It’s amazing what you can find at farmers’ markets in the spring.  Scapes.  Fiddlehead ferns.  And — surprise to me — quail eggs.

But just what do you do with those tiny little eggs besides boiling them?

I spent Saturday exploring new farmers’ markets, driving from Bucks County down into Montgomery and then over into Chester County by back roads.  Some markets were disappointing — the stands had the same vegetables I can find in regular markets.  Or else the markets overall featured more crafts, antiques and/or prepared-foods, and offered only a meager supply of fresh vegetables and meats.

But some of them were definitely worth the trip, and the roadside stands I passed along the back roads made it even more enjoyable.  My haul was fairly impressive for so early in the spring.

First off, I located the one food I’d set off to look for — fiddlehead ferns.  I see them occasionally at food markets like Whole Foods and Wegman’s in the spring, but not in any great quantity or with any regularity.  I picked up an entire paper bag of them at a stand in far-Chester.  Fiddleheads are just delicious when they’re simply sautéed with a bit of butter, a nut and then topped with a touch of cheese.  My favorite combination involves pine nuts, a bit of pepper and parmesan — and in fact, that’s what was served for dinner tonight.

At the same stand, I found one small bunch of scapes.  Have you ever seen scapes?  They’re basically the tender flower sprout of a hard-neck garlic plant, topped with the ‘flower’ itself, containing tiny little pearls of baby garlic ‘seeds.’  You can chop them up and use them in stir-fries, soups, omelets — the flavor (to me) is much milder than garlic bulbs, but still adds that garlicy tang to your food.

I added the little pearls into the brunch potatoes — in one of the regular farmers’ markets I found what should properly have been called infant, not baby, potatoes.  The average size was that of a marble, and the stand had both white and red potato varieties.  Mixed with the pearl garlic and sautéed with some morel mushrooms and cauliflower, they made a nice lunch dish on an unusually cold day.  And yes, I found yet more purple cauliflower, and morels, a type of spongy mushroom, which I have never seen at a market before.

But the top find was the quail eggs.  Tiny little quarter-sized eggs, speckled in individual patterns of brown and black and tan and what looks like a bluey-grey.  They’ve been on my list to try for a long time, so I grabbed a dozen.  On the way home, I began searching for recipes.

Oddly enough, at least three-quarters of the recipes I found simply had me hard-boil the eggs, and then use them as garnishes in dishes.  There are a couple of recipes where I would poach or pickle them — but then, again, they’d just be used as garnishes to the main dish of vegetables or breads.

For some reason, in my head, I built up quail eggs as something unique, that I would cook them in exotic ways.  And don’t get me wrong — I definitely like them, they’re a milder taste, a softer texture, with a lot more yolk compared to the usual chicken egg.   I can see where that flavor would provide a nice contrast to various dishes, and I’ll be trying out some of the pickling recipes as well.  But most everything I read suggested that their flavor was best eaten in a simple manner, not combined into a dish with a lot of other ingredients that would smother the taste of the eggs.

I ended up at Whole Foods to pick up some fish and — ran into a wall of purple vegetables once inside — more asparagus, Brussel sprouts, carrots, potatoes and this time, the purple peppers, were there, along with white ones.  I’m planning on taking pictures and posting them tomorrow.

Meanwhile I’m going to see just how a quail egg pickled in soy sauce tastes.  Despite its small size, it takes just as long to pickle one of the quail eggs as it does its larger chicken cousin.

Eating healthy has turned into a bit of a scavenger hunt — for purple vegetables.

No, I’m not joking.  Over the last five weeks, I’ve become somewhat consumed with finding — and eating — purple vegies, all courtesy of my neighborhood food markets.

It started innocently enough.  I wandered into a Whole Foods at lunchtime, and discovered purple brussel sprouts from a local farm.  Really purple brussel sprouts.  The outer leaves were a deep, dark, eggplanty black-purple, and it wasn’t until I peeled to the middle section of these mini-cabbages that I found unusually-bright green leaves.  I’d read about purple brussel sprouts — I obsessively read books about kitchen gardening — so I promptly bought a large bagful to try.

Sadly, the beautiful coloring didn’t survive steaming, although, a touch of it did remain — I like my vegies a bit crunchy, so I don’t steam them until they’re soggy.  They tasted sweeter than the usual brussel sprouts, or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that they lacked the sometimes-bitter taste of their green counterparts.  I liked them, and returned to that Whole Foods to get more.

And found purple carrots, another vegetable I’d read about but never seen.  These were very different from my usual carrots — a deep reddy-purple exterior, and a clearly-defined ringed yellow inner core.   Unlike the brussels sprouts, the coloring survived cooking, and the taste was again sweeter to my taste buds.  I also learned that, unlike orange carrots, my purple ones had a thinner skin that cooked up nicely in soups and stews.

Just like that, I started hunting purple vegetables.  Obviously, I’ve eaten a variety of eggplants and turnips and I’ve grown purple cabbage, but what else was out there beside my yummy brussel sprouts and carrots?

Giant supplied me with purple cauliflower (which also turn green when steamed) and hothouse-grown purple peppers (which honestly looked more brown than purple to me, but that was the name, so they count for my tally).    Whole Foods pitched in with purple potatoes.  These are a deep purple outside, and a lighter purple with white specks inside.  However, once you cut them, they bleed a purple juice, and can stain your clothes if you’re not careful.  Whole Foods also provideda lovely bunch of purple asparagus that had a wonderful crispy texture even after being cooked.   Another specialty market provided purple French green beans (again, they turned green when cooked, and honestly tasted just like other ‘string’ beans).

It was the bi-monthly farmer’s market last weekend that provided the ultimate prizes.  Purple kohlrabi and purple sprouting broccoli.  Kohlrabi does not, contrary to rumor, taste like a sour apple, but it does have a wonderful nutty-sweet flavor and blends nicely with other root vegetables in a stir fry.  And the little sprouts of broccoli were perfect served raw in a mixed vegie salad topped with a light pomegranate dressing.

I haven’t yet found purple tomatoes, although several farmers at the market assured me that I’ll find them there, around July.  The pictures online at various garden centers show them as more brown than purple, much like the peppers.  I’ve also seen references to purple popping corn — little ears of corn, with a spectrum of color from eggplant-dark to pale violet, but no one at the market grew any corn except the larger ears for steaming at picnics.

Purple vegetables do, according to some sources, provide a wider spectrum of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients than their paler, mass-produced brethren.  But they have another side-effect that is useful to anyone trying to re-adjust their eating habits to a healthier menu — they distract you from snacks.

I was so interested in what these vegetables would taste like, what recipes I could create around them, that I ate lots of vegetables, and then didn’t feel the need for snacks.  End result?  I lost weight, without even trying, and without going to the gym or working out regularly.

We have many farmer’s markets in the Philadelphia area, and I’ve added to my to-do list a goal of hitting at least one a week.  Who knows what other gems I might find out there?