Owen’s Tip Corner – #2

Whole Foods has mediocre meat.  It is way overpriced and rarely memorable.  If you buy most of your meat and fish at Whole Foods, I suggest you look for better, cheaper options.  For those of you that live in eastern Massachusetts, I recommend checking out the following three places:

1. Blood Farm in Groton, MA - http://www.yelp.com/biz/blood-farm-wholesale-meat-w-groton

2. Butcher Boy in Andover, MA - http://butcherboymarket.com/

3. New Deal Fish Market in Cambridge, MA - http://www.newdealfishmarket.com/

The first two establishments are superb sources of meat.  Blood Farm, in particular, is remarkable.  The meat is as fresh as it can possibly be, the prices are very affordable, and the experience of shopping at Blood Farm is worth the trip alone.  The New Deal Fish Market is the best fish market I have been to in Massachusetts.  I worked at an upscale fish market in Connecticut in my high school days, so I know good fish when I see it.  The quality and selection are out of this world, and the prices are far better than those at Whole Foods.  An added bonus, the service is incredible.

Mala Pijaca for suits and hardy marketeers

Located in the urban sprawl to the west of the city center, Podgorica’s small market, called Mala Pijaca, targets those who live or work in the immediate area and are in a pinch for produce. While this market might be viewed in a better light if it were the only market in town, when stacked up against Podgorica’s other market, Velika Pijaca (see my previous post), Mala Pijaca is decent at best.

Boston Hay Market Sriracha

A. Maki:

Mark Bittman’s NYTimes article of Nov. 18th on homemade hot sauce (read here) made me reminisce about our own Hay Market sriracha. Different from his recipe, I recall that we used cider vinegar instead of white wine vinegar, and that we tossed in a healthy amount of garlic. Owen, if you’ve got this recipe on paper somewhere, post it here for a useful side-by-side comparison.

Also, have you ever been to THE ‘hot sauce blog’?

O. Maloy:

We made two versions of the sriracha. The first was simply a combination of habaneros, jalapenos, fresh cayenne peppers, tons of garlic and a few glugs of cider vinegar. I don’t have the exact recipe, but I would guesstimate that we added…

• 1 part habanero,
• 2 parts jalapeno,
• 3 parts cayenne, and
• 2 parts garlic,

…all rough chopped, to a saucepan and poured in enough vinegar to just cover them, and a pinch of salt. We then allowed the chili mixture to simmered for about 20 minutes. After removing the pot from the heat and allowing the chili mixture to cool, we poured everything into a food processor and pureed it into a sauce.

This was my favorite recipe. It was delicious, had a great red color, was firey hot, and did not spoil since it contained so much vinegar. The other version was made with all green chiles and had some cilantro in it.

Sriracha: Put it in your SALAD DRESSING

I found out the secret to great salad dressing: sriracha. I added just a tiny bit of sriracha to my last batch of salad dressing, which was made of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard, salt, pepper and a scant half teaspoon of sriracha. 

The sriracha added a little something to the background that took the dressing above and beyond your typical homemade dressing. Also, I was afraid that it would add a southeast Asian flare to the salad that I didn’t quite want at the time, but it did no such thing. The sriracha helped to emulsify the salad dressing, too.

The Gold Standard of Produce in Boston

Andrew’s posting on Podgorica’s Big Market immediately roused memories of my time spent in Barcelona, where I frequented La Boqueria, one of the largest and most revered markets in all of Europe. I would walk the concentric circles of La Boqueria for hours, ogling beautifully fresh produce, studying the most unusual sea creatures, drooling over perfectly marbled cuts of meat, and envying all of the Spaniards strolling about who were able to shop at such a market on a daily basis. La Boqueria introduced me to what fresh produce and meats should taste like, as well as how food shopping should be conducted. It was difficult returning to the States and having to walk the aisles of supermarkets housing meats and produce that just don’t quite meet the standards of those that I had the luxury of eating in Spain. I either needed to find a good domestic version of La Boqueria , or I needed to buy a plane ticket. With a little trial and error, I was able to find a farmers market that satisfied my needs and I avoided the expense of have to fly East.

The market that keeps my fridge and stomach plenty full is the Copley Square Farmers Market in Boston. Open from 11am to 6pm every Tuesday and Friday from the middle of May through the final week of November, the market houses about 15 vendors representing farms and small businesses from all over Massachusetts.  

There are 5 or so vendors that specialize in baked goods, the best of which, by far, is Iggy’s Bread.   Iggy’s is always stocked with a large assortment of sensational breads and also offers a few specialty sandwiches that cannot be beat.  I recommend the very Parisian ham and cheese sandwich, which is a simple combination of a great baguette, delicious thick-cut Niman Ranch ham, high quality cheddar cheese, and a thin smear of sweet butter.  It is an unforgettably good sandwich and the perfect accompaniment to fresh produce shopping.

Podgorica at the Market

Open daily, Podgorica’s “Big Market” (commonly known as Velika Pijaca) offers the largest variety of fruits and vegetables that is available citywide. With the addition of separate rooms for cheese vendors, egg vendors, and fish vendors, this market serves as Podgorica’s retail hub of foodstuffs that are locally produced (note: there is also a section dedicated to meat vendors, but as of this post these rooms appear to be under renovation). 

market stand from above