Going To Market

The farmers' market makes a great menu planner. I find inspiration when I walk through the Fayetteville market, located less than two blocks from my home. Strawberries, if you're lucky or strong-willed enough to get there early in the morning, yield themselves to great salads in the spring. When the hot peppers arrive in the late summer to early fall, I know it's about time to stock up for chili. Peaches and apples and nectarines, all arriving in mid-summer, cause me to ponder cobblers or sangria.

But what about during the winter? The weather has been constant at peak gloominess recently -- cool, cloudy and without a hint of sun. There's been so little sun, in fact, that Northwest Arkansas just experienced one of its cloudiest Decembers in a decade.

There is growth, however, at the Winter Market, an offshoot of the warmer-weather Fayetteville Farmers' Market. The winter market officially reopened Saturday at Jefferson Place, located inside the former Jefferson Elementary School on College Avenue. It runs weekly until the market on the square returns in early April.

I challenged myself to find dinner for Saturday night using only what was available to me at the market combined with things on hand in my pantry. I almost pulled it off and for only about $20, too.

Below are my finds, and my recipes for four unique courses. But because seasonal goods are sometimes microseasonal, it wouldn't surprise me if your finds at the market are different even next week.

Salad

Patrice Gros of Foundation Farm near Eureka Springs does not use a greenhouse to grow greens in the winter. That requires constant heat. He instead uses a "cold house," a similar protected enclosure but without the heat. On Saturday at the winter market, he offered some fresh arugula, kale, lettuce and bok choy. His favorite, he insisted, was the arugula.

"It tastes sweeter in the winter," he said.

Not having a recipe, but having word-of-mouth endorsement, I went with his suggestion. A simple balsamic vinaigrette -- about one part balsamic vinegar, three parts olive oil and a pinch of black pepper -- would be all the dressing needed. I went a half step further, buying some fresh vanilla-maple fromage blanc from the White River Creamery in Elkins. It's a sweet version of a classic French cheese, and it felt right. A very simple but very fresh salad started dinner and started it well.

Main Course

This proved to be the easiest of the dishes to acquire. The market provided several choices, in large part because pigs and lambs and beef cattle aren't quite as finicky about seasons as fruit is. Shumate Farms, located near Elkins, presented several different cuts of beef, and another provider had some lamb. I went with pork, however, in no small part because several cuts were on sale Saturday. I chose some thin pork chops from DH Farm near West Fork. Thick-cut chops were available, too, but I went with personal preference here. I simply fried the pork chop in a cast iron skillet, drizzling on a bit of the vinaigrette from the salad at the finish, though I'm not sure I needed it.

Side Dish

As I stood talking with Va Yang of Lee Produce of Siloam Springs, I waffled between the purple sweet potatoes and some new potato fingerlings at another booth. Another market patron, unsolicited, begged me to try the sweet potatoes. Two votes to none, I went that direction and bought a quart of purple potatoes. Lee said the batch she sold on Saturday was planted in July, harvested in September and then cold cellared until she pulled some out for the market. The outside of the tuber only hinted at what was to come. Yang suggested I boil them like I would more conventionally colored potatoes. She also suggested I drink the boiled water after it cooled. These potatoes are shockingly, garishly, "these-cannot-possibly-be-natural" bright purple. And I love them. The water -- it too bright purple -- saved after a 45-minute boil was sweet. I liked it but not enough to consume an entire cup. As for the boiled spuds, well, I was shocked but not just at the appearance. After cooking them, I handed over a still-warm chunk to my girlfriend. She noticed the sweetness immediately. She guessed brown sugar, and while that's an accurate taste profile, they are just that sweet on their own. I mashed about half the boiled potatoes together with about a half cup of milk and four tablespoons butter. Perfection.

Dessert

I cheated on dessert. I initially thought about considering the flavored cheese as the dessert, and that would have been a fine option. But Yang mentioned a tapioca dish with the potatoes. I wanted to give it a try. So I searched for recipes online, and sure enough, found a purple sweet potato plus tapioca dessert recipe. This broke one of my original guidelines considering I didn't have tapioca at home at the ready. But I found some easily enough, and I prepared it according to this recipe, courtesy of the Hawaiian Electric company:

7 cups water

1 cup tapioca (use the small pearl-type tapioca from )

1¼ cups sugar

1 can (13.5 ounces) coconut milk

2 cups chopped fruit (or cooked and chopped purple sweet potato)

Instructions

Bring the water to a boil. Add tapioca and bring to a boil again; lower heat and simmer for 25 minutes. There should be a tiny white dot in each tapioca pearl ball when done. Remove from heat. Let stand for 30 minutes; add sugar. Cool and add coconut milk. Add fruits (such as melon, mandarin oranges, banana) or purple sweet potato. Refrigerate. Makes 10 servings.

I did as instructed, and like magic, the potatoes turned the mixture Dayglo purple. It's sweet, but not too sweet, and the tapioca texture makes it fun to eat. I'll caution two things: Make sure you mash your potatoes really well and consider cutting the recipe in half. Small lumps in mashed potatoes are distracting but hardly problematic. A potato lump in a dessert, however, is quite the unwelcome distraction, and I found that out the hard way. As for the recipes above, most of the dishes would comfortably serve two, and maybe four, depending on everyone's appetite. I'll be eating tapioca for weeks. Not that I mind too much.