Dining In: Summer lunch for two

We love the lazy pace of July. School has been out for weeks. The hectic pace around the office has slowed as folks take off for vacation. And the heat—well, it’s unbearable. What better time for a light, refreshing and relaxing summer lunch for two? This menu fits the bill, and the beauty is that it requires no standing over a hot stove. It’s also reminiscent of a cool, New England afternoon, as it consists of a Cape Cod cocktail, along with a Lobster Roll sandwich, Roasted New Potato Salad and, for dessert, light and flaky Blueberry Turnovers.

A Cape Cod is a delicious and refreshing drink to sip in the heat of summer. It combines crisp cranberry juice with a splash of vodka and a twist of lime, and it goes down way too easily on a steamy afternoon. 

The Lobster Roll is an unusual offering for these parts, but it’s a fun sandwich to add to your culinary repertoire. It’s a popular and common dish in New England, where lobsters are plentiful. Given the availability of fresh lobsters here in Baton Rouge at several local seafood markets—Tony’s Seafood and Albertsons grocery stores get regular shipments from New England—it’s worth serving to your special guests in the Deep South. They won’t be disappointed.

For those unfamiliar with the Lobster Roll, it is essentially a light lobster salad stuffed into a warm toasted bun and topped with crisp lettuce. You can steam the lobster yourself or have it steamed for you at the market or grocery. Then, when assembling the seafood salad, just crack it open and pick out the meat from the tail and the claws, much as you would with a crawfish. A good set of nutcrackers and pickers will help in this task. Once the meat is extracted, you toss it with seasonings (see recipe) and a little mayonnaise. It makes for a light and tangy seafood salad, and if you’re counting carbs, you can skip the bun and serve it over baby greens instead.

To accompany the sandwich, Tracey has prepared a Roasted New Potato Salad, one of our favorite potato dishes. It is a take on German-style potato salad, served warm, room temperature or chilled. It starts with tender new potatoes roasted until they are golden and crisp on the outside but still creamy on the inside. While the potatoes are still hot, they are tossed in a light Dijon mustard vinaigrette.

For dessert, the Blueberry Turnovers are as simple as, well, pie, though they’re not made with piecrust but from puff pastry sheets, which you can find in the freezer section of the grocery store. The fresh blueberry filling is just sweet enough to satisfy any sweet tooth, and it has a hint of port wine and lemon, which raises the bar on the complexity of flavors. These turnovers freeze well, so they can be made well in advance. Pull out as many as you want to bake and save the rest for another time.