It’s time for our annual reminder that gazpacho is the queen of summer cooking, a coolly satisfying remedy for intense, sluggish heat. Our recipe is called best gazpacho, and it delivers on that promise. It’s simple, salty, thick and smooth, with no bobbing cubes of cucumber in sight. (I never liked those.)
We have dozens of other no-cook recipes for you, and recipes for slow cookers, too — a heat wave hack. As slow cooker devotees will tell you, the machines don’t heat up your kitchen and are therefore brilliant for summer.
Also a good idea right now: very cold drinks. I heard from a reader named Amber asking for unique nonalcoholic cocktails that aren’t too sweet. Try this hibiscus fizz, this cucumber and tonic or this salted lemon-ginger spritzer, which are all nicely balanced and incredibly delicious.
I also got a ton of emails from you after last week’s newsletter about chicken thighs versus breasts, some powerfully in favor of thighs, others making the case for breasts. I love reading them. Send me notes anytime to dearemily@nytimes.com. I’m here!
1. Best Gazpacho
The name of Julia Moskin’s five-star recipe says it all. If you have a powerful blender, now is the time to break it out. In southern Spain, you’d drink it by the glass, but in my slightly less glamorous backyard in the United States, I’d have a bowl for dinner with bread, salad or both on the side.
2. Chicken Pesto Meatballs
Dan Pelosi wants you to add pesto to chicken meatballs, and so now I want you to add pesto to chicken meatballs. It’s really smart. The olive oil, nuts and herbs of the pesto flavor the chicken, which needs a little help on that front, and the extra fat keeps the meatballs juicy. Serve with pasta, please.
3. Spicy Tuna and Avocado Tostadas
I always go for canned tuna when it’s too hot to cook, and Kristina Felix’s new recipe is very much on my radar for dinner this week. She tosses the tuna with avocado, onion, tomato and creamy chile-lime dressing and then piles the mixture onto tostada shells. You could use sturdy tortilla chips instead and scoop your dinner; I’d also try it on top of white rice in the style of a tuna mayo rice bowl.
5. Borani Banjan (Afghan-style Eggplant in Yogurt)
Is this the most beautiful way to eat eggplant for dinner? Zainab Shah’s simplified version of the Afghan dish, which layers the eggplant with tomatoes and a swoosh of garlicky yogurt, would be an amazing light dinner for two or three, maybe with flatbread and salted cucumbers on the side. The eggplant slices are typically fried, but roasting them at 450 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes is less work and less messy (though it deprives you of crisp edges).
