The Bounty Hunter

The Bounty Hunter is a website about cooking and eating delicious, seasonal and local foods.

Late Summer

Peach, Lavender and Ginger Oxymel

It rained, it finally rained! After what has been a very hot and dry summer, we finally had some rain over the weekend and it felt good, really good. The smell and sound of the rain and freshness of the air was so comforting and calming. While we are back to sunshine today, I can certainly feel fall creeping in. The days are noticeably shorter, the morning air is cooler and the light is changing. My wee summer garden is also slowing down in its production. Late summer is the time of year where I really feel the call to squirrel away bits of summer to enjoy on those dark, wet and rainy days that are characteristic of fall on the west coast.

I am always looking for new (to me) kitchen experiments and ways to preserve the summer season in a small apartment in the city. I love having things brewing, soaking, fermenting and infusing around the kitchen. I find these practices to be grounding and it is fun and powerful to connect with old traditions and wisdom around food and medicine making.

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A Lemon Blueberry Olive Oil Cake

Sweet, sweet summer always passes in a flash. It is a funny time of year, as I am beyond excited about all of the incredible food that is in season and yet I am so busy enjoying it all that I don’t stop to document and share it here. I do manage to capture much of it with a quick snap on my phone over on Instgram. It is also a case of not really using recipes during these months.

Summer is all about simplicity, picnics, picking berries, dips in the ocean and laying on a blanket under a big tree. We eat sliced tomatoes with a drizzle of good olive oil, a scattering of fresh basil and sprinkle of flaked salt, apricots baked with a bit of honey and vanilla, ice cream, salmon on the bbq or a late summer succotash with butter, corn, fresh herbs and whatever bits are in the fridge. Delicious for sure but hardly worthy of a recipe.

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French Melon Sorbet

I have discovered that there are a fair number of people out there that don’t care for melons. People I never would have suspected. So this blog post might not be very popular but I chalk it up to not having eaten the right melon at the right time.

It is like the difference between eating a tomato in summer and one imported in winter. They are two different creatures entirely. If I only ever tasted a winter tomato, I probably wouldn’t like tomatoes. If I had only ever eaten the anemic, tasteless melon often used for garnish, I probably wouldn’t be writing this post. So anyway this leads me to the recipe that I am sharing and my love for local, summer melons.

When the melons come in from the field at Cropthorne Farm they can be smelled from across the barn. The perfume is incredible. Everyone’s eyes get a little brighter. Especially the two little farm girls. They are the quietest when munching on melon. These are the melons you are after. The ones you can smell at the next stall over at the farmer’s market. I particularly love the Charentais variety. It is a French heirloom similar to a cantaloupe with deep orange dense flesh, incredibly juicy and sweet with tropical and floral notes. What is not to like?

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