Winter Vegetable, Hungarian Accent

Green cabbages at Iovine Brothers' Produce

It's soup weather, an ideal vehicle for that sturdiest of winter vegetables: cabbage. It's cheap, easy to prep, nutritious and satisfying.

First, let's deal with price. At the Reading Terminal Market today OK Lee had a special on green cabbage, 39 cents a pound -- half the price Iovine Brothers was charging, although even at 79 cents cabbage will hardly bust a budget. (Red and savoy cabbages are a tad more expensive: this week they were 99 cents at Iovine.)

I found a small cabbage weighing in at a pound and a half (most heads of green cabbage are between two and three pounds) and decided an Eastern European style soup was the way to go. I found lots of recipes on the web, and they were fairly similar, but the one I settled upon -- with two significant tweaks -- is attributed to Mel Markon's, a defunct Jewish deli in Chicago with a credit to the recipe's original appearance in the December 1980 issue of Gourmet magazine.

In addition to scaling the recipe down from a three pound head of cabbage, I took advantage of some homemade Hungarian sausages made by a neighbor's father in Budapest and smuggled back here about four or five years ago. Yes, the sausage is that old, but I've been using it as a flavoring agent in soups and stews and have lived to tell the tale. It replaces the sweet paprika called for in the sausage-less original recipe (find it here), but you could use smoked paprika instead.

My second tweak beyond the sausage was to add some barrel sauerkraut lurking in the back of my fridge. I used about a cup, rinsed, because that's all I had. If I had a quart, I would have used it all.

The most expensive part of the recipe is the meat, since it calls for one and a half pounds of short ribs; I used a little over a pound since I was dealing with a lesser quantity of cabbage.

Finished soup

Start by putting 12 cups of water in your stock or soup pot, then adding the beef before turning the heat to medium high. Once the water starts bubbling, cut back the heat to maintain a steady but minimal simmer. Do not add salt or any other seasoning at this point. When the meat is tender (which might take about an hour) remove it to a platter and let it cool. Make sure to skim the surface of the stock as it cooks to remove scum, and after removing the meat also skim off any fat globules you can find on the surface. (If you wind up boiling rather than simmering the broth, the fat will be emulsified into it, and that's yucky.)

While the meat simmered I attacked the cabbage. After discarding the outer leaves and coring the cabbage I cut it into roughly one-inch pieces. A medium onion got the same treatment. Although the recipe doesn't call for it I added half of an exceedingly large carrot (about one medium carrot) cut into slightly smaller than spoon-sized chunks.

Next, remove the meat from the bone and cut away any identifiable unrendered fat and gristle, then cut the meat into small bits, half-inch at the most.

Take the meat and veggies and add them to the pot, along with three-quarters of a cup of ketchup, a cup of chopped, drained canned tomatoes, a quarter cup of sugar, and a quarter cup of lemon juice (cider or white vinegar could be used in a pinch). If you are fortunate enough to have Hungarian sausage (a Spanish chorizo or Portuguese chouriço would also work) chop up about two ounces worth and add it to the pot. With sausage there's no need for additional seasonings. If you have no suitable sausage go with four or five teaspoons of paprika, plus salt to taste.

The soup should gently simmer (only the barest of bubbles should break on the surface) for 30 to 60 minutes. But don't be tempted to cook longer: overcooking is what leads to cabbage emitting a sulfurous and off-putting odor.

Like many soups and braises it improves with an overnight stay in the refrigerator, which will also allow you to remove congealed fat that might accumulate on top. I froze about half of it and have been enjoyably consuming the remainder. With a slice of good rye bread or pumpernickel and sweet butter you've got yourself a great meal.

Iovine's Goes Local at Reading Terminal Market

Iovine's uses old-fashioned carts to feature local produce

Local produce is hardly a new thing for Iovine Brothers Produce at the Reading Terminal Market. But earlier this spring they positioned two old-fashioned carts near the front of their space to emphasize the local connections.

These days the carts are loaded with lettuces, radishes, cooking greens, summer squashes, mushrooms, scallions and lots more from nearby farms, primarily southern New Jersey, but Bucks County, too.

Jimmy and Vinnie Iovine have long-standing relationships with a number of local farms, including Shady Brook Farm in Yardley, especially for corn.

But even more produce comes from the larger, commercial South Jersey operations, like Vineland's Flaim Farm in Cumberland County. While Flaim is a larger operation than the typical boutique farmer you'll find at the Headhouse Square or Rittenhouse Square farmers' markets, the produce is just as fresh and nutritious, and usually considerably less expensive. Iovine takes deliveries direct from the farms, avoiding the middle-man stop at the wholesale produce market, which speeds the product from farm to shopping cart. And although Flaim and other local farms supplying Iovine are big in comparison with a Tom Culton or Earl Livengood, they're still small potatoes when put up against the agribusinesses in California and Mexico supplying your local Acme.

Iovine's regularly sends out emails (see the latest here) showcasing their specials, including locally grown items. This week they're featuring blueberries. Although the blues brought up from the Carolinas are less expehsive ($1.99 a pint), they've got the first of the South Jersey crop at $3.99. Expect the price to decline in coming weeks as the local product comes into full harvest.

Iovine's is hardly the only option for local produce at the Reading Terminal Market:

• O.K. Lee, the other large full-range greengrocer at the market, also brings in local produce, including from Lancaster County.
• Kauffman's Lancaster County Produce, in the market's Pennsylvania Dutch area, features fruits and vegetables from Amish country Wednesdays through Saturday.
• L. Halteman Family, primarily a deli and butcher, offers a limited selection of seasonal produce from their Pennsylvania Dutch country neighbors, Monday through Saturday.
• Bowes Family Farm from Milton, Pennsylvania, offering organic produce, can usually be found Thursday through Saturday in the Piano Court (near Metropolitan Bakery). His prices, though, rival those at the high-end farmers' markets.
• Fair Food Farmstand has been pioneering selling local produce at the market for about a dozen years, often at prices that rival Iovine's. Much of their produce comes from the same producers you'll find at local farmers' markets.

O.K. Lee Upgrades Fixtures

Produce vendor O.K. Lee has gotten into the spirit of the Reading Terminal Market's renovations by replacing its display tables. The finished wood displays are a significant visual improvement over the more rustic displays they replaced.

Cactus Pears

O.K. Lee had some gorgeous cactus pears today at a bargain two for a buck. I've used them for sorbet, and also in margaritas, though I'd imagine they would work in other cocktails, including mojitos. The color of the juice is intense, making any beverage made from it a great showpiece. Four fruits should yield about a cup of juice.

You can find an illustrated guide to peeling and prepping these beauties (not at all hard) here.

Quick thought for another use: make a sugar syrup with it and drizzle atop vanilla ice cream.

A Little Bit of Spring

The chives in the backyard container started to shoot up last week, enough so I could clip some as a soup garnish last evening. But that doesn't mean we'll see local produce anytime soon. Maybe we'll see ramps (and they won't be local) by late March, and perhaps some tiny potatoes from Earl Livengood by mid-April, but asparagus will have to wait for late April, and strawberries another three weeks or so beyond that.

But if you're hankering for spring, there's alway Mexico and California. Iovine's Brother Produce offered asparagus and strawberries this week at reasonable prices, and the quality didn't look bad.

The Mexican asparagus, $1.99 for a one-pound bunch, was thin and bright green; though the purple-topped local variety will no doubt be tastier, these didn't look bad.

The California berries were huge, if not fully ripe. $2.50 for a one-pound clamshell.

Cacus pears must be in season in Mexico and Southwest. Both Iovine's and O.K. Lee have been selling them at bargain prices. The former had slightly smallish ones today at five for a buck today.

A Hake is a Whiting is a Mountain Trout?

For years I've been looking at "Mountain Trout" displayed as filets at the Reading Terminal Markets' fishmongers, knowing full well they weren't trout, but not quite sure what they were. Down in Baltimore they call this "Lake Trout".

Today I noticed (at Golden Fish) a sign which identified them, parenthetically, as hake, which is a member of the cod family, as is its very close cousin, the Whiting, which is usually found hereabouts as Silver Whiting, but sometimes called Silver Hake, as if things aren't confusing enough.

All the varieties are interchangeable, as least as far as culinary purposes are concerned. All are suitable for frying, steaming, poaching and baking, though broiling or grilling would be too extreme for these delicate and very mild-tasting fishies. Hake are the most popular fresh fish in Spain, and take particularly well to parsley and potatoes.

In other seafood news, Golden Fish is carrying a new item, head-on shrimp, $7.99/pound. You could probably save a bit by walking over to Chinatown, since that's where Golden procures these formerly frozen farm-raised crustaceans from China.

Nobody asked me, but . . .

Why is farm-raised striped bass more expensive that wild striped bass, a.k.a. rockfish: $6.99 vs. $4.99 at John Yi.

In the event you're wondering, the King salmon at John Yi (and just abou anywhere else) is farm-raised from British Columbia. Like it's Atlantic cousin, it gets its color from feed.

The Produce News

Cucumbers galore at O.K. Lee, including two seedless (or nearly so) varieties: Japanese and English. The former are a buck for what appears to be a one-pound bag with about six of the five or six-inch cukes. The latter are two 16-inches for a buck.

OKL also has bags of green seedless grapes for a buck (a tad more expensive if on trays) and Hass avocados at 49-cents apiece (essentially the same price as Iovine's where they're two for a buck).

Another cucumber-like item normally found in Chinatown made its way to the RTM today: Iovine Brother's had Bitter Melon sitting next to the bell peppers, $2.99/pound.