Category is...Summer 2025 Remix
This menu features recipes and components from the season that was Frankenstein-ed together to create a series of brand new dishes.
When I was in university, I took a course on the history of fashion and textiles at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). The course changed my life in many ways that do not apply to this article. But one of the many discoveries I took away from that course was the convertibility of vintage pieces. The detachable collars, the repurposed silks, the necklaces that transformed into a pair of earrings and a brooch, and the tiny compasses concealed in the buttons of military coats. Clothing, cosmetics, and jewelry were modular, fluid, and adaptable to the context. I feel very much the same way about cooking.
Recipes are far more modular than people realize. In much the same way a camisole can be paired with multiple outfits, a sauce can meet the moment in a multitude of ways. That’s why I’m introducing Remixes, and today I have the Summer 2025 Remix for your viewing and (hopefully) eating pleasure. The meal begins with Cherry Gochujang Caesars paired with ears of Cool Ranch Roasted Corn. The menu continues with a Cantaloupe Salad with Red Leicester Crisps and a Mozzarella Schnitzel BLT. Finally, the curtain closes on a showstopper of a dessert: a PB & J Baked Alaska with graham cracker crust. Every dish is made up of recipes you’ve already seen over the course of the summer. Hard to recognize them, right? Let’s dive in, shall we?
Cherry Gochujang Caesars
This opening cocktail owes its roots to the Cherry Gochujang Gazpacho featured in the Bowl of Cherries menu, with a subtle nod to the Clarified Caesars featured in the Night of 1000 Tomatoes menu. To make the cherry gochujang concoction less like a soup and more like a juice, I omitted the bread and cooled it with the olive oil. The original recipes called for the innards of an entire loaf of bread and a full cup of olive oil; ideal when you’re in gazpacho territory, less so when you’re looking for a highball. I didn’t eliminate the olive oil completely because I like the unctuous mouthfeel it brings, so I knocked it back to a quarter. Otherwise, the recipe is more or less the same, and the juice is deployed as Clamato would be in any sippable Caesar.
Cool Ranch Roasted Corn
This is basically the street corn approach to the Cool Ranch Salad with Miso Grilled Corn featured in the very first Hardcore Supper Club menu - Big Kid Birthday. Not much has changed about this recipe other than the format. The recipe starts by roasting a couple of ears of corn in their husks. This method is not only easy and prep-free, but it also makes the corn taste, um, cornier? If that’s a thing. Regardless, it’s my new favourite way to cook corn. The corn is then kissed with a miso butter before being slathered in a Cool Ranch Dressing and rolled in crushed Cool Ranch Doritos. It’s pure delicious evil in the best possible way.
The miso butter and corn is the only nod you will find in this menu to my corn-themed menu. It was not my intention to ignore it so thoroughly. There are plenty of useful components available for play on that menu. But, I have to admit, I’m a little sick of corn. Lol! After rounds of recipe testing and the final shoot, I have eaten that menu so many times. Naturally, because it was the most recent menu, I felt less inclined to revisit it. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, though.
Cantaloupe Salad with Red Leicester Crisps
This salad is really just an excuse to bring back my beloved cheese fascinators. You first spotted these lacy Red Leicester beauties on my Tuna Melt Deviled Eggs from the Sandwiches menu. The rest of the salad is a riff on the Cantaloupe and Olive Salad that appeared on my Italian Heatwave menu. That salad featured an Olive and Garlic Scape Dressing, but obviously, scapes are long gone now. In spite of that, I wanted to resurrect the dressing. So, in the place of the scapes, I used full-grown garlic cloves and added dill to get us closer to the gorgeous soft green of the original dressing. Very obviously, this dressing tastes different from the scape edition, but it was delicious, so I won’t hold that against it.
The juicy chunks of cantaloupe are served on a tangle of mixed greens and topped with pistachios, those perfect cheese crisps, and marigold petals. I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve been a little marigold-petal-happy lately. I promise I will move on eventually. Probably when my marigolds stop blooming.
Mozzarella Schnitzel BLT
This sandwich was the freebie recipe from the menu, so if you want to learn more about it, you can by reading this ramble. But if you’re interested in the cliff notes version, this sandwich is comprised of an entire loaf of ciabatta, toasted to golden perfection and soaked with a Honey Mustard Sub Sauce. The sub sauce was originally a salad dressing for my BLT Salad that graced the Sandwiches menu. The sandwich contains the heavy-hitters of a classic BLT and the Mozzarella Schnitzel from my Night of 1000 Tomatoes menu. One of these party subs serves three comfortably, so I recommend making two. And don’t forget the olive-adorned cocktail picks; this sandwich needs a little extra structure. She’s a little unstable. Lol!
PB & J Baked Alaska
This showstopper takes inspiration from the sandwich classic. It features a layer of an all-raspberry version of the Red Berry Sorbet that originally appeared in my Italian Heatwave menu, followed by a layer of fresh raspberries. The next strata is the Peanut Butter Ice Cream that previously filled the Elvis Pie from the Sandwiches menu. And finally, we have a Graham Cracker Crust bringing up the rear. The entire frozen shebang is enrobed in an Italian meringue and torched to the perfect shade of toasted marshmallow gold.
Typically, a Baked Alaska has a cake base. Pound, chocolate, spice - the sky’s the limit. And while I’m usually tickled by possibilities, after making a sorbet and an ice cream from scratch, the prospect of cranking out a cake was less than compelling. So I copped out a little and defaulted to a no-bake Graham Cracker Crust situation. It was only after letting myself off the hook that I realized this crust was also a nice nod to the crust of the Elvis Pie. So yeah, it was intentional?
