Sure Sign of Summer: Soft Shell Crabs

One of the surest signs that winter is done and summer within sight is the reappearance of soft shell crabs at local fish mongers. Early season prices for these crustaceous delicacies are always dear, but they appear even higher this year, at least by the prices displayed at John Yi at the Reading Terminal Market, above.

Headhouse Opens With 30 Vendors

Green, purple asparagus from Three Springs

If there was any doubt Headhouse is the city's premier farmers' market, it would be dispelled simply by walking through the shambles today. I counted 30 vendors, with nearly one third selling their own produce, dairy or meat products.

There are also now two seafood vendors. In addition to Otolith, which sells high quality, individually quick frozen salmon and other Alaskan seafood, Shore Catch has joined the Headhouse roster. Shore Catch, which also sells at the Rittenhouse Saturday market and about half a dozen farmers markets in New Jersey, gathers finfish and shellfish (scallops and clams) landed by family-owned boarts at the Barnegat docks on Long Beach Island.

Blooming Glen garlic

The first asparagus of the season remains pricey, about $6/pound from most vendors. The one exception at Headhouse was A.T. Buzby, the South Jersey farmer who was selling one-pound bunches for $3.50. The higher-priced asparagus could be found at stalls from Tom Culton, Three Springs Fruit Farm and Beechwood Orchards.

Other produce offerings were largely limited to early greens, ranging rrom broccoli rabe and tatsoi at Blooming Glen and radishes at Weaver's Way to black salsify at Culton Organics and pea shoots at Root Mass Farm. Among Culton's other offerings were fresh eggs from two different breeds or heritage chickens.

Flowers were also in abundance, as shown in the two photos below.

Tulips and lilacs at Weaver's Way

Gerbers adorned wagon at Culton Organics

Livengoods Return to City Market

Joyce Livengood with lilacs at Reading Terminal Market in 20089

Livengood Family Farm, which for years sold organic produce at center court in Reading Terminal Market on Saturdays until 2009, abandoned city markets entirely last year. But this past winter son Dwain Livengood brought back the stall to the Saturday market on Clark Park.

The Food Trust, which operates Clark Park, has asked the Livengoods to limit its produce offerings at Clark Park and instead concentrate on meat. That suits Dwain just fine, since he's been concentrating on raising beef cattle, hogs, chicken and now lamb around the bend from dad Earl's and mom Joyce's vegetable farm just outside Lancaster's city limits.

Lamb is the newest addition to Dwain's production, which he started about 10 years ago with some beef cattle. The lamb, pasture-born and raised, is fed exclusively on grass. That's possible because the Dorper breed Dwain is raising (a South African originated cross of Dorset Horn and Blackhead Persian sheep) grows meaty on just grass, even in winter. And since it's a "hair" sheep variety, it doesn't require as much labor-intensive shearing as "wool" sheep do.

Dwain's current lamb offerings are currently limited to ground meat, shanks, necks, bones, kidney and head. But he also slaughtered a three-year-old ewe which has produced a bonanza of mutton cubes. Mutton is usually very strong in flavor, too much so for most American tastes. But Dwain said that this animal is rather mild in flavor. I bought a pack of rather lean-looking cubes (the strongest flavor is in the fat, which Dwain also sells) and plan to braise it as a curry tonight.

The young rancher soon will purchase some piglets to restock his pork offerings. But he warns prices will be higher this year because of a viral epidemic that started in the U.S. last year, causing millions of piglet deaths. The disease causes no threat to human health or food safety, but it is already increasing prices.  With beef prices already in the stratosphere because of drought and poor feed crops, chicken looks to be the least expensive of America's favorite animal proteins.

His lamb prices yesterday ranged from $9-$14/pound, depending on cut; the mutton fat is about $2.50.

Prime Beef at Halteman's

You can buy USDA prime beef again at the Reading Terminal Market for the first time since Harry Ochs went belly-up a few years ago.

Rib steaks in that class were on display this morning at L. Halteman Family Country Foods. Be forewarned, however: these are wet-aged steaks, not dry aged. The butcher told me they might go with dry-aged at some future point.

In case you're wondering, across the aisle Giunra's Prime Shop (one of two other butchers at the RTM) does not sell prime meats. Owner Charles Giunra tried that when he opened eight years ago, but found his customers wouldn't pay the price that prime beef demands. That said, Charles is a great meat buyer and while his beef is technically USDA Choice and wet-aged it's a very tasty, superior product.

Rhubarb, too

Strawberries are a few weeks away but rhubarb is here today. Fellow foodie Emily Teel suggests using sweet storage apples with rhubarb in cakes or pies. Mark Bittman has an easy recipe for rhubarb-orange soup as a whipped cream-topped dessert. The rhubarb in photo was at Countryside Farm & Bakery's Fairmount market stall yesterday.

Seasonal Farmers Markets Open

Countryside Farm & Bakery at today's Fairmount Farmers' Market

 Although a few farmers markets operate year round (Rittenhouse, Clark Park and Fitler Square), the first week of May brings the official opening of the area's sesonal venues.

The first to open was the Fairmount market at 22nd and Fairmount, which runs Thursdys from 3 to 6 p.m. into November. Two produce vendors -- Countryside Farm & Bakery and
Queen Farm -- Wild Flour Bakery and The Pop Shop (popsicles) were there for opening day.

Needless to say, produce pickings were slim, but the items offered were of good quality, particularly the kale, scallions and fresh garlic.

I was hoping, but not really expecting, to find local asparagus. Although some area growers -- particularly those in the warmer parts of Delaware -- have a little, the main crop won't begin until next week, although I would expect to find some at this Sunday's Headhouse market. However, expect to pay a stiff premium until the bulk of the harvest begins. Fair Food had some from Delaware at the Reading Terminal Market today; Benuel Kauffman offered some of what he said was asparagus from his garden, but more will be available next week.

RTM Opens Revamped Info Booth

Alan Segal at his post in the redesigned information both at the Reading Terminal Market

Original lithograph

The redesigned information booth opened last week to greet visitors at the Reading Terminal Market. A mural of the terminal's head house and train shed, as they appeared in 1893 when both opened, provides the main visual interest, from a lithograph published by George Moore & Co. of New York.

As far as Segal and other information booth volunteers are concerned, the best features relate to their comfort. There's an electrical outlet under so a portable heater can be used, since the booth's position by the 12th Street entrance near Filbert can be quite cold in the winter. A glass plate helps screen at least some of the cold wind when the doors open.

Signs of Spring

Beyond today's balmy temperatures there's another sign of spring: stores are stocking Easter candy. Here's the Zitner's selection at the Pennsylvania General Store at the Reading Terminal Market.

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.

Market's New Website Goes Live

The revamped website for the Reading Terminal Market went live last week. While there are plenty of tweaks still needed and the overall organizational structure of the site isn't ideal, it's a far sight better than the previous iteration, which was not updated as merchants were added.

The most important improvement (beyond the fact that the merchant list is up to date) is that the site is mobile-friendly.

Another addition is the ability to search for a product and determine which vendors sell it. Though useful, this function is hardly perfect, since it depends upon each merchant keeping the market informed of its product line, and the market updating the database. For example, search for "chocolates" and you'll be told to try the Pennsylvania General Store and Wursthaus Schmitz, but not Sweet as Fudge or Chocolates by Mueller. But search "chocolate" and you won't get the first two although you'll get the latter two, as well as Famous 4th Street Cookie and Old City Coffee. Go figure.

Just like the old site, you can read the market's Mission Statement and Operating Policy Guidelines. But good luck finding them. The logical place would be under the "About the Market" menu heading, but that item is filled with directions and parking info along with a link to pages about the market's history. Instead, if you want to read the Mission Statement and OPG you have to click on "Contacts" where there are further links to those two items. Hardly logical or user friendly.

Price Drop on Temples; No More Buck-a-Shuck

The price of temple oranges at Iovine Brothers Produce dropped a bit this week. Today they were four for a buck; last week it was $3. The oranges are a tad smaller, but they weigh out at about a pound and a half for four fruits.

On the other side of the Reading Terminal Market, Pearl's Oyster Bar discontinued the late afternoon Buck-a-Shuck deal. Operator David Braunstein said not many eaters took advantage of the offering, and the few who did rarely ordered anything else. Since Pearl's doesn't offer alcoholic beverages, it was tough to justify continuing.

Meanwhile, Pearl's started work this week on a refurbishing of the restaurant. The walls will get a new treatment, as will the signage, there will be new butcher block tables (though the counter will remain unchanged for now) and the colorful figurehead will be moved to a more prominent position.

Today was the last day for the old information booth at the 12th near Filbert entrance to the market. It will be replaced with a new stall where volunteers will answer questions from tourists, like, "Where is the Convention Center?"

Sweet and Tangy: Temple Oranges

To the orange connoisseur, there's no finer specimen than the temple orange. a older mandarin-sweet orange hybrid that's both sweet and tangy. It has a complexity of flavor that no other orange can match.

Alas, because it has seeds many folks avoid the temple orange. That's their ill-fortune and your good luck. And at three for a buck at Iovine Brother's Produce at the Reading Terminal Market these large oranges are a good buy.

Though the skin is tight to the flesh, Temples can be easily peeled and sectioned by hand, much like its tangerine ancestor.

As with any other citrus fruit, you want it to feel heavy in the hand for its size -- that means there's plenty of juice inside. The thin skin will be shiny but not without some spotting

Whether eaten out-of-hand, juiced, sectioned for salads or used in baking the temple orange is a stand-out winter fruit. But get them now: the season is short, less than two months from late-January until March.

Pearl's Starts Breakfast, Brunch

Ship's bow statue at Pearl's Oyster Bar

Pearl's Oyster Bar introduced a breakfast/brunch menu last week, featuring egg dishes accompanied with seafood, including a crusted shrimp/egg Po' Boy on a Sarcone's roll, and eggs benedict serve with either crab cake, shrimp and grits, or smoked salmon. French toast is also on the menu. I'll vouch for the cheese grits.

With the help of 10,000 librarians attending their association's mid-winter meeting at the convention center Pearl's owner David Braunstein appears to have picked a good week for introducing the breakfast menu. By the time I left the market about 10 a.m. Saturday, nearly half of the restaurant's seats were occupied -- not bad considering Pearl's is only eclipsed by the Down Home Diner and Molly Malloy's in seating capacity.

Since taking over the business from his parents Braunstein (together with executive chef Jason Ledee) have made substantial tweaks to the menu. Most of the classics remain, though not the fried clams. The snapper soup is a good one: when I sampled it two weeks ago it had plenty of snapper meat, lots of traditional flavor, but none of the over-cornstarch gloppiness that detracts from some versions. The plate of a dozen Cape May Salts I tried were properly shucked with a minimum of broken shells and served with the classic mignonette sauce (hot sauce, lemon also available).

Amazingly, Pearl's offers buck-a-shuck oysters from 4 p.m. to closing on weekdays. Since Pearl's doesn't sell booze, it's hard to image Braunstein is making any money on the deal.

New RTM Website Long Overdue

Next month the Reading Terminal Market plans to go live with a new website. It's much overdue. The current website has minimal functionality, its merchant list/map is both out-of-date or just plain doesn't work. The new site is also expected to be more mobile-friendly.

Sourdough Pizza? Yes!

Photo courtesy of Angelo's Pizza

Danny DiGiampietro has been a bread jobber -- a route-man delivering bread from Sarcone's and other bakeries to sandwich shops and other eateries (including Tommy DiNic's) -- for years. But his true love is the baking of bread and its sidekicks. For about a year he ran a small bakery in South Philly while maintaining his route, where he also toyed a bit with pizza-making. For a variety of reasons, the bakery didn't work out, though not because of any flaws in his product. DiNic's only switched to Sarcone's after Danny's closed shop.

Late last year Danny opened a new venture across the river in Haddonfield: Angelo's Pizza, 122 N. Haddon Ave. The menu is simple: pizza, cheese steaks, chicken steaks, fries, salads and escarole soup.

She Who Must Be Obeyed and I stopped by today and were blown away by the pizza. She went for the pepperoni, I opted for sausage. Instead of using crumbled meat, Danny slices the sausage in thin lengths to adorn the pie. The pepperoni is cut in the usual rounds. He uses fresh mozzarella and/or high quality regular mozzarella, depending on the type of pie ordered. And after coming out of the oven he tops most with a little fresh grating cheese.

The crust is thin, crispy and delicate and is made from sourdough. It's what Danny's pies are all about.

I never thought of fermented dough for pizza, but it works. Indeed, sourdoughs are hardly unknown in Italian baking. Danny takes it easy on the tartness, so the sourdough doesn't call attention to itself, but when you bite into the unadorned puffy crust on the pie's margins you will detect a slight tang that complements rather than competes with toppings.

What makes it even more unique is that Danny didn't begin with a commercial sourdough starter. He set out flour mixed with water and let the local Haddonfield yeasts do their thing. Works for me.

He's selling a lot of cheese steaks, too. Danny's picky so he uses prime beef. He's also cooking long hots, which can adorn the steaks or the pizza.

You can watch a cheesy video of Danny at work here.

(Full disclosure: I got to know Danny from hanging out at the Reading Terminal Market when he was making deliveries to DiNic's and consider him a foodie friend.)

New Year's Treat: Not Pigs in Blanket

For New Year's Day football-watching (and Superbowl Sunday as well) She Who Must Be Obeyed and I set up a variety of small bites for noshing through the day and night. In years past Pigs in the Blanket have been the star attraction, but we also indulge in appetizers from the frozen aisle at Trader Joe's and other emporiums: phyllo-wrapped savory treats, dips and chips (including guacamole) and similar high-calorie, high-fat fare.

This year I wanted to replace the worst offenders with something less enlarging to the gut, or at least not quite as unhealthy. I still went with the guac (homemade). But instead of oversalted tortilla chips I swapped them out with pita chips.

Still, I wanted something special and a little out of the ordinary.

Coming to the rescue was Otolith Sustainable Seafood, a small Philadelphia purveyor which does some of its own fishing in Alaska and also buys seafood from other small fishing operations in the Sitka and Petersburg areas. Almost everything is individually quick frozen and everything I've tried so far has been absolutely delicious. In fact, the king (chinook) salmon is the best I've ever had, including during a two-week visit to the 49th state.

For New Year's I took advantage of a special Otolith offering: salmon roe. The deep reddish-orange roe (also known as ikura) came in four-ounce refrigerated jars, priced at $10 apiece.

To serve them I used mini-pastry shells (about the diameter of a quarter) purchased from the South Philly Ikea's Swedish Food Mart. Into each went a dollop of non-fat Greek yogurt, then a heaping spoonful of roe. To finish out my plate I filled the remaining pastry shells with more yogurt, then a curl of smoked salmon.

Next time Otolith offers salmon roe, I won't wait for New Year's to indulge. Otolith sells its seafood at local farmers' markets (including Rittenhouse and Headhouse) as well as through some natural food stores in the area. They'll also deliver to your door.

Reserve Your Haggis

Among the changes transpired since my six-month absence from blogging about Philadelphia's public and farmers' markets is switch of chefs at Border Springs Farm, the fresh and prepared lamb purveyor at the Reading Terminal Market.

In the fall Nick Macri moved over from executive chef at Southwark to run the cooking operation at Border Springs. (Opening chef Aaron Gottesman is how chef de cuisine at Kevin Sbraga's new The Fat Ham.)

In honor of poet Robert Burns birthday Jan. 25, Macri will be preparing a near-authentic haggis. All that will be missing in the offal-stuffed offering will be the traditional lights (lungs) which, to the best of my knowledge, remain off-limits for human consumption under USDA rules. Nick also told me he will be using manufactured casing rather than sheep stomach, the traditional containing vessel for the oat-extended offal-loaf. If you want it, make a reservation: it won't be available unless you make a prior commitment to purchase one.

In the meantime, Border Springs has had to cope with a non-functioning refrigerated display case. They expect to get a replacement compressor installed Monday.

Breakfast of Jewish Champions: Not lox.

Who knew? The matzoh ball soup at Herschel's deli in the Reading terminal market makes a superb breakfast when you're looking for something substantive but not overwhelming. The broth itself was clear and rich with just enough carrots and celery as well as white meat chicken pieces a few but enough. The matzoh balls themselves were plenty big, about the size of a baseball. Just the right density neither too heavy nor too light.

Won't You Be My Melon-craving Baby?

Local muskmelons -- usually called cantaloupes because marketers consider "musk" off-putting -- can be found at local farmers' markets, like Headhouse Square where A.T. Buzby, the South Jesey grower, displayed these giants at $4 apiece.

The same variety of local melon has been available on and off for the last week or so at Iovine's Urban Produce at the Reading Terminal market at half the price for a similar-sized melon. I purchased one of Iovine's a few days ago: good flavor, moderate sweetness with a sea-salt tang, all-in-all, an enjoyable melon to eat.

Although I'm not a stickler for washing produce, I always scrub melons in the sink: they're more apt than most other fruits to pick up pathogens in the soil. A quick, warm, slightly soapy scrub to the exterior before cutting does wonders. If you don't wash melons, any baddies on the surface will work their way inside when you slice it open.

Lamb Man Working Spit

Shepherd Craig Rogers, proprietor of Border Springs Farm, works the spit with a 52-pound lamb roasting for today's Sidewalk Sizzle and Ice Cream Freeze at the Reading Terminal Market. Although they started serving lamb tacos from previously cooked lamb about 10 a.m. today, Rogers didn't expect to be able to carve from this carcass until about 1:30 p.m., after cooking for about six hours.