What does summer taste like? Fresh strawberry pie. A salad of 10 different baby lettuces, snipped from the garden just before supper. Fried clams. Juicy tomatoes, sliced thinly and baked atop a homemade pizza.

Jim Stott and Jonathan King know all about the flavors of Maine’s shortest season. Their business, Stonewall Kitchen, got its start at a farmers market in 1991. They set up a table with an ever-changing selection of condiments fresh from their garden – herb-infused vinegars, blueberry jam, blackberry syrup.

They’ve since grown from a stovetop in their kitchen to a 50,000-square-foot complex on Route 1 in York. But their commitment to seasonal cooking hasn’t changed a bit, as evidenced in “Stonewall Kitchen Harvest,” which they co-wrote with Kathy Gunst.

“When we started, we never had a product list because we’d only make products with things that were available,” King said during a recent interview at Stonewall’s York headquarters. “We just really wanted to celebrate the seasons and the harvest and go back to our roots.”

“Harvest” celebrates fresh produce and seafood with simple, elegant menus. In summer, sweet apricots become a luscious dessert when grilled and topped with lavender honey and creme fraiche. Root-cellar staples shine in dishes such as Beet Napoleons stacked with herbed goat cheese or Osso Bucco with Mashed Celery Root. Sweet scallops wrapped in pancetta and served atop fresh basil risotto is a cook’s dream of summer.

“We’re so lucky. We can have strawberries any time of the year, blueberries, zucchini, but there’s nothing that tastes as great as the actual thing in season, right off the vine or right from the farmers market,” said King. “We’re not saying you shouldn’t eat tomatoes in January. We’re saying you should overeat them in August and enjoy – really enjoy – what’s in season.”

It’s a reflection of the way King and Stott live and cook. At their home in the seaside village of Cape Neddick, King tends extensive, pristine gardens, where many of the photographs in “Harvest” were taken. He landscapes with vegetables, edging beds with parsley, using lettuce as a groundcover, planting eggplants in the flowerbeds. This year, his seed-catalog order took up two pages of a legal pad.

“This is the lifestyle that we love and we wanted to share that,” King said.

So they teamed up with Gunst, a renowned cookbook author and former culinary at Food & Wine magazine who happens to be a longtime friend of Stott’s. She worked as the primary recipe writer and tester.

“We’re not good at the exacts. We both cook from here,” King said, moving his hands over his heart.

It was important that Gunst lives in South Berwick, as well. Though King and Stott are both Massachusetts natives, Maine is their home for all seasons – even winter.

“There’s an emotional tie to food during winter,” King said. “We live in this pretty cold climate and we have a pretty rough winter to get through. … We’re all Mainers and we’ve all gone through these winters.”

They all know the warm comfort of butternut squash soup, the craving for roast chicken and root vegetables, the allure of a stuffed pork roast. But they also revel in fritters made with corn straight off the cob, mussels steamed in wine and garlic and bright, summery fish tacos.

“I’m affected by the weather,” said Stott, who cooks “13 nights out of two weeks” – King cooks one huge meal in that time. “All winter long I’m doing all kinds of comfort things.”

Whatever the weather, and regardless of their increasingly busy schedules, they always cook a proper meal.

“We have to sit and have a real dinner,” Stott said. You can’t have a bowl of cereal for dinner. That’s not allowed. We have an appetizer, a salad, a full dinner. I love to eat and Jonathan loves to garden. There’s always something to cook with, either something fresh or something you put up or something from Stonewall Kitchen.”

King agrees, even if Stott isn’t doing the cooking.

“When I’m alone, I’m not going to eat a sub,” he said, laughing and rolling his eyes.

King and Stott are putting the finishing touches on their next cookbook, “Favorites,” which will be released next summer. It’s their personal “best-of” comfort foods with a gourmet twist. And they’re still growing the business. They’ve expanded their product line to include bath products, garden goodies and furnishings, moving Stonewall out of the kitchen and into the rest of the home. And they’ve opened Stonewall Caf?, which serves a seasonal menu, of course.

“Everyone thinks of us as the jam people or the jelly guys,” King said as he walked by a freezer the size of a truck bay during a tour of the plant, which smelled that day of mustard and dill. “Jim and I, we’re more than jam-makers.”

Kristen Andresen can be reached at 990-8287 and kandresen@bangordailynews.net.

Pancetta-Wrapped Scallops on Creamy Basil Risotto

Makes 4 main-course servings or 8 appetizer servings.

Creamy Basil Risotto (recipe follows)

1/2 cup all purpose flour

salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1 pound fresh sea scallops or diver scallops

4 to 6 ounces thinly sliced pancetta

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/3 cup minced fresh parsley

1 cup dry vermouth or dry white wine

Make risotto and keep warm.

Put flour on a plate and season liberally with salt and pepper.

Rinse scallops under cold water, drain and pat dry with paper towels.

To prepare the pancetta, make a slit in it so it can be laid out in a long, thin strip, unraveling the meat. Wrap a strip of pancetta around a scallop so the center of the scallop is enclosed by the meat (you should see a bit of white scallop on either side of the pink pancetta). Press the pancetta down into the scallop to help it adhere. Repeat with remaining scallops.

Dredge scallops in seasoned flour and set aside (this can be done several hours ahead of time; wrap in plastic and refrigerate until ready to cook).

In a large, heavy skillet, heat oil over high heat. Add half the garlic, stir briefly, and immediately add scallops to hot pan. Cook for 2 minutes, or until golden brown on one side. Carefully flip scallops over using tongs and scatter remaining garlic into the pan with 1 tablespoon butter. Cook for another 2 minutes. Add parsley and vermouth and simmer for 1 to 2 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the scallops to a warm serving plate and continue to reduce the vermouth for 1 minute. Add the remaining tablespoon of butter and whisk into the sauce. Cook for another 1 to 2 minutes, or until the butter is melted and the sauce is thickened. To serve, spoon warm risotto on a serving plate and top with scallops. Drizzle the sauce on top.

Cook’s note: When buying scallops, look for unprocessed, or “dry” scallops, which have no added water. Pancetta is a type of Italian bacon with a distinct flavor, in the shape of a pinwheel. Look for it in the refrigerated gourmet food section of the grocery store.

Creamy Basil Risotto

6 cups homemade chicken broth or 4 cups canned broth mixed with 2 cups water

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large shallot, finely chopped

2/3 cup packed fresh basil (julienne-style), plus several leaves for garnish

1/4 cup packed finely chopped parsley

salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1 cup Arborio or Bomba rice, or any good short-grain risotto rice

1/2 cup dry white wine

1 cup packed freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Pour the broth into a saucepan and warm over low heat.

In a medium, heavy saucepan, heat the oil over a low flame. Add the chopped shallot and cook 10 minutes, stirring frequently, until pale gold. Add basil, parsley, salt and pepper and cook for 1 minute. Add rice, stirring to coat each grain, and cook for about 30 seconds. Add the wine and simmer. Stir frequently and let the rice absorb all the wine before adding about 1 cup of the hot broth. The idea is to add liquid, then stir and stir and stir until just about all the liquid has been absorbed, and then add additional warm liquid. By the time you add the sixth cup of broth, the rice should be quite creamy and tender. Don’t worry if the risotto seems loose; that’s exactly what you want.

Remove from the heat and gently stir cheese into the rice. Taste for seasoning and add more salt and pepper if needed. Serve hot with the basil leaves on top.