This Week at the Smart Markets Centreville Farmers' Market

This Week at Our Centreville Market
Friday 3:30–6:30pm
5875 Trinity Pkwy.
Map

New Vendors This Week

Uncle Fred will pay us another visit, this time with some advance notice! And he will be there no matter how hot it is! He can handle the heat.

On the Way In and Out

Check out the heirloom tomatoes from our Northern Neck farmers, Alma and José. The tomatoes are fantastic and because of their meaty interiors produce lots of thick sauce for freezing or canning. And the price is right—just compare it to the grocery store heirlooms, which are not even tasty.

It will be another week for the first apples of the season at Tyson Farms, and as Max has reminded me, the Ginger Golds are not your typical early “green” apple like the Rambos. They are a sweet and flavorful apple to whet your appetite for the great apples coming in early fall—maybe even a few weeks early this year.

This is one of the few markets in the metropolitan area that offers rose veal from humanely raised and hand-fed calves. Ask Jacob at Windmill Meadows about his cuts and prices, which are reasonable considering the cost of good veal at high-end grocery stores. And you know who raised this veal.

If Mike Burner brings any more tomatoes, we will have to make room for another tent. They are coming fast now—he can hardly keep up with the picking. He is offering you the opportunity to mix and match your own quart box. You don’t have to buy a box of each color to go home and make a beautiful and flavorful salad. We also have a lovely flyer (designed by 12-year-old Louisa Janssen) that tells you about the varieties.

And I cannot say enough about Mike’s potatoes. Mike is amazed himself that they are so big and taste so good—he farms sustainably anyway, but he used no fertilizer of any kind this year in soil he has never planted before, and those potatoes are fantastic. You can’t mess them up, but you can overcook them if you do not test them often. They take less time, whether you are baking them or boiling them, so take that into account.

Doug Linton is bringing beef from one of his new steers—it looks so lean but is extremely tender. Cook it no further than just this side of medium and it will be as juicy and flavorful as any heavily marbled cut and much healthier for you, too.

This Week at the Market

This is the time for BLT sandwiches that you can make with all-market ingredients, even using mayonnaise that you make from Windmill Meadows Farm eggs. It tastes nothing like even the best mayo you can buy, and it’s actually yellow! Here’s the recipe. And it is also the season for gazpacho—everything you need for that cool salad that you can eat with a spoon is somewhere at the market. You can use this recipe.

From the Market Master

(We’re taking a break this week — enjoy this newsletter from our archives!)

Part of improving your skills in the kitchen is knowing what to have on hand at all times to expand your repertoire. For a well-stocked pantry, you will need some items that regretfully cannot be bought at area farmers’ markets. But having these items will enable you to cook up those market ingredients on any spur of the moment. They are also the kinds of ingredients that enable you to successfully create a menu of complimentary dishes or a one-dish meal or casserole that needs something more than just the main ingredients to hold it together.

Start with a good vinegar and maybe even two or three. Pick out a good wine vinegar and move on from there to include some flavored ones also. And it never hurts to have some good old cider vinegar around too — for potato salad if nothing else. Then I recommend that you choose a good quality extra-virgin olive oil that tastes good to you, because this is the one you will use for salad dressings and also to dribble over a completed dish to pop the flavor. For most of your cooking, Berio pure olive oil is just fine, and it also works for those salad dressings that will play a minor rather than starring role in a dish. I also use a combination of olive and canola oils in my homemade mayonnaise that I always have on hand.

Next you want to keep lemons, limes and oranges on hand for marinades and salad dressings and to flavor dessert sauces — these are the secret ingredients that add summer brightness to foods.

In the refrigerator, keep on hand a good-quality ketchup and some Dijon mustard for marinades and BBQ sauces. In the pantry have some Worcestershire sauce and good soy sauce for flavoring anything from crab cakes to gazpacho to summer vegetable sautés. And of course you are going to need herbs — buy them fresh when you can, grow them yourself or check out the herb mixes that may be sold at your market. If you do not cook from scratch every night, buying mixed herbs and spices is a great way to save money on individual spices that have skyrocketed in recent years — and to eliminate waste.

I always have a pepper grinder handy, and I confess I am now using sea salt for just about all my cooking — though not my baking. It really does do a better job of bringing out the flavor of the food without overwhelming it with saltiness.

And then there is the cheese. I always have a variety of cheeses that I use on a regular basis including American cheddar, Australian cheddar when I can get it, Parrano and Parmesan Reggiano. Less often I will buy fresh mozzarella because it does not keep so well — and when I have it on hand I will cook something that uses it. If the cheese assortment begins to get moldy, I trim them up and throw them all in the food processor with that mayo I have on hand and make pimento cheese.

In the meat keeper in the refrigerator, I also have either some really good and lean smoked bacon or a package of country ham bits and pieces. I use these almost as much in the summer as winter for flavoring because it does not take much to add aroma and flavor to a vegetable dish like the summer succotash recipe I like so much. And garlic! I always have garlic in the crisper next to the citrus fruits in the other one.

That would appear to be the full circle, though I have probably forgotten something. Reply to let us know what you have on hand.

That’s about it — not too many items for even the smallest kitchen — and I have one of those so I should know. And it’s all you need to cook on the fly with whatever you bring home from the market, just like a French country cook or a modern California chef. All good cooks start with the basics and take off from there. Have a great flight — no need to play it safe on this runway.

See you at the market!

Jean