At Mission Community Market, Zuckerman Family Farms is your go-to-spot for asparagus and potatoes. The farm, located in Stockton, is known best for their white potatoes. But summer weather has brought changes to the booth: the season of asparagus, a spring vegetable, is over, and this summer, blueberries have joined the Zuckerman table.
“Every season something new comes through,” says Marvin, a seller for Zuckerman farms. This is his first year selling blueberries at Mission Mercado––in fact, as I speak with him, this is Marvin’s first day as a blueberry seller. The berries have a short season, and don’t come every year.
Shoppers linger around the booth, dipping their hands into an open blueberry container to sample. Marvin says that though the blueberries mostly go in oatmeals and muffins, the fruit is versatile. In fact, I can’t think of a berry more suited to a variety of cooking techniques––blueberries, while sweet, are relatively mild in flavor, and can be baked, grilled, pureed, or eaten raw.
For that reason, blueberries are an effortless summer classic, ready to be packed in lunches, enjoyed during sunset porch–dinners, or floated in drinks. I explored two ways that blueberries could be prepared and paired with corn.
Blueberries from Zuckerman farms are resilient and warm from the sun; the addition of fresh, locally produced blueberries is what makes the following recipes come to life. I encourage you to use berries from your local farmer’s market––the flavor in international bulk-produced fruit is just not the same.
The full recipes appear after the jump!
