bluebird bakeshop

Thai doll eggplants

Few vegetables have as many deadly cousins as the eggplant.  It belongs to the nightshade-potato family, Solanacae, which includes such poisonous plants as Jimson Weed (Datura), the Belladonna (a.k.a. Deadly Nightshade), and tobacco (Nicotiana), but also the aforementioned potato, tomato, tomatillo, gooseberry, and peppers.

white eggplant

The eggplant is indigenous to a broad area encompassing India, South East Asia, and Southwest China where even now, wild plants with spiked fruit can still be found.  It is thought the plant was domesticated in the Indo-Burma region some time shortly before the in the 4^th century B.C., owing to several descriptions of it as a spiny blue fruit in Sanskrit writings about its uses as both food and as a treatment for diabetes and asthma.  The eggplant was eventually domesticated in China as well where it was cultivated to be a smooth fruit, and colorful as well.  A Jin Dynasty (late third century A.D.) treatise on plant diversity cited white, yellow, and azure eggplants, in addition to purple.  The Chinese also highlighted its use as treatment for toothache, intestinal complications, and abscesses, but also considered it somewhat dangerous and a potential threat to female reproductive health.

an eggplant blossom

The exact date of the eggplant’s introduction to the west is uncertain, but there is evidence that the fruit had found its way to Persia sometime in the 800’s.  Medieval Persian writings also treat the eggplant with extreme ambivalence, accusing it as being the cause of several ailments including pimples, ulcers, leprosy, elephantitis, and an excess of black bile, but when ripe, salted, and cooked, the eggplant was credited with curing diseases and balancing the biles.  The Muslim expansion in the 7^th and 8^th centuries brought the eggplant to Eastern Africa, and eventually, to Southern Spain.  As early as the 12^th century during the later Medieval and Renaissance periods, the eggplant often appeared in writings and artworks.  During this period, the eggplant was still mostly misunderstood, and was even blamed for causing angry moods in addition to physical ailments.

some heirloom varieties

Fortunately, we now understand that eggplants are extremely healthful.  They contain significant quantities of the powerful antioxidant chlorogenic acid which is credited with the prevention of Type II Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and is considered an antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal agent.

If you go to the Davis Farmers’ Market, you are bound to find some wonderful specimen of beautiful eggplant from any number of farms including my personal favorites, Lloyd’s Produce and Good Humus Produce.  Good Humus Produce began in 1976 when husband and wife team Jeff and Annie Main graduated from UC Davis and decided live self-sufficiently.  They moved to their

the Good Humus Produce farm

current property in 1983 which began as a fallow milo field in a beautiful valley called Hungry Hollow, north of Capay and east of Brooks.  Since then, they have grown their farm to 20 bountiful acres with the help of fellow worker Francisco Montez who has been an indispensable member of their farm since 1980.  Their land is divided into 2 ½ acre fields that are occupied by mixed orchards, complimentary cover crops, annual and perennial flowers, herbs, and vegetables, and California native hedgerows.  Their strong dedication to their governing philosophies of “cooperation, communities, social change, food movement and land stewardship” have not only brought about bounty in their harvest, but also in the positivity they impart on their community through education.  They are heavily involved in local school district lunch programs and they also provide summer programs for inner city youth.

black beauty

If ever there was good karma palpable in the physical manifestations of one’s work, Good Humus’s offerings are it.

Visit their farm stand at the Davis Farmers’ Market, or find their goods at the Davis Food Co-op.

You can also learn more about their farm on their website.

There are few fruits that I look forward to eating more than a truly fine strawberry in the summer.  I can honestly say that I remember the first time when after years of eating strawberries that were enormous, watery, and only vaguely strawberry-tasting, I tasted a concentrated, sweet, and aromatic strawberry.  It was one of those love-at-first-sight/punched-in-the-face stunning moments.  I hadn’t even known what I was missing all those years.  It was a little Fraise du Bois from Mary of Middleton Gardens.  It was the size of my thumbnail, deep red, luxurious-tasting and nothing short of a revelation.

Because of its inherent qualities as a luxury—easy spoilage, vulnerability to pests and diseases, delicate skin, etc.—the strawberry was never considered a staple in the human diet, and therefore its history is particularly difficult to trace, and its exact origins are still considered unknown.  The first instances of strawberries recorded are in Greek and Roman texts, including the Ovid where strawberries were noted only for medicinal and aesthetic purposes and as a foraged specialty.

strawberry fields in Watsonville

It wasn’t until the 14^th century that the strawberry became more popularly cultivated, although at this time, it was used mostly in an ornamental capacity in French royal gardens, gradually spreading in recognition to England as well.

It was there in England during the late 15^th century that the name “strawberry” developed from its predecessors “Streowberige, Strea Berige, Streowberge, Streaw Berian Wisan, Streberi Lef,” and “StrebereWyse.”  The two leading hypothesis as to why it garnered this name are that the plant has tendency to sprawl or become strewn about, or that the fruits of the plant were sold in beds of hay, a practice that still occurs in Ireland.

Albions

It was also during this period that the three European species of strawberry were classified– Fragaria-F. vesca, F. moschata, and F. viridis, the former of which is one of the two garden species cultivated for fruit today.  The first mention of strawberries in the United States is the famous Virginia strawberry, the second most popular fruit species, Fragaria Virginiana, developed in the Americas for its large fruit and productivity.  It gained immediate popularity in Europe after its introduction in the early 18^th century.

Chandlers

Currently, California and Florida are the United States’ greatest producers of strawberries.  In its 30,000 acres of strawberry fields, California grows primarily these varietals of strawberry: Chandler, Seascape, Palomar, Albion, Aroma, Camarosa, Camino Real, Diamonte, and Ventana.  Of these nine varieties, the latter six were developed by the University of California.  Here in the San Joaquin area, the farms produce almost exclusively Chandlers, and the next closest growing area, California’s most productive region, Watsonville/Salinas, is dominated by the Albion.

Seascapes from Lucero

No matter the variety, the strawberry is packed with nutrients.  It is a good source of vitamin C, fiber, antioxidants, and folate.  Strawberries can also be dangerous.  Consumers should be advised of the potential health hazards of eating non-organic strawberries since they have been ranked as 2010’s third highest of the USDA’s annual “Dirty Dozen” foods—the foods that contain the highest residual pesticide.

Fortunately, there is an abundance of delicious organic strawberries within our reach.  Some of my favorites are from Terra Firma Farm (Winters), Lucero Organic Farm (Lodi), Middleton Gardens (Healdsburg), Dirty Girl Farm (Santa Cruz), and Catalan Family Farm (Hollister).  Enjoy!

I hope my friends and neighbors love summer squash.  In the early spring craze this year that really just felt like winter, I bought what can only be described as a “value pack” of summer squash seeds in a craze of over anticipation of summer.    I planted the starts, so innocuous at first, in a cell pack of 48 wells, and when the weather warmed up, I put half of the them in the ground all over my front yard, and gave the other half away, feeling that I was some harbinger-of-summer fairy.  The plants leafed out, branched out through the yard, and the blossoms filled in the negative spaces with their bursts of golden yellow and ribs of light green.  And then they came, the squash, with a vengeance.  Please don’t misunderstand me—I love summer squash—stuffed blossoms, roasted squash, squash soup, ratatouille, shaved in salad…but now I’m hoping my neighbors, friends, and family do too.  I have a growing pile in my refrigerator that keeps me up at night.

zephyr

Summer squash and all its varietals are the same species—Cucurbita pepo.   It is impressive to think that all those different shapes and colors—the gourd-shaped yellow summer squash, the elongated body of the zucchini, the golf-ball like gem squash, the seemingly paint-dipped zephyr, and the brioche tin-shaped patty pan are all the same species.  This tremendously varied species also includes some fall varietals including some pumpkins, crook-necked, acorn, spaghetti, and delicata squashes.

yellow summer squash

Zucchini and several other summer squash like the light green striped  coczelle and the caserta were given their names in Italy and other parts of Europe where those cultivars were developed, but the history of the squash, and even the name “squash” itself are deeply rooted in the history of the Americas.

squash blossoms in my garden

The term “squash” is an adaptation of the Native American term skutasquash, a generic term for something that is eaten when it is still green, as in the dish succotash when corn, fresh beans, and squash are cooked together, all fresh and green.  The earliest evidence of squash cultivation was found regions in Mexico as early as 7,000 B.C., and was linked to the production of two other simultaneously produced foods—the climbing bean and maize, together known as “the three sisters.”  These three items grown together not only provide complete nutrition, but also have a symbiotic relationship in terms of the soil-content management and growing space, and are the first known example of companion planting.  The corn grows tall, providing a living pole and important starch source.  The beans provide nitrogen to the soil, and proteins in the diet.  The squash cover the ground, blocking sunlight from the soil and preventing weed growth, and provides nutritious folate, vitamin A, and potassium.

patty pans

Columbus brought the squash to Europe, where it was especially well-liked in Italy, Spain and Greece, and eventually spread in popularity to France, to the rest of Europe, and then throughout the world.

cocozelle

Summer squash is a vegetable that is as versatile as it is diverse.  You can find several beautiful varieties in abundance from any number of our local farms at the Davis Farmers’ Market, Davis Food Co-op, or even at some farms’ stores on their properties.

Or you could e mail me and relieve me of some mine.

Usually I love to give food my garden away.  I do it with pride.  But this squash—I’ve been leaving it anonymously on doorsteps in the night.  Is it my imagination or have my neighbors been returning my enthusiastic squash-fisted waves with half-hearted nods, carefully averting their gazes from me as they check their mail?  I think I’m in deep trouble.

goodies drying on my rafter

Last night I shared a drink with a childhood friend and the boy, now a man, who grew up in the house next to mine at Our House, an establishment perfectly named for the little gathering we had.  My neighbor and I joked about our fathers’ ancient disagreement over a shared and mutually coveted parking spot.  We talked about owls.  And someone noticed my arm tattoo, which has a rendering of a Red-winged Blackbird, and a quote from Albert Camus that reads, “In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer.”  We all mused on the importance of finding one’s “invincible summer,” and then we turned the conversation to the important connection of the internal summer—the internal strength and fire—to appreciating the external invincible summer—the inherent beauty and richness that are always around us, if only we take care to look, like the simple beauty of the Red-winged Blackbird.  This is a concept that applies to a rainy day, such as Tuesday, to frustrating moments, to challenging yoga poses, and of course, to the kitchen table.  There is nourishment all around us, even where we don’t usually look, and this year, it seems, everywhere I turn.  Here are some of my favorites:

fresh coriander

After the cilantro leaves have shrunk, and the stems of the plant shoot skyward, and the plant seems to have lost its edibility, there comes an expected treasure—fresh coriander.  More perfumed and infinitely more vibrant tasting than its dried counterpart, fresh coriander is the beautiful fruit of the Coriandrum sativum plant.  The berries can be used freshly picked from the stems to accentuate dishes whole, or as I often like to do, mashed with a mortar and pestle with a little salt and oil.  Even the highly pungent roots of this plant are edible, traditionally as a flavoring to south-east Asian curry dishes.  Their ancestral roots, however, are placed in Israel with the earliest mericarps dated approximately 8000 B.C.

lemon verbena

In the parking lot of the Food Co-op, there are several leggy-looking, but robust lemon verbena plants.  These Aloysia Citrodora plants, native to Central and South America, smell kind of heavenly—crisp, citrus-like, and bright.  One of my favorite things in the world to make is lemon verbena-honey gelato, but it also makes a wonderful tisane (infused with hot water), and can even be used in savory dishes.  In addition to its lovely aroma, it has a medicinal use as an antifungal agent.

nasturtium at Chef Doug's

Also from Central and South America is the Nasturtium, or Tropaeolum.  Nasturtium petals, all bright fire, have a nice, light peppery flavor, and can be found in abundance in gardens.  The leaves are also edible.

purslane

There is a lowly-looking weed that I always remember growing in certain patches of the greenbelt.  My mother would take stems of them back home on our way back from piano lessons, wash them, and serve them in cold salads, and they were nothing short of delectable.  Purslane, or Portulaca oleracea, is an annual succulent with small yellow flowers that originated in North Africa, and has been in North America since pre-Columbian times.  It is considered a weed, and you can still help yourself to them throughout the greenbelt.

borage at Doug's

Borage, Borago officinalis, is an herb that originated in Syria.  The seeds are a highly nutritional source of gamma-linolenic acid, a compound used to treat inflammation and autoimmune disorders.  The leaves have a cucumber-like flavor, but the real gem is the blossom, which has a honeyed flavor, fantastic in cocktails, tisanes, and desserts.

rose geranium

Rose geranium is a scented geranium that smells of roses and has a slight citrus aroma.  It is perfect for baked goods and for imparting aromas when macerating fruit.

loquats at Doug's

Loquat fruit, Eriobotrya japonica, is a member of the Rosacea family which includes roses, stone fruits, blackberries, and apples.  This plant, native to southeastern China, despite its name, bears delicious fruits that are yellow-orange when they ripen in the early spring.  This year, they are a little late in their arrival, but they are available in incredible abundance right now all over town.

Fig trees are not just for figs.  The leaves are superbly scented, and are used in one of my favorite warm-weather dishes, halibut roasted in fig leaves.  Peach leaves can also be used as a flavoring, though they can’t be heated (the heat releases strong tannic flavors), and they have a light bitter-almond flavor.

noyaux

Fruit seeds are an often overlooked source of wonderful flavor.  Cherry pits are so flavorful that they are left in the fruit for traditional clafoutis.  When making jam or other recipes, the cherry pits can be placed in the mix in a sachet of cheesecloth for extra flavor, or saved in the freezer for infusions at a later time.  The king of fruit pits is the heart of apricot pits, called noyaux, which has an exquisite almond aroma, is the flavoring of amaretto, and can be used in infusions or made into bitter almond extract.

Remember to keep your eyes open, and I guarantee that you will be amply rewarded—en route to the store, in the garden, and even in your discarded fruit scraps, you will find hidden beauty and a taste of that invincible summer.

My parents used to have this fabulous apricot tree in our backyard.  I remember swimming in the pool, and eating apricots while treading water, the weird combination of the smell of chlorine on my fingers, the sweet fruit in my mouth.  My sister and I used to climb up on the play structure my father had built for us, and sit atop the thing top pick the tree-ripened apricots.  We sat there, all dark, farmer’s tanned limbs and sticky hands, and we would eat these apricots, warm from the sun, plump with juice and flavor, and just devour them until we were stuffed.  Every time I eat a perfect little apricot, I think of this memory.

fruit in the tree

The apricot, Prunus armeniaca, is part of the genus that includes all cleft fruit (fruit with that line extending from the stem to the bottom) which includes cherries, plums, peaches, and almonds.  At one time, the apricot was thought to be native to Armenia where seeds from the Copper Age (fifth millennium B.C.) were found, hence its scientific name.  However, the method for determining the origin of plant species by the original regions where plant domestication started, called the Vavilov Center of Diversity, places the origins of the apricot in China before the Copper Age (this fact will end a month-long dispute between me and a co-worker of mine).   Alexander the Great is credited with bringing the apricot to Greece.  The Roman general Lucullus then brought it and other stone fruits to Europe in the first century B.C.  Spanish missionaries brought apricots to California where the first recorded major production of the fruit occurred in 1972.

royal blenheims

My favorite variety of apricot is the late-season Blenheim which has its origins in the royal gardens of Luxembourg, why it is also sometimes referred to as the Royal Blenheim.  This perfect specimen of apricot is slightly acidic and has a wonderful floral and honeyed aroma.  It ripens from the inside-out, like all apricots, so the fruit is often harvested when it has a slight green tinge on the outside.  It will continue to ripen at room temperature in storage.

a full farm box

Every year around this time, orchard stands have crates heaping of apricots for sale.  They can hardly sell them quickly enough!   I love to buy a little bag to eat fresh, and then an additional giant box of “cosmetically challenged” or overripe ones to use for jam or pie.  I have always enjoyed the bounty of this fruit, its seemingly endless supply.  But this year, I had to wonder, “Where are my heaps of apricots?”  The farmers’ markets seemed to have some, but not many, and not any of particularly great quality.

apricot blossom and bee

Riverdog Farm has a nice little grove of apricots that turn out some delicious fruit, typically around this year, so I called them to find out what was happening with their crop.  It turns out that there Mother Nature played a cruel trick on the apricots over the past year.  The trees prefer to have a frosty winter to encourage good bud production, but we had an unseasonably warm December.  When the trees finally budded and the lovely blossoms came out, the orchard experienced torrential rains that washed away so many of the flowers and so much of the pollen.  The coup de grace was that when the precious fruit that survived all of the adverse conditions finally became ripe through the cold spring, we experienced more unexpected storms that left the fruit to split and spoil.  All the additional moisture has also contributed to leaf curl which damages the leaves of the tree.  All is not lost, however, because the later crops of apricots are still somewhat promising.

It is humbling to see what a few unseasonable weather patterns can do to an entire crop—and for some, an entire livelihood.  These whims of nature can happen in all varying degrees of severity, sometimes small enough that only the farmers notice.  We as consumers only see the end products of their travail—beautifully grown produce, ripe and delicious.  The farmers usually quietly endure setbacks with strength and optimism that is so much of what makes them that admirable breed of human.  They farm for beauty, righteousness, and deliciousness, and it’s nothing short of backbreaking.  So the next time you go to the market, resist the urge haggle.  Chat with your farmer, and tell them how much you love what they bring to our community table, because in these uncertain times, that can sometimes be all the payment they receive.

Love your local (apricot) farmer!

It seems ironic that someone with so little patience (me) would love so many things that take such a great amount of time to produce (a large percentage of things I love to eat)—cassoulet, tomato sauce, paella, trippa alla Fiorentina, and even specific meats.  Slow growing breeds of meat are often more flavorful than their rapid-growing conventional counterparts.  This is true of the rabbits at Devil’s Gulch Ranch where they crossbreed traditional meat rabbits—Californians and New Zealands—with more non-traditional rabbits—Rex—which produce a slower developing, more flavorful meat.  It is true of the wooly Hungarian Mangalitsa pig, usually slaughtered at more than twelve months where typical pigs are slaughtered between eight and ten months of age, which makes some of the most spectacular pork I have ever tasted.  And it is even true of the chicken.

a young Red Ranger

There are several special breeds of chicken that fall into this category, many of them heritage breeds.  Only the most superior tasting breeds of chicken are selected for production in France’s, Label Rouge, considered by many to be the international standard for quality meats.  The flagship product of Label Rouge is poultry, or Poulet Rouge.  These breeds take longer to reach fryer size.  A Cornish cross, a typical commercial chicken, achieves five pounds at approximately six to seven weeks whereas Poulet Rouge birds never reach this size until they are about twelve weeks of age.  Their bodies are generally more elongated with smaller breasts and longer legs, qualities that better suit chickens in free-range pasturing environments, which is a lifestyle strictly required by the Label Rouge.

happy girl, mobile coop at Riverdog

In order to be considered Label Rouge in France, farms must follow rigorous guidelines.  They dictate a wide range of specifications that insure the highest quality of meat which include genetics, buildings, density of livestock, access and range, feed, medication of sick animals, minimum slaughter age, minimum weight of the carcass without giblets, time period permitted between raising flocks, travel time and distance to processing plant, the method of cooling the carcasses, and shelf life.  Only certain breeds of broilers are permitted, all of which are slow-growing, ideal for pasturing.

tomato feast at Riverdog

One such breed is the Red Ranger, available from local Riverdog Farm.  This Guinda farm is best known for their bounty of certified organic produce—fruits, vegetables, and nuts, but they also raise some of the most delicious chicken, eggs, and pork produced in this area.  Riverdog uses mobile coops which they rotate through their 300 acre property where their laying hens and meat birds eat alfalfa, insects, and even a share of the farm’s gorgeous produce.  The adage “you are what you eat” has never been truer.  These chickens are exceptionally rich in flavor and also have a higher percentage of dark meat than conventional broilers.  Braise the legs in some nice rosé and stock with shallots, garlic, thyme, and butter, and you will taste heaven.

You can buy Riverdog’s delicious Poulet Rouge breed chickens as well as their celebrated produce through their CSA. Visit their website for further information.

You can also find their produce at the Davis Food Co-op.

I am nothing if not stubborn.  Last year, on one of the hottest days of the year, I held my mother and father prisoners at my dining table to pit two 15 pound cases of cherries and made jam.  I had the jars, I had the cherries, and when the weather forecast for a hot and unusually humid day came out, I refused to change my plans.  I filled my house with steaming hot fruit, and cranked up my oven to finish the canning process.  My parents and my dining room walls and furniture were speckled with cherry juice—it looked kind of macabre like some sort of point-blank shooting fiasco.  We were all sweating bullets.  I can still picture my poor parents hunched over piles of cherry pits.  David Lebowitz, a prominent pastry chef (formerly of Chez Panisse) writes in his blog about making cherry jam: “Stand back.  This is gonna get messy.”  It’s no wonder Mom and Dad think I’m a crazy person.

sour cherry jam

But being crazy has its benefits too.  For example, in the middle of the winter, I roasted some cherries I had squirreled away in the freezer in balsamic vinegar in a moment of summer fruit withdrawal, and ate it over vanilla ice cream in my freezing cold house.  This past weekend, I bought my first bag of cherries and cracked open my very last jar of cherry preserves from that brutal day last summer, and mixed them into a crisp for Mothers’ Day—a perfect circle of events, in my mind.  My friend Samin used to can enough tomatoes and tomato sauce at the rustic Italian restaurant where we worked that we had enough to last us for a whole year until the following year’s tomato season.  My humble jam production is hardly anything to match the tomato canning operation that she ran, but I always feel a tingle of pride when I am able to put enough of something by to last me to the next year.  Some things I can live without through the winter, but cherries are not one of those things.  You can imagine my rapture at seeing the first cherries at the market this weekend.

Brooks cherries

The first cherries of the season are Brooks, which is what you will find at the area farmers’ markets this week.  They are a wonderful and delicious hybrid of Burlat and Ranier cherries developed at our very own UC Davis in 1969.  It quickly became one of the more popular varietals grown, especially in this area.  They are a big, juicy, flavorful, sweet cherry that are extremely heat tolerant, and fruit up to a full month before other varietals.  Typically, though, a few short weeks following the Brooks’ appearance at the market, the king of sweet cherry varietals arrives—the Bing.

The Bing was developed in the earliest years of the West’s tree fruit industry.  In the 1850’s the Lewelling brothers, originally from Iowa, set up a cherry orchard in what is now Milwaukee, Oregon, an outlying area of Portland.  With the help of their Chinese orchard foreman named Bing, they developed my favorite variety of cherry.  It is now the mostly widely produced cherry in the United States.

Bing cherries in farm boxes

There are many edible members of the Prunus genus with “cherry” incorporated into their names, but commercially produced cherries generally fall in one of two species—cerasus (the sour cherry) and avium (the sweet cherry).  There are almost 100 different cultivars of sweet cherries, but only a handful are very popularly produced—Bing, Burlat, Brooks, Ranier (the white ones), Royal Anne, and Lambert.  Avium is native to the temperate regions of Eastern Europe and China, and was cultivated as early as 300 B.C.  The sour cherry is also sometimes called “pie cherry” or “tart cherry,” the most common variety of which is the “Montmorency.”  It is thought the sour cherry first occurred as a natural hybrid of a type of bush cherry and the sweet cherry.

The leaves of the cherry tree can also be used.  The Japanese salt-preserve and candy them, and then use them as a flavorful garnish on desserts.  There is a wonderful Southern Italian goat’s milk cheese called Fiorito in Foglie di Ciliege that is wrapped in cherry leaves.

As I write this, I’m sitting under my very own canopy of cherry leaves, my Bing cherry tree, as I drink in the spring breeze and warm sun.  I am mentally willing the little green cherries to become plump and deep red.  My mind is racing with cherry-related recipes—compotes, clafoutis, upside down cakes, crisps, pies, frangipane tarts…and of course, I’m plotting for the hottest day this summer to make jam.

Bing cherries on the tree

Despite many years of professional cooking, I still love the simplest activities the best—shaping dough, cutting fruit, making soup, and cleaning vegetables.  I love the meditative quality of these tasks, and the feeling of handling the raw, fresh, and therefore most pure elements of dishes, and then seeing them celebrated in finished form.  Last night, with spent muscles and an airy state of post-yoga bliss, I came home to a bag of sugar snap peas.  I settled on the couch with a bowl and picked through the snap peas, crisply breaking off the tops, eating some of the cleaned ones raw, and saving the rest for dinner.  Honestly, it was more like half and half.  That is one of the perks and dangers of cleaning vegetables—eating the beautiful things as you work through them.  It’s easy to suddenly have very little left for cooking.

split peas

Sugar snap peas, snow peas, and split peas are actually all the same species, Pisum sativum, different cultivars.  The two with edible pods are sugar snap peas, varietal macrocarpon, and snow peas, varietal saccharatum, both in abundance in local farmers’ markets right now.  The sugar snap pea is actually a derivative of the snow pea.  It has been grown since at least the nineteenth century, although it was known as the “butter pea” or “butter sugar pea.”  In the late seventies, it became best known by its current name, the “sugar snap pea,” after a cultivar sold by the Gallatin Valley Seed Company.

pea sprouts

The pea’s history, however, is much more ancient.  The earliest evidence of peas being eaten is as primarily as a pulse crop, or a dried legume, now marketed as the “split pea.”  The first evidence is from eight thousand years ago in Neolithic Syria, Turkey, and Jordan.  Later dated finds have been located in Egypt, then Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.  In the Middle Ages, the pea gained popularity in Europe, primarily England and France, where in later years during the 17^th and 18^th centuries, eating the green peas fresh  in the spring as opposed to dried became more common, giving the fresh spring pea the name “English pea.”  The fruit of this plant is not the only edible part.  The young tendrils of the plant, known as pea sprouts, or in Chinese as “dòu miáo,” are also incredibly delicious.

One of my favorite places to get the crisp and sweet sugar snap peas that are so perfect in the spring is from Full Belly Farm.  This duel-family owned farm occupies 200 beautiful acres in Guinda where they sustainably raise 120 different crops and keep over 20 acres of riparian habitat and California native plants.  Dru Rivers and Paul Muller began working on the rented farmland in the eighties, but when the opportunity came to purchase the farm

full belly farm

in 1989 they joined forces with Judith Redmond and her husband and Full Belly Farm, Inc. was born.  They began selling primarily wholesale, but in 1992, they began their legendary CSA while maintaining their very personal wholesale relationships with some of the most venerated restaurants in the Bay Area because after all, farming is just as much about people as it is the land and the food.  In addition to the four partners that own the farm, there are fifty full time employees, many of whom have been a part of the farm for decades.  Ten have been with the farm for ten years, and another ten have been with the farm since its establishment in 1989.  Community education is another core value of the farm, and to that end, they have an internship program which is helping to shape and inform a new generation of farmers.  They are also the hosts of the famed annual “Hoes Down” festival, an all-day festival of educational workshops, farm tours, live music, hay rides, and of course, delicious food, this year slated for October 1^st and 2^nd.  Hoes Down is not the only time to pay the farm a little visit–you can visit the farm any week at their farm stand to buy their beautiful and perfect produce, including sugar snap peas, on Fridays between the hours of 2 and 6 pm.

Few things in the world make me say, “Oh crap!” and “Yay!” at the same time.  The first arrival of fava beans in the kitchen always generated a polarized ambivalence in the cooks.  On one hand, they are delicious—especially during those first few weeks of the season when you can eat the small beans whole, pod and all.  On the other hand, they are extremely time consuming.  After a time, the bean matures, elongates, and requires a three step preparation process: 1. remove the beans from the pod; 2. blanch the beans; 3. pop each bean out of its skin.  A few handfuls of these luscious beans can take hours to prepare.  We cooks used to take back packs of fava beans home at the end of our shifts so that we could pop the beans from the pod while we had idle hands at home.  We “lovingly” (I use the term loosely) called it “fava homework.”  But they are totally worth it.  Few foods more than young fava beans—their rich and yet fresh, delicate flavor, their vibrant green color—truly capture the essence of spring time.

fava blossoms

The fava bean, known elsewhere in the world as simply the “broad bean” is a member of the Fabacae family, which also includes lentils, chickpeas, shelling beans, and soybeans.  Its genus, Vicia also includes vetch.  Bitter vetch is one of the oldest cultivated legumes, first cultivated in the early Neolithic times (9000 B.C.).  It’s cousin, the fava bean, though a smaller version than what is grown today, was foraged first in the Himalayan hills and in Afghanistan.  It late became domesticated around 7000 B.C., as evidenced by dried pods found in the archeological site of Spirit Cave in Thailand, occupied by the ancient peoples, the Hoabinhian, between 9000 B.C. and 5500 B.C.  Many ancient Egyptian and Hittite glyphs illustrate the seeds of the broad bean, dating back to 6000 B.C.

The name “fava” is derived from the Latin term “faba” which means simply “bean.”  The Egyptian name for fava is “fūl,” also “bean,” and the name for the medium-sized round ones are “fūl hammām,” meaning “bath bean.”  One of the oldest dishes recorded to have been made with favas is “fūl medames,” using the fūl hammām.   Traditionally, the coals in the bath houses of Egypt were used in the night time to cook fūl, giving fūl hammām its name.

Broad beans are also incredibly powerful for encouraging nitrogen fixation in soil, and so it is a very popular green manure, in addition to a wonderful food source.

shelled and cleaned favas

Fava beans contain certain alkaloids which can cause hemolytic anemia in certain people with the genetic disorder known as “favism.”  It is hypothesized that the condition coincides with malarial areas where fava beans were produced as a mechanism for protection against malaria.  They also contain L-dopa, a compound used to treat Parkinson’s disease.   Plus, fava beans cause sore, discolored thumbs from hours of cleaning.

More importantly, after the cleaning is over, and you have beautiful tender spring green droplets of splendor.  I love to mash them up with some Bellwether Farms ricotta, parmesan, pecorino, and sea salt, and spread that onto grilled bread.  I also love them tossed into some nice green pasta fresco with other spring vegetables.   There are these few weeks of spring when English peas are juicy before they turn starchy, sugar snap peas crisp, and the fava beans are small and perfect and can be sliced and eaten in their entirety.  Put them all together in a dish and you have perfection, absolute spring time perfection.  Enjoy this special fleeting moment of pure spring!

Last weekend, I brought a few branches of bay leaves from the Oakland hills to the kitchen where I work.  The beautiful aroma quickly filled the small room with its heady, eucalyptus-like essence which only ten minutes ago was ripe with the odor of sausage casings.  It is very common, especially on the west coast, for this type of bay leaf, commonly known as the California Bay Laurel, to be marketed and sold as the conventional spice.  In reality it is a different genus of the large family of Laurel (scientific name Laurus) trees.

cinnamon tree

The Laurel family encompasses many useful trees and shrub with both medicinal and culinary applications.  One important genus in this family is Cinnamom, which includes Camphor Laurel, and two types of trees from which the bark of the tree cinnamon is taken, Cinnamom verum and Cinnamom cassia, better known as “Ceylon cinnamon.”  Avocado (Persea americana) is also a member of this family, as is sassafras (genus Sassafras with varying species).  The two Laurels that are often confused for each other as use as bay leaves are the true bay leaf, the Bay Laurel (Laurus nobilis) and the California Bay Laurel (Umbellularia californica), sometimes called by its other names: Oregon Myrtle, Peppernut Tree, Cinnamon Bush, Spicebush, Headache Tree, California Bay, or California Laurel.

laurel forest

Bay Laurel is an evergreen, indigenous to the Mediterranean where, until roughly ten thousand years ago, there were entire forests of laurels.  When the region became drier, the laurel forests were replaced with more draught resistant trees to accommodate for the increasingly severe  conditions.  Some laurel forests still exist today, mostly in the southern mountains of Spain, north-central part of Portugal, and northern Morocco.

bay laurel

Like many herbs, it has medicinal purposes, in addition to its culinary uses.  It has been used as an astringent, diuretic, and in poultices for rashes and rheumatism.  The leaves of the Bay Laurel are shiny and slightly rounder than their Califonian relative, with slightly crinkled edges.  They are also somewhat milder in flavor in and aroma.

The California Bay Laurel has longer, thinner leaves without the crinkled edges of the true Bay Laurel.  It bears small green 2-3 cm long fruit, green with small yellow speckles when immature and purple when ripe.  The interior of the fruit looks somewhat avocado-like, and is traditionally eaten by indigenous peoples roasted or dried. The tree is native to a large area as far south as San Diego County and as far north as Douglas County, Oregon.  Tribes known to use the tree for medicinal purposes include the Cahuilla, Chumash, Pomo, Miwok, Yuki, Coos and Salinan people.  The leaves have been used to treat headaches (hence the name “headache tree”), tooth aches, rheumatism, stomach pains, colds, and congestion.  The leaves of the California Bay Laurel can be used similarly to Bay Laurels, but more sparingly due to their extremely strong flavor, and it should be noted that they have a slightly more spiced flavor than Bay Laurel.

You can find California Bay Laurels almost everywhere in Northern California—in the Oakland Hills in Juoaquin Miller Park, nestled in the redwoods of the Santa Cruz mountains, and even in the Davis greenbelt.  Happy foraging!