West 57th St. Greenmarket

The West side? I knew I'd have to make the journey across town eventually, but I didn't think it would happen as a spur of the moment thing. I had some free time, I needed some food, so I decided to actually go through with it. It was quite an adventure. As you know, on the West Side, people wear shoes on their heads and hats on their feet, and their clothing is all inside-out by comparison.

More seriously, it was pretty accessible getting over to 57th and 9th where this Greenmarket is located. Admittedly, it wasn't the most exciting trip ever, but I did get to see some sights and I suspect that for a large number of people this market is very conveniently located. It runs from 8 AM to 6 PM on Wednesdays, from April to December, so it's also pretty good for a hump day produce run.

However, I can't really say that it is convenient. It might be in the right place for some, but I found it lacking in a lot of ways. There was basically a fruit and vegetable stand, and a baker stand. Earlier in the day, apparently, there was some kind of salad-making demo, but I missed it. So it goes. Perhaps more vendors were present earlier; I'm going to try revisiting some of these smaller markets at their opening times in coming weeks, to see if they have more stalls present.

Again, I also found problems with the "local" nature of this market. Call me picky, but I don't think that PA is really close, nor did I find the stall from a farm there to be particularly interested in what I'd call sustainable farming. They didn't seem to have indications about the use of organics or sustainable techniques in their farming processes, they looked really sort of industrial, and it just generally left me with the stark taste of "marketing" in my mouth. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with nicely printed materials and a clean storefront with good produce. But when that is present, I want to also see the extra commitment to letting me know how the farm is staying sustainable, green, and healthy. Maybe my standards are too high, but if I'm strict about it, then my readers can at least make their own informed decisions.

Seriously? PA?

Examining their website I find that they have a commitment to pesticide-free growing, which I can respect. In fact, they even use Integrated Pest Management, which means using natural deterrents and beneficial insects. However, they don't say if all their produce is subjected to this kind of treatment, or only a fraction of it. It also bothers me that they traveled about 211 miles to bring me heirloom tomatoes. They don't even distribute in Philadelphia; instead they reach all over Virginia and all the way to Washington, DC. A network like that, I feel, is defeating some of the purpose of "buying local."

I also took issue with this jar of tomato soup. Here is an unfortunately blurry picture of the ingredients list:

For one thing it bothers me that this product contains butter. Olive oil would be a superior choice for that kind of soup from a food perspective, though perhaps they used butter because it is available locally. One ingredient that isn't available locally, though, is evaporated cane juice; that stuff isn't growing in Shippensburg, PA, and the only reason that they add it is to get away with "no sugar added" on the front of the jar. I find that pretty sneaky. I also wonder if the tomato puree that they use is made from their tomatoes or is a generic industrial tomato puree, and why there is modified food starch (a thickener) in here if there is already heavy cream and butter in the recipe. I dunno, this tomato soup is not what the front of the label seems to be. Toigo Orchards, I have doubts about you.

On the other hand, Meredith's Bread presented me with the only purchases I made at this market. For $8.50, I ended up with two sliced loaves of bread, from what was an impressive selection for the small stand pictured above. One was a sourdough rye that has turned into an excellent bread for coldcut sandwich lunches over the past week, and the other was a rustic whole wheat bread which I turned into a modified Tuscan bread soup, the recipe for which will be found in my next entry. It utilizes Brooklyn Breweries' Brown Ale, and so I'd like to talk about the soup when I talk about that. Look for it! The rustic bread also makes pretty good toast, so if you see Meredith's out there, try it. Nothing like a tasty local bakery.

As a less green, more food-oriented aside, on my way back I needed some internet and a cup of tea, so I ducked into a Starbucks (I know, I know, not exactly the paragon of sustainability, but at least they do try) and was offered some kind of free sample. This free sample was of hot chocolate, but some new super-expensive super-rich line of it called "signature." Mine was an unsigned work, as far as I could tell, but what was interesting about it was that on the whipped cream, I don't know if you can see in the picture below, they put some sea salt. I was skeptical, but I thought I'd be adventurous and try it. Turns out, sea salt really enhances hot chocolate. If you don't believe me, I recommend some delicious experimentation with a hot chocolate that you like.

Apparently Starbucks has a "taster" size cup. Does it get a bizzarely Italian sizing name, or like tall, does it get some non-glorious nomenclature? I, for one, will call it "Little Tall," for the sake of its feelings.

Green Apple Cleaners: Crisp and Refreshing

In my post about the Third Avenue Street Fair, I noted that I had found a place called Green Apple Cleaners, notable for the large amount of advertising that it was doing and for being something that I'd been looking for in Manhattan for awhile: a Green Dry Cleaner. My $20 free promo gift certificate in tow, I went over to their 2nd Avenue location, which was the most conveniently located for me. Other locations do exist; 92 Greenwich Avenue is notable for being very convenient for theoretical NYU student Amelia, and their 322 Columbus Avenue location is great for West Side dwellers. For the commuters among you with extremely high car insurance but tanks of cheap gas, they've also got a location in Mahwah, NJ.

To begin with I have to say that I was impressed by the nature of Green Apple Cleaners. While at times I can be described as a bleeding-granola, hippie-hearted liberal, there are times when I'm wearing the hat of a savvy and calculating New York businessman, or the labcoat of a detached intellectual. Green Apple manages to appeal to all of these sensibilities by being a completely traditional dry cleaner that just so happens to use green materials and methods. I could see everyone from dyed-hair punkish college women to the soccer moms they are terrified of turning into being very happy to use Green Apple. That kind of pluralism is the thing I look for in green business because it means that green stops being something that you have to be a "nut" in order to care about. If something can make it seem like everybody in society is concerned about sustainability and the environment, I say bring it on.

It's this that left me inclined towards Green Apple from the moment I walked into the door. Mainstream appeal means that things will move forward with making the US a greener place to live. This place had pretty reasonable prices, an on-staff tailor, and a friendly set of employees. Anybody could have a good experience at Green Apple without ever knowing that they are a green business, and that's the way that we are going to move this philosophy into the hearts and minds of more than just the activists out there. So points for you, Green Apple, for being completely normal. It's not for me, but I respect you for it.

Further, I got the clothes back and they weren't just clean. The principle by which Green Apple's dry cleaning works is that they use carbon dioxide (at least someone is putting it to good use) to clean clothes. As a biologist, I can tell you that carbon dioxide can be a pretty effective disinfectant, and it can dissolve lots of exciting forms of dirt that make their way into your clothes. It even did a bangup job of removing an ink stain that I just could not get out of one of my shirts, something which was a major cause of celebration when I got to wear that shirt and still feel presentable.

I have to admit that my visit was definitely incentivized by the 10% off for new customers that they offered me, along with the gift certificate that I'd been given at the street fair, but after the experience of getting what I would expect from another dry cleaner and still sticking to my green principles, I will definitely be going back to Green Apple. You should check it out.

Mt. Sinai Farmers' Market: Go Uptown, Moses

This little angel lives at the 96th st. Subway Station in the Station Operator's booth; isn't it fantastic? Kinda looks like it's rockin' out.

Given that the Bowling Green farmers' market was so lackluster I decided that I needed to try and get out to another market this week, so I went 80+ blocks away for the Mt. Sinai Hospital Greenmarket, which is at 99th St. on Park and Madison, closer to Madison. Some materials online will tell you that this market meets on Fridays, but don't be fooled, it meets on Wednesdays now. I've made this mistake before, and it's no fun going up to Mount Sinai only for the revelation that there is no deliverance. Er, I mean, no produce delivered. You reap what you sow.

The market itself is small, so don't come uptown expecting some kind of huge gathering of tents. However, there are a bunch of stalls, and they offer a pretty wide variety of things. I would go so far as to say that Mt. Sinai is a small market done right.

It may be small, but it's tough.

It had some missing pieces; no plants, no real "bake" shop, and no fishmonger, so if you're looking for those components you might want to look elsewhere.

However, it did have a very wide selection of both fruits and vegetables, with several varieties of fruit that I haven't seen at a small market before. The presence of a dairy vendor was especially welcome, as I'd exhausted my butter supply last night on browning butter for the fish and pasta I'd made. That recipe will get posted eventually, don't worry.


The dairy stall was actually pretty good; yogurt, cheese, and butter available from both sheep's milk and cow's milk. Ravioli and gnocchi made with sheep's milk. Cave-aged cheeses. An amusing French staffer. They had a wide variety of cheeses, and something that I simply had to buy; fresh mozarella that was ready for sale yesterday. A recipe for how I used it appears at the end. One warning, though, is that their butter is made from both sheep's and cow's milk, and so you need to be careful that you like the flavour of sheep's milk, as it may be different from what you're used to having.


While there was no bake shop, there was a little fruit vendor who also had some wares that were made from his fruits, like pies and cider, so if you're looking for a good pre-made apple pie, this might be your place. I, however, went straight for the cider because it had been pressed only a few days before and is super-fresh. Given that the apple crop is making its way to market right now, it's pretty fantastic.

The vegetable selection is pretty worth it, but the corn is really the best part of this market. It is consistently good. Personally I'm not sure that this market is worth it for a person like our NYU student Amelia, since the market is so far uptown, but for people living on the middle-to-upper East Side this is a place that I would strongly recommend visiting if Union Square is less convenient.

I ended up buying some Roma tomatoes, the fresh mozarella, and the cider. I couldn't resist the idea of doing an insalata caprese for lunch, seeing as I knew I had some leftover basil from the fish I'd made the night before, and if you don't use up basil quickly, it becomes a green and black mess of rot. It turned out fantastically:

This dish is a breeze to prepare. It has all of five ingredients (six if you're feeling like adding a little excitement), and there is no actual heat involved, just chopping. To prepare it as a light lunch for one person, you'll need:

1/2 lb mozarella cheese, fresh. Don't use the hard, rubbery mozarella from the supermarket here. You want your cheese the freshest possible, as its very delicate flavours are what will tie this entire dish together.
1/2-1 lb Roma tomatoes. I use Roma tomatoes because they have more meat than seeds, and so you don't end up with tomato seeds all over eveything and a lot of the flavour translates to the dish itself rather than running off in juice.
Basil; the amount of basil that you use should be based on your own preferences, but I recommend at least one leaf per slice of cheese/tomato that you produce so that you can mix all of the flavours appropriately.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil, again to be added based on your preferences. Do not use "pure" or "light" olive oil, or olive oil that is too old, or has been heated; all of these lack the fantastic flavours of Extra Virgin olive oil because heating or time has destroyed the volatile oleic acids that make the magic happen. Use first press oil if possible.
1 tsp-1 tbsp Salt, again varying to taste
Balsamic Vinegar (I do not actually recommend using this at all; lots of places will give it to you with a caprese salad, but there are a few gastronomy reasons not to apply it. For one thing, its astringency totally masks the taste of the cheese. Second, the fats and oils from the cheese and olive oil block out the less astringent tastes of the vinegar and both worsen the effect while removing its advantages. I suggest only using this if you have cheese that is getting a bit old and losing its flavour, and even then, sparingly. In Italy you will rarely see this served with Caprese, especially because the cheese there has an even more distinct flavour as it is made as intended, from bison milk)

Preparation is simple. Cut the tomatoes and cheese into 1/4 thick slices. Ideally the slices should be able to fit in the palm of your hand, unless you have especially small hands. I suggest cutting both on the plate you intend to use for serving; runoff from the cheese and tomatoes will mix on the plate and soak into the cheese for a nice effect. Arrange the slices along with basil leaves so that the cheese, tomatoes, and herbs cover the plate, are layered, and overlap each other. The whole point of this salad is to make sure the flavours and tastes interact. I tend not to overlap my basil, but that's done mostly for presentation purposes. Sprinkle salt on to taste, but try not to overdo it. Salt can really overpower the mozarella's flavour and turn this into the equivalent of chewy, freshly washed, salted basil. Then, drizzle on the olive oil liberally. I use about 4-6 tbsp of oil, though I've never measured. I tend to just eyeball it, since I'm pretty sure you can go wrong unless you completely coat everything on the plate in oil. Don't do that.

This salad is a very refreshing lunch. Enjoy!

Bowling Green Farmers' Market Revisited and Panned

If you can see the customs house, then you are near the Bowling Green farmers' market.

Today, I tried to give the Bowling Green Greenmarket a second chance. It just has such a fantastically redundant name that, really, I couldn't let my first impression condemn it.

My second impression, however, was sufficient. The basic details are that the market is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8 AM to 5 PM. I arrived at about 2 PM, so it's possible that things are better in the early morning, but I really doubt it. The space available for the market is so insufficient that I really just don't know where more stalls would fit.

The entire market is pictured here

Three stalls. Two of them with more or less identical offerings, though one had corn and potted plants and the other did not. One had cleaner okra. I was not pleased.

The middle stall was a little interesting. It carried baked goods with a dessert focus, and seemed to have some pretty good confectionarial technology going on. Unfortunately it just wasn't what I'm looking for when I try to get food. Pre-baked desserts, to me, are like the souvenir shop of the foodie world. They're generally overpriced for their quality, they're not as good as what you could make yourself, and while they might look good for an impulse buy, sometimes they sit around until you don't want them anymore.


The thing that this vendor did have, though, was the advantage - I think - of offering a product that the likely consumers at Bowling Green would be interested in. It was a little difficult for me to figure out quite what the intended audience of this market is; after all, the place is situated right near all of the major stock trading groups and many financial buildings downtown, there is not a lot of residential living around there, and the park attracts people who want to see sights during the hours that it is open, not regular stiffs who want to work their 9-5 jobs. I can only assume that it grabs two markets; tourists, and commuters to the financial businesses who might need to bring the odd dessert or forgotten ingredient back home to make sure dinner goes off well.

The baker stall seemed to agree, with its array of premade desserts, but the other two vendors had such an incoherent set of items that I just don't think they would get any purchases from that crowd except by chance. There were certainly people there, but the selection just wasn't very wide and the quality wasn't high enough for me to recommend this market to anyone who doesn't just accidentally happen upon it while in need of cucumbers.

However, because the market was so unfortunate, I decided that I would make my way over to the not terribly far away New Beer Distributors (167 Chrystie St.):


This place easily has one of the widest bottle selections I have ever seen in such a small area. They have specialty brews from a great many US microbrewers, and a very wide selection of imports.

I picked up a few interesting things; the Stone Brewing Co.'s 08.08.08 Vertical Epic, released the same day as the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies. Stone has been doing a series of "Vertical Epic" brews since 02.02.02, all of which are designed to be aged until 12.12.12, at which point they are to be all opened and tried together. I'll be trying the 08.08.08 now, and then will store a second bottle until that later date.

The second interesting beer is something I've had before; He'Brew's Origin, which is an ale that is brewed with pomegranate juice and I find quite enjoyable. But the best of all is definitely Paulaner's Oktoberfest Märzen. It's like caramel on toast, with a honey undertone. It's delicious and malty. Love it.

After that, I tried to make my way on foot to Union Square, as I like walking, and was interrupted by becoming an innocent bystander to a street fight in Chinatown that got kind of dangerous and I'm glad I got away from unscathed. Not everyone was so lucky, but we made sure the police got called and hopefully everything will sort out well. Very unusual for Chinatown, though.

Finally I made it to Whole Foods, where I got some locally caught bluefish, an orange, and a lemon, along with some linguine and basil. These became an interesting dish, which I'll pass on to my readers once it has become finer-tuned. Until next time...

The Loftier Branches

Frequently I have to fight the impulse to turn this into a general purpose blog on sustainability, especially scientific and engineering problems in making our society cleaner, leaner, and greener. It's already mean enough.

Of course, I fight this impulse with my strong desire for this blog to remain useful as a tool for those seeking to find good farmers' markets. Luckily (!) I have discovered this new phenomenon wherein individuals with little formal journalism training - if any - write episodic, topical websites.

Namely I was looking up an old friend who I have not spoken with in some time, and discovered that this fine fellow has started a blog that lets me vicariously live out my desire to wax poetic about awesome things like alternative energy and cellulosic biofuels. He calls it Green Rumors, and after close investigation I have decided that it rocks pretty hard. And so, gentle readers, I pass its noble, epic deeds on to you. Hope you enjoy it.

St. Mark's Greenmarket: Watch out for the Goodfeathas!

Tuesday saw me visiting the St. Mark's Greenmarket, which is one of the smaller Greenmarkets available. The location is, unsurprisingly, right in front of St. Mark's Church in a little parklike area there. It is located at 10th st. and 2nd Avenue, and it has longer hours than most of the Greenmarkets around, running from 8 AM to 7 PM on Tuesdays. It's not available year round, but that seems to be true for most of the Greenmarkets. I arrived around 3 PM and found that things were about as busy as the small area where the stalls are set up would permit:


As the first Greenmarket I've visited that had a Church looming over it, I must provide a warning about imposing buildings near your farmers' market: Large stone buildings with food supplies out front attract the flying rats also known as pigeons. I, and my outback hat, found this out the hard way when we got dive-bombed. If you're going to be going to this greenmarket, stay under the merchants' awnings!

Now, of course, this little incident gave me some exciting information about the merchants there. Rather than watching my plight with a disconcerned detachment, one of the staffpeople offered me a bunch of paper towels as a means to get the bird's artistic expression off of me. Considering that she was under no obligation to do that, I was left with a pretty good impression of the farmers' who frequent this market.

Other positives include the proximity to Union Square. The market is a short walk from the major subway stop there, and is even closer to the Astor Place 6 train stop, so it is accessible very easily from the entire East Side and slightly less easily from the West Side.

Food-wise, there was a lot of fruit at this farmers' market for its small size. The Dag Hammarskjold Plaza Greenmarket had a crazy variety of tomatoes, but St. Mark's had a similar variety of apples between the few stalls that were there, and enough different peaches to impress me also. I ended up getting $7 worth of tree-ripened peaches and apples, which are making for good snacks. There was also a surprising variety of pears, which I haven't noticed a lot of at other markets. This picture, for example, is mostly apples:

If we return to the NYU student from the Dag Hammarskjold post- and since I think we'll be revisiting her repeatedly, I think I'll give her a name, say, "Amelia Earheart" - we can find a definite use for this Greenmarket. It runs on days when Union Square is not available and is very close to there. Let's say Amelia ran out of fruit because her voracious roommate got the munchies and she simply must have apples for the pie she's making to celebrate the anniversary of her first transatlantic flight! Well, look no further than St. Mark's if that party happens to fall on a Tuesday.

Will they save your pie?

Additionally, it offered me something that the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza market did not. It's pretty important, with lots of types of bread, that you are able to get it fresh on the day you intend to use it. It's also important to me personally that bread be produced using good ingredients by a baker who knows what he is doing. Well, at the St. Mark's Greenmarket, there was a bread stall. With only four stalls, I was pretty happy that one quarter of this market was dedicated towards baking. The bakery was named Bread Alone, and it is an organic, kosher bakery, so perfect for the religious, Jewish, organic-conscious Amelias out there. For $4.75 I picked up a multigrain organic artisan sliced loaf that has made for excellent snacking and will be used for breakfast toast in coming days. I highly recommend it.


As a small market, this isn't a bad stop if there's something you need, and it has fresh bread, which is always a plus for me. It's not something that you would want to visit every day, necessarily, but in a pinch, St. Mark's may just save the day.

Third Avenue Street Fair

In many ways it was a departure from my usual for this particular blog, but I was on the way to the bank this past Sunday when I stumbled upon the entirely unexpected presence of a street fair in the upper regions of Third Avenue. After dazedly winning a burrito from a magical spinning wheel, I proceeded to examine just what was going on.

After wandering around and finding vast numbers of things utterly irrelevant to what I usually like to write about here, including numerous bedsheet sellers, more $1.00 Thai food than you should be allowed to shake a satay at, and a short course in why I don't like Radio Disney, I found a block near Cornell Weill (around 72nd street) with a number of green businesses that had set up stalls.

These, I figured, would be of interest to other people who sit longing for the day when concrete contains chlorophyll and cars run on sunshine and smiles, or at least just sunshine.

For one thing, I had been looking for a green dry cleaner for a little bit, since my shirts are starting to pile up and I'd like to know that getting them cleaned isn't killing the old furry lobsters of Jonathan Coulton fame. Luckily, Green Apple cleaners came to my rescue. They had a rather impressive display out at the street fair, though I have yet to avail myself of their services- I will let you know how it goes! Apparently they use a carbon dioxide jetting system to clean clothes, and as we all know, carbon dioxide seriously needs to be put to some good use around here. Here being planet Earth. Good use being anything other than melting the ice caps. To be clear.



Given that this seriously reduces the number of weird soaps and other compounds being released all over everywhere in the process of dry cleaning, I was pretty happy to see it. Given that they gave me a free $20 gift certificate, I'm going to be pretty happy getting free dry cleaning at least once.

Another interesting little establishment was what I would call an utterly ridiculous green business, but that is because I don't really think keeping pets is a particularly "green" enterprise, unless your pets happen to live on those oh-so-underused sunshine and smiles rather than processed meat and fish. At any rate, this place, GreenPaws, offers green grooming and care supplies for your pets; if you're going to keep animals, might as well keep them sustainably.


It was, all in all, a pretty unexpected little adventure, but by far the most interesting part about it was when one of the bedsheet vendors tried to set me up with his daughter. Apparently graduate students are kind of attractive to fathers of young, marriageable women. I figure if he decides to email me, I'll figure out how much livestock he'll give me for a dowry and then get back to him.

Of course, now that I've been to the street fair, I'll be able to take care of that livestock sustainably, so it's a win-win. Next time, you'll hear about the St. Mark's Greenmarket.

Dag Hammarskjold Plaza Greenmarket: an Adventure in Spelling

Yesterday's agenda, right after meeting with faculty and going to class, involved me heading down to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, which I assure you is really difficult to type into an iPhone. It is right next to the UN and so is frequently the site of protests for, against, and indifferent to oppression, Free Trade, genocide, the WHO, The Who, Israel, Palestine, and other countries exploited by Britain. Thankfully this post has nothing to do with any of that, unless the hot new method of protest is selling fresh fruit and vegetables. I'm not going to rule that out, actually, but I thought it was a farmers' market.

This greenmarket isn't nearly as extensive as the one at Union Square, but that didn't stop it from having enough variety to give me a pretty good meal out of it.

There were about eight stalls when I got there, but I suspect that a few had already packed up for the day. The morning agenda meant I was there well after the market's opening at 800, arriving sometime around 1430. Still, that's more than three hours before the stated closing time 0f 1800. Based on the stalls closing up when I got there I'm fairly unsure that the market sticks around until that late in any real kind of way.

I'll give you the bad news first. Namely, I was disappointed that there was no baker at this market. It would've been nice to have some bread with the meal I cooked last night, and I could've toasted some of it with breakfast this morning. So that was a little disappointing.

The number of stands, as I said before, wasn't anything to write home about, and that was somewhat unfortunate. If you live down by Union Square, like you would if you were, say, an eco-conscious NYU student, it might not be worth the trip to come up to E 47th St.

Another thing that I imagine will be a negative, but may have little to do with the market itself, is the fact that one of the dairy vendors came all the way out from Lancaster, PA dressed as if he were one of the Amish. Now, parading around as a religious person has its problems, but for me I wonder if it's not a little absurd to drive three or four hours to a local produce market to peddle cheese in costume. Namely because I know there's a solid farmers' market in Lancaster and even Philadelphia seems like a good market. I wonder if this farm has just an enormous distribution network, or if for some reason the locals aren't buying from it anymore. Given that his presence in New York with a giant truck makes it pretty clear he wasn't Amish, I have to say I don't like posers.

At any rate, there was another dairy stall and that was from New York, so the PA farm oughtn't be a dealbreaker for this particular market. Plus, I have no idea if he's there every week or if this was just a little Amish Expeditionary Force.

The good news is that the vegetable and fruit contingent was strong and widely varied. I bought shallots, potatoes, thai chilis, cilantro, some squash, and a variety of tomato that I had never heard of before, the Garden Peach Tomato, which is small, round, yellow and sometimes mottled with pink, and fuzzy like a peach. With good levels of iron and vitamin B5 as wikipedia has chosen to tell me, they're kind of a fun little fruit. The picture can't quite show their texture, but they're good:



So the rundown is that there was one stall with a wide variety of herbs, one with squashes of a wide variety, others with more corn and basic staple vegetables than you really know what to do with. I was pretty happy with it. The one that really got me, though, was a stand with so many different kinds of tomatoes it was unbelievable:


Yep, those are all tomatoes. The rest of the fruit situation wasn't nearly as good, but apparently that can be blamed on the weather, in an example of something I've never seen before:

Anyways, I was overall pretty happy with the prices. Aside from the fish stand, they were lower than those at the Union Square Greenmarket, which might make it worth the trip for the NYU student I mentioned above. My shopping list rounded out with two flounder filets, and the whole thing came out to about $16.

On the way back, I stopped at the Manchester Pub and had myself a Harpoon cider, which is sort of oddly floral and lacks some of the more appley qualities I'm used to in English-style ciders, but it was still pretty good despite a little too much carbonation.

When I got back it was time to prepare what I'd bought. I was originally going for a brown butter, cilantro, and thai chili sauce, but the chilis and the cilantro started to burn before the butter started to brown, and so I ended up with something a little different. To accompany this surprisingly delicious occurence I made a mix of the potatoes, squash, and shallots that shall go unrecorded due to its uninteresting and slightly burned nature.

Anyway, the fish is worth giving you some notes on:


Flounder with Tomatoes in a Thai Chili and Cilantro Butter Infusion

2 Flounder filets (approx 3/4 lbs)
1/2 stick butter
1 cup finely chopped cilantro
1 small Garden Peach or, alternately, Roma tomato
Thai chilis to your satisfaction
Flour, possibly seasoned with a little pepper, or sage and thyme, if you feel like it.

Remove stems from chilis, then chop chilis in half lenghtwise. If you want to reduce their spiciness, or the spice's concentration, remove the seeds, otherwise leave them in.

Melt the butter in a small frying pan and add the cilantro and chili. I suggest medium to high heat. Heating the cilantro should leech out its flavour into the butter; when the butter turns green, scoop out the cilantro and the chili bits that are left. It doesn't matter if the cilantro or the chilis start to char or burn a little bit, because you're removing them anyway. It happened to me and the infusion was still delicious, with a spicy overtone and a cilantro undertone. Set this aside.

Lightly coat the flounder with flour, then cut the tomatoes into small chunks. Place the frying pan with your infused butter back on the heat. If you can judge it right, the flounder should obtain enough internal heat to cook itself fully even after you've taken it off, so you can add it simultaneously with the tomatoes and remove the whole lot of it after you've flipped the flounder once and made sure that it's white and a bit flaky on both sides. Shouldn't take more than about six minutes per filet. Once you've done that, pour the remaining infused butter over the fish and you're done. Pair with some kind of vegetables or pasta and enjoy.

Until next time...

Bowling Green Farmer's Market

This past Thursday I attempted to go to the Bowling Green Greenmarket. I say attempted because while getting there was very easy (just go down to the Bowling Green subway stop and walk up and look around), there wasn't much of a market there.

There were all of three stands, and one of them was selling jewelery. The problem with this is that I was hoping to buy things to cook, and there weren't sufficient things to cook. There just wasn't nearly enough selection at the place for me to justify any purchases because it wasn't wide enough to really make any kind of meal come together. I thought of a few possible explanations for this:

• The farmers' market is a terrible one and there is never any selection
• I went there too late in the day for there to be stalls
• The closeness to Labor Day Weekend resulted in several farmers taking the week off
  

The latter two reasons mean I'll check it out again before condemning it completely.

However, there is the fact that it's near Battery Park led me to have a little fun anyway. The City Gardens at Battery Park are also host to a Beer Garden, which features Victory Brewing Company beers for about $4-5.00 for what seemed to be a 20oz plastic cup. All in all a decent deal and a nice location from which you can see the ferry coming in and out and look at the statue of liberty, etc. The beers are a little carbonated for my taste, but the Hefeweizen was done in almost the proper Bavarian style and it made up for the disappointing greenmarket.

Union Square Greenmarket

Yesterday I found my way down to Union Square for the Greenmarket that lives there on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, starting at 8 AM and ending at 6 PM. The Greenmarket program runs a variety of other Farmers' Markets in NYC, and there is probably one near you if you live in New York. It's a program of the Council on the Environment of New York City and they have more information about it on their site.

I arrived at Union Square around 2 PM and left around 3:30, and things were quite busy with a large number of merchants, so expect to have some degree of hassle in walking around with crowds and having to wait in lines for particularly popular stalls if you happen to be there at a high volume time.

Just about everything that one would expect to see at a Farmers' Market is there and repeated at least once; herb and flower merchants with potted plants, dairies with fresh butter and milk, vegetable and fruit stands, freshly butchered meat, and something that isn't found at farmers' markets everywhere- fish stalls. Even more unusually, these stalls are broken up by the usual Union Square population of street artists selling everything from colourized black and white photographs to painted silk nudes of Japanese warrior women to a few minutes of breakdancing and winning personalities. All in all, it makes for a very diverse experience.

Prices were about what one would expect from a farmers' market, slightly higher than for less local, less fresh produce. The fish prices were the exception, coming in somewhat below what I'd expect to see at a major store. Cutting out the middleman of the supermarket in this respect makes sense, and in my case resulted in a cheap tuna steak.

In the end I spent about $12.00 on the dinner I had last night, which ended up being very tasty. I had a tuna steak which was seared lightly in a sauce made from raw buckwheat honey, five spice, three shots of scotch, and a peeled and sliced peach. To balance, I managed to find, unexpectedly, some okra at the market for a low price since almost no one in the North knows how to prepare it correctly. Anyway I breaded that with cayenne pepper, flour, and salt and fried it up, resulting in a nice spicy side dish to counterbalance the sweet, smokiness of the scotch-peach-honey tuna. All in all it was pretty cheap and simple to prepare, especially for a set of things that would've cost about $25 off of a restaurant menu. Take a look:



The bottom line is that the selection and density of market stalls at the Union Square Greenmarket is pretty extensive and there are definitely unusual things to be found there, given that variety. Walking around for an hour I threw a great meal together, which could probably have satisfied even two people, without having to completely empty my wallet, which was my goal going in.

By comparison to other farmers' markets I've visited this was a very good experience, but I can't compare with other Manhattan markets yet so I'll reserve judgment for now. Still, given its accesibility and the frequency of its open days, Union Square is a pretty good market to rely on.

The End of the Beginning

I grew up in the late 80s and early 90s. There are Fraggle Rock animators and writers rolling in their suburban retirement homes at the work ethic I developed despite their very best efforts. This blog is another example of how that very dedication to seeing my harebrained crazy soft-boiled dreams turned into printed internet and dead-tree page realities can be twisted towards doing something with little measurable value for my career.
And so what started as an interest in getting delicious fresh produce at a premium resulted in the creation of this only somewhat aptly named set of banged keys, which is soon to have reviews of Manhattan farmers' markets and some other general ideas on NYC horticulture, food, and other exciting elements of urban greenery.
Therefore, come back in the future for that sort of content. Tomorrow, I believe, I will be visiting the Union Square Greenmarket, and may have a thing or two to say about it.