Weekly Dish

See all of those lovely vegetables? Garlic, spring onions, asparagus, yellow and green zucchini, all grown right here in my home state, in the ground just days before they arrived on my cutting board.

Every Saturday morning, David and I journey the mile or so down the road to our local farmer’s market, and I try really hard to buy most of my produce there. I also try to buy Kleinpeter or Smith Creamery dairy products, both local companies, and locally produced meat or chicken, and whenever possible, I look for locally made jams, jellies, and cheeses. Why?

Well, the first and most selfish reason is that local produce simply tastes better. Logically, strawberries harvested on a Thursday and sold to me on a Saturday morning are fresher than strawberries that must be picked before they’re ripe and have unnatural things added to them so that they can spend a week or longer on a truck or in a storeroom. That just makes good sense, right?

Also, though, I love to look into the faces of the people who grow the food I eat. The guy we usually buy strawberries from has a picture of his little girl taped to the top of the cash box, and, call me a sap, but I enjoy knowing that the money I put into that cash box is helping support the family of an honest, reliable small business owner and not to fund a multimillion dollar corporation. I also know, both from an economics class I took in college and from simple common sense, that money spent in my local economy returns to my local economy; buying local makes me a good neighbor and a smart citizen. And with increased gas prices, I’m guessing that the fewer miles my food travels, the better for the environment and the energy crisis. I’m no expert, of course, so if you want to read more excellent and well-thought out reasons to buy and eat locally, check out this post.

For the month of May, food bloggers are tackling the Eat Local Challenge. Largely an awareness-building and educational movement, the challenge is designed to get us all to be critical consumers, to think about where our food comes from and where we’re spending our money. While I don’t think it’s realistic to eat completely local all of the time–even more unrealistic for my friends who live in less agriculture-friendly climates than I do–, I support any effort to help people think about what they’re putting in their mouths, or, as I teach my students about media literacy, their brains.

While I’m not the kind of person who believes in beating people over the head with my politics, religion, or grocery-buying practices in order to convert them, I still thought it might be interesting for some of my readers to take a look at how I approach eating locally. For me, this commitment is year-round; every Saturday morning I try to make it to the market, and fortunately, I live in a place that grows at least some foods year round. I also check the labels at my grocery; I buy from a locally owned supermarket–not a chain–and so the owner is also invested in bringing local goods into the store. Plus, he is a local consumer, spending money in my local economy.

If you aren’t concerned with eating local, that’s fine by me. But if you are, I thought it might be useful to see how one gal does it. Lots of other people have done more research than I have and have stronger commitments to the movement, but for what it’s worth, this month, I’ll talk about the ingredients I’m buying and how I make my consumption choices. If you don’t care, feel free to skip down to the recipe; I’ll never know.

This pasta dish quintessentially represents my efforts at eating locally: not everything in the dish is locally made, as the pasta, mascarpone, olive oil, and Parmesan were all imported. But the recipe resulted from my weekly trip to the market: zucchini, asparagus, onions, tomato, and peppers were all available from local farmers, and so I made them the centerpiece of the meal. And that’s exactly how I like to challenge myself: not necessarily to buy only local ingredients but to buy as many as I can as often as I can and use those ingredients to come up with fresh dishes that taste like the season.

I call this dish Pasta Primavera because (besides the fact that many other people before me have used the title) the Latin roots of the word can mean literally first (prima) and spring (vera). These vegetables were the first ones available this spring season, and so I offer them up in a simple cream sauce that highlights the crisp, fresh taste of seasonal, local vegetables. However you choose to enjoy the first fruits of this season, I hope you eat fresh and well.

I’m sorry my posting has been so sporadic over the last few weeks; thankfully, the semester is over, and I have a bit of a break!

Pasta Primavera

1 pound linguine or other thin pasta
1 yellow bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
1 T. olive oil
1 T. butter
1 white or yellow onion, sliced thinly into half moons
20 stalks thin asparagus, chopped
1 green zucchini, sliced
1 yellow zucchini, sliced
1/4 cup white wine
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tomato, diced
1/2 cup mascarpone cheese
1/4 cup half and half or heavy cream
Salt and pepper, to taste
Parmesan cheese, to taste

Preheat the broiler. Wash and dry the peppers and place on a foil-lined cookie sheet. Roast, under the broiler, for about 20 minutes, turning about every 5 minutes or so to make sure each side blackens. When all sides are charred, place the pepper in a bowl, and cover tightly with plastic wrap to steam. Set aside.

While the peppers are roasted, bring a pot of water to boil and cook the pasta. You can also use this time to prep the other vegetables. When the pasta is done, drain and place in a large bowl.

In a large skillet, heat half of the butter and olive oil. Add the onion. Cook over medium-high heat for about 10 minutes, until the onion is very soft and just beginning to turn golden. Add the asparagus and zucchini. Cook for 5 more minutes. Season well with salt and pepper, then pour in the wine and cover to let the vegetables absorb it. Cook about 2-3 minutes more. Dump this mixture into the bowl with the pasta and toss lightly.

When the peppers are cool enough to handle, peel the skin from them, remove the stem and seeds, and chop. Add them to the pasta bowl.

In the same skillet, heat the remaining half tablespoon of butter and oil. Add the garlic and cook for a few minutes over medium until soft. Add the chopped tomato and cook for another couple of minutes. Salt and pepper well. Stir in the mascarpone and half and half; cook and stir until it’s blended and creamy. Pour this sauce over the pasta and toss well. Top each serving with a healthy dose of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Serves 4-6.

Note: Seasoning is the key to bringing out the flavor of the vegetables; salt well at every stage and the vegetables will absorb it into their own flavor. If you wait until the end, you risk the dish being salty rather than flavor-enhanced. I’ve made that mistake far too many times!

If you’re interested in other ways to cook asparagus, check out Kevin’s growing collection of asparagus recipes over at Seriously Good.

Posted: Thursday, May 11th, 2006 at 6:35 pm Filed under: Main Dish, Vegetables, Pasta. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.