Summer cooking
- samrudd123
- Nov 7
- 2 min read
Recipes for summer cooking. A time to enjoy the abundance of fresh veg available from the fields. Get creative in making meals while the weather is hot and seek fresh flavours that are less heavy and quick to prepare.
🌞 Summer Bounty: The Season of Plenty
By Hamish Evans, Middle Ground Growers
Summer is the time of fullness — long, light days and fields bursting with colour. After months of relentless work planting and keeping pace with nature's peak activity, the land rewards us with abundance: tomatoes warm from the sun, crisp cucumbers, courgettes in full flow, and herbs that scent the air with vitality.
This is the season for celebration — for shared meals, picnics, and easy cooking that honours freshness above all else. Your veg boxes in summer tell the story of thriving biodiversity: bees in the flowers, rich soil beneath, and the hum of life across the farm. come and join one of our farm feasts or events to share in the abundance !
A few ways to enjoy the season’s gifts:
Tomato & basil salad: Nothing fancy — just ripe fruit, good oil, and a pinch of salt.
Grilled courgettes with mint & lemon: Simple, light, and endlessly versatile.
Cold beetroot soup: Vibrant pink, refreshing, and full of minerals.
Herb frittata: Packed with greens, perfect hot or cold for a summer lunch.
Summer cooking invites us to slow down and savour the immediacy of flavour — food that barely needs cooking, grown within miles of your kitchen. Every bite carries the story of the land and the growers who tend it.
Supporting local, regenerative farms in summer means more than just eating well — it’s about sustaining the ecosystems that feed us, keeping the soil alive and thriving through the hottest months.
1
Serving suggestions and alterations
This recipe is a wonderful side to any summer salad, barbeque, fish dish, fried steaks. The lemon, coriander and garlic flavour trio is sharp, zetsy and fresh, giving it a light and refreshing flavour.
You could try adapting the recipe with our flavouring such as:
-Soy sauce and seasame seeds
-sweet chilli and coriander
-nuts and cheese (e.g. walnuts and blue cheese)
Notes
1
Wash and cut the courgette into thin slices (a little under 1/2 cm) with a sharp knife and steady hand (you could use a julienne cutter here if you have one). You want enough slices to fill a large flat baking tray.
2
Drizzle a little olive oil over the baking tray and use a slice of courgette to evenly spread it across the surface. Neatly arrange the remaining courgette slices over the tray- try to avoid layering any slices to enable an even cook.
3
Drizzle over the remaining garlic infused olive oil over the tray of courgette slices (or evenly scatter the minced garlic), season and place in the oven at 180c for 10 minutes.
4
Inspect the courgettes, they should have softened with signs of browning. Use a fork and spoon to flip the slices over and return to the oven for 2 minutes.
5
The courgettes are ready when they are tender, slightly soft (not mushy) with a little browning. Scatter over the chopped coriander and evenly squeeze the lemon juice over the courgettes and serve.
Instructions
1-2 courgettes
1 tbsp garlic infused olive oil
1 clove of garlic (minced)- if without garlic infused olive oil
1/4 lemon (1 tsp lemon juice)
5g (small handful) chopped fresh coriander
seasoning
Roasted courgette slices
Roasted Courgette Slices
Food Enthusiast
Sam Rudd
A quick, easy and tasty way to make use of a glut of courgettes. This recipe can be easily served as a side to lots of summer dishes and is also highly adaptable so you can cycle through different flavours each week. What's not to love when you've got courgettes for days?
Servings :
4 Servings
Calories:
Prep Time
5 min
Cooking Time
12 min
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Total Time
17 minutes
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