Повышение температур в «собачьи дни» подтолкнуло шеф-повара к созданию холодных закусок из огурцов и томатов

(Aug. 13, 2026) While the term the “dog days of summer” is intended to define a 40-day summer stretch of hot and humid weather running from July 3 to Aug. 11, I don’t think last week’s sultry and scorching weather is suddenly going to be over come Tuesday. The “dog days” term itself dates back to ancient Greeks and Romans who believed Sirius, a bright dog star inside the Canis Major constellation, was the cause of excessive heat due to it rising and setting alongside the sun throughout this 40-day period. Summertime vibes are supposed to mesh with the idea of easy living and perhaps also easy cooking, yet I personally don’t find any cooking requiring heat very enticing during summer’s “dog day” stretches. Fortunately, I’ve long been a fan of cold food requiring minimal methods of preparation. I was reminded of this when I attended a dinner party at a good friend’s house on Cape Cod last Friday evening after spending many hours on the road driving home from Maine, a trek made even more challenging by suffering through the usual infuriating Boston traffic in unrelenting 102-degree outside heat. The dinner had originally been planned as an alfresco gathering, but even the evening heat on the Cape was so unbearable that the gathering was moved inside to the air-conditioned dining room. Our hostess had grown up in Charleston, S.C., and often incorporates Southern traditions into her menu planning. The evening began with the simplest and most delicious cucumber sandwiches I have ever tasted. What made these cucumber sandwiches so exceptional was the Southern technique of marinating the thinly-sliced cucumber rounds first in a bath of white vinegar in the refrigerator and then patting them dry before putting them atop rounds of fresh white bread smeared lightly with mayonnaise. Now, I’ve made an awful lot of cucumber sandwiches throughout my catering career, but the vinegar maceration proved to be a real game-changer. A few days later, I happened to come across another intriguing, no-cook cucumber appetizer in a cookbook by Marissa Mullen entitled “I’ll Bring the Apps” (Union Square & Co., 2026). For those staying away from carbs, Mullen’s recipe for Cucumber Bites with Boursin, Smoked Salmon and Dill does not require a bread base and instead uses the sliced cucumber rounds as the base for the toppings. I would be remiss not to include a tomato recipe in this column because this summer is turning out to be a great one for locally-grown, vine-ripened tomatoes. In the past, I’ve always been a Tomato Caprese Salad sort of person and even used to feature “#acapreseaday” tomato salad posts on my Instagram feed. Somehow, this year I decided to shake things up a little after I came across the idea of using thinly-sliced tomatoes instead of beef to make a vegetarian carpaccio. After researching several different tomato carpaccio recipes, I opted to make the recipe my pal Ina Garten had featured in her “Cooking for Jeffrey” cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 2016). The best beef carpaccio I’ve ever savored in my life was years ago at Harry’s Bar in Venice, and Ina’s sauce for her Tomato Carpaccio recipe closely resembled the one I so fondly remembered on the classic beef version famously served there.