Due to work, I have to miss Saturday morning’s Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza. So instead, I went into Manhattan to the Union Square Greenmarket yesterday, and was pleasantly surprised to see long beans. I’ve cooked with long beans before, but I got them from a vendor in Chinatown, who didn’t have this purple variety. I’ve never seen long beans at the Grand Army Plaza market, so I just had to pick some up. Any suggestions on what to do with them?

Howard: On a recent Saturday Donny and I took the train up to Tarrytown, and then took a cab to Stone Barns. The Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture is, of course, the home of the fancy restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns. What you may not know, though, is that there’s also an informal Cafe on site as well. Sure, you’re not going to get a multi-course extravaganza, but it’s a good way to get a quick showcase of the way Stone Barns incorporates their crop into their food.

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A lot of attention is given to heirloom tomatoes at summer Greenmarkets, and I can understand why. They’re seasonal, beautiful, tasty, etc. It bears mentioning, however, that there are heirloom varieties of other vegetables as well. If you’ve thought about okra at all you’ve probably thought about the long, icicle-looking okra that is seen most often. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to see these plump, curly, purple streaked pods at the Grand Army Plaza market. Some people say they don’t like okra because it’s slimy, but that’s precisely why I like it. Lately I’ve been stewing it with tomatoes, cooking it down to mush so that the entire thing is slimy and delicious.

Padron peppers (named after the Padron region of Spain from which they originate) are the staple of a great Spanish dish, pimientos de Padrón. The reason the dish is named after the peppers is that it’s a simple one: the peppers are blistered in olive oil and sprinkled with salt. I’ve had the dish before, at Boqueria, albeit made with the more common shisito peppers. Padron peppers are slightly more expensive than the other hot peppers showing up at the summer Greenmarkets; hopefully their unique blend of sweet and spicy will be worth it.

These long and twisted Asian cucumbers are covered with ridges and bumps, but the sign said that the skin is thin and soft and therefore the cucumbers don’t need peeling. I’d still slice it thinly if I were you, before tossing with a little rice wine vinegar, salt and pepper, maybe a touch of chili sauce.

Regular Market Watch readers know that I get excited when I see something that I haven’t seen before, let alone never heard of. Callaloo is also known as amaranth, which I have heard of. Callaloo is also the name of a dish made with this leafy green and is very popular in the Caribbean. It’s similar to spinach, the man at Bradley Farms told me, though when you cook it the color will leach out and stain the rest of the food. I’m looking forward to finding out.