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The Market:
Hollywood
Farmers Market
Los Angeles, Calif.
Ivar and Selma / map
Sundays, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
(323) 463-3171
Market-Goer: Mark
Thompson
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Seasonal Chef's West Coast correspondents,
Sara and Amanda Thompson, a.k.a my daughters, load up on seasonal provisions
at the Hollywood market. It is one of the largest
in Los Angeles, with the farmers' part filling each side of
one and a half long city blocks, intersected by two blocks
filled with vendors of crafts and prepared foods. It's got a
great urban-street-scene vibe to it, replete with musicians
playing for spare change, hawkers of political tracts and
shoppers in all sizes, shapes and colors. In short, it's a
great place for people watching as well as for fruit and
vegetable shopping.
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What I Bought:
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potato
varieties (clockwise, from lower left) purple
Peruvian, banana fingerling, French fingerling
and Laker Bakers; (top) red and sweet white
onions
The Lakers Bakers potatoes, grown by Weiser Family Farms,
are so-named because they bear the purple and
gold team colors of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball
team, now entering the NBA championship's
final round. David Karp dug up a few tidbits about
the potato in one of his incomparable market
watch columns in the Los
Angeles Times. He testifies that they
are floury when baked but really show their
culinary colors when
"sliced into quarter-inch-thick roundels, lightly coated with olive oil and roasted at 400 degrees for 50
minutes." Cooked that way, Karp reports,
"they turn golden brown, crunchy on the outside and are very flavorful."
Price: $1.50/lb. for
fingerlings and Peruvian
$2/lb. Lakers Bakers
$1.50/bunch of white onions
$.75/one red onion
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fava
beans and rhubarb Speaking
of the aforementioned basketball finals now
underway, I've always thought it was convenient
that that event happens to coincide with fava bean
season in California, because extracting the beans
first from their pods and then from their skins is
a labor-intensive exercise. But for a
multi-tasking addict like myself, it is something
that can easily be accomplished while keeping ears
and an eye on a basketball game. Recipes:
* Three
rhubarb
recipes
* Nine fava
bean recipes
* Two more fava bean
recipes
Price: $1/lb. for fava
beans
$5/bunch for rhubarb
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heirloom
tomatoes and a hybrid vine-ripe tomato (upper right
corner)
Price: $3.50/lb. for
heirlooms
$1.50/hybrid variety
fennel and purple
kohlrabi
Price: $2/bunch
arugula
and avocados Price: $2/bunch
for arugula
$1/four small avocadoes
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