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It’s so easy adjusting to the good life — defined, for our purposes, as a farmers market with four kinds of nectarines and three types of peaches. With raw flavors this bold, the eating couldn’t be better. Sweet peaches cut into a simple bowl of yogurt made for a perfect breakfast. Sweet-sour nectarines sliced and layered with tangy cooked apricots and vanilla-infused cream made for a delicious dessert.
And don’t forget savory — we marked nectarines quarters on the grill and tossed with a basil and jalapeno vinaigrette. Sounds strange, but I find that smoky heat enriches the the fruit flesh, making them perfect alongside marinated flank steak and chilled soba noodles. Good living, indeed.
Grilled Nectarines
5 nectarines or peaches, about 2 pounds / juice of 1 lime / 1 tsp sugar / 1 tsp ginger, minced /chili paste to taste / 1 tsp fresh basil, sliced thinly
Halve nectarines and remove pits. Stir together remaining ingredients and marinate nectarines 30 minutes, then grill over medium heat until flesh is marked and soft, about 8 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix together dressing ingredients: 3 tbls rice vinegar / 3 tbls olive oil / 1 tsp jalapeno, minced / 2 tsp fresh basil, chopped / 1 tsp lime juice / 1 tsp sugar / salt & pepper to taste / chili paste to taste
Toss with grilled nectarines and serve in a salad with arugula and watercress, or alongside grilled meat if you like. Adapted from Jerry Traunfeld.
It took many an unsuccessful attempt to get a handle on cooking aubergines, those ubiquitous Barney-shaped eggplants. Not so with their Japanese kin. These slender beauties were at the farmers market this weekend in northern California, and I couldn’t have been happier. I like cutting Japanese eggplants into beef stir fries but even easier is grilling them a la Jerry Traunfeld, who dips the halves in a soy marinade, then grills over a moderate flame until silky. Finished, they’re a rich, delicious accompaniment to many Asian foods.
Grilled Eggplant with Rosemary
4 medium-sized eggplants, halved lengthwise / 3 tbls soy sauce / 3 tbls olive oil / 1 tsp rosemary, minced / 1 clove garlic, minced
Stir together soy sauce, olive oil, rosemary, and garlic. Coat eggplant flesh with marinade and let rest 10 minutes. Grill eggplant halves over medium heat (about 300 degrees), flesh side down, turning after 5 minutes or so. Continue grilling until the flesh is silky, another 5-10 minutes depending on heat. Serve immediately. Feeds 4 as a side. Adapted from Jerry Traunfeld.
How much do I love that the neighborhood farmers markets are back? Columbia City opened yesterday to brilliant sunshine and the Broadway market starts up again on Sunday, May 10, among others. Check the Seattle Neighborhood Farmers Market site for further details.
Also, Seattle Tilth hosts their yearly edible plant sale at Meridian Park in Wallingford this weekend. It’s a great chance to get your summer vegetable starts if you’re like me and chronically behind in life, or if you’re on the hunt for unusual herbs.
It’s low tide for local, seasonal produce, but this cabbage slaw keeps things pretty interesting for us, no fooling. We’ve enjoyed the slaw folded into fish tacos, wrapped in a tortilla with pork and beans, and eaten on a soft sesame seed bun with chopped barbequed chicken. It’s creamy, tangy, and flavorful, and subs in nicely for your usual green salad.
I especially like the Savoy and purple cabbages from Nash’s.
Recipe: Simple Cabbage Slaw
¼ purple cabbage, sliced very thin / ¼ Savoy cabbage, sliced very thin / 3 leaves dinosaur kale, stemmed and sliced very thin / 1 carrot, grated / 2 tbls mayo / 1 tbls vegetable oil / 2 tsps dijon mustard / 2 tsps cider vinegar / pinch cayenne / salt & pepper
Toss sliced cabbages, kale, and grated carrots. Mix mayo, oil, mustard, vinegar, and cayenne until emulsified. Toss oil and vinegar mixture with greens. Correct salt and pepper as desired. Serves 2-4, depending on use.
Weeks of travel, long work days, and things were starting to slip around here — we’re talking reheated frozen sauces over pasta, a pork tenderloin from Costco, the sort of passable cooking you get by on. That was not going to work for dinner on New Year’s. Time to get my game back on, and this ravioli fit the bill perfectly. It’s made from mostly local ingredients, including lots of herbs from the garden, and pasta that’s handmade from local eggs and Northwest flour.
Like anything with fresh pasta, of course, this recipe requires something of a time commitment, or speed things up using sheets of purchased fresh pasta dough. Once the raviolis are sealed and floured, the cooking goes quickly. And the eating goes fast too if you don’t pace yourself.
We savored ours with a glass of champagne. If you can’t do ravioli this time, consider making a risotto using these sturdy winter flavors.
Recipe: Butternut Squash Ravioli with Herb Butter Sauce
Fresh pasta dough made of 2 eggs & 1 cup flour, or purchased / 1 cup pureed butternut squash / 2 tbls goat cheese / ¼ cup breadcrumbs / 2 tsp fresh thyme, finely minced / 4 tbls butter / 1 tbls fresh parsley, finely minced / 1 tbls fresh sage, finely minced / salt & pepper / ¼ cup toasted hazelnuts, minced, optional / Parmesan cheese, optional
Prepare the pasta dough by mixing together then kneading the eggs and flour for 8 minutes. Roll out on to your pasta machine’s thinnest setting, sprinkle with flour, then set aside. Mix together squash, goat cheese, breadcrumbs, and 1 tsp thyme. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Assemble raviolis, using a generous teaspoonful of squash filling per ravioli. Bring water to a boil and cook raviolis 4-5 minutes, until al dente, then drain.
Meanwhile, melt butter with sage, parsley, and remaining thyme in a pan over medium heat and cook until butter is bubbling and starting to brown. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Toss cooked ravioli with butter sauce, plate, and sprinkle with more pepper plus hazelnuts and Parmesan cheese if you like. Makes about 40 ravioli. Adapted from Deborah Madison (goddess).
Sourcing: Eggs and winter squash from multiple local producers. Hazelnuts from Holmquist Farms in Lynden, Wash. Goat cheese from Port Madison and others. Fresh pasta from La Pasta, available at the University (Saturday) farmers market. Parsley, sage, and thyme keep their foliage through Seattle winters — and ours weather the recent storms without too much trouble. And repurpose that day-old bread for fresh breadcrumbs.
There’s so much to be thankful for this year, like that my only assignment for tonight’s dinner was to bring the pumpkin pie. Nobody’s surprised that I quickly reassigned pie-making duties to Charlie, who’s a much better baker than me, and gave myself the even easier task of prettying up the table.
Seriously, though, I feel thankful for so many things. I’m especially thankful for all of the local farmers and chefs who work so hard to make sure that we eat well all year round, and who brighten our lives in other ways too, like the lovely Hmong lady at the Pike Place Market who hand tied the kale flowers, above, for me yesterday. What a privilege it is to live in this little corner of the world.
Hope your turkey day is a wonderful one.
My mother-in-law sent Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken a year ago — she was on it before the book was even available stateside — but it still took a New York Times story earlier this month before Hopkinson was solidly on my radar. I’m with the program now, having sampled his savory mince, and having realized just how many of his many recipes are inspired by a single ingredient. I find him especially handy when deliberating over all the pretty but random stuff that got picked up at the farmers market. This particular recipe was perfect for a pile of slim leeks. There are just five essential ingredients, and you have them all. Even better, the whole thing takes minutes to prepare and is interesting enough to serve with a nice dinner, like we did at last weekend’s turkey warm-up.
Recipe: Leeks Vinaigrette
1 hard-boiled egg / 5-6 small leeks, about 1 pound /1 tsp dijon mustard / 1 tbls red wine vinegar / 2 tbls salad oil / 1 tsp chives, optional, minced
Finely mince the egg. Cut leeks an inch into the green portion, then slice in half lengthwise and rinse out mud. Blanch leeks in salted boiling water until tender-crisp, about 5-7 minutes depending on thickness, then cool. Whisk together the mustard, vinegar, and oil. Pour vinagrette over the cut leeks and top with egg and chives if using. Feeds 4 as a side. Serve immediately.
At the bottom of next Tuesday’s ballot is a new tax levy to fund basic structural updates to the Pike Place Market, Seattle’s original farmers market. The levy would cost the average city homeowner just $256 over six years. So how can you go wrong? It’s an investment an old Seattle landmark that stands for local food. In the grand scheme of things, the levy is a tiny bite.
But consider this. The Market occupies prime real estate and draws phenomenal foot traffic — some 10 million visitors per year. Based on those numbers you’d expect it to be a thriving business. A dynamic, self-sustaining entity. Yet the Market’s been unwilling or unable to make capital improvements to its aging facility since the 1970s, when Seattle taxpayers last upgraded it.
So now the place is in such bad shape it needs to be “saved”.
In recent years some have accused the Market of poor management. One particularly poignant example was the Market Basket program, a CSA subscription that incorporated seasonal produce from twenty-some local farms. In 2007, the CSA program lost $74,000 on 500 subscriptions. The PI reported that farmers were so upset by how the program was run that some quit outright and others threatened to picket. Program administrators blamed the farmers. The program ended that year.
So I thought I’d pay a visit and see how things felt; I needed corn and chantrelles for dinner anyway. While browsing the stalls I noted that many of the goods were truly local — jars of honey, berry jams, brilliantly colored dahlias. But a more critical survey suggested that a certain percentage of the produce had probably been grown some place warmer, like California. Sure, it all comes from a farmer. But so does the stuff at the grocery store.
And strangely, the local farmers you know and love are relegated to tables on the street, outside the main structure. Only Alvarez Farm was there on my visit, with their beautiful organic eggplants and peppers, under a tent set up next to a garbage dumpster. It wasn’t immediately clear to me how upgraded plumbing and electrical would benefit Alvarez and other struggling area farmers. Maybe a roof?
As a voter I don’t appreciate being backed into a corner and being made to feel I’m somehow at fault if we have to turn out the lights on an old Seattle landmark. And that’s a big part of why I’m still undecided on this particular ballot issue. I would love to see the Market remain a collection of small locally-owned and -operated businesses. But it concerns me that Market leadership may not work well with actual farmers. That they can’t keep the place up despite a premier commercial setting. If there weren’t a dozen other great farmers markets in neighborhoods across the city, I might feel differently. But you can buy local at plenty of other places in town, and since Prop. 1 does nothing to change the conditions under which the current problems arose, I’ve got some deciding to do.
Every week another farmers market shuts down for winter, making it harder and harder to find your favorite growers. So I was happy to find a selection of produce from the Carnation, Wash.-based Local Roots Farm at the Madison Market co-op yesterday. Local Roots is just two years in existence but produces some of the finest produce around these parts, in my humble opinion. I especially appreciate the variety of their offerings, which makes eating during the cold seasons that much more interesting. Last week they were the only ones selling raddichio at the Broadway market, for example, which I used in a risotto with winter squash. Hopefully the co-op connection helps the farmers to keep doing what they’re so good at, coaxing tasty vegetables out of local soil.
These lovely pics, snapped by my friend Julianna at yesterday’s Broadway market, pretty well tell the story. Tomatoes, corn and eggplant have been relegated to sideshow status and cold season crops have taken over. The variety right now is excellent — we’re talking broccoli, collards, leeks, lettuces, pumpkins, root crops, plus apples and a selection of pears. But stone fruits and berries seem to be gone for the year. Time to start storing those acorns.
