Little oddities

Hanging around at the market has unusual side benefits. You see being only a visitor, though a dedicated one, I am not aware of all the peculiar specialties that occasionally crop up. This past Sunday, Thomas, the "genius" behind RoliRoti , brought a mystery. As I was milling around during a slow period, he asked me (in his wonderful Swiss accent), "Do you wanna try something?" When a great chef like that makes that offer, I thought it was stupid to say no. So he pulls out from a plastic bag in his cooler a dark, bumpy, aged sausage. He proceeds to carefully slice the sausage. He offered me a taste, followed by the expected question. "What do you think it is?" I would not have guessed wild boar. So he explained how it was he came upon wild boar in the Bay Area and we enjoyed his excellent sausage.

Robert of Robert Lambert shared some grapes with me. He proceeded the offer by saying that they had just come into season and they were only in season for three weeks. These light colored grapes, called Bronx, are a cross of the Concord grape and the Thompson seedless. I learned that currently only two mother vines exist for the Bronx grape. Lagier Ranches grows their Bronx grapes from vines started from a cutting from the original vine that is kept at the Cornell Biological Field Station in New York State. This hybrid was created in 1933. They have a sweet Concord flavor with a Thompson-like skin. The inner texture is a mix of the two. The highly vicious flesh of the Concord is muted, making the grape more palatable raw for me. If you have never had a Concord grape raw, they can feel a bit like eating an eyeball.

Indian Summer is upon us. The apples are coming and going. Local citrus is only weeks away.