Frozen Delights at Hester Street Fair, NYC

Hello again, Hudson Grown fans!

Forgive us for our long silence, it's been a roller coaster of a year. Here we are in mid-harvest season and the farmer's markets are overflowing, canning and freezing are under way. I trust that there's enough time left in the summer to celebrate the cornucopia of produce from Hudson Valley farms. In the meantime, I just had to share our recent field trip to Manhattan and the discovery of a new outdoor market with vendors that you won't find anywhere else.

Eating the Hester Street Fair

[Mango con chile paleta from La Newyorkina] Tucked away in a sliver of Seward Park on the lower Lower East Side is a new marketplace filled with funky jewelry, vintage hats and food, glorious food. The newly formed Hester Street Fair, just over two months old, is an homage to the pushcart markets of long ago. It is also a food-lover's treasure trove of international edibles with contemporary twists, from candied bacon French macarons to homemade kimchee and cheddar-truffle pretzels.

Paul and I found ourselves there on a humid July Saturday to meet our friend Fany, the proprietress of La Newyorkina paletas and the author of My Sweet Mexico (out in September). Newyorkina's paletas (Mexican popsicles) were selling fast — flavors of horchata (cinnamon rice milk), hibiscus and mango con chile were favorites.

After brunching on a delicious omelette from Too Good Traders filled with zuchini, peas, bacon, leeks and ricotta, we were compelled to try more of the market's sweet offerings, among them a red velvet macaron from Macaron Parlour Patisserie filled with a tangy cream cheese frosting (we took a candied bacon one for later). We were tempted by the empanadas at La Sonrisa (especially the smoked kielbasa one and their cucumber mint lemonade) but just didn't have room.

Revolutionary Flavors

["Velvet Revolution" from Guerilla Ice Cream] We tasted several samples proffered by the young men behind the Guerilla Ice Cream table, and it didn't take long to see that their cleverly-named concoctions (Velvet Revolution, 8888 Uprising) were a nod to the 5-week-old non-profit's focus: 100% of proceeds go towards helping "marginalized populations" in NYC and around the world. Ethan, the pastry-chef of the duo (Ori's the business mastermind), will begin his Master's degree in conflict studies in the fall. He assured me that Guerilla Ice Cream will stay alive during his summers off. This was comforting because I was already addicted to the "Velvet Revolution" — lemon poppy seed ice cream topped with lemon zest and crumbled spice cookies, it tasted like a frozen muffin. It was a tough call, though — the chocolate-port wine ice cream and the mango-lemongrass-palm sugar sorbet were both amazing, delicately sweet and complex. It only left us with one choice – we'll have to go back again before the summer's gone.

Click here for more scenes from the Hester Street Fair.