Jowls, Scapes & Crafty Farmers

Last Friday I walked over to the Union Square Greenmarket to clear my head from the countless hours I spend in the restaurant, poke around and possibly pick up some goodies to play around with. I did a quick walk-through, turning North through the park winding my way past the various purveyors and farmers selling their fare and trying to undercut each other while still trying to turn a profit: on this side, Kirby Cucumbers $2.60/lb; down the row from him, Kirby Cucumbers $2.25/lb; and around the corner Kirby’s for a scant $2/lb. My plan was to walk down the Blue Water Grill aisle that runs parallel with Union Square West and then turn down the 17th Street aisle, continuing down to the end of the market.
Most of what I saw was your standard farm fare for mid-July: peaches, cherries, a few berries, corn, the aforementioned Kirby’s, and one vender brashly selling tomatoes…next week maybe (the Rutgers and Ramapo varieties both taking nearly 80 days to reach maturation. Not to mention all the rain from June could lead to a late blight which could wipe out crops across the state. Anyway...). Then there were the few expected surprises such as garlic scapes, some small Summer squashes and herbs of all kinds; Licorice-Basil, anyone…?
As I walked from stall-to-stall and chatted with the farmers, a thought popped into my head: showing up at the Greenmarket in your whites is just ridiculously pretentious. Most people would probably think you looked silly any other chefs would probably curse you under their breath and the farmers don’t produce enough crop to start acting like “purveyors,” supplying restaurants with pounds upon pounds of garlic scapes or culantro to have them falling all over anyone wearing a chefs coat.
Anyway, I didn’t see anyone being pretentious and continued poking around, practically laughing in the face of one farmer who tried to sell me garlic scapes for $8/lb. These might be salt of the earth people, or at least saltier than I am being a cityboy and all, but they’re still business men & women at the end of the day. Two Friday’s ago a buddy of bought garlic scapes at the Greenmarket for $2/lb, last week a magazine apparently published an article (that I’m still trying to locate, by the way) about the “hottest chefs” using garlic scapes at the “hottest restaurants.” And by this Friday, the price had risen by $6/lb, which if my high school math is right, is about a 300% increase in price! Instead of laughing at him, I moved on and found a guy selling tightly spiraled scapes in square pint containers that seemed to weight around ¾ of a pound, for $3 each. I also picked up some of the aforementioned Licorice-Basil, and a small pot of cherry peppers and culantro, cilantro’s more potent Mexican cousin. Then the piece de resistance: a beautiful 2lb piece of Pork Jowl.

I practically skipped back to the kitchen.
So what the hell was I going to do with this stuff? I decided to give the plants some water, bias cut the scapes for something…and then smoke and braise the jowl for empanadas. I set up my smoker

and popped the jowl inside. Then I got my braising liquid going, deciding to first reduce it and then add beer before throwing in the jowl. An hour and a half later, I pulled the jowl out of the smoker

and slid into the water, covering it with beer. Then into the oven it went. When I took the pot out, the jowl was practically falling apart…and my jowls were trembling with anticipation. I pulled a small piece off and popped it in my mouth, my cares and worries melting away as the meat melted in my mouth.
Once the jowl had cooled, I pulled the skin off for cracklins, cut the meat into small pieces and tossed it in a sauté pan with my previously cut garlic scapes. Once crispy, the steaming filling went into my empanada dough and the whole thing went into the oven. My reviews were good. My favourite local drunks and my favourite local drinkery raved about them. My bartender buddy around the corner was less kind, but appreciated the free food.
Since then, the remaining garlic scapes took a trip to my mom’s place in Jersey, then came back to the City with me and are currently going to waste in my fridge…and I’m hating myself a little bit because of that. Hopefully tonight I can do something with them before they turn…I’m a little garlic scaped out at this point, so maybe pickled garlic scapes? We shall see.