Market Report

Brooke Williamson and her husband, Nick Roberts, are the chef/owners of The Tripel in Playa del Rey and Hudson House in Redondo Beach. This week Williamson is shopping for globe artichokes from Life's a Choke farmstand. At the Tripel she steams them for 40 to 45 minutes, cleans them, cuts them in half and grills the halves. Then she serves the grilled artichokes with a house-made umami butter that includes olives, anchovies, tomato paste and almost 20 other savory ingredients.

David Karp is a pomologist with the University of California Riverside and he writes the Market Watch column for the Los Angeles Times' Food section. This week he discusses several unique varieties of apricots that Frog Hollow Farms will bring to the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers' Market on June 12 and June 19. Known as CandyCots, the Anya and Yuliya varieties are twice as sweet as other Americangrown apricots. In this Market Watch article he rates all available varieties of apricots on a scale of one to 10 - Anya received a 10 and Yuliya received a nine.