And sometimes you don’t. An idea for dinner, that is. It sounds odd, coming when the fields of the midwest are at their most bountiful, producing innumerable varieties of colorful, ripe produce. Mother Nature is providing to her fullest.

But Mother Nature threw us a curveball this week, in the form of 90ºF+ day after 90ºF+ day. Consequently, the Magic Chef, usually my ally in turning the weekly farmers market haul into various kinds of delicious, has become my bitter enemy and I avoid turning him on at all costs. Indeed, I absolutely refuse to give the Magic Chef the time of day. But there are still the vegetables sitting in the crisper drawer, begging for some transformation that I feel powerless to effect as Martha and I stew in our air-conditioningless apartment.

While the Magic Chef has betrayed me with his apartment-heating ways, a steadfast friend — one that stands by me in hot and cold — stepped to the fore: my Benrinner Mandoline. Even though I spend a lot of time cooking, I am really not much of a kitchen gadget person — you’ll rarely see me endorsing gear on this blog. That said, everybody should have a mandoline. Its uses are many, not least among them when you’re completely out of ideas for dinner you can pull out all your vegetables and just start slicing. Shredded purple cabbage? Beautiful! Fine julienne of carrots? Not if I don’t get to do radishes too! Green peppers? Well, I don’t really like them raw, but slice them thin enough and who can tell the difference? As my salad bowl began to fill, an idea started to form in my mind.

A purple cabbage, a half onion, a green pepper, several carrots, a couple of radishes and an ear of corn later I decided this was going to be a vaguely Asian salad, so I set about putting together a dressing of garlic, ginger, peanut sauce (in fact left over ají de mani from last week), soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and olive oil. Six tomatoes withering in the heat on the counter made a natural vessel for the salad, just as their pulp was a nice addition to the vegetable roster. To top it off, I happened to have some five-spice pork aspic sitting in the fridge from bánh mì — the kind of thing you save because you should but have no idea what you’re going to do with.

And that’s the great thing about no ideas — sometimes they turn into something else.

Another week, another trip to the farmers market, another six ears of sweet corn. Maybe you’re one of those stolid types that needn’t go beyond the perfection of an ear of fresh corn, boiled and slathered in butter, salt and pepper, but after a few weeks of that routine I’m ready for a change of pace. Now you might suggest I go a week without buying corn, but with a season that lasts only six or so short weeks and a longing that builds up over an entire year, that would just be wrong. But where to find fresh ideas for consuming fresh corn — that was the question.

As a Midwesterner, corn forms a small part of my cultural DNA, but there are other foods that equal or surpass it in significance. For the indigenous people of Mexico, corn played (and continues to play) a much more central role, taking on religious significance. Who better to turn to for corn advice, then? Tamales are one of the more famous corn-based foods of Mexico, but the tamales most of us are familiar with used dried corn. In the state of Michoacán, however, they make uchepos, which are made like tamales but use the husks and kernels of fresh corn. These sweet tamales, complemented by a spicy salsa, are the perfect answer to the midsummer sweet corn doldrums.

Uchepos

Adapted from Diana Kennedy, The Art of Mexican Cooking: Traditional Mexican Cooking for Aficionados (New York: Clarkson Potter, 2008).

• Husks from 5 ears of corn
• Kernels from 5 ears of corn (about 5 cups)
• 2 T sugar
• 2 T unsalted butter, softened
• 2 T sour cream (original recipe calls for natas, creme fraîche or thick cream, but I used what I had)
• 1 t sea salt

The easiest way to prepare the corn for this recipe is to cut through the unhusked corn at its thickest part — just above the base — and then carefully roll off the husks in sheets. This also gives you a nice flat base to stand the corn up as you slice off the kernels.

Line a steamer basket with any husks that are too small to roll uchepos from; set steamer over low heat.

Process half the corn in a food processor until reduced to a pulp. Add the rest of the corn and process until corn forms a loose puree. Add sugar, butter and cream and process to combine. Transfer to medium bowl and stir in salt.

Taking one husk at a time, place a heaping tablespoon of corn mixture near the center.

Fold the sides of the husk together so they overlap and enclose the filling.

Fold the thin, tapered end of this cone up over the uchepo to close the bottom. The top will remain open.

Lay horizontally in lined steamer basket.

Continue doing folding uchepos until a layer covers the bottom of the steamer basket. Place in steamer and cook ten minutes, until just beginning to firm up. Remove steamer basket and fold the remainder of the uchepos, adding them in horizontal layers. When all the uchepos are prepared, place a towel over top of them inside the steamer, then cover the steamer with plastic wrap and place the lid on top. Steam 1 ½ to 1 ¾ hours, until the filling is pretty firm.

Serve uchepos hot with salsa and sour cream.

When I travel — which happens far too infrequently for my taste — I focus on the food. That’s probably not surprising. The problem with falling in love with the food of a place that, due to a lack of funds or time I won’t be visiting again in the near future, is the cravings. Sometimes after barely a week has passed I’m already desperate to be back where I was eating those foods I just can’t get in Minnesota. My coping mechanism is cooking: when the appetites first awakened by travel arise again instead of buying a plane ticket I head to my kitchen and do my best to recreate those foreign flavors at home.

It’s been a year since Martha and I traveled to Colombia and discovered the magic of Empanadas de Pipián. I’ve eaten plenty of empanadas in my life, many in restaurants in in Minnesota, but none like these. Empanadas de pipián have two distinguishing characteristics: first, the texture of their shell. Nobody would ever compare empanadas de pipián to Cornish (or Upper Peninsular) pasties; empanadas de pipián have a crisp, crunchy shell, reminiscent of a hard taco but slightly more yielding. The other unique characteristic of empanadas de pipián is their flavor: peanuts. While some empanadas may feature meat, or olives, or a medley of any number of ingredients, empanadas de pipián taste like peanuts. In a good way. A uniquely Colombian treat.

When a Colombian food jones strikes, the first reference I consult is the brown notebook I transcribed during afternoons and evenings spent in Martha’s Aunt Stella’s kitchen in Cali, Colombia as she prepared the family’s meal and put up with my persistent questions about her technique and ingredients. Stella is my sage for many Colombian foods.

As a resident of Cali, however, Aunt Stella has easy access to the nationally-renowned empanadas fried up at El Zaguán de San Antonio. Being able to drive 15 minutes to eat some of the best empanadas in town (in the whole world, in fact), she didn’t have much reason to make them at home while we were there. So the brown notebook had no recipe for me.

Where the brown notebook fails, the the two volume Nuevo Gran Libro de la Cocina Colombiana (originally published by Círculo de Lectores in 1983 and reissued by Intermedio in 2008) that I bought in Cali usually has some guidance. This cookbook covers a great variety of Colombian dishes, from soups to desserts, and does a good job of treating the regions of Colombia, even in its brief form. The photos are beautiful. But while it contains several recipes for empanadas, El Gran Libro was silent on the subject of those of pipián.

With first-hand experience coming up blank and my published reference of no help either, I had to turn to my absolute last resort when it comes to cooking: the Internet. That might sound odd coming from a food blogger, but my experience of Internet recipes largely mirrors that of grumbling old-media editors: there’s a lot of crap to sift through (all the recipes I post on marthaandtom.com are perfect, of course). There are a few websites whose recipes I will trust outright, but for the most part searching the web for recipes requires sifting through several versions on various websites and then applying a little common sense and experience to try to get something workable. A search turned up several recipes which I used as to develop a recipe for my empanadas (there was a spreadsheet involved, but I’ll spare you).

Empanadas de Pipián

You’ll need:

• 624 g (eh, call it a pound) potatoes, cut into a small dice

Note on potatoes: In Colombia, potatoes are a science unto themselves; there were more varieties of potatoes in the supermarket than I could even begin to wrap my head around. Small potatoes, large potatoes, red potatoes, blue potatoes, purple potatoes; there were even unwashed potatoes with the dirt still on (to be washed at home — some people like them that way). Taking a survey of the entire country would yield even more variety. And all of these potatoes have their specified uses; without a doubt there is some canonical potato for pipián. In the United States though, potatoes is more or less potatoes and we’ve got to take what we can get. I used white potatoes from the Midtown Farmers Market.

• 212 g (~3/4 c) hogao

Hogao is an ingredient in many, many Colombian dishes. In its simplest form — this is how Stella taught me to make it — it is a mixture of chopped onions and tomatoes, cooked to a puree-like consistency. More complicated versions exist; I personally couldn’t resist throwing in some garlic. I took 356 g roughly chopped tomatoes, mixed them with 156 g roughly chopped onion and 12 g (2 cloves) minced garlic and cooked it to the right consistency: maybe ten minutes over medium heat.

• 78 g peanut butter, melted

This probably leaves authenticity purists even more disturbed than the potatoes, but all the recipes call for roasted and ground peanuts (peanuts being the defining characteristic of Pipián); peanut butter saves several steps. I’m not talking about Jif here — our jar of Salt-Free Eastwind Peanut Butter’s ingredient list reads as follows: “Roasted Peanuts.” But Jif would probably be fine too.

• 1 T achiote

To make the Pipián, place the diced potatoes in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Add plenty of salt. Bring to a boil and simmer until the potatoes are just tender; it won’t take long if you’ve diced them small enough. When the potatoes are cooked, drain them well, then mix with the other three ingredients until everything is evenly distributed.

With the filling under control, the next step is to make the wrapper. Empanadas de pipián feature a yellow-corn based masa, for which I used the bag of P.A.N. Harina de Maiz Amarilla Precocida that we brought with us from Colombia. At the time we thought it would be impossible to get in the States and that we’d be out of luck if we needed our empanada fix. Happily, I’ve noticed this product available in many Latin American markets and even Latin American sections of supermarkets, so there is no obstacle between you and perfectly crunchy empanadas.

I followed the instructions on the package, adding a bit of salt to a cup of water, then stirring in a cup of corn flour. It is important to let the dough rest 15-30 minutes to hydrate fully; the dough will be too wet when it’s first mixed; the water hasn’t been fully absorbed by the corn.

When the dough is sufficiently hydrated, it should be divided into balls. I pinched off a ball I thought looked to be the right size and measured it at 34 g; in retrospect these were probably a little too big. But the bigger you make them the fewer empanadas you’ll have to fold together, so it’s worth considering. Anyway, there’s no agreed upon size for empanadas de pipián; in Colombia we sampled some that were little more than folded over tortilla chips, and others that were much more substantial.

Once you’ve completed your ball size deliberations, you’re ready to form the empanadas. The easiest way to do this is with two sheets of plastic — a zipper-lock bag torn asunder, say. Place one ball between the sheets of plastic, flatten it slightly, then roll it out into an even circle using a rolling pin. Remove the top plastic sheet, place a tablespoon or so of filling in the middle of the dough circle, then fold the bottom plastic sheet over itself to close the empanada, pressing the edges to seal them. Carefully peel back the plastic and flip the empanada onto a cornmealed, floured, cornstarched, or otherwise nonstickified sheet. Continue until you run out of dough, filling, or patience.

Heat deep frying oil to 350ºF (you’ll have to use your own judgment on how much oil to use; in my pan 2 quarts made sense). Fry the empanadas in batches of 4 or 5. They are done when they start to develop dark brown spots, which should occur just as your oil recovers to 350ºF, ready for the next batch.

Let the empanadas cool a little (OR THEY WILL BURN YOUR MOUTH) but not too long — they are best fresh. Serve with ají de maní, preferably applied to each bite from a red squeeze bottle.

Ají de Maní

To be honest I wasn’t totally happy with the way this sauce came out; the addition of cilantro (an idea I got from that darn Internet) didn’t do much for the sauce. The basic idea here is a spicy sauce tasting of peanuts with a thin consistency.

• 96 g peanut butter
• 156 g hogao (should probably use much less, but I wanted to use up what I made for the pipián)
• 10 g (1 small) hot pepper
• 10 g (2 cloves) garlic
• 6 g (largish handful) cilantro
• 162 g water
• a pinch of freshly-ground cumin

Process all ingredients in a blender until smooth.

The Midtown Farmers Market has so many great prepared food vendors this year: some old stalwarts, some newcomers, but always enough to offer a lively and interesting blend of ready to eat food for at market consumption. Local media have taken notice too; it seems every week there’s a new story on a vendor who sells at Midtown: The Magic Bus Cafe in Minnesota Monthly, Dandelion Kitchen in the City Pages, or the Heavy Table’s roundup of five flavors of Midtown.

While the latter piece was interesting in its own right, what really got my attention was the comments; particularly, those by Brian Ames of Ames Farm questioning how big a role non-producer vendors should play in a market. Or rather answering, “a heavy ratio of immediately consumable foods (ICF’s) to growers/producers at farmers markets is detrimental to farmers and growers in my view.” He goes on to argue that sales made to ICFs take dollars that could be going to farmers/producers.

Two years ago, when I started shopping at Midtown — the first farmers market I’ve regularly shopped at — I would have been on the same page with Mr. Ames when it comes to non-grower vendors; let the yuppies get their coffee and tamales, I was there to buy produce. Over the course of the past couple of years, though, I’ve come to appreciate — and befriend — sellers of ICFs. As some of the comments in response to Ames point out, they are part of a symbiotic relationship with the growers that helps to produce a farmers market experience that is unique — not just another grocery store.

In spite of the important role played by the food trucks, tents and taxis, I agree with Ames in as much as whatever other amenities they offer, a farmers market should be primarily about the farmers. Last year I made a serious effort to highlight the farmers — or at least their fruits — on this blog with weekly posts featuring the farmers market haul. I’ve cut back on those this year since it got a little boring for me (and perhaps for you?). But don’t take my silence to mean the farmers of Midtown aren’t weekly providing delicious produce; they continue to keep my basket and eventually my belly full of locally grown vegetables.

One producer I’ve been especially happy with is new this year: Gardens of Eagan. My love affair started when, on the first market day when all I was expecting was opening festivities and canned goods, they had a table full of strawberries. Not just any strawberries, either, but strawberries that were the sweetest I had ever tasted: ideal strawberries. I rode that wave for the month or so it lasted, and have also enjoyed various interesting lettuces and kale from the Gardens. Then last week, as I was in line to buy tomatoes (some of the first of the year), Gardens of Eagan’s Jennifer Nelson insisted I try a sample of their watermelon. Here again, the same experience as with the strawberries; I was tasting a fruit like no other I had tasted before, but that tasted like the fruit should taste. I hadn’t planned to buy a watermelon this week, and didn’t really have a solid plan for carrying it home on my bike, but after that one bite of perfect watermelon I didn’t have much choice but to buy one.

Midtown vendors have also been quick to supply the season’s first sweet corn: I bought half a dozen ears from Pflaum Farms two weeks ago, and last week tried the corn grown by Carmen of Peter’s Pumpkins and Carmen’s Corn. It’s still a little early for sweet corn — the flavor is not quite at its peak – but after enduring a whole winter with nothing but the frozen stuff, all these ears were welcome relief.

And of course beyond the sexy fruit, tomatoes and corn there is the regular mid-summer stuff like potatoes, summer squash, eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, herbs, lettuces, greens, onions; basically any vegetable that grows in this climate is growing now. This is the best time to shop at the farmers market: no mania or cult-like commitment required — the vegetables sell themselves. And, what’s more, you can also get a great breakfast from one of the many sellers of immediately consumable foods!

Maybe it’s because of the name — chanterelle — that I always assumed these wild mushrooms were exclusively a California thing. Surely such a frou frou term couldn’t describe anything growing in the meat-and-potatoes midwest, where you might more expect something hardier, say a beefsteak (which, incidentally, doesn’t seem to grow in the Midwest. But I digress). My brother Mike, who lives in California, basically assumed the same, until a week ago when, while wandering the family land in northern lower Michigan, he happened upon a handful of the unmistakable orange fungi. As soon as Martha and I got wind of his discovery, the three of us headed back out into the woods and the hunt was on.

While not a party to the fungiphobia that so infects most of our country (and about half of my family), my wild mushroom gathering experience is limited to the mighty morel, a mushroom which — even when plentiful — does a good job of disguising itself on the forest floor. I am convinced that it is in fact invisible to the direct line of sight, appearing only in one’s peripheral vision. What a relief to hunt the chanterelle, then, which is not nearly so cagey; its bright orange yellow stands in strong contrast to the forest around it. Provided there actually are chanterelles where one is looking, there’s little risk of not seeing them.

And chanterelles there were. We must have hit their seasonal peak (our mushroom guide unhelpfully identified the season for chanterelles as “summer and fall”) because it seemed like every 15 feet or so we would walk on the hill crest, someone would spot a new group of the golden mushrooms poking through the ferns and grass. Mike — the experienced mycologist in the group — soon developed a theory that the chanterelles were somehow connected to maple trees. I remained a little dubious, largely due to my inability to consistently identify said trees (yes, I have trouble identifying maple trees).

Whether or not we cracked the code of chanterelle growth, we sure found a bunch of them. There was no scale available, but the bag I was carrying felt like it contained two, maybe even three, pounds of mushrooms.

Dumping that bag on to the kitchen table, the most impressive thing beyond the sheer quantity of fungus was the aroma: it was as if someone had cut open an apricot right under our noses. Mike said this aroma is not as strong in the California chanterelles he has found; this being my first chanterelle experience, I couldn’t make comparisons, but I did find the aroma striking for its pleasantness — none of the mustiness I usually associate with wild mushrooms.

Given my inexperience, I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with our chanterelle bonanza in the kitchen. We decided on two approaches: the larger chanterelles would be sliced and grilled, while the smaller ones would be quartered or kept whole and sauteed with olive oil, garlic, and chicken broth to make a kind of mushroom sauce/side dish.

But before any of that could be attempted, the chanterelles would need to be cleaned. The fluted gills running up the sides of these mushrooms are adept at catching dirt, and the bases of their stems won’t ever shed it no matter how much you wash. Mike showed us a technique for getting the bases of the stems clean, using a paring knife to shave off the layers of dirt.

The chanterelles were fun to cook with; their meaty, solid stems were firm under my knife, not delicate in the way of hollow-stemmed morels (note: if your morel doesn’t have a hollow stem, you might just have a verpa. Don’t eat it.) In spite of  the vast quantities of liquid the mushrooms gave up as they cooked — liquid which frustrated my plans to brown the mushrooms and deglaze with chicken broth — they remained substantial in the finished dishes, only a little diminished in size. Their flavor was like their smell, hinting of apricots but with a unique woodland taste. Both the grilled and sauteed chanterelles made perfect accompaniments for venison harvested from the same land by my other brother, Kevin.

I’m sure the presence of wild chanterelles in the forests of the upper midwest is old news to the seasoned foragers out there, but for a greenhorn like myself the discovery was pretty exciting: a new bounty to harvest from the woods! Now I just need to find some good mushrooming land in Minnesota.

Perhaps you hadn’t noticed, but I haven’t been posting much lately. This is mostly for positive reasons: fun and interesting social engagements, steadily progressing training runs in anticipation of a marathon in October, excellent meals eaten outside the home, all working together to spare you of my culinary musings.

Related to the aforementioned activities or not, I’ve also been feeling a little blah about cooking lately. I’m still putting food on the table most nights, but it has mostly seemed pretty automatic — nothing quite interesting or delicious enough to share. I was uninspired.

Inspiration, happily and frustratingly, comes at unexpected times. So it was this afternoon, in a moment of distraction from the tasks at hand, I allowed my RSS reader to direct me over to the latest post on our friend Brett’s blog Trout Caviar: Grilling the Market. Whether it was the picture of a beautifully charred carrot or Brett’s call for simplicity in summer preparations, something about his post got my wheels spinning again.

My mind jumped immediately to dinner, where suddenly a pasta with some kind of onion, summer squash and cream sauce — most definitely blah food — started to take on a more interesting character. For one thing, pasta was out: no need for imported starch when a bowlful of market new potatoes sat underutilized on the counter.

The summer’s first squash could still be used, accompanied by some of its first carrots. Given our current urban living situation, grilling was not a possibility; luckily, roasting can also develop those deeply browned surfaces I was after. A quick dressing with olive oil, vinegar, market parsley and garlic, and plenty of salt and pepper was all that was needed to showcase the best of the season.

I read fifty to one hundred food-related blog posts in any given day; most of them are discarded with the spin of a scroll wheel. Sometimes though a post comes along like Brett’s that changes what I’m doing in the kitchen — and even my outlook on this blog. It’s enough to inspire someone to write a post.

Roasted Summer Vegetable Salad

• 1# golf-ball sized potatoes
• 5 or 6 small summer squash
• 10-12 small carrots
• 3 small onions, sliced
• 2 T butter
• 1/2# flavorful sausage, cooked and sliced
• 4 oz goat cheese

Dressing

• 1/3 c olive oil
• 2 T apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup parsley leaves, minced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 450ºF.

Cut the potatoes in half and place in large microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high for 8 minutes, until starting to become tender. Toss potatoes — careful, they’re hot! — in ample quantities of olive oil, salt and pepper. Don’t wash the bowl just yet. Arrange the potatoes on a sheet pan, cut-side down. Roast 20-30 minutes, until cut-sides are deep brown, just about to burn.

Meanwhile, cut the squash into 1″ chunks and place them in the bowl you tossed the potatoes in. If your carrots are pencil thin like mine were, you won’t need to peel or cut them; thicker carrots can be quartered. Toss carrots and squash in bowl, adding more olive oil, salt and pepper as necessary to make everything good and moist and seasoned. Turn the contents of the bowl out onto a sheet pan and roast in the oven 3o minutes, until the surfaces start to brown. It’s probably a good idea to flip these veggies around about halfway through the cooking so both sides get brown.

Heat the butter over medium-low heat in a small skillet and add the onions. Cook until greatly reduced and deep brown.

While the vegetables are roasting prepare the dressing by combining all the ingredients. Salt and pepper should be added to taste; given the quantity of vegetables, you may need more salt than expected. Add in the sausage (I used the beef, bleu cheese, and Surly Bender sausage from Clancey’s Meats & Fish).

As the vegetables are done roasting/caramelizing, add them to the bowl with the dressing. When all is ready, toss the vegetables well. Top with crumbled goat cheese and serve.

Look at all them vegetables! Only a couple of weeks ago that I was whining about the slow pace of the season; now the dreamed for abundance is upon us: radishes, fingerling potatoes, frisée, beets, strawberries, rhubarb, spinach, a rainbow of chard, sugar snap peas, broccoli, mint, basil and a jar of the salsa Mayor RT Rybak just can’t get enough of (I take market vendors at their word). An imposing haul, but I refuse to be intimidated! I am invigorated! Sure, my crisper drawer may be stuffed up to the glass now, but I will not let any of these veggies languish past the next weekend. The key is to attack your produce head on — don’t sit on it trying to make it last through the end of the week: this much produce lasts forever.

Within an hour of returning from the market Saturday morning, I had the oven fired up roasting beets — a roasted beet can be used without any forethought in salads, sandwiches and side dishes — a raw beet, not so much. As it happened, I layered beet slices with basil and chevre in a terrine that we ate that very night. If you don’t have the patience for careful stacking and weighting, this trio works just as well in a salad. The radishes were also gone by Saturday evening, roasted to make these crostini from the New York Times.

With the knowledge that the strawberries wouldn’t last overnight on our warm counters and lose much of their flavor in the refrigerator, after enjoying a few berries fresh I cooked the remainder into a strawberry sauce with just a little sugar. We’ll be eating this sauce all week; it was perfect for Sunday morning waffles enjoyed with the World Cup on in the background.

Even after separating all the stems from the spinach leaves, the bag of spinach I was left with (which I paid $2 for, by the way) was still taking up half of the crisper drawer. Obviously, it would have to go. I like spinach salads as much as the next guy, but quantities like this demand to be cooked. You know those recipes that, if you go to the grocery store, force you to invest a small fortune in spinach only to have you cook it down to a small fistful? Those are the recipes you want to make with farmers market spinach. Case in point: spinach lasagna.

One and a half days after the market, I’m feeling reasonably good about my progress: beets eaten, radishes roasted, spinach dispatched, strawberries sauced. I even made headway through half the head of frisée in a salad to accompany the lasagna. I have plans for some of the rest: the chard is bound for a north African soup, the rhubarb will likely become jam. If I remain vigilant, the fridge should be empty again just in time for next week’s market.

I’m fully aware of how empty my early farmers market boosterism sounds: “Really, even though you’ll only be able to buy a pint of strawberries and a head of lettuce, it’s totally worth making the trip to the market! Just think what you might find!” Okay, Tom. Whatever.

Well I’m happy to say those weeks are definitively over! As of last weekend, the first Saturday market in June, the market has finally hit its full stride. I could barely contain myself as I went from stall to stall, seizing on the fresh — and small in a cute way — vegetables: Chard! Snap peas! Garlic! New potatoes! Kale! Friseé! Basil! Leeks! Rhubarb! Strawberries! Finally, the makings of a feast.

Markets like these — rife with fresh and tender vegetables — allow me to make my favorite post-farmers market lunch: produce, steamed or blanched, with homemade mayonnaise, hummus, or any other sauce you like to dip them in. I did cheat and supplement the Midtown new potatoes and snap peas with asparagus from The Wedge (but hey, they’re my year round farmers market).

All that and I barely made a dent in the week’s haul. There will be plenty more meals this week derived almost entirely from market produce. The fun is just beginning.

Call me a pessimist, but in spite of all the amazing advances being made in the realm of cold weather fruits I don’t think anybody’s ever going to grow citrus in Minnesota. So what’s the hard-core locavore fundamentalist zealot to do when he finds himself in the North country and craving a glass or two of sangria, the citrus-laden wine drink of Spain? Since moving to California — or better yet, Spain — isn’t necessarily a workable option, the drink would just have to be adapted to local circumstances. Time for Minnesota sangria.

The inspiration for this concoction was a visit Martha and I made recently to Delano, MN and the Woodland Hill winery. Besides producing surprisingly decent traditional red and white wines, Woodland Hill also makes some worthwhile fruit wines, including, most notably for me, wines made with rhubarb. In visits to wineries in Michigan and Minnesota over the years I have imbibed all kinds of different fruit wines — most of them terrible — but this was the first time I’d ever seen rhubarb wine. Juice is extracted from the stalks by first freezing them to break up the cells, then pressing them for all they’re worth through a wine press.

At the time of our visit they were sold out of last year’s straight rhubarb vintage but had plenty of Tickled Pink, a strawberry-rhubarb blend. Strawberry and rhubarb is a classic flavor combination — and far superior to the ubiquitous kiwi-strawberry, I might add. Lest you think cloying thoughts of strawberry-rhubarb pie, crisp, or what-have-you, I should say this wine was remarkably restrained for a fruit wine; relatively dry (for a fruit wine!) and with clear strawberry and rhubarb flavor.

Clear as these flavors may have been, there’s always room for a little improvement. With copious quantities of strawberries and rhubarb from the Midtown Farmers Market, as well as a bundle of mint — the official herb of summertime — from the Saint Paul Farmers Market, I mixed up a version of this Spanish summertime staple fit for the fields of Minnesota.

Minnesota Sangria

• 1 bottle (750 ml) strawberry-rhubarb wine (we used Tickled Pink from Woodland Hill)
• 1 ½ cups rhubarb, cut into large chunks
• 10 medium strawberries, sliced
• 1 generous handful mint (you can leave it on the stem)

Mix all the ingredients in a large pitcher. Chill and serve.

All the time she spends away from our land — with what seems like most of the year seized by Old Man Winter’s cold, dead hands — makes the return of the Green Goddess to our fields and forests so much more sweet; an unrivaled cause for celebration.

The objects of her cult are easily obtained this time of year at one of her many temples. We chose the Saint Paul Farmers Market, well stocked with her tender pea shoots, her verdant watercress, her crisp lettuces, and, of course, her mighty royal standard: asparagus. Indulging in an orgy of her fruitful abundance, the watercress’s bitterness reminded us of our Goddess’s never-distant departure. This only served to increase our zeal, as we sang songs praising Her name.

Prayer to the Green Goddess

• One large bunch pea shoots
• One head baby romaine lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces
• One bunch watercress, leaves and tender stems only
• One bunch thin asparagus spears, cut into one-inch pieces
• Green Goddess dressing (see below)

Wash and dry all greens. Combine first four ingredients in a large bowl and toss to combine. Top with dressing, or toss dressing together with greens before serving.

Green Goddess Dressing
From Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

• ½ cup mayonnaise
• ½ cup sour cream
• 1 T tarragon vinegar
• 2 T water
• ½ cup parsley, chopped
• 3 T chives, chopped
• 1 ½ T tarragon, chopped
• ¼ t salt

Blend all ingredients in blender or food processor until smooth and pale green. Adjust consistency with additional water and season with salt to taste.