Grilled Summer Vegetable Skewers with Herb Oil

Start at the market. Look for zucchini that are firm and heavy, no bigger than your forearm. Peppers should be glossy and taut, their skin snapping when you press a nail to it. Red onions with papery outer layers and a weight that promises sweetness inside. These are the ingredients that need almost nothing done to them.

The grill does the work here. Fire transforms vegetables in a way no other cooking method can: it caramelizes natural sugars, softens flesh while leaving structure, and adds that whisper of smoke that makes people lean in and ask what you are cooking. Your job is to get out of the way.

The herb oil is simple. Good olive oil, the best you have, steeped briefly with garlic and whatever herbs look alive at the market. Basil, oregano, parsley. The oil carries their fragrance to the warm vegetables, and that fragrance carries across the table. Every meal is a meaningful choice. When you cook like this, with ingredients you can trace back to a farm and a face, the food tastes like it means something. Because it does.