Summer lovin': Gazpacho and cantaloupe ice cream

What to do with an abundance of summer vegetables: corn, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, and melons.

Next Barn Over sent us home with more melons than we know what to do with---cantaloupe and watermelon. We also got pounds of zucchini and summer squash, as well as our usually generous shares of salad and cooking greens, and a few tomatoes: the tomato season is not yet in high gear and is already threatened by blight, sad to say. An evangelist for Long Island sweet corn brings us bags of ears. I tossed some with cucumbers and tomatoes, herbs, a little chopped onion, and piment d'espelette for a light salad.

Having just used up all our cucumbers in a lacto fermentation, I made a large batch of watermelon tomato gazpacho, and learned that summer squash makes a decent substitute for cucumbers. It provides the right mild crunch. But don't use too much---cucumber is still a milder flavor.

I've gone a little wild this summer with herbs and make bold substitutions, cilantro for mint, dill for cilantro, that I never would have before. Handfuls of whatever parsley, mint, and cilantro I had on hand went into this delicious, mildly sweet soup that I found myself craving a bowl of, repeatedly, until it was gone.

I've never gone in for vegetable smoothies, preferring a little chunk and a spoon, a crunchy garnish, and the visual appeal of gazpacho. I want more than the season allows, which is just the right tension to maintain a love affair.

August is the month of our wedding anniversary. One of the dishes I prepared for the reception was Mark Bittman's melon salad: balled cantaloupe seasoned with a bit of lime juice, sugar, salt, cilantro, and a pinch of cayenne. It's refreshing, while the salt and cayenne keep you coming back for more.

Half a melon makes a lovely breakfast. Not only melon, of course, and by half a melon I mean one of the small watermelons that New England produces. I remember my grandfather bringing over such sugar babies in the summer from his backyard garden on Long Island. Here, they are the same: sweet and perfect and just about the size of the cantaloupes, which are a hair large. Their musk permeates a room. Kevin will start one in the morning and wrap the other half's cut side, the seeds already removed, for my enjoyment when I arise.

Another way to enjoy cantaloupe is in ice cream. According to my copy of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book, cantaloupe ice cream "is one of Jerry's favorite flavors, but we never figured out how to make it in large batches." Which is why you could never get this one in the Amherst scoop shop. But if you've got your own ice cream maker, you can make your own with a sweet cream base, the juice of a mashed cantaloupe (strain it very well!), and the juice of a lemon. When the ice cream is nearly done, stir in the mashed fruit.


Since last weekend was a tax weekend in Massachusetts, and Kevin and I have lived without the benefit of a sofa or recliner for many years, we rectified this deficit and celebrated by having friends over for dinner. The excitement of the furniture delivery that morning, or else my big sister's new baking blog on Facebook, "The King and I," must have affected me, as I decided to make a classic fruit tart for dessert, breaking the cardinal rule to never make something new for company. I break this rule all the time, but not usually so many rules at once. I also made a sweet pickle and a pork wrap for dinner, neither with a recipe, and had only made either of them once before.

I started with a recipe for the tart and began by modifying it, used the wrong gluten free mix for pie crust, one loaded with leaveners and browning agents, and utterly destroyed the tart base. While cooking the pastry cream, I got distracted chopping vegetables, wondered more than once why the preheating oven for pie crust smelled so deliciously like vanilla, and was lucky enough to rescue it just before the thick custard could clump and brown. Batting .667 on the tart, I still had the fruit, a mix of peach slices and blueberries. But I'd also made this cantaloupe ice cream---I've made this before, and because I have a huge tote bag full of cantaloupe right now, and remembered how delicious this ice cream is, I had to make it for my friends. I served all three together, it was pronounced a trifle, and it was a hit.

Like them apples?

Apples grown in western Massachusetts

The harvest season in New England is rich in the produce that is depicted with nostalgia, and sometimes tasted only at this time of year. The apple, that lowly fruit so common that even McDonalds sells them now, could be in danger of being so highly commercialized that, like milk, what was once the image of wholesome, natural food is muted in all of its original flavor and food value. In an Ingmar Bergman film, a meal of raw milk and apples is treated as rustic ambrosia. The variety available from a fast food outlet does not taste like this, but you can still get real apples in western Massachusetts.

The problem with commercial apples is how few varieties are grown, and the qualities that commercial growers prize them for are not what endear them to eaters. I want taste, an acidic bite, a dry, crisp texture. I want different kinds of apples: little mild ones to pack in my husband’s lunch, and big zesty ones that hold their shape when I bake them into pie. Ugly, flavorful apples that make me feel like a clever insider for knowing that a knobby Russet exists despite its unlovely mug because it has a winning personality worth propagating.

The website Orange Pippin, no doubt named for Cox’s Orange Pippin, a variety of apple, describes an exhaustive list of apple varieties on their website, including such western Massachusetts favorites as the Mutsu, Rhode Island Greening, Ananas Reinette, and Knobby Russet, as well as the more widely known varieties like Macoun, Empire, Gala, and Golden Delicious. The images, while lovely, don’t give a sense of scale. Here are a Mutsu, which typically weigh about a pound each, beside its tiny cousin, the Ananas Reinette.

Ananas Reinette, left, and a Mutsu apple, right

During apple season at my neighborhood co-op, the produce manager hangs a chalkboard with the number of varieties of apples available for sale that day: forty-three on the day I visited. “These were all harvested a month ago,” Joe Stan told me, indicating the baskets of local apples from Dwight Miller, Apex Orchards, and Scott Farm, among other local orchards. “And they’ll fill orders through March.”

The secrets to storing your apples, according to Joe Stan, are low humidity and a cool temperature, around forty degrees. If you plan to cellar your own apples, choose unblemished specimens only--use the ones with nicks and bruises, don’t store them. Wrap each storing apple in a clean sheet of newspaper to prevent the apples from touching one another, and store in a dark, dry place in the cellar. For cooking apples, you can peel, core, and slice even imperfect apples, then either cook them gently, cool, and freeze for pie filling, or put the slices in a food dehydrator or warm oven until they are beyond leathery to brittle. Dried apples reconstitute well in porridge and stews.

I've been experimenting with gluten-free alternatives to the classic apple pie. Here are a butternut custard pie with a "crust" of sliced apples, and an apple pie recipe from Real Food Forager that uses a pecan meal crust.

Butternut custard pie with a crust made from thinly sliced, peeled apples

This apple crumble pie is made with a pecan crust

Another tasty way to enjoy the local apple harvest all year round is as cider. A local vendor, West County Cider, produces ciders from several named varieties. They range from dry to sweet, and the crisper ones are like champagne. Much drier than the sweet, fresh cider you give the kids, and an excellent alternative to wine or beer at Thanksgiving or any harvest meal.

Free for all: black raspberries

Black raspberries (Rubus occidentalis), are native to the northeastern United States.

If you are on the bicycle paths of Northampton in the next few days, look for ripe black raspberries along the paths. The plants grow wild along embankments in swampy areas. Some are close to people's homes, and have clearly been picked over, but others, far from frugal homemakers with their bowls and pans, are still full of ripe berries, begging to be tasted. Bring a plastic quart container with a lid to protect your berries on the ride home.

Pick only the blackest berries. Wash them first, then eat them fresh, or freeze them. Fresh or frozen, the berries can be mashed and then pushed through a sieve until as much of the liquid as possible is extracted, or put through a food mill to remove the many tiny, hard seeds for a smooth sauce, syrup, or jelly. Raspberry puree that has been filtered of its seeds is perfect for use on or in cheesecake, ice cream, sorbet, or soda.

To make black raspberry soda:

In a glass, mix a quarter cup of the puree with a tablespoon of sugar and the juice of half a lime. Add sparkling water to within a couple inches of the top of the glass, and add ice. Garnish with a lime wedge or sprig of mint.