Farmers' Market Chitchat

So here's what we talk about at the local farmers' market:

The award winning artisanal goat cheese lady couldn't answer a customer's question about why goat cheese doesn't melt and kept the conversation going with me. "I've been trying to figure it out for years but nobody seems to know," she said. "And it's also true that goat cheese sticks to itself, like clay. So for sure, it's easier to clean up. I know that."  I said that might be why the French now use soft goat cheese in lieu of softened butter to dip their breakfast radishes in before rolling them in sea salt.  The cheese seems to adhere to the moist pink radishes.  "I'll have to try that," she said. "Sounds mighty good. But I'd still like to know why goat cheese behaves so differently from cow's milk cheeses."  I asked if it really matters... to her making the cheese and her fans gobbling it up. "Not really, "she admitted. "But I'd just like to know. I like mysteries solved."  

One of the newer organic farmers had puntarelle, a beloved and rare southern Italian chicory. He had absolutely no idea how to cook it; he'd just decided to grow it along with its cousins the radicchio and treviso that restaurants were buying.  Puntarelle was a seriously exciting Eureka! it's so hard to come by in California, gourmet cooks and chefs complain all the time. Admittedly the bunch I got was thin but it's enough to get going. Bitter greens are crucial to a healthy diet because their nutrient dense immune system builders, stimulate digestion and have no calories. Arugula is less exotic than Puntarelle as are  turnip greens, mustard greens, chicory, radicchio, dandelion and endive. Don't forget them.

Romans have an eponymous, legendary salad made from this particular winter green, Puntarelle. They strip the leaves and slice the stems lengthwise into thinnest strips. These are soaked in cold water for at least an hour so they soften and above all curl. Then the curlicues are dried and served with an anchovy garlic olive oil dressing. Nobody whose eaten bitter puntarelle served salty like this ever forgets. I'm on it for tonight!  The leaves, which look like the dandelion's twin, are good for sauteeing with lots of garlic. In fact that's what made me so excited about this find: in Puglia, the southern tip of Italy often called the heel of the boot, natives famously eat a noontime dish of mashed fava beans laced with bitter chicories--an extraordinarily healthy, lo cal and colorful meal with crusty bread and a chunk of hard cheese. I love it and keep cans of fava beans on hand. So now I can make the real thing...

(Canned fava beans are often sold by Arabic brands as Ful; I use Sahadi cans. You can empty the can into a pot and make delicious Ful (recipe in Veggiyana, the Dharma of Cooking,  or you can go a step further by cooking it a bit longer then pureeing it with extra olive oil before you add the garlic sauteed greens. )

Still high from the prospects promised by the puntarelle find, I went to the fruit man to check out what he had. "Not much," he said. "Just fresh crop of rhubarb."  Rhubarb redux!  What wonderful news. I spent much of late spring cooking it down with vanilla, star anise, currants and cardamom into a thick, tasty sauce for spicy fried chicken. Everybody wanted me to make them some. When I got really lazy I just stewed some up with raisins and orange juice for breakfast. Now it's back just when melons have disappeared throwing my daily breakfast fruit in jeopardy. I grabbed a pound for $3.00.

Then I got garlic I know isn't tainted by Chinese chemicals or night-soil like the cheap supermarket bulbs could be, and fresh ears of corn not genetically engineered with pesticide inside. My basket was heavy. "You certainly look very happy," someone said watching me head toward my car. "Yes," I said. It's only 9:30 and already It's been a banner day."