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Farmers markets yield exotica
By Michele Kayal |
September 1, 2011, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
KATSUYA Fukushima is used to working with unusual ingredients, using liquid nitrogen or high-tech whipping canisters to make "snow" or "air" from otherwise solid ingredients.
But when he came across a long-stemmed plant with scalloped leaves at his farmers market, he was stymied.
"I had no idea what it was," Fukushima - who was chef de cuisine at Jose Andres' cutting edge minibar restaurant - says of finding what turned out to be the herb known as stevia. Stevia most often is seen in powdered form and used as a sweetener. "The farmer let me taste it and it was super sweet, but it was a leaf. Something that tiny and that sweet was very exciting. It was a great discovery."
So he laced it with fresh mint and balanced it with tangy yogurt for a dessert. Now he is considering a salad of sweet stevia and bitter arugula for Rabbit, the Arlington, Virginia, restaurant where he consults.
Farmers markets have grown like tomatoes in summer during the last five years, and a food savvy public has pushed their numbers up more than 60 percent to 7,175 today. But after the spring onions, snap peas and new potatoes, many consumers - and even some chefs - find baffling items. What do the pros do with their enticing yet exotic finds?
Andy Ricker, who won the 2011 James Beard award for best chef in the Northwest, shops the stalls of Hmong farmers at his Portland, Oregon, market for fiddlehead ferns, vegetables like "phak khanaa" or Chinese broccoli, exotic, untranslatable herbs and crucial ingredients like cilantro root for the innovative Asian cuisine he turns out at his restaurant Pok Pok.
Foraged mushrooms and turkey eggs were recent finds for Nicholas Stefanelli, executive chef at Bibiana in Washington, DC, but he also stumbled on wormwood, the legendary ingredient in absinthe liqueur. He'd had high hopes for that.
"It didn't have the flavor I expected," he says about the bushy blue-green shrub. "I thought it would be anise, but it was herbaceous. It was a little woodsy." He tried making tea from the leaves and using its branches for smoked meats, but it never found a place on his menu.
At Lantern Restaurant in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Andrea Reusing uses horseradish leaves in a beef sashimi, treating the tender young shoots like shiso, the Japanese basil often used in sushi. Fresh green coriander seeds - sold by farmers whose plants are going to seed - lend a lemony, peppery tang to cubed, raw salmon. And fresh fig leaves offer a perfumed accent to grilled chicken or mullet.
The curly little tails her pig farmers bring get braised, then grilled with a five-spice barbecue sauce.
"If people are doing meat, often they have odd parts of animals in their coolers," she says. "The meat is very succulent, like on a rib."
Like many home cooks, chefs also look to farmers markets for the freshest ingredients and for a greater variety than they might get from purveyors or supermarkets.
"I'm not into searching out strange things," says Daniel Giusti, executive chef at 1789 in Washington, DC, and a self-professed "psycho" about onions. "I like to find what's good and buy a ton of it."
Spring onions, candy onions, torpedo onions (like shallots), Giusti finds a way to feature them all on his menu, using even the tops as crunchy garnish on items like creamy Vidalia soup.
During the summer, Little Rock, Arkansas, chef Lee Richardson from Ashley's in the Capital Hotel, buys purple-hulled peas by the bushel at markets, incorporating the mahogany-centered legumes into side-dishes, salads, even deep frying them.
"They're an amazing bar snack," he says, adding that he sprinkles them with salt and cayenne pepper. "They're really addictive."
Cookbook writer Deborah Madison was excited to find quinoa in Santa Fe, New Mexico. But she's more encouraged by the many different grains - wheat, cornmeal, organic rice, and so-called ancient grains - showcased at markets around the country.
"You find you get a lot more of the hidden treasures," Stefanelli says. "They might only have two quarts of figs and they save them for customers who come buy from them every week."
But when he came across a long-stemmed plant with scalloped leaves at his farmers market, he was stymied.
"I had no idea what it was," Fukushima - who was chef de cuisine at Jose Andres' cutting edge minibar restaurant - says of finding what turned out to be the herb known as stevia. Stevia most often is seen in powdered form and used as a sweetener. "The farmer let me taste it and it was super sweet, but it was a leaf. Something that tiny and that sweet was very exciting. It was a great discovery."
So he laced it with fresh mint and balanced it with tangy yogurt for a dessert. Now he is considering a salad of sweet stevia and bitter arugula for Rabbit, the Arlington, Virginia, restaurant where he consults.
Farmers markets have grown like tomatoes in summer during the last five years, and a food savvy public has pushed their numbers up more than 60 percent to 7,175 today. But after the spring onions, snap peas and new potatoes, many consumers - and even some chefs - find baffling items. What do the pros do with their enticing yet exotic finds?
Andy Ricker, who won the 2011 James Beard award for best chef in the Northwest, shops the stalls of Hmong farmers at his Portland, Oregon, market for fiddlehead ferns, vegetables like "phak khanaa" or Chinese broccoli, exotic, untranslatable herbs and crucial ingredients like cilantro root for the innovative Asian cuisine he turns out at his restaurant Pok Pok.
Foraged mushrooms and turkey eggs were recent finds for Nicholas Stefanelli, executive chef at Bibiana in Washington, DC, but he also stumbled on wormwood, the legendary ingredient in absinthe liqueur. He'd had high hopes for that.
"It didn't have the flavor I expected," he says about the bushy blue-green shrub. "I thought it would be anise, but it was herbaceous. It was a little woodsy." He tried making tea from the leaves and using its branches for smoked meats, but it never found a place on his menu.
At Lantern Restaurant in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Andrea Reusing uses horseradish leaves in a beef sashimi, treating the tender young shoots like shiso, the Japanese basil often used in sushi. Fresh green coriander seeds - sold by farmers whose plants are going to seed - lend a lemony, peppery tang to cubed, raw salmon. And fresh fig leaves offer a perfumed accent to grilled chicken or mullet.
The curly little tails her pig farmers bring get braised, then grilled with a five-spice barbecue sauce.
"If people are doing meat, often they have odd parts of animals in their coolers," she says. "The meat is very succulent, like on a rib."
Like many home cooks, chefs also look to farmers markets for the freshest ingredients and for a greater variety than they might get from purveyors or supermarkets.
"I'm not into searching out strange things," says Daniel Giusti, executive chef at 1789 in Washington, DC, and a self-professed "psycho" about onions. "I like to find what's good and buy a ton of it."
Spring onions, candy onions, torpedo onions (like shallots), Giusti finds a way to feature them all on his menu, using even the tops as crunchy garnish on items like creamy Vidalia soup.
During the summer, Little Rock, Arkansas, chef Lee Richardson from Ashley's in the Capital Hotel, buys purple-hulled peas by the bushel at markets, incorporating the mahogany-centered legumes into side-dishes, salads, even deep frying them.
"They're an amazing bar snack," he says, adding that he sprinkles them with salt and cayenne pepper. "They're really addictive."
Cookbook writer Deborah Madison was excited to find quinoa in Santa Fe, New Mexico. But she's more encouraged by the many different grains - wheat, cornmeal, organic rice, and so-called ancient grains - showcased at markets around the country.
"You find you get a lot more of the hidden treasures," Stefanelli says. "They might only have two quarts of figs and they save them for customers who come buy from them every week."
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