The "City Market Cookbook" is available for purchase at the market on Saturdays through December 20. Outside of market hours, you can find the cookbook at Carver Recreation Center, Key Recreation Center, and Smith Aquatic & Fitness Center. Supplied photo.
Editor Becky Calvert describes the tiramisu banana pudding recipe in City Market Cookbook as “Southern Grandma meets an Italian Nonna.” Fresh chevre from Caromont Farm replaces mascarpone for a tangy take on the classic dessert. The cookbook is full of recipes like this, unexpected versions of familiar foods. Take l’etoile catering’s pumpkin and Virginia peanut bisque or the market’s own recipe for apple-pie jam.
Calvert spent a year collecting recipes straight from the vendors’ kitchens to give readers a taste of the seasons. “In putting the City Market Cookbook together, I approached it as a community cookbook,” says Calvert. “I want it to reflect the community.” And who better to demonstrate ways to utilize produce than farmers’ market vendors, familiar with the ebbs and flows of seasonal availability.
Daniel Perry of Jam According to Daniel, a City Market vendor since 2008, contributed two recipes. Generously, his proprietary jam recipe, which differs from traditional jam recipes in two ways. First, you will not see pectin on his ingredient list. Perry prefers to cook the jam down, reducing water content to get the desired texture and concentrated fruit flavor he’s known for. Second, because of his process, he adds less sugar. Typical jam recipes call for 1:1 ratio of sugar to fruit. Perry uses a 4:1 ratio, relying instead on the natural sweetness of the fruit.
Perry also included his jam curd recipe, first tested in the wedding cake celebrating his union with Rachel Perry of Fairweather Farm. Perry’s jam flavors change with the seasons, and once they’re gone, they’re gone. “You’re participating in a natural system that has limitations and boundaries,” says Perry. “And I think that’s part of what people are looking for in the farmers market and in life in general.” At the market, we can release ourselves to natural cycles that are out of our control, relying on the knowledge of our community to help us decide what’s for dinner this week, forgoing things like out-of-season asparagus for fresh-picked kabocha squash.
There are many varieties of squashes and more at F.J. Medina and Sons Farm. Francisco Medina and his family have cornered the market, literally. Their booth is situated at the corner of Water and Second streets, and it’s overflowing with farm-fresh bounty. A City Market vendor since age 16, Medina took over his father’s business that landed in Montross, Virginia, after years of migrant farming up and down the East Coast. “I’ve been here a long time and consider a lot of my customers friends and family,” says Medina. And in that spirit, he offers four family recipes in the City Market Cookbook: stuffed round zucchini, a shoulder season staple; not-stuffed poblanos, his variation on chiles rellenos; fire-roasted salsa; and Frankie’s ceviche, delightfully spiced with his serrano peppers.
Beyond her tiramisu banana pudding recipe, Gail Hobbs-Page, the farmer and cheesemaker behind Caromont Farm, provides two more ways to savor chevre: goat cheese ice cream and chevre hazelnut brownies. With these recipes, Hobbs-Page wanted to provide an alternative to more conventional savory ways to enjoy goat cheese. But her cheese stands strong on its own as well, a product of her holistic farmstead dairy system where, since 2007, the goats are raised on the same land where the cheese is made. Hobbs-Page enjoys the proximity because it allows her to be in tune with her animals and the milk they produce. “The milk tells me what to do, not the other way around,” she says.
