As spring turns to summer, it seems like a different seasonal fruit or vegetable becomes available every week. Fresh produce at its peak can elevate your menu to exciting heights, as these five recipes demonstrate.
Mangoes are available most of the year, but right now, there are more varieties on the market. Grilling infuses the fruit with an alluring smoky flavor that pairs especially well with mango-marinated pork.
Zucchini season is just starting, with local crops beginning to fill produce bins and farmer’s markets. Chef Aida Mollenkamp created a refreshing soup that pairs the vegetable with another seasonal ingredient—fresh basil. Toasted walnuts, garlic and yogurt round out the flavors.
Fresh corn on the cob is one of summer’s delicious pleasures. Chef Stephen Barber of Farmstead Long Meadow Ranch in California’s Napa Valley combines corn with summer squash, cherry tomatoes and dragon beans—a type of snap beans—in a succotash that amplifies the taste of summer.
In this plant-forward version of traditional Japanese yakitori, Chef Kilgore poaches fingerling potatoes with lemon dashi seasoning until barely tender before grilling. The slightly charred fingerlings add depth and umami when paired with a Parmesan truffle cream and dashi glaze.
Photograph courtesy of California Avocado Commission
Avocado Caprese Salad
Caprese salad has Italian roots, but at the Bruin Plate restaurant at UCLA, the kitchen flavors it with a Thai-accented dressing. The salad contrasts the season's juicy, ripe tomatoes with creamy avocado slices.
The final weeks of this school year have been turbulent at dozens of college campuses across the country, driven by differing views of the Israel-Hamas war.
From day-to-day dining to Diwali, Chef Rajeev Patgaonkar, CEC, AAC, HGT, has forged a culinary path that’s allowed a generation at Michigan State University to experience the truly fascinating flavors of Indian cuisine and given Indian students and faculty at taste of home.