Love is Love
Sharing a Lakeview rainbow (from 2017) to salute today’s Chicago Pride Parade.
Man About Town About Food
I hit two farmers markets and a great sandwich popup on Saturday. It was for this newsletter story, so yes, it counts as work.
My first stop was at Green City Market in Lincoln Park. The first stand that I visited was that of Iron Creek Organic Farm (LaPorte, Indiana), and they not only had the super-sweet Sungold tomatoes on the left, which I expected, but perhaps the earliest peaches I’ve seen in these parts.
I am overloaded with berries and cherries, so I passed on the peaches for this week, but it’s great to know they’re on their way.
The main reason Green City was on my Saturday agenda was to check in with Jerry Boone of Froggy Meadow Farm (Beloit, Wisconsin). As Local Food Forum has reported, Jerry is facing a critical situation because a long drought sapped the water resources on his small vegetable farm. He already has lost all of his spring crops and was at risk of losing a whole year of work.
But a group of leading chefs to whom Jerry sells his artisan produce rose to the rescue, launching a GoFundMe campaign that within just a few days has raised most (but not all) of the money Jerry needs to cover the installation of a much deeper well, a pump house and electrical equipment.
With your help, this campaign will get over the goal line. Please click the button below to make a donation.
Jerry is known for his unique and sometimes exotic varieties of produce. Though he didn’t have much out on his table yesterday given his difficult circumstances, he did have something I’d never seen before. Shungiku (which Jerry is holding in the photo above) is an edible chrysanthemum, the leaves and flowers of which are known well in Japanese and Korean cuisine.
According to the Organic Gardener site:
Eat the strongly aromatic leaves and stems as a vegetable. Steam, blanch or boil in a tiny amount of water and serve with a little soy sauce and sesame oil. Don’t over cook as this makes them bitter. In Japan, shungiku leaves are an important ingredient in one pot beef and fish dishes. If they are to be used on their own they are usually dipped briefly into boiling water and then plunged into cold water to maintain the green colour. In Korea, the leaves are used with strongly flavoured fish to neutralise the flavour and in China, they are added to soups and stir-fries. The Vietnamese use the leaves in chicken, pork and beef dishes and fried as a vegetable. Fresh young leaves are high in antioxidents and carotene in particular. They are a piquant ingredient in leafy salads. Sprouted seeds are also eaten in salads or as a snack. Flower petals are also edible and in Japan, they are used either fresh or dried in salads, with fish, and in soups and pickles.
So now you know.
I also made a stop at The Lincoln Park Farmers Market, which over the past couple of years as been revived from near extinction by market manager Elsa Jacobson. Elsa told me that the market, one of the longest running in Chicago, is up to 33 vendors (from a low point of five during its slump).
I somehow managed to forget to take any photos there 🙄, but my combined market haul was (from Green City), the shungiku from Froggy Meadow Farm, Sungold tomatoes from Iron Creek, and strawberries from Eliis Family Farms (Benton Harbor, Michigan) and (from The Lincoln Park Farmers Market) raspberries and snow peas from Noffke Family Farms (Coloma, Michigan), cherries from Stover’s Farm Market (Berrien Springs, Michigan), asparagus and spring onions from Los Rodriguez Farm (Eau Claire, Michigan), pork sirloin from Cut Once (Chicago), and thick Greek yogurt from Aleka’s Kitchen (Sheboygan, Wisconsin).
To cap my morning adventures, I trekked (by bus) to Publican Quality Bread (PQB) in the West Town neighborhood for “Greg Wade and Rob Levitt’s Super Delicious, Super Fun, Super Italian Deli Pop-Up.”
I like a good sandwich but the lure of this event was the opportunity to see, even briefly, my two longtime friends who were busy constructing their masterpieces in the photo above.
Rob Levitt, in the plaid shirt, is head chef and butcher at Publican Quality Meats (PQM) in the Fulton Market District and holds stature as one of Chicago’s leading meat vendors. Greg Wade, in white, is head baker for Publican Quality Bread, which opened its own brick and mortar bakery and store at Grand Ave. and Wood St. last year.
The sandwich pop-up came at the end of a week in which it was revealed that Rob has a cameo of Season 2 of the Hulu series The Bear, set in a fictional Chicago restaurant. PQM and PQB are both own by the One Off Hospitality Group; co-founder/partner Donnie Madia and Dylan Patel, chef de cuisine at the group’s Avec restaurant, also make guest appearances on the show.
Greg is a celebrity in his own right, having received the 2019 James Beard Foundation Award as the nation’s best baker. Greg is the author of the baking book Bread Head, which the PQB site describes as “a groovy master class in healthy, sustainable, naturally delicious breads from a star of the new bread renaissance.”
I bought a lonza sandwich with herbes de Provence and mushroom conserva. The lonza — produced by Rob, a master of charcuterie — is a roasted pork loin that is cured and air-dried. I warmed the sandwich when I got home, and it was superb.
The event took place in a garage just down the block from the PQB shop. The place draws a line out the door on Saturday mornings, but I waited to purchase one of Greg’s seeded rye breads and crackers completely coats with seeds, one of my favorite snacks. It’s a little off the beaten path, but definitely worth a visit.
Chillin’ Out? Tune into Our Podcast
Just a reminder that Episode 4 of the Local Food Rules podcast was posted Saturday. Its main focus is on the extraordinary generosity and inclusiveness of our region’s local food community highlighted by:
The fundraising drives to help Jerry Boone of Froggy Meadow Farm, who lost all of his spring crops to a drought-driven water shortage, and Stephanie Dunn of Star Farm Chicago, whose innovative urban ag project lost important equipment and collateral in a fire.
NĀTIFS.org (North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems), whose founder, Sean Sherman (aka The Sioux Chef), is receiving the annual award from the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts.
The Abundance Setting, a chef-driven non-profit that works to improve working conditions in the culinary industry for women and especially for mothers.
The Conservation Fund, which is buying farmland and leasing it to small farmers with an option to buy (addressing the high cost of land, a major obstacle to new and beginning farmers).
Frontera Farmer Foundation, founded by Chicago Chef Rick Bayless, which over the past two decades has given outright grants to small farmers totaling more than $3 million.
And on the lighter side, showing some bialy love to Zeitlin's Delicatessen, and the first in our "No Shit, Sherlock" mystery series (just kidding), titled the Case of the Purloined Compost Bucket.
Rabbit Nightlife
Smartphone photography sure has come a long way. I was on my way home on Hawthorne Terrace after dark a few days ago, noticed small movement on one of the lawns, and realized it was this rabbit, either having a late dinner or early midnight snack.
This may look like it was taken with a flash, which would have been rude and most likely caused the rabbit to flee in terror. Rather, it was taken with the low-light feature on my iPhone 13 Pro Max. You have to hold the camera very still for a few seconds of processing, but the results are often pretty amazing.