On Long Island’s South Shore, a Leisurely Summer Dinner

I’m one step through the doorway of Andy Baraghani’s kitchen and suddenly the air is perfumed with peonies, earthy dill and just-fried onions. The chef and food writer, 32, is eager to play with the first tastes of summer but is also determined to let the season’s bounty speak largely for itself. “I want my cooking to be effortless, and this time of year, you don’t have to do too much,” he says, popping a strawberry into his mouth and grinning.

It’s a warm and glorious June afternoon, one perfect for cooking, even if Baraghani is due for a day off. He’s spent the past few weeks on a whirlwind cross-country tour promoting his new cookbook, “The Cook You Want to Be” (2022), which is filled with the kind of sophisticated yet unfussy recipes that, during his time as a food editor and video host at Bon Appétit magazine (where he and I worked together for a time), won him a multitude of fans. They know that in Baraghani’s world, no dish is complete without a bold finishing touch, whether in the form of tender herbs, acidic dressings or nori and sesame seed sprinkles.

Baraghani grew up in a Persian family in Berkeley, Calif., and first learned to cook by watching family members prepare such classics as kuku sabzi (an herbaceous omelet) and chelo ba tahdig (steamed rice with a golden crust), before going on to work in the kitchens of Chez Panisse, in his hometown, and Estela, in New York, where he’s now based. He’s already made stops on both coasts for his book tour, hosting pop-up dinners at Contra, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and at Los Angeles’s Found Oyster.

Presently, though, he’s on a brief break from the tour, and so has invited a group of close friends to feast on what he considers some of the book’s quintessential summer recipes at the home of his partner, Keith Pollock, near Bellport, Long Island. The couple met at Condé Nast, where Pollock, now senior vice president of creative for West Elm, was working as the executive digital director at Architectural Digest. Their relationship was just beginning to blossom when the pandemic hit, at which point Baraghani started staying with Pollock and their friend John Guidi, an associate director at The Real Real with whom Pollock shares the home, on trips away from the city. “We were very grateful that he was recipe testing for the book during that time,” says Pollock, who’s particularly fond of Baraghani’s chickpea cacio e pepe with lemon, the first dish Baraghani ever made for him.