Farmer's market again

I like to make a point of going to the New Morning Farm farmer's market Saturday mornings and simply buying what looks good to me. It's fun then to find the right recipe for the ingredients.

Last Saturday they had "cheddar cauliflower," small little heads that truly were the color of cheddar cheese. I roasted it with butter and lemon per a technique in a Canal House cookbook I bought recently, and, together with a sautéed yellow squash we had around, put it over penne with a little grated pecorino. Pretty good.

I also got some fava beans. These were pretty late stage beans but I used a recipe from Sara Jenkins' Olives and Oranges for a salad with "spring" fava beans because she specified you could use more mature beans and blanche them to remove the tough skin. It's a bit labor intensive to first shell the beans, blanche and shock them, then pop them out of their skins, but playing with food is for me part of the joy of cooking. The beans get mixed with greens, herbs (mint, basil, parsley), and tiny cubes of pecorino and dressed just with olive oil and salt.

I paired it with a pork loin spit-roasted (felt like using the spit on my Weber grill) that was marinated in roast garlic and spike with springs of rosemary. The recipe from the Jamisons' Big Book of Outdoor Cooking called for fennel and onion to be roasted in the grill underneath the spit and then tossed with orzo. So it was a great little meal, with lots of leftover pork for later in the week. No chianti with these fava beans, but a nice Montalcino.

Slow Food farm dinner

This annual event is held at Clyde's Willow Creek Farm in the Broadlands near Ashburn. The encroaching exurbia in Loudon County robs the setting of any rural character, no matter what you call the restaurant. However, the tables were set up in a courtyard that sheltered the diners from any views of intruding sprawl, and made for a charming venue.

The six-course menu opened with passed hors d'oeuvres -- a tiny slice of pork belly served on a spoon with a sliver of peach (stole the show); small, fluffy onion tarts; and a yellow tomato consomme served in a paper cup with frozen a cherry tomato that was very light and summery. The wine was a sparkling SP Blanc de blancs from Kluge Estate in Charlottesville that was like a good prosecco. A second aperitif was a very refreshing white sangria made with a mix of pinot grigio and viognier, a dash of soda, and peach slices and plump blackberries for the fruit.

The first seated course was roasted poussin (baby chickens) served with roasted peaches, greens sauteed in bacon fat, pickled onions and herbs. The white meat was very delicate in flavor, while the leg had a more robust taste, like a good confit. The wine was a rose from Barboursville Vineyards, dry and crisp and very French.

Next came jumbo lump crab cakes with the super-fresh crab meat supplied by Russell Hall Seafoods in Fishing Creek, Maryland. The single cake rested on kernels of local corn and a tomato coulis rounded out the dish beautifully. A Chardonnay Reserve from Jefferson Vineyards was light with only a hint of oak and accompanied it well.

The main course was a wood-roasted Virginia prime rib of beef served with a tomato smokey blue cheese gratin (the tomatoes were bursting with flavor and set off perfectly by the creamy blue cheese) and mini-fingerling potatoes. The beef was drier than your typical prime rib because of the wood roasting, but very tender and flavorful. The red Garnett from Hillsborough Vineyards in Purcelville tried to keep up but demonstrated once again how difficult it is to produce a good red in Virginia.

Artisanal cheeses were not local, the chef explained, because it was not a good season for local cheeses, but the selection from New York, Vermont and Wisconsin was very nice.

Dessert was a warm corn cake with sweet corn ice cream and blackberry compote. The cake suffered from not being able to come straight out of the oven, but the ice cream, with the barest hint of corn flavor, was tasty and fresh and the blackberry compote was terrific. A very accomplished dessert wine, Moonstone from Hillsborough, made a perfect finish.

Ample as the menu was, we missed having a salad, which would seem like a natural at a farm dinner. But it was a terrific package and for $65, wine and service included, a great bargain.

Slow Food is an international organization set up to counter fast food. In the U.S., it supports local foods and sustainable production. The DC chapter organizes an event about once a month.

Part of the program was an explanation from the Clyde's chefs about the chain's commitment to local produce, dating back 25 years. The restaurant actually grows some vegetables at the Willow Creek Farm. Of course Clyde's does not offer this kind of menu at its restaurants, for whatever reasons, so it may not represent the real solution to America's food quandary. But it's a step in the right direction.

Other speakers -- who spoke only briefly between the courses -- described the great success of the farmer's market in Olney after overcoming many obstacles and related something incomprehensible about biodynamic growing. Ann Yonkers, one of the cofounders of the Fresh Farms farmers' markets, demonstrated with an apple how little of the earth's service is given over to agriculture, but it might have been more interesting to hear her talk about farmers markets.

Mt. Pleasant Market

After reading about it in Dean Gold's weekly email for Dino, we went to the Mt. Pleasant farmer's market last Saturday to check it out.

It had a good spread of vegetables, a couple of meat stands, and one cheese vendor. Like most farmer's markets in the city, it was way overpriced. A pound of green beans was $5, and a little carton of fingerling potatoes (potatoes!) was also $5.

The meat was, of course, frozen and packed in translucent cellophane to make it as unattractive as humanly possible. I bought a ham hock with a label so crumpled and smeared it could have been months old.

I also bought the green beans and cooked them together with the ham hock on Monday. The proportions were out of whack. I had twice as much ham hock and half as many green beans as the simple recipe I found on Epicurious called for, but it resulted in a substantial main dish that we built a meal around, complementing it with a salad and toasted slices of six-grain bread from the co-op.

But we didn't see any reason to traipse across town to return to this market, even though it is really just a pleasant ride through the park. We like our New Morning Farm market at the Sheridan School just fine, even though it is only vegetables. Prices are not quite as outrageous as the Dupont Circle market and generally compare to Wholefoods. Can't beat the freshness.

Love to support farmer's markets and local producers but will not hesitate to go backe to the supermarket if I start to feel like I'm getting gouged on prices.