This week has been crazy busy, but we did make time to get down to opening day of our local farmer’s market. It was a classic Pacific Northwest Memorial Day weekend, which is to say it rained every. single. day.

Fortunately there were plenty of vendors and customers, and the hardy Prozac Mountain Boys managed to keep the music playing without floating away.

We bought leeks, fingerling potatoes, asparagus, hothouse peppers, and butter, which seemed like a pretty good haul for the season (thank goodness for Hedlin Farms’ greenhouses). Then we checked out Gothberg Farms’ stand. A local goat dairy, they’re newcomers to the Mount Vernon market, and we’re really excited to have them here. I expect we’ll be eating a lot of their cheese in the months to come, but for now we limited ourselves to a tub of fresh ricotta and a block of Queso Blanco.

The ricotta blew us away. I mixed it with a little sugar and a drop of vanilla, and we rolled it up in warm eggy crepes with hot blackberry sauce. Incredible stuff, so fresh and milky and with a delightful springy texture. I am so buying this again.

The Queso Blanco was awesome, too. It’s very fresh and milky as well, with a firm texture rather like panir. I hear it’s excellent fried, but we ate it on garlicky chicken tacos with roasted bell peppers and cilantro and it was lovely. I tried marinating a little in a bowl with olive oil, salt and pepper, rather like mozzarella balls, and that was delicious. We also tucked some into quesadillas the next morning with hot sauce and scrambled eggs. The queso didn’t melt so much as warm and soften, but I thought it was a perfect breakfast cheese.

As it happens, Gothberg Farms is having an awesome-sounding farm day and BBQ this Sunday. We can’t be there (I have a pie class to attend), but I strongly urge everyone to go out there and support this place. They do amazing work!

Since our local farmer’s market doesn’t start for another month, we drove up to Bellingham last week to see how their market was doing. Man! I have serious market envy. Not that I don’t love ours, of course, but wow.

Covering a large parking lot as well as filling the big permanent covered area the city built, the market is thriving, not just with local fresh vegetables and crafts, but food carts, plants, bread, meat, clothing and henna tattoo artists. Instead of a main stage, they have the old-fashioned approach of letting acoustic musicians set up in the intersections. A hula-hoop area is set up on one side for the amusement of limber youth, and the goat-with-a-cart sculpture on the corner is constantly beset by children. People are everywhere, shopping and visiting and hula-hooping and eating.

The market booth had some really excellent ballcaps. Jon bought himself one, while I ogled the croissants and rhubarb tarts in the neighboring stall.

We wandered the circuit, picking up our favorite semolina crackers and a couple of macaroons from the Breadfarm booth, plus a magnificent head of napa cabbage and some spinach and asparagus. As we headed back through the center aisle we saw this amazing display of pastas, right next to a booth of exquisite cupcakes (salted caramel, oh my) and a blend-your-own-smoothie station with built-in bicycles.

The pasta, made by the Bellingham Pasta Company,  looked gorgeous and didn’t seem exorbitantly expensive. We picked up a pound of lemon-black pepper linguine, then tore ourselves away to go make lunch at home.

That pasta? It was fantastic. When I opened the packet a cloud of lemon scent wafted out, and the pepper came through in every bite. It cooked perfectly in 3-4 minutes and did not stick to itself. We had it for lunch two days running, both times using leftovers from a Gretchen’s class.

The first day I chopped up these incredible pink oyster mushrooms and sauteed them with roasted garlic, then mixed in smoked salmon and some goat cheese. That was pretty good.

The second day I used chopped crimini mushrooms and leeks, mixed in sliced serrano ham, then tossed the pasta with it and added some of its cooking water along with finely chopped parsley and grated parmesan. That was really, really good. Really.

We still have a few weeks until our own market starts up, so I suspect we’ll be heading up to Bellingham again soon. What pasta lunches might we end up with next time?

One day is hardly enough time to spend in San Francisco, but it’s better than nothing.

I particularly wanted to visit the famed Ferry Plaza farmer’s market on this trip, after reading other people’s accounts. My main destination was Rancho Gordo, Steve Sando’s heirloom bean company I’ve heard so much about. I have eaten their beans once, actually – Steve donated beans to Duckfest for our cassoulet, and they were, indeed, wonderful. I’ve been considering ordering some, but I hate paying for shipping, so this was a golden opportunity.

The range of beans was fantastic. We loaded up with yellow eye, vaquero, vallarta and Christmas limas, as well as a copy of Steve’s cookbook. Can’t wait to try them at home!

After wandering the market a bit, breathing in the scent of fresh citrus, and stopping to buy some lovely soap, we decided to get some lunch at MarketBar. It was just sunny enough to sit outside, as long as we ignored the chilly breeze, and felt rather springy.

I wasn’t expecting much, as this place looks rather like a tourist trap. But the service was excellent, there were locals all around us having brunch, and the food was really nicely done, with care and attention.

Paul got poached eggs with asparagus, new potatoes and fava beans. Springtime in a bowl.

Jon got a hamburger. It was cooked just the way he asked for it, had good flavor, and came with a fine pile of crisp, flaming-hot fries.

I was especially happy with my seafood chowder. The soup was well flavored and not gummy, and the seafood was obviously added in at the very last moment, because the scallops were perfectly done, the fish and prawns were tender, and the oysters were almost raw, just barely heated through. Delightful.

After lunch we wandered through the Ferry Building, admired all the cheese and mushrooms and olive oils and salted pig parts, got some gelato, and walked out to the ferry dock and felt the wind blow across the water. It was a good day.

Last weekend we were delighted to have the chance to visit Martiny Suffolks, the farm from whence comes the lamb we’ve been eating all summer. As part of the Skagit Festival of Family Farms, many small farms up and down the valley opened to the public for the day, including great places like Taylor Shellfish, Golden Glen Creamery, and Gordon Skagit Farm (to see the festivities at Gordon’s, check out this post at Willow Basketmaker). There were all sorts of activities, but we were there for the free samples and to give a few sheep noses some scritches.

We probably would never have ended up as customers if Linda Martiny (who owns the farm along with Mike Donnelly) hadn’t decided to try running a booth at the Mount Vernon Farmer’s Market this year. We saw the sign for local lamb on the first day and made a beeline, immediately buying a selection of chops and ground meat. We ended up buying half a lamb, and I suspect it will only be the first of many.

Martiny Suffolks is in Birdsview, a lovely area tucked into the valley bottom along the Skagit River. There are small farms all around, surrounded by the sudden foothills of the North Cascades. Just down the road is an Angus Cattle farm, and up the other way is the Ovenell’s ranch. There are plenty of trees and lush green grass, paradise for a herd of sheep.

Linda and Mike raise Suffolks, as you might guess from the name, and sell them for both meat and breeding stock. They’re a very common meat breed, and very tall and handsome, with narrow, pitch-black faces and legs. Back in the day when I raised 4-H lambs, most of my classmates raised purebred Suffolks, but I usually had some sort of Suffolk-Hampshire cross-breed (I should find the picture of myself with Smiley, one of the oddest-looking sheep ever).

In the barn there were some two-week-old lambs, who would have been irresistible if their mother hadn’t been standing firm guard against anyone even looking that direction. She really gave me the hairy eyeball.

For the purposes of the open house, some sheep-raising colleagues brought along a few other breeds to show off. I was smitten by the Scottish Blackface sheep. Compact, with adorably freckled legs, they also have cute curly horns and are very sturdy.

And there was food! Someone had put together tiny triangles of pita filled with a single bite of lamb and a bite of cheese, with a bowl of tzatziki sauce on the side. Linda was hard at work (as long as we didn’t keep distracting her) skewering marinated chunks of lamb and grilling them. And there were bits of lamb bratwurst and breakfast sausage as well.

Even though an open house like this isn’t quite like visiting the farm on a regular working day, I really think it’s worthwhile to give the customer a glimpse of their meat as a well-cared-for living animal. Not only does it help dissolve the disconnect many Americans have between their food and where it actually comes from, but it’s very reassuring to those of us trying to eat ethically, to see a clean, well-run business whose owners take their responsibility seriously to produce quality meat.

Plus, sheep are just plain cute.

Just a reminder to anyone in the general neighborhood: this weekend is the Skagit Valley Festival of Family Farms, when many of the local small farms open their gates to visitors and feature tours, activities and goodies for the general public. If you want to visit a working farm or see where your food is coming from, now’s your chance. There will be hayrides and corn mazes and all kinds of fun stuff. Make a day of it!

The list of participating farms can be found here.

This was a good pizza.

It evolved naturally, inspired more or less equally by our usual Middle Eastern Lamb Pizza, the cover of the latest Food & Wine, and a recipe in Tessa Kiros’ book Falling Cloudberries. I knew I wanted to try a pizza with a leek-based sauce (I’m on a leek kick right now), but I wanted spiced lamb on it as well. In the end, it wasn’t quite like any of the source recipes, becoming something quite perfect all on its own: a melange of braised leeks tossed with hot pepper and tamarind-spiced lamb, layered with mozzarella and adorned with small ripe tomatoes, all resting on a chewy part-whole-wheat crust.

Savory and wonderful as the pizza was, there was something that made me stop mid-chew and stare at my plate for a minute. I realized that I knew where everything on that pizza had come from! Leeks and gorgeous fiery red peppers from Hedlin Farms in La Conner, lamb from Linda Martiny, local mozzarella, Shepherd’s Grain Stone-Buhr flour, salad (with flowers sprinkled in it) from Frog’s Song, and tiny tomatoes from our deck.

The only products I couldn’t put a face to were the salt, yeast and olive oil (well, okay, and the tamarind and cinnamon). I think that’s pretty cool.

Plus it was an incredible pizza.

Today is the kickoff of Skagit Eat Local Week, sponsored by the local Slow Food chapter and the Skagit Valley Co-op. If you’re in Skagit County, now’s your chance to take advantage of all this amazing area offers. Participating restaurants will be featuring local food specials, and residents are encouraged to shop at farmer’s markets, farmstands and shops selling local products. Are you cooking at home? See how much you can do with Skagit Valley-produced ingredients. Remember, Eat Local Week happens mostly at the end of your fork.

PARTICIPANTS

Anacortes

Restaurants

Adrift

Anderson’s General Store

Bellissima Trattoria

Bob’s Chowder Bar

Brown Lantern Ale House

Calico Cupboard Cafe & Bakery

Cameron’s Living Room Dining

Deception Café & Grill

Gere-A-Deli

The Majestic Inn

Mary Ann’s Kitchen

The Rockfish Grill

Star Bar

Sweet D’s Shrimp Shack

Thai Season

Markets & Producers

Anacortes Farmers Market

Anacortes Brewery

Black Rock Seafood

the Market at Anacortes

Conway

Restaurants

Conway Pub and Eatery

Markets & Producers

Frog Song Farm

Mother Flight Farm

Skagit Valley Farmers Market

Snow Goose Produce

Edison & Burlington

Restaurants

Chuckanut Manor Seafood and Grill

Farm-to-Market Bakery

The Longhorn Saloon & Grill

The Old Edison Inn

Rhododendron Café

Tweets

Markets & Producers

Blau Oysters

Breadfarm

Equality Garden

Gothberg Farms

Morgan Family Farm

Rosabella’s Garden Bakery

Samish Bay Cheese  

Slough Food

Taylor Shellfish

La Conner

Restaurants

Calico Cupboard Cafe & Bakery

El Gitano

La Conner Brewing Company

Nell Thorn Restaurant & Pub

Palmers

Rexville Grocery

Seeds - A Bistro & Bar

Markets & Producers

Dona Flora Herbs & Flowers

Hedlin Farms

Hellam’s Vineyard

La Conner Flats

Rexville Farmers Market

Mount Vernon

Restaurants

Calico Cupboard Cafe & Bakery

The Co-op Deli

El Gitano

Empire Ale House

Il Granaio

Pacioni’s

The Porterhouse

The Same Old Grind

Skagit River Brewery

Trumpeter Public House

Markets & Producers

Dunbar Gardens

Gordon Skagit Farms

Libation Station

Mount Vernon Farmers Market

On Sunday we made sure to make it up to the Bastille open-air market on Boulevard Richard Lenoir. It begins at Place de la Bastille and stretches for several blocks, four aisles wide and teeming with people, dogs and little wheeled shopping carts.

You can buy everything from tomatoes to underwear. Not to mention foie gras. And wine.

It was so exciting to see wine being sold out in the open! At a farmer’s market! We have somewhat arcane liquor laws here in Washington, it makes me easily impressed by this sort of thing.

The “as-is” bottle selection was particularly scary. Some of them were only one euro, but looked thoroughly toxic. Maybe we should have sprung for a bottle, what the heck?

There were sausages of all sorts, and complex looking loaves of pate stuffed with indescribable body parts. I saw little cups of brains and lots of tripe.

You could buy handmade pasta and gnocchi…

…and cheese of all shapes and sizes…

…and fish!

We bought a few vegetables, some fresh herbs and flowers, and some Moroccan bowls (only one of which survived the trip home, alas) then headed for the fish counter. Some had been cleaned and filleted, but most were intact and bright-eyed on their hill of ice. We bought a bag of fresh sardines – always a treat for me, since they’re so rarely available back home.

Back in our tiny apartment kitchen, we realized that we had a certain lack of sharp knives. Jon used a bread knife to cut a fennel bulb and some tomatoes into small dice.

I used a dull steak knife to gut the sardines. They were so tender, though, I probably didn’t even need that. I rinsed them out and patted them dry, then used a pair of scissors to cut up chives and parsley.

We had one decent skillet, so first Jon used it to saute the diced fennel until soft and caramelized. This we mixed with the chopped tomato and herbs, with a drizzle of fruity olive oil from the Ducs de Gascogne store around the block.

Once the pan was free, I fried the sardines quickly in olive oil until the skin crisped.

To accompany our fish and salad, we had a loaf of bread from the bakery down the street, plus a bottle of rose and a round of St. Marcellin cheese which we had also brought home from the market.

It was very simple, yet completely different from any meal we’ve made at home before. I loved the salad, with the deep sweet flavor of the cooked fennel and the summeriness of the raw tomato and herb. We’ll have to make it again.

A number of years ago, my husband and I took a trip to France for our anniversary. We hiked across the Vaucluse wine country in ninety-degree weather, got sunburned and exhausted, and developed plenty of blisters. We also ate splendidly. I fell in love with the Provence countryside at the same time as I was discovering dry rose, salad with a poached egg on top, hot milk for coffee, and fresh soft cheese. Oh, the cheese!

The French waiters always looked at me funny for this, but when they would come around with the cheese tray and offer me several wedges, all I ever wanted was a spoonful of the freshest goat cheese, more like ricotta than regular chevre. The flavor was fresh and milky, the texture slightly grainy. I had never had cheese like it, and after we came back to the States I never had it again. Until…

At the conference I went to last month, there were many fine cheesemakers represented. Most I had encountered before, such as Mt. Townsend Creamery and Estrella. Willapa Hills Farmstead Cheese, however, was new to me, and their cheese was so delightful I loaded up on samples and completely neglected the (also wonderful) Mt. Townsend. And as I was collecting my bits of cheese, the man at the counter asked, hopefully, if I wanted to try the fresh sheep cheese. Apparently the last several people didn’t even want to taste it! Naturally, I took some.

The cheese was all excellent. Mostly it was blue, which isn’t my favorite, but I still liked it. The fresh cheese, however, was exactly what I’ve been looking for all these years. Bright, milky and grassy, with a slight silky cream-cheese texture, and just a touch of sheep, it was very, very close to the goat’s milk cheese I had fallen in love with in Provence. I took a card from the cheesemaker and vowed to find a source.

And last week at my local co-op, I was glancing over the cheese shelves just in case, and there it was. A single round of Willapa Hills cheese, and it was the Willapa White fresh sheep cheese! I did a little happy dance and whisked the cheese home with me, to eat with fresh fava beans and crackers. At last!

In the last two weeks some of the most amazing eggs have come through this house. First I managed to get hold of some from Laura of (not so) Urban Hennery, which were adorable, with improbably large orange yolks that looked like they wouldn’t even fit in the shells.

The following week, I managed to arrive at the farmer’s market early enough to buy eggs from the industrious small girl at the Frog’s Song Farm booth. She had gone to a great deal of trouble, arranging each dozen so it was an attractive mixture of blue, green and brown eggs, and ornamenting the top of each carton with an illustrated profile of a particular chicken. I chose the one featuring “Black Bird,” who apparently announces the arrival of her daily egg with a song.

With all these fabulous eggs in the house, I’ve been eating a lot of fried eggs on top of leftovers, scrambled egg sandwiches and egg fried rice. Yesterday I had one of the best soft boiled eggs of all time, which is saying something.

I also tried a new recipe, found in a madly compelling library book (everyone in the cataloging department kept swiping it to drool over the photos), for an eggy Dutch baby sort of pancake flavored with a large quantity of stinky cheese. That used up six eggs, right there.

The pancake was a success, but I think needs a little tweaking, at least to feed fewer than six to eight people. I made it in a large cast iron pan, and it fed four people easily with leftovers for two more, so for my purposes I think I’ll cut the recipe down a bit next time (I think it would poof better if there was less batter in the pan, as well). I used Brie, but a more assertive cheese like Gorgonzola would be really good, especially served with grapes or lots of fresh chopped herbs.

Brie Pancake

adapted from Chocolate for Breakfast by Barbara Passino

• 4 Tbsp butter
• 1 ½  cups all-purpose flour
• 6 oz Brie, Camembert, Gorgonzola or other ripe cheese
• 6 eggs
• 1 ½ cups milk
• ½  tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 425°.

Thinly slice the cheese and blend it with the flour and salt in a food processor. If your processor is safe for liquids (mine turned out to be not), add the eggs and milk and blend till smooth. If not, mix by hand in a bowl.

Melt the butter in a very large cast iron pan or eight individual ramekins (you can put them in the oven on a sheet to heat up). Pour the batter in and put directly back in the oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the edges are crisping up and turning brown. Don’t open the oven while it’s baking!

Take the pancake(s) out and serve immediately – it will begin to deflate right away, so seize the moment. Sprinkle with herbs, halved grapes (I particularly recommend the grapes if using an assertive cheese) or fresh strawberries.