After several weeks away, it was a pleasure to return to the
farmers market. Each stall seemed to be
overflowing with piles of colorful peppers, squash, tomatoes,
eggplants, stone fruits, melons, apples, pears, and grapes. We were delighted to see people strolling
through the market who appeared to be discovering it for the first time. As you know, we
believe in surrendering yourself to the sensual experience of the market,
smelling, tasting, observing, and chatting with the vendors. Be gentle with
your touch, however, since, as a seventeenth-century book on orchards puts it, “bruise
none, every bruise is to fruit death.” 
Watching many visitors taste and savor without buying, we found ourselves thinking of the frank epistle to the “great variety of readers” in the First Folio of Shakespeare’s works. (The First Folio was published after Shakespeare’s death by two actors; it collects together 36 plays many of which survive in no other form.) This appeal to readers acknowledges that they will want to “read and censure” just as we eat and censure what we bring home from the market, comparing one vendor’s peach to another’s, one season’s melons to the last. But as the First Folio insists “Do so, but buy it first.”
(William Shakespeare First Folio [Public domain], via Wiki Commons)
This is as true of a tomato as it is of a Shakespeare play. Taste the samples to identify the produce you want to buy. But remember that paying customers keep the market, like the theater, afloat. The market is the opposite of the Big Box store in so many ways, giving us direct access to its wares without swaddling them in packaging and affording the luxury of buying just one tomato or peach. No need to stagger out burdened with the amounts we buy every week. For a few dollars, even an undergrad can come home with a market lunch of a single bunch of grapes, a piece of cheese, a loaf of bread, and a tomato.
This is as true of a tomato as it is of a Shakespeare play. Taste the samples to identify the produce you want to buy. But remember that paying customers keep the market, like the theater, afloat. The market is the opposite of the Big Box store in so many ways, giving us direct access to its wares without swaddling them in packaging and affording the luxury of buying just one tomato or peach. No need to stagger out burdened with the amounts we buy every week. For a few dollars, even an undergrad can come home with a market lunch of a single bunch of grapes, a piece of cheese, a loaf of bread, and a tomato.
Speaking of cheese, it’s an offering at the market that
comes and goes. In the past, we’ve been
able to buy jersey cow’s milk butter and cheese from Spring Hill, sheep and
cow's milk cheese (including ricotta) from Bellwether farms, and goat cheese
(as well as gnocchi and cheese cake) from Nicalau Farms. We haven’t seen any of these vendors at the
market in a while, presumably because they just didn’t sell enough cheese. That’s why the Winters Cheese Company is no
longer bringing their terrific cheeses to the Wednesday market. Most of these cheeses are still available at
the Davis Co-op’s carefully curated cheese counter, so do not despair. But if we want to find cheese at our farmers
market, we need to buy it.
Nicasio Creamery isn’t at the Saturday market every week,
but when they are, with their terrific assortment of cow’s milk cheeses, try
one. In this month’s Cooking Light magazine, their annual round
up of artisanal foods singles out Nicasio’s Foggy Morning as a winner: “Similar to cream cheese in texture, but in a
mind-blowingly upgraded form. Velvety
soft, cow’s milk cheese with a lingering hint of grassy tang—all wrapped up in
a thin, delicate rind.” We use this
cheese in salads and in pastas and strongly recommend it. Orland Farmstead also appears only
occasionally, but if you spot them, try their cow’s milk feta or fromage
blanc. And don’t take for granted the
one cheese vendor who is always at the Saturday market: Oakdale Cheese with their quark, gouda, and
brownies.
All of this talk of cheese reminds us that on our recent trip to Italy we ate a whole lot of mozzarella in versions of caprese salad (tomato, mozzarella, and if you are lucky, olive oil and a few leaves of basil) served at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Although at moments we vowed to abstain for a while upon our return, seeing the tomatoes and peppers at the market this week and thinking about local cheeses has led us to reboot the caprese with an eye to more color, more texture and fiber, and more flavorful cheese. So here it is. We layered slices of roasted red pepper (who can resist peppers in their one brief moment of being affordable?), and of a striped yellow heirloom tomato from Lloyd’s, then scattered on top some chopped black olives, about 1/4 cup cooked chickpeas per plate, crumbles of Cypress Grove goat cheese (from the Co-op, Nicasio's Foggy Morning or Orland Farmstead's feta would also be great), a drizzle of some basil oil we had in the fridge (the gift that keeps on giving from one huge bunch of basil from the market), and salt. While we tend to be fans of simplicity, we were ready for this zipped up California style caprese salad.
