I was chatting with a woman who’s buying umes this week. She’s making umeboshi herself at home. She also pointed out to me that this stall, at Cal Ave PA Farmer’s market, also sells potted shiso plants. @charliemyboy
Not a farmers’ market, but Berkeley Bowl had golden cordycep mushrooms for a reasonable price this week.
I had the most spectacular guindilla pepper last week from Borba Farms- a mix of sweetness and peppery-ness and regretted not getting more. This week I got some more, but the taste seemed to have reverted back to the mean from the farm, which was not to say its bad at all, and in fact, pretty darn nice, but nowhere near the heights reached last week.
Who has great guindilla/ shishito?
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After years of not growing them, Happy Boy finally grew some Beauregard sweet potatoes this year. Not very sweet and plenty fragrant. Not quite as spectacular as I remember them from like 8-10 years ago, but still very good. They grew it that one year, but didn’t grow it afterwards. When I asked the following year, they said that the bugs ate a lot of them and they lost thousands of $ in the crop. Hope they have better luck this time around.
Swanton Berry Farm at FPFM still has excellent English peas. Pods are full but not starchy. They started them as a sacrificial barrier to distract the deer from their berries, and now they’re cultivating them more for market. $5 lb.
Does anyone know if this is really all the vendors who attends the Thursday Ferry building market? That seems very limited.
https://cuesa.org/markets/ferry-plaza-farmers-market-thursday
Ideally I’d like to bring some fresh and good quality CA produce (mostly fruits) to my family who lives outside the US and don’t have access to them, and I want to find a market that’s open on Thurs or Wed with a good selection, that showcases the best of what CA offers. Any suggestions here? Ideally it has easy parking too, but I’d put quality over ease of parking this time.
Has anyone seen good strawberries yet this season? I’ve seen some Montereys (I think) once at Tomatero. But it was a month ago and I haven’t seen from them afterwards. The frost from 2 3 weeks ago kind of screwed up strawberries from some vendors (brown in the middle).
Thanks.
Thanks! I ended up not going to a market. Thought i’d grab something from CJ Olson’s in Sunnyvale. But found they were open only Sun/Mon. So I ended up empty handed on the fresh fruits department. I shouldn’t wait till the last minute…oh well.
Hit the Alemany FM in San Francisco on this magnificent Indian Summer day. The array of fresh beautiful produce and fruits were almost overwhelming. So much freshness, and at almost unbelievably reasonable prices. We are only two in our household, and it appears we may have overbought.
Anyone know what that last vegetable (looks like some kind of pod) in the basket is? Our fellow shopper says it is a rarely available vegetable that is indigenous to Viet Nam, and we should grab it while it is available. Per her instruction, we will lightly fry and dust lightly with salt.
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Wow, great find—— Last vegetable are wing beans!
What time are you getting there? The cauliflower you got have been tarnished by the time I’ve gotten there most times (by 8am).
We got there late, about 10am. The cauliflower was (is) beautiful. We’d not hit Alamany fm in a while, and just gawked and gathered like newbies.
Basil chicken tonight, with lots of basil!! Dou miu Pea tendrils, simple like we just had in Beijing. And first try at wing beans. Any cooking suggestions??
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I bought some wing beans in Hawaii a few years ago and I grilled them. I didn’t write down quantity, but grilled them whole, and my notes said the following:
1 tbs whatever oil, 1 tsp sesame oil, salt and pepper, grill 3 min per side
The first, well, other time I had them was in Malaysia in a stir fry of Anchovies, petai (stinkbeans), and winged beans. @klyeoh might be able to give you some cooking suggestions. I believe I may also had one steamed (possibly raw) as a vegetable side.
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Specialty Produce has some recipe suggestions. (FWIW, specialty produce is a great IOS/Android app.)
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First stab at cheffing Wing Beans. Already had some Chicken Center Joints simply marinated in soy and black pepper. Prepped and ready to go.
Some brown on the wings.
Garlic, Bird’s Eye Chili, Wing Beans.
Basil to Chicken.
All together now.
Done. Got to get to the FM earlier to get the pick of the Wing Beans. Now that I’ve got hands on, I have a better idea of how to choose the choice beans, . All in all, a decent first effort.
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Looks great! How would you describe the taste, and can you remind me which stall at Alemany has wing beans?
“How would you describe the taste, and can you remind me which stall at Alemany has wing beans?”
The flavor itself was kinda woodsy, tasting somewhat green. I cook vegetables mostly al dente, but I will give the wing beans more heat the next time. Will also select the beans with the most heft, as some of our pick yesterday lacked the substance of the more dense picks.
We bought at the stand about 6 stands down on the left, as you drive in through the main center aisle. Picture of the actual stand.
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It’s been awhile since I’ve been to Alemany so hard to be sure, but from the color of the truck I think this may be the same farm as a Southeast Asian vendor I shop at regularly at Civic Center. (Maybe Hmong? IIRC they were the first to introduce me to “Lao” or “Hmong” cultivars of one of the brassicas, I think yau choy.)
In addition to the wing/four-corner beans they had today at Civic Center, they have been carrying a lot of interesting stuff - kaffir lime fruits in addition to the leaves, moringa drumsticks, pigeon peas (also seen other SE Asian vendors with these), lots o f bitter melon, etc. They also tend to have unusual greens for sale and are often a good option for holy basil.
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This black edamame is seriously fab. Much better than the edamame from restaurants or the frozen ones from supermarkets. Has a depth of flavor that others just don’t have. From the Japanese stall at Cal Ave market in Palo Alto.
Yay- Happy Boy is growing their sweet potato again! Making it for dinner and see how it tastes this year. Years back it was fantastic, and they stopped growing because they lost a lot of money on the crop.
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I was at Alemany today and spotted one of the stalls in the middle on the north side selling something I had never seen before: fresh arrowroot. As it was $8 for a ~1-1.5 lb bag, and I had no idea how to use it (nor what the benefit is of buying fresh rather than just using store-bought arrowroot flour), I passed. Posting as a heads-up.
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