in praise of sardines

A Taste of Yellow: Mariquita's carrots

I feel a special bond to Barbara, the writer behind the blog Winos and Foodies, even though we've never met. Barbara lives in New Zealand. I live in San Francisco. I am positive that if we do some day meet, we'll get along famously. Why? We have one rather random thing in common.

When each of us started our food blogs back in 2005 (she in January, me in June), we both wrote about our trips the previous year to the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal for her, just Spain for me). In the first posts of our respective blogs, we each described a significant meal that featured the same special product. Yes, you guessed it. We both wrote about sardines! What are the chances of that? For that reason alone Barbara and I share a special kinship.

My meal of sardinas a la plancha in Seville completely changed the way I looked at cooking, so much so that I named my blog after the occasion. For Barbara, sardines represented something else entirely. The grilled sardines Barbara ate in Portugal were her last memorable meal before receiving news that forever changed her life. In the middle of her holiday, not long after she had completed a 500 mile (800 kilometer) walk along Spain's Camino de Santiago, Barbara checked into a Portuguese hospital and discovered she had cancer. Read about it in her moving first post.

Recently, after several years of improvement, Barbara received news that her cancer has returned. Barbara's friends and supporters throughout the food blogging community wish for one thing. Some day we all hope Barbara will make a complete recovery.

This year, to raise awareness of the issues associated with cancer survivorship, Barbara created an event she's calling "A Taste of Yellow." She made a simple request: bake or cook something yellow, the color of the famous LIVESTRONG wristbands. Her event provides us food bloggers with a small way to take part in LIVESTRONG Day.

LIVESTRONG Day is the Lance Armstrong Foundation's grassroots advocacy initiative to unify people affected by cancer and to raise awareness about cancer survivorship issues on a national level and in local communities across the United States. LIVESTRONG Day 2007 will occur on Wednesday, May 16, 2007.

If you wish to make a donation to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, please visit the foundation's donation page.

When I picked up this week's CSA basket from Mariquita Farm, I knew in an instant I wanted to make something from the farm's sweet yellow carrots (pictured above) for "A Taste of Yellow." I also wanted to somehow pay homage to that significant meal of sardines that bound Barbara and me together. Unfortunately I couldn't find fresh sardines. Instead I chose another local fish, petrale sole. I decided I would cook the sole a la plancha (in a cast iron pan), the same way as the sardines I ate in Spain. Cooking fish quickly in a searing hot cast iron skillet gives it a delicate crisp (and golden yellow) crust. To provide a textural contrast, I decided to simply whiz the yellow carrots with slowly cooked onions and coriander leaves (cilantro) in a blender to create a silky smooth purée.

To complete the petrale sole dish, I stewed some artichokes and blanched some peas to scatter over the top. Then I whipped up a spicy olive oil-based sauce with finely chopped mint, coriander leaves (cilantro), garlic, ginger, and chilies. The whole dish was spring on a plate, the kind of food I'll surely serve this time next year at Olallie. In the picture below, you can barely see the carrot purée peaking out from under the sole. N loved the dish.

Purple fava beans...

...may look pretty. But...

...that vivid color is not necessarily a sign of deliciousness.

When Andy Griffin said "good-bye" to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market a month ago, my first reaction was to pout. I couldn't imagine a Saturday without discovering what magical vegetables Andy and his crew were growing at Mariquita Farm, their farm in Hollister near Santa Cruz. Next, I stomped my feet. Who was to blame for this injustice? For lack of a better target, I shook my fists at CUESA, the non-profit organization that runs the market blamed myself for not buying enough of Andy's artichokes, cardoons, piquillo peppers, and pimientos de padrón last year.

Finally, I got smart. I signed up for the weekly CSA basket from Two Small Farms (the other farm being High Ground Organics in Watsonville). That's how these pretty purple beans landed in my hands. They were part of last week's basket. When I ripped open one of my 2 pounds of fava pods, out popped a violet bean. How exciting! In the tens of thousands of fava beans I've shucked, I had never once seen a purple one. 2 of the pods in my basket contained purple beans.

As you know, shucking favas is a 2-step process. First you pop the beans out of their pod. Next you blanch them for a minute and toss them in ice water. Finally, you pry them out of their little wet suits with your finger nail. Would the bean inside be purple?

Sadly, the answer is no. The purple jackets contained starchy beans the color of straw. Fine for a puree on toast, I suppose. But a pale shadow of the beautiful emerald jewels in the rest of my bowl. Those tender marvels represent the highest expression of spring.

Have any of you ever seen a purple fava bean?

Maybe, just maybe, finding a purple fava bean is like finding a four-leafed clover. Perhaps I should head to Vegas this weekend. Or buy a lottery ticket. Or maybe, instead of blanching them, I should have planted those purple beans in the backyard of my future restaurant. Do you think a completely constructed restaurant would have sprouted from the earth? (Sigh. One can dream).

If you want a chance to win your own good luck charm, head down to Mariquita Farm tomorrow morning between 9 and noon to their one-day-only Fava Bean U-Pick. Fava bean season's short, so it's tomorrow or next year. I know, I really ought to have told you sooner. Please don't pout. Or stomp your feet. I know you miss Andy and Julia as much as I do. Maybe I'll see you down there?

Food|and Drink|San Francisco|Farmers' Market

I heart artichokes + a favorite way to prepare them

Last Saturday, the day before Easter, I was singing the blues. By that day, the Bay Area had endured far more than 40 days and 40 nights of rainfall (which might help to explain my extended break from blogging). I had started scouring the web to learn more about the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, convinced I must be suffering from it. After I grew bored with medical sites, I surfed over to ones picturing vacation rentals in Barcelona, hoping that Travel Porn would lift me out of my funk. No luck. Nothing could cheer me up, not even dunking chocolate covered Digestive biscuits into a cup of Earl Grey.

Then I made my weekly trip to the local farmers market and spied these.

Just knowing that something so gorgeous could spring up out of our sodden local landscape cleared away my gloominess in a flash, like the elusive burst of sunshine that I and everyone around me so desperately craved.

Feeling like a child who had just found a stash of brightly colored plastic eggs filled with chocolates, I picked 6 purple-tinged lovelies out of a basket of the Sicilian Violetto artichokes at Mariquita Farm's market stand. I was amused that about a third of the artichokes in the basket perfectly mirrored my previous foul mood: dark violet in color, they bore vicious long spikes as sharp as a wolf's fangs or claws. I was happy to leave those -and my blues - behind. I'd dealt with cases of those bastards a decade ago as an intern at Chez Panisse, daily returning home with a new collection of bandages. I figured this time around that I deserved to pluck the tamest looking chokes in the basket.

I am a sucker for sexy produce. Some might say to an unhealthy degree. Once, a few summers back, I was so absorbed by a display of ripe, juicy heirloom tomatoes in a rainbow of colors that I completely missed that a beautiful Hollywood celebrity was standing right next to me. I'm not making this up. She apparently even bumped into me and excused herself and I didn't even look up. In fact, I recall being rather annoyed. I only learned of it when, after she had left, the salesperson and my wife both exclaimed their excitement at the brush with celebrity. I was oblivious and thought they were making it up. Sadly, they were not. And N will never let me forget it. Yes, I have a problem.

Where was I? Ripe, juicy, sexy... oh, yes, artichokes! I have yet to find a way to prepare these prickly flower buds that I don't like. See Mark Bittman's article in yesterday's Dining section of the New York Times (on line free for a week) for how to stuff, pan fry, and shave artichokes raw into a salad. But stay here if you want to learn one of my favorite ways to tame this thistle, a method that draws out the vegetable's innate sweetness better than any other. For lack of a better term, I'll call it oven-braising.

You can use any size artichoke for this method, but try to use the smallest you can find. Regardless of the size, the challenge with these curmudgeons of the vegetable kingdom is always the same: getting down below the layers of armor and thorns to expose its tender "heart." Of course, as a loyal reader of this blog, you already know how to do that from my recipe for vegetable paella.

So, on to the recipe!

The art of the frying an egg

While we're on the topic of eggs....

Several years ago at our farmers market, N and I spied one of our favorite farmers, Lee of Tierra Vegetables, surreptitiously slip a small carton of eggs into a customer's canvas bag. Our curiosity was piqued. Neither of us had never seen a sign advertising fresh eggs at Tierra! My eyes widened and my jaw started to drop. N, sensing an opportunity, cast a sharp sideways glance at me that wordlessly communicated that I had better bite my tongue and not make a spectacle of myself. This situation required finesse.

We sidled up to the displays of dried and smoked peppers and feigned interest in the jars of spicy pepper jams even though our cupboards were already filled with them. Now within earshot, we overheard Lee tell the grateful customer that her brother Wayne had gathered the eggs that very morning. The customer prattled on about freshness and flavor and how these were the best eggs ever...blah blah blah.

My heart began to race and I turned Araucana green with envy. Must. Have. Eggs. Now. N gave me another one of her looks, this one saying "Let me handle this." I bit my tongue until it damn near bled.

As soon as the lucky bastard had left with his stash of eggs, N mustered up all her charm and made her move.

I watched with my usual sense of awe as N wove one of her masterful stories, using her astounding powers of persuasion and innate emotional intelligence that, were EQ as highly regarded as IQ would surely place her on a par with Einstein. Were my memory as gifted, I would share every detail with you. Suffice it to say that she somehow turned Lee's initial "No, I only have a few eggs for special long-time customers" into a "Yes, just this once."

At the time, no other farmer at our market was selling eggs from truly free-range chickens. (I remember how shocked I was when I first learned that poultry ranches could use the term "free-range" even if they debeak their hens and stack cages one atop the other. If I understand correctly, all they need is occasional access to the outside). Wayne's tiny flock of chickens actually get to roam around a yard and blissfully peck at weeds and grubs and slurp up the occasional worm. Like a scene out of Chicken Run (minus the evil chicken pie machine).

We carried our treasure home, nestled between bunches of herbs and spinach in our basket. Although I may not have remembered every detail of N's story, I do remember every detail of lunch that day. We fried our eggs in fresh butter, sprinkled them with coarse fleur de sel and freshly ground pepper, and plopped them on top of thick slices of toasted country bread from Della Fattoria. The yolks were as dark orange as a tangelo and we were convinced the eggs had the distinct taste of freshly roasted chicken.

Today, of course, it is much easier (for you local San Francisco readers at least) to find true farm fresh, free-range eggs at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. They'll set you back a few bucks, but they are worth every penny. While I don't think Lee still brings eggs to the San Francisco market (you can buy them at her stand in Healdsburg), on Saturdays Eatwell Farms sells eggs from Three Wise Hens (see Sunday's post) and Marin Sun Farms sells their own chickens' eggs, while Nash sells eggs at the afternoon FP market on Tuesdays and across town at the Alemany market on Saturdays.

Below are instructions for how to fry an egg Spanish-style in olive oil, which is (perhaps not surprisingly) my new favorite way to devour these culinary jewels.

Diego Velázquez's "Vieja Friendo Huevos" (Old Woman Frying Eggs), 1618, hanging in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh

Guavas in San Francisco?

I was raised a sugar addict.

When I awoke every morning at my house in a suburb of L.A., I would amble across the terrazzo floors in my slippers to the kitchen. There, in the cabinet that was just within my reach above the white formica counter top , I would find a dozen brightly colored boxes. Each box had a different cartoon animal on it - bears, rabbits, even a toucan -yet each critter shared the identical wild eyes and big smiles. How could I resist such friendly! fun! exciting! characters when my eyes were still full of sleep?

I poured the dry flakes-squares-nuggets-loops into my white bowl, the cereal tingling like I imagine diamonds sound when poured into a crystal vase. Then I added a splash of milk and a heaping spoonful or two of refined sugar and carried the bowl to the white Eero Saarinen tulip table, nestled myself into my tulip chair, and devoured my fix, all washed down with a glass of Sunny Delight orange flavored drink.

In retrospect, I wonder why I didn't just mainline high-fructose corn syrup directly into my veins. I suppose I was too young to use a hypodermic needle.

Thankfully, I've mostly weened myself off the sugar addiction in the intervening 30 years. Years have passed since I last had a soda or fruit juice sweetened with corn syrup. The closest thing to the Kellogg's of my childhood is the occasional muesli with yogurt.

My new addiction is fruit.

I can't imagine a breakfast that doesn't include a ripe piece of fruit. Being a good little disciple of Alice Waters and the Slow Food Movement, my fruit of choice varies with the seasons, is locally grown, and usually organic. Right now I'm eating a lot of different varieties of fresh citrus and apples and pears stored from the fall harvest.

And guavas. You might not think that local California guavas would be any good and for the most part, you'd be right. There is, however, one farmer who grows the most incredible Asian guavas and sells them at our local farmers market.

Tucked into a corner in the back of the farmers market, Will Brokaw (aka the Avocado Guy) sells a variety from his family's farm that they label "White Malaysian." The yellow to chartreuse colored fruits are not particularly inviting in appearance. They look like an apple or pear with a slight case of the mumps and often include a few brown scars.

Don't be put off. Pick one up. Close your eyes. Inhale deeply. I guarantee a smile will spread across your face as you are embraced by aromas of ripe pear, cut pineapple, and some heaven-sent flower you can't quite recall the name of.

Spring is just around the corner!

Today at Rick Knoll's farm stand at our local farmers market, I spied the first fresh green garlic of the season. The arrival of the tender shoots, which also go by the aliases "spring garlic, " "young garlic" and "garlic shoots," is the first sign of the impending arrival of spring to the Bay Area. Within 4 to 6 weeks, our local markets will be bursting with fresh spring onions, asparagus, fava beans and peas.

Last summer, I discovered that green garlic, called ajo tierno in Castillian Spanish and all tendre in Catalan, is quite popular in Spanish kitchens. Later in the week, I'll share a surprising yet easy recipe I learned in Catalonia that features this milder, sweeter young garlic. Green garlic is my entry for this week's edition of Kalyn's Weekend Herb Blogging event.

Also, I'd like to apologize for my brief case of blogus interruptus this past week. My poor little iBook G3 (we had the very first model of the white iBooks) unexpectedly passed away, forcing N and I to patiently await the arrival of its shiny new incarnation as a G4. The G4 looks identical, but is much more nimble and clever. Hopefully, its brilliance will rub off on the eternally flummoxed fellow who clicks away on its keys.

There are many exciting and tasty tidbits to fill you in on, so stay tuned as I plan to update IPOS more frequently this coming week!

Food|and Drink|Vegetables|Weekend Herb Blogging

Autumn vegetables: discovering cardoons

A couple of weeks ago, I saw whole rosettes of cardoons for the first time at our local farmers market.  Although one farm has sold large, more mature stalks of this celery doppelgänger individually (for a dollar a piece) for a number of years, last month Mariquita Farm started selling younger, more tender bunches of cardoons at a more reasonable price. Mariquita's Andy Griffin has sold these to his restaurant customers for a long time, but has now thankfully made them available to us.

Admittedly, the first thing that flashed in my mind at the sight of the oversized, spiky leafed stalks was anguish. I remembered the stressful day I was first introduced to the cardoon. I toiled for hours in a corner of one restaurant's kitchen, even skipping lunch, trying to finish peeling cases upon cases of this troublesome member of the thistle family, its bitter juices staining my fingers black. I learned intimately that the cardoon, like its cousin the artichoke, needs to be lavished with lots of love and attention to coax out its subtle herbaceous sweetness. But I suppose that's true of most of the best things in life, isn't it?

Realizing, with an immodest amount of smug elation, that I only have to cook for two chez moi, I decided to buy a single bunch. I sought out the smallest, liveliest looking bunch, because younger cardoons generally are more tender and require less preparation. Firm, solid stalks are more desirable, too, so I avoided any bunches with hollow, stringy stalks.

When I arrived home with my prize, N inquired with her usual tact, "What the f@#$ happened to that sorry-looking bunch of celery?"

Not surprisingly, she had never seen cardoons, which are rarely eaten outside of southern Europe. In Italy, Spain and France, where they are very popular during the holiday season, they are considered a colder season vegetable. According to Chez Panisse Vegetables, however, they are in season in California from the spring to the fall. I appreciate that Mariquita seems to be following the European tradition.

To prepare my bounty, I set up a bowl of acidulated water, which is a fancy term for water with lemon juice squeezed into it. I also put a pot of heavily salted water on the stove to boil. Then I cut off the base of the cardoon bunch, freeing the individual stalks. One at a time, I used my paring knife to trim off any jagged edges or leaves from each stalk. Then I peeled off the tough strings as best as I could (pictured left), just as you might string a stalk of celery. After I was done peeling each stalk, I cut it into 3- or 4-inch pieces and dropped them into my bowl of acidulated water to prevent them from turning brown.

When I was done prepping all the stalks, I dropped them into the pot of boiling water and simmered them until tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. They can take as long as 30 or even 45 minutes to reach tenderness, depending on the size and age of the cardoons.

My bunch of Mariquita's cardoons, which weighed about two pounds, yielded enough cooked stalks to make 4 healthy-sized appetizer or side-dish portions.

Now that my cardoons were ready to use, I had to decide how to serve them. A Spanish recipe for cardoons with almond sauce that I had seen in Janet Mendel's My Kitchen in Spain came to mind, as did lots of variations of Italian recipes for frying, gratinéeing or braising the stalks.

In the end, though, I opted for the familiar, the way I first learned to love this thistle. One of the longtime chefs at Chez Panisse Café, Russell Moore, taught me to simply cut the tender boiled stalks at an angle (on the bias, as we say in the kitchen), dress them with an assertive vinaigrette made from anchovies, garlic, lemon, a touch of red wine vinegar, and olive oil, and shower them with chopped hard-boiled eggs.

The eggs and olive oil add much needed creaminess to the otherwise naked cardoons, while the anchovies and lemon juice highlight rather than overwhelm the natural sweetness of the vegetable. A truly spectacular start to any autumnal meal.

With cardoons finally so readily available, I have a feeling they're going to make a frequent appearance at our dinner table this autumn and winter.

This post, by the way, is my entry for this week's Weekend Herb Blogging, sponsored by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen. Although, of course, cardoons are not an herb, any plant or vegetable is apparently an acceptable topic.

Food|and Drink|Recipes|Vegetables|Weekend Herb Blogging

When life gives you a case of tomatoes....

With my computer up and running again, I can once again join my friends in the food blogging community. So, what have I been up to in my computer-free spare time? I went Amish.

Last week at the farmers market, I was surprised to see Joe at Dirty Girl selling his luscious dry-farmed early girl tomatoes in November. I plucked a blood red wedge off the sample plate. With juices running down my wrist, I popped it in my greedy mouth and audibly gasped as its mid-summer sweetness exploded across my tongue. If only I could bottle that taste....

In that split second, my stomach staged a bloodless coup, momentarily overthrowing the more rational and obviously weaker part of my brain known as self-restraint. "You can bottle that summer goodness," it whispered hungrily to the easily duped, and no doubt dormant, part of my cerebral cortex, the left frontal lobe, the decision-maker that mistakenly believes it holds the purse strings.

Before I knew it, I arrived home with a 20-pound case of tomatoes in my trunk.

After many hours of cutting, peeling, chopping, puréeing, stewing, cleaning, bottling and freezing, I now possess two gallons of sublime tomato sauce, enough to introduce a little bit of sunlight into the cold dark months that lay ahead.

As the days grow shorter, I seem to be unconsciously preparing for the hibernation of the winter rainy season. You'd think I lived on a farm in snowy Minnesota or rural Missouri (perhaps a part of me does).

With two dozen jars of "Dirty Girl Late Early Girl Tomato Sauce" secure in my freezer, I figured why not attempt to bottle every bit of sunshine I can? I scanned the contents of my fridge in search of the next victim to embalm. By now, I was deeply in touch with the Luddite, Pennsylvania Dutch roots on my father's side of the gene pool.

First, I whiled away an hour or two pickling a few pounds of Joe's crispy yellow wax beans. In a week, they will make the ideal tart counterpunch to a rich creamy duck liver terrine.

Today I'm putting up a batch of red pepper confiture that my friend Alicia taught me how to make in Catalonia this past summer. Cook together cut up red peppers (including a hot chile or two) and sugar in the proportion of two parts peppers to one part sugar, a lemon (inner flesh only, all peel and seeds removed) and a vanilla bean until soft. Then remove the vanilla bean and purée the whole mess, adding salt to taste. It is unbeatable with sheep's milk cheese on crackers with the morning cuppa or as an aperitif with a glass of Cava later in the evening.

Food|and Drink|Recipes|Vegetables|Market

Unexpected food discoveries lead to a tasty Halloween and Diwali

There are few things that get me more excited than discovering something new to eat. In the name of unearthing an unusual and original taste, I will scour local markets, steal tastes at farm stands, pilfer fruit from neighbor's trees or wild bushes. I will endure excruciating heat, verbal abuse, gastrointestinal discomfort, endless hours of searching, even potential jail time.

Of course, the joy multiplies tenfold when new products practically jump into my undeserving hands, which is exactly what happened not once but twice over the weekend at our local farmers market.

Making my usual rounds, my blood hound mind was distracted by every aroma and shiny object. I paused here to sample a glistening pear, there to sniff the rose geraniums. I was as insatiable as Condoleeza Rice at Ferragamo.

The sight of a giant bee out of the corner of my eye momentarily yanked me out of my reverie. Once my reptilian brain relaxed, I realized the over five-foot tall bee was actually Helene Marshall of Marshall's Farm Natural Honey dressed as a bee, a la John Belushi.

Having my foot swell to the size of a basketball after stepping on a bee when I was a toddler didn't dampen my enthusiasm for honey. Neither did the discovery that the liquid amber is essentially bee vomit. I adore the sweet nectar.

In the Bay Area, the folks at Marshall's are the ambassadors of the bee kingdom. Their selection of dozens of varieties range in color from pale gold to dark chocolate and in flavor from floral to bittersweet. I decided to veer from my usual favorite "star thistle" and sample their seasonally changing collection of sticky wares.

After licking enough samples to send a dozen diabetics into shock, my clear favorite was endearingly named "Haunted Honey." Made from the pollen of pumpkin blossoms, this bright orange syrup has distinct undertones of roasted butternut squash and butterscotch.

Haunted Honey for Halloween. How appropriate. Unbelievably, I next stumbled upon a product worthy of Diwali, the Indian festival of lights which takes place today.

This time, I spied a product that stopped me in my tracks - a local version of an Italian cheese that some readers know I am inordinately fond of. While I paused to take a picture of the sheep's milk cheese, another cheese grabbed my attention.

Apparently a month or two ago, the local cheesemakers at Cowgirl Creamery teamed up with noted Indian food expert Niloufer Ichaporia King (whose cookbook I am excitedly awaiting) to create a creamy "Parsi style" version of panir (also spelled paneer). The Cowgirl version of this cow's milk farmer's cheese tastes like a smoother, saltier version of fresh ricotta, remarkably similar to a fresh cheese I often enjoyed in Catalonia called mató.

And guess what! Mató is almost always paired with honey* as a light and refreshing end to a Catalan meal. So I married my Halloween honey with my Diwali panir, added a few toasted California walnuts, and ended up miraculously with the best version of mel i mató I have had outside of Spain. Kismet.

Happy (belated) Halloween! Happy Diwali! And, most of all, happy tummy!

*Thanks also to the brilliant NS of San Francisco Gourmet San Francisco Gourmet who just a month ago reminded us all what a simple yet wonderful combination fresh ricotta-style cheese is when drizzled with a flavorful honey.

Food|and Drink|Recipes|Cheese|Desserts

Pomegranate trick (and therapy)

As promised yesterday, here's a quick and easy way to get the seeds out of the pomegranate that I learned a decade ago from Persian-born Bay Area chef Faz Poursohi.

You'll need just a few items:  your biggest bowl, your biggest spoon, some juicy ripe pomegranates, and all your pent-up aggressions.

First, cut off the little tiara that sits on top of the pomegranate (just who does she think she is, any way?) and cut the fruit in half across its equator. In each half, cut 4 or 5 one-inch nicks in the skins along the side where you cut, forming the beginning of a star.

Place one half in the palm of your non-dominant hand, cut-side face down over the bowl, preferably in a sink or outdoors.* In the other hand, hold your spoon, with the back facing down. I'm left-handed, so the spoon is in my left hand.

Now comes the fun (and potentially messy) part. Whack the pomegranate firmly with the back of the spoon.

Keep slapping it like you mean it, until you knock almost all of its teeth seeds out. Depending on your temperament, you may find it helpful to imagine that the pomegranate is a politician or boss that you don't particularly like. I'll leave that up to you.

Voila! Most of your fruit's juicy jewels will be laying in the bowl, still intact and surprisingly unharmed.

When you're done, manually dislodge any seeds that have, despite your best efforts to persuade them otherwise, continued to stubbornly cling to the membranes of the fruit. Also pick out any stray bits of the bitter membrane that have fallen into the bowl.

Now the little rubies are ready to garnish your favorite fall salad, morning müesli or silken panna cotta.

*To preserve marital bliss, I have learned through trial-and-error that it is best to perform the above task in the deep well of the kitchen sink or even outdoors. Also, don't wear white; an apron is advisable. The above is especially true should you decide to juice your pomegranate halves, which I prefer to do with an old-fashioned 1950's citrus press (Juice-O-Mat says "Hi") that I inherited from my mother.

Food|and Drink|Farms|Markets|Fruit|San Francisco

If there's pomegranates at the market, it must be autumn

I have a theory regarding why so many cooks in the Bay Area are obsessed with seasonality (meaning using fruits and vegetables only when they are at the peak of their season). Yes, there are the obvious reasons: close proximity to excellent farms, good distribution at farmers markets and local stores, desire to support local farms, and the majority's left-leaning support for environmental policies. Of course, everything also just tastes better when it's in season.

My theory adds our weather to the equation. We, in San Francisco at least, can't tell what season it is by the weather alone. When you live in a town where nearly every day of the year the meteroligist predicts "patchy morning fog, highs in the mid-sixties," you need to go to the farmers market or a store that specializes in seasonal, local produce to figure out what season it is (yes, I'm aware you could also simply look at the calender).

I know that it is now early autumn because, while a few tomatoes are still available, summer's sweet peaches, nectarines and figs have been replaced by pomegranates, persimmons, pears and quince.

Here's some of my loot from a recent visit to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Amazingly, all these fruits were grown within 200 miles of San Francisco.

This gorgeous and very ripe pomegranate comes from Balakian Farms, located about 200 miles from San Francisco in Reedley. One indication of ripeness and sweetness are cracks in the skin of the fruit. Only the sweet-tart seeds of the pomegranate are eaten. Tomorrow I'll show you a neat trick to help you remove the seeds from this fruit with little effort.

Husband and wife James Beutel and Kalayada Ammatya of K&J Orchards are my favorite growers of the fuyu persimmon. Kalayada first convinced me to try one of her persimmons a dozen years ago when I started to shop at this market. Unlike the hachiya variety which must completely soften before it can be eaten, the fuyu is typically eaten when it is still firm. I usually peel and slice my persimmon across the horizon to reveal its beautiful star pattern. Kalayada and James (K&J) grow their persimmons in Winters, about 67 miles from the city.

According to Al Courchesne of Frog Hollow Farm, the juicy Warren pear is a difficult variety to grow. It is similar in taste and texture to the Comice pear, another of my favorite pears. Al's farm is located in Brentwood, about 54 miles east of the city.

The folks at The Apple Farm, Tim and Karen Bates, grew these quince at their beautiful farm in Philo, about 120 miles north of San Francisco (which, by the way, has reasonably priced comfortable guest rooms for visitors). Like a firm hachiya persimmon, quince are unpleasantly tannic when eaten raw. Unlike the hachiya, a quince must be cooked before it is eaten. It is naturally quite tart, so often requires a sweetener like sugar or honey. Quince can be roasted, poached, or cooked down to a paste called membrillo in Spain (traditionally served with Manchego cheese as a tapa).

Expect to see more of these lovely autumn fruits in upcoming recipes!

Food|and Drink|Farms|Markets|Fruit|San Francisco

Now that's a pumpkin!

Champion pumpkin "El Camello." All 1,200.9 lbs. of it were on view at MarketBar restaurant in front of the San Francisco Ferry Building.

Food|and Drink|Markets|Vegetables|San Francisco

When potato farmers get bored....

Ferry Building at dusk

I captured this picture of the San Francisco Ferry Building after the night market on Thursday. It's already Friday which means tomorrow (at least in our town) is another market day.

Getting ready for an Indian feast

N and I just got back from the farmers market with lots and lots of vegetables for an Indian feast that we're preparing for friends tonight. It's a participation kind of event where we plan to show our friends, who are vegetarians, how to make some of our favorite Indian dishes.

Recipes will follow in a few days, but first I wanted to share with you photos of some of the gorgeous veggies we will be using.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

Lemon Verbena Tisane

There was I time I could handle a dessert wine, a digestif or maybe a cognac followed by a strong espresso after a work day dinner and still get up at the crack of dawn the next day, but those days have long since passed.

Now my favorite way to end a simple midweek dinner is with a plate of fruit and a pot of tisane, herbal tea, made with fresh mint leaves or, when it's in season, lemon verbena. It's a tradition I owe to many dinners over the years at Chez Panisse Café in Berkeley. N and I enjoy it so much, we couldn't resist buying the same beautiful glass teapot the restaurant uses when we saw it at a store in Berkeley.

So I was happy to discover that Nigel of Eatwell Farm is currently growing this highly perfumed herb on his farm in Winters. Its aroma is a wonderful as its name, scented like lemongrass or lemon zest on steriods.

To make a tisane, wash then place your herbs in a pot and cover with water that is just shy of a boil, as you would for green tea. Then let the leaves steep at least three minutes and serve.

Lemon verbena can also be used in place of vanilla to infuse cream to make any custard dessert, such as ice cream or panna cotta, any of which would pair perfectly with sweet local strawberries.

Eatwell Farm regularly attends the Saturday market and, during summer any way, the Tuesday market. If you're in town, stop by the Ferry Building today between 10 am and 2 pm and pick up a bunch of lemon verbena.

Fruit Porn (recipe inside!)

Here's a peek at some of the sexy local fruit from our Saturday farmers market.

These beauties, the best of our local figs, are the mostly widely anticipated fruit at my house. They come from Rick Knoll's Tairwa' Farm (a phoneticization of the French terroir, which loosely translates as "a sense of place") in Brentwood. The large purplish ones are Brown Turkey figs (N's favorite) and the small green ones are Adriatic figs (my favorite, mainly because I love the colorful contrast between the chartreuse skin and the red flesh, but they both taste similar). Both are scarlet on the inside and absolutely bursting with juice.

These lovelies with the color of a tequila sunrise (when was the last time you had one of those?) are called pluots. They're a cross between, as you may have guessed, a plum and an apricot. Steven Kashiwase, my favorite stone fruit farmer (peaches, nectarines, plums and pluots), grows them in Winton. This variety, which I find the most satisfying of all the pluots, is aptly called Flavor King. When eaten raw, the succulent fruit more closely resembles a sweet-tart plum. Its apricotness pushes to the forefront when it is cooked into a gorgeous galette or preserves (click "continue" below for an easy recipe for pluot preserves).

Our final bombshell is also of mixed parentage. This bunch of Bronx grapes, from Lagier Ranches in Escalon, is a cross between the flavorful purple Concord grape and the rather dull Thompson seedless variety. What you end up with is better than the sum of the parts. The Concord lends a tinge of its amethyst color, its floral perfume and its quintessential grapey flavor (I can't think of any better way to describe its almost artificial tasting flavor, the taste of the Welch's Concord grape jelly you had smeared on your peanut butter sandwich when you were a kid). The Thompson was clearly chosen to result in a seedless progeny, but it also adds its characteristic shade of jade green.

Butteriest Butter in the Bay Area

A recent story I read somewhere about the famed butter of Brittany whet my appetite for a taste of some good butter.

The flavor of really great butter is a taste, and specifically an aroma, that I associate with my grandmother's kitchen. Whenever we flew from Los Angeles to visit my grandparents' house in New York,  my grandmother always seemed to be in the process baking a  pie, usually my favorite, blueberry. The scent of Mimi's, that's what we called my grandmother, legendary buttery pie crust baking in her white enamel 1930's oven would send shivers of anticipation up and down my spine. Invariably, I would insist on eating a slice before it had properly cooled and I would devour that buttery, flaky crust before even touching the too-hot filling.

In the spirit of this month's challenge to eat locally produced foods, I remembered  the best butter I've ever tasted that comes from close to home. It's made by Spring Hill, a dairy farm and artisan cheese maker in Petaluma, a town north of San Francisco in Sonoma County. When I shopped at our local farmers market this morning, I saw this display and sign at their farm stand:

It seems one of the secrets to their butter is it's unbelievable degree of freshness. You've never tasted how sublime butter can be until you've let freshly made butter melt on your tongue.

The other secret to their incredible butter is Jersey cow milk. The milk from the smaller brown  Jersey cows is almost 50% higher in butterfat content than that of the more commonly raised, larger black-and-white Holstein cows (4.5% vs. 3.15%). Spring Hill's entire herd of 400 or so cows are  Jersey.

Spring Hill also properly cultures the cream to add the slightest tanginess to the otherwise sweet,  almost caramelized milk flavor. I prefer their salted butter to their unsalted, because the salt heightens the, well, butteriness. It's so slightly salted that I still prefer to sprinkle on a few crystals of fleur de sel (from Brittany, of course) when I spread it on a slice of my favorite bread.

Perfection doesn't come cheap, though. Prepare to pay $8 for a pound a Spring Hill butter. If you're a butter-lover, it's worth every penny.

What's in my market basket?

 
After a spending a week basking in the lovely warmth of the Sierra foothills, I was not surprised to find San Francisco enveloped in fog when I woke up late this morning.  Being Saturday, I instinctively headed to our amazing Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.  It's no secret that all of the stars in the Bay Area's foodie galaxy can be found here.  The sellers here are like the rock stars of the Bay Area food scene:  the growers, ranchers, bakers and cheese makers whose names you see sprinkled all over the menus of the eco-conscious restaurants who follow Alice Waters' lead.

Over the next month, I'll be traveling to New York City and Spain, so this was my last visit to the Saturday market until August. Wherever I travel, I make a point of visiting the best farmers markets to discover what's in season locally (frankly, after markets and restaurants, museums and other sights place a distant third).  So before I head abroad, I wanted to make note of what's currently in season in the Bay Area so I can compare what's available here with what I find at the Union Square Greenmarket in New York and at Spain's most famous markets, including La Boqueria in Barcelona, La Brecha in San Sebastián and the Mercado Central in Valencia.