THE MUSE #102
In this edition: Recounting tales and characters from the local farmers market, Jack Dahill returns for another edition of “Lessons & Recipes from the Heirloom.”
Lessons & Recipes from the Heirloom: “Mr. Actor Man”
A guide to making cooking the best part of your multi-hyphenate practice by Jack Piscitelli Dahill
“Once in your life you need a doctor, a lawyer, and a preacher, but every day, three times a day, you need a farmer.” ~ Brenda Schapp
I had only been to the farmers market a handful of times in my life. Never was it partially memorable; I was young and almost certainly being dragged by my tiny arm when I’d have much rather been playing in the woods. I thought of markets as stuffy and rather boring. Less effective and more expensive grocery stores. But then I was suddenly grown. I was imminently graduating with a bachelor's of fine arts in acting (of all things), during COVID (of all times), in love with a woman who knew lots of farmers, and no other job prospects in sight. Thus began my career at a farmer's market.
…
I work at a farm stand for Maitri Farms, a horticultural operation growing flowers and vegetables and livestock. I work with Sage who studies food systems and food allegories in literature. She has farmed before, I haven't. We both work for Ellie, Sage’s old farm manager. As an artist herself, she rocked the bass in an all femme punk band for many years and she understands how deeply linked art and food are.
Today’s the first day we have tomatoes at the market and they’re stunning. Ellie sees me eyeing the heirlooms and asks if I want to taste one — of course I do.
And I’m home. Cicadas buzz in my ears and I can faintly hear my grandmother calling me inside to wash up for dinner. The smell of rosemary and basil from the herb garden and the warmth of the sun on my neck. It all comes rushing back. One bite of this red nightshade and I’m little again, in my garden. I look down at the tomato, professionally grown, on the market fetching a pretty penny, and I realize that my parents, my first culinary collaborators and a far cry from the farmers of the Hudson Valley, were creating the same sort of agricultural magic, not in a field or a greenhouse, but in a small stretch of dirt in our backyard. I look back to Ellie, and I see a proud glint in her eye.
“Pretty good huh?” she asks, knowing full well the answer.
“Oh hell yeah” I mutter, my mouth full.
“It’s such a weird and wonderful thing to watch someone eat something you’ve grown.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, wiping juice from my mouth.
She just points to the shirt she’s wearing. She smiles. It says, “Work is love made visible.”
We go on to talk about the various uses of the tomato, a major source of the nutrient lycopene. We debate which tomatoes are best for salads, stews, sauces, salsas and the like. She shares with me her years of agricultural knowledge, about how tomatoes grow and what I can do to make them better. Ellie tells me to take all the varieties home, to try them all, to cook with reckless abandon. We talk about how, like theater, they are fleeting and ephemeral (as is all seasonal produce). How you must get while the getting is good, and when it’s out of season you have no choice but to yearn for the hot, sticky, terrible days of August to bring about the best thing that grows on the vine.
A customer interrupts our revelry. A weeping willow of a woman who walks with a cane. She smells of thyme.
“You know I can tomatoes every year and send them to my grandchildren who live in Toronto, and San Marzano tomatoes are the best to preserve by can. Do you have any?”
“Any type of plum tomato will can really nicely because they are structurally more sound than other varieties. Less juice and seeds, more hearty meat,” Ellie says, pointing her towards the Romas we have for sale.
The two of them talk back and forth, and I stash a few tomatoes in my bag, taking them home to preserve for the sad tomato-less winter.
I learn many things from Ellie and just as I am becoming proficient at sorting one type of potato from the other, I am poached by the fishmonger who works next to us…
“You know, theater begins at the market,” Paul proclaims aside to me, his only captive audience member, with a theatrical wave of his hand. Paul is a short and pseudo-curmudgeonly fishmonger (underneath it all he’s a devoted father who wants a miniature schnauzer).
Jack Dahill, wearing a beige t-shirt and grey shorts holds a red back of clams at the farmers market stand.
And since I’m transitioning from selling vegetables to selling fish, he has made it his priority to teach me, the junior fishmonger, what he, the senior fishmonger, knows. It’s all lineage and history and the open seas. He makes up stories of wild waters, of a kraken, of some monstrous Moby Dick, as if he lived his life bobbing up and down on the Atlantic, not tucked away on the Upper West Side.
He continues, “You’re selling people the fish, yes, but you’re also selling them a story, a solution to their problem, a brand new lifestyle. Their dinner is exciting, and you need to show that to them. But that shouldn’t be hard for you, Mr. Actor Man.”
He’s right. It’s not hard for me. I’ve fallen into this line of work with ease. I'm genuinely excited to talk to people about what they're making, to break our tent's fourth wall and gesticulate in the round. I've become invested in the regulars who come back willing to try new and more daring dishes, like old audiences, who come back to watch this particular story, like old friends telling and retelling their favorite stories. This kind of storytelling is dangerous. It lives not only in the brain and the heart but in the belly too. I'm not only selling them an evening to remember, like a night out, a dinner and a show, but I'm selling them a story that could also make them sick if handled incorrectly.
But this is not a one sided exchange. Much like the old woman with her canning tricks, these customers give me just as much as I give them. John cracks one liners as I weigh out his mussels, and every week he gives me another addition to his list of “the best restaurants in New York” — and he would know as a “lifelong New Yorker and nearly-pro-chef.” Judith doles out tips on how to make the most out of my studio apartment storage space; she also tells me stories of how she made her way into the construction union as a 5’2’’ Jewish woman in the late 70s. Felipe gives me a sketch of St. Sebastian and Paul a painting of a Mackerel. Jacob and I discuss the joys of music and improv, as well as his impending move to the west coast over loins of cod in Prospect Park. A man I know only as “The Spaniard” brandishes a bag of barnacles for us to eat.
“They’re illegal in America; the FDA is scared of their own shadow,” He whispers, his gold tooth glinting in the sun. “But they’re the tastiest thing you’ll ever eat.” He’s right. They are stunningly good, and the crime makes them all the sweeter.
Bianca runs a restaurant in the East Village and comes swaggering up to the stand every week promptly at 7:45am, 15 minutes before we officially open. We never mind.
“Good morning Sunshines!” she announces with her thick Italian accent. “What do I want for dinner today, fish boys?”
Paul and I tell her what’s fresh and she tells us what her customers have been enjoying. We dance back and forth about what she should get, what sort of fish story she wants to share with her “Petunias” (that’s what she calls her customers). I feel a deep responsibility to Bia; she is not only cooking for herself but for her community. As she shops, some of her faithful Petunias recognize her and they swap stories and tales of mouth watering desserts. She has her “market husband,” a German man named Christof who kisses her on the cheek through their face masks. (I’d later meet him and his real wife walking around the park in my neighborhood) they discuss notes about recipes and tweak cooking times for the dishes they’ve made together. They commiserate about their respective spouses and what they will bring to their potluck next week. Come Christmas, she offers me a place at her dinner table, but only if I cook with her husband.
“I cook every day of the year, on Christmas Jaun cooks, and Lord knows he needs help.”
But it’s not just the customers with whom I get to collaborate, the other vendors are also artists. Ralph, a soft spoken scraggly man is the farmer who runs Lucky Dog. He and I have talked about everything from how sad it is that most people think potatoes taste like nothing, to the ethical implications of The Brothers Karamazov’s stance on nihilism. Sam, who works for GrowNYC and sings in a radical environmentalist choir, talks to me about the heartache of her most recent breakup, her lonely garden in Bay Ridge, and how cooking isn’t the same when it’s just for one. Mort and Sarah, the hippy grandparents from Vermont who make the best maple syrup I’ve ever sipped, talk to me about the joys of living slowly and the peace that comes from knowing the trees that sweeten your pancakes, touching the earth that grew your food. The people who go to and work at the farmers market are deeply aware of the inherent artistry that food elicits and their joy fuels my own.
…
As the first birds of spring return to Union Square, I realize what a community I’ve found, at this place that once was foreign, in this space that once was inaccessible. What wonderful recipes and stories I’ve gathered from these people. What a difference I’ve made on the customers who trust me with their dinner and their gut. How good it feels to have them come back and say, “I took your advice and it came out wonderfully” or “Last time you steered me right, what do you think I should make for dinner today?” I’m not working as a PA on a film set, or in a post-production company, or as an usher in a downtown theater, but I’m filled each day by sharing my story and full of the people who let me in on their own.
I’m privy to my customers and their meet cutes. I watch relationships fostered while waiting in line, sharing and re-sharing recipes, like stories. I get to see first hand the way good food and local ingredients bring a community together. How the conversations in line perfectly mirror the conversations I hear after I walk onto the street after a play. How the customers look at the fish as if they were gazing upon a Hopper painting, perfectly captured in a late afternoon slant of light. How a shared experience of local food creates a zeitgeist all its own. When ramps were about to come into season, I could hear it whispered on the breeze and I felt the morale swell when they finally arrived.
When I chose to study acting, never would I have imagined that my first job post college would be at the farmers market. That I’d call myself a fishmonger. That when I put my name into people’s phones it would be “Jack Fish.” But that is the beauty of multi-hyphenate artistry. When you choose to lead an artistic life, art is everywhere. And working at the markets has allowed me to engage in an artistic community unlike any other.
Jack Piscitelli Dahill (he/him) is a 2021 Nine Muses Lab Fellow and interdisciplinary storyteller who believes in “following the fun.” His interests lie in twisting traditional archetypes and narratives to shine light on how humor elicits the most profound empathy. He believes that food is the base of shared human experience, and through exploration of the artistry of food we can find a radical connection to each other.
“Change shakes us up, and we can thank our Muse for it... we are driven by change to create, to excel, and to become better humans, perhaps even more sensitive humans!”
Newsletter run by Nia Farrell, Director of Development & Production at Nine Muses Entertainment
