Docsconz- The Blog

Sage

From Denison Farm purchased at The Saratoga Farmers Market

The Saratoga Outdoor Market is Open!

These fiddleheads are from Kilpatrick Family Farms. Many of my other favorite farms were back back today as well. It's always good to see old friends, but I was also excited to see a new vendor at the Saratoga Market - Dancing Ewe Farm with their wonderful Italian style cheeses. Their fresh sheep's milk ricotta is a personal favorite.

Bountiful Breaux Bridge

Before our foray for crawfish, we spent the better part of our day in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana - a charming small town in the heart of Cajun country where the street signs are still in French and the place where Scott Boswell gets his boudin for the wonderful "Beaux Bridge Benedict" he serves at his Jackson Square restaurant, Stanley. That place, a small grocery called Charlie-T's, makes their boudin artisanally daily in two varieties - pork and seafood. We bought some along with some Cajun spiced cracklins' and sat outside to sample them.The seafood boudin is good, but the pork is amazing. Even more amazing were the cracklin's - crisp, flavorful, nuggets of wonderful pork.

We arrived in Breaux Bridge on a beautiful spring day in time to have lunch at their most well known restaurant, the lovely Cafe Des Amis, owned by the former Louisiana state legislator, Dickie Breaux. The restaurant is well known for its Cajun cooking and crawfish, in particular is everywhere on the menu, as it should be given that Breaux Bridge is the home of the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival coming up in the beginning of May. Needless to say, we ordered a bunch of different dishes to try.

 

Some of the standouts included the duck and andouille gumbo, which came with sides of deviled mashed potatoes and rice to add to the gumbo, fried catfish with shrimp and crawfish etouffees, BBQ shrimp Pont Breaux Style, fried green tomatoes with crabmeat imperial sauce, crawfish  cornbread with crawfish etouffee, crabmeat stuffed mushrooms and shrimp kidder. Desserts really stood out as well, especially the white chocolate bread pudding and gateau sirop, a Cajun cane sugar syrup cake with pecans.

The food was excellent, but even more fun was chatting with Dickie Breaux and another prominant local, Roy Therriot, who founded a number of technology companies in Breaux Bridge as far back as 1973. They gave us a wonderful sense of what makes Breaux Bridge a very special place.

Dickie Breaux

Roy also brought us to his favorite place for cracklin's, Goula's Grocery, a small store on the outskirts of town. While there, we enjoyed a Cajun French serenade from a local songstress, a fitting cap to a wonderful afternoon.

Roy Therriot buying cracklins' at Goulas Grocery

Fine Food Find - Oyster Mushrooms

 

It had been more than a month since I had been at the Saratoga Springs Farmers Market. I already knew that Zehr and Sons Mushroom Farm sold wonderful fresh shiitake mushrooms, but now they had fabulous oyster mushrooms too. At $10 for a box, they are not cheap, but they are generously portioned, beautiful and delicious. I bought a box and determined to use them simply.

I made them with pappardelle pasta. I took the mushrooms, probably about a pound, broke them up into smaller pieces and sauteed them dry in a wok, initially over low heat and gradually increasing it. As the mushrooms started to cook, I added a squirt of EV Arbequina olive oil and 3 shallots sliced thin. As these items cooked I added a tablespoon of fresh chopped rosemary and 4oz of butter. The sauce was finished with half a cup of goat's milk yogurt from Gillis Acres Farm (we also made it to the Tory Farmers Market), a cup of fresh-grated Parmagiano-Reggiano and fresh-ground pepper. The pappardelle (500g) was cooked to al dente and finished in the mushroom sauce with s ladles (about a cup and a half) of generously salted pasta water. It was simple...and quite delicious in the way much Italian food is.

Taste of the Week - February 1st-27th: Bee Pollen

While the glowing health claims are quite dubious and there may be significant risk in eating bee pollen, especially for those with severe allergies to substances like ragweed or bees, bee pollen remains interesting to me from a culinary point of view. It has much of the flavor of honey without honey's overt sweetness and also has an interesting texture. I used some this week to brighten some Greek style whole milk yogurt from The Argyle Cheese Farmer. I purchased both products last week at the Saratoga Farmers Market. I can see it used in any number of applications in which I may desire a honey like flavor without the extra sweetness or calories. Any additional nutritional benefit would be gravy. How have you used or tried bee pollen?

Taste of the Week - February 14th-20th: Cereal

Yes, cereal. Not just any cereal, though. Frankly, I don't care for most cereals on the market. They are generally too high in carbs and simple sugars for my taste and either lack good texture or good taste. However, this cereal, Heritage Heirloom Whole Grains High Fiber from Nature's Path really stands out.

First of all, it is delicious with or without milk and with or without fruit. I like it best with non-homogenized whole milk from the nearby Battenville Creamery. It stays crisp in milk and has great flavor without being too sweet. While it has 24g of total carbohydrates per 30g serving, only 4g are sugars with 6g dietary fiber. The cereal also contains 4g per serving of protein. All in all, not bad for a breakfast cereal. While I believe the term "certified organic" has lost a lot of its meaning, all in all, I still prefer to eat "organic" than not. This is certified organic. The grains this is made from include wheat, spelt, oats, barley, millet and quinoa.

It seems fitting that with the Winter Olympics ongoing in Vancouver BC, my taste of the week would come from Canada. We purchased it, though, in New Hampshire at the Upper Valley Food Co-op while visiting our son for Dartmouth's Winter Carnival Weekend. While we can get other, less satisfying Nature's path cereals locally, for some reason this one isn't carried near us. As a result, we took advantage of the generally excellent Upper Valley Food Co-op and bought 5 bags of the cereal, unsure when we would return. Of course, the cereal was not the only item we purchased there. Their cheese department has a wonderful selection of Vermont and New Hampshire cheeses, many of which are hard to come by elsewhere and they carry a wide selection of my favorite beers - those from Unibroue, especially Fin du Monde. I was both surprised and taken aback at their seafood counter though. They have beautiful product and go so far as to employ a labeling system for their different seafood products as to whether they are considered sustainable, threatened or unsustainable, which I applaud. I was shocked, however, to discover that they actually sell fish that they have labeled as "unsustainable" such as Chilean Sea Bass and others.  I queried the saleswoman about it. her response was that as a member organization, all they could do is educate, thus the labeling system. If members want specific product, they have to sell it! I asked her if they would sell Panda meat if members requested it? She didn't answer. I don't understand why an organization generally devoted " to supporting social and environmental responsibility" as they say on their website doesn't act even more responsibly when it comes to selling fish at risk of extinction or fished by processes destroying ocean ecosystems? What concerns me the most is what kind of chance do these fish or ecosystems have if even the "good guys", the people who are supposed to be doing things responsibly, don't act responsible?

A Cheesy Valentine

Vermont Heart - Aged Goat Cheese with Bay Leaf from Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery

Cheese and Crackers

Some very good friends are visiting us this weekend from the Philadelphia area. In addition to themselves, they brought a number of lovely things with them including some beautiful cheeses, crackers and Dalmatia fig spread that they brought from the Ardmore Farmers Market. Amongst the cheeses were the creamy, smooth and delicious Delice de Borgogne and the rich, blue St. Agur.  Each cheese served atop La Panzanella Rosemary Croccantini was marvelous. The Delice was also lovely with a dollop of the fig spread. I'm looking forward to sampling some of the other delights they brought as well.

I'm still scratching my head though, as to how these lovely foods from France and elsewhere, as wonderful as they are, can come from a place outside of Philadelphia that calls itself a "farmers market." I fear that the term "farmers market" is being co-opted, like so many other terms that start off meaning something specific and wind up becoming relatively meaningless. While that has yet to become commonplace where I live, it appears to be all too common elsewhere. In my point of view a "farmers market" is not a "farmers market" unless it is selling only foodstuff directly from the farms from which they were grown or raised. That definition can be stretched to the production of artisanal food products so long as they are sold directly by the artisan. Anything else, though it may be a wonderful market, is quite simply not a "farmers market." This opinion in no way is meant to disparage The Ardmore "Farmers Market" or other markets that sell items like the wonderful ones our guests so kindly brought. It is a fine market, however, It should call itself something other than a "farmers market," lest the term continue to lose all real meaning.

Goose

I recently took the opportunity to buy a goose for the holidays from Mary Pratt of Elihu Farm at The Saratoga Farmers Market. The goose was an American heirloom variety - a Buff. I cooked it following instructions from Julia Child with a variation in that rather than steam it in a Dutch Oven, I cooked it in the CVap oven. As wonderful as the flesh turned out, the fat was even more special. I could not make enough roasted potatoes when they were cooked in the fat along with some salt and ground cumin.

Shiitake

This beautiful mushroom along with others came from Zehr & Sons Mushroom Growers via the Saratoga Farmers Market. I used them the other night when my son came home from college. I sliced them, sautéed them with olive oil, garlic and butter, added wilted spinach and Strascinati pasta (orecchiette-like) that had been cold-soaked in saffron water for three hours and finished in the pan. The dish was topped with fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. It was simple and delicious.

Marina di Chioggia

This is an Italian heirloom pumpkin from Chioggia, the same place that produced the famous beets of that name. This pumpkin came from Sheldon Farms in Salem, N.Y. and was the one I photographed roasted for my "Taste of the Week."

At the Market - October 31st, 2009

Rainbow chard from Denison Farm at the Troy Waterfront Farmers Market in Troy, N.Y.

At the Market - October 20th, 2009

Roughly the same size and with many of the same vendors as the Saturday market on Magazine Street in downtown New Orleans, the Tuesday Market at Tulane University Square near Audobon Park somehow felt a little more energized to me. Perhaps that was because the day was a little warmer or because I started to get a better handle on the market and its products or perhaps it just was. Whatever the reason, my wife and I enjoyed the market and loosened our purse-strings to purchase a few items to bring home with us including some beautiful fresh lemongrass and ancho chiles from Nicholas Usner's Grow.Farm in Bush, Louisiana (they also had some beautiful cardoons and persimmons I would have loved to buy), mayhaw and other jams from Whitewood Farms, a  creole tomato (local heirloom) and fresh, green peanuts and pecans from The Indian Springs (Mississippi) Farmers Association. We tasted their boiled as well as the green (fresh and raw) peanuts. The boiled peanuts were great, but appeared much less likely to survive our trip home. The green peanuts made us understand how peanuts got the name "pea" as they tasted very much like green peas. I would have loved to buy much more including some fresh shrimp, meats and cheeses, but we could only carry so much and heavily favored those things we could transport more easily and safely.

At the Market - October 17th, 2009

Crescent City Farmers Market - New Orleans, Louisiana

It was a beautiful sunny morning on Magazine Street in New Orleans, albeit slightly chilly. The market was smaller than I expected, but still vibrant with plenty of interesting and great quality produce. Since this was the beginning of our trip, we didn't buy much, limiting ourselves to some newly in-season satsumas, meyer lemons, pralines and blueberry jam. The temptation to buy much more was great.

Galeux d’Eysines

This is one of my favorite pumpkins. Having originated in France, it is funky to look at and delicious to eat. This specimen came from Sheldon Farms in Salem, N.Y.

Butterfish

These extremely fresh butterfish were purchased last weekend from the fishmonger at The Union Square Greenmarket. My friend, Joe Bavuso prepared them with a simple pan frying served with a little extra virgin olive oil, lemon and salt and pepper. They were delicious!

Celery

Autumn = Pumpkins

Does any one agricultural item shout autumn more than a pumpkin? These were photographed this past Saturday at The Union Square Greenmarket in NYC.

At the Market - September 26th, 2009

These seedless Jupiter grapes from Buzzard Crest Vineyards sold at the Union Square Greenmarket in NYC are the most delicious eating grapes that I have had in some time. Their other varieties are also wonderful. At $4.50/lb they aren't cheap, but they are so worth it!

Peachy

At this time of year the best peaches are generally behind us. I just tasted what may have been the best peach I tasted all summer. My wife brought it and a few pounds back with her from Hilton Head, S.C. where the grower said that they have had their best peach season in years. They were all excellent, but this last one was extra special -perhaps because it was the last? I cut it into small bites to pan-grill with a little butter to serve my son, who loves peaches, but can't eat them unless they are cooked because he has an oral allergy syndrome.