the little notches here, and it doesn't squeeze quite as smoothly as it used to. So, sad state of affairs, to say the least. But nevertheless, she persisted. A second lemon. Then I'm gonna add some herb de Provence. Very niçoise. Healthy spoonful of... This is whole grain mustard. You can use Dijon mustard or whole grain, doesn't matter. Sorry, stone ground mustard, not whole grain mustard. My apologies. And of course, plenty of salt and pepper. There you go. Really bright, fresh, lemony vinaigrette for a salad. All right, that can just get set aside. Then I'm gonna slice up some cucumber. What's great about a niçoise is you can use pretty much whatever you have in the fridge. Whatever produce looks good to you that day. If you really wanted to make it like a truly no-cook recipe, I would go to the preferred food section of your grocery store, and if you can find like a pre-done salmon filet, get a couple of those. You could also do it with a tuna salad, canned tuna, so many options. Great for a picnic, too. All right, there is our cucumber. Then I've got some of these delectable little Campari tomatoes. I'm just gonna slice these in half. It just looks so gorgeous when it's fully assembled on the platter. I'm also going to take some olives here, like a fork or something. Whatever kind of olive floats your boat, this is just what I have sitting in the refrigerator. I'm gonna chop these in half, too. Fabulous. Lastly, I've got three hard-boiled eggs here. And listen, if there's one thing I will do, it is absolutely mangle a hard-boiled egg. Like, what? So I'm just gonna chop these in half. Look at that. Nice bright yellow center. No ugly gray ring. For these eggs, I just did them for six minutes. So I placed the eggs into a pot of water, bring it up to a boil. Then once it reaches a boil, turn the heat off, cover it, let them sit for six minutes, and then let them cool in an ice bath completely. And then peel them, hopefully without completely ruining them, like I did. You know what? Such is life. There we go. There's our eggs. All right. Then here is our lettuce. I just have some baby romaine that I washed up earlier. It's just been sitting in the refrigerator. So we are just waiting on the salmon and the potatoes and the green beans. And that's it. All right. We are out of the oven. The salmon and the green beans went for about 25 minutes. So I'm gonna let this cool before we assemble the salad. That way the lettuce doesn't welt too badly and all those things. So. All right, friends. Time to assemble. Got our crunchy lettuce. I'm just gonna arrange it in a flat layer on the bottom of the platter. This would be so great for like a summer dinner party or something. In fact, I'll probably have to whip this one out later this season. All of our roasted elements have cooled. We got our roasted potatoes, our salmon, and our green beans. So we're gonna start with our salmon right in the center. This little piece flaked off. Mmm. Oh my gosh. That herb butter is so good. And we have our roasted potatoes, our roasted green beans. Got some of these Campari tomatoes just in a big pile in the corner. I'm a firm believer in seasoning tomatoes. So a little salt and pepper on those. Then I've got some cucumbers that I sliced really thin. This is so fab. I can't even tell you. Got some stuffed olives that I cut in half. Our hard-boiled eggs. Just ignore them. They look a little worse for wear. But you know what? I love them just the same. And then lastly, fabulous lemony vinaigrette over everything. A little extra black pepper on the eggs. Oh my god. Like how fab. Isn't she gorgeous? To serve this, I would just put it like a big serving spoon in a fork. And people can just kind of come along and take what they want, leave what they don't. I want a big flaky piece of roasted salmon. Some of that dressed lettuce underneath. Definitely want some potatoes. I want it all. A little extra vinaigrette on the side. Holy moly. So, so good. Herb butter that we made in the beginning really does most of the work here. It's fresh and light, but still really substantial, which is what I think makes a really perfect summer dinner. So, so good. If you cook this up for a party, your friends are gonna love it. It's gonna look so impressive, so bountiful. Can't go wrong. All right, I'm gonna clean up and I'll see y'all in the next recipe. All right, hello. Oh, it burns so good. I'm back with our second warm weather friendly recipe, and today we're doing like a build-your-own sandwich tray, which is simple in concept, but we're gonna make two really delicious flavored mayos to go alongside. These are both tried-and-true recipes for me. We're doing a pepperoncini mayo and a roasted red pepper mayo. You can use both of these in many more ways than just sandwiches, but I thought it was a good idea to make this into like a real meal. So, here we go. We're gonna start with the pepperoncini mayo, which is very, very simple. And I do both of these in the blender just to make it really easy. But we're gonna start by making like an herb and garlic paste, and then add the mayo to it. So, I've got one clove of garlic. I'm gonna add some fresh dill. It's about a tablespoon to two of each herb. Some fresh chives and some fresh parsley. These three are like my herb trifecta. I use them literally all the time. In fact, I really want to start like a little container herb garden. So, if anyone has any tips, let me know. Like, is it already too late in the year to start something like that? Is it just gonna be too hot? Are they gonna die? Tell me what you know because I know nothing. But I'm tired of buying herbs from the grocery store because I go through them like crazy. And I'm tired of like the little plastic clamshells they come in. They drive me nuts. So, there's my herb tangent for the day. All right, I've got one jar of pepperoncinis here. I'm gonna add a touch of the pepperoncini brine to get these started, as well as six to eight whole pepperoncinis depending on the size. I've got four. This is gross. One, two, three, four, five, six, let's do... Let's just kill the whole jar. Why not? There's like eight or nine left. And I am gonna take the stems off of these. You want to go easy on the pepperoncini brine because it can make the mayo too liquidy, especially in a blender. But I just ripped the stems off just like so. Okay, I've got my little baby blender over here. I use this all the time. I'm in love with it. So, we're gonna blend this into a paste just to get things started. Okay. And then in goes one cup of mayonnaise. Other than sandwiches, this is so great on its own as like a veggie dip. I love this with french fries. So many ways you can use this. Back on the blender. There we go. And it just is this like delightful sherbet green color that I'm so in love with. Right into a little container. Perfecto. And then right into the refrigerator. This can chill for like three, four days before you want to use it. So, great little make-ahead recipe too. I only have one blender blade. So, I'm gonna give this a rinse before we make the red pepper version. All righty. Red pepper version is incredibly similar. This one is actually based off of a red pepper mayo that they used to have at a Bobby Flay restaurant in New York. I'm just gonna find the cookbook actually. So, the Bobby Flay version uses one red pepper, one to two canned chipotles in adobo sauce, mayo, salt, and pepper. I add a little cayenne and a little paprika just for something extra. But such a good recipe. When the restaurant was open, it was served with french fries on the side. I think you could still get them at one of his restaurants in Vegas. But I digress. I love this recipe. It's such a good little go-to for any kind of party, any appetizer. And for your summer sandwiches. So, starting with the jarred roasted red pepper. These are whole peppers in this jar. So, I'm using one. Then we have canned chipotles in adobo sauce. I'm going to use two of these. There we go. The thing with canned chipotles and adobo is that you're not always going to use a whole can the entire time. I want to say you can buy like adobo paste. I could be wrong. Anyway, you save these in like a little Ziploc baggie. Put them in the freezer and they do keep really well. I'm gonna do about half a teaspoon of paprika. About a quarter to half a teaspoon of cayenne. All right, same deal with the pepperoncini mayo. I'm going to blend this into a paste and then add about a cup of mayonnaise. Even just this spread on a sandwich would be really, really good. If there's one thing that I can do, it's eyeball a cup of mayonnaise. Believe me, I know what a cup of mayonnaise looks like. Back in the blender. All right, same deal. Right into a container, into the fridge. I started eating this like it's served at the restaurant as a french fry dip. But again, so many applications. Great base for a salad dressing too. All right, in the fridge to chill for a bit. All righty, now we're gonna get everything ready for our sandwich tray. All right, I'm gonna start with the cheese. And honesty hour, I did not have any decent like already sliced cheese in the fridge. So we're gonna slice our own. I just spent the better part of the last 15 minutes looking for this little cheese slicer knife that Kerrygold graciously sent me for moments exactly like this one. So I'm gonna slice up some sharp white cheddar. It's, you know, crumbly, so it's not gonna be perfect. That's okay. Okay, then I've got some Colby Jack. Wow. And you know what? If all else fails, we got some good old American cheese slices. And I maintain that Kraft Deli Deluxe and a Kraft American Single are not the same thing. I will not be elaborating at this time. Got a beautiful summer tomato that I'm gonna slice up pretty thin. Got some butter lettuce I'm gonna use up. What else? Oh, I also cooked up a whole bunch of bacon earlier. I just roast it on a rack at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or so. Always comes out great. And of course, sandwich board needs bread. So I got this really beautiful kind of country wheat that I think will be perfect. We have our roast turkey, some ham. Be sure to get decent cold cuts. That's kind of like the main thing. So we are gonna go ahead and arrange this on our little platter. I almost forgot the pickles. You forgot the pickles! Right, Caroline? My diet, Dr. Kelp. All right, let's see how we want to do this. I think we're gonna do like a meat and cheese board. And then all the other veggies on the separate plate. Got some really great looking ham here. I got a couple dogs right here at my feet that are begging for a piece of ham. Now we're gonna roast a turkey. Torkey. This turkey is like shaved and just like totally falling apart on me. But that is because it's real carved turkey breast and not like compressed lunch meat. Don't get me wrong. I love me a lunchable turkey slice. Pretty, right? Yeah. For lunch meat on a plate. I mean, yeah, go off. Go off, king. We have our bacon. Sliced white cheddar. Sliced Colby Jack. And for fun, a few slices of American tucked right under. I'm gonna shingle out these tomatoes. You all know, a little salt and pepper on the tomatoes. Gotta do it right. You know what? I want to shape up some red onion. I love thin red onion on a sandwich. Just a little pile. You could do cucumber and a little bowl of our pickles. Oh my gosh. Already. Then the main event. These gorgeous, bright, colorful flavored mayos. There's our red pepper. Oh my gosh. And our pepperoncini. Cute little spreaders for each. I could die. And then we are eating this for dinner tonight. So a couple of these like little mini tongs are perfect to put out. So everyone can help themselves. Oh my gosh. This is so cute. I just put the bread on like a little separate plate here. You can serve this alongside. All righty. Sandwich time. I'm gonna do... I'm gonna go for two and do both mayos if you want the honest truth. We're mixing and matching. I'm gonna go for like a club ham and some roast turkey. And a little bacon. Cheese-wise, I'm gonna go with that white cheddar. Some red onion. Seasoned tomato. I'm like going for it. Wow. Hi, Sammy. Should we make a triple decker scooby-doo? Oh, you could totally do triple decker scooby-doo. Guys, I'm so excited about this. A sandwich is gonna win for me like every single time. One of these after you get home from the pool. Or if you're doing like a girl's trip to like an Airbnb or something, you don't have like much to cook with and wherever you're at, this would be super easy to accomplish. If you have a blender or a little food processor to do the mayos, that's really helpful. But you can do them by hand. Just chop everything up really fine. They're not gonna look exactly like this, but it'll taste really good regardless. Then just get a bunch of sandwich stuff at the grocery store. Lay it all out. Cute. Donzo. This is so good. Simple sandwiches, but do it upright. Wish I had a fat Diet Coke right now. Lay all this out. Big bag of chips. Done. Everyone's happy. These right here, these Graza slow fried potato chips. So good. All right. Great idea for our little summer gatherings. And I'll be seeing you soon in the next recipe. All right, friends. I just cleaned up from dinner. The house is quiet. So we're gonna go ahead and make our last recipe, which is a chopped antipasto salad. This is super, super simple. You probably made something like this before at some point in your life. There are a couple ways to kind of beef this up if you wanted to. I am going to prep this for lunch tomorrow. But if you wanted to make this a little bit heartier, you can add some chickpeas, some pasta if you wanted to. Serve this alongside some grilled chicken. Totally up to you. But this is not a white cloud, by the way. It's just a little cherry spark in the water. Um, here we go. It does require quite a bit of chopping, but that's really the only hard part involved. So good opportunity to kind of put on like a little podcast for yourself. Get your knife out and meditate into the chopping. So here we go. Let's start with the artichoke hearts. This is one can of quartered artichoke hearts. I'm gonna drain these. My cousin just sent me an audio message of her singing the new Jelly Roll song. You guys want to hear this? Snakes aren't always in the grass. Sharks aren't always in the water. I'm gonna say that was beautiful. Wow. All right, I'm gonna drain these really well. I'm gonna use probably like half of this can and save these for another recipe. You can do spinach artichoke dip with these. The key with salads like this is to chop everything pretty much the same size. Just so it eats really easy. I'm going for like small-ish dice on everything. Next up, some roasted red pepper. You should look familiar. We literally just use these for the red pepper mayonnaise. Same deal, small-ish dice. It's like the head of a squid. Perfect. Then we're gonna do some pepperoncinis. Gotta crack open a fresh one. Oh, there's plastic on the side. Okay. This one's got like a little plastic plunger in the jar. I'm gonna do about 10 whole pepperoncinis. Put my little plunger back in. Stems off. Same deal here. Just kind of dice these up. Fabulous. Our last jarred component, some olives. Just like a little jarred medley. You can use any kind you like. Castelvetranos would be nice. Kalamata. Dealer's choice. I'm gonna do a small handful. And then with the olives, I'm gonna chop these pretty fine, actually. Add those to the pile. It is so nice to cook like this when nobody else is bothering you. Isn't it the best? I'm gonna throw these into a bowl just to get them out of the way. We're gonna move on to the fresh veg. I need to oil up this cutting board so bad. I'm actually going out of town this weekend, so I might do it tomorrow. So we can just like soak. These can return to the fridge. All right, fresh veg wise, I'm gonna finish off this tomato that we had in our sandwiches. I've got some more tomato over here if we need any extra. I'm also going to slice up some green. I'm also going to slice up some red onion really thin. I'm gonna turn my phone on silent because y'all are bothering me. All right, for our tomato, I just want to dice this. Do anyone have any fun like summer trips coming up that you're excited about? I want to hear about it. Got some more of these gorgeous Campari tomatoes to use. I'm going to use these. I'm just gonna do these in like little cubes. I think that works. I love a Campari tomato. It might be my fave. Just look how like red and juicy they are. All right, there's that. Let's get the last of our green onion shaved. I'm gonna quarter it just so we have nice like small slices that eat well with everything else. Slice these up. All right, red onion. Now all that's left is our meats and our cheeses. So I've got some sliced salami from the deli and some sliced pepperoni. Gonna do about equal amounts of each. Oh my gosh, that pepperoni smells so good. That's a good piece of pepperoni right there. That's some good stuff. If you order salami and pepperoni from your deli counter, get them to slice it nice and thick. I actually wish I went a little bit thicker than what you see here, but it is okay. I'm gonna slice these into nice neat cubes. There we go. Same with Miss Pepperoni. Oh, it's gonna be good. Scooch that aside. I'm gonna wash my hands. When it comes to cheeses for and a pasta salad, you have many options. I would like to recommend crumbles, large crumbles of Pecorino Romano. I love Pecorino cheese. It has that like... It has such a nice kind of salty sharpness. Similar to Parm, but different. You know what I mean. So get you a nice hunk of it and we're going to just kind of rip off little shards. Regular pieces like so. Take you like a little paring knife and just flake off some big chunks. I love to do this for a cheese board also with Pecorino or with Parm. Easy peasy. All righty. Lettuce wise, I've got some little gem lettuce here. You could use a romaine. That's probably like the traditional choice, but totally up to you. But I am gonna stack up these little gem leaves and kind of slice them into more bite-sized pieces so they fit better with all of our veggies and our chopped meat and everything. I think another thing that makes a really great antipasto salad is you should probably have just as much if not more of a goodies to lettuce ratio. You want every bite to have plenty of flavor, plenty of good stuff in it. All right, here we go. Got our lettuce in our big salad bowl. We're gonna make the dressing really quick. It's a very simple, very basic balsamic vinaigrette. Doing about a quarter of a cup of olive oil. Then you want a really good balsamic vinegar for this. Something nice and syrupy, about three tablespoons or so. The olive mustard and salt and pepper. Simple, simple, simple. This whole recipe really is incredibly simple and pretty basic. But I think the key to getting a salad like this really good is using really good ingredients, first of all, and getting everything in the right ratio. You want to have enough of everything. All right, balsamic vinaigrette going strong. So here we go. In goes all of our pickled and jarred goodies. The olives, the pepperoncinis, the artichoke hearts, and the roasted red pepper. And all of our fresh veg, the tomatoes, the red onion, possibly my favorite part. All of our cured meats, the salami, the pepperoni, and of course, all of our pecorino shards. All right, so we're gonna get into a little TV magic here. Because it's late and if I were to dress this entire salad, it would just kind of be languishing in the fridge overnight and wouldn't be ideal to have for lunch tomorrow, which is my plan with this. So I'm gonna dress a little bit right now so we can taste it together. And then I'll load the rest of the salad undressed into a container, keep the dressing on the side. And then if anybody wants a little portion, they can just make up a little serving for themselves. This would be so great to bring to a party. Love a good balsamic vinaigrette. It's nice and thick and syrupy because we're using like a thicker balsamic and also that mustard. You really don't want to overdress a salad like this because of the like kind of brine things we were using. There's plenty of liquid in there already. You need to build like the perfect bite. I want tomato, I want salami, I want red onion, I want a little pecorino wedge. I lost my pecorino wedge. Okay, that's perfect. What is so great about this is the texture. Crispy lettuce, cheese, the tomato. It is more than the sum of its parts, trust me. This is such a good salad. And that balsamic dressing. The balsamic, if you will. So good. If you were serving this for a bigger crowd, I would totally, would you get it nice in your pretty bowl, shave a bunch more either fresh parm or more pecorino over the top. All right, I'm gonna put this away, clean up, and then it's time for a little sweet treat. What do you think? To me, this is delightfully reminiscent of the chopped salad at Buca di Beppo. One time I went to Buca di Beppo for a student council dinner when I was like a sophomore in high school. And I don't know if they still have it. I haven't been in forever. But they used to have this dessert on the menu that was called the Kitchen Sink. I think that's what it was called. Was it called the Kitchen Sink? Anyway, it was just like a giant ice cream sundae that was served in like a huge martini glass. And it had like brownies and cookies and whipped cream and sprinkles and like five different kinds of ice cream. Anyway, my friend Haley and I ordered that as our dinner at the student council event. They also used to have like a private room that had like a circular table and the center of the table was like a bust of the pope. So I've had a family function or two in the pope room at the old Buca di Beppo. There you go. There's my Buca di Beppo lore for you. There she blows. Okay, there we go. I've gone through this olive oil in record time. I bought this bottle I think like a week and a half ago. It's the cost of doing business. It is sweet treat o'clock around here, baby. You know what? Let me flip this cutting board so nothing tastes like olives and roasted red peppers. We are making some semi-homemade cookie ice cream sandwiches. These have really quickly become a family favorite ever since I started making them and they are like the perfect thing to have in the freezer all summer long because you can just kind of make a whole bunch at once, pull some out as you need them, pull them out for dessert at the end of a party. People love it. And I actually learned this from a friend Hannah who I met on a trip with Milo's Tea last year. So Hannah, hi. She shared this little trip with me and I was like, oh, I've got to try it and it's hit. People absolutely love it. I'm using the Tate's Bakeshop Cookies. It doesn't have to be this particular brand of cookie but I do like how thin and crispy these are. And I will say you'll want to let these sit in the freezer for at least a day. They're really best on like day three, day four because the ice cream will kind of slowly soak into that cookie and make it like the perfect ice cream sandwich texture at a couple of days. It's why it's really nice to have them just like sitting in the freezer for whenever because you pull one out, take a bite. Perfection. And of course, you can change up the flavor combinations any which way you want. Tate's makes gluten-free cookies if that's a consideration. You can use vegan ice creams if you need to. Everybody wins. But first, we're doing a little arts and crafts. So I've got some parchment paper here that I'm going to cut into smaller squares to wrap them in. About that big. Okay. Okay, I've got three flavors of ice cream. I've got strawberry, I've got chocolate and I have old-fashioned vanilla. This vanilla looks really good. Beth Marie's old-fashioned soda fountain from Denton, Texas. Oh, that looks good. See what you got, old Beth Marie. And then cookie-wise, I have the double chocolate. These are my fave. I've got oatmeal raisin and I've got regular chocolate chip. You definitely want to let your ice creams sit out and soften for a good 15-20. All right, well, thought I was filming that entire time. I wasn't. But anyway, I think y'all pretty much get the idea here. Oh no, that one's a little broken. I just made some chocolate chip with vanilla ice cream. Now I'm going to do some chocolate chip with chocolate ice cream. Sometimes, you guys, a plain Jane Haagen-Dazs chocolate will really, really do it for me. I find one of these little clicky scoopers really, really helps. It just dispenses the perfect amount of ice cream. Get your cookies, mash it together, grab one of your little parchment squares, wrap it up as best you can. These squares are a little small. Then if you have a little pen, it's good to maybe label the top. Put three Cs, chocolate chip, chocolate, right in the freezer. I'm going to do some of these double chocolates next for a death by chocolate type thing. Oh my gosh, the chocolate cookies with like coffee ice cream. Ooh, that would be a good one. Possibilities are endless here. Okay, got one little parchment square left. So this last one's going to be chocolate and strawberry. Like a chocolate covered strawberry. Genius. I need a bite of this. I love ice cream. All right, friends. That is all the time I have for today. Hope you got some really good ideas for your next warm weather friendly meal. And I'm going to kick it back over to myself for another edition of Ask Harry, where I am answering more of your cooking and entertaining questions. Love you. All right, we are back. I had to grab one of our ice cream sandwiches that we made. What do y'all think of the jorts? I have taken to the jorts in a major way this season. Oh my God, I'm so excited for this. Perfect little summer munchie moment. Look, are you kidding me? Okay, it is time for another round of Ask Harry, where I am answering your burning cooking and entertaining questions. This is so good. That is the trick. You guys let them sit in the freezer and like really do their thing. All right, I put out a little thing on my Instagram to get some questions from y'all. And this question came up twice, which is essentially to the effect of, did I go to culinary school? Do I have a culinary background? And the answer is no. I am a regular home cook, just like y'all. And everything that I've learned how to do, I've taught myself. I have learned it through cooking videos like this. I've learned it through Food Network. I've learned it through just working through recipes and hosting parties and just doing things myself as like someone who does this like as a hobby. And of course, that means there are still plenty of things for me to learn. I'm by no means an expert in like all culinary fields, but I know what I like to make and I have a lot of fun doing it and sharing it. So to answer your question, no. I have no like formal culinary training at all. I've taken some cooking classes at Sur La Table, mainly just for fun. But yeah, that's it. All right, Daniela is asking what my favorite noodle is. Um, that's a fantastic question. I love like a Pepe Rigate. It's almost like a rigatoni. It's kind of like you mix a rigatoni and a shell pasta. I love those. They're like short and tubular. I love them for things like spicy rigatoni with vodka sauce. I love them for like a cheeseburger macaroni type of thing. That's probably my favorite short pasta. My favorite long pasta is probably Pappardelle. Pardon my Italian. But I love how like flat and thick and wide that they are. So yummy to eat. Okay, any ideas on packaging or presenting food if you're giving it as a gift? Excellent question. Um, usually what my motto is is just like put a bow on it. Whatever it is. Maybe it's like a jar of homemade jam. Slap a bow on it. I gifted my friend Kenzie some turkey stock last Thanksgiving. And I just gave it to her in like the freezer quart containers. Wrapped them in ribbon. It's like kind of cute. Like the juxtaposition of a plastic container with ribbon on it I think is cute. If you're giving away baked goods or bread, I would give them like a dedicated like a box or like a bread sack. You can find those on Amazon. I'll link one that I use when sometimes I'll give away like big batches of cookies or something. I like to put those in a box, put a ribbon on it, and then give it away. If you're doing something a bit more like real food wise. Like if you're giving somebody a casserole. If you're giving somebody, you know, a pie. I would probably put it in a container that you're not worried about getting back. I know it can look like a little cheesy. Those like metal sheet pans, you can give food away in those. And then if you're giving away something like that where they maybe have to reheat something, I think it's a nice courtesy to include the reheating instructions. So when you give it to them, they kind of know what to do with it. But yeah, I think those are the general guidelines. At the end of the day, what they're going to do is eat it and enjoy it. So it's not so much about the presentation as it is what you've given somebody. But some good rules of thumb. I hope that answers your question. All right. How did you start recipe development? I want to start making recipes, but I don't know how. I will say that my kind of recipe development process is probably a bit more loose than many other like professional recipe developers. But I think a great place to start, just in getting yourself used to making dishes from scratch on your own for like your own use, is to think of things you've had out at restaurants or on vacation or at someone else's house or what have you. And kind of try your best to recreate that from the jumps. You can find kind of, you know, a million base recipes for things online and use those like as a starting point and then start to kind of tweak things as you go along. I will also say, you know, because like the price of groceries is what it is, we don't always have like the resources or the time to make, you know, an expensive dish five times through to get it totally right. So a lot of times when I'm testing things, I'll make just like the one quantity of the recipe and then maybe split that out three or four ways and try three or four different things with it. Last week I was testing a recipe for like a fried jalapeno corn cheddar fritter that I really want to do. What I did was I made like one recipe of the batter and then did my different mix-ins in four different techniques with, you know, four different ratios of corn to jalapeno to cheese. This one with garlic, this one without garlic, just kind of tried it a couple different ways at one time rather than making something all the way through multiple times, you know, in 10 different ways that I think is kind of like the quick and dirty way that I tend to test new recipes. But it's great to like get inspiration from somewhere else. Like say you have a dish at a restaurant you totally love. Like I had a dish at Uchi, which is a sushi place and it was a seared sea bass in like a spicy coconut tomato sauce. I loved that dish and so I wanted to make like a at-home friendly version and that way I just kind of like started from the ground up. I knew I wanted to use coconut milk, tomato puree, some kind of spicy element and then poach the fish in the sauce, top it with like a coconut breadcrumb, you know, and just kind of like do your best to sort of figure it out that way. And if you need some help like as a jumping off point, there's tons of like base recipes you can look up online, you know, for like a basic version of that thing and then use that as a jumping off point and go ahead and make it your own. I will say for people that develop like baking recipes from scratch, y'all are geniuses. That is something that I really have yet to figure out or like really try super in depth to do that much. And so mad respect to the baking recipe developers out there because that takes work. I feel like I just kind of get in the kitchen, do a little of this, a little of that. It tastes good. Try it again to make sure it's going to work for you guys and then there it is. All right, Kay is asking, the best summer dessert, strawberry shortcake or cobbler? If I had to pick between those two, I myself would say strawberry shortcake. I think the best summer dessert is whatever's really simple. Nobody really wants to be like languishing over a really complicated dessert. I will say, you know, once a summer, I make Claire Saffitz's cherry cobbler with the biscuit topping. It's a little labor intensive. You know, grand scheme of things, it's really not that bad. You make like a lemony shortbread biscuit dough. You do a cherry filling. That one's annoying because I have to pit all of the cherries, which just gets very messy. But ooh, that one is so worth it with a scoop of really good vanilla ice cream on top. Insane. Otherwise, I love easy stuff. Like, you know, 10 minute fruit compotes you can do over the stove, you know, with like fresh berries or peaches, whatever. And then serve that over ice cream. I think that's always a great way to go. And then pavlovas. So, so simple. And you can like switch them out for all different kinds of fresh summer fruit. It, for me, like a really good summer dessert probably has fruit in it. I'm not always yearning for like something really heavy and rich and chocolatey this time of year. But that's just me. Hi, Oski. Do you want to answer a question for the people? Oscar has a lot to say. Okay, our last question comes from the paid subscriber chat over on Substack. Hi, friends. So Ashley asked earlier this week, actually, does it really make a difference using jarred minced garlic versus mincing a fresh clove? And I answered her in the chat, but I'm going to kind of repeat what I said here for you all. Yeah, unfortunately, it does. And I don't want to say that I have like a vendetta against jarred minced garlic, but I kind of do. It just, we can do better. As a society, we can do better on so many things. To me, the minced garlic that comes in the jar tastes more pickled than anything. And I totally get it. It's convenient. And if you're trying to like whip out a meal for your family in 30 minutes or less after work, the last thing you really want to do is like take out a fresh clove, smash it, mince it, all that. Believe me, I totally understand. There are other solutions out there that I think are better if you need like a convenient solution. The little frozen cubes of, it's either like minced garlic or pureed garlic. Those, pretty good. Pretty good if you need like a more convenient option. And then if you want to spend an arm and a leg, most grocery stores in like the prepared produce section will have pre-peeled cloves of fresh garlic or even pre-minced fresh garlic. And if you're not going to kind of get to like the pre-minced stuff before it's going to go bad on you, stash it in the Ziploc baggie in the freezer and kind of pull it out as needed. I've also seen a lot of people, I've never done this myself. I just kind of do it as I'm cooking. But you can peel up a bunch of garlic at once, mince it up in a food processor, and then freeze it yourself in little cubes or something for like a more convenient solution. But that also requires you having the time and the energy to do that. You know? So dealer's choice, but I say this with love, we're going to let the jarred garlic go in 2025. You're worth it. All right, that is all the time we have for today. Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I'll be back with another one two Sundays from now. And I'm frankly a little lost on what we're going to do. So if you have any suggestions or specific recipes or themes or ideas you might want to see, let a girl know and we can do it. But I hope you all have a really fantastic week. Hope you're taking care of yourself given everything happening in the news right now. We live in interesting times, my friends. So just be kind to one another. I'm going to leave you with that. Okay, love you all. Mean it from the bottom of my heart. And be sure to like this video. Give me a cute little comment. Subscribe. All the things that you have to do. And yeah, I'll see you on the next one. Bye.