Souvlaki, which means “little skewer” in Greece, came to the U.S. with Greek immigrants and became a staple of street carts, Mediterranean restaurants, even diners.

When you grill chunks of meat on skewers, you’re making souvlaki. Kebabs are the Arabic word for the same thing.

The protein can be beef, chicken, lamb, pork, a plant-based protein (photo #5), or a combination. You can also use meatballs, sausages, and cubes of a firm fish (e.g. salmon, swordfish).

If you prefer vegetables, those work, too (photo #2).

Classic souvlaki serves the grilled skewers on a platter with salad or other vegetables, fries, pita bread, tzatziki (yogurt dip), and a wedge of lemon.

A gyro is a Greek sandwich made not from skewered meat, but by thinly slicing meat from a large piece that’s grilled on a vertical rotisserie. The meat is wrapped in pita with tzatziki (in the Middle East hummus is used). Gyros are handheld street food, while souvlaki is typically plated. (Gyro means circular, referring to the rotisseried meat.)

A kebap in Greece is different from the Turkish doner kebab. A Greek kofta kebap is spicy minced meat, mixed with parsley, onions, and garlic, formed into balls or a longer shape and grilled on a skewer. (We suggested Americanized meatballs, above, but you can make a kofta recipe.)

You can serve the grilled skewers as snacks, appetizers (see photo #3), entrées, or as a base for sandwiches (photo #1). You can just slide the meat off the skewer into a piece of flatbread with a sauce, from Greek tzatziki to the numerous other flavorful sauce below.

Here are tips and some modern sauce pairings for summer grilling, from Flavor & The Menu, a website for chefs that follows restaurant trends, for the idea. It starts with a few tips:

 
 
SOUVLAKI & SAUCE PAIRINGS

FOR BEEF

Use flank steak, strip steak, or top sirloin for:

 
 
FOR CHICKEN

For the breast or thigh:

 
 
FOR PORK

For the belly, loin, or tenderloin:

 
 
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*This is a great use for herb stems that usually get thrown out. Toss them into the freezer. Of course, you can mix the different herbs in your soaking liquid.

[1] Classic souvlaki is served with pita, tzatzii (cucumber-yogurt sauce), fries, and often, onions (photo © Williams Sonoma).

[2] Vegetable skewers, with beef on the side, can be served with just about any dip (photo © Sun Basket).

[3] A fun idea for a first course: a kabob atop salad (photo © McCormick).

[4] Argentinian-style: beef skewers with red chimichurri sauce. Here’s the recipe (photo © McCormick).

[5] Plant-based fish skewers from Good Catch.

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[1] A twist on the Caprese salad, adding peaches or nectarines plus enough arugula to make it a green salad fusion. The recipe is below (photo © Colavita Recipes).

[2] A creative idea: use bite-size mozzarella balls (bocconcini) instead of sliced mozzarella (photo © Fruits From Chile).

[3] A minimalist, fruit-centric peach Caprese (photo © Good Eggs).

August is National Peach Month, celebrating the juicy stone fruit* that is one of America’s Top 10 favorites. In the U.S., the peach season begins in June and lasts until the end of August. August is when the peaches are at their peak—so gather ye peaches as ye may.

You could bake a peach pie or one of the other peach recipes below, but how about this easy Peach and Tomato Caprese Salad?

A spin on the traditional Caprese, the peaches are a sweet complement to summer tomatoes. You can substitute nectarines for the peaches.

Thanks to Colavita for the recipe.

> Here’s more about stone fruits, also known as drupes.

> You can make your own balsamic glaze from balsamic vinegar.

> Caprese salad history.

> More Caprese recipes.
 
 
RECIPE: PEACH OR NECTARINE CAPRESE SALAD

This salad can be a first course or a lunch salad.
 
Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. PREPARE the fruit. Cut the tomatoes lengthwise into large rounds about ¼” thick. Slice the peaches or nectarines into segments, discarding the pit.

2. SLICE the mozzarella cheese into rounds about ⅛” thick.

3. PLACE a circle of tomato slices onto a large serving platter. Season with 1/4 teaspoon sea salt. Layer the slices of mozzarella cheese on top of the tomatoes. Place the peach or nectarine slices on top of the cheese.

4. MOUND the arugula in the middle of the circle of fruit. Sprinkle the blackberries onto the arugula. Sprinkle the arugula and blackberries with the remaining salt.

5. SHAVE the Parmesan cheese with a potato peeler and distribute the shavings on top of the arugula and blackberries.

6. DRIZZLE the entire platter with the olive oil, then drizzle with the balsamic glaze. Scatter the basil leaves throughout. Serve!

*Common stone fruits include the apricot, cherry, damson, nectarine, peach, plum, and hybrids like apriums, plumcots, and pluots. Here’s more information about stone fruits and other drupes.

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We feel a bit hesitant to publish this “public service announcement” on the heels of National S’mores Day, but August is National Wellness Month.

National Wellness Month focuses on self-care, stress management, and creating healthy routines, including eating.

So here’s our PSA.

These eight tips for healthy eating come from the National Health Service—of the U.K.! The advice is universal.

1. Base your meals on higher fiber starchy carbohydrates (i.e., unprocessed or minimally processed whole grains, vegetables, fruits, and beans).

2. Eat lots of fruit and vegetables.

3. Eat more fish, including a portion of oily fish (the latter include eel, herring, mackerel, salmon, sardines, sprats, trout, and tuna).

4. Cut down on saturated fat and sugar.

5. Eat less salt: no more than 6g a day for adults.

6. Get active and be a healthy weight.

7. Do not get thirsty (i.e., drink enough water).

8. Do not skip breakfast.
 
 
You can read the full article here.
 
 
Dear reader, you may say, “I know all this.”

Great! Happy National Wellness Month!

[1] Spinach hummus with crudites, for a starter or snack (photo © Australian Asparagus Growers).

[2] Miso-glazed salmon atop mixed vegetables—edamame, mushrooms, onions. Here’s the recipe (photo © Chef Rita French | Urban Kitchen & Bar | Phoenix [permanently closed]).

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This party platter is a s’mores lover’s dream (photo © XO Marshmallow).

August 10th is National S’mores Day. We never run out of creative s’mores recipes: Check them out here.

Whether it’s a s’mores cake, s’mores pie, s’mores ice cream, s’mores popcorn, or the classic s’mores cookie sandwich, every bite is a delight.

One year, we went overboard and had a s’mores party with six of these recipes. After tasting some of everything, some guests were begging for plain Greek yogurt to “detox.”

Lesson learned: The next year we served just one (the S’mores Baked Alaska).

Maybe next year we’ll treat family and friends to the s’mores party platter in the photo, the creation of XO Marshmallow.

If it’s too overwhelming for you, default to these classic s’mores. You don’t need a campfire; you can melt them in the oven.
 
 
> The history of s’mores.

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Like zucchini? Today is for you: August 8th is National Zucchini Day. (There’s also National Zucchini Bread Day on April 25th, and for fans of zucchini noodles, National Eat Your Noodles Day is March 11th.)

Zucchini is one of the best foods to spiralize. You can make delicious, very low-calorie ribbon noodles for a cold salad or cooked for “pasta.”

Americans use “zucchini” as both singular and plural. In Italian, one zucchini is a zucchini.

> The history of zucchini.

> The different types of squash.

> The history of squash.

> The year’s 3 zucchini holidays are below.
 
 
30 MORE ZUCCHINI RECIPES
 
 
BREAKFAST, BRUNCH, OR LUNCH

 
 
FIRST COURSE

 
 
MAIN COURSE

 
 
SIDES

[1] Zucchini pan pizza. Here’s the recipe (photo © The Baker Chick).

[2] Grilled zucchini with cumin, mint, and balsamic glaze. Here’s the recipe (photos #3 and #4 © Good Eggs).

[3] Lamb chops and zucchini in a one-pan recipe.

 
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*One of the more amusingly-named holidays, National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day on August 8th originated in the 1980s. It’s credited to Tom Roy, a humorist from Pennsylvania. The holiday acknowledges a very real issue: zucchini is legendary for its prolific production, and home growers often plant too much. The result: There’s simply too much zucchini and not enough opportunities for the family to eat it. However, these days we’re aware that many churches, food banks, soup kitchens, and other organizations would be happy to take a load of zucchini.

†National Zucchini Day is celebrated on August 8th in some references, but is also sometimes listed as August 25th. This day is more of a straightforward celebration of the vegetable itself—its versatility in cooking, nutritional benefits, etc. So while the two zucchini holidays might fall on the same date (August 8th), one is about the comedic abundance of home-grown zucchini, while the other celebrating the vegetable as a food.

And by the way, zucchini is actually a fruit. Fruits are not necessarily sweet. Tomatoes are fruit, avocados are fruit, hot chiles are fruits, cucumbers and squash are fruits. Because they aren’t sweet, people think of them (and classify them in recipes and produce departments) as vegetables. But by botanical definition, fruits have their seeds on the inside: the seeds, or pits, are contained in the fruit’s ovary sac. A major exception is the strawberry.

Botanically speaking, the strawberry is not a true fruit; it’s classified as an accessory fruit or false fruit. What appear to be seeds on the outside are actually the true fruits of the plant. They’re called achenes, and each little achene contains a seed inside. The red, fleshy, sweet part we eat is actually enlarged receptacle tissue—the part of the flower stem that held all the flower parts. So technically, when you eat a strawberry, you’re eating the swollen flower base with dozens of tiny fruits stuck to the outside! So despite this scientific technicality, strawberries are called fruits in everyday language, because we use them like most other sweet fruits.

Other botanical quirks:
> With apples, pears, and quince, the core is the true fruit; the flesh is enlarged receptacle tissue.
> Figs are actually an inverted flower cluster (called a syconium) with tiny flowers/fruits inside.
> Blackberries and raspberries are classified as aggregate accessory fruits. Each little bubble (called a drupelet) is actually a separate tiny fruit, with each one attached to a receptacle. When a raspberry is picked, the receptacle stays on the plant (giving the raspberry its hollow interior), but with blackberries, the receptale remains attached.
> Pineapples and mulberries are formed from many flowers that fuse together along with the stem tissue.
> With cashews, the “cashew apple” is the swollen stem, while the cashew nut (in its shell) is the true fruit.
> With rose hips the fleshy part is the swollen receptacle; the true fruits are the achenes inside..

On the flip side, many things we don’t think of as fruits botanically are indeed true fruits: beans, cucumbers, eggplants, grains, nuts,peppers, squash, and tomatoes. Mother Nature likes to keep us guessing!
 
 

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