Head to your local farmers market and start picking out these fleeting spring ingredients for an exceptional salad.
Claytonia, which looks like mini lily pads has a nice clean taste and crisp bite.
Mizuna is a versatile leaf that can be added to a salad such as this or lightly sautéed. I like the shape and texture of the leaves because they have a slight crispness to them. The hearts of palm, goat cheese and artichoke hearts round this dish out nicely.
Full of fall flavors, be sure to make this salad at your next dinner party.
The pineapple is one of those perfect ingredients (alongside avocados and mangos.) So why mess with perfection? I would say it is more about taking a different approach to something you are familiar with than a detraction. The heat concentrates and enhances the natural sweetness of the fruit and the caramelization on the outside is just delicious.
I originally put this together for my paleo friends. Aside from that, I wanted to play around with temperature and texture. The raw and cooked ingredients play well off each other. This is also a really simple salad and you can put it together in about 20 minutes.
While contemplating what to plant in my garden box, tomatoes seemed like a natural choice. But what type of tomato should I plant?
I could have gone the heirloom route because few things in a garden are cooler than zebra tomatoes. San Marzano were next under consideration because this Italian gem is one of my favorites.
Every week the plants in my garden seem to grow 30% bigger. This city guy is learning a lot about plant care (and that my garden neighbors are probably going out of their way to help me out – I really shouldn’t have this much success….)
The first of the crop that I can actually use are my herbs (cilantro and parsley) Butter Lettuce and some Red Russian Kale. Again, my neighbors reminded me to start harvesting the lettuce leaves from the outside so new growth can come in.
I think cauliflower might have replaced kale as the new ‘it’ vegetable (Nashville for example has all the cauliflower dishes you could ever hope for.) But don’t worry, kale had it’s time in the sun and in case you aren’t ready to make the switch I put together a kale salad for you below.
The kale in this dish is lightly cooked so it retains a little bite and is complimented with the slightly sweet shallots. You can pick up some duck eggs at the Union Square farmers market. They have a rich yolk which is the perfect compliment to the salad and brings the whole dish together.
By Seth Fera-Schanes I put this dish together to use one of my favorite ingredients: ramps. Ingredients: 1.5 cups of prepared Cannellini Beans. (Or 1 15oz can Cannellini beans – rinsed) 3 fresh ramps, grilled or cooked in a cast iron skillet and chopped. If ramps are not […]
By Seth Fera-Schanes I set out to make a dish that accomplished two goals: have an affordable light lunch or dinner starter and use the fresh cilantro I have been growing in my garden. Check and mate. Cost cutting is always helpful in the city. Dining out multiple […]
A few years ago, during one of my Saturday visits to the Union Square farmer’s market, I came across fiddlehead ferns. They were tightly wound-up little green disks piled high in a cardboard box. I kept looking in the box and although I wasn’t sure what they were, it was something new which meant I was going to buy some.
The great thing about a farmer’s market are vendors are more than happy to tell you about their product and most importantly explain how to prepare them.
