Incredible Edibles

This spring I have had the best time traveling On the Road with Sickles Market with Kirsty, our Director of Tours and Training.  We have visited some of the finest gardens in the country, including Longwood Gardens, Winterthur and the New York Botanical Gardens.  At the Botanical Gardens we were dazzled by walls of colorful orchids, designed by Patrick Blanc.  Being the Culinary Marketing Specialist, my thoughts naturally wandered in the gastronomic direction, and I mused that the bountiful blooms looked good enough to eat!  I was not entirely out of line, as it turns out. There are certain species of orchids (Vanilla and Orchis) that are actually edible.  These lovely flowers are available this time of year in the produce section at Sickles Market and add a tropical touch to salads, fruit bowls and cheese platters.

Other flowers find their way to the table in the summer, including Nasturtium, whose flower has five bright orange, red or yellow petals and a long nectar tube in the back. The flavor is quite peppery like watercress, making a festive and rather zippy addition to salad greens.  The Nasturtium flower can also be tossed with pasta or added to a vegetable stir-fry.  Zucchini blossoms are one of my favorite edible blossoms.  They proliferate all summer long and taste delicious deep-fried, tossed in pasta dishes or stuffed with cheese.  Bon Appetit calls Fried Zucchini Blossoms the “jalapeno poppers of the jet set.”

Herbs provide a source of edible blooms throughout the summer months:  sage, thyme, basil, rosemary and chives all flower if they are not pinched on a regular basis.  Use these blossoms to adorn potato dishes, steak, fish and grilled vegetables.  Another popular herb, lavender, is a fragrant addition to ice cream, baked goods and cheese plates.  If you are growing your own herbs, you’ll want to plant English Lavender, which is the variety used for culinary purposes.

You can also turn to the rose garden for inspiration. Rose petal jam, a cherished delight of Middle Eastern origin, is a delicate, almost ethereal experience.  The Italian company, Casa Forcello, combines raspberries and rose petals to make an enticing little compote that the Cheese Department will be sampling on June 2^nd and 3^rd as part of Sickles Market’s Rose Weekend festivities. Do come out and try some with our luscious Stracchino-Crescenza cheese.  You’ll soon see why edible flowers are incredible!

Enjoy!

Cheri

Tale of Two Drinks

La Comapnia de Jesus, Cusco, Peru

In the city of Cusco, I felt the legacy of the Spanish like nowhere else in Peru. Graceful plazas, grand houses with balconies, and imposing churches evoked old world charms in the former capital of the far-conquering Incas. Wandering around the historic city on foot, I occasionally experienced geographical confusion. Was I truly 11,200 feet high in the South American sierra and far from Western Europe?

It’s not only Cusco’s architecture that reflects the heavy hand of the conquistadors. There’s also pisco, Peru’s national drink, found at many of the city’s swank restaurants surrounding the elegant main plaza. Not unlike Italian grappa, pisco is a clear grape brandy that’s fiery, fierce, and fruity. Until the Spanish arrived there were no grapes for wine or distilled spirits.

LIMO, a restaurant in Cusco

Having read in the New York Times last summer that pisco is asserting itself in the U.S. market,  I made it my duty to explore as many different expressions of this spirit as I could. I was lucky enough to stumble across the refined restaurant LIMO, where the young head bartender took it upon himself to educate me. Each night I went, I sat at the hip bar and Gawd started me with a carefully prepared cocktail and then chose a pisco for me to drink straight with the restaurant’s artistic Japanese-Peruvian food. On my last night, I even had pisco with dessert. After three nights of intense experimentation, my clear favorite was the aromatics, made from moscato, italia, or torontel grapes, which exude floral notes that elude the heat of the alcohol. Delicious!

Machu Picchu

My three-night stay in Cusco was broken up by three nights in the majestic Sacred Valley, culminating with a trip by train to Machu Picchu. Out in the green, steep valleys, the grip of the Spanish subsides, and pre-Columbian Peru emerges. I experienced this fully in a small village where I had hiked to explore an out-of-the-way Incan ruin. It wasn’t just the stones that brought me to Pucamarca; it was also the chance to try chicha, the true drink of Peru.

Red bag on a pole, indicating a chicha house

If pisco is the potable mark of the Spanish, chicha, a fermented corn drink  is the enduring legacy of the Incas. In fact, if you want to know how most Incas lived, just visit a chicha house. You can find one by looking for a red plastic bag flying on a modest wooden pole. When seen at the pole, you’ll be led through small open courtyards with chickens to the correct house by someone in the village. Once inside the one-room house you might encounter, as I did, the matriarch doing laundry by hand in a bucket on the dirt floor, a small wood fire for cooking in one corner, a pot of fermenting chica in another corner, and opposite the woman, two men, one middle age, one old, drinking large plastic cups of chicha, chatting in Quechua, the indigenous language of the Andes, and listening to an old radio hanging from the adobe wall.

Men drinking chica in Pucamarca

As much as I cherished the experience, being the only tourist in the village, sampling Peru’s native corn beer, and being transported back in time, I am afraid to admit that I wasn’t a fan: chicha is too thick to quaff and simultaneously sweet and sour. I’d rather have pisco.

Vat of chicha, Pucamarca

If you’d like to try some pisco, you will probably be able to find a bottle at a well-stocked liquor store (there will be brands from either Peru or Chile, the other South American country that claims it as their national drink, and shake up (and shake it hard to froth the egg whites) a pisco sour. Limes are aplenty at Sickles, as well as a selection of cocktail bitters.

Diana Pittet, the adventurous cheesemonger

Cooking Through the Seasons: Asparagus with Carol Maxwell

ASPARAGUS

 Wow!  Thanks to all (especially our host/partner Carolyn Rue at the beautiful “Taste and Technique” Cooking Studio in Fair Haven) for being part of my first class in our new Sickles Market “Cooking Through the Seasons” Lunchtime Cooking Express series today.  

It was “All About Asparagus” and we indulged ourselves with that wonderful vegetable for two hours with recipes, tastings and acquired new asparagus knowledge.  Participants enjoyed a light lunch, a great goodie bag (including fresh asparagus to take home and play with!) and coupons to use in the market.  

What a wonderful group of people with great questions and what a lovely way to spend a couple of hours learning new ways of preparing what’s in season.  As the series continues we will follow each vegetable and fruit as it take it’s turn in the summer and fall spotlight. It’s all about simple, great food using the freshest ingredients.

The next class will be STRAWBERRIES on June 6th.  Also in June are  ARTISANAL OLIVE OILS on June 21st and TOMATOES on June 27th. Check sicklesmarket.com for further details and a complete listing of classes through December.  Spaces are limited.  You can register by phone, online or come visit me, say hello and register in person!

Here’s my bonus recipe as promised:

Asparagus and Crab Salad

Dressing:

2 Tablespoons good quality Olive Oil

2 Tablespoons Rice Wine Vinegar

2 Tablespoons Sugar

1 Tablespoon Orange Juice Concentrate

1 Tablespoon Lime Juice

1 Tablespoon Dark Sesame Oil

Salad:

2 cups cut-up fresh Asparagus

12 oz. Crab Meat (fresh or canned)

1 bag Lettuce mix of your choice

1 cup Cantaloupe )1/2 inch dice

1 cup English cucumber, sliced

Combine all dressing ingredients, mix well and set aside.  Steam or microwave asparagus briefly just until crisp tender.  Plunge into ice water to stop cooking - drain and blot with paper towels.  Cut crab into bite size pieces.  Combine asparagus, crab, lettuce mix, melon and cucumber.  Toss gently to combine, add dressing and toss to distribute evenly.  Serve immediately.  Makes 4-6 servings.

Chef Carol

Ceviche: Freshest Way to Enjoy Fish

Ceviche in Ecuador

Rich, my traveling companion in Ecuador, prides himself on eating just about anything. On principle, he tells the wait staff at restaurants that he’s allergic to boneless chicken breast as a way to rebel against the culinary unadventurous. Bones and dark meat are the flavorful way to go in his book.

What surprised me, then, was that ceviche wasn’t in the cards for him.

Shucking oysters for ceviche
Montanita, Ecuador

I had thought for sure that ceviche, a protein-rich salad of raw seafood “cooked” in lime juice, prepared on the spot from a bright yellow cart on the beach in Ecuador would be something that Rich, a chef and caterer in New York City, would leap for, like a salmon in spring. I was wrong.
“Dude, I am not eating that. I mean, the fish is in those carts all day long without refrigeration. It seems really sketch.”
If Rich wasn’t going to eat ceviche, then I had some explaining to do, not only to him but also to the culinary cautious.

Adding lime juice to oysters
Montanita, Ecuador

I instructed by example. I walked up to my favorite ceviche guy on the beach, the one I had regularly frequented last year, and ordered ceviche mixto, with fish, shrimp, oysters, black clams, and octopus, to which was added fresh lime juice, salt, chopped onions and tomatoes, minced cilantro, and hot sauce. Under a wee bit of shade cast by the cart’s umbrella, I sat on the sand, tucked in, and offered Rich a bite. He took the bait, so to speak.

“Yeah, this is friggin’ delicious.”

More spoonfuls of zippy and refreshing ceviche followed, and neither of us got sick, as Rich had feared.
Of course we didn’t. Sure, there was a chance, as there is whenever you eat raw fish or something from an outdoor cart, but it was unlikely. A guy like my ceviche-wallah is on the beach everyday, and he can’t make a living if he’s making people ill. On top of that, the fish is going to be super fresh if you are right on the coast.

In my travels in South and Central American and in Mexico, those bowls of ceviche, eaten on the beach in Ecuador, were my favorite, topping the dainty parfaits of fish in Panama and the meaty marisco melange served with Saltines in Costa Rica. Peru, however, the presumed birthplace of ceviche, posed a worthy challenge.

Ceviche Stall at Market
Chiclayo, Peru

Ceviche can be considered Peru’s national dish, or at least of its long, arid coast. The Humboldt Current keeps the Pacific hospitably cool for a wealth of fish, and this bounty finds its way into many different expressions of ceviche. On the northern coast in the city of Chiclayo, order a potato croquette with a small side tangle of raw fish at the large outdoor market. At a restaurant near the pre-Incan adobe ruins of the Chimu, also in the north, prepare yourself for the spicy assault from an artistic plate of seafood that will burn your lips and keep your tummy full for hours. Enjoy the cooling and starchy relief of sweet potatoes and yucca that often accompany this fiery, protein-rich meal. Down a side street in Lima, try a variation of ceviche, taradito, which is the Latin version of sashimi: fine, long pieces of raw fish, slathered in a piquant sauce from local chiles. All excellent, but the simple preparation in Ecuador pleased me the most.

Spicy & beautiful plate of ceviche
Trujillo, Peru

So deliciously suited to hot days by the ocean, ceviche is regrettably hard to find here on the Jersey Shore. And it’s surprising, too, given the number of sushi restaurants. Why not pick up some fresh fish and make your own? Don’t be afraid! Here are some recipes courtesy of Martha Stewart: one with tilapia and the other with bay scallops and key limes. N.B. You can find key limes at Sickles.

Buen Provecho!

Diana Pittet, the culinarily daring cheesemonger

The Duck Stops Here

The Duck Stops Here

By Cheri Scolari

 Who would have thought that I would be frosting cupcakes with my nose and tossing rubber ducks through a cardboard cutout as part of my duties as Culinary Marketing Specialist at Sickles Market?  All in a day’s work for the Fearless Foursome who rose to the occasion, sporting rubber duck necklaces,  Duck, Duck, Goose pins, and entered Duckathlon VII, an annual gastronomic competition in New York City hosted by D’Artagnan, purveyor of gourmet meats and other fine foods.  Our Sickles team (comprised of Kirsty, Director of Tours and Training, Carol, Bakery Manager, Vieva, Cheese Department Manager and yours truly) arrived at Abe and Arthur’s  restaurant around noon and found ourselves immersed in a sea of strangely costumed fellow participants, many of them chefs from the city’s finest restaurants, including Le Bernardin, Daniel and Annisa.  The founder of D’Artagnan and our host for the day, Ariane Daguin, gave us the rules, a map and our itinerary with 26 food-themed stations located throughout Chelsea Market, High Line Park and the trendy Meatpacking District.  Off we went on our first Duckathlon course, hoping to bring glory (or at least not too much shame) to our beloved market. 

For four hours we toiled, building pyramids with cheese molds, reassembling a partitioned pig, identifying a collection of fowl, post-mortem,  and even walking backwards wearing flippers, holding a tray of glasses while under siege by water pistols!  Our culinary knowledge was put to the test as well:  We tasted pates and pastries wearing nose plugs and blindfolds, identified grains of rice, mushrooms and Bloody Mary mix and ascertained the age of French wines  and Armagnac.  At four o’clock we returned to Abe and Arthur’s, exhausted but proud to have finished the course.  A post-Duckathlon party and awards ceremony followed where we enjoyed champagne and a sampling of D’Artagnan’s offerings.  Our Fearless Foursome tied for third place with Tom Colicchio’s craft, in our knowledge of New Jersey seasonal produce (you see, it pays to work at a fresh produce market like Sickles!) We also made a decent showing of fourth place on “A Flocking Good Time,” or naming the dead birds. 

We didn’t bring home any spoils (those went to the first and second place winners) but we were proud of our effort, had a good romp and  enjoyed a beautiful day in the city with some of the best chefs you’ll meet anywhere. With any luck, we’ll get invited back next year. That will give us some time to hone our skills making mayonnaise with a barbeque fork!