Fairmount_market

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• Photos: Fairmount_market at the playground and her Leek and Cherry Tomato Clafoutis -- it's almost in season!
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There is something fairly mysterious about our growing power user, Fairmount_market. What exactly is the "Fairmount Market"? With recipe submissions in almost every recent contest, and numerous Editors' Pick badges to go with them, we are more than curious about this creative and vegetarian-friendly cook. All the while, she's a biology professor and even helped found a farmers' market in her Eugene, Oregon neighborhood (now you see!) with a beautiful blog to accompany it.

The humble dried bean is too-oft overlooked by even the best of cooks -- but not by this bean queen. A true bulk bin MVP, tackling even the trickiest of beans, Fairmount_market knows her heirloom varieties: from the more obvious French Lentil Caviar Salad with a Poached Egg to Flageolet Bean Salad with Fennel, Orange and Tapenade Toasts ... to Best Boston Baked Beans ... to Rio Zape Beans with Toasted Chile Sauce (honestly, Rio Zape Beans?!). Rustic cooking all around the world has beans as a cornerstone -- we're relieved to have Fairmount_market in our midst keeping things down-to-earth. 

She loves a perfect paella. So do we! She's eager to eat Japanese hand-drawn noodles in Japan. So are we! It profoundly bothers her when someone dips their buttery knife into the jam jar. We too cringe. And anyone who makes tomato sauce when she's home alone is someone we'd want to come home to. (Side note: We were delighted to learn that her children like to play Amanda and Merrill at bath time.)

Be sure to check out her blog, see her profile and recipes on food52, and read our Q&A with her below.

• What do you cook when home alone?
  Tomato sauce
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• Your most treasured kitchen possession:
  Crumpet Rings (for sentimental reasons)
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• Your ideal meal:
  Perfect paella
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• Something you'd like a chance to eat or cook:
  Hand-pulled noodles
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• The number of bottles of wine you own:
  12
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• The ideal number of guests for a dinner party is:
  6
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• Kitchen pet peeve:
  Poor sterile technique, such as when people dip a butter covered knife into the jam.
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• Your favorite cookbook:
  I love reading new cookbooks, but ones I return to often are The Greens Cookbook, Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, and Patricia Well's Bistro Cooking.