Playing With Your Food – Page 6

Playing With Your Food – Week 6

Jul 232014

S’mores experimentation with Sweet Lydia’s marshmallows

“Playing With Your Food” is a weekly post highlighting a few of the many great uses for the wide range of produce and artisan food at the Salem Farmers’ Market, a Salem Main Streets project. While we can never predict exactly what our farms will be able to bring each week, we do our best to reflect some of the fun items we’ve found recently and what’s likely to be available for the upcoming week. Hopefully this will give you a few new ideas to play with, and inspire you to try some new things at the market.

Bruschetta with edible flowers from Maitland

I try to be practical at the Farmers’ Market. I look for ingredients that will help me cover the basics, or that I can use in a few different meals, or that are specific to the season. But summer is also a time for parties and get-togethers, and sometimes you need something a little more special to spice things up (or to cover up the fact that it is WAY too hot to spend more than 5 minutes in the kitchen). Thankfully, the market has a lot of options that will cover you for special occasions, or regular days that just need to feel special. Here are a just a few things we’ve been playing with recently:

Edible Flowers

Did you ever notice those beautiful little plastic boxes full of flowers at the Maitland Mountain Farm stand? Did you realize they were full of EDIBLE FLOWERS? Well, they are, and the folks at Maitland can tell you all about the different types. You can sprinkle them on top of pretty much anything – pasta, soup, salad, or bruschetta. Almost too pretty to eat! Almost.

Fancy Cheeses

In addition to the delicious artisan cheeses of Wolf Meadow Farm, everyone’s favorite green grocer Milk and Honey always has an array of interesting cheeses at their market stand. I always love to see what new products they’ve brought! This week, we tried this amazing honey lavender fromage blanc made with unsalted goat’s milk cheese. It was absolutely delicious and surprisingly light, perfect for a summer snack on crackers or toast, or used to substitute ricotta in one of our favorite summer appetizers. Why don’t you sprinkle a few edible flowers on there while you’re at it?

Marshmallows

Seriously, a farmers’ market that has marshmallows? If you’ve ever had a marshmallow from Sweet Lydia’s, you wouldn’t question it. They are absolutely out-of-this-world and they CAN be roasted – though they melt a little faster than store-bought marshmallows, so keep your eye on them. Roasting them under a broiler actually does very nicely, especially if you live in Salem and don’t have access to a fire pit. Our household was split between whether the raspberry or the coconut was better roasted (psst, it was the raspberry).

This is only a small sliver of what’s available – we didn’t even touch on the chocolate bread at When Pigs Fly Bread, or Jodi Bee Bakes’ ridiculously good gluten-free and vegan cupcakes, or the infamous “turducken cookie” at The Cookie Monstah! What are your favorite “special occasion” treats from the Farmers’ Market?

Squiiish…

Playing with Your Food 2014 – Week 5

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Jul 172014

Broccoli Rabe at Heaven’s Harvest Farm – Week 5

“Playing With Your Food” is a weekly post highlighting a few of the many great uses for the wide range of produce and artisan food at the Salem Farmers’ Market. While we can never predict exactly what our farms will be able to bring each week, we do our best to reflect some of the fun items we’ve found recently and what’s likely to be available for the upcoming week. Hopefully this will give you a few new ideas to play with, and inspire you to try some new things at the market.

Some weeks, I have specific recommendations for you based on well-tested plans and recipes that I’ve made with my farmers’ market produce. This was not one of those weeks. Instead, I basically decided to thrown anything and everything I had into a pan and hoped for the best (“Market Surprise”!). But honestly, that’s part of the fun of the farmers’ market, and part of the purpose of this blog series – sometimes you just have to play with the ingredients and see what you like. So let’s see what we played with this week:

“Market Surprise” Pasta – Version 1

– Dried Shiitake Mushrooms from Salem Spice – you can either reconstitute dried mushrooms in liquid or crumble them up into sauce. I had never tried this before, but I took Salem Spice owner Dave Bowie’s advice and let mine soak in a little warm white wine for at least 15 minutes (I bet Mill River Winery’s “Plum Island White” would be perfect for this). When I was ready to start cooking, I threw the mushrooms and the wine they’d been soaking in into a saute pan together.

– Broccoli Rabe from Heaven’s Harvest Farm – I’d never actually cooked broccoli rabe before. When I got home from the market and did my research, it was not encouraging – there were endless warnings online about how to get the bitterness out, apparently those lovely little yellow flowers I’d been drawn to indicate a plant that’s past its prime, on and on. Don’t overthink it; it will be fine. I just removed the thicker, woody stalks, chopped everything into large bites, boiled it for about 5 minutes, blanched it with cold water, then sautéed it with the mushrooms for about 5 minutes.

– Wild Garlic Scape Pasta from Valicenti Organico – we discussed scapes last week. When I saw this new seasonal pasta variety at Valicenti’s stand last week, I realized that garlic scapes have officially taken over the market (not a bad thing) and I absolutely had to try it. Not only is it delicious, but the tangy, garlicky flavor of the pasta also saves you the trouble of having to slice up any other aromatics. Their fresh pasta usually only takes a minute or two to cook in boiling water, so don’t overdo it!

*Fresh pasta tip: after you drain your pasta, add it to the saute pan with your sauce and cook for half a minute more to let the flavors combine.

– Primo Sale from Wolf Meadow Farm – Luca from Wolf Meadow introduced me to Primo Sale cheese (literally “first salt”), and I am now a convert. I grated some over the top of my pasta to add a little extra salt and flavor to the dish.

The only non-market items I used were the wine and a squeeze of lemon at the very end. Just these four fresh market ingredients made for an incredibly complex and hearty meal! What’s your favorite haphazard market dish?

Playing With Your Food 2014 – Week 4

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Jul 102014

Lots of pink and green going on after Week 3 of the market!

“Playing With Your Food” is a weekly post highlighting a few of the many great options for the range of produce and artisan food at the Salem Farmers’ Market. While we can never predict exactly what our farms will be able to bring each week, we will do our best to reflect some of the fun items we’ve found recently and what’s likely to be available for the upcoming week. Hopefully this will give you a few new ideas to play with, and inspire you to try some new things at the market.

This is a big transitional time of year at the market. It’s time to say goodbye to many of our early summer favorites – strawberries and rhubarb are either gone or starting to slow down, snag them immediately if you find them! – but raspberries and other summer berries are showing up and we’re starting to hear rumors of sweet corn. That said, many of our market staples are in full swing! Greens of all sorts, radishes, peas, beets, and herbs are busting out all over the place. Here are a few things we’ve been playing with:

Garlic scapes, herbs, and more at Maitland Mountain Farm – Week 3

Garlic Scapes

When I was first introduced to garlic scapes a few years back, I could swear that I’d never seen or heard of them before. Now they seem to be everywhere! Milder than garlic but with a satisfying crunch, these fun, curly, green shoots can be used in plenty of recipes to substitute garlic. They’re fantastic in stirfry, pesto, sauteed with pasta, you name it. We’re particularly interested to try these Garlic Scape Pancakes – if you’ve made them, let us know what you think!

Radishes

Radishes will be with us for a long time throughout the market, but the lighter, delicate radishes seem to make their appearance earlier in the season (like the “french breakfast” radishes that we snagged from Grant Family Farm this week). We’ll have lots more to say about radishes as the summer progresses, but right now we’re happy to simply sautee them with butter, salt, and pepper.

Shelling peas and basil at Long Hill Orchard Farm – Week 3.

Shelling Peas

Last time we talked about pea tendrils, but now we’ve gotten to the part we were really waiting for – the peas themselves. For me, there’s nothing as sweet or satisfying as those big, fat peas eaten raw right out of the shells, but there’s so many different things you can do with them – from pea puree (to complement your fresh fish from Rowand’s) to a pea-ricotta torte for brunch (especially if you’ve grabbed some fresh ricotta from Wolf Meadow Farm)!

Herbs

Whether from the greenhouse or outdoors, or your own herb garden if you have one, we’re seeing lettuce-size bunches of herbs all around and can’t seem to go through them fast enough. We’ve been drying them, throwing them in any pasta or sauce-based dish we can, adding them to marinades, making simple syrups, and there still seems to be more! What’s your favorite way to use up an abundance of herbs?

Last week at home, we had grand schemes for each of these ingredients – and then decided we’d really rather combine them all together sauteed in butter, salt, and pepper for a fantastic early summer side dish. Happy market hunting!

Sautee radishes, garlic scapes, and peas in butter, then toss with fresh mint for a beautiful side dish!

Playing With Your Food 2014 – Weeks 1 through 3

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Jun 252014

Produce at Wally’s Vegetables – Week 2

We started a little tradition with the 2013 Winter Market of posting ideas for recipes and uses for the many products you could find at the market, called “Playing With Your Food”. Now that the 2014 Salem Farmers’ Market is in full swing, we thought it would be fun to start a similar tradition highlighting a few of the many great options for the range of produce and artisan food at the market each week. While we can never predict exactly what our farms will be able to bring each week, we will do our best to reflect some of the fun items we’ve found recently and what’s likely to be available for the upcoming week. Hopefully this will give you all a few new ideas to play with, and inspire you to try some new things at the market.

We’ll start with a round up from the first two weeks and the upcoming third week.

Strawberry and Rhubarb

Nothing says early summer like the combination of strawberry and rhubarb, but the season is always far too short. Celebrate them now, or find a way to hang on them for winter when you’re desperately missing summer.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble – easy, peasy, delicious
Rhubarb Buckle with Ginger
Rhubarb Agrodolce – a surprisingly savory option
Strawberry and Cream Biscuits – eat them immediately, or freeze them before baking to enjoy all year long
Rhubarb Cordial – the only downside is that you have to wait a month
Simple Ways to Freeze Strawberries – trust me, on that day in February when it’s sleeting sideways, you’ll be so glad that you planned ahead.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble

Asparagus

The season for asparagus is almost already over. Snatch some up while you still can!

Assorted Greens and Allium Options

Spring Allium Family

Spring onions, leeks, and scallions are popping up left and right, and they are ridiculously beautiful. Grill them, fry them, saute them, whatever you please!

Grilled Spring Onions – the purple and green scallions we found at the Clark Farm stand last week are beautifully suited to this easy side dish
Leek Fritters – note that leeks this time of year may be a bit smaller than you’re used to seeing, so you’ll need to tweak recipes accordingly

Week 2 - Leek Fritters and Sauteed Pea Tendrils

Leek Fritters and Sauteed Pea Tendrils with Pork Chops

Odds and Ends

Pea Tendrils – we found these at the Long Hill Orchard stand last week and had no idea what to do with them. Turns out a simple saute with garlic, lemon, and salt is all you need!

Berries in syrup, ready for the freezer

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