Summer is a lucky season, everyone loves summer and I’m no exception. I love the heat and even though it makes me lethargic and lazy I still buoyantly chase the sun. Those three liberating months have provided me with nothing but marvelous memories throughout the years. Every summer when I would come home from camp I would watch the Parent Trap every day for a week to keep the camp momentum from ending. I spent two childhood summers in Iran visiting my family and soaking in incredible food and a culture that I strongly craved.  Food has always played an intrinsic role in summer memories — my mother’s staple breakfast of warm, Persian bread stuffed with feta cheese and fresh basil accompanied with Cardamom tea, the roasted corn sold on the streets of Tehran, the sweet tomatoes and figs of Armenia and the insanely addictive raspberry-oreo ice cream at Sundae School in Dennisport, Cape Cod. I spent endless summer days in San Franciso desperately praying to the sun gods to send heat to the city so I can walk around in my skirt, wife beater and flip- flops. Unfortunately the sun gods turned a deaf ear to my cries, so my mantra became the famous words of Mark Twain, “The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco.” Aside from vacations, wife beaters and flip-flops, I love summer because it’s the only time of year where I consume an enormous amount of my favorite fruits.  There’s nothing like biting into cold, juicy mangoes, cherries and strawberries during the sweltering L.A. heat. On the flip side, there are certain summer fruits that I don’t eat with type of fervor because they simply don’t move me.

A week ago I went to the Italian deli for some Burrata cheese and picked up the latest issue of La Cucina Italia to see what summer recipes were flowing in its pages. A whole section dedicated to melon recipes caught my eye. Melons are definitely not one of my favorite fruits, I only eat them to cool down from the heat. I can’t even count the amount of melons I had to carve in culinary school. Mastering the proper ways to work around the curves was intricate in creating cohesive and beautiful fruit trays. All that carving helped me with my knife skills and getting the “A” I needed for Garde Manger class, aside from that I had no use for them.

The recipes in the magazine reconfirmed for me that melons worked best when paired with something wonderful like prosciutto, and in the case of this particular recipe, pistachios and blackberries with a blackberry sauce. The recipe caught my eye because the striking colors of the fruits immediately popped out of the magazine, and as they say, “You eat with your eyes first.” It’s a simple dessert consisting of melons and blackberries with a blackberry-pistachio sauce. Summer is nothing without ice cream and since pistachios are synonymous with Persian Saffron-Rosewater ice cream an a la mode dessert was unavoidable.

The recipe asked for the pistachios to be roughly chopped but feeling a bit adventurous, I decided to make pistachio dust instead.  Prior to this little experiment I had neither eaten nor made pistachio dust. I absolutely love the concept of pollen and dust for culinary uses. Powders mesh beautifully with whatever they’re usually sprinkled on allowing them to capture the essence of flavors with ease. I add beet powder to salads and often cook with fennel pollen, especially with seafood dishes. Homemade rosemary–thyme dust regularly makes an appearance in my savory dishes and it also tastes divine when you sprinkle it on ice cream and fruit. Out of curiosity I Googled “pistachio pollen” to see if such a culinary toy existed, but surprisingly I found nothing. Instead, I got lost for half an hour reading a heap of articles discussing the effects of pollination on pistachio cultivation.

I eventually found my way back to the pages of La Cucina Italia and headed to the Middle Eastern market for the fruit, pistachios and ice cream. I give thanks for Middle Eastern markets, they keep my wallet fatter with their great produce and mom & pop prices. Melons remind me of two things, Garde Manger (my favorite class in culinary school) and director Peter Bogdonovich. A few years ago Mr. Bogdonovich happened to be living in a certain West Hollywood hotel that I had been working at and for one year I cooked his dinner a few nights a week. He had been living in and out of the hotel for years and had just returned at the time that I’d been hired. He always ordered the same thing — salmon with bok choy, a Cobb salad with no eggs or blue cheese and for “dessert” he only ordered thinly sliced melons. One night he sent back the salmon that had been cooked by my coworker Mildre, nicknamed El Tigre for his prowess with the ladies. The waiter brought the food back yelling at El Tigre telling him the man upstairs was a famous director named Bogdonovich and now he was worried he would lose a good tip. He claimed the salmon was too soggy. El Tigre gave the waiter a careless shrug so I grabbed another salmon filet, dusted it with flour, seared it to a crisp and sent it back upstairs.

Later that evening a request was sent from upstairs that from now on Mr. Bogdonovich’s salmon was to be cooked by whoever sent up the second salmon.  At the moment I thought, “Wow how cool, from now on I get to cook Peter Bogdonovich’s salmon,” but then came the neurosis of the melons.  From that moment on his melons also became my responsibility.  They had to be of a certain texture and carved no more than a ¼ inch thick. If there was even a slight bit of mushiness to the melons, he would send them back immediately with the waiter yelling at me about his tip. At least three nights a week I would sharpen the hell out of my knife, gently run the blade down those curves as smoothly as possible and attempt to carve perfectly moon shaped melons. Before slicing them, I would taste them first to make sure they were the right texture while  my coworkers stood around laughing and calling the man upstairs Loco. However being someone who has neurotic tendencies myself, I completely understood the man’s affinity for perfectly sliced and textured melons and for that one year I took great pride in carving them to his liking.

This recipe on the other hand is easy with no neurosis attached and can be done in less than half an hour. I used a melon baller to scoop out the melons. The pistachio dust was easy as well, I roasted whole pistachios and tossed them into a mini chopper and chopped them until they came as close to dust as possible. La Cucina Italia’s recipe for the blackberry sauce asked for the blackberries to be sautéed with sugar only, but I wanted to add some more flavor to the dessert so I replaced the sugar with honey, added Grand Marnier and butter to the sauce and finished it off with the powdered pistachio. It’s a simple, colorful dish and the floral Saffron-Rosewater ice cream takes it to a whole other level.  Melons have now officially moved up my list of favorite summer fruits. My memories of melons that this recipe helped resurrect were actually far from boring and it hit me that melons had in fact been very useful to me throughout the years. I realized that sometimes it’s okay to be a little boring and safe, I liked how their mild flavor gave my palate a break from the tart blackberry sauce and fragrant ice cream.  Plus the contrasting colors looked beautiful on the plate and the pistachio dust added texture to the fruit and fortified that lovely pistachio taste. Mostly though I’m grateful to melons for being the vehicle that indirectly introducing me to Peter Bogdonovich, who not only helped boost my confidence in the kitchen but also directed one of my favorite films The Last Picture Show and introduced the world to that mellow and gorgeous man who simply goes by the name “The Dude.”

Persian Saffron-rosewater ice cream called Akbar Mashti can be found in Middle Eastern stores, Whole Foods (on the West Coast) and Mashti Malone’s, the best Akbar Mashti makers outside of Iran who ship nationwide. Adapted from La Cucina Italia’s recipe: Melone a Palline con Salsa di More e Pistacchi

Wine Pairing – Dry Moscato

Melons and Blackberries with Blackberry-Pistachio Sauce and Saffron-Rosewater Ice Cream

Yield 4 servings

¼ cup shelled unsalted pistachios

2 tbsp unsalted butter

1 cup blackberries

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp lime juice

2 tbsp Grand Marnier or Cointreau

1 (3 ¼ to 3 ½ -pound) cantaloupe, halved crosswise, seeded

1. Heat oven to 350°. Spread pistachios on a baking pan and toast until fragrant, about 4 minutes. Let cool, then using a mini chopper or food processor until finely grated.

2. Cut ¼ cup blackberries in half; set aside.

3. In a sauté’ pan, melt butter and add the remaining 3/4 cup blackberries, honey, Grand Marnier and lime juice and cook for 2-4 minutes and remove from heat. Sprinkle 1-2 tbsp of the pistachio dust and mix into the sauce.

4. Using a hand held blender or regular blender purée the blackberry sauce. Divide the blackberry sauce among 4 serving bowls.

5. Scoop out melon with a melon baller. Arrange balls and sliced blackberries in the serving bowls and lightly sprinkle with the pistachio dust.