Category: Local Food and Seasonal Ingredients

A collection of local food and seasonal ingredients, recipes, food and culinary exploration within New York and around the world.  With a focus on using local, seasonal ingredients or cultural specialties, Full Access is excited to highlight some of our favorite dishes for you.

Local Food and Seasonal ingredients include ramps, fiddlehead ferns and asparagus in the spring.  Summer is filled with stuffed squash blossoms and the transition into fall brings venison and slightly heavier fare.  Our winter recipes are filled with stews, soups and filling risottos.

Additionally, our category will highlight growing your own food in local community gardens, baking your own bread and getting a taste of the city.

Chocolate Bars of Iceland

Take a moment to imagine you are in New Orleans, Philadelphia, Florence Italy or Madrid Spain.  What do you think about?  Oysters Rockefeller?  Cheese Steaks?  Gelato?  Serrano Ham?

Food is directly associated with our travel experiences.  It helps us experience local cultures and in our own lives it’s how we pass down family traditions.

Roasted Mini Pumpkins with Wild Rice Stuffing

Fall is in the air with Halloween and Thanksgiving right around the corner.  Most bodegas in the city sell pumpkins (in addition to the many grocery stores and farmers markets.)  You can also head out to the Queens County Farm which is a real working farm in the borough and pick out a few which is a nice weekend date or activity with friends.

I bought a few pumpkins and put together a little appetizer that would be perfect before Thanksgiving dinner.

3 Squash Soup: Calabaza, Amber Cup and Kabocha

There are so many varieties of squash in season right now.  I am most familiar with a handful such as Butternut, Acorn and Delicata.  However, there are many other’s I always look at but then walk right past.  I decided to make a squash soup using different squash I don’t normally buy and the end result was great.

These three squash; Kabocha, Calabaza and Amber cup work really well together. There is a natural mild sweetness in this soup which I really enjoyed.

Beer Battered Delicata Squash Chips

Fall squash are some of my favorite ingredients to work with.  Spanning from soups to stew, roasted to mashed, there is no shortage of preparations.  So one afternoon, I was looking at a few delicata squash on my counter and asked a very simple question.  Why not fried?

My general philosophy (one of many) in life is: fried = good and beer battered + fried = better.

Brioche Doughnuts at Mah Ze Dahr in the West Village

Sunday morning and I am lazily scrolling through facebook from my bed.  I come across a soaring review of Mah Ze Dahr in Gothamist and immediately jump up.  15 minutes later, I am dressed and on the A train heading downtown.

New to the village, Mah Ze Dahr should very quickly be placed on your bakery radar.  With a variety of both sweet and savory pastries, I opted to try one from each side of the spectrum.

An Exercise in Making Apartment Sourdough Pretzels

So what if you wanted to move your pretzel experience to the comfort of your own home?  It’s actually quite easy with one annoying exception.  The recipe called for 1/4 cup of powdered milk.  Did you know you can only buy powdered milk in increments of 5 pounds?  I do now.  So $13 later and with the newest addition to the back of my cupboard, I was ready to bake.

Pandan Cake: Singapore Recipe Tasting in Uptown Manhattan

I am always looking for new recipes to try (and ultimately set off the fire alarm in my apartment….)  It just so happened the incredibly talented Janness Koh who writes for our Full Access Singapore site had just what I was looking for with her Pandan Cake.

Old New York and Homemade Sourdough Bread

Disregard the fact there are 3 grocery stores within half a mile of my apartment.

Throw out the knowledge there are 2 bakeries, countless bodegas and Seamless ready to handle all my restaurant delivery needs.

Let’s take it back to ’79 (1879) when people were making their own food at home.

Challenge accepted.