5 Recipes to Celebrate Your Farmers Market Bounty

Grab up all the summer vegetables and cook them in fresh, fast weeknight recipes for quick and easy warm-weather dinners featuring vegetable pizza, scallops with sweet corn, stuffed zucchini, and steak with peppers!

By
Sara Bir
Sara Bir
Sara Bir
Sara is a chef, culinary educator, and author of three cookbooks, The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook, Tasting Ohio and The Fruit Forager's Companion. The latter won a 2019 IACP Cookbook Award.
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Updated September 01, 2021
Sara Bir
"What's For Dinner" with a table set with two plates of Pan Seared Scallops with Sweet Corn topped with chopped herbs and a lime wedge.

Since May, I’ve been riding my bike to the weekly farmers market, donning my mask, and buying up all the good stuff I can cram into my backpack. Now that it’s late summer, things are really rolling around here on the produce scene.

Mid-week, I cruise to our favorite farm stand and load up on sweet corn, plus whatever other goodies they may have to offer: ripe peaches, cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, blackberries, watermelon—this is what we dream of all year long!

This week’s meal plan keeps that momentum going. Even if your farmers market happens to be a standard grocery store, you can still embrace the glory of summer produce. Whether the vegetables came from your own backyard or the produce aisle, we picked recipes everyone can dive right into.

  • Easy Summer Vegetable Pizzas

    How to Make Vegetable Pizza - flatbread pizza piled high with vegetables. Cut into slices on a parchment paper with a wooden handled knife nearby
    Sally Vargas

    Use store-bought naan to cut prep and baking time for these colorful pizzas topped with peppers, zucchini ribbons, and a sprinkling of flavorful grated cheese. Or if you have the time, make Naan from scratch. Right after baking, top these pizzas with a salad of baby greens, herbs, and tomatoes. These are imminently user-friendly: No naan at the store? Use pita rounds instead. Swap out spinach for the arugula, or mozzarella for the fontina.

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  • Pan Seared Scallops with Sweet Corn and Chiles

    Seared Scallops with Summer Vegetables
    Sally Vargas

    I live in Ohio, and we’re shameless sweet corn snobs. We eat it only in the summer and often go well out of our way to get the freshest ears, harvested that day. I love how it doubles as a starch and vegetable for streamlined dinners. Strip the plump kernels from the cob and give them a quick stint in a skillet for a creamy-sweet-crunchy bed for flash-sautéed scallops. This is easy summer cooking at its best.

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  • Stuffed Zucchini with Ham and Mushrooms

    Stuffed Zucchini with Ham and Mushrooms
    Elise Bauer

    By August, monster zucchini “gifted” from the gardens of friends and family can wear out its welcome, but with a little creativity, you can transform it into satisfyingly different dinners. You can swap cooked bacon for the ham, or totally omit it and add canned beans or cubed cheese for a vegetarian version. If you’d like a little meat on the side, grill up some Citrus Brined Pork Chops.

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  • Grilled Tri-Tip Steak with Bell Pepper Salsa

    Grilled Tri-Tip Steak with Bell Pepper Salsa
    Elise Bauer

    Tri-tip is a flat, lean steak popular on the West Coast that’s perfect for grilling and slicing, but the cut can be hard to find elsewhere. Flank steak or London Broil makes a fine substitute. Because these steaks are not lean, they are best cooked medium-rare. No grill? We have instructions for making this on the stove. Serve with German Potato Salad.

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    Continue to 5 of 5 below.

  • Herbes de Provence Skillet Chicken with Potatoes and Greens

    Chicken Freezer Meal with Chicken Tenders-close up of chicken, potatoes, olives and swiss chard
    Alison Bickle

    Have you ever had locally grown potatoes—the little, waxy ones that come in so many colors and shapes? They’re great to showcase here, but a bag of baby potato blends from the store works just as easily. Briny olives and bright lemon zest add zing to this all-in-one-skillet meal. There’s minimal chopping, so you can spend the saved prep time on the porch chilling out with a cold glass of lemonade.

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