skud

Mirrored from The OEconomist. You can comment there or here.

It’s a while since I did one of these, but today was my first Saturday market trip since moving back to the Preston Market area, and I got so much good stuff I wanted to post pics.

Clockwise from lower left: figs, free range eggs, biscotti, cauliflower, salad onions, zucchini, polenta, whole wheat bulgur, cherries, tomatoes, parsley, silverbeet (chard), salad mix, nectarines, baby potatoes, and cheese (maasdam and caprakaas). Not shown: spring onions, whole nutmeg, whole allspice.

It’s the first time I’ve seen decent looking stone fruit in the market, though it’s still early days. These truss tomatoes were $5.99/kg and I saw other decent-looking cooking tomatoes around $3… when they come down to $2 I’ll buy boxfuls of them and make sauce. The potatoes were 79c/kg and should be lovely. Zucchini was… was it $1 a kilo or $2? Either way, worth it. Cauliflower was $1.50 a head. This is why I love Preston Markets on a Saturday afternoon: they’re closed Sunday-Monday-Tuesday so everything is going cheap.

Plans:

• Figs: carrot cake! I tried to make my favourite “dwarf bread” carrot cake a couple of weeks ago and the new oven just didn’t want to work with me, so I’m going to try again.
• Cauliflower: baked, with parmesan and breadcrumbs (recipe)
• Potatoes: housemate says she’ll make potato salad, which was exactly what I was hoping for.
• Tomatoes, bulgur, parsley: tabbouleh
• Silverbeet: with tomatoes and cannelini beans, over cheesey polenta

And a quick tabbouleh recipe, for the record. This is what we had for dinner tonight.

• 1/2 cup whole wheat tabbouleh, soaked in 1 cup boiling water with a pinch of salt, until chewy
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• juice of 1 lemon
• slosh of olive oil
• 2 tomatoes, seeds removed then diced
• scant 1/4 cup finely chopped salad onion
• 1/2 a large bunch of parsley, chopped
• pepper and salt to taste

Mix everything together and let it sit for 15 minutes or so for the flavours to blend. Serve with whatever mediterranean things take your fancy. In our case, we had lebanese bread, hummus, and feta cheese.

Related recipes:

• Herbed couscous with chickpeas and baked sweet potato