Ina e recently been inspired buy all of the baby beets. Being so tired a beet salads I decided to do a beet cocktail. We took 5lbs of baby beets I split them into three piles. We roasted, juiced, and pickled the three groups. We take some flor de Cana dark rum, fresh beet juice, pickled beet juice, lime, house made saffrass bitters, splash of simple syrup.
Shake and pour into a coupe glass up. The garnish is a hazelnut rim, a baby beet stuffed with marscapone, arugula flowers and some pickled beets. I really enjoy food forward cocktails

I'm serving a mix of cherries on top of an individually baked gooey butter cake and topping it with candied Marcona almonds. Raspberries from the market are going on a sundae of vanilla ice cream, brownie and raspberry fudge sauce.

This will be the 3rd year that I have a booth at the Lincoln Square Thursday market, and I really try to use ingredients from other vendors. At the moment it's rhubarb from Mick Klug. Be on the lookout for rhubarb crumble cake, and rhubarb sour cherry crisps. Fairly soon I hope to load up on the fantastic pickles from Lange's Farm, and start our summer ginger, garlic, citrus pickle production

I'm gray enough at this point that I rarely discover new things at the market, but that also makes it even more fun when I do. So far this year I've done new things with seasonal favorites like scarlet turnips, kohlrabi, and Cincinnati Market radishes, one of my favorite heirloom vegetables of the whole year, and we've expanded use of green strawberries this year, pickling them and also making a chutney that is super tart and really delicious with roast pork. New Traditions Farm is growing some heritage field peas for us so I'm really looking forward to working with those as the season moves along, and I'll definitely be looking for more interesting heirloom apples.

Strawberries were everywhere this weekend at the market. In response I had put on the menu almond dacquios with goat cheese cream, strawberry mint sorbet with beautiful strawberries draped over it all. It is a very fruity light dish which screams summer and is very refreshing in this hot weather.
Craig Harzewski
Pastry Chef
NAHA Restaurant
500 N Clark St.
Chicago, IL 60654
312.321.6242