No-Cook Summer Dinners from the Shine Supper Club
The Supper Club serves up no-cook, keep-cool tips to make summer feasting as relaxed and lazy as August itself.
• Use summer tomatoes. They're at their ripest right now, ruby red and bursting with flavor, perfect for a no-cook pasta sauce, salsa, salad, or gazpacho.
• Turn to your crock-pot. Is it cooking? Kind of. But it's not you doing the cooking.
• Savor a summer salad. On hot days, fresh, crisp ingredients are way more refreshing that a steaming casserole.
• Whip up a dip. "Puree some white beans with herbs and olive oil...then you can use raw vegetables, crackers, whatever," suggests Shine reader K.
• Dinner of champions. The favorite no-cook dinner of our Community Manager, Brenda: a bowl of cereal. "And I don't even sit at the table to eat it!"
• For the perfect snack, remember two words: Frozen grapes, says Nicole Gulotta.
• Put together odds and ends. Who says dinner can't be a hunk of cheese, olives, sliced salami, bread, and a big green salad. Add a glass of wine and we call that heaven.
"This is nothing more than summer tomatoes, tumbled together with salt, pepper, olive oil and shredded basil. I let it sit for about half an hour, the time it took for the water to boil and a handful of linguine to cook. I threw the still-warm pasta in on top, tossed and topped with a pulled apart ball of fresh mozzarella. Served with a green salad, it was summer time in a bowl." --Food in Jars
"The thought of turning on the oven to invite 350 more degrees of scorching heat into my kitchen might cause someone to haul me off to the loony bin." --Terribly Lovely
Recipe: 24-Hour Salad
"Enjoy with some chips and an ice cold cerveza!" --Terribly Lovely
Recipe: Ceviche
"I just made this salad to take to a potluck event tonight and am pleased that I didn't manage to screw it up for vegans by adding one forbidden item. It contains arugula, watermelon, avocado, olive oil, lime juice, cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper. I'm also pleased that I was able to find a Florida avocado since I prefer them and since they are less fatty that the small, darker skinned avocados." --Natalie Maynor
"This heatwave, besides having me crave outdoor cooking, also makes me want to prepare something simple without using the stove. Gazpacho to the rescue! It's in the running for the most refreshing soup. Greg and I savored it sitting in the prairie area of the trails one weekend and with the clouds and slight breeze, it just seemed perfect." --The Dabble
Recipe: No-Cook Gazpacho Soup
"These treats are full of bran, which I think officially cancels out all the fat and sugar that must be in the other ingredients. It's yummy; a bit of a bugger to make and you might lose a tooth while eating it, but I think it's worth it." --Dreamdust
Recipe: No-Cook Cake (Assuming Melting Isn't Cooking)
"What can go wrong with romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, dried cranberries and toasted almond flakes? All you need is just a simple lemon vinaigrette to dress it up." --Happy Home Baking
Recipe: Simple Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette
"If you can stand the heat long enough to boil some pasta, then you can enjoy a fantastic dinner with this no-cook sauce. The sauce is a super easy blend of mascarpone, parmesan, pesto and a few other seasonings. It's rich, creamy and packed with flavor." --Elle's New England Kitchen
Recipe: No-Cook Mascarpone Pesto Sauce
"The green zebra tomatoes joined forces with fresh mozzarella, basils, and a drizzle of olive oil to create a salad caprese." --Dessert by Candy
Recipe: Caprese Salad
"Hot summer days have you avoiding the kitchen like your scheduled teeth cleaning? Here's a way to avoid cooking in the kitchen when summer laziness hits an all-time high. Shine Supper Club challenged us to come up with our best recipes for no-cook dinners, and I'm delivering my crock-pot version of chicken tacos." --SoCalResident
Recipe: Crock-Pot Chicken Tacos
