Purslane

The market was in full swing last week, overflowing with summer's bounty. I can't resist the beautiful but pricey heirloom tomatoes--so juicy, sweet, and flavorful! Peaches are also a must right now, as are the candy-like Walla Walla sweet onions. This week I bought the young, small ones with the stems still attached, perfect for grilling. But my most thrilling discovery was purslane.

While I may be relatively new to the delights of purslane, others, especially those in Latin America, India, and the Middle East where it grows like a weed, are not. It is actually a type of leafy succulent (portulaca oleracea), and can be eaten in its entirety, stems and all. We ate it raw, just chopped coarsely, but apparently if you cook it as you might spinach it becomes "mucilaginous" which, I'm assuming means a bit thick and perhaps snotty? Whatever the case, many cultures use it profusely in soups and stews, as in the Mexican Verdolagas con Carne de Puerco. In addition to tasting quite good, a bit sour and even salty, purslane is also extremely good for you. It boasts more Omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy vegetable, and is apparently loaded with good for you antioxidants and vitamins. Summer purslane is what is at the market right now; we fell in love with winter purslane, more commonly known as Miner's lettuce, early on in the spring months. It too is a type of succulent, and Miner's lettuce is also chock-full of healthy stuff; it even made it onto the "perfect foods" list. All I know is that both types of purslane taste terrific and make a deliciously crunchy and uniquely flavorful addition to a salad.

So what did I do with all of this "perfect" food? After thoroughly cleaning and picking through the purslane, I chopped it and splashed it with just a touch of champagne vinegar, my best olive oil, salt and pepper. Then I cut up big, meaty chunks of those gorgeous tomatoes and put them on top. I recently received some "finishing" salts as a gift, so I sprinkled the tomatoes with the coal-black Hawaiian salt, then doused the entire thing with olive oil. The only thing else we needed to round out our meal was those lovely grilled Walla Walla sweet onions and some chicken that had been marinating in herbs and garlic for a good part of the day. Delicious. Simple, but that seems to be a theme around here lately.

Garbanzos

Various things have conspired against my trips to the farmer's market over the past few weeks. Some weeks we were out of town, others we went but didn't have the time to make anything remarkable let alone write about it. And now the latest development, our kitchen remodel, has nearly brought all cooking to a complete halt in our household. I say nearly because we do (thank god!) have a grill and it is summer time. However, our "kitchen" currently consists of a table in the living room piled high with cutting boards, the microwave, and as many useful things as I could fit on it, while the refrigerator sits far away in the other room, the only lonely item in our once functional kitchen. Our "sink" is now the laundry room basin where the dish rack sits next to it on top of the washing machine. In case you're not getting it, I'm trying to paint the picture that our cooking lives are in complete chaos.

However, we are still stuck with the lovely dilemma that the food must go on--we must eat. And while our meals have been reduced to the most basic and simple of grilled foods, there is something wonderfully primal about cooking over fire because you have to. This subtle shift seems to result in food that is so entirely satisfying. At the end of the day when the workmen have gone and the dust has settled, there we are on our back patio, enjoying the small things in life--food, wine, each other.

So garbanzos? you're undoubtedly wondering. Sure, we're all familiar with the regular canned or dried chickpeas, but I found them fresh this past weekend at the farmer's market. A wonderful mess of fresh little pods at the end of their very dry and crispy stems and leaves. A wonderful mess, but a time consuming one as well; first finding all of the pods hidden among the leaves and then removing each little "pea" from its protective jacket was no small task. After all was said and done, my gigantic pile of garbanzo mess turned into a tiny bowl full of bright green chickpeas. It's no wonder that they were considered peasant food in ancient times. Who else would put forth so much effort for such a tiny little morsel?

They were all shelled and ready to eat, so now what? The farmer at the market said that she preferred to eat them raw, but in my opinion they seemed a bit chalky and well, raw. So I decided to blanch them quickly over my fancy propane burner. It took at least 5 if not 10 minutes of boiling before they were tender when poked with a fork. While they were cooking, I cut up one of those remarkably ripe and juicy tomatoes found only in the heat of the summer and slathered it with my very best olive oil, salt and pepper. I then added to the tomatoes some chopped up fresh mozzarella and the cooled chickpeas once they were done. I sprinkled some finely chopped basil on the top and voila! A fresh garbanzo bean summer salad.

After all that work, I'm sorry to report that the fresh chickpea was remarkably similar to its canned counterpart. Perhaps a bit more toothsome and flavorful, but the difference was barely discernible. Still, it was a fun process and a fun find.