Lessons are only good if you get something out of them, so now that you know all about farmers' market etiquette you're ready to tackle buying tomatillos and blueberries, to enjoy the fruits of your labour.

Wild blueberries (the small ones, not the fat, tasteless ones) are available all over the city, so if you feel like you're not quite ready for one-on-one consumer/producer farmers' market action, and you need to go read more about canteloupes and tiau first, then you can still find them sometimes at your local grocery store. There you don't even have to look the cashier in the eye.

The best bargain on wild blueberries right now is actually at Jean-Talon market where you can get a huge $8 container of "jam blueberries" - ones that are a little soft and almost overripe - and either make jam, freeze them, cook with them, or eat them right away. Or you can also always pick your own. Tomatillos are a whole lot harder to find but completely worth the effort and the eye contact. Nobody seems to know how to cook these things so they end up being relatively affordable (a container for $3.50). They're found at only a few stalls at the Mile End, Plateau and Outremont Farmers' Markets, and a few weeks ago the woman from the De La Rive Farm stall was handing out a small recipe for salsa to help people out (and help sell the product). This is not that recipe. That one you just dice the tomatillos with some red onion or shallots, garlic, lime juice, salt, cilantro, apple cider vinegar, and oil, I believe. This one you grill.

Tomatillos taste like something between a plum, an apple, and a tomato, and when they get grilled their sweetness intensifies. It's a wonderful mix between sweet and sour that a regular tomato salsa just doesn't have without adding a lot of sugar or fruit. You can make this vegetarian or not, but if you add the ground meat there's a bit more depth to the flavour. You can also turn it into a main dish by stuffing it in a tortilla or a pita. Or just serve it with any kind of bread as a dip. For the meat I'd recommend ground lamb from the Rose des Vents Farm (the lamb guy at the Plateau market or ground venison (a very lean meat) from the Mile End Market. Ground beef or pork also work just fine. You could also try TVP if you're vegetarian. Beans would be okay as a good way to add protein, but they wouldn't add flavour or texture.

Traditionally, this dish is eaten in the south of China near Burma, Thailand and Laos. It's often eaten with Thai sticky rice, another carbohydrate option for gluten-free people and rice lovers everywhere. According to the authors of "Beyond the Great Wall", Jeremy Alford and Naomi Duguid, it's a "jaew", a kind of dish made from grilled and then pounded ingredients, so the grilling gives a nice charred, cooked flavour and then the pounding gives a rough, thick texture. It won't be watery like a Mexican salsa. It might not look gorgeous but it tastes amazing and completely unlike anything I'd had before. Just make sure to ask the vendor if the tomatoes are ripe or if you should wait a few days to let them ripen before grilling them.
Ingredients:
3/4lbs tomatillos, unskinned. Tomatillos have skins and parchment-like wrappers. You want to take off the wrappers and leave on the tomato skin since it's hard to remove the skin itself until it's charred. Don't make this with canned tomatillos because the skins are already removed. It will be a big, scorched mess.
1 cup shallots or red onion, unpeeled, halved if large, quartered if red onions
1 head garlic, unpeeled, but separated into individual cloves
1/4 cup water
1/4 tsp salt
2 oz (1/4 cup) ground meat. Pork has the most flavour, but game meat tastes richer, so really any ground meat that isn't chicken or turkey will work. Since you're using it for flavour, your best bet is a meat that's organic or at least antibiotic-free
1/2 cup fresh cilantro

1. Put the tomatillos, garlic and shallots on a grill screen or fine-mesh surface on the barbecue or an indoor grill (so they don't fall through) or put them in a skillet on medium-high heat. Cook, turning them frequently, until they get black splotches on all sides and they're soft. Try not to set off the fire alarm. There's no oil in the pan and things are burning and that has to be okay here. This should take 10-20 minutes depending on your grill and tomatillo-, garlic-, and shallot-turning skills.

2. While that's all grilling and you're forgetting to turn the contents of the grill, put the water in a large skillet or pot and bring it to a boil, then add the meat and salt. Cook until it changes colour and break it up so it doesn't get lumpy. Now who really just cooks a quarter cup of ground meat? No butcher will sell it to you in that quantity. So you either cook the whole pound you bought or you cook the quarter cup and freeze the rest. I just cooked the whole thing and a half a teaspoon of salt was still enough! So don't go overboard on the salt. You can add more to the salsa in the end if it's not salty enough. You don't really need to use any extra water if you cook the whole pound.

The browning of the meat should just take a minute, but it'll take a bit longer if you cook a whole pound. If you stir constantly, maybe 3 minutes once the pot is hot.

3. When your grilled things are splotchy (technical term) let them cool before removing the charred skins of the onions, garlic and tomatillos.

4. Put all the grilled and peeled things in the blender or food processor and pulse to chop roughly. You don't want a purée. You want some chunk. You can also use a mortar and pestle for a more authentic mashing.

5. Pour it out into a bowl and add the 1/4 cup of meat (or 1/4 cup of your cooked pound of meat) including a little of its juice if you like. If you don't want the juice or extra fat (flavour), you can drain the meat on paper towels first. The nice thing about using ground venison or bison in this recipe is that they're very lean meats (steaks of them are often very dry if over-cooked or not properly marinated) so when they're ground there's actually a fair bit of flavour (since ground meat this is fattier than most cuts of meat) but there's still not as much excess fat as with pork, beef, or lamb.

6. Just before you serve the salsa stir in the chopped cilantro.

Vanilla Blueberry Custard

Then there's the custard - the perfect summer dessert. Normally this is made with a million egg yolks and a lot of cream. This is a lighter, but still decadent, version that you can optionally make dairy-free. The eggs are hard to replace, though, so sorry vegans. You can top it with fresh Quebec blueberries or a blueberry syrup (you can buy good blueberry syrups at La Marche des Douceurs at Marche Jean-Talon or make your own by cooking equal parts blueberries and sugar over medium heat until the berries break down and then adding a dash of lemon juice when you remove the pot from the heat). You can make an actual blueberry custard by processing blueberries in a blender or food processor and then passing them through a sieve before stirring them into the custard while still warm...your choice. You could also skip the vanilla extract and pour in a tablespoon of blueberry honey wine, blueberry maple liqueur, or alcohol-free blueberry syrup. Again, your choice.

Ingredients:
6 tbsp sugar
8 tsp flour
8 tsp cornstarch
2 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
2 cups milk (almond, soy, cow's)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Basically all you do for this recipe is thicken milk and eggs on the stove. The only way to mess it up is to let the eggs scramble, so make sure you whisk quickly while you pour the hot milk over the eggs.

1. Combine the sugar, flour, and cornstarch in a large bowl. Add all the eggs and yolks and beat them for 1-2 minutes with a hand-held or stand mixer, or a whisk (if you want a good whisking workout). The eggs should be thick and almost white.

2. Scald the milk in a medium saucepan (until the edges just start to bubble a little. It shouldn't boil) and pour it slowly over the egg mixture in a thin stream like olive oil, whisking or beating constantly until all the milk is added. It's probably better to keep beating with the mixer here because you won't have enough hands to whisk and pour at the same time. The bowl has a much higher chance or falling disastrously to the floor if you have a hand-mixer (you can put a kitchen towel under the bowl to help keep it from moving around of its own accord). The liquid ends up a bit frothy with the mixer, though, so you kind of need to beat the froth down into the liquid afterward or you'll have a hard time telling when the mixture has thickened in the next step. Really, borrowing a friend to either whisk or pour is your best option, except then you have to share the custard. Tough call...

3. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and cook on medium heat, stirring constantly with a whisk (not a hand-mixer), reaching all over the bottom and sides of the pan, until the mixture thickens a lot. When you think it's had enough, keep cooking and whisking an extra 30-45 seconds. Then scrape your custard into a clean bowl and whisk in the vanilla (and sieved blueberries or vanilla alternative if you want). Let it cool. Cover it. Refrigerate it a few hours until it's set.

Sprinkle with blueberries (or raspberries if you can find good ones), or chocolate shavings...really, anything that isn't white or yellow (for contrast) to garnish. Serve in individual dishes or one large communal bowl, depending on the circumstances and your whisking needs.