While it has been summer for me mentally since the first warm weekend of May, the season officially kicked off yesterday with the summer solstice, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. I’ve anticipated this time of year with equal parts enthusiasm and dread. (Being a summer baby who can’t stand the heat leads to some complicated feelings.) Then there are the meals that punctuate these summer pursuits: tomato sandwiches in the sand, chilled tomato salads in the grass, icy pitchers of gazpacho passed around a rickety wrought-iron table. In a few weeks, when tomatoes are at their most delicious, I’ll adorn them with olive oil, red wine vinegar and a Parmesan and olive bread-crumb mixture flecked with fennel seeds, a recipe courtesy of Christian Reynoso.

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Persons: gazpacho, Christian Reynoso Organizations: Northern