Some more spring stuff

This past Saturday I went to the Greenmarket hoping to see the first true signs of Spring, green vegetables. I woke up early hoping that if there did happen to be some signs of Spring that I wouldn’t miss out.

Luckily, I was rewarded with bunches of garlicky smelling ramps, and nice plum looking green asparagus with faintly purple tops. There was also an abundance of interesting salad greens and some of the usual pears, apples, mushrooms, potatoes etc…

I wanted to make use of the new Spring produce in a Spring inspired dinner. I came up with a menu of

‘Green’ risotto with asparagus, carrots and chard stems. It gets the greenness from a puree of pea and ramp greens. I thought this was probably the best tasting dish of the night.

The next dish was a salad of red spinach, mache and amaranth with soft shell crabs, pickled ramps and blood orange. This was ok, I think I was a bit too heavy handed with the salt. I think I’d like to try to refine this a but more and perhaps give a coating to the crab, I really like the idea of cornmeal.


Then there was my take on beef with broccoli. I coated a beef tenderloin with five spice powder then browned and roasted it. I served this with pan roasted shiitake and oyster mushrooms, a broccoli ginger puree, and a chili oil that was a bit too runny for this slanted plate.


Dessert is not pictured but was a pear and ricotta tart with maple syrup and frangelico. It turned out really well.

I’m looking forward to see how I can use more green vegetables in my cooking during this incredibly green season.

Market Update

With the weather starting to get warmer, I was hoping for some green spring vegetables at the Greenmarket this weekend. Unfortunately, there were none to be had, and I was left to suffer another Spring weekend without any wild asparagus (I've been craving vegetables lately.)

However, I did receive some good news. The people at Mountain Sweetberry Farms had a very tiny bunch of ramps at their stand and told me that ramps, and perhaps some other spring bounty should be available next weekend. I smell a farm to table dinner coming...

I kept my spending at a minimum and made myself a Greenmarket breakfast:


Fried egg over german butterball potatoes, bacon, crosnes, apples, pea greens and mustard seed. Eggs and bacon were from Violet Hill Farms and potatoes, crosnes and pea greens were from Mountain Sweetberry.

Mexico Part I

Loving Mexican Markets

It’s been about two weeks since I’ve come back from Mexico, and although I haven’t written much about the experience, I have spent a good amount of time reflecting on it. Fun-wise I had an excellent trip. I saw some things I wanted to see, did a decent amount of going out, won a bunch of scrabble games, didn’t get stressed out and tired, and did a lot of eating. Obviously it is fun to have fun, but anyone that knows me understands that now, whenever I travel, the focus of any trip will always be food.

So what do I think of my eating experiences in Mexico?

I loved the street food and a lot of the more low end food we had and I was disappointed by the high end food. I was also extremely happy with the markets and grocery stores in Mexico City. Mexico has an incredibly long growing season, which means that fruits and vegetables are abundant. This also makes Mexico a fairly large exporter of fresh produce to the United States. However, while I feel guilty buying Mexican produce in New York (I’m not a big fan of the carbon footprint it leaves and would much rather purchase New York produce in New York) I have no problem about buying Mexican produce at markets in Mexico, I actually get really excited by the idea. Actually, the amazingness of the Mexican farmers markets is really what spurred my disappointment in the fine dining restaurants—there were little to no vegetables in any of the dishes they served.

Part of what I love about eating at restaurants in New York these days is the distinct influence of the seasons. Much of the produce you see in the Greenmarkets will actually wind up on your plate in a restaurant. Chefs really get to think and be creative with fruits and vegetables and the dishes they create for us are complete, pairing a protein with produce that complements it, and elevating the flavors of everything on the plate.

The finer restaurants in Mexico however, did not do this. Although I was intrigued by some of the combinations on restaurant menus, I was underwhelmed by what showed up on the plate. Certainly the food was good, but the beautiful looking produce I saw at the markets was conspicuously absent. The Duck confit with mole that I had at one restaurant was pleasing for the first few bites, but after a while I didn’t want to eat a duck breast and sauce, I wanted leeks or lettuce, or anything to alleviate the heaviness of the dish. There are several other examples of this, an osso bucco with Mexican Spices served with fettuccine; I also remember a rack of lamb seeming particularly lonely.

This isn’t to say that cheaper Mexican food is loaded with vegetables, its not. There are condiments, salsas and tiny accompaniments, but I don’t feel like I must have vegetables when I’m buying a 3 dollar torta, I do when I spend 20 dollars on a lamb dish.

Perhaps this is why some of the people I cooked for during the course of the trip were excited by some of the things I came up with. We took a day surveying a couple of markets and I wanted to cook a meal with the stuff we found. I think I was able to sue my own style with the Mexican ingredients to come up with some fairly interesting dishes.

Our dinner menu was as follows:

Roasted figs with bacon, mountain cheese and honey

Cornmeal crusted Squash Blossoms stuffed with avocado, leeks, tomatoes and Serrano

Squash with ground beef, cinnamon, cumin, raisins, almonds, cashews and a salty cheese
(I’m not really sure what either of the two cheeses we bought at the Market were called but they tasted really good)

Rack of lamb with peas, favas and huitlacoche (blue corn fungus) tequila MMMMM...Huitlacoche...The Mexican Truffle?

Fruit salad with mint and melted sugar plums

To Be Continued (with more pictures and some more ranting)

CORN!!!

If you are reading this on Friday October 26th 2007, you still have a chance to snap up some of the last corn of the season. During my weekly trip to the Union Square Farmer's Market I asked one of the farmers about his late season corn. I mentioned that I thought it was unusual to have corn so late into the fall, and he told me that the late season corn was a result of the global warming heat that we've all been feeling. He then shed a tear.

He also gave me the good news that there will be one more week of corn available at the market.


Sooooooooooo. Buy some corn! all you really need to do with greenmarket corn is smother it in butter or olive oil, add a little sea salt and pepper and grill or roast. You will be in for a treat.

Another combination that I love is corn and pesto. It goes great with just about any crisp skinned fish.

Buy Corn!

Cooking Classes

As I continue to toy with the idea of trying to find a food related job, I have been trying to expand my food world knowledge by reading, dining out and taking classes. I haven’t taken too many classes yet but there was the Masters in French cooking class over the summer and most recently, my class on how to roast suckling pig.

Last Friday I went to the Inn on West 23rd to take a 4 hour course on Roasting suckling pig and cooking some of the traditional suckling pig meal accompaniments. The class was fun but I wish I would have been able to be a bit more hands on with the pig. Time constraints mean that the instructor pretty much dealt with the pig (which seems fairly easy) while the students prepared the sides. This was, however, the first time that I’ve been able to experience the joy of suckling pig in its whole form, and yes, the head was still attached (it’s a good think too.) I managed to try suckling pig trotter, cheek, rib, loin, ear, tongue and brain. My favorite part was actually the tongue, it was incredibly tender, piggy and flavorful and once it’s cut out of the mouth, you kind of forget that you’re eating a tongue!

Anyway, I’m taking a class next Saturday taught by the Ideas in Food tandem on “steak and eggs” in which we will investigate and prepare steak and eggs in various forms. If it’s anything like what their pig and apple class looked like I’m in for a treat. (Click on link for something bizarrely awesome.)


In relation to yesterday’s post, here is a meal composed of ingredients solely from the farmers market:


It’s Mako on top of cranberry beans with bacon and sage in a spicy tomato broth. Simple and delicious and I have enough left over for lunch tomorrow.


On a final note…The 2008 Michelin guide to New York was released. You can see the starred restaurants here. The starrings seem to be completely arbitrary (almost as if the Michelin people skipped half of the restaurants in New York) and are not to be trusted. I have no idea how accurate Michelin is in Europe but their New York guide is of no use to me at all.

Go to the Greenmarket!!!

If you are someone that doesn’t go to the Union Square Greenmarket on a regular basis, I am urging you to make a trip there this week. Despite the unseasonable heat, fall is starting and the variety of produce offered at the Greenmarket is starting to turn over. What makes this week especially fun is the fact that is has been so warm recently. This means that the farmers are still bringing in some of their summer crops that might not usually be available at this time of year. Even if you don’t cook, it’s worth going to Union Square. I guarantee there will be something you like in a close to pristine form.


On my visit I got very excited and a little overwhelmed. Here is a delicious short rib dish (Sunday dinner and probably also lunch throughout the week) with a few alterations based on what looked good. It involves braised short ribs, purple cauliflower and sunchoke puree, caramelized Cippolini onions, roasted baby carrots, heirloom tomatoes, roasted white beets, radish greens, and celery leaf, all topped off with some of the braising liquid.

It's Turkey Eating Time

I tend to overlook turkey as a viable dietary option. For whatever reason, other than during Thanksgiving season, I never eat turkey. I don’t dislike turkey; I love turkey legs, and I really enjoy making a mish mash of my mom’s leftover turkey and gravy from our holiday meal, but I never seem to find myself eating turkey other than at Thanksgiving time.

Luckily for me, a couple of friends (unknowingly) have led me back to turkey land. Last week one friend invited me over for dinner and cooked a delicious pasta dish with turkey meatballs made from DiPaolo’s turkey in the Greenmarket. Then, I was having dinner with a friend on Friday who told me she had a turkey craving. I took these two occasions as a sign that I should buy, cook and eat some turkey.

On my next trip to the farmers market, I made sure to seek out the DiPaolo’s stand. If you’ve ever been to the greenmarket you probably know them as the stand that always has something delicious smelling on the grill. You then probably notice that it’s a turkey stand and pass it by, something I have done many a time (big mistake.) This past Saturday I finally decided to buy some turkey sausage to make meatballs for Sunday dinner and subsequent workday lunches. I really enjoy the strong, fennel-y flavor of the turkey sausage and appreciate the fact that the DiPaolo’s people season their ground turkey so well that I don’t really have to do anything to it to make it good.

Here I serve turkey meatballs with tomato chutney stuffed squash blossoms and a pistachio pesto (I made the smear more to be funny that for appearance.) For lunch, I’ve been eating the meatballs over roasted corn with nut free pesto, (can’t be brining nuts to school with all the allergic children these days) heirloom tomatoes, and wild Italian arugula.I find that the strong taste of the turkey goes incredibly well with pesto, something that can often overwhelm other flavors.

While these dishes might sound, and perhaps even look good, the fact of the matter is that you can’t really go wrong with DiPaolo’s turkey. Buy it at your local greenmarket today!!!!!

Greenmarketing

Shopping at the Union Square Greenmarket recently has been more fun than ever. I started seriously cooking about a year ago and for the most part didn’t really know what I was doing. Since then however my knowledge of food has grown by leaps and bounds and now, I can actually think of ways to use many of the Greenmarket ingredients that I see. I don’t even have to go in with a plan or shopping list anymore. I feel like a kid in a toy store if the toy store had lots of perfect food products that can be eaten.

I guess I’m writing about the Greenmarket because I actually found myself there twice this weekend and I might even go again on Monday morning. I went on Friday because this past Thursday night I made the impromptu decision to have people over for dinner on Friday night. I wanted to make something with mostly Greenmarket ingredients that would be light and simple—its starting to get too warm for multi-course tastings.

I came up with these—


This is a salad of mixed greens, frisee and sorrel with toasted hazelnuts, honey chevre croutons (The honey chevre people are there on Fridays and the honey chevre is extraordinarily good) and a raspberry/mustard vinaigrette.



This is Sea Bass with caramelized lemon served over sugar snaps, baby carrots, and red and green tomatoes all tossed with lemon oil and Muscat vinegar.




We then finished the meal eating wild strawberries dipped in chocolate sauce and leftover calvados ice cream.