To Market

Today Z and I went down to the Union Square Green Market. I almost feel as though that should be the post in itself, because there's no really good way to describe it. We wandered past stalls with corkscrew-curly garlic tops, and saw broccolinni it a leafier form called Chinese Broccoli. We saw fresh eggs and fresh pheasant sausage. We wandered past stalls with herbs carefully labeled and stalls full of herbs with no labels at all, where the knowing got what they wanted. We saw stalls with fresh flowers and flowers in pots and herbs in pots and pots. Z munched on a chocolate chip muffin and we bought glasses of mint ice tea sweetened with maple syrup that was so good we had to go back for seconds. There was one stall selling dirt -- just rich, amazing, organic, composty dirt by the pound. There was one stall with nothing but lettuce in something like 10 or 15 different varieties. It was three times the size of most of the stalls. There was a stall selling nothing but little pots of growing wheatgrass, with information explaining that everything that walks or flies eats wheatgrass (including pictures of birds and dogs and cats and hamsters and guinea pigs all happily munching the stuff).

I bought a pound of assorted wild mushrooms from the mushroom lady. She was far too cool to punch her mushrooms together into "assorted wild". I achieved it by buying 1/4 of oyster mushrooms, 1/4 of shitakes, and half a pound of creminis. I am unsure I have spelled any of these mushroom varieties right, but they are lovely. I will cook them tomorrow into a creamy pasta sauce with gorgonzola cheese and little sweet peas (which are, sadly, best bought frozen).

I also bought a new potted mint plant, because the one I had wasn't lovin' me. It was too small to be happy in a pot, it needed to be replanted and allowed to spread. I also set it in the sun, forgetting that mint is shade loving. That and I killed it from too much iced tea. This is beautiful spearmint, with that sweet smell that only spearmint has. It is also bushier, with lots of stems from which to pick. I think it will do well.

And I bought a big old chicken, fresh and organic, which I will roast later on this week and turn into delicious leftovers, and I bought two tiny little Persian cucumbers which I will slice thin and serve as a salad before the creamy mushroom pasta, light and cool to foil the richness of the dish. And I bought two pints of blueberries, one for snacking and one to turn into a blueberry tart. I want to pre-bake a tart crust, then fill it with pastry cream and top with the blueberries and glaze with red-currant glaze. I made this once before, when I was no sort of cook but happened across Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. It came out fine, which is a minor miracle. I'm hoping I can make it any better this time. It is to finish off tomorrows dinner -- you may have guessed I'm cooking for company tomorrow. I cook for company almost every week, because I love an excuse to make something fancy or even just more complicated, and I love feeding people, and we need a reason to make sure the apartment gets clean.

What else? Ah, yes, tonight's dinner. For tonight's dinner I bought fresh beautiful cherry tomatoes. I am going to quarter or halve them and toss them with linguine and torn basil from the terrace and some beautiful olive oil Z's mother gave us. That will be the main course.
And before that? Fried zucchini blossoms.

My favorite food writer, Laurie Colwin, writes of theses in a chapter in her book Home Cooking. There is basically nothing in this book I don't want to make. And Z has had these before, though I haven't, and loves them, and they have such as short season so I thought, why not? It will be a grand and relatively safe adventure: I many ever have cooked or eaten them, but everybody seems to love them, and I have a recipe from one of my favorite cooks of all.

I will eat them on the terrace, and tell you what they're like.