Try these three tips when deciding what goes on your plate.Jessica Emin/The Globe and Mail
It was deep summer in Provence, and my bicycle wheels clattered along a dusty path flanked by cypress trees. To my right streamed a golden field of ripe wheat, the sheaves so dry they crackled. On my left, wild thyme and rosemary burst from crags along the ground, lacing the air with their herbal scent.
A decade ago, after graduating from culinary school in Vancouver, I spent a summer working at an ancient stone inn and cooking school nestled in France’s arid south. There I mowed spicy, spindly arugula for salads with kitchen shears, hand-picked hazelnuts off the ground under a spreading tree, and carefully cut wrinkled crottin de chèvre cheeses into rounds for tomato tartlets drizzled with vinegar. More broadly, though, I glimpsed – in the field, market and kitchen – how ancient rhythms of understanding drought, scarcity and seasonality shaped cuisine in that region.
These are lessons I catch myself frequently reflecting on as summer temperatures soar. Our beautiful, beleaguered planet is ringed with similarly ancient hot-weather cuisines that we can learn from as we all adapt to punishingly hot summers and dial back our individual carbon footprints. Try these three tips when deciding what goes on your plate – after all, we’ll need the fuel for the good fight ahead.
Five recipes to beat the heat this summer
Pick better proteins and grains
Without a doubt, the best and fastest way to reduce our environmental impact through food consumption is to not eat beef and turn to alternate protein sources. From Ghana, fibre- and protein-rich red cowpea beans inspired Haiti’s iconic red beans and rice, which were a favourite of New Orleans’ jazz icon Louis Armstrong.
Tepary beans, which are high in protein and cultivated as early as 500 BCE by Indigenous peoples in central Mexico, thrive in high temperatures and drought and are growing in popularity with heirloom bean suppliers.
Similarly, farmers around the world, including here in Canada, are experimenting with ancient Chinese, Japanese and Ukrainian upland rice varieties that grow in rows and don’t need the seasonal flooding demanded by conventional rice.
Embrace the spice
Twenty years ago, I lived in Malaysia for a summer, and nothing cut the pounding monsoon humidity better than the searing heat of fish-laced laksa soup. If eating spicy foods in hot weather, which is widely practised across Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Caribbean, seems counterintuitive, one study published in The Quarterly Review of Biology showed that spices favoured by many tropical chefs would have historically helped suppress bacteria growth at warm temperatures.
When the sun’s heat causes your taste buds to languish, there’s nothing like a cooling sweat kicked up by a few blistering-hot chilis.
Buy what thrives
While classic Mediterranean veggies like eggplant, peppers and my beloved French arugula can flourish during drought, Nova Scotia farmer Ted Hutten says he has responded to increasingly volatile growing conditions by growing an even-wider diversity of foods. He knows, from experience, that some will thrive despite the “ridiculously unpredictable” weather caused by our changing climate. “If you grow a bunch of crops,” he says, “you have natural resilience to drought, to rain.”
In buying directly from farmers like Hutten – just ask around at your local market for a producer who sells what they grow themselves, not a middleman – home cooks can participate in this climate-conscious two-way conversation: about what crops are thriving, when to expect the season’s first cherry tomatoes or how to best plan for an incoming bumper harvest of sour cherries.
That, more so than anything, reminds me of my time in Provençal markets: Be flexible, be creative and be willing to let the farmer’s bounty dictate what’s for dinner.
One in a regular series of stories. To read more, visit our Inspired Dining section.