It's cold and dreary here in France but the farmers' markets are still cheerful. What's most in season locally in the north are radishes, leeks, winter squash, lettuces, fennel and cabbage.
My French "sister" whose mother was my cooking teacher brought home a big bunch of those lovely French radishes that are cylinder shaped, pink fading to white. The bunches here are twice what they are in America and happily the radishes are small too, which makes for the best eating. Marie-France's way of preparing them for a first course was to mix soft, fresh goat cheese with a mass of chopped chives, a bit of parsley and lots of sea salt. Then we dipped the cleaned radishes in. The taste and texture combination was sensational and the preparation couldn't have been any easier: it was all in the shopping.
Marie-France and her husband have a 17thC farmhouse and cook in their massive fireplace, usually fish and duck. But I insisted we roast the leeks and they were a huge hit. I simply cleaned and halved them both ways because they were large, drizzled olive oil on them, sprinkled sea salt and wrapped them in foil to put on the fire. Twenty minutes on the coals gave us meltingly sweet leeks to eat with our grilled salmon. Its just as easy to perform this magic 15-20 minutes in a 450 degree oven on a baking sheet without the foil.
Again couldn't have been simpler: twas all in the shopping.
Farmers' market are the ace place when that's the case.
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