Seasonality in food is rare these days, with our capacity to go to almost any food shop, supermarket or produce center and find anything, anytime, and from anywhere. Strawberries in December – no problem! Asparagus in November? Just perfect for Thanksgiving, and brought to you by the wonders of global transport… Many aspects of food globalism are positive – for instance, that we can buy fresh olive oil from Italy and Spain or Parmigiano Reggiano from Modena, Parma and Reggio Emilia – but other consequences aren’t as positive. The flavors of perishable items such as fruits and vegetables often don’t live up to expectations and represent a sad and pale imitation of their taste possibilities.
Here is an example. Many years ago, in July, I brought a tomato salad to a friend’s birthday party. The salad was a very simple one from a Marcella Hazan recipe – just tomatoes, basil, garlic and a few other ingredients. People at the party raved about the salad and it was gone in minutes. One woman asked me for the recipe, so I wrote it down, along with my phone number. I also repeatedly told her that she had to use really fresh tomatoes for the salad to taste right…
A few months later the phone rang and there was a VERY angry voice on the other end of the line. All I heard was “You deliberately wrote down that recipe wrong, didn’t you! You didn’t want me to know how to make it because it’s a secret!” Once I had calmed her down I asked her what she was talking about…. Sure enough, it was the woman from the party who had been given the recipe. And here we were in late November and she was upset because her salad hadn’t tasted like the one I had made. Her assumption was that the recipe I had given her was incorrect, that I had tried to ‘hide’ the secret ingredient of the great salad, to keep it all to myself. Well, she was right that the ingredients weren’t right, but wrong that I had given her an incomplete recipe. She had assumed that she could go to the supermarket, buy the ingredients (tomatoes, basil, etc.), and reproduce the salad as she had experienced it. And of course she couldn’t, because it was November and the two main ingredients – tomatoes and basil – weren’t in season.
The tomatoes for that salad were straight from my garden – harvested just a few hours before the salad was eaten. The variety of tomato was Consoluto Genovese, an ugly but very tasty cultivar not available in supermarkets because the skins are too thin for lengthy transport. The basil was straight from the herb garden, and that mélange of ingredients, at that time, at that place, and combined just 30 minutes before eating came together perfectly and deliciously. The salad depends upon fresh, in-season tomatoes and basil at their full peak of flavor, because the ingredients are so simple that each must be perfect. Made in November with pale tomatoes picked unripe and shipped 2000 miles from Southern Mexico, the salad was pallid, lifeless and dull.
And that’s why seasonality is important. The magnificent flavor of that salad – and it is magnificent – depends on fresh in-season produce. Nothing else works. It’s that simple.
And now, as the seasons play out in the farmers’ market offerings, we have a chance – often a far too brief one – to eat our veggies and fruits at their peak of perfection. You’ve probably already noticed that the asparagus is here and gone far too quickly, and now its passing is mourned. But fresh peas and greens are becoming available, and the glorious and meteoric reign of the strawberries will soon give way to raspberries, blueberries, then peaches and plums…. Each in its own perfect time and place, for our brief but intense enjoyment, then gone… but to be remembered as we anticipate and enjoy the next seasonal offering……
I’ll provide that tomato salad recipe in July, when the tomatoes and basil are at their flavorful peak….
Janet Chrzan
Oakmont Farmers Market Co-Manager