At Santa Monica farmers market, peppers, flageolets, peaches and berries

At the Santa Monica Wednesday farmers market, growers, shoppers and chefs are always searching for new and extraordinary items.

One of the most innovative farmers is Alex Weiser, who returned from a trip to Spain last year full of ideas about things to grow. He put in 2,000 plants of pimientos de Padrón, the classic peppers from Galicia, which are typically stir-fried for tapas. Like Japanese shishito peppers, most are mild, but about one in 10 is hot, ideally. Actually, they’re sweet when green but get hotter as they ripen. Chefs are lining up to buy them, said Weiser, who also has red Chilean potatoes, elongated fingerlings with striking red skin and white flesh. They’re starchy, and best roasted.

Fairview Gardens of Goleta has fresh organic flageolets, the small, light green shell beans, tender and flavorful, beloved in France. Jean Francois Meteigner of La Cachette (and now LC Bistro) said he has been buying them to accompany lamb, a classic use.

There are so many good stone fruit varieties available now that it’s hard to know where to start. Modern low-acid white peaches are useless for cooking, but Sierra Blanca, a high-quality freestone with an excellent balance of sweetness and acidity, excels both for eating fresh and culinary use. Art Lange’s Honey Crisp stand and Fitz Kelly, both from Reedley, offer it now.

San Joaquin Valley growers have finished with Elegant Lady peaches, but Tenerelli Farms, from the high desert, where seasons are two to three weeks later, is just starting its harvest. For many years after its introduction in 1979, Elegant Lady was the Cadillac of the California peach industry, with rich-flavored yellow flesh, flecked with red when ripe. Because it tends to develop split pits, most commercial growers are replacing it with larger, redder, and often less flavorful varieties, but it’s still a favorite at farmers markets.

Among the amazing rainbow of berries at the Pudwill stand, perhaps the rarest and most exotic are the Royalty purple raspberries, which are a cross that’s one-quarter black raspberry and three-quarters red raspberry. Introduced in New York in 1982, they’re large, soft and dark, velvety purple, with unobtrusive seeds. Straight purple raspberries (half black, half red) are tart and typically used for jam, but Royalty is sweet enough to eat fresh; tasting them last Wednesday, Sherry Yard, pastry chef of Spago, thought that they had a grapey flavor.

It’s peak season for Persian mulberries, and many market-goers are asking who has the best. An acquaintance and I used a refractometer to test the sweetness of fruits from four vendors. Tenerelli Farms came out first, at an average brix (a measure of sweetness) of 22 degrees, averaging fully ripe dark fruit and less ripe red specimens; this matches my observations over the years, in which Tenerelli consistently provides superior quality. Weiser Family Farms was just behind at 21 degrees, but had a slightly higher proportion of red fruits. The first local orchard to market mulberries, Circle C (which sells only at Hollywood), averaged 19.5 degrees, but had a higher proportion of dark fruits; they also offer the best value, $7 for a punnet, instead of the $10 the others charge. Garcia Organic Farm, which grows in northern San Diego County and is just starting its harvest, measured 14.25 degrees for both black and red fruit.

Santa Monica farmers market, Arizona Avenue and 2nd Street, 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Wednesdays