Not your average farm dinner

Friends, John & Leslie, treated us to dinner at Blue Hill Café at the Stone Barns in New York where an earlier generation of Rockefellers grew up. Now whoever owns the barns and acres around, whether it’s a public trust or private ownership, I don’t know. All the land in sight of this hill raises livestock, gardens and orchards specifically for the menus. The barn is magnificent with stone and timbers and arches and copulas and heavy doors built to last for centuries. They make you think being a dairy maid might have made you very happy (brilliant Margie). It’s now an event center and restaurant co-owned by Dan Barber, one of the first garden-to-table chefs. You might say his calling is about being conscious of food choices and the effort required to eat healthy, nourishing food, and how our options should include natural, organic, local and all those important, over-done, oft exploited words.

     John and Leslie choose a multi-course meal built around what was overwintered or harvested in April. You don’t get a menu – you get what the chef wants to give you, although we were all a little relieved when the staff asked whether we had reservations about eating organ meats, and we all got shifty-eyed and gently said, may we pass, s’il vous plait. It began with amuse bouche – foofy French word used in restaurants I can’t afford, (thankfully the staff interpreted for me: snacks), and herbal infused elixirs (I grinned at “elixir” which I freely associate with fairy stories or poison – can go either way). Each was a wonderfully complex flavor of this flower or that herb. I hadn’t thought of drinking beets. Most of the bites were small tastes, appropriately brilliant or just sweetly, softly themselves. Loved them. Some were so simple, I fancied I could DO them myself if I got away from the peasant mentality of more is better. However, the square inch of congealed vichyssoise wrapped in a leek leaf would challenge my patience.

 Smoked kale and a sweet potato chip

 Mini Beet Sliders.

 L to R: Elixirs oatmeal/honey, yellow beet, berry

 Leek-wrapped vichyssoise.

      At the end this came out and we can’t remember what that little square was called. Chocolate, obviously, and something pistachio. The round things were chocolate covered hazelnuts. The white frothy drink - icy vanilla shake aka time to go home.  

     I kept wanting to stay in the moment, okay, the three hours. Trying to keep things real. Wanting to keep on talking about really important things like luh-ove and how to solve the world’s problems. I reminded myself this kind of celebration every day would not be possible nor wanted. But once, maybe in a lifetime? Mine, anyway? Eating at a 3 Star Michelin as a guest? You’d at least hope your conversation measured up. I doubt mine did. I know. Some things you can’t give back. This was a gift. A celebration. And like most graces you don’t get to deserve them, you should accept them gratefully, thankfully, and hope God will bless the giver(s), because you sure can’t. 

   Although we've been coddled and treated for a whole week, going home to rice and stir fry is way okay, too.

Just another great meal at Toad Hall

Not long ago I got a craving for a simple supper. A favorite easy is baked chicken breasts drizzled with olive oil, seasoned with salt, pepper, paprika and grated Parmesan. Pop in the oven at 400 degrees and they’re done in about 20 minutes. I wanted wild rice to go with them and since Denis was gone, and he HATES mushrooms or anything that squeaks on your teeth, slimes or could POTENTIALLY slime - he abhors, and with his usual unassailable logic designed to convince all of creation he says that if God had intended us to eat mushrooms they wouldn’t be called FUNG-GUS. Yes, well, he doesn’t know I chop FUNG-GUS all the time and put them in LOTS of things, because they deepen and intensify flavors especially in soups and meat dishes. I sautéd half a pound of them to add to the rice. I was happily stirring when Anita came into the kitchen. I should add that since she’s been a part of our life for awhile now, I expect little packets of spice, some of them unlabeled, to proliferate in our cupboard - she often picks them up in the bulk section of the Good Food Store. So I was talking to her as I cooked and idly grabbed what I THOUGHT was a bit of Celtic salt in a little baggie from the shelf and sprinkled it on the mushrooms. For good measure I tossed several generous pinches in the simmering rice. The mushrooms nicely browned just like Julia Child’s and were added to the rice along with some chopped onion.

All dished up everything looked tasty, especially the mushrooms, eat your heart out, Denis. But the first bite made my eyeballs water and my salivary glands spurt. I almost dropped my plate. Dang. (Okay, yes, we were standing in the kitchen eating.) I COULD NOT figure out WHAT the!? Who was trying to punish me? On a hunch I grabbed the bag with the salt. It was clearly, disappointingly labeled: ASCORBIC ACID. Which is like pure vinegar only powdered and concentrated. Accidents happen all the time and I’d like to think they are someone else’s fault and I just don’t have the evidence.

The only good thing about this dish was that it seemed curiously preserved from rot and I ate the rice as leftovers for about ten days, not in a row you understand. The acid must have had a pickling effect. That was a challenge, but I hate to waste good wild rice and mushrooms. I also hope, please God, I do not have to do this again. And to make sure for now I’ve hidden the ascorbic acid.

Zucchini

First good thing. Am much happier now than I was a few minutes ago having just eaten a slice of fresh zucchini bread. Anita’s been baking and the scent rises to my second floor office. As far as I’m concerned it’s still too early in the season to resent the giant, naughty zucchini gardeners pawn off when you're not looking.

Second good thing, I see it is nearly dinner time and I’m not cooking! We’re grilling at Kosmo’s tonight and I hope she remembers that a bunch of us are coming over and she’s providing the car-nay. So. More joy. It’s not that all of my life is about food. Really, it’s not. But at the end of a long day to find that someone else is redeeming zucchini and lighting the fire is, well, a grace. And for good measure: a poem:

Zucchini

O dread species!

overachiever, overpopulator,

you bore me to death.

At night while the stars hone their points

you multiply and inflate into obscene gestures.

You are the season’s homeless.

We pass you among us like orphaned children

until our sense of charity dissolves

under the sheer weight of your numbers.

Then do we stack you like firewood

and pray for lightening to strike.

- Robert Samarotto

Savory Friends

Last night we had dinner with Steve and Karen and Rachel. They cook like the apocalypse is coming and we'll never get this again. Lovely. It's not often I eat magenta colored food -- a whole plateful of beet risotto with a side of baby green beans, with crusty whole-grain bread. And chocolate -- a souffle you could eat forever because its velvet smooth layers of cream and cocoa just slide across your tongue. I looked at my bowl and sadly thought of licking it. Sometimes we're able to grab moments like this. When someone cooks for me, sure, it's sweet, but it's as much the dreaming, talking, and yes, Rachel, even the ranting -- that is good, and safe, and right. I pray they will be blessed for welcoming us as pilgrims in need of a brief wayside rest. Margie