chives, continued!

Saturday, May 31, 2008

This month has marked the beginning of my second summer managing farmers’ markets, and in fact this very week was my one-year anniversary of working for Farm to City.  It’s been rewarding and challenging in ways I couldn’t imagine before I had a job that I loved, but one of my favorite things about my job is that there are always new vegetables to discover!

One of my newest discoveries is chive blossoms.  I had never paid particular attention to chives themselves, but on the first Saturday of the Rittenhouse Square farmers’ market, I found myself unable to resist the light purple thistle-resembling blossoms at the tent of Crawford Organics (one of the partner farms in Paradise Organics, if that name is familiar to people).  I’d heard that people often put them in salads, and since buying that first little bag of chive blossoms, I’ve done that myself.  I slice off the stem end of the blossom, to let the blossom fall into individual petals so the taste isn’t overwhelming, and sprinkle it over the lettuces and other salad greens that are so plentiful at this point in the season.

But what I happened to do the first morning after I’d bought the blossoms—and what I think is so far my favorite, tastiest way to use them—was sauté a chopped blossom or two in butter, then scramble eggs in. 

Perhaps it’s an idea for tomorrow’s brunch. 

(I promise I was thinking about the entry all week, before seeing Nicole’s entry about chives in general!)