By Julia Howard
This weekend, we honor the people who are no longer with us who have fought to keep our country free and safe. Food will be the centerpiece as we safely come together for family gatherings and parades or to visit cemeteries or memorials. Memorial Day invokes eating outdoors, grilling, and traditional summer recipes with a farmers’ market spin.
This week’s recipes:
Potato Salad with Pickled Cucumbers
By Himanee Gupta-Carlson
Those who frequent the Saratoga Farmers’ Market know it’s a special space. For four hours, shoppers, farmers, other vendors, and volunteers come together to talk food, shop and sell, and bop to the music of the week. The energy is electric, and the food is beautiful. We go home a bit tired but with our taste buds alive, eager to cook and eat.
And sometimes you arrive and discover your favorite vendor has sold out of eggs. Beef stew meat or pork chops are unavailable on that particular day. Vendors have onions but not scallions. Fresh greens, particularly in the winter months, are scarce.
In some ways, this unpredictability makes the market what it is. When farmers and other vendors bring to market foods that they themselves grow, raise or make, availability will vary from week-to-week, and certainly by season. The market cannot offer everything, but it can assure customers that our food has not traveled 1,500 miles to reach its destination – which is an average computed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for produce offered at grocery stores. Our foods are locally grown, raised, or made, and it is fresh.
How does one learn to navigate the unpredictability to take advantage of foods that are local and fresh?
One answer is to throw away the shopping list. Come to the Saratoga Farmers’ Market instead with a blank sheet. Browse what’s available, talk with farmers – the ultimate foodies—and make your meal plans for the week. Set a goal perhaps of trying a new item every week, knowing that full meals can be built with what we offer.
Sound ambitious? We’ll help. Starting tomorrow, we will be in a more open space in the Wilton Mall, moving from the walkway between the Department of Motor Vehicles and Bath & Body Works to the food court. Find us and look then for a white board near the market information table. On it, will be a recipe based on ingredients one of our vendors or volunteers found a few minutes before the market’s opening. Take a look, snap a photo with your cell phone, and shop. Give the recipe a try and share your results.
This week’s recipe: Sweet Potato Fries with Yogurt Honey Dip
Recipe shared by Jamie Kelley, owner, and creator of Mugzy’s Barkery
*Ingredients available at the market
Your pup will enjoy a nice cold and nutritious treat on a hot summer day!
Adapted from Julia Child’s recipe for Daube de Boeuf featured on www.juliasrecipes.com
*Ingredients currently available at the farmers’ market
Put the orange zest, cinnamon stick, thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns, cloves, celery leaves and parsley onto a layer of cheesecloth and tie it up in order to make a bouquet garni. Put it aside.
Get a big, non-reactive dish and put celery, garlic, beef, onions, carrots, bouquet garni, and bacon into it, all at once. Pour the cognac and wine over the mixture. Put the mixture in refrigerator for marinating for about 24 hours.
Preheat your oven accurately to 325 F. Get the beef out of vegetables, and put it on a kitchen towel for draining. Get a skillet and put oil into it. Heat the oil on medium heat. Put the beef into the pan along with some flour. Cook it until it turns brown. Remove the beef and deglaze the skillet with tomato paste and beef stock. Scrap all the browned bits of beef from the pan’s bottom.
Mix the pan sauce, salt, olives, beef, and vegetables-wine mixture together in an ovenproof dish. Cover it. Next, you need to braise the beef for 2 to 3 hours, until it is tender. If you want your stew to be thicker, check after 2 hours of cooking and remove the lid for the rest of the time.
Prepare the rice according to the direction given on package. Garnish your stew with cooked rice and parsley.
Serve and enjoy!
Adapted from recipe by Kenton and Jane Kotsiris of www.lemonandolives.com
Prep time: 40 mins
Cook time: 30 mins
Total time: 1 hour 10 mins
Serves: 4-6
*Ingredients available at the farmers’ market
Bechamel Sauce:
Heat milk in a pan. Then add butter and melt. Once, hot – slowly stir in flour. Stir continually over low-med heat until thick. Once thick, remove from heat and pour over eggplant/meat mixture. Spread bechamel evenly over top
Notes
Moussaka is an interesting dish. It can be made many different ways. Some people substitute eggplant for potatoes or zucchini. The specific blend of herbs is even debated and or changed. If anything, use this as a base and experiment. You’ll get it different ways depending on where you have it in Greece. So make it your own!
Adapted from recipe by Dinner at the Zoo, shared by My Saratoga Kitchen Table
Serves: 4
*Ingredients currently available at the farmers’ market
