SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Grapes Even before harvest, grape vines produce big fleshy leaves you can use to wrap various stuffings, and you can crush unfermented grapes to make verjuice ( if you prefer), a tart liquid similar to
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Figs But we just like the taste. Back in August, only a few farmer's market stalls had them, but now it seems like everyone's got some on display. Figs flourish in this state, which
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Melons You'll find a number of varieties at the farmer's market right now, but for a cook's purposes, they divide into two categories: watermelons and everything else. Watermelons have an airy network of cells
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Crayfish Fast forward a few years to the Grand Lake Market in Oakland. We spotted another crayfish vendor, but this time we subdued our long enough to ask an important question. "How do you
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Tomatillos The tart taste of a tomatillo, which is a relative of the tomato, adds a zingy note to guacamole or salads, though Elizabeth Schneider cautions readers to use raw pieces in moderation. More
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Okra So we have pointedly ignored the okra that has appeared at markets of late. Even the pretty crimson types haven't tempted us. But every farmer seems to have this hibiscus relative for sale,
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Market Breakfast Back when we subscribed, we daydreamed about the perfect life depicted in those features. We eyed the Smoked Trout with Cucumber-Watercress Cream and thought that maybe if we made it often enough, we
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Corn Farmers bred the super-sweets for a good reason. As soon as you pick corn, enzymes begin to convert the sugar in the kernels to starch. Hence the old advice to boil water before
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Bitter Melon Bitter melon is, obviously, bitter. Western palates shy away from this sensation, but it's a common component throughout Eastern cuisine, where many consider bitterness to be a cleansing panacea. Piles of these exotic-looking
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Tomatoes You knew this post was coming. You've seen tomatoes piled up at the farmer's markets, a gumball machine of green, yellow, orange, and red spheres, and you've wondered when we're going to talk
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Cucumbers We found cucumbers by the armful at this weekend's Jack London Square farmer's market. Pickling cucumbers, Japanese cucumbers, standard American cucumbers. The abundance flaunted itself, and challenged us to take some into the
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Zucchini, Mostly The simplest treatment features sautéed slices with minced garlic—we suggest the flavorful, hard-necked Rocambole variety you can find at various market stalls. Before turning on the heat, slice the squash into thin
Arts & Entertainment SFist Goes to the Theater: The Goat by Edward Albee But you have to sympathize with modern writers, faced with an increasingly open-minded audience. Fifty years ago, interracial relationships were the stuff of discord. Twenty years ago, it was homosexuality. What's left? Edward
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Peaches Mmmm. Peaches. Repeat after us. Mmmm. Peaches. We've been slurping down sample slices at various farmer's markets stands, and we were drawn to the Gold Dust heirloom peaches from Frog Hollow. Sure, it's
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Apricots We have been eagerly tasting apricots on our farmer's market forays, waiting for them to go from tart and unpleasant to juicy and sweet. Someday soon, we knew. Saturday wasn't promising until we
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Plumcots and Apriums Neither plums nor apricots were showing particularly well yet at the Berkeley Farmer's Market, but we found some decent samples of their hybrids. We've noticed purple-skinned plumcots and pluots, along with soft orange
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Lavender We always know when we're near the Eatwell Farms stand at any given farmer's market: A sudden whiff of lavender quickly balloons into a heady aroma. The farm's stand always carries dried lavender
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Cherries Cherries are out in abundance at farmer's markets, though quality still varies from stall to stall, so we reccommend sampling first. We liked the red-black meaty Bings from Lagier Ranches enough to grab
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Marin Sun Farms We loves us a good piece of meat, but we can't stand buying the factory-farmed animal products we find in most stores. An American obsession with cheap meat has left us with powerful
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Honey - ABBA Gourmets often say that cheese is the food world's analogy to wine, but we think honey is a better candidate. Our food writing idol Edward Behr wrote that "honey, in its
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Cardoons We were over the moon when we saw cardoons at Tairwa' Knoll's stall last Saturday at the Ferry Plaza Market. Restaurateurs and avid cardoon eaters usually buy all these tall, light green stalks
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist In the Kitchen: Strawberries You don't need us to tell you what to do with strawberries. Eat them raw on a picnic and enjoy their juicy flesh. Eat them the raw with your lover, dunking the red
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist in the Kitchen: Radishes We confess that we, too, used to use spring radishes for garnish rather than flavor, though they have the same bite we like in their close relatives the turnips. At best, we've put
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist In The Kitchen: Kohlrabi We felt uninspired as we shopped at Oakland's 9th Street Farmer's Market on Friday, shivering against the sheets of rain and high winds. But as we chatted with a jacketless worker from Watsonville
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink SFist In The Kitchen: Snap Peas It seemed like every vendor at Oakland's 9th Street Market was selling sugar snap peas last Friday, and it didn't take us long to cave in to the impulse to buy some. We
