The Local Food Report: the middle man

I don't usually talk about this here, but I have a night job. A restaurant night job, in the summer at least. I hostess at Blackfish in Truro, an upscale gastropub type place where the old Blacksmith Shop used to be. It's the kind of place where the ivy grows through the bricks into the dining room and pork belly is an everyday thing, and my job is to fit three seatings of four tops and two tops and ten tops, even, into and out from a maze of copper tables in happy, contented waves. Most of the time—when no one is in an uproar about the lack of vegan dishes or the fact that it is noisy at 7:30 on a Saturday night, when everyone is feeling reasonable and at ease—it is one of my favorite places to be. I was certainly glad to be there last night, when the first flat of local strawberries came in. Here's our busser, Lee, about to dig in:

The strawberries came from a business called LunaSoul Foods, run by Liam Luttrell-Rowland out of Wellfleet. Blackfish has always focused on local food, but this is something new. Each week, Liam gets together with our chef, and they put together a list of local specials. Then Liam drives up to the farms—Cape Cod Organic Farm in Barnstable, Matt's Organic Gardens in Dennis, and Checkerberry Farm in Orleans, let's say—and picks up produce for the next week. He works not just with our chef, but with five other chefs, acting as the local food middle man. It's his version of a farmer chef collaborative—the first one on the Cape. 

The cool thing about LunaSoul Foods is that Liam is knocking down a barrier—the distribution issues that built up the wall between farmers and chefs in the first place. Most chefs think it's unrealistic to use local food, because they're too busy to call twenty different farmers just to get twenty different kinds of produce, and the farmers are too busy to drive around delivering their product to chefs. What was missing was a delivery company, at least until Liam stepped in. 

But while Liam delivers, he's also doing more than that. He's a chef by training—he used to cook at the Juice in Wellfleet and Enzo in Provincetown—and when he brings the food, he sticks around to help create a dish. Just the other day we had a stinging nettle cream sauce on top of one of the specials that he came up with. It's was true collaboration—both between the farmer that grew the nettles and our chef, and Liam as the middle man. 

Here's a list of the restaurants and farms LunaSoul Foods is working with:

Blackfish, Truro

Brewster Fish House, Brewster

The Juice, Wellfleet

Sol, Wellfleet

Terra Luna, Truro

The Wicked Oyster, Wellfleet

Bon Terra Nursery, Brewster

Cape Cod Organic Farm, Barnstable

Cedar Spring Herb Farm, Harwich

Checkerberry Farm, Orleans

E & T Farms, Barnstable

Kitchen Garden, Orleans

NestWood Farm, Truro

Redberry Farm, Eastham

Things are still just starting up—it isn't like LunaSoul Foods has an official looking website or a business card just yet—but keep your ear out this season for what the collaboration brings. I have a feeling it will be fairly delicious, and with any luck, the idea will catch on. After all, Liam is only one person. We need other middle men and women, too.

Remember this place?

It's opening tomorrow

and
we'd love it if you might
stop by.

The Local Food Report: Local Wednesdays

What would you do with the back half of a pig? I would throw it in the frying pan.

Chef Robert Lionette, who cooks over on the Vineyard, would brine the hams. And throw the bones into a stock for soup, and smoke the smaller pieces for sandwiches. He doesn't let a single scrap of animal go to waste, ever. In fact, it's sort of a motto for him: not just with meat, but with fruits and vegetables too.

It's not exactly surprising knowing his pedigree. When you come from a family that owns a market like Boston's Lionette, you start to espouse these sorts of beliefs. Or rather, you've always held them; they emerge with you, from the womb.

Lionette Market sells local food in the South End all year round, operating on the premise that New England can feed itself. It used to have a café attached, where Robert cooked with the market's supply, but then the neighborhood got all trendy and the rent went up. Instead, he moved to the Vineyard, and started cooking with local food there. He thinks—grab your hats—that not only can New England feed itself, but that the Vineyard can feed itself. He gives a little I-know-I'm-crazy grin when he says it, but you can tell he's not kidding. Not even a little bit.


He's starting, of course, by cooking with local food at the restaurant where he works: Zephrus Restaurant, which belongs to the Mansion House Inn in Vineyard Haven. In the summer, he puts up tomatoes and dries peaches and freezes fruit if he can, but otherwise, he works by the seasons. When I visited a few weeks ago, it was "Local Wednesday;" an evening on which every week Lionette and Island Grown Initiative, a non-profit that works to increase both the supply and demand for locally grown food on the island, team up to serve an all local meal. For these events, local is a 200 mile radius that starts at home.

I had a whelk stew with clams and ricotta dumplings, molasses glazed duck drumettes with smoked duck breast and duck fat roasted fingerling potatoes, and an island dried peach and apple bread pudding. I am still thinking about the peaches and the way they tasted with a little bit of crumbly crust on top and vanilla ice cream dripping down their sides. They were awfully good.

In addition to eating, I also got to meet all kinds of interesting people at dinner, including Ali Berlow, who helped found Island Grown Initiative in 2005. She and a group of farmers and grocers and chefs and educators and parents all got together, and thought: What if we could connect everyone through what they eat?

So far, they've done a pretty amazing job. They post an island map every year to help lead people to producers and farmers, and have taken big steps towards re-establishing a year-round local food network on the island. Their big projects this year include working to get locally grown food into schools, driving around a mobile poultry processing trailor in an effort to provide a safe and legal slaughterhouse for local farmers, and working with the Brazilian community to see what crops from their native country will grow in Vineyard soil. As you can see, it's quite the operation.

Island Grown's partnership with Lionette is an effort to engage the community in the heart of these efforts. I don't know about you, but I am rarely so engaged in anything as when I'm eating a three course gourmet meal. It's a brilliant tactic, I think.

You can find out what's on the menu this week by clicking here, or by calling the restaurant up. And if you want to know more about Ali's organization, you can head on over here. Any other questions, well, you can throw those at me.

An invitation

This is an invitation. I'm helping to throw a dinner party, and I very much hope to see you there. It's a community supper, of sorts—on December 11th, at 7pm—a celebration of the fall harvest and the varied fruits of the season.

There will be lamb, from Border Bay Junction Farm in Barnstable, delivered whole and roasted in cuts from top to tail. There will be turnips, too, simmered into soup and served up hot and creamy from the roadside stand in Eastham.

There will be Brussels sprouts from Crow's Farm in Sandwich, greens from Tim Friary's garden at Cape Cod Organic Farm, and fruit pies made from local cranberries and apples.

It's being held at Willy's Gym—tucked back into a wood-floored, mirror paneled room out of the way of all the hubbub in Eastham. The executive chef from Mac's Shack, Jerome Watkins, is cooking there for the winter, and he'll be in the kitchen with me. Sarah Robins from the Flying Fish and Hillcrest Pizza will be there, too, along with her pastry chef Marissa Ferry.

I do hope you'll be there. Between the orchestration of flames beneath pots and pans, the roasting and the plating and the eventual serving, it could be quite a tiring day, and it would be nice to see some familiar faces at the table.

Reserve your spot soon, if you're coming—we can only serve so many (and five courses, too!). They have a list going at Willy's, and you can put your name in by commenting here, too. The cost is $35, which covers not just the food, but a little extra for the women at Safe Harbor Shelter in Hyannis, too. If you're anywhere near, I hope to see you there.

Arlington piz-Za

It isn't often your first five minutes at a restaurant table involve a tutorial. Upon sitting down at noon sharp at Za, a Mass. Ave. Arlington eatery known for its pizza, salads and creative use of local ingredients, we received a crash course in How to Order 101 before even taking a swig of water.

Our waitress was well versed in her explanation; the pizza ingredients were fresh, she told us, picked or harvested locally that week, and changing often. She laid down two menus, one year-round and one comprised of seasonal "chalkboard specials," and explained that the two should be thought of as a collaborative experience. "For example there is no basil on the toppings list for our menu of make-your-own pizzas," she pointed out, "but since you see it on the specials, you are welcome to add it to any dish." The same, that afternoon, went for rhubarb, asparagus, bib lettuce, and strawberries.

We selected two chalkboard specials: the first, an asparagus, rhubarb, caramelized onion, cheddar, and parmigiano reggiano 10-inch round, and the second a layering of Maine Ducktrap smoked salmon, creme fraiche, caramelized onions, fontina cheese, red onions, caper, dill, and lemon vinaigrette. Other options for the day included a goat cheese and basil creation accompanied by strawberries from nearby Verril Farm in Concord, and a "Caesar's Pizza" of creamy potatoes, kalamata olive tapendade, crisp romaine, garlick croutons, and a fresh lemon-Caesar dressing.

When our pizzas emerged steaming, we each grabbed a slice of the thin, pliable dough (made, we were informed by the menu, of organic flour, honey, wild yeast, and salt). While a bite of our first selection lacked the rhubarb punch we were hoping for, the smoky flavor of the Maine cured salmon gave the second enough pizazz to cover both. The salads—mine a fresh Verril Farm bib lettuce, shaved red onion, local micro-green, and creamy mustard masterpiece and my tablemates an artistic heap of Verril farm strawberries and arugula—were better still. Dessert, a Verril strawberry covered lemon tart topped with a scoop of fresh whipped cream, sealed the deal. We left satiated and happy, hoping to return.

Still, even while Za is serving up good eats and is ahead of most competitors in using and advertising local ingredients, it didn't take the locavore premise far enough to truly blow me away. Even on the chalkboard special pizzas, the asparagus was from California (despite being in season locally) and the salmon (while smoked nearby) was a far cry from a Massachusetts fish. Certainly, not every ingredient can be sourced locally, but on a menu that comes with a tutorial in eating seasonally, I expected a bit more precision in the department of local fare.

That being said, if every menu came with a tutorial like that offered at Za's we'd be a more conscious state of eaters.

Scallops and tinfoil

I do not normally endorse foods wrapped in tinfoil. Generally, what you find inside is nothing to write home about: soggy McMuffins or a BK broiler or perhaps a left over sandwich that's begun to show some mold.

Burritos, however, are one notable exception. By definition, the burrito should be wrapped in tinfoil; for ease of consumption, warmth containment, and hold-in-your-hand convenience, there is nothing better.

In the midst of a thunderstorm yesterday, I headed down to Mac's Seafood on the Wellfleet pier to pick up a scallop version of this Cape Cod summer essential. With the rain pouring down, the crowds were cleared out from the window, and I ordered my usual in record time. Scallops, black beans, rice, salsa, cheese, sour cream, guacamole, and calamata olives were pushed together, rolled into a wrap, and encased in tinfoil before being handed to me through the bay side window.

The first round bite was replete with mollusk and stuffing. With new scalloping grounds recently opened up 60 miles off Cape, the bivalves are not only abundant this week, but also extra rich. In hopes of recreating the wrap at home, I'm working today to master this tortilla recipe.

BASIC FLOUR TORTILLAS

Makes 8

In a large mixing bowl, combine 4 cups whole-wheat flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 cup olive oil, and 3/4 cup water. Mix with your hands, adding water until the dough is firmly in a ball but not sticky. Knead for 5 minutes, then divide into 8 balls. Place these on a lightly floured surface and cover with a damp towel.

Light a medium flame under a cast iron skillet. Roll out dough balls one at a time until they are about 1/4 inch thick. Place each in the pan and cook on both sides for about 30 seconds, making sure that the pan is not too hot or the tortillas will burn.

Eat hot or keep refrigerated for several weeks or frozen for up to six months.

Lobster riches

Yesterday, I was unexpectedly spoiled. Twice in one afternoon, I sat down to a plate of lobster. The first I ate at the Naked Oyster in Hyannis (508.7786500). Late for a lunch meeting, I asked my patient friend to order for me—anything she pleased, so long as it would fill me up.

She didn't skimp. When I arrived, a delicately halved lobster salad wrap sat leaning towards me, beckoning with a thin, creamy dressing and the crunch of young, tender greens. Its companion, a cup of fingerling potato fries and paper thin Parmesan crisps, was equally delightful against the tongue. A half a round of strawberry shortcake (made with berries from Tim Friary's Barnstable farm, Cape Cod Organics—the same I'd picked up at the market) completed the meal. It's not often you find yourself recognizing the same ingredients out to lunch as you do in your own fridge.

Come dinner, I walked into the kitchen of Mac's Shack on invitation from chef Jerome Watkins, former executive chef at South Boston Kitchen & Wine Bar (617.269.7832, 77 Dorchester St.), and a celebrated addition to the Mac's staff. He had offered to make us a meal; I told him we'd take whatever he thought best.

I watched as he took a live lobster, and in one fell swoop chopped off the claws and the tail, and split the meat down the middle. From one bug, he made two lobster specials: each a pile of saffron rice heaped with sweet corn, fresh morels, fava beans, and spring peas and topped with a tail half and lone claw. He drizzled a rich, buttery sauce over top, and I dug into my second treat of the day.

While Jerome wouldn't give up his secret to last night's dish, he makes it most nights in the Shack kitchen at 91 Commercial Street in Wellfleet (508.349.6333). Stop in any time after 4:30 for dinner; though they don't take reservations, this dish is worth the wait.

Micro-greens: a garnish for the gourmet

Micro greens are the latest craze to hit the chef world. The tiny, premature leaves pack a flavor punch more potent than any of their elders. Their looks don't hurt either; the array of brilliant colors, filament thin stems, and delicate leaves are enough to draw attention to any plate.

Add to these attractions the fact that micro-greens have managed to capture the attention of growing crowd of chefs focused on serving local fare, and it's easy to see they've made it, biologically speaking, into the crowd of safely domesticated species—at least for the time being.

Cape Cod chefs are no exception. At the upscale Truro bistro, Blackfish, where I spend my evenings, chef Eric Jansen recently ordered several trays to soak up the sunshine out back. In the afternoons before service, he and the other cooks clip what they'll need for the night. Between the miniscule distance (both in time and miles) between plant and plate and the already potent flavor of the tiny greens, these garnishes taste powerfully fresh. I wouldn't want to eat a whole salad of them, but mixed in with the more delicate flavors of mature greens, they offer a taste worth savoring.