Must you always use fresh foods when they are in season, or are canned tomatoes in August an abomination? Frozen Canned organic tomatoes cost $1.50 – 2.00 for a 28oz can. Fresh tomatoes, organic or not cost between $3-7 a pound: If the recipe is Insalata Caprese – a combination of tomato, fresh mozzarella and basil – the fresh is worth it. For dishes like Jambalaya, Ragu, Soups, it gets a little harder to justify the cost of fresh tomatoes. Then you add in the extra work and waste of cutting, peeling chopping and it gets really hard not to bust out the can opener.
Or take something like okra. Since the USDA started keeping stats on okra 30 years ago, we have gone from eating, on average, a little more than ounce a year to nearly consuming a half-pound. Viscous/slimy, fuzzy, and not really a familiar veg that cooks will readily sub for artichokes or carrots; okra really isn’t the most likely candidate to triple its growth. Except there was that period in the 80s where everything was canjunized, for a good 5 years, sometimes unfortunately like Dennis Quaid’s accent. After the cajun craze, we have seen the growth of Thai, Vietnamese and Indian cuisines – all occasionally call on okra to be the star of the show.
Okra is $5.99 a pound at the Farmers Market, which considering it is a plant that thrives in hot, humid environments – about the opposite of the growing regions of the Pacific NW and the fact that I am wearing a sweater in August, it is pretty amazing that the pods are available at all. My other choice for fresh okra is from the Vietnamese grocery store – they stock it fairly consistently, but having an item 80% of the time is just a high enough miss rate to make me wonder if it is worth a special trip. Then it is packaged in plastic wrap in Styrofoam and sometimes looks a little old but even if I wouldn’t want to use it, that okra is still considered ‘fresh’.
In contrast, I know if I go to my neighborhood grocery, baby pods will be available in the frozen foods section for $1.99 a pound every time I am in the store. Blanched for about 2 minutes, consistently sized and shockingly green, there is no prep, no quality issues - while I couldn’t really dry sauté frozen okra with spices to make Bhindi Masala, nor would I really want to add previously frozen pods to corn, fresh thyme and cherry tomatoes for a fresh variation on the succotash theme. But for a pot of gumbo with dark roux and shellfish and rich stock, previously frozen okra does the job and then some.
I recently purchased can of artichoke hearts in my cupboard even though fresh artichokes are in season right now. Once a year for a few months there is a chance for a big fresh choke with aioli and sometimes roasted potatoes, but sometimes I just want a grilled cheese with artichokes in the next 15 minutes. I know fresh, local and seasonal are tattooed on the buttock of the food culture right now. These are guidelines, not law – If you’ll excuse me, I think I need a grilled cheese now.
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