Farmers Market Pasta with Pea Tendrils

I usually go to the farmers market to buy odds and ends of things--whatever strikes my fancy. Last Sunday, I went to the Hillcrest farmers market to see what I could gather to make an interesting dinner. The trick was to find that one item to build the meal around.

I found it at Sage Mountain Farms' stall: sugar snap pea tendrils. On a gloomy day that hinted of rain, there were those sweet pea flowers spoke to me of spring and I had to have them, especially since their season is short. Pea shoots and tendrils can be enjoyed raw, chopped in a salad or snacked on, or sauteed. The young stems are crispy, the leaves a bit tart with a hint of pea flavor.

I picked up two bunches and turned around to continue my shopping and saw my friends Tina and Eric of Close to Home pasta. Voila! I had my meal. Pasta with pea tendrils. Nothing fancy or exotic, but the idea felt perfect.

I picked up a couple of pastas: spinach and garlic penne and firecracker garlic fettucine. I can't resist spice or garlic. After consulting with Tina, we decided that the fettucine would pair best with the pea tendrils.

Oh, and then I saw some shelled sugar snap peas at Valdivia farms. I bought a bag of those. Then some butter from Spring Hill Jersey Cheese.

I was done. At home I had some pine nuts and goat cheese--and, garlic and olive oil. Oh, and a lemon. No need to buy those that day.

I'd love to say that it's all I bought, but I was lacking in will power. I picked up a loaf of whole wheat sourdough bread from Prager Brothers and spicy Bitchen' sauce as well. Farmers markets are filled with temptation!

Last night I pulled the meal together. It was simple, but think of the ingredients I was working with!

I don't have a recipe, but here's what I did:

1. Toasted a handful of pine nuts while a pot of water was heating up
2. Removed the flowers from the pea tendrils to keep as garnish
3. Chopped the pea tendrils into bite-size pieces
4. Zested the lemon and minced a few garlic cloves
5. Sauteed the pea tendrils and peas in a combination of butter, olive oil, and garlic, then added some lemon zest and sea salt

6. Removed the peas and tendrils and made the sauce--a bit more butter and olive oil, a bit more sea salt, juice from half the lemon, and the rest of the zest.
7. Added the pasta to the boiling water and let the sauce reduce. Sliced some goat cheese.

That's it. I added the pasta to the pan filled with the sauce and tossed it to coat before adding the mixture to the peas and pea tendrils. I tossed it all together and then added the pine nuts and goat cheese before topping the dish with the flowers. Dinner was on in perhaps 15 minutes. Local, seasonal, fresh. Delicious!

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One Weird Ingredient, A Delicious New Twist on Breakfast

If you're from Wisconsin, cheese curds are all too familiar. But, in San Diego? Well, not so much. You can find them now through Spring Hill Jersey Cheese's Rachel Peter. I was at the Little Italy farmers market last Saturday, where she has a stall, and bought a container of the garlic curds (she also sells plain and "Mike's Firehouse," a blend of jalapenos, red peppers, cilantro and parsley).

Cheese curds, of course, are small chunks of cheese solids, separated from the whey. Usually, they're salted, pressed into molds, aged and eventually become cheese. But, curds can be eaten in youth on their own. They're an unusual texture sensation, though. As people who have eaten them will tell you, they tend to squeak when you bite into them.

There are a host of ways you can use cheese curds. They can be fried, they can be sprinkled fresh on top of a salad. You could simply put them in a bowl and just nosh on them. But, as I discovered, they also melt beautifully.

I had one of those moments of staring into the refrigerator this morning in search of inspiration for breakfast and when I saw the container sitting on the bottom shelf, it occurred to me that I could melt them on slices of sourdough bread from Bread & Cie. I had some beautiful tomatoes, too. So, I brushed two slices of the bread with olive oil and toasted them briefly in the toaster oven so they wouldn't get soggy from the tomato slices. I added the sliced tomatoes, then cut up little pieces of the garlic curds and topped the tomatoes and bread. They went back into the toaster oven on the highest "toaster" temperature. Here's what I got.


The cheese didn't lose its flavor in the cooking, although it obviously lost its squeak. It melts like mozzarella, so it would, of course, be perfect as a pizza topping. I enjoyed this for breakfast, but it would be a great match with a salad or bowl of soup for lunch or dinner. One of those great, easy discoveries when you don't want to fuss much.

Another item to try from Spring Hill is the quark, an unripened cheese originally found in Central Eastern Europe, but with a texture similar to cream cheese or ricotta. Eat it straight up, spread it on bread, use it as a topping on banana bread or a slice of lemon cake. I have a small container of their vanilla bean quark, which I've found is simply wonderful as a dip for sliced apples or pears. It's very tangy and smooth. Rachel also sells lemon and garlic flavors.

Garlic? Well, why not. And, here's a recipe for a savory Quark Spatzle with Cheese I found on epicurious.com. It comes originally from East of Paris: The New Cuisines of Austria and the Danube by David Bouley, Mario Lohninger and Melissa Clark. The spatzle itself is made with quark. It calls for plain, but I would think garlic or even lemon would add a wonderful layer of flavor.

Want to make your own quark? It looks pretty easy, according to a recipe on Sally's Place.

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New at the Market

Remind me, please, what city I live in! At the farmers market today, I bought cheese, butter, eggs, marmalade, a tall brioche and little spinach quiche, beans, heirloom tomatoes, nectarines, pluots and cookies.

Is this really San Diego? The San Diego I've lived in for close to 20 years? Well, it is now. Far from being depressed after visiting the astounding Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco, I'm feeling energized about what's happening in San Diego when it comes to food.

I went back to the Little Italy Mercato this morning, mostly because its manager, Catt Fields White, regularly sends beautiful, informative email newsletters about all the latest additions she's making to the market. She, too, looks to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market for inspiration, hoping, she told me this morning, to build something similar in Little Italy. The market has only been open since June and she's at a fast pace making that happen. I can only hope that other market managers follow her lead and do a little more to promote their markets, help their vendors with more traffic and build our 30 markets into strong, indispensable community presences.

So, the items I bought and the vendors I spoke with in Little Italy this morning represent a larger picture of possibilities for San Diego. Some of these vendors have started in Little Italy but are also adding other markets to their rotation. And, Catt has some new folks coming in shortly, including the folks at Sea Rocket Bistro. Yes, they'll be grilling their marvelous sardines at the Mercato for you to munch on while you shop.

Let's start with the cheese. We don't have any local cheesemakers I'm aware of, but Spring Hill Jersey Cheese from the Petaluma area in Sonoma County is now selling at the Little Italy Mercato. (They're also found at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.) San Diegan Rachel Peter, niece of owner Larry Peter, is running the operation down here. She's just started selling at the Coronado farmers market and you'll find her and her cheeses and butter (Butter!) at the Hillcrest farmers market as of Oct. 5. The plan is also to sell the cheese at The Ocean Beach People's Food Store.


Spring Hill has a long tradition in Petaluma. Peter has been running the dairy for more than 20 years. He has 400 head of Jersey cows whose milk produces higher butter fat than the familiar, more prolific Holsteins. The cows are pasture grazed six months of the year and the other six months they eat a forage mixture harvested from what Peter plants. The resulting cheese is certified organic.

And, they don't just sell cow's milk cheese. They have a very interesting collection of organic goat cheeses made from milk that comes from goats owned by the nextdoor neighbors. The cheeses include white cheddar, sage cheddar, garlic cheddar, feta, peppercorn dry Jack, brie, Teleme and dry Jack. The list of cows milk cheeses is long, but includes a variety of cheddars and Jacks, feta, dry Jack and Teleme. They have fresh curds, quark (a soft, unaged, cream cheese) and, of course, the butter.


Rachel has a lot of samples to try, which I dug into. Ultimately I bought the goat Teleme, which is creamy with that distinctive goat flavor, perfect with sliced heirloom tomatoes and fresh basil; the garlic cheddar (give me garlic anytime; this combination really works) and a stick of fresh unsalted butter. When I got home, I enjoyed the butter with an unusual tall brioche studded with golden raisins that I bought from chef Michel Morlas at Patisserie du Soleil (and June Taylor's stunning Meyer Lemon marmalade).


Well, let's talk about Patisserie du Soleil. This European-style bakery has been in operation since 1993 and makes desserts for a number of restaurants and resorts in San Diego from home base on Sports Arena in Pt. Loma. The selection is broad and satisfying. I tried a sample of Morlas's flourless chocolate cake, to which he adds no additional sugar beyond what is already in the chocolate. The result is a light, delicate and just-sweet-enough cake that would be perfect with a cappuccino. He's got bread pudding made with his brioche, a tiramisu terrine and two styles of spinach quiche -- an individual one in a very flaky crust that I bought and loved and a tall, creamier crustless quiche sold by the slice. It's a pretty large display you have to see.


I met up with Dave Heafner of Da-Le Ranch. I had mentioned earlier that he would be at the market with his meat. Today, he was grilling pork and chicken breasts to give out as samples. Soon, he'll also be bringing meat from NTM Livestock (near Lake Elsinore), as well as lamb and rabbit. You can buy the fresh, organic meat by the individual cut or by meat package that could include ground beef, pork sausage, lamb sausage, chicken, pork cuts, lamb cuts, beef cuts and smoked ham bacon. The packages come in 25- or 50-pound weights. I didn't buy any today but what Heafner was grilling was very tasty.


As long as I was at the market, I stopped by one of my favorite vendors, Schaner Farms. Once again, I bought some gorgeous heirloom tomatoes and the lovely chicken eggs.

This time, I also bought a jar of tangelo marmalade made by Adina Rimmon in Los Angeles. Rimmon sells Schaner's wares at the Santa Monica farmers market and uses the fruit to make a variety of marmalades, such as pomagrante, 3 citrus (grapefruit, orange and lemon), blood orange and the tangelo I bought. Since I'm doing a piece for the U-T on preserves this was, of course, research ;)

Finally, I stopped by a booth operated by Chi Chocolat and The Cookie Chew. Chi, of course, has a shop nearby, and had a number of delightful sweets on hand. But, I ended up being more interested in accountant turned baker Liz Chou's cookies. She has cookies she stuffs with decadent fillings that she calls truffles -- some propped on sticks like lollipops, others in little cellophane bags.


I tried the peanut butter and it was a luscious, creamy experience in the mouth. I can't wait to try the Chocolate Toffee Crunch and the Orange Chocolate Coconut.


I also bought a quarter-ounce bag of cookie cubes, little squares at most an inch but most smaller in flavors like classic chocolate chip, oatmeal peanut butter chip, Cosmo (orange, cranberry, white chocolate oatmeal), white and dark chocolate raspberry martini (chocolate raspberry cookie with white chocolate) and White Russian (Kahlua cookie with white chocolate). See a theme here? I particularly enjoyed the Cosmo with its mix of textures and flavors. It's a nice little treat you can almost guiltlessly pop in the mouth.

As Catt and others add more vendors and, especially, more unique vendors to their markets I'll keep you posted.

The Little Italy Mercato is on Date St. between Kettner Blvd. and Union St. It's open on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

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