Reinvent Your Food With Maplewood Farmers Market

The first step to creating, or recreating, any successful dish in the kitchen is to start with high-quality ingredients.

Using an heirloom tomato, for example, in place of a standard Beefsteak or Roma, can instantly elevate a meal both in color and flavor intensity.

Reinventing recipes that may have become old hat in this fashion can be fun, easy and rewarding - plus you'll impress your friends.

One good recipe to tackle from a new angle is pesto. Basic pesto generally contains basil, garlic, pine nuts, parmesan, lemon and olive oil. By spending a quick half hour at the , however, I was able to quickly adjust that ingredient list.

To start: Yellow Tree Farm was selling purple basil. Same basic flavor, more interesting color. About a half a bunch only cost me 50 cents and started my recipe off just right.

Nicola Macpherson, owner of Ozark Forest Mushrooms and Dan Hellmuth, who helped run the booth, then disclosed a fascinating secret to brand-new pesto: sorrel.

Sorrel is an herb with a pungent, citrus flavor. It's great in salads.

"It has a natural lemony flavor, but through our own experiments we found you need to add a little lemon juice to it," Hellmuth said. "It brings out that lemon flavor and really makes a big difference."

Hellmuth also said the consistency of sorrel pesto is wonderful. For other preparations besides pesto, saute the sorrel.

"The leaves will turn dark green and start to liquefy, making its own sauce," Macpherson said. She said she doesn't know of any other greens that do that.

I also picked up a yellow and orange variety of heirloom tomatoes from Builaland Buila Farm, just to get outside the red tomato box, and foccacia flatbread from Companion bakery, which I brushed with olive oil, toasted in the oven and sprinkled with sea salt. The bread has a neutral flavor and doesn't overpower the sorrel.

When making the pesto, I replaced pine nuts—a typically pricy nut—with dry roasted sunflower seeds. I also skipped the parmesan.

The result? Heaven in a pesto. Or maybe you should just try it yourself and see.

Sorrel and Purple Basil Pesto

Yield: About 1 1/2 cups.

1 1/2 cups packed sorrel leaves, rough chopped
30 basil leaves, chiffonade
5 - 6 garlic cloves, rough chopped
1 1/2 lemons, juiced
3 teaspoons dry roasted sunflower seeds
1 cup olive oil
sea salt, to taste
black pepper, to taste

Put the sorrel, basil, lemon, 1/8 cup oil and garlic into a mixer or blender. Turn on, then slowly add the rest of the oil. Adjust the consistency with the sunflower seeds. You may need a little more or a little less. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with pasta, fish or as a replacement for hollandaise sauce on poached eggs.

The runs from 4-7 p.m. on Wednesdays in the parking lot.