Summer fruit is a simple pleasure. It’s sweet and tart and great for snacking. We also keep a few pies and a few blueberries on hand for when the weather is warm. With a honey-sweetened pesto and strawberries, you can make a refreshing granita, an excellent, refreshing dish. Arugula, burrata, and country ham are also great options. Tempted? We have some great ideas for summer baking and cooking with fruit.
Grilled Pork Chops With Burst Blueberry Sauce
Nicole A. Taylor, the writer, takes blueberries and gives them a savory twist. She blends them with shallots and thyme, and chips in adobo. This creates a sticky sauce that highlights the floral notes of the fruit. Red wine and balsamic vinegar add a tart backbone to bring out the flavors. This sauce is great with any type of grilled meat. Taylor serves it with juicy grilled pork chops.
Georgia Peach Pie With Bourbon Whipped Cream
Don’t be shocked if you cut into this delicious pie. When a pie bakes at high heat, the crust sets before any fruit in the filling. The high heat helps to crisp up the crust.
Summer Fruit Salad with Arugula & Almonds
This savory and sweet salad is usually prepared by Suzanne Goin using whatever fruits are available at the market. Her favorite fruit is black or green figs. A few crushed figs can also be used in the vinaigrette instead of the nectarine.
Shortcakes with Mixed Berry Cornmeal Biscuits
These shortcakes are made with macerated fresh strawberries and homemade whipped cream. They’re served on top of a buttery, tender, split cornmeal biscuit. Cornmeal is a great ingredient to give the biscuits a rich texture and flavor. These biscuits can be made earlier in the morning and then heated up again when you are ready to serve.
Watermelon Salad With Feta, Mint
This summer watermelon salad can be enjoyed outside in the sun. The refreshing flavors of watermelon and mint are balanced by briny olives, feta and a variety of savory ingredients. Chef Jacques Pepin makes small, seedless watermelon rounds using a melon baller. He also adds the trimmings to the salad to make sure they don’t go to waste. You can also chop the watermelon into cubes if desired.
Summer Plum Crostata
This tart is great for cooking in a mountain cabin’s bare-bones kitchen, as it doesn’t require any special pans. Kelly Liken uses Colorado plums. She loves their “beautiful sweetness”. This recipe will work well with any firm, but not ripe plums.
Chilled Peach Soup With Fresh Goat Cheese
This sweet and tangy summer soup is made by Jason Franey, who marinates fresh peaches overnight in honey, vinegar, and olive oil before pureeing them. Franey recommends seasoning the peaches with vinegar as they can have different flavors.
Strawberry-Mango Paletas
Fany Gerson uses the rule of thumb when creating new paletas to sell her company La Newyorkina. The colors of her ingredients should match the flavors. This brightly colored ice pops with orange and red hues are great to make when the juicy strawberries are in peak season.
Apricot Nectarine Julep
The perfect late-summer cocktail is a puree of nectarines and roasted apricots. For a cocktail that almost looks like Hawaiian shaved ice, pour some of the reserved purees over the crushed ice. You can also roast and purée other stone fruits like plums or sour cherries.
Raspberry Clafoutis
This classic French dessert is made by Alix de Montille, an organic winemaker. She substitutes raspberries for traditional cherries in order to pair them with Jean-Marc Roulot’s raspberry eaude-vie La Framboise du Roulot.
Shrimp and Okra Kebabs With Grilled Peaches & Jalapeno Bourbon Vinaigrette
The vinaigrette contains bourbon, which adds sweetness and a boozy kick to the flavor. It also tenderizes the shrimp in Sue Zemanick’s 2008 F&W Best New Chef shrimp and okra Kebabs. The kebabs can be served with wedges of grilled peaches and finished off with a drizzle of extra vinaigrette.
Berry Ice Cream Pie
This recipe makes a delicious berry ice cream pie. The graham cracker crust is topped with strawberry ice cream and balsamic blueberry jam. Fresh blueberries are added to the final product.
Stone Fruit Salad with Collard Peanut Pesto
This savory fruit salad is made with roasted peanuts, collard leaves, and Parmesan. It makes a rich pesto that pairs well with honey-dressed wedges plums or nectarines. Fonio is a West African grain that’s similar to couscous in texture and flavor.
Peach-Blueberry Pie
This pie is a summery delight. However, if you don’t have fresh fruit on hand, thawed frozen fruit can be used. The tart lemon juice and zest in the filling balance out the sweetness of this fruit. This contrasts with the crunchy turbinado sugar atop the pie crust’s geometric pieces.
Sugared Melon, Cardamom, and Mint
You only need sugar, cardamom, and fresh mint to make ripe melon a memorable dessert. Sometimes muskmelon ingredients like honeydew and cantaloupe are treated as an afterthought. That’s why Vishwesh Bhhatt calls this recipe “Don’t Forget The Melon”. He says, “If you have the right kind of melon that is nice and ripe it’s just as good.” Summer is the best time to harvest melons.
This hearty summer salad is enriched with fresh plums, cherries and other sweet fruits. The dish takes on a darker, more moody look thanks to the addition of black rice. The salad builds into a satisfying crescendo with the addition of blue cheese-infused breadcrumbs. These breadcrumbs add a nice textural contrast to the rice and fruit.
Mama’s Blueberry Buckle
Martha Greenlaw, a cookbook author, learned how to make this coffee cake-like dessert using a streusel topping. Greenlaw states that sometimes the cake buckles and the top has sinks and holes. It looks great if you add whipped cream to it.
Boozy Frozen Strawberry Lemonade
Claudia Fleming, a renowned pastry chef, created the Boozy Frozen Strawberry Lemonade. It is sweet, refreshing, and delicious. This frozen cocktail can be used as a dessert or mixer. It is made with Prosecco, lemon vodka, lemon sorbet, and strawberries. Make sure you serve the lemonade immediately after it has been frozen.