Market Report

Akasha Richmond of Akasha Restaurant is shopping for summer fruit at the market. She loves the wide variety of stone fruit and especially the Snow Queen Nectarines from Art Lange and Honeycrisp farms, but she is also happy to see figs that she uses in salads, wraps in prosciutto and turns into jams and chutneys. For easy summer entertaining she suggests toasting some ciabatta bread, layering it with pecorino cheese and drizzling it with fig jam or fig chutney.

David Karp writes the Market Watch column for the Los Angeles Times Food section. He's thrilled to find a unique hybrid of plum and cherry at Murray Farms called Pixie Sweet. The fruit is smaller than a plum with a beautiful flesh and small pit. It's been called everything from a cherry plum to a cherrum to a chum. You can find cherry plums at Whole Foods in the LA Area where they will be marketed as "Verry Cherry Plums."