Black Bean Salad Farmer's Market Style

As a continuation of yesterday's post on Dinner from the Farmer's Market, I thought I'd share with you this lovely lunch made with the vegetables from my farmer's market haul, sardine sandwich on toasted ciabatta topped with slices of fresh heirloom tomatoes seasoned with homemade lavender salt, with black bean salad on the side.  I felt like an Italian grandfather eating this dish, and I was sure to brush my teeth vigorously after it, but it was so soul-satisfyingly good.  

To make the sandwich, I halved and toasted a section of ciabatta bread, opened a tin of sardines packed in water, drained them, added a little mayo and smashed it up.  I smeared the sardines onto the bread and topped with tomatoes and salt.  One tin of sardines made one hearty serving.  On the side, I had this little salad.  The leftovers of it kept for days and kept getting better and better.  Enjoy.

Black Bean Salad Farmer's Market Style by Joie de vivre

Salad Ingredients:

1 15 oz. can black beans, drained and rinsed

kernels of corn from 3 ears of corn, cooked and cooled

1/2 bulb fennel, chopped somewhat finely

1 red pepper (choose your level of heat) chopped 

1 medium sized red onion, chopped finely

1/3 c. finely chopped cilantro

Dressing:

1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil

1/4 c. lime juice (I just used bottled)

1 garlic clove, minced

Pinch of ground cumin

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1.  Combine all of salad ingredients in a large bowl.  Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours to allow the flavors to meld.

2.  One hour before serving, combine all of the dressing ingredients in a small bowl and whisk together.  Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

3.  Before serving, combine the dressing with the salad and stir together.  Salad gets even better the next day. 

Dinner from the Farmer's Market

When I think about my journey as a foodie and a food blogger, my love of writing about and taking pictures of food really started when I discovered how wonderful eating seasonally could be after reading French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano.  It was while reading that book that I discovered my joie de vivre concerning food.  The simple, unbridled joy I receive while eating a fresh peach whose juices run down my arm, or an end of summer tomato seasoned with nothing more than salt (or maybe some basil) are what I try to convey to my readers and my family.  What I hope that you, as my reader, take away from my blog, is a sense of that joy, and the motivation to create joy for your family in your kitchen through my recipes and experiences.  Bon appétit!

When my husband and I moved to Eastern Washington from Sacramento seven years ago, the things we most mourned were fresh vegetables.  We lived in a very progressive community near Sacramento and were part of a CSA before it was "trendy".  We loved browsing the farmer's market which was a huge community event twice weekly.  When we first moved here, we were unfamiliar with the area and thus did our grocery shopping solely at our local supermarket and missed California with each bite of tasteless tomato.

After living here a few months, I was lamenting the loss of fresh vegetables to someone when they mentioned the local farmer's market.  I cannot express the relief I felt when I first visited the farmer's market in town seven years ago.  It was as if finally, after months of feeling like we had moved to a wasteland, we could make this place our home.  Alas, the farmer's markets here only last from May until October (unlike the year round farmer's markets in California) so while they are here, I try to take full advantage.

This past week,  with $38 in my pocket, I took my youngest son to the farmer's market.   We noticed some fall squash, the very beginning of the season.

I just loved how they displayed them on the road.  With a little gathering of leaves, it definitely looked like fall!  I am not quite ready to fully embrace fall and while they are still with us, I stocked up on summer tomatoes and peaches.

For $35, we came home with quite a haul, heirloom tomatoes, a bag of Walla Walla onions, three cherry peppers, eggplants, okra, fingerling potatoes, a pint of strawberries and raspberries, peaches and nectarines, as well as an Armenian cucumber and grapes.

I just couldn't pass up these eggplants.  The colors were so deep and the flesh so shiny they begged me to pick them up!  Unfortunately, eggplant isn't a big winner with my family so I had to find a way to disguise it by turning it into baba ganoush.  Baba ganoush is a garlicky eggplant spread that is wonderful served with pita chips.  I can't say my children LOVED it, but they tolerated it which for a 5 and 7 year is pretty good!  

Joie's Baba Ganoush by Joie de vivre

Ingredients:

2 eggplants,

2 Tbls. olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

1 garlic clove, mashed through a garlic press

Directions:

1.  Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees F.  Cut several slits in each eggplant so they do not explode when you cook them and place them in a pan.  

2.  Place the eggplant in the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes.  Remove from oven and allow to cool.

3.  Remove the eggplant skin and chop the flesh very finely.  Add the garlic, olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.  Serve with pita chips.

Here's what I came up with to use the Armenian cucumber.  It is a cold, rice salad that hit the spot on a warm summer evening.

Cool Rice and Cucumber Salad by Joie de vivre

Ingredients:

1 1/2 c. jasmine rice, cooked and cooled to room temp.

1 armenian cucumber, peeled and seeded, (or 2-3 regular cucumbers)

1 tsp. dill seed

3 Tbls. chopped fresh mint

1/3 c. minced chives

1/4 c. white wine vinegar

3 Tbls. olive oil

Directions:

1.  In a large bowl, mix the cucumber, rice, dill seed, mint and chives.  

2.  In the blender, or in a wide mouth jar with a lid, combine the white wine vinegar and olive oil.  Cover and shake the jar until mixed or blend mixture in the blender to make a dressing.

3.  Pour the dressing over the rice salad and mix.  

4.  Serve cold or at room temperature.

Because I had bought the peaches and nectarines, I had some fresh plums from the week prior to use up and ended up making this DELICIOUS pie.   Sadly, I didn't take notes so I can't recreate it for you but I did take my inspiration from the book Pie by Ken Haedrich.

I'll be sharing other recipes from this trip to the farmer's market this week.  Come visit again to see what else I made.  Our farmer's market only lasts another six weeks before the cold weather sets in, you can bet that I'll be there, soaking up all of the fresh, local produce while I can!

Here are some books you may find useful in finding inspiration on what to do with your own Farmer's Market haul.

The good and the bad of the Pasco Farmer's Market

The Bad

Two weeks ago our local farmer's market opened.  As it has been an unseasonably cool spring, the pickings were pretty slim.  However there was a new vendor there selling Old Iron Wine, a label specifically bottled for the Pasco Farmer's Market.  The vendor called it a "young, farmer's table wine" and at $6 a bottle, I was willing to give it a shot.  Buyer beware!  For $6, all you are getting is a cute label on a bottle.  The wine was completely undrinkable.  For starters, when I opened it, it fizzed out like a champagne which has been uncorked improperly.  A carbonated red?  Still, I was willing to give it a taste test (stupid me!).  Upon first sip, I immediately spit it out.  Unfortunately, despite the offending wine being ejected from my mouth, the sickly sweet aftertaste kept building.  The whole bottle was dumped down the drain.  What a waste of the farmer's time and of a good $6.  If you frequent the Pasco Farmer's Market and come across Old Iron Wine, skip it!

The Good

On the upside, the farm I buy my eggs from slaughtered some of their chickens on Saturday and I bought a few.  I had never had fresh chicken before and I was curious to taste how they would differ from grocery store chicken.  Boy, the taste was incredible!  They were so much meatier than store chickens and cleaner too.  The juices of store chickens often get slimy feeling, but the fresh chickens were clean and soft feeling.  I put them on the grill and they were just wonderful.  After picking the carcasses clean, I put them in a stock pot and now have a good 10 cups of wonderful stock on hand as well.  Nothing goes to waste!  If you are living in Southeast, WA and are interested in fresh chickens or eggs, Greene Hills Farm has it going on!

Back to the Snow!

After a wonderful, relaxing and beautiful stay in Hawaii, it's back to the COLD realities of real life.  I can't complain much, I know that most of you have been living in the cold and snow for the past three weeks without the benefit of a Hawaiian vacation.  Let me tell you though, it is a shock to the system to be back home.  We landed two nights ago on an unplowed runway due to active snowing!  Now it's back to housecleaning and catch-up work.  I know, I know, I have no reason to complain, I'm just stating the facts.

Above are some pictures from the farmers market in downtown Kailua-Kona.  No visit to the islands (or anywhere!) would be complete without a trip to the farmers market.  Check out the prices and quality of the starfruit!  The hairy, red fruits are called rambutans locally or also known as lychee nuts.  If you score around the outside of the fruit, the red, hairy exterior pops off revealing a large grape like fruit with an attached pit in the middle.  You just pop the whole thing in your mouth and eat around the stone.

Also, I had to take pictures of the Filipino Store from a little shopping center in Waikaloa.  Coming from someplace without the benefit of ethnic stores like this, browsing here was a real treat.  My mother bought some frozen lumpias here and my father was in hog heaven!

On one of my very first mornings in Hawaii, I was doing some grocery shopping as I was doing a lot of the cooking and came across these Dragonfruits.  I had never seen anything like these before.  A few days later, my mother came across some at the farmers market that were cheaper.  The ones she bought were yellow, but the same shape.  They tasted very similarly to kiwis but were less tart.  The grayish fruit with black seeds that was inside though was visually a surprise from the look of the exterior.

I can't wait to catch up on all that you have been doing over the holidays!  Don't forget that I will be hosting a read through of French Women Don't Get Fat on Friday's in January.  Our first discussion will be this coming Friday, January 2!

Strawberries

Ah, it has finally happened.  After a winter that felt way too long, and a spring where winter coats were kept on retainer, strawberries finally appeared Saturday at our local farmer's market.  Those beautiful red, fragrant and delicious signs that summer is almost here.  I could smell them before I could see them.  Delicious.  I was so excited, and weary of more greens, I spent my entire budget on three flats of strawberries and immediately came home to excited yelps from my two year old who started digging in.  Finally, a strawberry worth eating!  As I was lamenting to someone a few days before about how long it was taking for the strawberries to get ripe this year, they commented that they have been buying good strawberries at our local big box store.  You can get passable strawberries at those stores, and if you have no other option, I say go for it.  But if you can wait for those locally grown strawberries, picked just that morning, those strawberries that are so fragile, fragrant and wonderful that their mere existence is temporal and limited to that day, then wait for them.  I spent the rest of the afternoon happily canning most of the strawberries into strawberry pineapple jam, strawberry jam, and strawberry topping, imagining myself remembering this happiness of summer as I spread the jam on toast in the dead of next winter.  Be sure to save some of these beauties for the next few recipes though.  Strawberries are only at their best a few weeks of the year, enjoy them while you can in all their glory.

Strawberry and Tomato Salad by Joie de Vivre

Time:  10 minutes tops if you're a very slow chopper

Ingredients:

Strawberries

Cherry Tomatoes

White Balsamic Vinegar

Directions: 

Take the tops off of the strawberries and slice into quarters or halves.  Halve the cherry tomatoes.  Mix all in a bowl and sprinkle on the white balsamic vinegar.  Slurp up and enjoy!

Fresh Strawberry Sorbet adapted from Cuisinart Ice cream maker instruction manual

Preparation:  1 1/2 hours (active:  about 15-20 minutes; 25 - 30 minutes chilling time; optional 2 hours to "ripen" in the freezer)

Makes about 10 1/2 cup servings

Ingredients:  

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

1/4 cup corn syrup

1 quart fresh strawberries, stems removed

4 tablespoons lemon juice

Bring the sugar and water to a boil in a medium saucepan.  Reduce the heat and simmer without stirring until the sugar is completely dissolved.  Transfer to a bowl and let cool completely.

Combine the strawberries and lemon juice in a food processor fitted with the metal blade.  Pulse to shop the strawberries, then process until the strawberries are completely pureed.  Combine the strawberry puree with the cooled sugar syrup and corn syrup.  Chill for 1 hour in the refrigerator.

Turn your ice cream machine on, pour strawberry puree mixture into freezer bowl and mix until thickened, about 25 - 30 minutes.  The sorbet will have a "soft serve" texture.  If desired, transfer the strawberry sorbet to an airtight container and place in freezer until firm, about 2 hours.

Nutritional analysis per serving:

Calories: 96, Fat 0g.

My Easy Strawberry Pie by Joie de vivre

Time 30 minutes

Ingredients:

Pie crust (either homemade or refrigerated)

A quart of strawberries or more depending on how thick you want your pie to be.

1/2 cup "red" jam (I use my homemade cherry marmalade)

Put your crust in a pie pan, prick with a fork all over and bake according to directions.  Heat 1/2 cup jam over medium heat until melted.  Fill pie shell with whole, halved or quartered strawberries and pour jam over the top.  Chill until cold.  Cut into wedges and serve!