Hello, Old Friend: Revisiting the Mountain View Farmer's Market

Strolled around the Mountain View Farmer's Market with my South Bay friends... brings back old memories!  I shouldn't really say strolled, because my friends are MV Farmer's Market experts, who know which vendors they like and don't like, and have routinized their weekly shopping trip to find the best produce (my kind of folks!).  People at the Ithaca FM have given me very strange looks for my purposive, direct, fast walking, but as people whizzed by ME today in MV, I realized that my behavior was NORMAL in MV.  Ah, to be normal... 

Many of my old favorites were there, but so many new vendors as well; the market has doubled in size since I last frequented it in 2007.  Hot tomato guy was not there yet (it's a bit too early for tomatoes) but the season for sun golds is just starting...

I will eat these soon, crushed on a piece of toasted green onion slab from Acme bread and drizzled with balsamic and olive oil.  Not sure what my kitchen will be like (although I'll have an electric stove, darn), so I'm probably going to focus on simple preparations of seasonal produce this summer, which is my favorite way to "cook" anyway.  I actually first fell in love with sun golds in Ithaca... I was too obsessed with brandywine heirlooms to notice sun golds while living in California.  But sun golds are some of the best, sweetest cherry tomatoes you'll ever find, and should not be passed over!

Welcome to SF!!!!

My good friend Cupcake, Mr. Cupcake, and little Cupcake picked me up at the SFO airport yesterday, and we immediately went for a fabulous lunch at Farmer Brown's Little Skillet.  It was a place that was so SF, that I felt its "placeness," which I loved.  Little Skillet is a small venture with no seating, serving "farm fresh soul food" with limited hours and a limited menu. 

You walk up to a tiny shuttered window to order:

We shared a box of fried chicken with waffles and miscellaneous sides, and munched on the feast on a concrete loading dock in the small side street where Little Skillet was housed.

The chicken was great, everything you'd want in fried chicken... salty, crispy, juicy.  I didn't think anything else was good enough to write home about, but the chicken was definitely worth it!  As if this wasn't enough, we of course got ice cream afterwards at Bi-Rite Creamery.  No pics because I got too excited and started eating before I took a picture, but I had salted caramel and balsamic strawberry, yum!  It was a beautiful sunny day (I actually expected it to be foggy) and a nice welcome to SF.

Inching toward a good homemade Thai curry

I mentioned Mae Ploy curry pastes earlier as one of the keys to excellent homemade Thai curry.  I wanted to make at least one use of my thai basil plant before I left, so I threw together a Panang curry w/ the thai basil, the Mae Ploy paste, a Thai brand of coconut milk, and the following veggies: orange pepper, baby eggplant, green zucchini, and white onion.  Here's the first stage of making the curry, when I saute the vegetables together before adding the other ingredients (oh, these are seasoned with a bit of salt and garlic powder)...

I was lazy so I threw them all in together.  In the future I'd cook the eggplant a bit longer first, it wasn't exactly the right texture.  I may experiment with the right kind of eggplant in the future.  Normally I buy japanese eggplant for curry but they didn't have that at Wegman's when I went.  The graffiti eggplant looked enticing.  Here's the final product:

After sauteing the veg, I threw in some diced chicken (pre-cooked, again the rotisserie chicken for ease) and some leftover fresh pineapple chunks.  Wegman's was out of the Ithaca tofu when we went so I left it out this time, but it really is a necessary ingredient.  I want to try microwaving the tofu to get a drier texture though.  We missed the tofu in this round.  The Thai basil really did add essential flavor, but I wanted more from this dish.  I think I'm going to have to figure out how to add extra keffir lime flavor.  The Mae Ploy curry paste has some, but nothing beats fresh.  I think I can order keffir lime leaves online and then stick them in the freezer, but I haven't yet done it.  Well, something to look forward to in the future!

Can't wait to go to NYC in the fall...

Not sure when, but after reading this New York Times article, I am dying to visit Greenpoint Food Market.  This opening paragraph to the article made my mouth positively water...

"THEY carry home-grown radishes and red-cooked pork. They transport dozens of empanadas, juggling sheet pans on the G train. They pack boxes of butterscotch cupcakes, Sichuan-spiced beef jerky and grapefruit marmalade. They haul boiled peanuts, ice-grinding machines, sandwich presses and at least one toaster oven painted hot pink."

I want to try everything... the list is so creative!

mini pita pockets with curried chicken and mixed greens

Sometimes great food ideas come from working within constraints.  Since I am headed to the left coast for the summer, I pared down on my food stock in the fridge.  With the miscellany left, I whipped up these mini pita pockets with curried chicken and mixed greens for lunch.  I think they'd make great party hors d'oeuvres, don't you? 

These are simple, though they take a bit of time to assemble.  Just chop up some chicken (we bought the rotisserie kind from Wegmans, this flavor is lemon pepper)... a secret I learned from Nigella is that you can use kitchen scissors to chop anything, especially when you are feeling lazy.  Add some vegan mayo.  Vegan mayo is so much better than the regular kind, because the expeller pressed vegetable oils last well, whereas regular mayo spoils quickly.  We never eat even a small jar of mayo in time (which I think is a good thing), so I only buy the vegan kind. 

Throw in a teaspoon or two of curry powder, to taste.  I prefer Penzey's Maharajah curry mix.  Stir it up, and spoon into pita pockets.  Stuff mixed greens into the sides and let overflow a bit, for color. 

Grilling vegetables

Today we had a vegetable grilling feast, with blue, red, and yellow fingerling potatoes, asparagus, and zucchini!

Keeping with the simple theme, these are prepared with a light coat of safflower oil, kosher flake salt, and onion powder, then grilled to doneness on our wonderful cast iron grill!  As S says, it doesn't have to be meat to be delicious!  I especially loved the zucchini today, it was positively sweet.

I have found myself to be a bit conservative when grilling vegetables.  Other than potatoes, zucchini, and asparagus, I wonder what vegetables would be good on the grill?  What immediately comes to mind are eggplants, yellow summer squash, peppers, and onions.  While I love roasted broccoli and cauliflower, what would they be like on the grill?  We will have to keep working on this experiment perhaps in the fall and next spring/summer, IF we will be in Ithaca.

Thai basil

I bought a Thai basil plant at the farmer's market, and it's really growing! Unfortunately I won't have time to cook with it too much before I head out, and I can't bring it with me :-( However, I do want to try to grow some herbs at Berkeley this summer, if I can.

I've made some progress this year in trying to make good Thai food at home, especially with my Mae Ploy curry pastes. However, it is essential to have Thai basil for authentic flavor, and so I will have to figure out how to jerry rig my Aerogarden this winter so I can keep a supply of my favorite herbs, not just the prepackaged seed packs they sell. I have 5 spaces for herbs, so hopefully I will be able to grow: Genovese basil, Thai basil, and cilantro. Competing for the two other spots will be: dill (although, like its name, it does grow like a weed which I don't like), rosemary, chives, Italian parsley.