Easy and elegant summer meal from the Market

Last Sunday, I came home from the market with all the ingredients for a simple and easy Sunday night meal. Simple summer meals accentuate some of what is best about a Farmer's Market. This was certainly true last Sunday.

We had Prather Moroccan-spiced lamb burgers with mint-yogurt sauce, two varieties grilled Capay squash with grilled fingerling potatoes from Zuckerman's farms. Following this, we had a County Line Harvest green salad with wild arugula and some variety of spicy watercress from Star Route Farms in a lime-maple-EVOO dressing. We finished things off with those awesome County Line seascape strawberries macerated in Almandine (a French almond liquor), lime juice, and sugar over a slice of lemon pound cake with an Almandine marscapone cream.

The synergies of the market are part of what make shopping there so much fun. I have been making lamb burgers regularly since I first had Doug's (of Prather Ranch Meat Co.) excellent ground lamb. He gets his lamb from Reed Anderson of Anderson Ranch () and it is excellent. Ground lamb is often the most muttony tasting lamb you will find, but not this stuff. To the lamb I now add a "Berber" spice mixture made by Kathy of the Occasional Gourmet. I use about 1-1 1/2 tablespoons. This adds a lovely flavor and a bit of heat. Though they cook just like hamburgers, the Berber lamb burgers are similarly satisfying, but a wonderful change. To accompany them, I throw some chopped mint into a bit a goat yogurt and season this with salt and pepper. Some still like their ketchup, but to me the mint-yogurt sauce really dresses the meal up. The only other prep to do was to cut the squash and potatoes, toss them in seasoned EVOO with some crushed garlic and grill them.