Farmers Markets
Stalking the Markets - Westchester, Asparagus
This is No. 2 in a 7-part series on L.A. Farmers Markets from TheDeliciousLife
The Westchester market is small, sandwiched between the drive thru window of a Del Taco and a huge shopping plaza. At 11:30 it’s buzzing; not with cooks looking for fresh produce for dinner, but with power-lunchers. There’s a huge red engine parked along 87th, and firemen are lined up at the stand selling grilled sausages and whole chickens. In fact, the line at the enormous, 5×5 foot grill stretches across the street-wide opening to the market and I have to shimmy in front of a properly power-suited woman on her cel phone. Every once in a while jet engine flies low overhead into LAX.
The first thing that catches my eye is a table of little green balls. Middle eastern green plums that I’ve never seen before, but will have to wait for another time. This week, it’s all about the vegetables. As if the market’s location had been perfectly pre-planned, the end of the street has a grocery store that sells farmers market type produce every day. Lucky Westchester-ians.
Either it was already late in the day for a farmers market, or the farmers had sent their B teams down to Westchester, taking the bulk of their crops to the larger market in Santa Monica, because many of the tables were sparse. A sweet, smiling old man sits behind a table that’s empty save for two last baskets of kumquats. As I stoop down to snap a photo, he tells me to wait and winks, “You have to taste it to know what you’re shooting.� He held out a tiny little kumquat in his hand, gnarled, darkly tanned from farm field sun and peppered with age spots. I popped it like a skittle – just as tart, a little bitter. Before I snapped the photo, he played stylist, piling a couple more kumquats in the basket, and adding a little green leaf for color. He didn’t need to. The kumquats were beautiful on their own.
On either end of the market, there are non-produce farmers. On the Del Taco side (how sad that i have to use Del Taco as a point of reference) two moms are chattering away in Spanish with the flower farmer. Red and yellow marigolds and little daisy-like things that I didn’t know – did you know that marigolds are a natural insect repellent for rose bushes? The other end of the market has herbs.
Farmers markets never have anything overly exotic, and the smaller markets seem to stick with familiar fruits and vegetables that home cooks use. Pea shoots looked enticing, and I absolutely love the way they are prepared in Chinese restaurants – simply sauteed with garlic. But I wasn’t ambitious enough to cook an entire Chinese meal just to have dau miao, so I would wait for my next sunday afternoon dim sum.
Asparagus is one of my favorites. I love it. Yes, okay, so I use the words “favorite� and “love� with a lot of vegetables – I gush. They were standing straight up like perfect soldiers, gorgeous green with tight little purple helmets. Even though part of my challenge is to try different vegetables, the asparagus won me. Besides, I already had it in my head to have fish for dinner, and I didn’y know how to incorporate fish with cabbage.
Some people get their market basket in a tizzy tasket when they see pencil thin asparagus. *eh* They actually taste no different than regular asparagus, and in fact, are much more likely to fall through the grate on a grill – annoying. White asparagus, well, those just look too alien for me. I like dark green, thicker stemmed asparagus that I can bite into and taste the vegetable in all its lily-ous glory. These asparagus I have to strip down a little with a peeler because I was going to bundle and wrap with salmon.
Nothing but salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon on the salmon fillets that I wrapped around the asparagus bundles. With the seam side down in a little puddle of water for steam, they pop into the oven for a quick, tightly covered 325 degree roast. The sauce is just a simple garlic and lemon cream sauce, though I added quite a bit of hot pepper sauce to it – that’s just me and my silly tastebuds. I like heat.
With the chardonnay that I was forced to drink with it (I typically *gag* at chardonnay), I chuckled thinking about stripping the soldiers. How naughty!
By sarah (see more of her posts). You can find more of sarah's writing at her own website The Delicious Life
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Looks like an incredible meal. I have been disappointed with the Westchester market, and with the produce market that is there full time. The selection and quality isn’t great, I bought some peaches one day and they were bland, like something I would get at a major supermarket.