Greenmarket Foraging: Quattro's Game Farm and Oyster Mushrooms

Having grown up in Southern California, I have no intuitive sense of when things are in season, since most things are somehow available there year-round, regardless of whether it's January or June. It's sad, but one of the steps I've taken to rectify this native ignorance is by visiting greenmarkets for seasonal goodies and asking too many questions of vendors. Cooler weather inspires a craving for rich brown flavors, whether from frying, roasting, caramelizing or braising, and an instinctive desire to fill my belly full of hearty ingredients. And when the stomach speaks, I listen. Isn't that what it means to 'follow your gut'?

Saturday at the Union Square farmer's market is always a bit frustrating due to the sheer number of people who mill around without the intention to buy anything, not unlike cows at pasture. But it's also when the most vendors come out, making the weekly trip down to Manhattan. One of these weekly stands is Quattro's Game Farm, a poultry farm up in Dutchess County; a quick stop and I walked away with 1/4 of baby chicken. Ginormous wild oyster mushrooms, which sprout abundantly on tree trunks starting the early autumn, were everywhere, and screamed for a saute with butter and salt (and maybe a bit of liquified chicken fat, too, if for some reason you happen to have it sitting in front of you).

It was dinner for one, so I decided on an easy, one-pot dish. I cooked the chicken with olive oil, pimenton (apparently Mark Bittman's favorite spice, and maybe yours as well if chorizo is your favorite sausage), salt, and pepper. The meat was shiny with bird juices, and the dusting of pimenton lent beautiful color and a smoky sweetness. Farm-raised chicken is firmer, chewier, and yet more tender than its industrial counterpart, with the felicitous side benefit that the skin also crisps up better (I'll have to ask why on my next visit), and was so crunchy I was reminded of chicharron (deep-fried pork rind), my favorite 'chip'.

Dump the chicken into hot olive oil, sear thoroughly on all sides (tip: if the skin sticks, it's not crispy enough) till a nice crust forms, half cover the pot with slightly lowered heat, and less than 20 minutes later, a filling start to hibernation mode.

Mid-Atlantic Eating: Baltimore Pit Beef at Chap's BBQ

It's not true what people say, that eating in the parking lot of a gentleman's club makes food taste better. Maybe this theory has resonated as strongly with you as it did with me... and for the same vulgar reasons. So imagine my googly eyes when GPS led us right to a sign advertising the next Miss Nude Baltimore competition.

Baltimore, as a kinda southern city, has its own version of bbq called pit beef. It's not "real" bbq, in the smoked, sauced, or rubbed way that other places do bbq. If you're a fan of 'The Wire', as every truly thinking up there person is, this dysfunctionality will strike you as oddly correct. Pit beef, similar in taste and appearance to roast beef, is beef round steak, grilled rare, left unsmoked, and thinly sliced like deli meat. It's typically served on a Kaiser roll, then pungently piled with raw white onion and tons of raw horseradish. I really don't care for horseradish, but it didn't seem fair to eat pit beef the wrong way: the artistic integrity of every sandwich deserves respect, on principle.

Sandwiches are always worth eating (another principle), but this one was a bit plain somehow, even with the heartburn-inducing toppings. In bland roast beef tradition, it was badly in need of salt and rather flat in flavor. Even the "tiger sauce" (watery sour cream loaded with horseradish) didn't make it taste like much. So I only ate one.