Garden Design

Cooking from locally grown and seasonal ingredients is easiest when you can harvest from your own backyard. Courtesy of Saveur magazine, here are 20 recipes that let your homegrown bounty shine. 

• Pasta with Grilled Artichokes: Baby artichokes, dressed with olive oil and garlic, take center stage in this lemony dish.
• Corn Relish: This bright-tasting relish is one of our favorite uses for summer corn.

• Panzanella (Bread and Tomato Salad): In her book Lidia’s Italian Table (William Morrow, 1998), Lidia Bastianich recommends making this rustic Italian salad with toasted country bread and ripe tomatoes.

• Vegetable Salad Soup: This soup is based on a recipe dreamed up three years ago by the artist Stella Bellow, who is currently ten years old.

• Beet and Goat Cheese Napoleons (pictured): These elegant appetizers come from Wolfgang Puck’s Los Angeles restaurant Spago.

• Eggplant Spread: Los Angeles home cook Ruth Honegger recommends eating this spicy spread with pita, lavash, or naan.

• Squash Bread Pudding with Rum Sauce: This Mexican take on a Cajun-style bread pudding is studded with cubes of squash and plump raisins.

• Grilled Eggplant with Basil Vinaigrette: Sliced, grilled vegetables served in a simple marinade or vinaigrette are a fixture at many Tuscan meals.

• Corn Chowder: This summer chowder is thickened not with flour but by puréeing a little of the soup, which is then stirred back in.

• Tomato Salad with Herbs and Pomegranate: This dish is a perfect garnish for falafel and is also delicious on its own.

• Asparagus with Citrus and Oregano: This recipe is from chef Andrew Carmellini’s book Urban Italian (Bloomsbury USA, 2008).

• Fettucine with Artichokes and Chicken: This satisfying pasta dish is from Justin Smillie, the chef at Smith's, a restaurant in New York City.

• Stewed Squash and Tomatoes: When served with chicken fried steak, fried okra, and pecan pie, a side of stewed squash and tomatoes rounds out Oklahoma's official state meal.

• Roasted Herbed Chicken and Vegetables: This one-dish meal of chicken and vegetables is flavored with lemon peel, garlic, fresh thyme, and butter that has been infused with herbes de provence, a mix of lavender, rosemary, fennel seed, and savory.

• Spicy Lemongrass Salad: Although many of us in the West assume that lemongrass must be cooked before it's eaten, cooks in southern Thailand adore its crunchy texture and intensely citrusy flavor.

• Green Beans Almondine: This recipe is best with unsplit string beans, but make sure to use the tenderest beans you can find.

• Risotto with Butternut Squash, Leeks and Clams: This recipe is from the godmother of Italian cooking in America, Marcella Hazan. 

• Marinated Zucchini: Like most marinated vegetable dishes, this one is best made a day ahead of serving. It will keep, refrigerated, for about a week.

• Lobster Cevice with Limestone Lettuce: This recipe, which came from noted chef Nobu Matsuhisa, is typical of the cross-cultural innovations that made him such a success. Limestone is another name for bibb or boston lettuce.

• Chilled Tomato Soup, Gazpacho Style: Chefs from Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, collaborated on this wonderful summer soup, using only organic produce. This recipe is their version of the Spanish classic.