Humble Feast Update (and Braised Baby Turnip Recipe)

These are servings of strawberry shortcake stacked on the espresso machine at the defunct Patty Pan Cafe during this past Monday's Humble Feast dinner. We were at close to capacity for both seatings and a bit tight on counter space as well, which is why we were stacking the strawberry shortcakes on the espresso machine.

After some rough spring months where ingredients were hard to come by, Monday's dinner finally felt bountiful. We bartered for many of the ingredients, and even made some additions to the menu simply in order to use some of the items that we acquired during the course of our market adventures. This was my original vision, and it was exciting to see it coming to fruition.

Next month we're expanding to two dinners: the Ballard Eagles' Lodge on Monday July 18th, and the Mountlake Community Center on Monday July 25th. It'll be the same menu for both events. I'm thinking Mediterranean food because we should be getting into tomato and cucumber season by then.

Here's a recipe for braised baby turnips from Monday's dinner:

Braised Baby Turnips (makes 4 servings)

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 spring onions, finely sliced

1 fennel bulb, finely chopped

2 tablespoons chopped garlic

1 teaspoon salt

1 pound baby turnips, trimmed and quartered (Save the greens for another recipe.)

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup orange juice

Black pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a medium-size saucepan. Add the onions, fennel, garlic and salt, and cook for about 5 minutes on medium-low heat, stirring often, until the onion is soft and transluscent.

Add the turnips, balsamic vinegar, and orange juice. Bring the mixture to a boil, and then lower the heat, cover the pan, and cook for about 10 minutes on low heat, until the turnips are tender.

Grill Xpress

After three and a half years and 521 blog posts, I'm now going to write my first restaurant review. The reason I've never written about a restaurant before is that, as a sometimes restauranteur, I'm not a big fan of this culture of grassroots criticism and digital Marxism, where anyone who has had a restaurant experience that didn't meet expectations can go online and spew vitriol.

Most restaurant reviews assume that restaurants should exist, first and foremost, to meet the needs of their customers. I'm fully aware that no restaurant can stay in business long unless it meets its customers' needs, but restaurants also fundamentally exist to express the vision of their proprietors, and to provide these hardworking folks with a livelihood. No single eating establishment can please everyone. Restaurants that survive are able to find a critical mass of customers' who appreciate their offerings enough to support them over time.

The process of setting up a restaurant involves making difficult choices. Most likely you won't be able to do everything just the way you originally envisioned because even basic building blocks like ventilation and plumbing can cost tens of thousands of dollars. You'll find a space that seems like it can work, and you'll most likely sign an extended lease before you figure out how all of the pieces are going to fit together because if you wait until you work out all of the details, someone else will jump at the opportunity if it's a space worth having.

There's a little Mediterranean place in a strip mall by my house where I often go for takeout, especially after very long market days. It has a definite strip mall feeling, with flourescent lights and strip mall tables. But the food has heart and the proprietor clearly works very, very hard.

I actually wasn't thrilled with the food the first time I ate there. I ordered falafel, and the garlic didn't taste right and there was far too much of it. But it was an interesting sandwich, one that had clearly been conceptualized by someone who was paying attention to detail. And there were so many other things on the menu that I wanted to try.

I regularly order the tabouli, which always comes with far more parsley than bulgur. I appreciate that. I also get a lentils and rice dish that's subtly flavored with cinnamon, and topped with chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, as well as a tahini sauce. It fills me up and makes me happy. I also order the hummus and the foul medamas, a rich fava bean dip. They all come with pita that's been warmed and tucked in ziplocs.

The spot is open long hours, and the owner has been there personally every single time I've been there. Of all the fast food places close to home that I frequent, it's the only one where I haven't ever shown up ten minutes before closing, tired and hungry, only to discover that it's closed early. I've been there on days when it's snowing and sleeting, and Easter Sunday and Superbowl Sunday, when business is clearly very, very slow.

As a sometimes restauranteur, I fully understand the impulse to close early when you haven't seen a customer for hours. I'm grateful for this guy's dependability, and he's earned my profound respect. It's a tough business, and he does a great job.

Loading Out

The process of loading out at the end of a market day is a bit like I would imagine the dismantling of a gypsy caravan, but members of a caravan tend to all be headed in the same direction while market vendors are headed to different places. If you're all headed out together, then one slow link in the chain delays the entire process. But if you're each headed your own way, then it's everyone for themselves.

Some vendors rush to get their vehicles at the earliest possible moment. Technically you're supposed to break everything down before you get your van so each vehicle spends as little time as possible on the street and things move along relatively smoothly. But few people follow the rules. At one market there's a line of vehicles waiting to come in as soon as the market ends. One guy consistently falls asleep in his truck while he's waiting, so someone has to gently nudge him awake when it's time to move.

We all tend to be friendlier and more patient on busy days than on slow ones. After a rainy day you feel soggy and poor, and you just want to go home. After a busy day you feel affluent and magnanimous, and it just doesn't matter as much if your day is 15 minutes longer.

I've seen vendors get into fights during the process of loading out. Someone sneaks into a spot that someone else has staked out. Everyone's tired, and it gets ugly. I tend to take my time packing up my stuff, to stay out of the fray and be able to pull my vehicle up right next to the booth.

Phinney Farmers' Market 2011

I'm pleased to report that the Phinney Farmers' Market is much improved this year, at least during the three weeks that it's been up and running.

This year the market moved from the lower parking lot at the Phinney Neighborhood Center to the upper parking lot. The new location is much more visible from the street, which is always good for business. The old location was "L" shaped, with prepared food vendors like myself tucked in the corner that bent away from most of the other vendors. At the new location we're integrated much more gracefully with the rest of the market. We're even next to the music, which always helps. Folks linger to listen and while they're there, they buy food.

Another important change has been the fact that they now allow dogs. At some point in the past, the administration had made the decision to make this a dog-free market. Some dog owners stopped coming specifically because they disapproved of the decision while others simply found it inconvenient to leave their dogs home during a Friday evening jaunt.

I'm always surprised at the good behavior of most of the dogs I see at farmers' markets. But I remind myself that I'm seeing a preselected sample: bad dogs don't get to come to the market. One farmer friend has a theory that days when you see a lot of big dogs at the market tend to correlate with high sales, while days when you see a lot of small dogs tend to correlate with lower sales. I'm not sure how you could objectively verify that theory, but it does intrigue me.

The Wallingford Market's New Location

This month the Wallingford Farmers' Market moved from its old home at the Wallingford Center to a new home at the Good Shepherd Center. I'm usually slinging quesadillas at the Columbia City Market on Wednesday afternoons, but I managed to sneak away last week to peek at the new venue.

It feels expansive and pastoral. This is a welcome change after the space the market occupied in the Wallingford Center parking lot was cut practically in half last season. That felt stressful and cramped. It's also wonderful to stand on grass rather than asphalt. You feel a lot less beaten up at the end of the day when you stand on a softer surface.

The challenge at the new location is to let people know that there's a market going on, even though it's hidden from view. The old location was right off of a main drag. The advantage of the new location is that it's a pleasant place to linger. It's also the home of Seattle Tilth, ground zero for urban agriculture, and I can't think of a better setting for a farmers' market.

There's a chef's only market between 3 and 3:30, for the purpose of allowing the pros to get in and out quickly. That's a worthy idea, though it doesn't make much sense for those of us who are selling finished products rather than primary ingredients. Fortunately, the rule isn't strictly enforced and the first half hour at an afternoon market tends to be the slowest time of day for my operation anyway. In any case, our sales so far have blown last year out of the water, so I'm certainly not complaining about this minor inconvenience.

Zola's "Belly of Paris"

I knew I was going to enjoy this book from the very first page, as Zola describes the wagons pulling into the Les Halles market one morning during the mid 1800s. Vendors are paying for stall space, quibbling over placement, and getting in each other's way. One of my favorite things about my own market experience is the connection I feel to the countless farmers and vendors who have parked their wares in public places since the very beginning of civilization.

My attention began to wander during one of the early scenes as the protagonist Florent takes off to explore the market with his new friend Claude, who is based on the painter Paul Cezanne. Through a long, drawn out section, Claude repeatedly exclaims about the colors of the light on the vegetables as the sun rises over the market. Though the account probably should have been about half as long, it did call to mind the folks with cameras who I see daily at Seattle markets, angling to catch the produce in the best possible light.

Later in the book, I grasped what Zola was trying to accomplish in that too long section, as he waxes poetic describing cheeses and fruits:

"There, next to the one-pound stacks of butter, a gigantic Cantal was spread on leaves of white beet, as though split by blows from an axe; then came a golden Chesire cheese, a Gruyere like a wheel fallen from some barbarian chariot, some Dutch cheese suggesting decapitated heads smeared in dried blood...a parmesan adding its aromatic tang to the thick, dull smell of the others."

And:

"The cherries, arranged in rows, were like the lips of Chinese girls drawn into a tight smile: the Montmerencies suggesting the fleshy lips of fat women; the English ones, much longer and more serious; the common black ones, which looked as if they had been bruised by kisses; the bigaroons, speckled with pink and white, which seemed to be smiling with a mixture of merriment and anger."

Like Claude the painter, Zola was painting his market with words. He clearly knew the venue as intimately as any modern day vendor, describing the subterranean caverns dense with livestock and the vats of culturing milk, the vendor rivalries and the neighborhood gossip who showed up late each day trying to get something for nothing. I know each of these characters, or at least modern day versions of them.

Zola's genius as a writer lies in his profound understanding of working people. He manages to paint them with an eye that is at once sympathetic and critical. I can't think of a more fitting subject for his talents than a bustling market with its day to day dramas. This is certainly a gloomy book, focusing on the dark side of interpersonal relationships. And yet the story unfolds amidst the heart and soul of one of the most vibrant food cultures the world has ever known. If only for that reason, I found it strangely uplifting.

Goodbye Meadowbrook

The Meadowbrook Farmers' Market announced this week that it had cancelled its 2011 season. There simply weren't enough vendors to make it happen this year. I have to admit, I was one of the vendors who hadn't planned to return.

I'd always thought of the Meadowbrook Market as a beautiful experiment. The managers were enthusiastic and committed, and it was perhaps the only market in the city that had a completely secure location because it was held in the parking lot of the school that founded it. Other local markets such as Ballard and Queen Anne have to apply for street use permits year after year, while markets hosted at venues such as the University Heights Center or the Phinney Neighborhood Center also need to renegotiate the terms of their locations every year.

The Meadowbrook market grew out of a tight Waldorf School community. The very first day in 2009 was amazing; in fact, one vendor I spoke to recently said that it was the best day he'd ever had at any market. But it tanked pretty fast. I've heard folks speculate that the problem was a location off the beaten path and, in retrospect, I think it may have been the only market I've ever seen that was located on a side street rather than a main drag (except maybe the first few years of the Queen Anne Market.) In any case, I think it's possible that the school's community could have supported the market, but school season is fall, winter and spring, while market season is summer.

I'm sure that folks are going to read all kinds of assumptions and conclusions into the Meadowbrook Market's cancellation this year: they'll say it was one too many markets in the city or that the lousy economy killed it. New markets succeed and fail for many reasons, and every market and every season is unique. Personally, I hope folks will continue to start new markets, bringing new ideas and new vendors into the mix. There's still so much potential, and so many ideas we haven't even tried.