Blue Cayenne

You can go home again!

After a too long Covid-related hiatus and with a nudge from some good friends, I finally made it back to the Long Beach Marina Farmers Market. 

As I strolled through the trimmed-down market, I was reminded of the many reasons to love the place: exquisite fresh produce, fresh air, friendly vendors eager to talk about (and practice) sustainable farming, the exhilarating sense of being out in the world again.

My particular market is a Sunday affair in the marina parking lot on Pacific Coast Highway and Second Street in Long Beach, California. It’s open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sundays rain or shine.

You no doubt have a local farmers market in your own neighborhood.

Farmers markets, after all,  have been around in North America since the 1600s. Over the years, many cities and towns reserved a designated plot of land for regular produce markets. The markets brought townspeople and rural farmers together and sometimes attracted notable foodies. Reportedly, Thomas Jefferson was a regular at the Georgetown market. (As a retired history teacher and an unashamed foodie, the image of Jefferson putting aside pressing affairs of state to wander the local food market is a delight. He reportedly leveraged his contacts with foreign embassies to collect unusual seeds and had the seeds distributed to area farmers to cultivate. He personally kept a detailed log of the produce growing seasons for local fruits and vegetables and directed his White House Maitre D, Etienne Lemaire, to buy the best produce for the White House table.)

Farmers markets went into decline after the introduction of the refrigerator in the early 1900s but thankfully they have enjoyed a renaissance in recent years.

On this particular Sunday, the heirloom tomatoes were ripe and beautiful.  

The varieties of chili peppers were so bright they could light up any salsa recipe you could conjure.

And, oh,  the wax beans!  I have a special place in my heart for golden wax beans. As I drove to the market, I found myself hoping that I would find mounds of wax beans and that they would be the stunning butter yellow I remembered. I did, and they were.

But,unexpectedly, it was the mushrooms that brought the most cooking joy to my day.  

I bought a ten dollar-ish basket of assorted fresh mushrooms. My market has several mushroom vendors; it is an embarrassment of riches!

The basket I bought was a beautiful thing–overflowing with delicate pink and white oyster mushrooms, fragile enokis, muscular kings, and shaggy lion’s mane mushrooms. I’ve never tasted lion’s mane mushrooms before and I’m eager to return to the market and buy enough of them to explore their flavor eaten solo. 

Here is what I did in my kitchen with my mushrooms. Simplicity ruled the day. All it took was a small (baked) piece of store-bought puff pastry, a quick sauté of the mushrooms (and a clove of garlic) in butter, a splash of cream and brandy, and a finishing sprinkle of grated fresh Parmesan, cayenne pepper, and fresh parsley and violà– a gorgeous gourmet-quality meal. 

Can’t wait to go back.

These Raspberry Shortbread Bars are sublime!

The shortbread melts in your mouth and the raspberry jam is, well, raspberry jam. 

This recipe comes from Joanne Chang’s cookbook, Flour. You can buy the cookbook at your local bookstore or on Amazon here. Chang is also the author of another wonderful cookbook, Pastry Love.

Intriguingly, Chang, with a Harvard degree in applied mathematics and economics (with honors!), left the corporate world to become a chef.  Today, she operates the renowned bakery Flour Bakery-Cafe in Boston along with a chain or bakeries in other locations and an Asian-fusion restaurant, Myers + Chang, with her husband. She is also a James Beard Foundation Award-winner.

In her cookbook Flour, Chang credits the inspiration for the shortbread in this recipe to her mentor Boston pastry chef Rick Katz. Among other culinary accomplishments, Katz operated the prep kitchen for Julia Child when she was filming the PBS “Baking With Julia” series. 

These bars are wonderful with raspberry jam, but I’m thinking these would be good with apricot jam, too. Maybe even marmalade.

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen. 

Prepare for a treat.  

Every place in the world deserves a good chocolate chip cookie. Am I right?

These Chocolate Chip Cookies With Ras el Hanout are right out of the Middle East. The recipe comes from New York Times Food Writer Nargisse Benkabbou and can be found on the NYT Food site here.

According to Benkabbou, Ras el Hanout is a common Moroccan spice blend.  Benkabbou says the term translates to “top of the shop” in Arabic, meaning that the spice is a blend of the best available spices available at the time. Ras el Hanout, then,is infinitely variable.

I bought my jar of Ras el Hanout at Trader Joe’s (Trader has everything!) and it is a blend of coriander, cayenne, cinnamon, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, spearmint, chili, ginger, allspice, long pepper (what’s that?), black peppercorns, cardamom pods, cloves, mace, and (wait for it) rose petals .

Here’s the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen. I’m eating  cookies as I type this post and the cookies are spicy and delicious.