March 1999

Last month I wrote about stocking the pantry - what kind of staples we keep on hand, and how it shapes our cooking. This month I want to talk about the fresh marketing we do every week or even every day.

I can't say this too often: if you want to cook well, you have to start with good ingredients. The food you begin with has everything to do with the food you end up with. It can be fancy or simple, traditional or trendy, slow or fast - doesn't matter. Did you start with good ingredients?

As I said last month, when people ask me what they can do to improve their cooking, I say: improve your shopping. When you walk into the kitchen wondering what you should fix for dinner, if you find yourself surrounded by beautiful, fresh produce, you'll cook a different meal than if you open the cupboard and find canned soup, or something with the word 'helper' at the end of it.

So think about your shopping habits. Begin by thinking fresh, and thinking seasonal. Perhaps the most important thing is to find the best source for good produce in your neighborhood, and a good farmers market is the ideal.

I love the farmers market in Ventura, near where I live. You can find me there on most Saturday mornings, and I rarely have a list in my hand. I go with my basket and my old canvas bags, and walk up and down the three rows of stalls, slowly. Sometimes I buy flowers first, for the pure pleasure of it. I visit my favorite vendors, but I check out everything.

I feel the seasons there as I never do in a supermarket, no matter how many holiday-themed decorations they put up. I'm outside in the weather, looking at produce that's grown in my area, buying it from the people who grow it, pick it and truck it in.

Now, in the late winter, I look at firm, glossy bunches of chard, great arugula and young spinach, potatoes in many varieties, sweet navel oranges and beautiful apples, big Peter Rabbit cabbages, and root vegetables of all kinds - like the spectacular beets with their luxuriant leaves that were the inspiration for my beet-green soup. We're getting the best giant, sweet strawberries of the year. It's a great time for cilantro, parsley, raddichio, and all kinds of salad greens because of the steady, cool weather. The frilly purple kale is so showy it almost looks fake. Fennel is appearing, and there are still winter squashes - Tahitian, hubbard, butternut, and kabocha. Because this is California, we always have tomatoes, but at this time of year they're hothouse tomatoes. I like to search out the outdoor growers, and ask for green tomatoes.

Today, I'll oven-roast some yellow squash with fennel, onions and a couple of green tomatoes, and have that with a rice pilaf or some couscous. Last Sunday I made a stir-fry of shiitake mushrooms, kale and baby bok choy, and tossed it in the wok with soba noodles. These are not fancy recipes or things that need to be planned way ahead - just easy, fresh food that evolves from the shopping I do at the farmers market. And they're seasonal things. I know I can get eggplants from Chile in the supermarket, but I'm not ready for ratatouille. I'm in the mood for a bowl of hot squash and ginger soup, an earthy lentil salad with leeks and spinach, or turnips and rutabagas slow-roasted with onions until they are soft and glazed with their own caramelized juices. It is one of the benefits of farmers market shopping that you can enjoy truly seasonal food.

Later, in the spring, I'll be looking for fresh green peas, and the tender shoots of their plants. I'll get fat asparagus, blood oranges, sweet butter lettuces, and maybe morels from the mushroom lady. Around Easter, lilac suddenly appears, brought in from the cold in the nearby mountains. There are always a few of us walking around with our faces buried in a mass of purple blossoms, inhaling deeply, dreamy-eyed.

As spring moves into summer, an air of excitement comes in with the first summer fruits. Crowds form around the earliest cherries of the season, the first crop of apricots. Then as the weather heats up, and tables are piled with peaches and plums and nectarines, the perfume of deep summer in the air is intoxicating. Vendors urge their customers to taste, holding out juicy, dripping slices of fruit on toothpicks.

My local market is not as big or exciting as the one half an hour up the road in Santa Barbara, but it suits me. I find everything I need and, over the years, have been introduced to many wonderful new things. In the corner, behind my favorite flower stall, three fiddlers and a banjo player, each of them about one day younger than God, play the same songs every week - cowboy songs, bluegrass, and some nursery songs for the children.

It takes me half an hour, maybe all of forty-five minutes, to do my shopping. I fill my trunk with the freshest, most beautiful, most seasonal fruits and vegetables, flowers and herbs, and head home. But that half hour gives me much more than a trunkful of good food and a blast of bluegrass. My approach to food and cooking is re-formed every time. The look, the smells, the tastes, the experience of each season's harvest - it's fun, and I start thinking about what would be delicious to make with this kale and bok choy in winter, or those peppers and eggplants in summer. I'm already cooking. The pleasure of the farmers' market stays with me, and I bring it into the kitchen when it's time to cook dinner.

I realize that not everyone has a nice farmers' market nearby, but there has been a proliferation of these markets recently, and they are flourishing in many parts of the country, both in rural areas and in big cities. I urge you to find out if there's a market in your area. If there is, try it.

If you don't have a farmers market, then look for the nearest thing to it. In the summer, farm stands spring up on country roads everywhere. In cities, the greengrocery has become a viable business again. Don't overlook ethnic markets and neighborhoods. Asian or Latin American markets can be great finds, and you'll undoubtedly learn something new. And health food stores, which used to be shelves of pill botles and dreary powders, now have some of the best produce departments around, with fabulous selections of local and imported goods. If you haven't looked lately - look!

And when you've looked, buy. Don't be tied to a list. Give yourself the freedom to take home the things that look enticing, or interesting, or curious. Don't pass by something simply because you've never cooked it, or eaten it, or even seen it before. It was at the farmers market that I first saw fuyu persimmons, kabocha squashes, mustard greens, fresh lima beans, green garlic, and dozens of other things that are now part of my standard repertoire. If you don't know what something is - ask. Someone standing next to you will probably start telling you how to cook it. At my market, some of the vendors even hand out recipes from time to time.

Are you afraid you won't get around to using it all? Worried that you might not eat salad every day, or have time to make that green soup you found on this website in January? So what? Fresh produce is, over all, the most economical food purchase you can make. Honestly, how terrible is it if you toss a wilted lettuce or some mushy zucchini into the compost at the end of the week? One bad meal at any fast food place would cost more. The point is, it's worth the investment to keep fresh produce around, even allowing a certain margin for the compost, because it helps you cook more often, cook better, and enjoy nicer meals.

Finding a farmers market may be the biggest change you make, but don't overlook the cheese shop, the bakery, the deli or the chile pepper emporium. Many of us are willing to splurge on a night out in a good restaurant as a treat, but we don't apply the same thinking to our food shopping. Drop into some of those places and get something special - a wonderful, aged vinegar, or some great olives. Buy something you don't normally buy, like dried porcini, or a Basque cheese - or some superb Belgian chocolate. The simplest things can sometimes give the greatest satisfaction. A loaf of artesanal, hand-shaped, brick-oven-baked bread can transform a meal. Take the extra few minutes now and then to stop in somewhere special and get the thing you'd love to cook with - or to discover that thing.

I have my special places where I get good coffee beans, excellent cheeses, fine preserves, my favorite breads. I don't have the selection of a big city, but I buy the best citrus fruits on the roadside, and for a time I was getting exquisite goat's milk cheese from a woman who has goats on her farm. These little efforts give great returns.

No matter where you shop, or what your style is, above all - seek quality. Insist on quality. Do this whether you are buying a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread or stocking your wine cellar. This is your food, after all. It's what you will eat, what you will feed your children, or share with your friends. It will become part of you, both your physical self and your personal culture. So honor yourself, and get the best food you can find. Your cooking will improve, perhaps your health too, and most important, you will have a lot more fun. The shopping and cooking that was a chore will transform into a pleasure, and that is an alchemy we can all use in our lives.

March 1999 recipe