Stuff's coming up!
It was off to St. Lawrence Farmer's Market this past Saturday so we could see what was popping out of the ground and available for eating.
The north Farmer's Market location at Front Street East and Jarvis has been in operation for over two hundred years and while the building has been replaced a few times since then (the current structure was built in 1968), it has always been the place for Torontonians to come for fresh produce, meat and bread.
St. Lawrence Market has an incredibly comprehensive website that includes the history of the market, great old photos (including a couple of the various versions of the north market building), as well as lists of vendors in both the south retail market and the farmer's market, complete with maps!
This week, our haul was mostly about spring foods. From the upper left corner: Ontario hydroponic cherry tomatoes, local rhubarb, three cheeses including Eweda Cru, two trays of tarts including Bakewells, and two Eccles tarts, apple cider, spring green beans, fiddleheads, wild leeks, Ontario asparagus and fingerling potatoes.
The wild leeks, fiddleheads, beans, asparagus and potatoes came from Marvin's Produce in the outside booth by the front door. The tarts all came from British Baked Goods. The cheeses; a raw sheep's milk, a Quebec cheese similar to Morbier and some Beemster from Holland; all came from Best Baa Farms, the cider from Bilski Farms, and the tomatoes from Cherry Avenue Farms.
What we cooked with it: I was excited to try wild leeks (or ramps) for the first time - they seem to be quite the trendy vegetable this year. I chopped them finely and tossed them over the boiled fingerling potatoes along with some butter, fresh ground pepper and fleurs de sel. I also used the ramps on the fiddleheads; same preparation but with a squeeze of lemon juice. I served both of these dishes with a couple of lovely Atlantic mackerel.
The rhubarb ended up in a fruit crisp. There wasn't enough for a pie and I couldn't bring myself to pair the stalks with imported strawberries, so I added the 'barb to some apples and made a tasty dessert. The asparagus was a small batch, so that went into a pasta dish. No idea what to do with the green beans as of this writing, but the tomatoes went into a salad and the cheese and tarts went directly into our bellies pretty much as is.
Want to share the contents of your market basket with the world? Send us a photo of your market swag, telling us what you bought and where, along with info on the tasty dishes you cooked up, and we'll add them to the market basket column next week.
So what did you think of this year's trendy spring vegetable? I preferred the ramps to fiddleheads, both of which I tried for the first time this year, but the fiddleheads might have suffered from my inexperienced cooking of them.
Well, I grew up eating (and picking) fiddleheads so it wouldn't be spring without some for me. Canadian fiddleheads are not poisonous, but they do need to be cooked thoroughly to get the bitterness out. I usually just toss them with butter and garlic and lemon. If you choose to sauté them, parboil them a bit first.
I really liked the ramps although I don't know if they deserve the huge amounts of attention they've been getting. They're good, but I've seen them some places at $20/pound, which is a bit excessive.