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Chef’s Best: Hidden Hadley - Fabulous finds at out-of-the-way markets

Part of the fun of food adventuring is discovering a new place to shop or eat. I’m not ashamed to admit that when my wife and I first visited Grand Bahama Island, our first two stops were the local supermarket and the food stands. The beach came later. When I hitchhiked to California back in the early ’70s, my friend Richie and I haunted the supermarkets and farmers markets, easing our way with rides and overnight accommodations by cooking breakfasts and dinners.

You don’t have to hitchhike to California for a food adventure. The Pioneer Valley abounds in farm stands, little markets, and ethnic stores and restaurants. Hadley, too often a movie and mall destination or a midpoint between Amherst and Northampton, has its share of treats.

There are some places that I’d like to keep secret, just to ensure that they don’t get too crowded for my taste. But I’ll write about them anyway. FLAYVORS OF COOK FARM at 1 East Hadley Road (the road between the two malls) is a dairy and ice cream stand selling innumerable flavors of ice cream (asparagus anyone?) made from milk and cream from their farm; it also carries milk and butter, local breads and pastries. Flayvors arguably has the best ice cream in the area. My favorite is the flavor known as Inez — coconut ice cream with chocolate-covered almonds mixed in.

ESSELON CAFE at 99 Russell St., Denis and Essie Laflamme’s new eatery across the street from Carmelina’s, has also become too popular, to my way of thinking. Aside from the coffee drinks and teas, which are up to the high standards set by co-founder Scott Rao, of Rao’s Cafe in Amherst, Esselon offers breakfasts and lunches. The place keeps growing, from a nicely redone dining room to an enclosed four-season porch to outdoor tables. I had lunch there with a colleague recently. She and I walked in, looked at the sandwiches — brie and pears, prosciutto on ficelles (the smaller version of baguettes) — and both instantly thought “France.”

Driving down Maple Street, perhaps on your way to Flayvors, you’re likely to catch a glimpse of MAPLE FARM FOODS, in the old Letourneau Flooring building at 10 South Maple St. Stop by. Steve and Nuray Selik have stocked their store with fresh produce and groceries, shot through with the unexpected. There is a large selection of Napoli brand Italian foods and the odd-shaped pastas that you don’t often see in supermarkets. The produce selection is both large and varied, with much of the fruit just at its peak, which means that when you need those fresh nectarines or cherries for tonight’s dinner, this is where you want to come. There is a wall of Polish foods interspersed with Turkish foods: Polish jams, jellies and pickled goods sit side by side with grape leaves, hot pepper relish, pomegranate molasses and six kinds of halva. Couscous, both the small and larger Israeli size, dried fruits and nuts, fruit drinks, a good selection of chocolates and thick Turkish yogurt round out the picture.

I don’t know how anyone can walk through Maple Farm Foods without being seduced by the display. Everywhere I look I spot something I want to eat out of hand, or find some use for in a recipe. I passed by the Turkish fruit sausage a couple of times before I broke down and tried it. A combination of grapes and walnuts, it is a knobby sausage and tastes like a stiff grape leather with walnuts in the center. Nuray Selik and I traded ideas for the yogurt, and she suggested a drizzle of the pomegranate molasses.

The couple has been in the food business forever, it seems. They owned Martini’s Italian restaurant in Northampton once upon a time, and a number of places in Connecticut besides. You can tell a chef is behind the ordering — I’m sure Steve Selik wants to cook with what’s on his shelves as much as I do. Maple Farm Foods is open seven days a week, 9 a.m. until 8 p.m., except on Sundays, when it closes at 6 p.m.

I revisited MI TIERRA, at 206 Russell St., especially for this article. I expected to find what I’ve always found, a Mexican grocery with a small restaurant attached. Instead, I found a larger restaurant with an attached small grocery. The restaurant has been busy every time I’ve stopped in. It serves Tex/Mex-style burritos and tacos, but also more authentic Mexican food. In the film “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” there is a scene in which the characters wander into a small-town eatery and order beers and shrimp. Mi Tierra’s restaurant has that comfortable feel and I’m glad to see that it is doing well.

However, the success of the restaurant has shrunk the grocery to the point that it seems endangered. In addition to the rice, dried and canned beans, salsas and canned chiles that you might expect, there is a shelf of candies and treats that makes me think of school kids and birthday parties in Mexico City. A number of brands of coffee and yerba mate line the shelves.

There is a wall display of Oaxaca brand dried chiles, herbs and spices. My shelves are already crammed with bags of peppers — ancho, mulato, pasilla and chile arbol — but I had to pick up some more. There is dried Mexican oregano, stronger than the more common oregano, and bags of true cinnamon. Most of the cinnamon we get in stores is really cassia, and true cinnamon is milder. You can tell the difference because cassia rolls look like scrolls, rolled at either end toward the middle, while cinnamon is thinner and rolled singly or in pieces.

Mi Tierra is another family affair, this one run by George Sosa. The guy at the counter told me Sosa is limiting the groceries to the items that people really want. Stop in for dinner, but pick up some groceries at the same time, to encourage Sosa to keep the grocery part of Mi Tierra up and running.

The glass milk bottles from MAPLELINE FARM are a familiar site at Atkins Farms Country Market in Amherst, Cushman Market in Amherst, Whole Foods Market in Hadley and many more places. You can even get Mapleline Farms milk, with Outlook Farm bacon and Diemand Farms eggs, left in a milk box outside your door by an honest-to-goodness milkman. The milk is hormone-free, which for me is as organic as I need.

Mapleline is a family farm, run by the fifth generation of Kokoskis. Located at 63 Comins Road in Hadley (www.maplelinefarm.com), it has a small store that is open several days a week. In addition to milk, and the aforementioned bacon and eggs, Mapleline sells a variety of homemade, local and small-company products. The freezer is stocked with chopped beef and steak from the farm, along with pierogi, frozen pies and four kinds of kolachi (a Polish pastry that resembles a yeast-bread strudel). There are homemade soups.

The store has a nice selection of surprises: Black Jack chewing gum, pints of homemade ice cream, a selection of Amish-style pickles from Pennsylvania, and Harmony Springs soda in returnable bottles. This last is produced locally in Ludlow using cane sugar, not corn syrup.

What’s a sugar house to do in the off season? At North Hadley Sugar Shack, 181 River Drive, the solution is to become a farm stand, and it’s up and running for the summer season. In addition to local produce, there is a large selection of maple syrup and maple products, some local jams and jellies, and an array of tasty baked goods. The baker used to work with my wife and we’ve eaten our share of her pies, so I can vouch for the fact that they are first-rate.

Recipes

Yogurt and Cantaloupe Fruit Soup

Picadillo

Orginally published Daily Hampshire Gazette, June 29, 2007

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Pioneer Valley Markets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.