Huh. Cauliflower. Who knew it could be so delicious?

The first time I went to the Berkeley Bowl, I remember marveling at the array of orange cauliflower (which contains 25 times the Vitamin A of white varieties; the color is from the massive quantities of beta-carotene in the veggie) and purple cauliflower (whose shocking violet color is caused by the antioxidant anthocyanin, also found in blueberries, red cabbage, and red wine) on display.

Apparently, yes, you can have your vegetables in carnival colors. I still went home with the plain Jane white variety that evening -- I dunno, maybe the kaleidoscope cauliflower was just too jarring for me. It's been awhile since I last bought a head of cauliflower. My renewed interest in it came about after a lovely Italian meal.

Did you ever notice how Italians just have a way with making simple vegetables taste so darn good? It's the Grade A olive oil they use. That, and invoking la bella vita into their kitchens, no doubt. This particular contorno of cavolfiori was robust and full of flavor. Florets of cauliflower were roasted with sweet garlic, briny anchovies, and gilded with fruity olive oil. As each little cauliflower tree disappeared into my mouth, I plotted my strategy on how to recreate this dish at home.

I started off by cutting the cauliflower in half, then separating the branches into florets. Then, I melted down the anchovies in a skillet, stirring them until a paste formed. My husband is obsessed with all things anchovy (and all things salty for that matter), so I've been buying in bulk these little tins of Italian anchovies packed in olive oil.

Next, I add the smashed garlic to the pan, lemon juice, and the cauliflower, tossing it all together so that the anchovy "sauce" coats all the florets. A sprinkle of panko crumbs, a drizzle of olive oil, and into the oven it all goes.

The dish is done when the cauliflower is fork-tender and the panko has turned a crunchy golden brown. Top with grated parmigiano, salt and pepper, and you've got yourself one mighty fine side dish. No peacock colors necessary. The bang is all in the taste.

Every year, usually around the beginning of February, I notice that the ornamental plum trees in Golden Gate Park are starting to burst into clouds of pink and white, covering the lawns with a pale, fluffy blanket of springtime splendor. But as much as I love how these 10-foot tall pastel bouquets line the streets, my mind instantly goes to another sign that the season is changing. Soon local farmers markets vendors will start stocking my very favorite bit of produce, which is only found this time of year: green garlic.

For those not in the know, green garlic is simply early season garlic that hasn't yet matured into a fully bulbous state. Green garlic is special for many reasons, but the reason I love it so is that it takes the strong, pungent qualities of mature garlic and lightens up the game a bit. Infinitely more subtle and nuanced than its full-grown brothers and sisters, green garlic has a less intense flavor and a sweetness that only early-season produce can impart. Perfect for both strong and mellow dishes, green garlic can be used wherever you would use regular garlic, in the same amounts. Give it a try in garlic bread or mashed potatoes. As well, green garlic's flavor is gentle enough that it can be eaten raw in a lovely green salad. Seriously!

Perhaps the coolest thing about green garlic, though, is the fact that you can eat the entire thing, from it's long, frondy leaves to it tiny root system. The younger the garlic the more tender it will be, and you'll know true baby garlic by its nearly complete lack of a bulgy, bulb-y end. As the season progresses week by week, you'll notice that green garlic at your local farmers market will get thicker and thicker towards the bulb-end, until it looks almost like a fully matured bulb of garlic with a long, green stalk. At this point you can still eat the entire thing, though the fibrous membrane that separates the individual cloves will have begun to form by this stage in its development. The cloves will have a strong, more traditional garlic flavor as they mature as well.

When shopping for green garlic, look for specimens that are long and green, without any browning or wilting along the stalk. Green garlic should be eaten within a week of being harvested for the best possible flavor, though it can be stored in the refrigerator for up to three weeks if you end up with a bunch of it. To store young garlic, I'd recommend wrapping the stalks in foil and leaving them in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator, where the humidity will work to keep them fresher, longer. If you're not planning on eating them right away, a little spritz of water in the foil every few days will help keep green garlic tender and fresh.

The best way to enjoy green garlic is in a dish where it's the star. For anything even remotely herb-y, I always try it out in a pesto recipe, where its flavor is front and center -- and in this case, green garlic plays the lead role with aplomb.

Green Garlic Pesto Pasta
Serves 2

Ingredients:
6 green garlic shoots, trimmed of the dark green tips and cut into 2 inch pieces
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup pine nuts
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons kosher salt
6 cups water
2 cups uncooked penne pasta

Preparation:

1. To the carafe of a food processor, add green garlic, parmesan, pine nuts, sea salt and pepper. Pulse 10-15 times, until ingredients are relatively well-blended, scraping down the sides in the middle of blending. Slowly drizzle in olive oil and continue blending until you get a well-combined pesto texture. Scoop into a bowl and set aside while the pasta cooks to let the flavors meld.

2. Add kosher salt to water and bring to a boil in a large pot. Add pasta and cook until al dente, about 9 minutes. Drain and rinse pasta.

3. Spoon pesto over hot penne pasta and serve immediately.

This September, KTEH invited local viewers to audition for their chance to be the next cooking show star in their live December special, KTEH Cooks with Garlic.

Thirty-eight people of all walks of local life got up enough nerve to send in their video recipes and on November 1st, you, in all your I-could-have-done-that-so-much-better smugness, are invited to vote for your favorite. Do yourself a favor and watch them.

For those of you who were either too late to submit your own video, or would simply enjoy contributing your own recipe, there is still time and an ounce of hope. Submit to KTEH your favorite original garlic recipe to be considered for their upcoming cookbook. All recipes should include a byline. Please note that any recipe submitted becomes the property of KTEH.

It takes a lot of time to watch all of the video submissions, certainly, but I found them absolutely fascinating. I am impressed by the amount of people out there who have, um, garlic bulbs big enough to let televisionland into their kitchens and, in a sense, into their psyches.

Take a peek. In the mix, you can watch a woman creating a Garlic Dream Sauce with the help of a puppet, teen-aged girls with confident cooking skills preparing soup under the supervision of a doting father, cooks hawking their own cookbooks, even a woman creating a garlic-infused "Toasty Thai Ice Cream" under the menacing gaze of a crazed-looking, apron-wearing pig.

The overall craftsmanship of the videos is non-professional, to be sure. Many of the videos are so dark, it sometimes seems as though some of the contestants were in the care of some sort of culinary witness protection program. Some of the submittors make up for lack of technical know-how with vibrant personalities. Others come off frightfully dull, professorial, repetitive, or even painfully awkward. But here they are, for all the world to see.

I've spent a few hours watching the videos. I've got my favorites and I'm definitely voting. I'm basing my choices not so much on recipe, production value, or even physical hotness. Instead, I'm voting based on kitchen décor. Look for the Marlo Thomas-as-That-Girl kitchen tile.

Have you ever entertained thoughts of becoming a cooking show personality?

Chances are, since you're currently reading a food blog, you've thought about it. Perhaps you have a running narrative flowing out of your mouth as you make your lunch, explaining in chatty style to your cat the origins of oil-packed tuna and how to make it shine. Maybe you've always wanted to be as perfect as Martha or, at least, body-check Rachel off camera and show her how it's really done.

If any of the above sounds familiar and you have a special affinity for garlic, this could be your big, fragrant chance at local stardom.

KTEH Cooks with Garlic is giving you the opportunity to show the Bay Area what you've got. In December, KTEH will broadcast a live show featuring local viewers preparing their favorite garlic recipes.

Submissions so far have been encouraging-- and interesting. All types of professional and amateur cooks have already submitted. A local master chef; a Pavarotti-lover who once got him to sign her package of veal in North Beach; a vegetarian Peace Corps volunteer (and “future film star”) who plans to cook lamb, stating that “eating is not destroying; everything is merely transferred.” That's one segment I'm going to want to see. I hope she makes it.

All kinds of recipes have been submitted, too. Lamb dishes, chicken cacciatore, salads, and-- I only offer this as a warning-- a preponderance of soups. No one, so far, has been adventurous enough to submit a garlicky dessert recipe. Perhaps you can be the first.

No professional experience is required-- just a love of cooking, a bit of enthusiasm, and a knack for teaching. A clever introductory letter is helpful, beginning your letter (as one submitter did) with "I'm not sure I'd make a great tv chef" is not.

Sound like fun? Good. Just remember to be kind to the little people when you're famous.

How to apply:

Step 1: Send them a letter, telling them why you would make a great "TV Chef," and an original recipe that you would like to prepare live on KTEH. The recipe must feature garlic as an ingredient. Submissions must be received by September 15, 2008. (the date was extended from September 1, 2008)

Send Submission by Email or Postal Mail:

Email: Garlicrecipe@KTEH.org

Postal Mail:
Garlic Recipe
KTEH
1585 Schallenberger Rd.
San Jose, CA 95108

Step 2: All recipes submitted become the property of KTEH and will be included (with your byline) in our KTEH Cooks with Garlic Cookbook.

Step 3: KTEH will review the letters and recipes and invite selected viewers to video tape themselves preparing their recipe. These videos will be posted on our website.

Step 4: If you are selected, start your video camera and prepare your recipe as you would if you were on television. Then upload your video to their website (instructions to come) or send it to KTEH and they'll upload it for you.

Step 5: KTEH viewers will be invited to vote for the video they like best.

Step 6: Videos with the most votes will be reviewed by KTEH producers who will invite their favorite "chefs" to prepare their garlic recipe on their live special, KTEH Cooks with Garlic, December 3, 2008.

Step 7: If selected, you will be asked to provide all the ingredients for your recipe and a completed version of the dish. If your recipe is made in stages, you will need to provide a version in each stage-- just like Martha!

Step 8: The show! Chefs will be assigned a time slot and have 10 minutes to prepare their recipe.

Step 9: Each TV Chef appearing on the show will receive a KTEH Cooks with Garlic Cookbook and a DVD of their appearance on the show.

Saturday morning, market day, is a jumble of visiting with friends, purchasing food for the week, jostling with tourists, and talking to farmers. There are some weekends when the amount of energy needed for the market -- including lugging my goods home on the bus -- takes its toll. While on wintry days the market almost feels like a whisper, on summer days the market shouts at the top of its lungs for hours on end. Summer food is amplified, summer crowds are amplified, and even the number of farm booths is amplified.

Most of the local, hard-core market goers that I know won't be seen at the market after 9am on a summer Saturday morning. I tend to gamble with that rule some weeks. Sometimes it's more important to sleep in than to be the first at the market, and sometimes I have market obligations that require me to be there later. And then, all you can do is just go with the flow and be as patient as possible.

This weekend, I was at the market late. I had interviewed Ed George of the Peach Farm for CUESA's Meet the Producer series at 10.30, and wasn't at the market early enough to shop before the interview. That meant that I was still shopping close to noon. Interviewing Ed was fun -- he's a really dedicated farmer who provides produce to some of the city's best restaurants. His major crop is heirloom tomatoes, and they were beautiful on Sunday. I picked up some very small eggplants from him that I still haven't decided how to prepare.

Even at the height of the market, farmers are usually in a good mood and talkative. I purchased fresh garbanzo beans, off the stalk, from one of the Catalan daughters at Catalan Farm. I asked her if she was the one who had to de-stalk them. It's a tedious process without much yield to show for your trouble. "No, and it's a good thing," she said. "I would just throw them at my brother. We get in fights with them."

If you blink, you'll miss Short Night Farm. They are a small booth in the front of the market, and they usually only have a small amount of produce on their table. Short Night has never disappointed me and I look forward to their produce every week, so I stopped to see what they had: beautiful melons that I didn't want to carry around the market. Deciding to take the gamble that there would be some left at the end of my trip, I passed them up. "But I'll take these," I told the vendor, grabbing some lemons. She laughed that the lemons were important enough to carry but the melon wasn't. It was no joke to me -- finding locally grown citrus in July is difficult, and they were the only vendor at the market selling lemons that day.

The Hunter Orchards farmers were in the back of the market, selling lavender and dried garlic. They are a vendor that we only see for about a month a year, when they bring their beautiful Rocambole garlic to the market. The garlic that I bought on Saturday will last until Valentine's Day, they said. I bid them good-bye until next year, and strategized a cool,dark place for my two bags of newly purchased dried garlic.

By the time I ran into a couple of bloggers, I had visions of going home for a post-market meal. "The tostadas at Primavera are really good today," Tea mentioned referring to the amazing Mexican food stand at the back of the market. "I'm going to skip it", I said. "I'm plotting a BLT." BLT's always make me think of Cookie and Cranky, my blogger friends in Marin, and I had them in mind as I ran to pick up bacon, perfect tomatoes, tiny little heads of romaine lettuce, and my BLT bun of choice.

Arriving back home, I unpacked and made my meal within 20 minutes, then sat and watched mindless television as I decompressed from my market day.

Each week when I get home, I scribble down my market list before I put it away. In addition to the produce mentioned above, I also purchased:

Orach, nopales, and cilantro from Heirloom Organics
Pasilla peppers from Catalan Farms Corn from G & S Corn
Nectarines from Blossom Bluff Orchards
Avocados from Brokaw Nursery
Butter from Spring Hill Cheese