marketfan

Garner's Glut Tomato Sale: $15/25 pound box of field reds -- not heirlooms.  wbboylejr@gmail.com by Friday 5 pm for pick up at U Street Saturday.  I just oven roasted 25 pounds overnight at 200 with lots of basil, olive oil, garlic and zipped them into quart bags.  My winter secret.  And they take up so little room in the freezer that I will do another 25 pounds this week.  Maybe 50.

*KUHN:

• *Raspberries and Blackberries - 2 for $9.00
• *Flats of Blackberries - $54.00 (12 pints per flat)
• *Cherry tomatoes - 2 half pints

IVY BRAND: is taking advantage of the cooler weather we have had with salad mix and head lettuce. The Fall squash have started as well: acorn, delicata and spaghetti. Kale, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, sweet peppers, hot peppers, potatoes, fingerling potatoes, carrots, and beets.
 
KUHN: Peaches: Bounty yellow, White Lady, donuts. Summer Beaut and white  nectarines, blue Italian plums for baking and cooking,  apples (Sansa, summer mack, ginger gold, zestar, Rambo.  Lots of berries. okra, bitter melons look like a prehistoric cuke.  Leeks, onions (copra, cippolini, red zeppelin, shallots, garlic). Carrots, sweet peppers, tomatoes (heirloom, cherry, salad). Basil, dill, parsley, cilantro, sage.
 
McCLEAF: New this week: Fennel, radishes, broccoli, cabbage, Fairy tale eggplant. Heirloom and cherry tomatoes, summer squash, colorful sweet and hot peppers, kales (dino, red and winterbore), red and golden beets. Sweet corn.
 
FRUIT: Peaches, Plums, Pluots, nectarines.  Pluots are 70 percent plums and 30% apricot hybrid.  Sweeter than plums usually.
 
TRUCK PATCH has a lovely mix of summer squash, lovingly selected heirloom tomatoes, arugula, salad mix, chard, kale, spinach. Incredibly long Armenian cukes, squash blossoms, pesto ready basil, beets, and all the pastured pork (in chops, steaks, roasts, sausages,) you can imagine plus free range chicken.
 
GARNER: Bernard tomato fields are thriving, "ordinary reds', romas, beefsteak, "early girls and heirlooms-- and cherry toms. Baby Limas (American edamame) are great quick boiled and seasoned with olive oil and salt and lemon.  Black eyed peas cook up quickly when they are so fresh and make a good salad with grilled anything. Japanese, white, Italian and Thai eggplant; Squash: Patty pan. Yellow. Zucchini. Ishtar is that pale green Lebanese variety. Kousa is another middle eastern varietal.  I find them buttery and not watery. Eight ball, golden zucchini. Sweet Corn, okra, potatoes, peppers sweet and hot, green and yellow and Roma beans. Melons: sun, cantaloupes and seedless  watermelons in red and yellow. Swiss chard and arugula.  Mint, dill and parsley.
 
PLANTMASTERS: Coming back from vacation is easier when you fill your home with local flowers. Dahlias in saturated colors, sunflowers, large white hydrangeas, rainbow-hued zinnias, and all the pretty fillers that set off your garden bouquets. The Leons are bringing some house plants like ivy, peppers and succulents, herbs to brighten your recipes and annuals to perk up your garden. Spoiler alert: cool stuff coming for fall in just a couple of weeks
 
PANORAMA: French bread baked by French bakers "“ baguettes, croissants, palmiers, Danish, scones, Breton specialties. Whole wheat, rye, pumpernickel, rustiques, country, sour dough "“ boules and sandwich breads too. Rolls and buns.

Pecan Meadow: lots of their half Piedmontese grass fed and finished beef, goat, lamb, duck, eggs.
 
CHERRY GLEN: Just 28 miles away in Boyds, Maryland, Shayne and Ashley make French style goat cheese "“ ricotta, chevre, aged Monocacies. And the new infusions.
 
NUMBER 1 SONS: A huge selection of DC's best traditional New York pickles, Korean kimchi and a variety of krauts from Central American curtidos to classic German sauerkrauts.  Fermented and fabulous. My fridge is always full of their flavors.  This week I have both half sours and kicky kosher picklels, rosetido kraut and classic kimchi.
 
WHISKED: Who can resist Jenna's pies? Sweet or savory. Jenna says: We're bringing back another great summer pie this week - our blackberry nectarine pie (yes, we love combining berries and stone fruit). This was a favorite at the stand last summer and we're happy to bring it back at the height of the stone fruit season. Also Classic Peach with Crumble Topping, Sea Salt Chocolate Chess (a cult favorite) is a cross between a brownie and a flourless chocolate cake. Corn, Tomato Basil Savory Quiche and Bacon, Cheddar and Onion. And all those cookies!

See you Sa

Strawberries on Sale at BFM  (think jam, jelly, shrub, syrup, ice cream, granita, tincture of, daiquiri

Truck Patch has 8 different varieties -- the chandlers etc are a flat of 8 quarts for 32 dollars, the delicate earliglows that Bryan adores are $40.

• Super Strawberry Sale at Truck Patch Saturday.   Truck Patch has a flat of 8 quarts of chandlers for $32 -- and the delicate Earliglows for $40. 

If you are a fan of Frankie's cocktails at Gibson, stop by the market at 11 for a Mixology Demo.  Frankie is making magic with...strawberries, of course.

Cherry Glen has 4 new cheeses -- aged chevre balls in herb infused oils. 

Number 1 Sons has their fermented garlic and Salsa so Verde this week along with the pickles, kimchis and krauts

Lots of grass fed and finished, half Piedmontese beef at Pecan Meadow-- 10 different Steaks

Duck and Goose and Chicken Eggs

Truck Patch Pastured Pork -- all over the  menu at Dino's, in case you want to know.

First Tomatoes at Garner from the High tunnels

Spinach, kales, frilly mustards, swiss chards, collards, bok choi

really gorgeous heads of lettuce at Ivy Brand -- Salad greens are great but heads of lettuce are wonderful for lettuce wraps  (envelope grilled everything) . composed salads, and it will be too hot for them soon so please try them.

Zucchini, baby squash, radishes, persian cucumbers,

Rhubarb --not just for sweets -- they make a wonderful tart accent to greens

Of course Whisked's strawberry rhubarb pie is pretty good, too.

 

We stopped by for a deeply flavorful goat stew-- a great asparagus risotto and terrific beans cooked in a flask.  Exciting to have Dinos just few blocks away.  Lovely wines as always.

Lots of formative food memories:

But here are two that are linked.  When I was a child (under 10) my mother used to try to serve calf's liver to me and pretend it was steak.  But I could not chew it or swallow it-- it tasted dry and unpleasant and minerally and I literally could not masticate it and swallow it.  And the worst was that I was salivating for that steak so the shock of the calf's liver was even worse.  I still cannot abide calves liver.

On the other hand, I adored my grandmother's chopped chicken liver.  She chopped lightly sauteed chicken livers with tons of sauteed onions (drenched in schmalz) and hard-boiled eggs --using a mezzaluna in a wide, shallow wooden bowl that was only used for this dish.  Salt. Pepper.  I loved to watch her turn the bowl and chop over the ingredients until they turned into a wonderful mush.   The  onions, schmalz and eggs made the liver taste very rich and I never associated it with calf's liver.  I don't remember any parsley but I add parsley and thyme now when I make it.  I never saw her use a mezzaluna for anything else.

One restaurant memory:  The first time i had good  Indian food was at Apana on M Street in Georgetown in 1977, I believe.  I was overwhelmed by the combination of spices and flavors -- and I kept saying to my boyfriend: "this food is making love to my mouth."  I went out the next day and bought Madhur Jaffrey's An Invitation to Indian Cooking but I was very frustrated because I  could not replicate the amazing flavors with supermarket spices.  Eventually, I discovered a small Indian spice store in Virginia and then I cooked almost nothing but Indian food for months.

Lunch at the bar today.  Delicious.  The Avgolemno inspired chicken veloute, the light as a cloud pasta of the cannelloni, parmesan salami fritters  ( a cross between a gougere and a biscuit with a cherry tomato marmelade )and the walnut cake were all a treat.  What was completely unexpected was the superb quality of the cortado Andy made.  We never order coffee in restaurants because so few restaurants pull a good espresso, so I am not sure why we took a chance.     So glad we did.

Bravo.

Salsify at the market today.  This funny -- shaggy looking -- long, skinny, tap rooted root vegetable  is at Kuhn.  Hard to find, rarely grown around here.  Cooked it does not taste like oysters although it is called the oyster plant, but more like artichoke hearts while Jerusalem artichokes not do-- raw they taste like water chestnuts to me.  Carrots, parsnips, salsify, jerusalem artichokes -- we have lots of roots at market today.  And brussel sprouts.  And tons of greens.

And Bonnie Benwick as chef at market, with her gougers and sweet and sour pumpkin. 11-12:30

Yes, it is dull and gray and cold and dampish -- but the market stands are very inviting..

Three of us went to Rose's Luxury last night and we loved it: playful and very precise cooking in a vibrant, charming but not twee atmosphere.  We arrived at 6:30 and left at 10:15 and ate a good part of the menu. From the whipped butter- buttermilk spread sprinkled with grated baked potato skin (great idea) to the  tender Jewish-Texas brisket, we enjoyed this meal!    The popcorn soup had nice chunks of lobster and made me think of Maine Lobster boils with corn on the cob, both slathered in sweet butter.  Yes, it may be a tad sweet but it was something I could not quite imagine working and it does.  Using popcorn like this is a bit like José Andres' recommending potato chips to make a classic Spanish tortilla..   The grilled romaine with poblano and avocado was brilliant.  Never thought of cooking romaine for a Mexican dish -- we are all used to it chopped raw for tacos.   The breadcrumbs work so well on the gnocchi ravioli. We really loved and appreciated these mixes of classic touches with reinterpretations.      The only dish that did not excite us was the octopus: while the  octopus has an interesting ink and burnt lemon sauce, it was a not in itself an exciting protein.  (And it can be).   A slight hitch in service -- a second order of the oysters with dark and stormy granita arrived 2 hours  after we ordered it --at the end of the meal and right after the brisket. Although the server explains that dishes come out in the order the kitchen wants to send it, that was clearly a mistake.  A small hitch in a great meal.  I wish all the new restaurants opening up had this kind of personal vision and level of  cooking.

Absolutely not my experience-- I did not know 95 percent of the kids -- nor their mothers. Every momthanked me!

Try it!

It is a silly myth-- how would you get a blade unseen into a unblemished apple? And if you were concerned, you could cut the apple into pieces.-- as easy as unwrapping candy.

I have been waging a small campaign to give kids small apples rather than Halloween candy and it works very well.  Last year I handed out 75 kid sized galas and only one child refused.  I would overcome any moment of hesitation by assuring the goblin that the apple was juicier and sweeter than candy.  Here, bite.  S/he would and was amazed at how good and sweet and juicy the apple tasted.  Then the other kids would surge forward.

This works.  And you can reserve apples at any of your favorite orchards at your favorite farmers market.   Get a bushel or half bushel box and save a lot of money.  Kid sized galas or kids sized other apples are what you want.

The old razor in apple scare is an urban myth!   If you want to be fancy, you can stick a stick  into them and caramelize the apples but plain apples work fine and are so much better than supermarket apples.

This week at BFM on Sundays from 9-1 at First and R NW

The cool weather combined with last week's rains have given us gorgeous greens of every kind.  And the Fall greens love to sweeten up after a frost.  There are still eggplants and summer squash and some red tomatoes, but not for long.  Next week carrots and leeks are back.  Lots of interesting winter squash including the golden Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Squash -- yes, they do taste like a mash up of both.

• Painted Hand will have lots of humanely raised veal and veal bones at BFM, goat and lamb and eggs as well as sunchokes
• Garner harvested a huge field of corn to beat the frost so this is the weekend to freeze corn and make corn soup, arepas, corn and crab cakes, etc.  he has white Maryland Heirloom Hayman sweet potatoes as well -- bake them, less sweet than the usual sweet potatoes.
• Mountain View has sales on peppers, small pumpkins (not just a pretty face, Attila and Shawna prefer them for baking and eating),and their  very good looking green tomatoes
• Reid has an admirable selection of heirloom as well as popular apples
• Panorama is now baking French Macarons as well as Madeleines for those of us who want tea infused crumbs of nostalgia
• Truck Patch is taking reservations for their Turkeys--ask Dean G about them.
• Truck Patch also has gorgeous lime green fractal Romanesco Broccoli also known as Romanesque Cauliflower.  My very favorite of that confused family.
• Pumpkin Pies at Whisked for Halloween..

If anyone is interested in experimenting with local wheat, Pecan Meadow at 14&U FM on Saturdays is growing and selling  their own stone ground Pennol wheat flour.  It is a 1940s strain, lower in gluten.  

I love Maple Lawn, they used to be a Whole Foods supplier but i don't know if they are any more.  And if they are, its not region wide.

Truck Patch is a superb traditional bird.  Mt Pleasant, 14th and U, and Bloomingdale 1st and R markets.

Glad you like them, Dean!  Truck Patch is taking orders for Thanksgiving Turkeys at all three markets.

Oven fried okra is crispy, slimeless and addictive.  (Roll it in olive oil, dust with ground cumin)  Squirt with lemon before serving. 

Welcome, Nizam!   Would love to hear more about the vision for the future that you and  your brothers have.  Ben's has been the soul of our community (I moved here in 1988) for decades.  It is impossible to recreate those community roots quickly in new spots. 

What happened to this hamburger thread?  Dinos? Ray's Hell Burger? Central? Willow?  Garden District (aka Standard)?

What is new at the market? Squash blossoms at Garner and Truck Patch on Saturday. Baby Yukon Gold spuds and broccoli and cauliflower and rapini. Mt View has an unusual giant Joi Choi bok choy. Everyone has spinach and kales and radishes and chards and mustards.

8 different varieties of summer squash including my favorite -- the pale green Lebanese Kousa because it becomes concentrated-- not watery. Last night back from 4 days of eating nonstop in Chicago, I made a "carpaccio" of very fresh squash and then saved the peel- resistant innards to grate and saute with leek greens. Looked like a leek risotto when I finished. Tonight will be pureed white leek and yellow squash soup.

4 or 5 different beets. Lovely small leeks. Pretty red and white Spring Onions of various kinds -- some that look like scallions on steroids and others that have big, fat bulbs. Candy Onions.

I am fascinated by the the peas and sugar snaps this year: There are English shelling peas (shelled and unshelled) and the flat sugar snaps but there are also fat sugar snaps that have small peas inside edible pods. A two-fer because you can steam or quick boil the popped peas and then use the pods for a different preparation.

Still have rhubarb for a week or two at Kuhn and McCleaf. Garner's strawberries are almost done but the Penn and Md berries will last a few more weeks depending on the weather.

I have fallen for Number 1 Sons New York style pickles, their kimchi and their krauts.

The 14&U farmers' market opens tomorrow, Saturday May 4th and besides heaps and heaps of green and purple asparagus, we will have our first strawberries at Garner and two other seasonal finds: nettles and watercress. I have that adopted French feeling that one should make soup of them because both make velvety portions -- I plan to combine them this year although I usually make two separate soups. Nettles are definitely worth braving their sting -- just wear gloves in washing them.

Lots of greens, both salad and cooking, thanks to the cool, wet Spring. Sweet Japanese turnips with greens. Young beets with greens. Radishes. All three of these roots made good raw salads and are also lovely braised. Sunchokes.

Whisked has gone mad and is bringing us 4 different pies: Apple Frangipane, a reconstruction of a classic French tart; a nod to tradition with strawberry rhubarb, Asparagus Quiche because how can you ignore all those green sprouts and kale-feta pie. Lois created the DC craze for Whoopie Pies with her Pumpkin Whoopie pie and it is back for a few weeks. At one last market, a customer bought 20 or 30 for the freezer. And Panorama has a new baker, imported from Brittany, who is revamping all their pastries.

Besides the strawberries, we have freshly pressed cider at Kuhn and McCleaf's amazing Fuji juice. And apples -- Goldrush, Pink Lady, Braeburn and other good keepers that are still crisp after their hibernation in proper storage. Honeycrisp Apple sauce too.

Rich duck eggs make luscious omelets, huge Goose eggs , chicken eggs. Rabbit. Duck whole and parts, fresh chicken, grass fed steaks, pastured pork including jows and scrapple. Lamb.

And Pleasant Pops has joined us as well.

I took my husband to Suna for his birthday last week and sat at the kitchen bar where we talked with the chef throughout the meal. We each had a different 4 course menu with the wine pairing. Both of us thought the portions were correct -- neither of us was hungry afterwards. The plating is very pretty.

Others have written about the root vegetables and the dashi, so I will be brief.

My take- away a week later is that this is satisfying and deeply- flavored food --and I look forward to going back in the Spring, the Summer and the Fall.

I got some pastrami a few days ago-- I like salt and smoke ....but it was much too salty for me and too smoky. Could not eat it. On the other hand, the roasted peanuts are amazing. And the venison pate was good.

Now I'm intrigued, I will have to check it out. Truth be told, I feel that DC has taken a step back in the past year in terms of the espresso I have been drinking at any number of places. I recall sweeter shots with more viscosity; too often, I get bitter shots with less body.

I live a few blocks away so it has been easy for me to pop in and I have had espressos/caps/machiatos at various times of days pulled by different baristas. They have all been sweet with very good body that does not dissolve into something a bit more bitter after a minute or two. The Ceremony espresso is a blend of two different Brazilians and a Guatamalan bean. It is very chocolate-y.

Cait is going to be starting some interesting coffee tastings in late January -- tasting, fx, the same bean brewed different ways ( pour over, drip, french press, espresso ). That will be interesting.

Cutting celery might be it! Looks like a good host for black swallowtail butterflies in my butterfly garden.

I think it was probably celery. The celery we are all familiar with from the grocery store is a pale thing in flavor compared with the cutting celery you can find at some farmers' markets.

Went yesterday. The espresso is Handsome and it made a delicious and chocolate-y capuccino from a blend of Guatamala and Salvadorean beans. They are adding more seating over the next few days. Nice atmosphere and a good addition to the neighborhood.

Went last night and sampled a few things. The cocktails were superb and really enjoyed the ginger beer we ordered afterward.. Loved the duck galantine with candied quince -- and it made me want to eat my way through all the charcuterie in the future. The chestnut ravioli was a bit dense but the flavors were excellent, especially a pureed essence of parsnip. We ordered the wrong pizza -- a bacon-onion-cheese that was too beige in flavor and appearance. . And the crust was undersalted and a little underdeveloped in flavor. But I love Edan MacQaid's pizzas, so I am sure it will improve. The vegetable side dishes were excellent, particularly the roasted brussels sprouts. I was amused by the color of thre screamingly green cream of chard, but it was a bit too salty. Very accomodating staff. Beautiful decor.

Today is our last market of 2012.

• And we have Mangalitsa pork with its amazing fat (think lardo!) at Truck Patch. Come now -- it will go very fast
  
• Narrangansett heritage Turkeys at Pecan Meadow (small ones left 6-8 pounds,the larger ones having been reserved weeks ago.
  
• Truck Patch has Broad Breasted Whites.
  
• 25 pound boxes of sweet potatoes for 15 dollars. Sales on Collards.
  
• All of Whisked's Thanksgiving Pies
  
• Pecan Meadow's cornmeal
  
• romanesco at TRuck Patch
  
• Japanese sweet potatoes at Mt View -- and escarole
  
• Oyster and shiitake and the first maitakes at Takoma Mushroom
  
• Brusselsn on stalk
  

The market is full of greens and roots and spuds of all kinds, gorgeous apples. A Fall market in full glory and a lovely day to close our 2012 season.