Buongiorno. Thanks to the 50 of you who participated in our Sunday dinner: that was inspired. Now please post your recipes in the forum. Grazie!
At the market the first sweet berries are showing up: raspberries, still-slightly-sour blackberries, and tayberries (see above). These Scottish raspberry and blackberry hybrids are a potent, juicy
mix of the two flavors, with the size of a blackberry and the color of a raspberry. We're still devouring a flat of Albion strawberries at an alarming rate, but tayberries are next on the menu. When fresh-picked they're still a little sour, but they should get sweeter after a couple of days at room temperature. I say it's time to get those 3-berry tarts in the oven.
Here's what else I liked this week at the San Francisco Heart of the City farmers market:
My favorite tomato farm is back: certified organic 2 Dog Farms. We still have two months to go until their exceptional dry-farmed Early Girls, but meanwhile, they've got spinach for $1.50/bag, salad mixes at $4/lb, and lovely sunflowers to brighten up our San Francisco pseudo-summer days.
Organic blackberries and raspberries have arrived alongside Albion strawberries. I'll trade you fresh duck-egg pasta for a three berry tart. Just post it in the forums. Any takers?

For you dedicated fans of Vietnamese cooking, there's a new herb stand that sells a thorough range of fresh herbs from around the globe: thyme, marjoram, three kinds of basil, dill, cilantro, an impressive range of mints, lemongrass, pennyworth, sorrel and shiso. Finally you can make those wonderful Vietnamese spring rolls at home. The pesto I made with his sweet purple basil won an encore at our Memorial Day lunch.
Summer squash for all your cooking needs, from very mild and floral to strong and herbaceous: Ronde de Nice, Romanesco, Crookneck and the just-waiting-to-be-stuffed flowers. At our Sunday CH&N event, Samsara's mom made deep-fried flowers stuffed with goat cheese using flowers picked from her garden that morning ... I can't get them out of my head. Recipe, please!


For our Sunday event, I made a duck ragú and farm-fresh duck-egg pasta. Recently I met a woman who rescues ducks, hens and quails, and sells me their eggs. Duck eggs are perfect for pasta, with a slightly higher protein content and a larger yolk yielding a toothsome, more richly colored dough. It was too hard for my pro Kitchen Aid 600 Watt mixer to handle, so I had to knead it by hand, but the results were well worth the trouble.
These are the pasta sheets drying out before rolling to make the pappardelle (ribbons).
Since I wanted a wider pasta than a fettuccine, I rolled the sheets and sliced them to my desired width to make pappardelle: a wide pasta that can hold more of the ragú sauce in every bite. This photo is about life-size:
Here's the final product: about 2 lbs. of golden ribbons ready to be cooked. They can also be refrigerated and cooked the next day. In Beverly Hills, there's a restaurant that fills reservations a month in advance for meals featuring duck-egg pasta - but with duck eggs from the Alemany Market and a little brute force, you can make it at home anytime.
Enjoy!
Marco Flavio