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...