Farmer Bill Coleman has a wide array of greens at the market right now. They are great for soups, salads or sandwiches. He uses red frill mustard greens, arugula and sorrel in salads and sandwichies. Green and red mizuna is great in soup as is shungiku, an edible chrysanthemum, which is used in hot pots.
Amelia Saltsman is making a winter salad with ingredients from the farmers market. She uses a mandolin to shave watermelon radish, apples, and fennel into your bowl. Add a handful of wild arugula and tangerine segments. Toss with walnut oil and a few squeezes of meyer lemon juice. Amelia is the author of The Santa Monica Farmers Market Cookbook.
Amelia Saltsman’s Favorite Winter Salad of 2010
Serves 4-6
1 watermelon radish
2 medium fennel bulbs
1 pink lady or other sweet-tart apple
3 mandarins, peeled and pulled into segments
2 large handfuls arugula, preferably wild
1 to 2 Tablespoons walnut oil
1 meyer lemon
Salt and pepper
Peel radish and cut into quarters stem to taproot. Using a mandolin, shave radish into crosswise slices. I like to rest the mandolin right in the bowl I’ll be using for the salad. Discard tough outer layers of fennel bulb. Cut in half top to bottom, rinse clean, and dry. Shave fennel into bowl. Core and cut apple into quarters and shave into bowl. Add mandarin segments and arugula to bowl. Drizzle with 1 to 2 tablespoons oil, juice of 1/2 lemon, and season with salt and pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning as desired.