Real Food In The Big Apple
02.02.10
MADELEINE SEVERIN visits New York’s thriving farmers’ markets - known locally as greenmarkets
On a recent weekday at noon, the Union Square Greenmarket bustled with shoppers eager to get a look at the first local asparagus of the season.
The market is the largest of New York City’s 16 year-round greenmarkets and even in the dead of winter it draws a steady stream of loyal shoppers and curious visitors, but after months of parsnips and beetroot, New Jersey asparagus is a welcome sight even for those who don’t cook.
A few months later the market will be at its peak and will draw up to 60,000 visitors per day, a great many of whom will go home with one or more of the 40 or so heirloom varieties of tomatoes on offer during the summer months.
In the meantime we have ramps foraged in the Catskill Mountains (a sort of wild leek that grows in the Eastern U.S. and parts of Canada) and soon we will have fiddleheads (tender young ferns picked before they unfurl, with a flavour reminiscent of artichokes and asparagus).
Greenmarket shoppers can fill their bags with just about everything a well-stocked kitchen requires apart from salt and pepper: vegetables, fruits, eggs, meat (including pasture-raised chicken, grass-fed beef and bison, and heritage breed pork), honey, maple syrup, herbs, wine, cut flowers and beeswax candles for the table, and dried beans and grains.
The Union Square market is open four days per week and the number of vendors varies; at this time of year there are approximately 20 on weekdays and over 50 on Saturdays. There are 15 other year-round markets in each of New York City’s five boroughs and an additional 23 markets that are open seasonally in the warmer months.
Full feature In Issue 7
