Summer in the city, for all its lyricism as a phrase, is not an easy time. Recently, on a day hotter and muggier than any day has any right to be, I found myself walking a particularly unappealing strip of urban turf. This walk was not voluntary; it was due to the re-routing of a bus and my need to catch a train. Not to put too fine a point on it, I walked a half-mile stretch which felt like I was entering a portal to Hell and smelled as if someone had neglected to clean up a recent Gangland mass murder in a local basement.
So what makes an urban summer bearable, besides parks, air-conditioned movies and ice-cream trucks? One aspect is the bounty to be found in summer's farm markets, which in NYC are known as Greenmarkets. Farmers from upstate NY and NJ truck in their beautiful produce and charge us top dollar -- a price I gladly pay, hoping that the folks who produce the food might actually benefit from their hard labor. It feels cooler at the Greenmarket, even on a hot day; perhaps it's just the effect of all those white-swathed tents, with tables and boxes and mounds of jewel-like produce beneath.
Urban Oasis: The Greenmarket in bloom.
Before we go off on a hard-earned vacation, I've tried to hit a few different markets, and am planning on one or maybe even two more as well. There's the gold standard, of course, which is Union Square on a Saturday (the Union Square Greenmarket happens on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays). I recently visited on a Monday, which was bustling but lacked both the size and the variety of Saturday's market. I also paid a visit to Dag Hammerskold Plaza in midtown on a Wednesday not long ago. That's a lovely mid-size farmers' market, with plenty of goodies to choose from. Although our vacation departure is finally imminent, I'm hoping to hit one or two more before we go. My big excitement is that there's a new (the only) one in East Harlem, although it's still about twenty blocks from where we live. I'm going to have to bring my little shopping cart and check it out. Another one is directly across town from me as the crow flies, and would necessitate only a walk through the park, as it were. So that too warrants exploring, to figure out if it's worth the trek.
Actually, it's always worth the trek. Even when I schlepped backbreaking bags from Union Square early one Saturday a few weeks back, I was able to gloat as I unpacked all that glory. A huge and gorgeous capon, fresh Ronnybrook milk and cream, day-neutral strawberries, other berries and the already immortalized sour cherries, the first apricots, the last English peas, tiny squashes, multi-hued carrots, baby leeks (thinner and smaller than scallions), wild arugula, piccolo small-leaf basil...
All the pretty little squashes.
The question then becomes what to do with all this bounty? Well, with that haul I made a simple herb and lemon roasted capon, which ran with intensely flavorful juices but also super-heated our apartment for about 12 hours. We barricaded ourselves in the air-conditioned bedroom with iced drinks and trays of food which also included a market salad, invented for the 
occasion.
Amazing technicolor baby carrots.
I came to refer to that salad as "not-pasta salad with not-pesto dressing", which recalls some of the more unfortunate summer salads prevalent in the later decades of the last millenium. This, although it had both pasta and a basil/garlic/cheese dressing, was composed mainly of little rounds and ovoids of squash, multicolored carrots in julienne and miniscule sweet peas, each one barely cooked, cooled, and tossed with a few handfuls of cooked tri-colored orzo, minced baby leeks, grape tomatoes and the aforementioned dressing, which was actually more like a creamy vinaigrette with pesto flavors rather than a heavy, oily pesto itself. I won't include a recipe, since you could a) throw it together from the above description and b) I'd rather urge you to invent your own salad with whatever is freshest that day from your local farmers' market. Today, for example, I'm going to use more Greenmarket treasure: slim and velvety just-cooked green beans and steamed new red potatoes that were left from last night's dinner. I plan to turn these into a cool Niçoise-style salad with roasted red peppers, onions and tomatoes and olives added in, all in a lemon-garlic vinaigrette.
My absolute favorite market supper this season was one we had a week or so ago. Spiky wild arugula and a few other field greens made a bed for thin rare slices of marinated grilled organic steak, similar to the dish that I enjoyed on a trip to Italy several years ago called tagliata di manzo. Our only accompaniment to this was slices of toasted country bread, and much later, fresh berries for dessert. Such a simple thing, and so good it defies description.
I'm about to head out for one of the newer Greenmarkets today, mainly to explore, since we're leaving soon and we don't exactly need to stock up. But perhaps I'll discover some fresh gem that must be eaten within the next couple of days, before we head south to the land of the deep-fried, the heavy sauce and "meat and three". A week or so later we'll have some respite in the Bay Area, where I hope to spend some time at a farmers' market as well. My favorite travel pictures always seem to include an inordinate number of markets. Oh for the market in Cuzco, in Florence, in Oaxaca, in Aix. Even on vacation, off to the market I go...
Hi Julie - such lovely vegetables! I don't think I've seen the yellow squash, so pretty! I'm curious about the red carrots as well...
Posted by: keiko | July 28, 2005 at 07:07 AM
Oh, my word, Julie. I'm right there with you, from the sight of all this beautiful stuff on the tables to the long, long schlep home, to the moment of glory when we unpack it all.
Did you happen to read Julie Powell's op-ed piece in last Friday's NYTimes? I'm dead keen to hear what your opinion is on it. (I have a copy if you need one. ;)
If I don't talk to you before you go, have an amazing trip! Are you going to try the Frog Hollow peaches?
Posted by: Bakerina | July 28, 2005 at 08:16 PM
Keiko -- I had never seen these items before either. One of the things I love about these market trips is discovering new things to try. The squashes were all lovely and delicate. The red carrots were more of a fun novelty than a taste sensation, to be honest -- and their beauty was only skin deep. I tried peeling one and it was pale orange underneath, so I just scrubbed them well.
Jen, ma chere. I did indeed read Julie P.'s piece, as well as Bruce Cole's response in Saute Wednesday. I think they're both missing the point. I don't think the dichotomy is between Western Beef and Whole Foods, and I also don't think that Julie Powell should equate the Greenmarket with Whole Foods, since there's a difference between supporting large corporate entities and small family farms.
What's at the heart of the debate is that everyone deserves to eat high-quality, safely produced food. That's why people like Alice Waters have gotten involved in school lunch programs for inner city children. I don't care if it sounds to some people like a kind of strange reverse elitism that she's teaching Oakland schoolkids to savor Frog Hollow peaches (and yes, my trip to the Ferry Market on a Saturday morning is already planned). I remember making homemade applesauce with a third grade class, and how they marvelled at its deliciousness, so different from the jarred mealy yellow stuff that had been their only experience of applesauce.
The point should be access for everyone -- and how do we, in the richest country in the world, make that possible? Sorrowfully, I did check out the "new" Greenmarket at 122nd St. and 1st Avenue, only to find 3 sad farm stalls with rapidly wilting produce and dispirited farmers, who said they probably wouldn't come back, since there wasn't much trade happening. What to do? Is there some way that farmers'markets in poor neighborhoods could be subsidized so that the residents of the area could afford to shop there? That, to me, is what should be at the center of this debate: what is our society's responsibility to insure that everyone is fed well and healthily?
Small family farms are doing the right thing by planting heirloom varieties and changing and rotating crops. Diversifying crops and organic farming are of course practices that are better for the land, and what will enable it to keep producing food for future generations. It's not just a matter of catering to boutique tastes, although admittedly that's how they're making a living at it, at least for now.
I don't know much about economics, but it seems to me that under a capitalist system, unfortunately, change is made when the rich (literally) buy into the changes, which may then eventually filter through to the rest of the society.
Posted by: Julie | July 28, 2005 at 11:39 PM
I don't know much about economics, but it seems to me that under a capitalist system, unfortunately, change is made when the rich (literally) buy into the changes, which may then eventually filter through to the rest of the society.
Posted by: football customized jerseys | February 11, 2011 at 03:31 AM
Fresh daily. Better get it on morning time.
Posted by: oakland defense lawyer | May 19, 2011 at 03:12 AM
Beautiful Greenmarket Urban Oasis pic! You just reminded me! Farmer's market in the morning!
Posted by: Tia | October 29, 2011 at 01:37 AM