Priceless
I have been standing in front of a basket in the produce section of the Columbus Circle Whole Foods for two minutes. There is no identifying name card or price tag on it. If you didn't know any better, you probably wouldn't even notice the contents of this particular basket. But even though Whole Foods has neglected to put a price on them, I have an idea of their going rate, and I have been eyeing them covetously for what seems like an eternity, gently picking them up one at a time to estimate their weight as I run and re-run cost-benefit analyses in my head.
Whole Foods is selling fresh cèpes, also known as porcinis, the king of mushrooms. They are showing some wear and age, slightly browned and wrinkled--a copule of them are even bruised. But they smell like a hardwood fire in a thousand-year-old forest after the rain, and they are enormous. I have never seen whole, fresh porcini mushrooms for sale in New York. I remember reading somewhere that porcinis are being intermittently foraged in Oregon, but I think most of them still come from Europe, and then only in dried form. Will I ever have this chance again? How much could they possibly cost? In another aisle, chanterelles are going for over twenty dollars a pound. Could porcinis be as much as forty? How many could I afford to buy?
I walk up to the checkout aisle, my covetousness turned to shame. I have four huge cèpes in my basket. I picked up a few other items too, in an effort to justify to myself what I expect to be a grocery bill of over fifty dollars by lowering the mean per-item cost. As the clerk tallies my purchases, I brace myself for an embarrassing total. But it doesn't come. Instead, the clerk asks me for less than fifteen dollars for my mushrooms, some assorted greens and herbs, and a modest cut of meat. I pay her and take my groceries into the subway, wondering if I've been had. Arriving home, I take out the mystery item and examine it thoroughly. They still look like porcinis to me. How did I get out of Whole Foods with these things for less than twenty bucks?
I examine my receipt. There is no entry for porcinis. Instead, there is a charge of just over three dollars for just over a pound of portobello mushrooms. Now I know that it's the checkout clerk, not I, who's been had. Portobellos are easily distinguished from porcinis by looking at the underside of their caps. Where portobellos have dark, brittle gills underneath, porcini, being members of the genus boletus, have no gills, but rather a spongy network of microscopic pores through which they disseminate their spores. My shame now turns to guilt, as I realize that the checkout clerk simply didn't recognize what I was trying to buy, and mistakenly charged me for a far less expensive item than the one I was actually purchasing. Almost immediately, I begin rationalizing my good fortune by recalling law school lectures about unilateral mistakes of fact, but mostly I'm just overjoyed that I was able to spot these prizes and acquire them so cheaply. I am somewhat comforted by the fact that the checkout clerk's mistake is unlikely to be discovered, and thus that my gain will not come at her expense.
I use the caps of my practically-free fresh porcini to make a hearty ragout, coarsely dicing them and sautéeing them in olive oil with garlic and thyme, adding a bit of homemade chicken stock, sea salt, black pepper, and a dash of sherry vinegar. The ragout, served on slices of crusty bread, is a magnificent and rare meal in itself. And the experience is a vindication for my sometimes overbearing, sometimes pedantic, sometimes snobbish attention to gastronomy. Knowledge has value, and in this case my knowledge (or the poor checkout clerk's lack thereof) carried a price. When I contemplate a lifetime of seeking out this type of knowledge and account for the hidden pleasures it allows me to discover, I have no doubt that my life will be richer for the effort. More often than not, my exploration and experimentation leads to disappointment or frustration, but every once in a while it yields a moment of perfect, sublime satisfaction. On balance, it's a price I'm more than willing to pay.
On the evening of Good Friday, I make my way East on St. Marks Place, past the bong-sellers and piercing dens that prey on NYU freshmen. It's a different neighborhood than when I came to New York as a college freshman nine years ago. The East Village, like the rest of Manhattan, is giving in to serial Starbuckses and two-thousand-dollar studio apartments. But I know there are vestiges of an older New York just around this corner.
On Second Avenue between St. Marks and 9th lies Julian Baczynsky's East Village Meat Market. The fresh kielbasa pictured above sits out on the counter; in a few minutes it will be gone -- purchased by a Polish mother -- and replaced with fresh links. I get one length of "kobasy" and a jar of "kapusta" (Polish sauerkraut). I pass over the stacks of stuffed cabbage and the rows of babkas that are being carted in from an off-site bakery and dusted with powdered sugar right in front of my eyes -- I'll be making my own, thank you.
On to First Avenue between St. Marks and 7th, and the Kurowycky Meat Products store. 
But this year, both sausages made it into the pot, along with a jar of sauerkraut (drained and rinsed), some peppercorns, juniper berries and cloves, a handful of caraway seeds, and a bay leaf. I browned the sausages in butter first, then cut them into chunks and braised them on low heat with the other ingredients for a couple of hours. I omitted the apple juice, chicken broth, and soup vegetables that some recipes call for -- from what Lisa tells me they don't belong on her Easter table.
The market here is smaller than the one in Florence, and not as dependent on local items. But you can still find treasures like these ridiculously long-stemmed artichokes here. It's a lighthearted market with a great sense of humor. On one end a rotund chain-smoker who looks twenty years older than he probably is demonstrates cheap vegetable garnishing tools for German tourists; on another end a playful fishmonger has built an homage to Darwinism out of his wares.
Walking past one of the larger fruit stalls, something in the corner of my vision caught my attention. I did a double-take, then a triple-take, then walked back to the box that had drawn my eye. "This can't be right," I thought. "What is this doing in Rome?" But there I was, holding it in my hand. "Che cosa è?" I asked the vendor, recalling my first lesson of Berlitz's Italian. "Mangosteen," he replied, "da Colombia."
It was true, then. I held in my hand the queen of all fruits, the legendary mangosteen. Mangosteens are native to southeast Asia, and the South American transplants are supposedly of inferior quality. But it is said that Queen Victoria offered a knighthood to anyone who could bring her just one of these fruits, so even a poor example is bound to have something to recommend it. What's more, mangosteens are illegal in the United States (owing to fears of exotic parasites), so this may have been my only chance, ever, to try one. I believe the fruitseller charged me four Euros; I would have given him forty.
Of course, there's more in the butcher stalls of the Mercato Centrale than just severed heads. In fact, most of the flying creatures in the market still have their heads attached. This means the ducks still have their tongues, and the cocks their combs, either one of which could form the foundation for a classic recipe few Americans will ever hear of, let alone taste.
There are also mounds of un-decapitated fish and scampi here. Scampi, not to be confused with a pile of rubbery, garlicky shrimp in a pool of bubbling margarine at the Olive Garden, is the plural of scampo, the Italian word for a certain type of mediterranean shellfish that is something between a shrimp and a langoustine. I can't really find an anaolgy for a head on the baby squid and octopus you'll find here, but I'm sure if there were one, the fishmongers would make a point of leaving it on.
Lest you think the Mercato Centrale is all about gross-out animal parts, it also has magnificent produce stands, salumerie, cheese cases, winesellers, and dried fruit and nut sellers. Some of these items are local, some regional, some come from elsewhere in Italy. Among the most impressive displays: these bouquets of purple artichokes, the crowning jewel of the produce stand.
In the Florentine neighborhood of San Lorenzo, the streets are cluttered with rickety booths where industrious locals peddle everything from kitschy souvenirs to hand-painted porcelain, counterfeit jeans to fine leather, silk scarves to silkscreened t-shirts. Rising above the fray on one side of the bazaar is the Church of San Lorenzo, the parish church of the mighty House of Medici, whose tombs in an 
It is the season of the spring lamb in Italy, when in the run-up to Easter milk-fed lambs of just a few weeks age are slaughtered for their incomparably tender meat. So special are these animals that the Italians have a separate word for them; while lamb is simply agnello, a baby lamb is abbacchio (from abbattere, meaning to butcher). A whole abbacchio is probably only slightly larger in total volume than your Thanksgiving Turkey, and may even have less edible flesh. But they are such a prize, the butchers of Florence display them proudly.
