- 4 Québec products to add to your recipes
- 10 Ways to Eat More Fruit Every Day
- Brighten up Your Plate with Citrus Fruit
- 12 Fresh Five-Star Salads
- Discover Hot and Sweet Peppers
- Eat More Nuts
- Enjoy Locally Grown Vegetables Year-Round
- Ways to Use Garden Vegetables
- Ketchups, Relishes, Chutneys, Marinades and Aromatic Vinegars
- Cranberries
- Cook with potatoes
- 8 Easy Recipes to Prepare Pumpkin—Differently
- Eat your veggies from the leaves to the roots
- Rediscover Fries!
- Super Salads!
- Eat more chickpeas
- Fruits and vegetables on the barbecue
- Apples on the menu
Have a Fruitful Summer!
With summer’s first fruits showing up in stores, we welcome the season where we can enjoy nature’s fresh bounty at its tasty best. Besides providing an abundance of vitamins and minerals, fruits brighten our menus with a wide range of colours, textures, aromas and flavours. Summer fruit can be enjoyed as is, prepared in different ways or used to garnish your favourite dishes.
Stone Fruits
- Think tender apricots, velvety soft peaches, refreshing nectarines or juicy plums.
- Try browning them in a little butter and brown sugar or poached in flavoured syrup or sweet wine—cooked stone fruit are delicious.
- Yellow, red or black, plums come in an endless variety and accompany salty dishes beautifully. They’re great for sweet and sour and other Asian-style sauces served with pork, game meat or poultry.
Berries
- Strawberries, raspberries and blueberries delight the senses with their deep colour, heady perfume and intense sweetness.
- They’re delicious served plain or with a little cream or maple syrup.
- Berries make glamorous, sophisticated desserts: try strawberries soaked in red wine and dusted with sugar, mixed berries with champagne or chocolate-dipped blueberries.
Sweet Summer Treats
- Celebrate summer's fruitful bounty in your baking: almond-crust apricot pie, peach upside-down cake, plum crumble or berry-studded muffins.
- Fresh fruit salad makes an unbeatable snack. Served with creamy vanilla yogurt or orange custard, it makes a fitting end to a summer meal.
- Fruit kebabs with chocolate or butterscotch sauce or fruit pizza are dazzlingly different!
- For a refreshing, energy-boosting drink, blend strawberries or peaches with milk and yogurt or ice cream in a food processor.
- Light and fresh, fruity homemade iced yogurt, sherbet or granita are guaranteed summer hits.
- Freeze stocks of jewel-coloured fruit coulis to enhance desserts all year long with summer flavour. Just purée raspberries, blueberries or apricots with sugar and a little lemon juice in a food processor.
Not the Same Old Thing
- For breakfast top cereal with berries, French toast with sliced plums or apricots or pancakes with browned nectarines.
- Fruit can be an integral part of main and side dishes: try pork and peach kebabs, salmon carpaccio with raspberries, lobster salad with nectarines; apricot rice pilaf, salad of lamb's lettuce with strawberries, goat cheese and peppermint.
- A cheese platter decorated with strawberry fans and nectarine wedges makes a beautiful sight.
- Explore new flavour sensations by combining fruits and herbs: basil peach compote, apricot-strawberry salad with lemongrass, sugar-coated strawberries with ginger or chilled fruit soup with verbena or tarragon.
- Fruit can subtly transform and flavour mustards, liqueurs and vinegars that can be used to make meat marinades, vinaigrettes or stock base.
Bottled Jewels
- Jams and chutneys are delicious ways to preserve summer’s brief bounty.
- Chutney, a spicy or tangy relish made of fruits, spices, vinegar, etc., enhances the flavour of meats, poultry and fish. It also goes well with cheese, makes a nice dip for vegetables and adds zing to sandwiches.
- Jam making perfumes the air with promises of sweet delights for future enjoyment. And, the flavour combinaions are limitless: strawberry-pineapple, spicy peach, plum, or blueberry-green apple....
- Don’t limit jam to bread! Stir some into a steaming bowl of oatmeal, use it in cakes and cookies, in rice pudding or a trifle, or top little meringues with jam.
Sweet Beauty
- To prevent soggy cakes or crusts, add chopped fruit garnish at the last minute.
Helpful Hints
- With their fresh, bright colours, fruits are naturally decorative and give desserts, salads and meat dishes a festive look. Try different combinations of shapes and colours: strawberries and blueberries, chocolate-dipped strawberries, nectarines in concentric rings or plum slices fanned out and garnished with a sprig of mint or a cinnamon stick.
- Baste fruit with heated apricot jelly for a glossy garnish.
- To avoid soggy bottom crusts in pies with stone fruit, lay halved fruit skin-side down in pie. With berry pies, brush a wash of egg white on the crust before adding the filling. Finally sprinkle the fruit with mini tapioca to thicken the juice.
- Peaches, nectarines and apricots can be substituted for one another in most recipes and can even replace mangoes at times.
- Berries are delicate fruit that keep up to two days in the refrigerator. Never soak berries, but wash them just before using them.
- Strawberries should never be hulled before they are washed or they will lose some of their juice.
- Spread whole berries out on a cookie sheet and freeze. Transfer frozen berries to freezer bags and return to the freezer. The berries won't clump together and you'll be able to measure out just what you need.
- To make your own fruit vinegar, bring 3 cups (750 mL) white vinegar combined with 1 cup (250 mL) of your favourite fruit to a boil. Cool, filter and bottle.
Expert Tip
For easy peeling of peaches, plums, nectarines and apricots, immerse them in boiling water for 20 seconds, then rinse immediately under cold running water and peel with a knife.