It is finally full blown melon season and that makes me very
happy. I like melons of all kinds but watermelon is my favorite and there’s
finally enough watermelon that those of us who buy last still have lots of
choices. (Since the market opened I have made it a personal policy to buy last
if an item is in short supply. I would rather the customer go home with what
they came for.)
At yesterday’s market I loaded up with seedless melons for the next kids meal. When you’re cutting up watermelon for 100 kids, you don’t want to pick out seeds. I know. I did last week when the seedless melons were not being harvested in sufficient numbers to last the whole market, much less enough to supply the kids meal. Not so at yesterday’s market. There were still loads of seedless watermelon at the end of market. So the kids will be delighted and I will be happy because instead of spending three tedious hours preparing the melons I’ll be able to whiz through them in less than one.
And there were plenty of other kinds of produce too,
including long beans which I wrote about last week. As promised, at the end of
the column are recipes using long beans.
We’ll have five farms at tomorrow’s market including our biggest melon producers: Brakers, Harmony Hill, and E and O. There will also be honey, coffee, beans and drinks, meats, and cut flowers. Songbird’s Kitchen will serve Asian specialties like egg rolls and crab Rangoon. Enjoy the uncrowded Thursday market while you can. There are only two left this year!
Saturday will feature our usual abundance of vendors, 11 produce farms, two mushroom growers, a cut flower farm, plus flowers from many of our regular growers, three bakeries, our shrimp farmer, two meat producers with beef, chicken, pork, and lamb, plus farm fresh eggs, and our cow’s cheese producer Grison Dairy & Creamer. We’ll have King’s Kettle Corn, 2T’s Soaps, DnD Smoked, Good Golly Tamale, and MaMa JoJo’s with pasta and sauces. We expecting another new vendor (yes, we’ve added four new vendors in the last 10 days). Alchemist Heaven will have handcrafted perfume oil and all natural body products. We only expect her one Saturday a month so be sure to check her out.
Cooking for a Cause benefits CROPwalk and will be operated by volunteers from Central United
The Free Kids Meals this week are:
Tomorrow lunch from 11 to 1 is served to-go in the kids tent: ham and cheese sandwich, carrot sticks, watermelon, and milk.
Saturday has both breakfast and lunch served to-go in the kids tent: Breakfast – bacon and egg casserole, watermelon, and milk AND lunch - chicken salad with crackers, cherry tomatoes, cantaloupe, and milk. The kids get both meals, regardless of income or residency, as long as they are between 1 and 18 years old.
Now’s the time to focus on summer crops like long bean. Long beans are bunched by our growers in either all green or a mix of green and dark purple. They both taste the same. My personal recipe is super simple, because that’s how I like my food. I can prepare a whole bundle of long bean in a large skillet. It makes two very generous servings but can easily serve more if you don’t devour it like I do. I rinse the beans and then cut about half an inch off the bottom. The rest I cut into about 3 inch pieces. In a large skillet I heat on medium low enough olive oil to thinly coat the bottom. I chop a clove of elephant garlic and brown it in the skillet. I get my elephant garlic from Hillside Farm who will be at Tuesday’s market. Then I add the beans and cover, tossing occasionally
to coat with the oil and make sure everything cooks. Cook until the beans reach the tenderness you like.
For me that’s under 10 minutes. This dish reheats well in the microwave.
Now for the real treat, a family recipe. Bertha O’Rourke
Cardetti was the mother of our wonderful volunteer Janet Taylor. Bertha was
English, German, and Irish and married into an Italian family. She became a
wonderful Italian cook, learning from her mother-in-law who came to the US as a
young child from Bologna, Italy. This dish was always a favorite of Janet’s and
became a staple in her own home when her children were growing up. She still
makes it about once a month. “It’s really simple and very good!! I’ve probably made it ‘healthier’ over the
years, exchanging olive oil for some of the margarine used in the original
recipe.” She’s also replaced the green beans
with our Asian vendors’ long beans. Talk about an international dish.
Bert Cardetti’s Green Bean Stew (adapted by Janet Cardetti Taylor)
Ingredients:
1 pound beef stew meat
1 pound long beans, cleaned and cut into 3” to 4” pieces
1 medium onion, dice
2 cloves of minced garlic
(or squeezed garlic)
2 celery stalks, chopped
parsley (or parsley flakes)
tomato juice or V-8
water
In a Dutch oven, brown stew meat in 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 1 tablespoon of butter. Remove meat from pan and set aside. If needed, add a bit more olive oil and sauté the diced onion, chopped celery, and parsley, adding the garlic after a few minutes. Add the browned meat back into th
e pan. Top the meat with the beans. (Janet usually salts and peppers each ingredient as it goes into the pan.) Pour 3 – 4 cups of tomato juice over the beans. Add water until the beans are covered. Bring to a boil on medium high for about 30 minutes, then turn down to simmer and let cook for at least 2
to 3 hours. Janet usually adds some Tuscan herbs at the end of the simmering time. I had to look up Tuscan herbs: basil, oregano, rosemary, marjoram, fennel seeds, and garlic. You can find recipes for the mix online.
Janet sometimes adds small potatoes about half way through the cooking time to make it a complete one-pot meal. “My mother always served this dish with potatoes, so I thought I’d just
add them to the pot to save a step.” (and a dish) She also sometimes substitutes pork for the beef.
It sounds like a hearty and satisfying meal and one that I’m going to try soon. Do you have a favorite market recipe? I’d love to hear it. Whether enjoying fresh melon or cooking up a family meal, the market makes everything tastier, don’t you think? See you at the market.
