Tomato

As a child, food editor Gina Marie Miraglia Eriquez regularly enjoyed the hearty stew that her grandmother Mary Pacella prepared as a way to use up surplus produce from the garden. Today, however, Miraglia Eriquez makes it as often as she can during the summer and early fall, using garden produce at its peak.

Even those who prefer their tuna raw or quickly seared will be won over by this preparation. Marinated in a savory anchovy-lemon dressing, the tuna steaks are cooked until their centers are pale pink but still quite juicy. The bold flavors continue in the colorful sauce of briefly cooked tomatoes, black olives, capers, celery, and basil.

Serve with crusty bread and a salad, if you like.

A rustic, comforting dinner dish.

This North African-inspired stew is lighter than traditional stews because there's less meat and more vegetables. Shell beans add to the brightness and freshness of the dish. Start the stew a day in advance—the lamb needs to marinate overnight.

This light salad is pretty enough for a dinner party.

The classic BLT sandwich turns into an easy wrap that tastes great served cold. For a healthier wrap, use uncured turkey bacon.

Spontaneity is the key to this pasta salad; it's not something you can make ahead and chill. The main ingredients can be harvested from a backyard plot or balcony pot, or simply be a reward for your produce-shopping prowess at the farmers market.

Celebrate the last of the hot weather with a spirited, chunky gazpacho in the Mexican mode. Tomatoes give the soup their characteristic rich, rounded flavor, and tomatillos—an Aztec and Mayan staple—lend fruity tartness and great body.

BLT, hold the bread (you won't miss it). Big chunks of sun-ripened tomato and soft leaves of butterhead lettuce—Boston or Bibb, for instance—are topped with a creamy blue cheese dressing (fine-tuned with a wizardly touch of bacon fat) and plenty of crisp homemade bacon bits. It is a familiar yet striking kickoff to a bucolic meal seriously focused on produce.

Talk about flower power. As every gardener knows, late summer brings a bumper crop of zucchini and, better yet, of zucchini blossoms—known in Italy as fiori di zucca. Here, the tender yellow-orange blooms are filled with ricotta, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and mint, then batter-fried. Served alongside an easy tomato sauce (dip as you like), they make an irresistible first course or, with the addition of a green salad, a satisfying main.

This bravura sandwich stimulates all the senses. Grilling eggplant instead of frying it adds lightness and smoky complexity.

Leftover barbecue sauce can be brushed over pork ribs during the last few minutes of grilling or combined with ground turkey for burgers.

Merluza en salsa de piñones Many Spanish fish dishes call for sauces made with almonds, hazelnuts, or pine nuts, sometimes in combination with tomatoes and saffron. While hake or monkfish is traditionally used for this Catalan dish, you can substitute cod, sea bass, flounder, or another firm white fish.

Gazpacho (a traditional chilled soup that originated in Spain) becomes a sauce for fish fillets.