It all started back in May, when I go to the market not expecting to find much more than a cup of coffee. At the Pig’s Eye stall there were green things! Garlic Mustard Greens, to be precise. Unlike the herbs and rhubarb also sold that day, these greens had not been intentionally cultivated: they were found growing on several of the lots that make up Pig’s Eye. I’m a sucker for wild foods, so of course I went home with a bag. The greens were a little tough raw in a salad (with garlic and mustard, of course), but they were perfect after a brief saute.

As the growing season went on, Pig’s Eye kept throwing me culinary curveballs. Locavores in Minnesota get used to finding new ways to appreciate the radish as it is one of the only vegetables available in the early days of summer, but Pig’s Eye took my appreciation to a much deeper level by introducing parts of the radish plant I hadn’t considered: first it was radish seed pods, the pods that develop when radishes are allowed to go to seed. Radish seed pods look like miniature snap peas and have a pretty pea-like flavor: bright green grass followed by the hint of radish tang, and increasing radish heat as you eat more and more. I loved them raw, and they worked well in a stir-fry too. Also stir-fryable were radish blossoms, delicate white flowers. The flavor was similar to the seed pods, green with a hint of radish. And of course, Pig’s Eye was selling radishes, and even had spicy ones, which are more or less unheard of these days.

I’ve appreciated the way Pig’s Eye kept me guessing all season, and also their more traditional offerings: their kale caught Rick Nelson’s attention, and they’ve had fine multicolored beets, heirloom tomatoes, and the other seasonal goodies one expects throughout the summer. Last weekend, though, I got the best surprise of all: there, front and center at the Pig’s Eye table, was a basket overflowing with bright green cones of hops. Cascade hops, to be precise. This was totally unexpected — I have never seen hops at the farmers market before, and it was my understanding that those in search of fresh hops either had to grow their own or make special orders from the Pacific Northwest. To be able to pick them up at the farmers market — what exciting times we live in!

What can you make with hops? You can pickle them — I once had a burger with pickled hops on it, though the memory is not a pleasant one. According to Nathan, the Pig’s Eye proprietor, hops make for an interesting tea. Or you can go the obvious route: make beer. That’s what I did: after a quick ride out to Midwest Supplies for, uh, supplies, I spent the rest of the afternoon brewing away in the kitchen and taking in that fresh hop aroma.

Not that the attention ratatouille garners is undeserved; packed with vegetables at the height of summer ripeness, it is one of the best testaments available to the joy of eating seasonally. In fact there may be no better way to enjoy zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, onions and tomatoes all at the same time. But the real lesson of ratatouille lies not in the adherence to those core ingredients but in the happy combination of peak season produce, with nothing that’s not in season. Just about any combination will do, as long as the vegetables are fresh and ripe.

Luckily, this is the time of summer when the overabundance in farmers markets helps keep my kitchen stocked with nothing but fresh, ripe vegetables. The motivation for this summer stew was two large eggplants, but as I stooped down to remove these from the crisper drawer I kept seeing additional prospects for a seasonal stew: half a head of cabbage, a green pepper, five small leeks, tomatoes (the latter not, of course, stored in the refrigerator).

The great thing about a stew is you can be pretty lax about procedure since it’s all getting cooked together anyway. I cubed and salted my eggplant, since conventional wisdom suggests doing so will remove some kind of bitterness. I then sauteed sliced leeks and green bell pepper in a large amount of olive oil until the leeks were starting to brown deeply. I added the eggplant cubes and let them brown a bit too. Next went in the half head of cabbage, thinly sliced, a large sprig of thyme, and about ten roma tomatoes that I had pureed (and salted and sugared to make up for really lackluster flavor — you don’t win ‘em all at the farmers market). I added water to just about cover everything and let the pot stew away for a half an hour while I cooked some white rice. Right before serving the dish, I sprinkled it with fragrant basil shreds.

I was happy with the way this turned out, but I hope I don’t have you headed to the store in search of two eggplants, a half head of cabbage, a green pepper, five leeks and ten roma tomatoes because the point of all this was that if the ingredients for your summertime stew are fresh and in season, you won’t go wrong — it’s the spirit, not the letter, 0f a ratatouille recipe.

There are few things more satisfying on a cold winter’s evening than sitting down to a meal brought about by your own craft and ingenuity. When a morning spent tracking rabbits across the snowed-in woodlands yields a young hare to serve as the centerpiece to a meal, garnished by shallots from the root cellar, carefully laid aside in summer’s waning, and sour cornichons from the crock, with fresh-baked bread, sliced, toasted and topped with leeks from that same cellar, bacon curing since the fall’s slaughter and cream milked out in the barn at the crack of dawn, this is the stuff of foodie dreams, culinary transcendence.

Returning to reality, though, I would most likely have missed the rabbit (and not for lack of firing, many, many times), my leeks and shallots would be dried up — along with the cow — the cornichons would be used up or spoiled, and poor little Tom Junior would have died of cholera. I have no illusions about my ability to survive in more rustic conditions. Luckily, rather than being dependent on my instincts and wits for survival, I can avail myself of the conveniences of the modern city. Instead of hours spent trying to outsmart small furry animals, a leisurely bike ride to Clancey’s is all I need to obtain a rabbit, conveniently skinned, eviscerated and frozen — as well as some awesomely gelatinous beef stock. And while our urban living situation has forced Martha and me into quarters too small to house a root cellar with sand-filled barrels of leeks and shallots, the co-op keeps a good supply these and other allia going pretty much year-round. As much as I like to romanticize the food and eating styles of the past, I’m grateful for the modern food system. (Thanks Monsanto!)

But even if modern life doesn’t demand a strictly local and seasonal diet, we shouldn’t overlook recipes developed with a place and time in mind before such considerations were optional. There is something perfect about a steaming pot of heavy stew on a winter’s night when the snow is falling in fat flakes and the fact that I can buy asparagus in February isn’t going to change that.

The dishes that follow both come from Madeleine Kamman’s When French Women Cook, specifically the chapter devoted to Marie-Charlotte. Raised in Poitou, France and later located in Paris around the turn of the last century, for Marie-Charlotte seasonal and local were realities rather than trends. These two recipes are satisfying ways to use up the remnants of the winter larder, but are equally satisfying when the only foresight required is a trip to the grocery store in advance of a big snowstorm.

Lapin aux Echalotes at aux Cornichons

I have only prepared and/or eaten rabbit a few times in my  life, and this recipe produced the best tasting one yet. I thought the use of pickles to the stew odd but their sourness combined in a familiar and delicious way with the sweetness of long-roasted shallots. For having such a short ingredient list, this produces a very flavorful stew.

On cutting up rabbits: The recipe as printed simply called for a young rabbit, but the first time it is referred to the instructions they are called “rabbit pieces”. If your rabbit came whole like mine did, here’s how I cut mine up: remove the hind legs and the forelegs. Slice off the flaps of belly meat from either side. Cut tight along the backbone to remove the loins from both sides of the rabbit. There may be a couple of tenderloins floating in the cavity — cut them out. Reserve the ribcage and backbone for stock (I just throw it in with my chicken carcasses). To promote even cooking, tie the tapered end of the loins back over the loin to produce an even cylinder. Roll the belly meat around a piece of tenderloin each and tie into an even bundle.

• 4 T butter
• 2 dozen large shallots, peeled
• 1 young rabbit (I didn’t ask mine’s age)
• Salt and pepper
• 1–1 ½ cups brown veal stock (I used the excellent beef stock from Clancey’s)
• 6 small sour pickles, sliced.

Heat the oven to 325ºF. Heat the butter in a large, straight-sided pan. Sauté the shallots until just beginning to brown. Season with salt and pepper. While you’ve got the salt and pepper handy, season the rabbit pieces and stir in with the shallots. Allow to brown a few minutes and then transfer the pan, covered, into the oven. Bake 40 minutes, basting at regular intervals with the juices that will accumulate in the pot. (I basted every ten minutes.) Raise the oven temperature to 400ºF, remove the pan and cover and stir in the pickle slices and the stock. Return to oven, uncovered, and bake an additional 20-30 minutes until the rabbit pieces are well browned on one side (do not stir after uncovering) and the sauce is reduced to a glaze.

Roties aux Blanc de Poireaux

Garlic toast topped with a mixture of leeks, bacon, cream and goat cheese — probably not something you should eat every day, but after trying it you might be tempted.

• 3 T butter
• 1 large leek
• Salt and pepper
• 3 oz bacon
• 1 cup cream
• 1 oz goat cheese
• 6 slices french country bread
• 1 clove of garlic
• Parsley, chopped

Melt the butter in a large skillet, add the leeks and cook over low heat, covered, until the leeks are quite soft and reduced. Season with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, chop the bacon into a rough ¼” dice and cook in a small skillet until crisp and most of the fat is rendered out. Drain the fat and reserve for another use and add the bacon to the leeks.

Add cream to bacon-leek mixture and allow to cook on medium low heat, uncovered, until cream is much reduced. Stir in goat cheese to melt. Cover and keep warm.

Toast the slices of bread and rub each with the garlic clove. Top each slice with a healthy spoonful of leek-bacon-cream-goat cheese mixture and sprinkle with parsley. Serve hot.

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.