The Power of Ingredients

One thing that struck me on this most recent visit to Cleveland's wonderful West Side Market and North Union Farmers Market is the role that ingredients play in the experiences we have at farmers markets and public markets such as this one.

Many of the stories that we heard from Mary Holmes and from Marilou Suzsko were certainly about traditions, quality, and community.  But, underneath those stories was really the latent, bubbling power of ingredients.

It's relevant here to look at the etymology of the word grocer.  It comes from the Old French and Latin words grossier, and grossarius, which mean, quite literally, dealer in quantity.  As such, it was common for the grocer to deal in things that we could store for some period of time, such as (especially in more recent centuries) flour, sugar, spices, coffee, etc. In our current food environment, many of us rely on the grocery store not only for these items which we buy in some degree of bulk, but also for all of our fresh goods: vegetables, meat, dairy, cheese, and so forth.  What is the effect of this?  On one hand, we are able to have access to a wide variety of foods that would not have been possible in another time, but how connected are we with these foods, their producers, and their use?

The students had an opportunity to talk with a few of the vendors at the North Union Market, where they were able to discuss the value these producers place on the quality of their products, as well as providing guidance on the usage of these items in a variety of dishes.  One mushroom vendor was truly a wealth of knowledge about the botany, etymology, and culinary uses for his wonderful fungi.

Marilou told us a story about a time when she was in the West Side Market in search of Speck, a Hungarian (or Italian, depending on its preparation) cured pork product, for use in a soup recipe.  She found that her favorite vendor was out of this ingredient, and when she was asked how she planned to use the Speck, the vendor suggested a cured pork skin product as a substitute.  This is one story of thousands that could be told about the relationship between the vendor at a farmers market or public market, the shopper, and the ingredient.  When we lose this, do we not lose much of the culture, flavor, and tradition that we love about food?  I fear that this is the case.

There are certainly other public markets where ingredients aren't nearly as important as prepared foods, and while these are a joy to visit, and result in some serious expansion of food horizons, it occurs to me that the triangular relationship between consumer, vendor, and ingredient is key to our values about food, and often rests with markets such as those we visited last weekend.