an open cupboard

On a recent bright Saturday morning at the Ferry Plaza farmers’ market, I was pleasantly surprised to find large bouquets of za’atar. Star Route Farms grows the herb and sells large bunches of it at the market.

Za’atar is more commonly known as an herby spice mix spiked with sesame seeds. The mix is named after the plant, which is dried and mixed with a variety of ingredients such as sumac, cumin and salt. Traditionally, people in the Middle East have mixed their own za’atar according to family recipes and the local palate. The dried mix is sprinkled on labneh (a sour sheep’s milk yogurt cheese) and on small round flatbreads drizzled in peppery olive oil.

Fresh za’atar is a rare treat. I’ve never seen it in bay area farmers’ markets. It was hard to find the herb even in the markets of the greater Tel Aviv area. Once you get your hands on some, you can use it fresh and dry the rest in the sun. Store it in a tightly sealed jar.

Fresh za’atar has an aroma and flavor somewhat similar to wild oregano, but different. Za’atar has a little more attitude. It’s oregano’s hot-headed cousin. Its scent is a little more heady, its taste a little more powerful. Za’atar goes very nicely with soft cheeses, especially goat and sheep cheeses, as well as hummus. It spices up a roast chicken, along with a little lemon, sea salt, pepper and olive oil. Sprinkle some on sliced heirloom tomatoes in lieu of basil, or add it to cheese kreplach. Gently fry some leaves in olive oil as a sauce for pasta, then top with chunks of cooked chicken or fish and olives with a squeeze of lemon juice. I haven’t tried it, but I suspect it would go well with lamb kebab. It might also enliven a packet of shrimp or fish en papillote.

My favorite use of za’atar—dried or fresh—is on a round of traditional flatbread, warm and redolent with toasted sesame seeds and a thick layer of za’atar mix drenched in strong olive oil.

What do you like to do with za’atar?

I don’t mean your grandfather from Mississippi. The pawpaw is a large berry that is native to North America, and is the only tropical fruit in its family that isn’t “confined to the tropics. ” I picked it up at the Temescal Farmers Market on Sunday morning. The pawpaw has a yellowish green skin that darkens to a muddy brown as it ripens. The farmer described its flavor as banana-like and custardy in texture. I’m not a fan of bananas, so I didn’t have any high hopes for the fruit.

I finally ate one today. Its skin was very dark, the color of an overripe banana. I carefully peeled it away, and the sweet scent of the flesh immediately hit my nose. I coaxed out the large, pebble-like black pits and cut the soft flesh into a bowl. I took a bite.

The pawpaw is one of the more peculiar fruits I’ve eaten. It has a soft, creamy flesh that is indeed reminiscent of custard. Its flavor is like burnt caramel with a hint of buttered popcorn. The slight bitter undertone rounds out the sweetness of the fruit and pleasantly lingers on the tongue. It’s like a vegan crème brulée!

Aside from eating it as is, I think pawpaws could be nice puréed into a pudding or sauce, served over something crunchy. Or it might be fun to eat them frozen. Chowhound has a post on the berry, including a list of ideas for pawpaw preparations. The Chowhound post also mentions that pawpaws change in flavor when stored above 40 degrees F for over two days. Frankly, I think I prefer them that way.

Lagier Ranch is currently selling pawpaws at San Francisco Bay Area farmers markets.

Claravale Dairy is now selling milk, cream, and colostrum at the Berkeley Farmers Market every Saturday. They plan to set up a stall at the San Francisco Ferry Building Farmers Market soon. I suggested they join the Sunday Temescal Farmers Market as well.

Claravale raw milk is sweet with grassy overtones, and deliciously rich. Try a couple tablespoons of their cream with strawberries—an ethereal experience.

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I’ve recently received Clotilde Dusoulier’s new cookbook “Chocolate & Zucchini: Daily Adventures in a Parisian Kitchen” from Amazon. If you haven’t done so already, buy this book! It’s full of creative recipes that don’t appear too difficult to prepare. It’s also full of Clotilde’s elegant photos and delightful prose you’ve grown to love. Most of all, her book is a source of inspiration—leaf through its pages for ten minutes and see if you don’t come up with a fabulous idea for dinner. Or lunch. Or breakfast.

Not the kind you eat with syrup. These flapjacks are a different kind of culinary pleasure. Read more at Well Fed on the Town.

I love tasting free samples of new foods at markets. The try-before-you-buy philosophy is a great idea when applied to food. Sometimes an item looks rather bland, but turns out to be remarkably tasty. Other times a sauce that looks great tastes, well, mundane. Once in a while, the food sample is so unusual that you are compelled to try it.

Such was the case with Korean aged black garlic.

Hold on… black garlic? Curious? Read the rest at the Cook’s Kitchen.

Ever go bobbing for apples in a huge plastic crate? How about filtering out bad oranges, revving up your pitching arm to toss them into a giant composting container? Last Saturday, thirty-odd foodbloggers got together at the San Francisco Food Bank to do just that. The San Francisco Food Bank is an enormous clearing house for food that is distributed to charitable organizations throughout San Francisco and the Bay Area. Huge amounts of food come through the food bank every day, all of which needs to be sorted and packaged into cardboard boxes. These boxes are then stacked on a flat, wrapped in plastic to keep them in place, and finally loaded onto trucks for distribution. The whole operation is run by a combination of employees, part-time volunteers, and sporadic volunteers. It’s remarkable to see such a dedicated, hard-working staff process and sort all those massive crates of food.

Our task last Saturday was to sort and package green apples, oranges, and frozen corn cobs. This involved putting together and taping the boxes, sorting the good fruit from the bad, packaging the fruit, taping the boxes shut, and stacking the boxes neatly on a wodden flat.

We foodbloggers spread around the crates of fruit and went straight to work. Some people taped boxes, others lifted and arranged the boxes. Some were especially adept at picking out the bad fruit and throwing them dodgeball-style into the composting crate—I nearly got nailed three times. Our efficient work paid off: the kind folks at the Food Bank said we managed our task much faster than they had expected.

Afterwards, we headed off to Yield Wine Bar for some great nibbles and wine served by Sam—barmaid for a day—looking cool in her officer’s cap. Organizers Amy and Sam provided delicious cheeses and baguette slices, the Fatted Calf gave fed us thin-sliced ham, and Poco Dolce brought us their little sweet/salty wafers of chocolate. (As both Fatted Calf and Poco Dolce are right down the road from Yield, this was micro-local cuisine, as someone pointed out.)

But the stars of the show were the sunny chutneys and spicy Spanish chorizo courtesy of Alison McQuade and Ore Dagan of Fra’Mani Salumi, respectively. I’m not usually a great fan of chutneys as I tend to find them too sweet. But McQuade’s Celtic chutneys are something else entirely. These are complex chutneys brimming with taste and texture. You can’t pick out any one individual flavor–there’s the zing of vinegar, a ginger kick, and a warm, brown sugar sweetness. But there’s so much more, and damned if you can figure out exactly what else is in that chutney. All you know is it tastes fresh and alive, and goes very well with cheese and bread.

The Spanish chorizo was brought to us from Fra’Mani salumi, by way of Ore Dagan, chef and Responsabile Produzione. I could not get enough of it, but sadly, this particular salumi is not yet available in stores. I’ll wager that a small popular movement will soon begin protesting the absence of this chorizo from local shops. Slogans like “Chorizo now!” and “Fra’Mani, not war!” will become ubiquitous. So please, Ore, bring on the chorizo before you have an angry mob of hungry foodbloggers bearing poultry forks and carving knives.

You can find McQuade’s chutneys at the Cowgirl Creamery retail shop in San Francisco, and other fine shops (how about some East Bay locations, Alison? Market Hall, perhaps?). Fra’Mani salumi is sold at the Berkeley Bowl and the Pasta Shop in the East Bay.

Many, many thanks to Amy Sherman and Sam Breach for having organized this wonderful event. It was great fun getting together with other foodbloggers, particularly for a worthy cause.

Soda for yuppies? Yup. Read all about it on my latest post at the Cook’s Kitchen.

The mystery green is…

Tatsoi!

This versatile Chinese green tastes like a cross between spinach and bok choy. It’s delicious cooked in a stir-fry, or raw in its baby form. Baby tatsoi look like little green roses. They make a beautiful salad with sliced kumquats and a lemon juice olive oil vinaigrette.

What do you suppose this mysterious flower-like vegetable is? To me it looks like the Jolly Green Giant’s wedding bouquet, or maybe the flower he pinned to the lapel of his giant green tuxedo.

I bought this emerald beauty from the Mariquita Farms stand at the Ferry Building farmers Market.

Can you guess what it is?

I try to get to the farmers market every Saturday or so, barring torrential rains or an insatiable need to laze around the house on a Saturday morning. While the Ferry Building farmers market in San Francisco is not the cheapest around, it’s still my favorite for its varied, high quality products, as well as the sheer fun of people watching. (There’s always an interesting array of locals and tourists, fancy city folk and laid back farmers.) The Ferry Building farmers market offers just about all the groceries you need, except perhaps, toilet paper. Among the goods: beautiful seasonal produce grown by local growers, freshly baked bread, fresh pastries, cow’s and goat’s milk cheeses both fresh and aged, grass-fed beef, pastured chickens, ducks, and eggs, the most delicious charcuterie around, nuts, jams, preserves, pickles, pasta, beans, fresh tortillas and tamales, and even wool yarn and blankets.

The purveyors sell their wares outdoors in front of and behind the ferry building all year round. The ferry building itself houses food-related shops such as a mushroom shop, meat shops and delis, an organic pastry shop, a chocolate shop, an ice creamery, an olive oil shop, an excellent cheese shop, as well as a combination wine shop and tasting bar, a tea room, caviar and oyster bars, and several very good restaurants.

The ferry building and the farmers market surrounding it is teeming with deliciousness that is constantly changing. The ebb and flow of the seasons bring herald new produce, which in turn inspire chefs, jam-makers, sausage-makers, fishmongers, bakers, pastry chefs. New stalls sprout up selling something new and different. And it’s quite common to see growers exchanging goods and sharing ideas. This is a living organism—a supermarket is dead in comparison. (Those of you who’ve been to a lively “shouk” or “souk” can attest to that!)

This past Saturday as I started my weekly round of shopping, it occurred to me that I had never photographed the farmers market I most often frequent. I’ve blogged about markets in Stockholm and New York, why not the local joint? And so I did. The following photos capture most of the foods I bought this week, and illustrating something of my favorite purveyors along the way. Bear in mind, I only captured a fraction of the market and its remarkable bounty. It would take several months of blogging, or perhaps a book, to document the market in its entirety.

Mariquita Farm, one of my favorite vegetable growers. I love the little cards they pin to the vegetable crates explaining the variety of each vegetable and suggestions for preparation.

Bodega Peruvian goat cheeses are delicate and light. I typically get the cilantro serrano chile spread and some fresh feta-style farmer’s cheese.

Della Fattoria sells European style breads baked in wood-fired brick ovens, as well as pastries such as cupcakes and cookies.

This is what’s left at the Fatted Calf stand in the early afternoon. Everything sells out fast, so it’s best to place your order in advance through their website (which, luckily, I remembered to do). Those saucissons secs in the jar are great for snacking.

Spring Hill produces excellent butter, often churned the day before. They usually offer tastes of all their cheeses, so their stand gets very crowded.

Stone Free Farm is where I like to buy greens such as chard, spinach, baby bok choy, and mountain spinach.

Marin Sun Farms is famous for its very fresh pastured eggs, which are typically sold out by 11am. A carton of their eggs is like a small multicultural egg community, with different sizes, colors (from white to grey, brown, or pale green), and variations in shape. They also sell some excellent grass-fed beef and lamb. The Marin Sun stand is conveniently located adjacent to the Hayes Street Grill stand.

The farmer’s daughter recommended Huckleberry potatoes as her favorite variety. I bought Huckleberries, Purple Vikings, and Katahdins from Little Organic Farms. The potatoes are dry-farmed, a method that results in more flavorful produce.

My favorite little apple stand (I’ve forgotten their name!) has a number of unusual varieties such as “Black Twig” and “Wickson.” Wicksons are very small apples, only about an inch and a half in diameter (about 4.5 cm), perfect for snacking or cooking with meat or poultry. I love the old-fashioned wooden crates in which the apples are displayed, and the explanatory text for each variety. You can also buy apple tree twigs, apple syrup, and cider at the apple stand.

I’m a tough customer when it comes to olive oil. Having lived in Israel for twelve years, I was spoiled by a relatively affordable selection of good Mediterranean olive oils. In the Middle East, spicy olive oils tend to be popular, as opposed to milder, buttery olive oils. I suspect this has to do with the variety of olives used, or perhaps their ripeness at harvest. Consequently, I’ve had difficulty adjusting my palate to the admittedly excellent California olive oils. Bariani is an exception. The flavor of their olive oil has a powerful flavor that reminds me of the dominant olive oils beloved in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

G.L. Alfieri Farms sells an incredible variety of nuts and nut products, including nut butters, chocolate covered nuts, and nut brittle. The bittersweet walnut brittle had me hooked on the first taste.