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Chelsea Market is home to many of New York’s premier craftsmen, cooks, bakers, and food purveyors. As parts of a dynamic whole, the people who have contributed to this book bring to it a range of talent, knowledge, and wisdom that comes from specializing in their particular craft in the company of like-minded specialists. The fast-paced lifestyle characteristic of New York City makes it all the more important that we take time to appreciate and value true craftsmanship.

While Chelsea Market fills with its own particular energy from the time the doors open until after dark, the space is also home to a mix of skilled, passionate makers whose daily work demonstrates the value of deliberate creation. No matter how busy the retail stores or restaurants might be, the symbiosis between the front and back ends, the retailers and wholesalers, is fundamental to what Chelsea Market is to our community. Most vendors at the Market are wholesalers first and retailers second. That’s a good thing for you if you shop at the Market because it means you’ve taken out the middleman. Many of the market’s vendors are the sole importers of the goods they sell, but far more are curators of the best ingredients—the very raw materials of the soups, breads, gelato, candies, cakes, cookies, pastas, stews, cocktails, tacos, ramen, crêpes, and sandwiches they make every day.

Whether you come to the Market to buy your ingredients, to eat, or to do a little of each, it’s difficult to get very far down the corridor without eating something—maybe one of the incredible salt caramel–chocolate fudge brownies Pat Helding makes at Fat Witch or the best organic hot dog you’ve ever tasted from Jake Dickson at Dickson’s Farmstand Meats or an astonishing lobster roll from Ian MacGregor at the Lobster Place. Whatever you find yourself popping into your mouth as you shop and look, you’re bound to witness crowds of businessmen, mothers, nannies, sightseers, and serious chefs doing just what you’re doing. Some rush through to return with their bounty to their own kitchens, while others engage with the space slowly, as if experiencing a county fair for the first time.

One of the qualities we love best about the Market is the way its vast array of choices prompts our desire—to consume, of course, but also to make, create, and participate. Take Esther Choi, who opened Mŏkbar a little more than a year ago at age twenty-eight. She has been making kimchi since she was old enough to trail behind her grandmother’s skirt into the kitchen. Esther was born in Philadelphia, but she’s a first-generation American with deep roots in Korean food culture. We’ve gathered Esther’s unusual knowledge of traditional ingredients and techniques while at the same time capturing the freshness and dedication (her stock takes more than ten days to make from start to finish) that make her kimchi ramen unlike any other in our ramen-obsessed city. This is but one example of the people, personalities, and voices that fill Chelsea Market and make it a destination for makers and consumers from across New York City and beyond.

Situated in the heart of the historic Meatpacking District, Chelsea Market is perfectly at home. At the turn of the previous century, Meatpacking was a central market location in the city, with more than 250 slaughterhouses and packing plants, because of its proximity to the rail line and the Hudson River. It quickly came to include a variety of other craftsmen, from cigar makers to import-export businesses. Through the ups and downs of the past one hundred years, the neighborhood has remained a market hub. The building in which Chelsea Market is housed was once the Nabisco factory—and the birthplace of the venerable Oreo cookie in 1898 when the companies merged. In 1990, New York City developer Irwin Cohen spearheaded the redevelopment of the existing buildings, connecting the entire block via a passage on the ground level. He then invited a handful of wholesalers to try retail.

This one-million-plus-square-foot space is now home to Chelsea Market, owned, managed, and curated by Jamestown, with more than fifty artisan food purveyors filling the lively concourse. In addition to the varied mix of tenants who occupy the public space on the ground level, what tourists and locals alike don’t see is that the market is also home to a multitude of office tenants who fill the upper floors, including MLB.com, YouTube, Food Network, NY 1 News, and Google.

One of the things we like best about the Market is the sense of history and the collective spirit of production that makes the vendors and other occupants of the building something like one dynamic, purposeful whole. The diversity of Chelsea Market today mirrors the development of the Meatpacking District, a neighborhood known throughout New York City for its food, fashion, art, and technology. With the addition of the Whitney Museum of American Art just down the street, the era of the “new” Meatpacking District has arrived, and Chelsea Market remains solidly at its core.

We rely on the Manhattan Fruit Exchange and the Latilla brothers who own and operate it for sharing the knowledge they’ve accumulated during their almost thirty years in the business. The brothers began by selling produce to just one restaurant in 1974. Today, three decades later, with two generations working at the Exchange, they’re still in business, now with hundreds of restaurants, plus a retail store and suppliers from around the world to match. When you shop there you’re buying directly from the wholesaler—just one step away from buying from a grower at a farmers’ market. You can’t get any closer to the source unless you pick the fruit yourself.

Step into the chilly walk-in retail store in Chelsea Market and you’re likely to discover something new, or, if you’re a professional, you’ll encounter prime specimens and varieties of fruit you can’t find anywhere else. We open this chapter with New York’s most famous contribution to the fruit world—the apple. It’s a humble, honored fruit.

Vito Latilla begins pestering his New York growers for the new crop of apples in mid-August, when the first upstate fruit is ripe enough for picking. After the first hard frost, sometime in November, he leaves them alone, turning to the South for citrus. As you know if you like apples—who doesn’t?—the quality and variety of the fruit available year-round has exploded in recent years. Given the crazy abundance of types on the market, from heirloom varieties to new hybrids, if your favorite is Red or Golden Delicious—the vanilla ice creams of the apple world—it’s time to look further afield. There’s no longer any excuse for a bad apple.

One of Vito’s favorite apples happens to be dominating the market at the moment. It’s an Australian hybrid with a balance of tart and sweet called Cripps Pink, trademarked in 2012 under the name Pink Lady. The Pink Lady vies for space and attention with its closest competitor, the Honeycrisp. Developed at the Minnesota Agricultural Research Station and trademarked in 1988, the Honeycrisp is a tad too sweet for Vito’s taste. (We’re big fans of it.) Both varieties are outstanding eating apples—crisp and firm with tender skin protecting the flesh’s large cells. These apples practically pop when you bite into them, and they hit the palate with tart juice infused with notes of citrus. They are at once fragrant, sweet, and refreshingly bright. Bred for extended shelf life, these beauties hold their staying power in the produce aisle right into March, even if the unmistakable bold, honest flavor of a local apple only a week or two off the tree won’t keep beyond Thanksgiving.

By the time apple season comes to a close in late October, you’ll be encountering the bright temptation of clementines in tidy wooden boxes, followed quickly by a new crop of grapefruit, oranges, lemons, and eventually mandarins. Before you know it, strawberry season will rescue you from waning citrus, defining the opening of a new season as much as the rising temperatures and the appearance of local asparagus and fiddleheads. As the months pass, the early spring bounty is overtaken by cherries and currants, and then by the miracle of perfect raspberries and blueberries. You’ll be tired of the heat by the time the final blackberries have ripened or been plucked by hungry birds. By then apples are well into their own season before it all begins again. With the vagaries of weather and heat determining the strengths and weaknesses of the season’s fruit, every year is different enough to make each crop feel like a new adventure.

As one of the best produce buyers in Manhattan, with any number of fruits available to him, Vito chooses to consume as much watermelon as possible throughout the summer months, extending the season by locating the earliest available melons in May and the latest fall melons in October. Vito never fails to get his hands sticky from the juicy melons he chooses, since he knows better than anyone how to identify a ripe, sweet melon. His advice? “Look at the flattened oval on the bottom of the melon where it rested in the field—it’s called a field spot. The spot should be distinctively yellow and fairly well defined. A melon without a spot was picked long before it ripened.” He advises you to “pick up your melon—heavy is good.” Actually, Vito’s fail-safe rule is to seek out produce that’s “heavy for its size.” It’s a solid tip to remember since it can be applied to a range of produce including melons, lettuce (always pick the heaviest head of romaine), sweet peppers—even onions.

We suspect Vito loves watermelon as much as he does in part because it’s one of those fruits that have not yet been doomed to year-round ubiquity. Sure, he says, “you can now get just about any fruit no matter what the season,” but that doesn’t mean you should eat raspberries in January. Vito doesn’t—he saves the pleasure for when they’re in season, and we recommend you do the same. As even the most seasonally out-of-tune shopper knows, winter berries, peaches, plums, and cherries have been flown in overnight from Chile, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand, or Australia. In other words, they’ve come from half a world away. Vito points out that “cool-weather, non-tropical fruits are meant to be harvested ripe and tend to lose their flavor quickly once picked.” We take this to mean it’s not really worth the expense to buy them when they’re not in season—coming from so far away, whatever flavor or scent they may have rubs off in transit.

Rustic Apple Streusel Pie

SARABETH’S BAKERY WITH MANHATTAN FRUIT EXCHANGE

Here, one of Chelsea Market’s goddesses of baking, Sarabeth Levine, offers her legendary pie recipe. It will take you through every step, and, because of the streusel topping, there’s no crimping crusts or weaving lattice. The combination of tart apples, a hint of Grade B maple syrup, Sarabeth’s famously tender crust, and a lightly caramelized top will have you lingering at the table, shaving off just one more sliver, until you whittle your pie down to nothing.

Serves 8

4 pounds (1.8 kg) Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and cut into ⅛-inch (3-mm) slices

⅔ cup (135 g) granulated sugar

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling out the dough

2 teaspoons pure maple syrup, preferably Grade B

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¾ vanilla bean, or ¾ teaspoon vanilla extract

½ recipe Tender Pie Dough (recipe follows)

1 large egg, beaten

1 recipe Streusel Topping (recipe follows)

Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Place a baking pan in the oven to heat.

Stir the apples, sugar, flour, maple syrup, lemon juice, and cinnamon together in a medium bowl until well combined. Cut the vanilla bean in half lengthwise, scrape out the seeds, and add them to the bowl with the apples (or add the vanilla extract) and stir until combined.

Place the dough on a lightly floured work surface and dust the top with flour. Roll out into a 15-inch (38-cm) round. Transfer the dough to a 9-inch (23-cm) pie plate, centering it in the plate and letting the excess dough hang over the sides. The dough should not be stretched over the edge of the pan; it should rest there easily, slack rather than taut.

Heap the apples in the crust, mounding them high in the center. Bring up the edges of the crust, pleating it as needed around the circumference of the dish; the center of the filling will be visible. Brush the crust with the egg. Sprinkle the streusel topping over the exposed filling to cover it, scattering any remaining streusel over the crust.

Line the baking pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Place the pie on the hot pan in the oven. Bake until the crust is golden brown and any juices that escape are thick, about 1 hour. If the crust is browning too quickly, tent it with parchment paper. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack for 1 hour, before serving.

TENDER PIE DOUGH

The usual method for making pie dough is to cut the dry ingredients into cold butter to form a coarse mixture with bits of butter about the size of peas. This method can be tricky; depending on the temperature of the butter and the efficiency of the execution, it’s easy to end up with a greasy mass that isn’t much good for anything. Sarabeth takes an entirely different approach: She creams the butter with a little milk until fluffy and then adds the dry ingredients, mixing them in slowly and gently so as not to make the crust tough. We think you’ll find her method considerably easier and faster. Most important, her crust lives up to its name—it is extraordinarily tender.

Makes enough for one 9-inch (23-cm) double-crust pie, two 9-inch (23-cm) single-crust pies, or six individual deep-dish pies

¾ cup (1½ sticks / 170 g) unsalted butter, at cool room temperature, cut into tablespoons

¼ cup (60 ml) whole milk

1¾ cups (220 g) unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1 tablespoon sugar, preferably superfine

¼ teaspoon fine sea salt

Beat the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment at high speed until the butter is smooth, about 1 minute. With the mixer running, drizzle in the milk, occasionally stopping the machine and scraping down the sides of the bowl with a silicone spatula. The butter mixture should be fluffy, smooth, and shiny, like a buttercream frosting.

Mix the flour, sugar, and salt together in a small bowl. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add the flour mixture and mix just until the dough forms into a mass. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and press it with the palm of your hand a few times to knead just until it is smooth and supple. Divide the dough in half and shape each half into a thick, 6-inch (15-cm) diameter disc. Wrap the discs tightly in plastic wrap and then press each one with the palm of your hand to form a neat round.

Refrigerate just until chilled, 30 to 60 minutes. (The dough can be refrigerated for up to 1 day, but it will be very hard and should stand at room temperature for about 30 minutes before you roll it out.)

STREUSEL TOPPING

This cinnamon-and-vanilla–scented topping transforms just about anything you bake. Sure, pie is its natural destiny, but we like to sprinkle it on muffins, coffee cakes, Bundt cakes, and tarts. If you’re a bit of a salt hound, as we tend to be, add a pinch or two to the mix. This topping contrasts nicely with the sweet-and-sour filling and the effortlessly tender crust in Sarabeth’s memorable pie.

Makes about ½ cup (80 g)

6 tablespoons (1¾ ounces / 50 g) unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1 tablespoon light brown sugar

⅛ teaspoon ground cinnamon

2½ tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

⅛ teaspoon vanilla extract

In a small bowl, mix the flour, sugars, cinnamon, butter, and vanilla with your fingers until combined and crumbly. Set aside.

Pancakes with Mixed Berry Compote and Maple Syrup

FRIEDMAN’S LUNCH

On any given sleepy Sunday morning, when nothing but a pancake will do, you’d never guess that these fluffy beauties—served with bright, fresh berry compote, a drizzle of warm maple syrup, and a pat of butter—are gluten-free. This suits Justin Brunwasser, Friedman’s chef and partner, whose goal is “to make food so good people don’t know it’s gluten-free.” A self-taught chef who began by chopping onions in the basement of a less-than-famous Manhattan restaurant, Justin is committed to comfort food with an emphasis on fresh, simple ingredients made with local produce—with or without gluten.

Makes about twelve 4-inch (10-cm) pancakes

¼ cup (60 ml) canola oil, plus more for the griddle

1 cup (240 ml) whole milk

2 large eggs, separated

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup (125 g) Justin’s Gluten-Free Flour Mixture (recipe follows)

2 to 3 tablespoons salted butter (optional)

1 recipe Justin’s Berry Compote (recipe follows)

1 cup (240 ml) maple syrup, warmed

¼ cup (30 g) confectioners’ sugar (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180°F (85°C). Set an oven-safe plate in the oven to warm.

Heat a well-cured cast-iron griddle over medium-high heat (or set an electric griddle to medium-high). Pour a little canola oil on the griddle, let it sizzle for a moment, and then spread it around, using a paper towel to coat the surface. Set the towel aside to regrease the griddle between batches.

Whisk together the canola oil, milk, egg yolks, vanilla, and salt in a medium bowl. Add the Gluten-Free Flour Mixture and whisk thoroughly until smooth. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form and gently fold them into the batter using a large rubber spatula, scraping the bottom of the bowl as you work, until white streaks are no longer visible. Set the batter aside to rest for a moment.

Pour a tablespoon or two of the batter onto the hot griddle for a test pancake. Once it rises, flip it over and cook the other side. It should be a nice brown color. If it’s pale your griddle needs to be hotter. Using a ¼-cup (60-ml) measure, pour the batter onto the greased griddle and cook until the edges brown slightly and the bubbles forming in the center retain their shape for a few seconds before collapsing. Flip the pancake and continue cooking until cooked through. Press the top of the cake at the center with your finger to test for doneness—it should feel springy, not liquid-soft. If desired, smear a little butter on the surface of each cake before transferring to the warm plate in the oven and repeat, using all the batter. Serve hot, topped with the compote and maple syrup, and if you want a snowy look, dust the pancakes with confectioners’ sugar sprinkled from a fine-mesh sieve.

JUSTIN’S BERRY COMPOTE

Makes 3 cups (720 ml)

8 cups (4 pints / 1.2 kg) mixed berries, ideally equal parts strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries

1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar, plus more as needed

Zest and juice of 1 lemon, plus more as needed

Combine the berries and sugar in a saucepan set over medium-low heat. Slowly bring the berries to a simmer, stirring frequently as they release their juices to avoid scalding. Cook the berries for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the natural juices have reduced by half and the liquid is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the lemon zest and juice. Taste for acidity, adding more lemon or sugar as desired. Serve warm.

JUSTIN’S GLUTEN-FREE FLOUR MIXTURE

Makes 4½ cups (735 g)

3½ cups (560 g) white rice flour

2 tablespoons baking powder

6 tablespoons (75 g) granulated sugar

½ cup plus 1 tablespoon (90 g) potato starch

1 teaspoon kosher salt

½ teaspoon xanthan gum

Whisk the ingredients together thoroughly and store sealed, at room temperature, for up to 3 months.

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BUTTER AND CHEESE

The cheese and butter sold at Chelsea Market are distinguished by their careful sourcing; Chelsea Creamline and Lucy’s Whey buy locally from small farmers whose cows consume a varied diet. The same is true for The Cleaver Co. and the other restaurants in the Market that use dairy of any sort in their recipes. The Market is a microcosm of New York and as such reflects the best ingredients the region can produce.

BUTTER

Next to eggs, butter is one of those ingredients it’s difficult to do without. Even if you use more olive oil for cooking, the flavor of butter can’t be replaced—think butter-based sauces like bérnaise and beurre blanc, pasta with butter, cold butter on warm sourdough bread, eggs basted in butter, grilled cheese, and, most important of all, toast! The greatest challenge when buying butter is finding one that is rich and round and smooth and grassy. Ronnybrook Farm Dairy’s butter is a great example of how to make good butter sustainably. As Ronnybrook’s owner, Rick Osofsky, says, “We make butter the way it was done historically, churned in small batches. The same day milk gets harvested from the cow, it goes to the creamer and is made into butter. It gets delivered to New York City the next day. This means the flavor of the butter reflects what the cows eat on pasture . . . . Every batch of butter has a different aroma and color, and it changes most dramatically season to season.”

Chelsea Creamline has close ties to the Osofsky family, whose Ronnybrook Dairy is one of the Market’s oldest dairy producers. As the Market’s most dairy-centric vendor—well, Lucy’s Whey is certainly in the running—Chelsea Creamline depends on Ronnybrook for its creamy, unhomogenized milk, super-rich butter, truly outstanding ice cream, and thick, non-ultrapasteurized heavy cream. (Another favorite is the maple yogurt.) All of it goes into the recipes for biscuits, milk shakes, sundaes, and the rest of the classic pharmacy-counter menu put together by Chelsea Creamline’s owner, Harris Selinger.

CHEESE

A balance of textures, flavors, and milk types is essential to composing a cheese tray for cocktails or an after-dinner cheese course. No matter when you eat cheese, it is always served at room temperature—be sure to let it sit out for an hour or two at a minimum; serving cheese straight from the refrigerator at 35 to 40°F (1.6 to 4.4°C) is akin to offering red wine at that temperature.

Wooden cheeseboards are traditional for serving cheese, but the staff at Lucy’s Whey prefer Brooklyn Slate’s cheese boards. The soft black of the stone contrasts with the white, yellow, and blue hues characteristic of cheese—plus, you can treat the platter like a chalkboard, writing the name of the cheese or milk type in chalk next to the cheese. When serving cheese after dinner, experiment with sweet pairings: salted caramel with soft goat cheese, a fruity jam with a triple cream, or quince paste with almost any cheese. When eating cheese, start by tasting the mildest, youngest cheese and progress to the strongest, oldest cheese. Again, this principle follows the way you might taste wine by beginning with lighter, younger wines and progressing to more complex varietals that aren’t just bigger on the palate but often have more age on them too.

As any of the cheese mongers behind the counter at Lucy’s Whey will tell you, the criteria for judging ripeness vary widely from one type of cheese to another. You can count on them to curate the best, perfectly ripe cheese for you—that’s their job. If you’re on your own, a cheese potent with the scent of ammonia may well be past its prime. Then again, don’t make the common mistake of interpreting mold as a sign of overripe cheese; while some overripe cheeses are moldy, a little mold is usually perfectly fine. If it bothers you, simply scrape it off or cut the affected portion away.

Cheese Tasting We like to approach cheese in order of potency, from mild to strong. If you’re looking into the case at Lucy’s Whey, it goes something like this:

• Fresh cheese, such as mozzarella, queso fresco, and Renaissance ricotta from Narragansett Creamery in Rhode Island

• Bloomy rind cheese, such as Harbison from Vermont, a soft-ripened cheese wrapped in spruce cambium, the tree’s inner bark

• Firmer cooked or pressed cheeses, such as Alpha Tolman from Jasper Hill Farm in Waitsfield, Vermont, and including firm, crystalline cheeses (with bits of solidified calcium) such as the sheep’s milk Paški Sir from the island of Pag, Croatia, and the award-winning aged cheddar Prairie Breeze from Milton Creamery in southern Iowa

• Washed rind cheeses, such as the not-so-strong Oma from Jasper Hill Farm and the distinctively potent Ameribella from Jacobs & Brichford Farmstead Cheese in southeastern Indiana

• A wide range of blue cheeses, from the unusual Beenleigh from the British purveyor Neal’s Yard Dairy to Echo Mountain from Rogue Creamery in Oregon

Composed Montpelier Butter

CHELSEA MARKET ORIGINAL

Whether you use the incredible butter from Ronnybrook, Lucy’s Whey, or Buon Italia, be sure it smells super clean and fresh with no off, refrigerator flavor. Fats like butter readily absorb odors (and flavors) from their environment. Foil is the best way to keep butter protected from becoming adulterated, but super-fresh butter that’s been stored tightly wrapped in plastic wrap or left out at room temperature will be just as clean.

This classic recipe will test your patience with its extensive list of ingredients. Once you’ve spread a little on top of a dry-aged porterhouse from Dickson’s Farmstand Meats or a length of skirt steak straight off the grill, you won’t regret taking the trouble.

Butter, like anything fatty, freezes well. Make a big batch and use foil to wrap it up in ramekins or roll it into logs.

Makes about 1½ cups (350 g)

1 cup (60 g) tightly packed watercress

3 large or 12 baby spinach leaves

3 whole chives or stems

1 sprig tarragon, leaves only

1 sprig parsley, thick stem trimmed

2 hard-boiled large egg yolks, plus 1 raw large egg yolk

1 teaspoon cider vinegar, red wine vinegar, or white wine vinegar

1 small clove garlic

Pinch cayenne pepper

Freshly ground black pepper

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons chopped shallot

¼ cup (½ stick / 115 g) unsalted butter

Chile flakes (optional)

Fill a small bowl with equal parts ice and cold water and set aside. Bring a medium pot of water to a boil over high heat. Once the water boils, add the watercress, spinach, chives, tarragon, and parsley. Remove the pot from the heat and allow the herbs to blanch for 1 minute. Drain the herbs through a sieve and place them directly into the ice-water bath for 2 to 3 minutes. Remove the herbs and squeeze gently together into a ball to remove the water before pressing gently with a towel to absorb any remaining water. No need to squeeze with the towel or you’ll remove too much of the color and flavor.

In a food processor with the knife blade attached, pulse the herbs, cooked and raw egg yolks, vinegar, garlic, cayenne, a generous grind of black pepper, the salt, shallot, and butter until blended. If you like a little more heat, add extra cayenne or a few chile flakes, but don’t let the heat dominate. Pack the butter into a ramekin, cover tightly with plastic wrap and aluminum foil, and refrigerate or freeze any portion you aren’t using immediately.

Pizza Mozzarella, Prosciutto, e Funghi

FILAGA

Fresh, milky, flavorful mozzarella and a crispy, chewy, lightly blackened crust are two of the essential elements of a memorable pizza. Buying great mozzarella is fairly easy—Buon Italia carries excellent domestic and Italian brands. They also carry the magical il Tartufato