Ligurian Style Pasta with Pesto, Potatoes, and Green Beans

Happy Anniversary to the Greenmarkets! As both the New York Times and New York Magazine highlight they turn 30 years old this week. In a way, it is hard to imagine the city without these culinary resources, they’ve become something of an institution. Specials and the latest seasonal produce are highlighted on blogs, and new arrivals are heralded in the Dining In section of the Times on Wednesdays. The market has even published its own cookbook.  

There, I’ve picked up wonderful cheeses, delicious handmade sausages, great homemade jams, and lovely freshly-baked bread – for toast of course. Plants and flowers dress up the square and the aroma of lilacs during the spring season makes the trip intoxicating as well. Like lots of folks who visit the market on a regular basis, I have my particular favorite vendors that I search out week after week for their wares.

Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato Sandwich with Homemade Mayonnaise

 

As you may have read on the previous post, I went a bit tomato crazy in August.  It’s just so hard not to, with such gorgeous specimens available.  And the flavors are amazing.  I wondered if, using only Greenmarket produce, how would these be on a BLT.  I’m not a giant fan of BLTs, mostly because I find that people put globs of mayonnaise on it, which I find kind of icky. 

Mayonnaise is one of those food items that I have a conflicted relationship with. The smell of a knife having been used to spread mayo and left in the kitchen sink makes my stomach turn.  I can’t stand the way it makes bread all spongy or the sight of oozy white stuff in tuna or chicken salad.  Mayo on fries, don’t even get me started on how repulsive that is to me.

Maybe I would change my mind, if I made the condiment myself, I thought.  I looked up a few recipes, read a few sets of instructions, and thought, “I can do this, easy-peasy.”  Well, it wasn’t so simple.  I couldn’t seem to get it to emulsify.  Twice, I tried this and was left with a golden, liquidy mess.  How could this be?

Summertime Tomato-Mozzarella Salad Ensalata Caprese

Freshly grown, ripe tomatoes are the essence of summertime’s culinary bounty for me.  In the cycle of the seasons, the end of summer usually brings with it a plethora of tomatoes.  As usual, the Greenmarket is my best friend at this time of year.  Along with my hunt for asparagus and strawberries in their time, when July heads into August my “food radar” becomes attune to seeking out and gathering the freshest, ripest specimens I can locate. 

A great ripe tomato that’s been raised outdoors (not in a greenhouse) smells just like a warm, lazy August day with sunshine, a blue cloudless sky, and the sound of bugs droning in the background.  If you can get the chance to pick one just as it is ready, straight from the vine, you are one of the lucky ones.  Hold it up to your nose and inhale its aromas.  To me, this is its quintessential fragrance: the mellowness of the red with a bit of a sharp tang from the green.  It is the contrast between the smooth roundness of the tomato and the prickly parts of the stalk from which sprung the vine on which it grew.