Ballard Farmer's Market 1

So we're not in a CSA currently, but we've been getting most of our groceries from the Ballard Farmer's Market so I figure I'll do a series of posts on that.

One of the things I've been gorging on has been garlic scapes. This time around I bought a bunch for about $2 and a bunch of dill and made Pickled Garlic Scapes. Basically just a cold/non-fermented dill pickle recipe subbing garlic scapes instead of cucumbers. I'll open the first jar in a week and try them out.

I picked up a full pork belly from Sea Breeze Farm over on Vashon Island. Plan is half pancetta, half maple bacon. I'll get some photos up soon as I find someone who sells 2 gallon ziplocks. The belly is a beast, near 10lbs, and very thick compared to a factory hog. They also sell raw, whole cow's milk which M turned into yogurt, as well as pate and cheeses.

By far my favorite stall is Foraged And Found Edibles. The team there go out during the week and scour the state for mushrooms and wild veggies. This week was King Boletes and Seabeans, last week was Morels, King Boletes, Miner's Lettuce, Elderflowers and Saskatoon Berries. We've been really into the King Boletes. They're great grilled. Last night M cooked up halibut fillets with a king bolete cream sauce and seabean salad. Awesome!

Quilceda Farm sells goat meat and raw goat milk, so I picked up a half gallon to make chevre with. It became an interesting experiment. I wanted to see if the yogurt maker would hold the right temperature for the cheese to set at overnight. So I put half the milk, inoculated with a chevre direct set culture, in the yogurt maker and the other half in a pot left on the stove. We were looking for it to hold more or less 72 degrees for 12-15 hours. The results were quite interesting.

The pot left out on the stove set up perfectly.

The yogurt maker was a disaster. My guess is that it held roughly 98 degrees. I thought that it was a total loss.

Until I poured off the whey. To my surprise, the yogurt maker apparently has hot spots and creates a sortof convection current. The result was these weird little cheese mushrooms! I left them to drain, then salted them. The result is like a very young unbrined feta. I've been snacking on them and crumbling them on salads.

The chevre in the pot was poured into chevre molds and left to drain for two days. By the end they were not quite dry enough, but were starting to smell a bit, so I salted them and rolled the edges in black pepper and herbs de provence. After a day in the fridge they dried a bit more and were delicious. Not bad for a first try. Great spread on toast with some jam. Next time I'll salt them after a day and then leave them to dry for another day.

This week I cheated and picked up some chevre from the masters: Port Madison Farms. (Warning: cute photos of baby goats).

Otherwise the haul this week was: a whole chicken, eggs, those weird striped beets, fresh lima beans, rainbow chard, yellow carrots, king boletes, seabeans, halibut, chevre, and my weekly bottle of kombucha. Plan is roast chicken with beets/carrots/potatoes/mushrooms, then use the carcass for soup with the beet and carrot tops, maybe some mushrooms, etc.