KEY POINTS:
This month, you can say au revoir to delicious asparagus, blackcurrants, gooseberries, tamarillos, broad beans and fennel and wait patiently and longingly for the season to return.
Say bonjour to the taste explosions called tomatoes, creamy aubergines, cool Lebanese cucumbers, nutty new potatoes, sweet beetroot, creamy summer garlic
and honeyed sweetcorn.
Corn, or maize, comes from America, where they soon figured that if cattle liked it so much, so would people - if it were bred to be really sweet. Which they did.
When I moved to Paris in 1980, few French people even knew you could eat corn on the cob. The Maori eat it fermented, calling it kanga piro, or rotten corn. It's ghastly, but they love it. They ferment it by putting it in a sack and leaving it in the river until it smells good, then steam it in the hot pools. When you're buying sweetcorn, don't hesitate to pull the husk back to check that the kernels are plump and look fresh. They may be yellow or white or a mixture but that doesn't make any difference to the sweetness. The husk should be green and the tassels pale yellow. If you don't devour them the minute you get home, which is the best idea as the sugar quickly converts to starch, keep them in the fridge in a plastic bag.
Sweetcorn takes only minutes to cook if you boil it but you can also throw it on the barbie or in the microwave in the husk. Nothing compares with eating corn the minute it has been picked.
Some berries are still around and more stonefruit is coming in, so now is the time for tarts, flans, fruit poached in lavender and verjuice, jams, fools (pureed or crushed fruit folded into whipped cream), sponges, crumbles, sauces, pancakes, smoothies and - best of all - summer puddings.
Lebanese cucumbers are the new black. They're the ones with dark green tender skin, about 10cm long with pale green flesh dripping with flavourful juice. Cucumbers are versatile and refreshing and go really well with chicken, crab, dill, pomegranates, oysters, yoghurt and are divine made into a chilled summer soup. Strangely enough they are delicious cooked - cut them into matchsticks and saute in butter and a little cumin. If you wanted to you could stir a soupcon of cream in and pour it all over steamed fish.
We eat far too much meat in New Zealand, so I'm imagining an outdoors lunch of a series of small dishes eaten one after the other, helped along with homemade lemonade with rose petals. You could start with fresh creamed corn with pinot gris, move on to wedges of Lebanese cucumbers and watercress sandwiches with oysters and something aromatic like a riesling, wrap yourself around slow-roasted vine tomatoes with veal chops and a chilled rosé, then give yourself up to a summer fruit clafoutis.
SUMMER FRUIT CLAFOUTIS
Serves 6
750g cherries, raspberries, fresh currants, blackberries, blueberries, apricots, plums etc
2 kaffir lime leaves, torn
30g flour
pinch of salt
60g sugar or honey
4 eggs
2 egg yolks
300ml milk
300ml cream
4 tbsp cognac
1. Put the washed fruit and lime leaves in a shallow, buttered baking dish. Don't stone any of the fruit.
2. Make a batter by sifting the flour and salt into a bowl. Add the sugar and make a well in the centre. Drop in the eggs one by one, with the milk and cream, and beat in.
3. Strain this mixture over the fruit and sprinkle the cognac over the top.
4. Bake the clafoutis in a moderate oven for 45 minutes or until golden and puffy.
5. Sprinkle with sugar and eat warm or at room temperature.
- Detours, HoS
