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I just have to change the message on the phone and try to squeeze one more pair of shoes into my bag and I'm gone! Off to France for five - yes, I can't believe it either, five - weeks. I'll write as soon as I can! A bientot - Dorie
They’re being called Dinners at the Farm, but they might just as well be called a community revolution, since these summer meals could change everything about the way the people in our little stretch of Connecticut think about what they eat and whom they eat it with.
From now through early October, there will be ten dinners, each held on a farm, each benefiting a local non-profit organization and each serving only the foods sold at the Lyme Farmers Market – translation: foods from within about a 30-mile radius of dinner.
The series is the brainchild of Chip Dahlke, owner of Ashlawn Farm and host of the Farmers Market; the gifted Jonathan Rapp, chef/owner of River Tavern in Chester, Drew and Claudine McLachlan, who own Feast Gourmet Market in Deep River, and, of course, the farmers.
Friday night, under a sky that was alternately threatening, wet and gorgeous – we had a ray or two of sun, a couple of downpours, a rainbow, black clouds, then stars and a peek-a-boo moon – there was a kick-off dinner for the farmers and winemakers whose products we would be savoring all summer, organizers from the groups that will receive donations from the dinners, and local press.
We all ate at one very long table and it was magical to look in either direction and see people eating and drinking fresh, beautifully prepared food, laughing, talking and marveling at the setting.
The menu was put together late in the afternoon, only after Jonathan knew what ingredients he’d have in hand, and everything was prepared on River Tavern’s “chuckwagon,” a red 1953 Ford flatbed outfitted with a commercial range, a smoker and some racks and counters.
The food was both simple and amazing for its goodness, quality and perfect preparation: warm squid (see below), a mixed seafood salad with scallops, lobster, Stonington red shrimp and bass on a bed of pristine greens, a porchetta with roasted tomatoes and a strawberry crostata with whipped cream. Every bite of food came from a farmer or producer who was seated at the table and we drank wine from local Chamard Vineyards with the winemakers right there.
Everything was served family style and it was lovely to be passing the food among us and serving one another.
There was a lot of table-hopping (if you can call jumping up to talk to people who are all at the same table table-hopping) and even truck-hopping – yes, that’s Jacques Pepin up there with Jonathan, who’s on the right.
In fact, Jacques will be cooking at one of the summer dinners and Jonathan asked me if I’d do desserts for a couple of them. Yes, yes, of course, I said “yes!”
It was an inspired evening and I left wondering if such evenings would be possible at Farmers Markets around the country. The effort is huge and it’s not every chef who wants to cook for a crowd when he doesn’t have a clue about what will turn up in the larder, but the rewards for a community are tremendous.
For me, it was extraordinary to be able to share the food of our region with the people who grow and produce it. It was another lesson in the power of food and one I wish everyone could have.
Can we start a movement? Is there already a movement?
For a list of the organizations that will benefit from Dinners at the Farm as well as dates and locations, click here.
In another one of those tricks of coincidence, someone mentioned a bakery in my neighborhood and a couple of hours and a few errands later I found myself just across the street from it.
The breads looked really good, but what I bought was what I had heard touted, a chocolate chocolate-chip cookie. At $3.50, I thought it was expensive (although no one should listen to me on the price of storebought sweets because I almost never buy them). I also thought it was big. Really big. Actually so big that the first thing I did when I got home was pop it on the scale.
This cookie weighed in at a whopping 6 ounces! That's more than one-third of a pound. In metric, that's 170 grams. It was a monster! Does anyone out there remember when McDonald's introduced the Quarter-Pounder and people thought that was sooooooo much meat?
Just so you know, one Thin Mints Girl Scout Cookie (the only storebought cookies I had around) weighs a fraction over 1/4 ounce (or 8 grams) and the recommended serving size is four cookies, or 1 ounce, 1/6 of my chocolate whopper.
I not only didn't eat the whole cookie, I didn't even eat more than a teensy nibble, a rarity (if not a first) for me. My beef with the cookie was its texture - essentially unbaked. Sometimes, like with brownies, a slightly underbaked center can be a draw, but here, the innards just tasted of too much sugar and still-raw flour.
The raw insides set me to thinking about how they could have been anything but. The cookie was so big - I think it must have been made with almost a cup of dough - it would have been a tough trick to bake the insides properly without overbaking the outside and the edges (not that there was much in the way of edges; this was really a mound). And it would have been an equally tough trick to keep the whole thing from becoming more like a cake than a cookie.
I left the cookie on the kitchen counter, but the poor thing drew no takers - a shame, because had it been good, it would have been enough to make three or four cookie monsters happy.
I'm really happy because once again I get to do something I love doing: talk baking with Michele Norris, host of National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. This time we’re talking about desserts that show off the wonderful fruits of summer – think berries, berries and more berries, peaches and nectarines, too. I’m not sure yet when the story will air, but it should be either Thursday or Friday, June 21 or 22, just in time for the first official weekend of summer. If you miss it, you can always hear it online (our other baking sessions are archived as well) and get the recipes on the ATC website.
Saturday night we went to a gala dinner for the wonderful Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, CT. Just so you know – and, if you live anywhere near Haddam, you’ll want to know – The Goodspeed is a historic playhouse presenting only musicals. Lots of the performers who started at Goodspeed have gone on to Broadway and so have several of the shows, including the original Man of La Mancha and the beloved Annie. Not bad for a theater that’s so far off Broadway! The gala honored Jerry Herman, the composer/lyricist with a few hits, like Mame, Hello Dolly and La Cage aux Folles, to his name, and it was such a thrill to hear some of his songs performed, then to have him speak so movingly about his life in the theater and his affection for Goodspeed.
But on to dinner, which was held in the scenery workshop – although you wouldn’t have thought that’s where we were. I know, if a theater company can’t create a set, who can? From where I sat, it looked like every one of the 200 guests could have been gold-star members of the clean-plate club. All of the dishes, from the grilled vegetable appetizer to the berry tartlet, were polished off, but there was one thing left on every plate that held the filet of beef: that red, furry thing in the picture.
No one ate it and no one I asked knew what it was.
Turns out it’s amaranth! Because I’d never seen it in its “fresh” state - in fact, I think I’ve only seen it as flour - I tucked the stem into Michael’s lapel and brought it home to taste in the privacy of my own kitchen. And here’s the report: I still don’t have a clue what it tastes like. This one (which might be more accustomed to being in decorative gardens than farmers' fields) tasted just like the beef it rode in on!
I know, it looks a little weird, kind of like a terrarium for lettuce, but it's really a little bit of low-tech genius. It's a terrific trick I learned from Michael Newburg, who grows the best, best greens at his Falls Brook Organic Farm. Put your fresh greens in a big plastic bag, gather up the neck, blow a little air, aka carbon dioxide, into the bag, then seal it up quick. If your greens are perfectly dry and really fresh (when Michael brings his to the Lyme Farmers Market, they’re only two-hours old), they’ll stay bright, firm and flavorful for at least a week like this. The only problem is the amount of space the puffed-up bag takes in the fridge – but scrambling for a few extra cubic-inches of room on the shelf seems a small price to pay for greens that stay great from market day to market day.
My friend Kerrin just sent me this photo. It was taken in a hypermarche, a super-big supermarket, outside of Paris and my guess is that, had Kerrin had a wide-angle lens, she could have shown us an equally long wall of canned tuna too. Even in the not-so-big Monoprix grocery near my apartment in Paris, the selection of canned fish is generous enough to keep you in that aisle for a while, reading labels and deciding among sardines with hot peppers, mustard, lemon or basil, smoked or not, whole or filleted. I always keep a stack of sardine cans in the pantry, they’re my rainy-day emergency munch, perfect for when I’m on deadline and glued to my computer. A squeeze of lemon, a couple of slices of tomato, a little salad and some bread and butter and all is right with the world.
The last time I was in Paris, I brought a few cans of sardines back with me
because, while I can get pretty much anything in New York, including these really good Portuguese sardines
the selection at my local Stop&Shop in Connecticut is not great. And, last night I discovered that it’s about to become even less not-great. See these cans of Bumble Bee sardines?
I picked them up last night for 50 cents a can because the store is discontinuing them.
I guess we’re not a sardine-savoring society in these parts, but it made me sad. Here’s a food, a real food, that’s inexpensive (even when it’s not on sale), high in protein, iron, calcium and precious omega-3 fatty acids (the stuff we’re all supposed to have a couple of times a week), and it’s going off the shelves.
I didn’t notice any discontinued signs in the chips department.
While I’ve been hearing from my West Coast friends about the treasures they’ve been savoring for months now from their local farmers markets, I’ve been counting down the time until opening day for ours, The Lyme Farmers Market, and, hooray and hallelujah, yesterday was the day!
The setting for the market, Ashlawn Farm, is gorgeous, and there’s never a time when we’re driving up to it on the winding road that’s edged by stone walls from revolutionary times that I don’t get excited. And when we round the last curve in the road and see the farm stretched out in front of us with the vendors’ white awnings sparkling in the field, it’s all Michael, my husband, can do to keep me from jumping out of the car before he pulls it up the drive.
Then there’s the ritual first stop at Farm Coffee, where Carol Dahlke, who, with her husband, Chip, owns Ashlawn Farm, roasts mostly organic and mostly fair-trade coffee beans in small batches and mans the espresso machine at the coffeehouse. Armed with a cappucino, we face the day’s biggest decision: whether to go to Bobby’s TALK Seafood to buy fish or to Michael Newburg’s Fall’s Brook Organic Farm Stand to buy his greens, which are exceptional. It’s a really big decision because both stands sell out fast. Michael and I could split up and cover both bases, but, for me, that defeats one of the points of the market: the chat. I love talking to everyone who brings his best stuff here and, on the first day of the market, you don’t want to miss a word – there’s so much catching up to do.
So yesterday, I stopped at Bobby’s first and got big, fat scallops and steamers, had a good chat and then got to Michael’s, only to find that he was already sold out of his mesclun. Drats! But he had his spicy mix, which includes baby mustard greens and a bunch of Asian lettuces, so life was still worth living. Strawberries, rhubarb and basil from Roses Berry Farm, and tomatoes (hothouse, but surprisingly good) and beets from Scotts Orchards, then all that remained was for my husband to have his usual hotdog, which Irene, from Four Mile River Farm, where they grow and butcher their own beef, grilled for him just the way he likes it: super charred.
If only it hadn’t gotten chilly last night, we could have eaten outdoors and it would have truly felt as though summer had started. Opening the windows didn’t help make everything seem summery, but tasting the farm-fresh food sure did.
Here are the recipes for two of the dishes we had last night: Scallops with Beet and Tomato Salsa and Strawberry-Rhubarb Cobbler.
SEA SCALLOPS WITH BEET AND TOMATO SALSA
It's pictured at the top of this post. I’m sorry that this isn’t a real recipe – I just put everything together and only thought to write it all down when it was too late – but nothing in the dish has to be so precise that you can’t just play around with it for yourself.
Makes 2 servings
For the salsa:
4 small beets – roasted, peeled and cut into small dice
1 cup grape tomatoes, cut in half
2 scallions, white and light green parts, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
Good olive oil (you could use a mix of olive and walnut oil)
Splash of sherry vinegar
Salt (I used fleur de sel) and freshly ground pepper
Minced fresh herbs – I used lots of chives, Greek oregano and thyme
Mix the beets, tomatoes, scallions and oil together and set aside while you make the rest of the dish. Right before serving, add the vinegar and season with salt, pepper and herbs.
For the salad:
2 handfuls of mixed greens
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Good olive oil
Squirt of fresh lemon juice
Have everything ready and toss it together right before serving.
For the scallops:
4 strips of bacon
Good olive oil
10 fat sea scallops
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 medium-thick slices tomato
Cook the bacon in a heavy skillet until it’s crispy, lift it out of the pan onto a plate lined with paper towels, cover with a double thickness of paper towels and drain. When cool, coarsely chop the bacon. Discard all but 1 tablespoon of the fat.
Add about 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil to the pan and heat until the oil is very hot, but not smoking.
Pat the scallops dry, season with salt and pepper and cook them, 2 to 3 minutes on a side, until they are golden on the outside and still opalescent on the inside.
While the scallops are cooking, put two slices of tomato side by side in the center of each of two dinner plates; season with salt and pepper and drizzle ever so slightly with oil.
Toss the greens and put them right behind the tomatoes. Put the scallops on top of the sliced tomatoes. If you’d like, you can moisten the scallops with a little of the bacon-oil mixture. Make sure all the ingredients are in the salsa, give it a last stir and spoon it over the scallops. Sprinkle the salsa with the chopped bacon and you’re ready to go.
STRAWBERRY-RHUBARB COBBLER
I really like the slight crunch I got by making the topping with a little cornmeal. If you’re not as crunchophilic as I am, just replace the cornmeal with all-purpose flour.
Makes 6 servings
For the fruit:
1 pound rhubarb, peeled, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 pint strawberries, hulled and halved
1/3 cup sugar (or more to taste)
2 teaspoons cornstarch
For the topping:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cornmeal
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger (optional)
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons; 3 ounces) cold unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces
1/2 cup cold milk
Lightly whipped cream or vanilla ice cream (very optional)
Getting ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter an 8-x-8-inch pan – I used a Pyrex baker – and place it on a lined baking sheet.
For the fruit: Put all the ingredients in the baking pan and stir them around. Give them a couple of stirs while you’re working on the cobbler topping.
For the topping: Put the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, salt and ginger in the workbowl of a food processor and pulse a few times to blend. Scatter the pieces of butter over the dry ingredients and pulse the machine on and off until the mixture resembles coarse meal – it’s okay to have some largish clumps, so don’t overdo it. Still pulsing the machine, add the milk. Stop mixing when the dough forms big, soft curds.
Turn the dough out onto a piece of wax paper and, working with a light hand, gather it together gently. Give the fruit one last stir, then pinch off pieces of the dough and put them on top of the fruit. Neatness doesn’t count here nor does covering the fruit completely or evenly.
Slide the cobbler into the oven and bake 35 to 45 minutes, or until the topping is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling up around it. Allow the cobbler to cool for at least 20 minutes before serving. While there’s something wonderful about having anything warm, I think the cobbler tastes better at room temperature. Of course, there’s no reason not to have some warm and some more cool.
If you don’t mind your cobbler being a little soggy (it’s never bothered me), you can cover the leftovers and keep them at room temperature or in the refrigerator overnight.
Here's the cobbler almost ready to come out of the oven.
Do you think there’s anyone in the Western world who hears the pop of a champagne cork and doesn’t think, “Ah, good times ahead!” Whether we’re hard-wired at birth to pair champagne with celebration (I think I might have been), forge those brain paths through a lot of happy times, or have just seen enough Cary Grant films to believe that only great things can happen to us when we’ve got a glass of champagne in hand, it doesn’t matter, the felicitous match is made and, as far as I’m concerned, the only thing is to enjoy it as often as you can. This explains why I skipped out on work yesterday with nary a twinge of guilt to go to Per Se and spend a leisurely afternoon eating Thomas Keller’s food and drinking champagnes from Maison Heidsieck, the mother house of Piper-Heidsieck (which was Marilyn Monroe’s favorite champagne) and Charles Heidsieck (which could be every bec fin's favorite).
There were about 20 of us “happy few”, as the French would say, and we were the guests of Christian Holthausen, the International House Communications Director, which means the guy who travels around the world spreading good cheer and pouring great champagne. At 33, Christian, whom I’m so lucky to call a friend, is the youngest person to have such a job for a major champagne house and he’s the only American in the lot! And boy was Heidsieck smart to nab him – he’s cute, charming, gracious, generous, articulate in a couple of languages and passionate about champagne.
We were welcomed to the luncheon with a parade of hors d’oeuvre, among them Keller’s signature salmon-roe cones, warm gougeres filled with melted gruyere, potato croquettes to be dipped in truffle mayonnaise and teensy brioche toasts topped with foie gras and apple gelee. And while you would have thought that we’d be sipping champagne with these canapes, you would have been wrong: we drank water, all the better to keep our palates fresh for the 11 – count’em – champagnes to follow.
So, right off the bat, conventions were broken – no champagne as aperitif. Instead, each course of our meal would be paired with a flight of champagnes. Christian had chosen the champagnes, a few of them quite rare, and Per Se’s kitchen and sommelier teams came up with a menu, which Christian said he thought was perfect from the start. Everyone around the two tables looked to be in complete agreement. And, why wouldn’t they be given what we had:
CAULIFLOWER “PANNA COTTA”
with Island Creek Oyster Glaze
and Sterling White Sturgeon Caviar
Paired with Piper-Heidsieck Cuvee Brut
Charles Heidsieck Brut Reserve
Think of this as the caviar and creme fraiche you might ordinarily have with champagne
HAWAIIAN HEARTS OF PEACH PALM
Spring Ramps, Poached Nectarines
Petite Mache and Hazelnut Butter
Paired with Piper-Heidsieck Cuvee Rare
Piper-Heidsieck Brut Vintage 2000
Piper-Heidsieck Brut Vintage 1998
The pickled ramps and poached nectarines in this dish were a terrific go-together. Keller often has fresh hearts of palm on his menu and, for anyone who’s only known these from a can, they’re a revelation – as was the Cuvee Rare.
RIB-EYE OF FOUR STORY HILL FARM’S VEAL
Butter Braised Morels, Thumbelina Carrots
Split English Peas and Sweet Pea Shoots
with Creme de Morilles
Paired with Charles Heidsieck Blanc des Millenaires 1995
Charles Heidsieck Blancs des Millenaires 1983
Charles Heidsieck Brut Vintage 1989 en Jeroboam
A perfect dish and perfect with champagne. I fell in love with the Blancs des Millenaires 1983, which is a shame because the odds are so against my ever having it again.
“CHERRY VANILLA”
Vanilla “Moelleux,” Frog Hollow Farm’s Bing Cherries
White Chocolate Cream, Kirsch Foam and Morello Cherry Ice Cream
Paired with Charles Heidsieck Brut Rose Vintage 1999
Piper-Heidsieck Rose Sauvage
Piper-Heidsieck Cuvee Sublime
If I weren’t having such problems getting the lighting right for these pictures – aarrgh – I would have been able to show you the gorgeous color of the Piper-Heidsieck Rose Sauvage. (It was a much deeper red than most rose champagnes because 35% of the pinot noir grapes were vinified as red wine before being added to the blend.) It looked so beautiful with the dessert; tasted great with it too. And I was really happy to have the Cuvee Sublime, which is a demi-sec (or “half dry”, slightly sweet) champagne. I’m told that demi-sec champagnes are not in the favor they once were, but I love them. I also loved the Vanilla Moelleux, a white version of the beloved soft, normally oozy, dark chocolate cake.
Do you remember when I was riding around Paris on a bicycle? Among the comments to my cycling post was this one from Mmm:
You've given me hope: a trip to Paris as a weight-loss regimen, pedaling aerobically from patisserie to patisserie!!! If you want to do a trial run of "Dorie's Patisseries-de-Paris Weight-Loss Tours," my schedule is such that I can be there on fairly short notice.
Hard to imagine, but the ruling elite in Paris beat me to it. In announcing that in their new program, Velib, Paris will have thousands of bicycles available throughout the city starting July 15 – buy a type of Muni-Meter ticket, pick up bicycles at any of the designated stations, then leave them at the drop-off spot nearest your destination (the first 30 minutes are free!) – the following line appeared in the press release:
Application forms for the annual card will be available starting June 13 at Paris District City Halls, 300 metro stations and 400 pastry shops throughout the city.
How fabulous! Soon we’ll be queuing up for macarons and meter tickets. Another reason I love Paris.
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