To market, to market

The Ortiz Brothers' fabulous vegetables.

In our little corner of the County, Tuesdays and Saturdays are market days. I don't know about your town, but I sincerely hope that you're fortunate enough to have convenient access to a weekly farmer's market; at the very least, if we all have to tolerate the silliness of the word "locovore", we should get some payback in the form of good, local foodstuffs, right? If I cared to do so, I can find a very good (and often larger) market on almost any day of the week, within a relatively short drive. But that, to me, would seem to defeat the point: I'm trying to eat stuff that was dug out of the same ground, in a largely literal sense, that my own house is built on. Avoiding car-time also offers its own attractions and advantages (less gasoline consumption, less wasted time, less opportunity for kids to whine, etc). I also like the imposed structure, because it forces, or at least encourages, me to think about what I'm buying, and why, and to actually use it, or risk the guilt of seeing good food go bad in the fridge while we chow down on boxed mac-n-cheese or whatever.

Of the two options, Saturday is by far the larger, and has some truly exceptional vendors that don't come to the Tuesday market, but I often prefer the Tuesday market by virtue of its navigability and more personal feel - the Saturday market can engender sensory overload, which is not necessarily conducive to a coherent approach to marketing, and almost invariably promotes impulse purchases of stuff that, as much I truly love, I really didn't need; and the shoppers at the Tuesday market, while more sparse, also tend to be more serious about buying food, which I find improves my dialogue with the farmers and subtly shifts the character of the market a shade further from tourism. (Hey, I love tourists - my town couldn't exist without them - I'm just saying.) But whichever format you prefer, it remains a basic truism of shopping for food that selectivity and purpose should be the final arbiters of what ultimately comes home. That, for me, is far easier said than done, particularly when confronted by a cornucopia of summer delights in all shapes, colors and sizes.

I believe there are at least two essential tactics to successfully navigating the market (and by success I mean getting the best products the market has to offer, that you actually want to eat and will in fact cook, in the appropriate quantities):

1. Take a lap. Walk past all the stalls, taking mental notes of which crops look like they're at their prime from a seasonal perspective, and which vendors have the finest examples thereof. You may see a gorgeous peach, only to see even finer ones later; or maybe you'll realize that, as nice as the peaches are, nectarines are better right now (this is, in fact, the case in our County); or, perhaps you'll realize that you've had enough of stone fruits and you'd rather have berries (which are just beginning to explode into their full potential right now).
2. Make a plan. Form an idea of what you're going to do with all this food. Don't just buy asparagus, peaches, and lamb because they all looked good individually - how are you going to prepare them, and will they work well together? Do you want to spend a lot or a little time in the kitchen, and do you want the oven on all day? Sometimes, I'll thumb through a cookbook, or I will have eaten something at a restaurant or seen something on TV, whatever, that I really want to try - this is the easy, although somewhat less interesting case, and all that it requires is a shopping list. More often, and both harder and more fun, is to go without much of a plan, except for some basic guidelines, such as "I need to feed several people, some of them don't eat meat, and I don't want to spend all night cooking while they're eating and drinking."

By way of a little case study, here is why I was shopping on my most recent trip: I am going to feed 2 couples, centered around a protein but with a starch and veg on the side; I want easy plating and very little a-la-minute prep; I'd like to have natural 'byproducts' from the main project to feed to the kids; and I'd like to serve it with some Rhone-style reds, including the Syrah that grows in our own backyard; and, as ever, I'd like it to be as locally sourced as possible."

Shiitake from the Alexander Valley

So I take my first lap around and perform my due diligence (this is not window-shopping, I move pretty efficiently; I don't piss around talking to everyone, unless there is a reason to do so, such as "what kind of potatoes are those", or "how old were the lambs at slaughter and who does your butchery").

Initial thoughts: Green vegetables of all sorts are in epic form, but not quite as 'baby' as they were a month ago; stone fruits lean more toward nectarines and plums than peaches by now; berries are getting revved up; and root veggies - potatoes, carrots, turnips, garlic - look exceptional. I notice the most astounding box of shiitake mushrooms - this one catches my eye and gets me thinking, because shiitake, in addition to being damn good in their own right, are, for me, the definitive example of the umami component of the palate.

Bernier Farms digs it up

Next, I strike up a conversation with a delightful woman from the Owen Family Farm,who describes their lambs as "humanely raised on our own local, evironmentally sustainable, family-owned farm in Hopland". OK, Hopland is technically in the next county, but c'mon! And when I ask her about butchery, she knows exactly who kills the animals, who cuts them, and in what conditions. This gets the ball rolling: Shiitake mushrooms - earthy, meaty, fresh from the next valley over; lamb - gamey meat, from what looks to be a great rancher in our neighboring county; and remember my Syrah - a gamey, earthy, leathery, bad-ass, big-boy red, grown in my backyard, which, to my palate, literally screams for lamb's meat. I also don't want to spend all night cooking and plating while my in-laws attack the wine cellar without me, I want leftovers, and it hasn't been that hot, so braising in the oven seems an obvious route. I grab a nice little shank, which just happens to be cut to exactly the right size for my cast iron braising pot, a box of little button-sized shiitake, and then - again thinking about the braise - grab a sweet torpedo onion the size of a nerf football from the Ortiz brothers and a bunch of baby carrots, some new Yukon Gold potatoes, and a head of garlic from Bernier Farms: Patiently Braised Shank of Owen Family Lamb with Shiitake Mushrooms and Home-Grown Syrah. I can't wait for Friday night! Keep an eye out for the final product in this weekend's post.