What’s at Your Farmers’ Market This Week? Green Almonds

 

 

During this first week in April, pickers at Brentwood’s famed Frog Hollow Farm are choosing a small quantity of the farm’s organic Independence almonds to harvest at an immature stage when this drupe fruit looks like a small green apricot.

The farm’s resident chef, Mario Hernandez, describes green almonds as “tart, crunchy, and juicy,” and he has come up with a number of ways for preparing them:

• One employs this recipe for Poached Green Almonds with Green Garlic.
• Another is shown in the photo above, which simply involves thinly slicing the whole fruit and drizzling the slices with extra virgin olive oil, adding a dash of Rancho Gordo Stardust Dipping Powder, and a sprinkling of kosher salt.
• A third way is even simpler: Just slice and toss the slices into a mixed green salad.

Frog Hollow sells their green almonds online as well as in person at the Ferry Plaza SF, Berkeley, Kensington, and a few other Bay Area farmers’ markets. At the market booth, you may rub elbows with an enterprising home cook who is picking up a bag of the green almonds to pickle so this fleeting taste of early spring can be enjoyed later in the year. Whatever you want to do with them, be aware that green almonds will mature in the blink of an eye, so you have to act right now in early April to get some!