In mid-July, the FoodNetwork.com stated that summer produce won’t last long, and suggested that viewers “Make the most of it with our best recipes for tomatoes, corn, watermelon, zucchini, green beans and peaches.” And the website does just that by offering recipes like zucchini gratin, and cherry tomato salad with buttermilk-basil dressing, proving that even the most common and abundant fresh produce items can be given a dressed-up appearance and flavor.

But there is also an extreme side to the ways that chefs are using fresh produce items that are in season and readily available. Besides giving them an edge over competitive eating establishments, they can gain personal acclaim for their techniques.

For example, David Bouley, Chef Grant Achatz, chef and owner of Alinea Next in Chicago, has heightened his profile by using molecular gastronomy, also known as progressive cuisine. Talented chefs are able to elevate ingredients to ‘gourmet’ status by simply applying some imagination, as well as their professional touch.founder of Bouley and Brushstroke Restaurants in New York City whips up a luncheon tasting menu that reads like a gourmet dictionary: jumbo French white asparagus and roasted green asparagus with pencil asparagus, basil dressing in a comté cloud carpaccio of kampachi, big eye tuna and striped amberjack prepared in a Mediterranean manner, salad of Boston Bibb, red watercress, fresh Hawaiian hearts of palm, julienne of Royal Trumpet mushrooms.

And if that’s not enough of a mouthful, there is molecular gastronomy, also referred to as progressive cuisine, which is what has helped Chef Grant Achatz gain worldwide acclaim. His Chicago restaurant, Alinea, has won numerous accolades, and Chef Achatz himself has won an overwhelmingly long list of awards from prominent culinary institutions and publications.

In April 2011, Chef Achatz opened Next, his second Chicago restaurant, which has a unique twist in that meal “tickets” are presold through the company’s Facebook or Twitter pages. The tickets sold out almost immediately when they first became available, and then they were being aggressively scalped at much higher prices. The company has since changed its usage policy regarding how tickets can be passed on or sold to those other than the actually buyers.

Chef Achatz, who is only in his mid-30s, already has a three Michelin star rating under his belt for Alinea. In her article in The New York Times on Feb. 15, 2011, titled “The Perfect Menu. Now Change It,” Julia Moskin describes what can be expected on the Next menu in the future: “Just to set the bar a little higher for himself, and make the creative process more invigorating, each menu for Next will draw from a different place and time. So, rather than the earthbound categories of Japanese, Italian or Peruvian, the food will evoke cloudier concepts: Kyoto in springtime; Palermo in 1949; Hong Kong in far-off 2036. A menu might be designed around a single day — say, the Napa Valley on Oct. 28, 1996, the day Chef Achatz started work at the French Laundry, where he remained until 2001.”

The menu at Next changes completely every three months. As of this writing it was featuring a “Next Sicily” menu, which, exactly like the dishes one would find in most Sicilian homes, is jam-packed with fresh produce items such as are included in the caponata, the blood orange granita and the charred grilled artichokes, which diners have described as very rustic with a home-prepared flavor.

“Creative culinary geniuses like Grant Achatz and David Bouley have been finding new ways to use what’s been around since the dawn of time,” said Charlie Eagle, vice president of business development for Southern Specialties in Pompano Beach, FL. “We look at gourmet preparations as a launching pad to developing new approaches to flavor profiles. These chefs are creating things like asparagus foam, and using it as an accent for their presentations. They take a sprig of a tree branch, ignite it and blow it out to create smoke for another accent. There are now entire schools where chefs are using science in their approach to create foams, gelatins and other new textures. These guys are doing some really wild and creative things with the exact foods that have been around forever. Presentation is a large part of the gourmet experience. We eat with all of our senses.”

Brian Peixoto, sales manager of Lakeside Organic Gardens LLC, headquartered in Watsonville, CA, concurred, adding, “The demand is definitely out there for new and different products. As long as we’ve had fire, humans have been cooking, and that’s been going on for a long time.”

He noted how interesting it is to imagine how people have tried to cook many items in a lot of different ways over the years.

“Heck, I ate some pickled nettle the other day, and that was wild,” he said. “I think many gourmet chefs out there are constantly trying to come up with something new and different, something exciting. Steamed organic broccoli is great, for example. It’s delicious, nutritious and, of course, I highly recommend you eat it, but I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as exciting. If I’m at a new restaurant for the first time and they bring me out a side dish of fresh pan-braised rainbow carrots with tops, well now they’ve got my attention.”