There comes a point in every summer season when I look around and think the market can’t get any bigger.
Trays and baskets filled with tomatoes and peppers. Whole trucks of corn, baked up into a side street over flowing with ears of corn still with beads of moisture on them. Rows of quart containers filled with peaches, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, blackberries, we really are at the peak of production. Then I realize that we still have a good three months of market left outdoors, and of course indoors goes year around.
We don’t realize how lucky we are sometimes to live in an area of the country that produces almost year-round. With the advancements in high tunnel production and second and third plantings, some industrious farmers are working their land full time, producing something of value almost every month of the year. Move us 50 miles north and that might not be the case, but it’s also a question of supply and demand, and in an unacknowledged way the farmer has joined battle with your grocery store and all the big boxes to try and carve a slice out of the pie.
I’ve written extensively about cooking from the market, and in recent years it’s gotten easier to sell that concept. There is a reason behind that shift and it starts with the farmer’s recognition that their market is primed to consider that option. Where once you might have a few brave souls who fill their weekend basket with meals, now you have weekly C.S.A. baskets and more farm to table establishments catering to the growing number of consumers who understand and embrace unprocessed locally grown food for one simple reason: it’s good.
The politics and the morality have started to fall away and the product quality and diversity has gotten progressively better. The prices have stabilized and in some cases gone down, as the volume sold rises, simple economics of scale at work.
Presentation has gotten better, and while you may not see that as a mitigating factor consider that a lot of people still harbor nostalgic notions of strolling through the farmers market and in the process creating a memory. When is the last time you felt nostalgia in a grocery store?
As the possibilities for an expanded market continue to present themselves we need to continue to push the process in any way we can. I constantly write and talk about the value of local foods and markets. There are more farm to table restaurants, more chefs who realize the financial importance of promoting local foods.
Consumers are spending more time researching local, shopping local and seeking out local over the corporate alternative, so much so that the corporate model has slowly started to move towards some variation of farm to table. Not necessarily locally sourced food at this point, but a concept that features fresh, scratch cooked items within the processed framework of the menu.
This is heady stuff, the notion that ever so slowly we can influence established eating habits by persistently advertising the positive qualities of the product and at the same time mainstreaming the product to a wider buying audience.
Which takes me back to my original thought, that there is a lot of stuff here to eat and cook. I’m tempted each week to stock The Sage Rabbit to the roof with chicken of the woods, tenderette beans, heirloom tomatoes, and spinach.
Planning specials in this type of environment is a blast. I rarely have to even think about what I can put on the plate, instead I’m trying to cycle through all the product I do have in order not to let things languish in my kitchen. On a much smaller scale you may be having these problems at home. The sheer volume of good food may even tilt your eating habits into a more healthful zone and that in itself is the best thing about abundance; no more excuse, you can eat healthy food every meal.
I will never tire of farm to table cooking, it is the best medium for me to work in both at home and at work. Using the freshest product within a creative framework should be the dream of every chef and the pleasure of every home cook.
There are fewer and fewer excuses, so get on the bandwagon, or redouble your efforts. Your local buying is having a positive effect, time to take the next step.
The Sage Rabbit Gazpacho
8 large tomatoes chopped
3 cucumbers peeled and chopped
½ large white onion chopped4
4 small cloves of garlic chopped
1 sweet bell pepper chopped
1/3 cup ice water
3 Tbl. Sherry vinegar
2 Tbl. Salt
¼ Tbl. Cracked black pepper
2 Tbl. Extra virgin olive oilAll ingredients up to the ice water should be processed to a chunky consistency in the robo coupe or food processor. If the tomatoes are ripe they should provide moisture to help smooth out the larger chunks, if not you may need to add a bit of the water. After you get a coarse, uniform consistency you can start adding the water, and the rest of the ingredients to taste. Make this soup at least 12 hours before you need it so that the flavors have time to blend and bloom. Keep it cold, serve it with crisp olive oil baked croutons.
Seta Sapore
Very much like the gazpacho this is a fresh tomato sauce I picked up years ago in New York. I’ve made some minor adjustments since then.
6 large beefsteak tomatoes or 10 roma tomatoes, fully ripe, chopped medium
2 ribs of celery chopped medium
3 green onions chopped medium
2 cloves of garlic sliced
½ cup fresh basil; leaves
Olive oil
Kosher saltSeven ingredients hence the seta of seta sapore. The first five are put into a food processor/ robo coupe and pulsed until they are a small dice consistency. Remove to a mixing bowl and add salt to taste and olive oil just to coat. This sauce holds refrigerated and covered for abbot three days. Add the sauce to the pasta at the end of your cooking process, much like pesto, so it keeps its freshness and texture.
John Foster is an executive chef who heads the culinary program at Sullivan University’s Lexington campus. A New York native, Foster has been active in the Lexington culinary scene and a promoter of local and seasonal foods for more than 20 years. The French Culinary Institute-trained chef has been the executive chef of his former restaurant, Harvest, and now his Chevy Chase eatery, The Sage Rabbit.
To read more from Chef John Foster, including his recipes, click here.
