Hello!

I went to the Wednesday market at the Dimond Center yesterday, and the vegetables were so beautiful and abundant and varied! I have to confess that I have a big problem when the market is so loaded with lovely, delicious, fresh produce… is there a term for a fresh-vegetable addict? Oh dear. I came home with four huge canvas tote bags of vegetables from the three wonderful vendors at the market. Yes, I did have a list of the things I needed… but then there were so many other fun things to try!  Then I spent all afternoon cleaning, chopping, and bagging the greens and broccoli. Here’s a list of what I bought yesterday, just for fun, in case you want to see how my menu-planning brain works. I don’t mean to plug my cookbook obnoxiously, but it is filled with all my favorite standby recipes that I love to make when the season for these wonderful veggies arrives!!

• 2 beautiful long eggplants, 4 large tomatoes, 2 lovely cucumbers, and 2 bunches of arugula: for a chopped Greek salad with garlicky croutons (recipe coming next week)
• 2 more eggplants:  for testing a recipe for an eggplant satay with a lemony marinade (recipe coming soon if it’s any good)
• 1 head romaine: for Southwest Caesar salad (recipe in my cookbook)
• 3 heads butter lettuce & 2 heads dark red lettuce (for various salads in my cookbook, including the green salad with garlicky red wine mustard vinaigrette with avocado and smoked salmon)
• 1 bag mixed salad greens (for peach-almond salad with honey-balsamic dressing—in my cookbook)
• 1 huge Napa cabbage and 2 bunches of scallions (for the napa cabbage salad with spicy peanut dressing from my cookbook)
• 4 small cauliflowers (For an Indian feast, including spicy roasted cauliflower with red peppers and cumin—in my cookbook)
• 2 bunches spinach (for the wilted spinach salad with olives & garlic-balsamic vinaigrette—in my cookbook)
• 1 pound of broccoli (impulse buy, because I couldn’t resist it. Not sure what I’ll do with it yet, but likely will steam it and toss a little garlicky red wine mustard vinaigrette on it and top it with some toasted pepitas)
• 2 bunches rainbow chard (I will braise the chard stems with onions, then garlic, then toss in the chopped greens and when they are tender, top the whole thing with chopped nuts—maybe pistachios, for fun?

And in a couple of days, at the Saturday South Anchorage Market, I’ll buy a pound of shrimp to try a new, simple Pad Thai recipe that came in a Fine Cooking magazine to see if it’s a good approximation of the real thing. I’ll fill you in if it’s worth doing!

And in addition to all those glorious things listed above, here are some more items that will be showing up at the market! Rempel Family Farms sent me word that they’d have the first new carrots of the year!

Beet Greens
Carrots
Cilantro
Collard Greens
Cress
Dill
Kale – Lacinato
Kale – Red Russian
Mustard – Mizuna, Red & Tatsoi
Italian Parsley
Radishes
Rhubarb
Shingku
Spinach
Squash Blossoms
Turnips (snow apples)
Turnip Greens
Zucchini - Green
Zucchini Blossoms

For the recipes this week, I’m still highlighting the cucumbers—giving you two great and unusual recipes in which to use the cucumbers, and then a bean recipe that goes really nicely with them. They all have Asian flavors, and if you made all three recipes, using the salad as a first course, you’d have a really lovely meal.

bread
This week, Rise & Shine Bakery will be making our Alaskan onion rye again! Thanks so much to those of you who have been requesting it! We’ll have fun making it for you—we love it, too! And I just love being able to use Alaskan ingredients. If you have ideas for other breads that we can bake using Alaska-grown products, let me know!

We’ll also be making the golden maize this week. I’ve included a recipe for a cucumber salsa and a gingery black bean recipe that might taste really nice with a toasted slice of golden maize… it’s kind of a hybrid southwestern/Asian theme.  Then again, the golden maize is awfully nice just for breakfast with honey and butter! We’ll be baking our other favorite breakfast bread, as well—the raisin & pecan loaf. We’ll also be baking the kalamata olive bread, and of course the regular 100% whole wheat sourdough levain. 

farmers’ market cookbook
Are you looking for even more ideas about what to do with the gorgeous fresh produce at the market? The South Anchorage Farmers’ Market Cookbook is filled with 100 pages of delicious, healthy recipes that showcase our flavorful, fresh local Alaskan produce. Recipes provide inspiration for ways to use Alaskan vegetables, fish, fruits, bread, and other products that can be found at our farmers’ markets. While the book includes some seafood recipes, the book contains mostly vegetarian and vegetable recipes. The cookbook focuses on recipes that have fantastic flavor and top-notch nutritional value. The directions in each recipe include lots of hints about how to prepare these recipes with speed and efficiency. The cookbook also includes directions for processing Alaskan produce to freeze for the winter. Just inside the cover, you’ll find information on when and where the farmers’ markets are held, and how to sign up for the farmer’s market weekly email newsletter. At the market, the cookbooks are $15, which includes a really cool folding wire cookbook holder while supplies last. (Holders sold separately for $6.)

seafood
Arctic Choice Seafoods will have all kinds of fresh, delicious, Alaskan fish! Here’s a list of what they are likely to have, along with lots of free seafood recipes for you to take along with you.
• fresh king salmon
• fresh sablefish
• fresh rockfish
• fresh halibut
• fresh clams
• fresh oysters
• halibut cheeks
• king crab
• snow crab
• spot shrimp
• side stripe shrimp
• Dungeness crab
• scallops
• smoked salmon bellies

Saturday South Anchorage Farmers’ Market
Dates: May 10-October 4
Hours: 9am-2pm
Location: Subway/Cellular One Sports Centre at the corner of Old Seward and O’Malley

Wednesday South Anchorage Farmers’ Market
Dates: July 2- October 1
Hours: 10am-4pm
Location: behind the Dimond Center, in front of the Dimond Center Hotel

Please pass this email along to anyone you think might be interested in receiving the weekly market news—they can email me at if they’d like to be added to our newsletter list.
For more information about the market, contact Arthur Keyes, South Anchorage Farmers’ Market Manager, at 907-354-5833, or at . Please respond to this email if you’d like to be removed from the newsletter list.

Cheers! And see you at the market!
Alison Arians
Farmers’ Market Reporter

related recipes

green salad with cucumbers and ginger-miso dressing
cucumber & hijiki salsa
gingery refried black beans