The Local Food Report: a local chocolatier

Chocolate is a pretty safe bet with me. Give me a chewy chocolate chip cookie with big, dark chunks, or a dense chocolate torte, and I will gladly hand over the keys to my car, or let you do your laundry in the basement. But handmade, local chocolates? Sixty-four percent single origin wrapped around a milk chocolate ganache infused with fresh local produce and herbs? You could probably empty our safe deposit box.

I'd never had a chocolate like that until the other day. A woman named Danielle Verizone makes those specimens up there. The one in the back is called Minty Fresh, and the one up front is a local strawberry ganache with a piece of dried strawberry on top. Danielle started her business back in 2009, after taking a class at L.A. Burdick Chocolate in New Hampshire. She calls herself the Sirenetta Seaside Chocolatier of Scituate, and she sells online and at the farmers' markets in Hingham, Falmouth, and Scituate.

The cool thing is that unlike most artisanal chocolatiers, she actually uses local produce and herbs in her chocolates. She was on her way to go strawberry picking in Bridgewater when I talked with her the other day, and for her other flavors, she uses things like basil from her garden and local mint and rosemary. Basically, they act as infusions—giving the dense milk chocolate ganache center its kick and flavor. She purees the berries or herbs, then heats them up with milk and honey, and finally purees the infused cream with milk chocolate. This makes a big slab of ganache, which she cuts into bite-sized pieces and dips in single origin sixty-four percent cacao dark chocolate. I tried four flavors—Rosemary with Olive Oil and Sea Salt, Spring Strawberry, Wild Minty Fresh, and Lavender Silk—and they were all delicious. Danielle puts out a new collection every season.

Right now, she's experimenting with raspberries and blueberries for summer—she's thinking raspberry-wasabi and blueberry lemon balm.

In the meantime, if you need a fix, there's a recipe to make your own chocolate sea salt caramels over here. Happy local chocolate, everyone.

In full swing

Strawberry season is here! The rain is here, too, I know, but we can't let that put a damper on things. Saturday morning the berries were everywhere at the markets: plump, blushing, peeking out from cartons of green. They're in our garden, too, big and dark, in full swing.

Yesterday morning Alex and I decided to celebrate. We slept through the storm and made French toast and topped it with a whole quart of fresh-picked berries: sweet red slivers over soft slices of anadama soaked in eggs and cream. And then, between cleaning and organizing and dinner and a walk, we managed to eat a whole other quart over the course of the day.

I don't do much cooking with strawberries—for the most part, I think they're best plain—but I do have a few favorite recipes. There's my mother's strawberry jam, for one, and the award winning strawberry-rhubarb pie I picked up last year from Elise. We always put up a bunch—just hulled and sliced and sprinkled with a spoonful of sugar, so that they'll juice before they freeze. And usually, I make strawberry shortcake.

But this year, I have my eye on a new recipe. It's the Fresh Strawberry Pie from last month's Cook's Illustrated, and what I like about it is that it doesn't fuss much with the berries. (If you want to see a how-to video, click on that link up there.) You just puree a few berries and cook them down with sugar, cornstarch, Sure-Jell, and salt—to make a thick glaze—and then pour it over a bunch of fresh strawberries into an already-baked bottom pie crust. The glaze firms up and holds the strawberries in place, and since you're not baking them, they don't ooze or juice and they still taste like good, sweet, fresh berries. There isn't much sugar, or much work, and after you've let the pie chill and set, you cover the top with homemade whipped cream. It sounds like sort of a shortcake-in-a-pie thing to me.

So if you're looking for me today, that's where I'll be. I'm heading out to pick more berries now, and by tonight, I plan to be digging in to a chilled slice of homegrown berries and sweet cream.

NO-BAKE STRAWBERRY PIE WITH WHIPPED CREAM

I've adapted the recipe from Cook's Illustrated slightly, but the idea is all theirs. I'm thinking I might also try making this with cooked down homemade strawberry jam instead of making the fresh berry puree. Our jam tends to be soupy, but who knows---with a little more time on the stove and a hit of Sure-Jell, it might be just the thing!

1 and 1/2 quarts fresh strawberries, gently rinsed and hulled
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 and 1/2 teaspoons Sure-Jell for low-sugar recipes (the pink box!)
a pinch of salt
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 fully baked bottom pie crust
1 cup heavy cream
a dash of vanilla
1 tablespoon confectioners' sugar

Pick out a handful of the "worst" berries (think small, under-ripe, bruised, etc.). If you have a kitchen scale, they should weigh about 6 ounces; if not, aim for about a cup and a half. In a food processor, puree them until they're smooth.

Whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, Sure-Jell, and salt in a medium saucepan. Stir in the puree and cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil and cook for 2 minutes (keep stirring!). Scrape the thickened puree into a bowl and stir in the lemon juice. Set this mixture aside and let it cool to room temperature.

When the glaze is cool, add the remaining strawberries. Stir gently until the berries are all coated, then scoop the mixture into the prepared pie crust and spread it around evenly. Put the pie in the fridge and let it chill until the glaze is set, about 2 hours.

Just before you're ready to serve the pie, whip the cream with the vanilla and confectioners' sugar until it is smooth and thick and forms soft peaks. Spoon the cream over the top of the pie, use a spatula to make it pretty, and serve immediately.

The Local Food Report: Blue Ribbon Pie

Elise Kaufman bakes a mean strawberry rhubarb pie. You know the type—rich, custardy filling; tender, flaky pastry; crystals of sugar on the crust, thick wedges that slide out intact. It's the kind of pie you want to devour with your bare hands, straight from the plate cold for breakfast, or hot out of the oven with vanilla ice cream on top.

The judges at last year's first annual Truro Ag Fair agreed. Elise entered her pie in the pie-baking contest on a whim. She and her husband and daughters had been watching reruns of The Waltons all summer, and there was this one episode—the one where Olivia enters her best pickles and pie in the County Fair—that had them all going one night. A few days later Elise's daughter saw a flyer for the contest at the fair, and the whole family agreed: Elise had to enter her strawberry-rhubarb pie.

She won the blue ribbon.

She was shocked, she says, but after watching her make the pie, I'm not surprised in the least. Elise has all sorts of pie-perfection tricks up her sleeve—she stews the rhubarb in orange juice to give it some sweetness along with a bit of extra tang, and she makes sure the pulp is strained. She keep the butter and water ice cold while she works with her pastry, then refrigerates it, the lattice already woven, so that it's still cold when it goes onto the pie. She takes the rhubarb out of the orange juice with a slotted spoon, then thickens the leftover juice with cornstarch before mixing it back into the fruit. She halves her strawberries, then gently spoons the rhubarb and thick orange juice custard over them before pouring it all into the plate. She brushes the crust with an egg wash, sprinkles a bit of sugar over top , and then finally, puts it in the oven, on the bottom rack. This helps the bottom crust cook through and the filling thicken up, she says, and then after 15 minutes, she turns down the heat and moves it up to the top rack.

It takes a lot of concentration. And on top of all that, she grows the rhubarb herself.

It's quite a pie to beat. But the Fair is coming up again next week—Sunday, September 5th, the Sunday of Labor Day weekend—and I'm thinking I might have to enter, even though the competition is so stiff. Of course, the more the merrier (is there such a thing as too much pie?)—if you'd like to enter your pie, you can find out more over here.

Elise will be giving us a run for our money, but I hope to see you there.

BLUE RIBBON STRAWBERRY RHUBARB PIE

This is Elise Kaufman's exact recipe, though I've changed a few words here and there for clarification. It won first place—a blue ribbon—at the 2009 Truro Agricultural Fair Pie Baking Contest.

dough for a 9-inch bottom pie crust and a lattice top
4 cups strawberries, halved and hulled
1 pound rhubarb
3/4 cup granulated sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
1/2 cup orange juice, strained
3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 egg
1 tablespoon cold water
a pinch of salt

Make your crust and chill it while you start the filling.

Clean the rhubarb and string it. Trim the bottom and top edges and chop the stalks into 1- to 1 and 1/2-inch pieces. Combine the sugar and orange juice in a medium sauce pot and bring to a boil. Stir occasionally until the sugar is dissolved and the syrup is boiling. Add the rhubarb and cook, stirring occasionally, until the rhubarb gives up some of its juice and the syrup thins. Turn off the heat, cover the pot, and leave the rhubarb to steam for 15 minutes.

Roll out the dough for the crust, lining a Pyrex pie plate with a bottom crust (Elise says Pyrex distributes the heat more evenly than metal) and weaving a lattice top (Elise does this on a baking sheet). Return both the bottom and top crusts to the fridge to chill.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Use a slotted spoon to lift the rhubarb out of the sauce pot and set it aside in a bowl. Sift the cornstarch into the orange juice, sugar, and rhubarb juice mixture and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture gets thick and becomes clear. Pour the thickened syrup into the rhubarb in the bowl and gently mix in the halved strawberries and the butter.

Get out the bottom crust and pour the fruit filling in. Slide the lattice on top. Whisk the egg, water, and salt together to make an egg wash, and brush it gently over the pastry top. Take care to make sure the egg doesn't pool—it will fry. Sprinkle with granulated sugar.

Place the pie plate on a cookie sheet with rimmed edges (the pie may overflow) and bake on the bottom rack of the oven. After 15 minutes, turn the heat down to 350 degrees F and move the pie to the middle rack. Bake for another 30 minutes, or until the crust is a deep golden brown and the filling is cooked through.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

We will be back

Fisher and I just wanted to say that we are home in Maine for a visit for a few days. We are very busy—turning forty quarts of strawberries into homemade jam and celebrating birthdays and anniversaries and 84 years of a long, full life—but we will be back here soon. In the meantime, Fisher has come up with something to keep you entertained: an act in which he stars as himself, balancing a spear of asparagus on his nose.

We'll see you Thursday, everyone.

The Local Food Report: strawberry land

Welcome to Tony Andrews Farm:

We're in East Falmouth, off Old Meetinghouse Road, and the farm's been here since 1935. Jeff Andrews' father Tony started it with his uncle after coming into town in 1927 from Cape Verde, and at one point, the farm had 23 acres—all strawberry land.

Tony was part of a wave of Portuguese-speaking immigrants that settled East Falmouth in the 20s and 30s. He came in as a crew member on a cargo ship, a three mast schooner that was owned by Rhode Islanders and re-possessed on what was supposed to be a return trip. He found family in Falmouth and started working the cranberry bogs, and eventually, he saved up enough to buy land. His story is a common one; the people who remember still call St. Anthony's the church built by strawberries, and it's true. Strawberries in East Falmouth were big business way back when.


The soil in East Falmouth is what made the industry such a success. It's a coarse, sandy soil called Carver soil, with the high acidity and good drainage that strawberries like. At the height of production, the town grew half of the strawberries consumed in Massachusetts, and was the biggest growing region north of Maryland. (That's according to a recent article in Edible Cape Cod about the history of the strawberry industry in Falmouth; to read more—and it's very interesting, so if I were you I would—head on over here.)

It wasn't until the 40s and 50s that production started going down. Tourism and development were starting to grow on the Cape, and the farmers in East Falmouth started selling off their acres, one by one. It was hard to get workers at picking time, too; Jeff Andrews remembers his parents bringing up families from Rhode Island to pick, and housing them all through June. When even the seasonal workers stopped coming in the 70s and 80s, they decided to open the fields to pick-your-own, and today, that's still how Jeff makes things work.

He's open every morning during the season, from eight a.m. to noon—any later, he says, and he gets determined folks passing out from heat and sun stroke. Mostly it's the old timers that come, but there are also a few young families mixed in. The day I went, Monday, I picked 16 pounds, and my only companion was this gentleman, and his Maxwell can.


If we want the tradition to stick around—if we want to hang on to one of the only commercial strawberry farms left in what was once a strawberry producing town—we'd better step up. Jeff says he won't quit, and he's got three boys, so the farm will keep on no matter what. But I'm guessing it would help if business picked up. He gets a good crowd for pumpkins in the fall and other crops, but strawberries, he says, just keep petering out.

The season's in full swing right now. This week, I picked for my freezer—washed and sliced the berries, sprinkled them with the tiniest bit of sugar, let them juice, and packed them into containers—and I put up 15 pints.

Next week, I'm thinking I'll go for jam.

P.S. The annual Falmouth Strawberry Festival is coming up. It will be held from 10am to 2pm on Saturday, June 19th across the street from the Village Green on the lawn at St. Barnabas church. Jeff says they don't always use his fresh strawberries—because the festival is so late—but they do use them for the jam demonstration. To find out more, head on over here.

Of magnificent firsts

This week was a week of magnificent firsts.

For starters, I took my first pond swim. Wednesday was the first day the heat broke 80, and I drove out to Great Pond and dove in. I took my first bike ride through the woods to the beach at Newcomb's Hollow, and at the restaurant, we were busy—crazy busy—for the first time this year.

Best of all, I stole the first four ripe red berries from my strawberry patch.

This was especially exciting in light of what happened last year. This year, if these four early berries have anything to say, is going to be a much better one as far as strawberries go. It has been months since we ate the last of my mother's jam from '08 and the few small jars from '09, and as soon as possible, I plan to rectify that.

In the meantime, I'll be eating our strawberries straight from the dirt, dipped in cream.

LIZ PIERSON'S STRAWBERRY JAM

When we make this, it's an all-family, all-day event. We leave for the pick-your-own fields (Prout's in Bowdoin, Maine) around seven, have 40 quarts home by ten, and spend the rest of the morning washing, hulling, and watching the pots on the stove. One note: we do not slice the berries, and I think this is key. It makes for big globs of berries in the finished jam, a texture that I adore.

6 cups strawberries, washed and hulled
4 cups granulated sugar

Get out a large, non-reactive pan, put the berries in, and crush them gently with a potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon. Cook over medium-low heat for about five minutes, stirring frequently, until they begin to release their juices. Add the sugar and stir until it's dissolved. Turn up the heat to medium-high and bring the berries and sugar to a light boil.

Cook, stirring frequently, until the jam sheets off the spoon. (When you first start cooking the jam, pull your spoon out and watch the way the liquid drips off of it. The drops will be light and syrupy at first. As the jam continues to boil, the drops will get heavier, and eventually, they will come together to form a fluid sheet as they come off the spoon. This is the jellying point.)

Spoon out a little bit of jam onto a plate and let it cool. If it has a good consistency, pour it immediately into sterile jars. (If not, continue cooking until you feel it has the thickness you want.) Wipe the rims with a cloth dipped in boiling water and seal the jars with sterile lids. Check the seal by leaving the jars to cool on a dishtowel overnight—if they didn't seal, there will be juice oozing out.

Once it's put up, the jam is good for at least a year.

P.S. There's a list of places that do pick-your-own strawberries in our area over here. Tony Andrews Farm in East Falmouth is currently open for pick-your-own seven days a week, from eight to noon. I'll see you there!

The Local Food Report: handy in combat

Ryeon Corsi deserves a round of applause. In September, she came to Provincetown as an AmeriCorp volunteer, and the first task the Conservation Commission dealt her was to tackle this:

If you're not familiar with that pink and green wonder, it's Japanese Knotweed. It is an invasive, brought over, as rumor has it, as an ornamental by Frederick Law Olmsted. The Global Invasive Species Database lists it as one of the world's 100 worst invasives, putting it at number 37. It spreads through an underground network of huge, bulbous rhizomes, making it nearly impossible to kill. It can grow through concrete, and if you pull it up, the spears just grow right back.

It also covers half of the land that the Provincetown Conservation Commission set aside for a community garden on Browne Street. That's where Corsi comes in. Her job is to make this:


Look—without using any herbicides—like this:


It's not an easy task. So far, she's hired a backhoe to break up the roots, worked with a huge group of volunteers to carefully, painstakingly dig the rhizomes out (one particularly nasty specimen was so big it took three people to pick it up out of the ground), and set all the roots on a big tarp. Once they are dry—thoroughly, completely dry—she will either burn them, or compost them, and hope for the best. She knows it will be a year-to-year commitment, and that after she finishes her program in July, the gardeners will have to work to keep it at bay.

But in the meantime, she's been waging war by eating the knotweed. As it turns out, those pink and green spears are edible, at least in the spring, while they're still under three feet high. Corsi describes them as sort of a cross between celery and rhubarb, and for opening day at the garden, she used them to make a strawberry rhubarb pie. It was tricky—the stalks are hollow, and most people recommend peeling them, which made for a lot of meticulous work—but the finished product was a hit.

I haven't found any growing in my neighborhood, but in case you have, this recipe could be very handy in combat.

STRAWBERRY-KNOTWEED PIE

Ryeon Corsi found this recipe on the NOFA website, but it comes originally from an old issue of Yankee magazine. The header says you can substitute rhubarb for knotweed, but it seems to me that would sort of defeat the point. The footer says to look for knotweed in disturbed habitats like roadsides, and to harvest thick stalks no more than 3 or 4 feet high that aren't fully leafed out by cutting a 1 and 1/2 to 2 foot section from the center of the stalk.

As for where to find strawberries, it's still a little bit early, but I ate my first three ( ! ) from the garden the other day. They should be turning up at the farmers' markets in the next two weeks.

4 cups strawberries, washed, stemmed, and halved
3 cups Japanese knotweed, peeled and chopped into 1/2-inch crescents
1 and 1/2 cups sugar, plus extra for sprinkling over crust
3 tablespoons cornstarch
dough for bottom and top crusts for a 9-inch pie
3 tablespoons butter
1 egg yolk, beaten with 1 tablespoon water

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. In a medium bowl, toss together the strawberries, knotweed, sugar, and cornstarch. Roll out your bottom pie crust, drape it over a 9-inch pie plate, and pour the filling in. Dot the fruit with the butter. Roll out the top pie crust and drape it over top. Roll the bottom and top edges together, moving around the edge of the pie, and press the log of dough against the rim of the pie plate as you go. Cut several slits in the top crust, brush it with the egg wash, and sprinkle the dough with sugar. Bake for 45 to 55 minutes, or until the filling is soft and bubbling and the crust is nicely browned. Serve hot, with vanilla ice cream.

Bearing witness

I would like to announce that Great Pond, in the summer time, is a magnificent place to be. Here are my toes, bearing witness.

It is especially lovely on a Saturday afternoon in July when you've spent the morning at the farmers' market (where there were carrots, no less!), passed mid-day at an ocean beach, and when your best friend is in town from 3,000 miles away. That, people, is the sort of magnificence I'm talking about here.

I would also like to announce that at the end of a day at Great Pond, it never hurts to have a large plate of shortcake on hand. Not strawberry shortcake, necessarily, at least not in a year like this one, but red-white-and-blue, with a box of blueberries and a pint or so of last year's frozen strawberries mixed in. (It does hurt to be a bit tipsy while you're whisking together the dry ingredients, especially if your baking soda goes into the bowl in big clumps, but I trust you already know that.)

Clumps aside, the shortbread making is really no trick at all. The cakes are just flour, butter, sugar, salt, and baking soda, with a bit of milk whisked in. Seriously, that's it. The berries aren't too tricky either—the blueberries freshen things up while the strawberries provide just the right amount of ooze—and then all that's left is the rather substantial dollop of whipped cream on top.


The trickiest thing about red-white-and-blue-shortcake, really, is rounding up the friends. What with the plane tickets and the getting-the-night-off requests and the drives down from Boston, it's much more of a bother to get everyone together than it is to whip up a few shortcakes here and there. But on Saturday night with the friends—the rounded up ones who are able to remember stories that start with the the Fourth of July you made out with a boy in an alley and progress to conversation about the cut of your wedding dress—on that sort of night, red-white-and-blue shortcake is a very good thing indeed.

Just be careful not to wear anything too close fitting, because between the laughter and the shortcake, it might not make it home in one piece.

RED-WHITE-AND-BLUE SHORTCAKE

This is a very versatile biscuit, adapted from Alice Waters' cream biscuits in The Art of Simple Food. They are equally good toasted for breakfast with a dab of butter and jam as they are drenched in berries and juice and topped with a whopping dollop of whipped cream, so it's a good idea to make more rather than less.

1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
6 tablespoons butter, chilled
just under 3/4 cup whole milk

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. (Watch out, ahem, for those baking soda clumps!) Cut the butter into the flour and then, using your fingers, work it into pea-size chunks. Pour in the milk and stir everything together with a fork until just combined. Butter two baking sheets and, using two soup spoons, drop the batter on in lumps roughly 1 and 1/2 inches in diameter. (There should be eight in all.) Bake for about 15 minutes, or until golden brown.

Cut each biscuit in half and top it with fresh whipped cream and a mixture of half and half blueberries and sliced strawberries. (Frozen strawberries are fine, both since this year's crop hasn't been very good and because they offer up a nice amount of sweet juice, but if you can find fresh strawberries, slice them up, put them in a bowl, and sprinkle them with a few teaspoons of sugar. Within about 15 minutes, they should produce a nice puddle of juice.) Happy July!

The Local Food Report: dust to dust

Strawberry season, in my family, is a religious thing. We pick strawberries in late June and early July the way other families watch Wimbledon or take Saturdays at the beach—every year, all together, no matter what. 

We wake up early, at seven or even six, and we drive out to Bowdoin, a few towns over from where I grew up in Maine. We bring our stained green quart containers from last year and our sunscreen and our hats, and we haul flats of empty boxes down the rows at Prout's field until they're picked full. We pick until our fingers are stained and our lips are red, and we make sure to get forty quarts at the very least. 

Then we haul the berries back home, lay them out on the kitchen counter like checkers, and everyone takes their spots. My father pulls the greens from the berry heads, my sister washes, I chop. My mother pulls out the big pots for jam—the jars in a water bath on the back burner and the sugar and the berries bubbling up front. We make pint upon pint of jam, to last all year on toast and peanut butter sandwiches and stirred into plain yogurt sometimes.

But not this year. 

This year, between the rain and the hail and the grey fruit mold—between those three, the strawberries were done in. There were some berries at the markets, certainly; they were big, plump, and juicy, and they had hardly any taste. They could have been California strawberries for all we knew.

I talked to Tim Friary about it the other day—Tim from Cape Cod Organics Farm in Barnstable who sells the berries at the markets in Hyannis and Orleans. He said he'd lost 150 cases by mid June, $6,000 down the drain. He said they just melted—ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But it was the terrific lack of sunshine that got them the most. The strawberries come in June for a reason, he explained: they rely on the longest days of the year, on the peak of light and loads of sunshine to get that sweet, signature taste. Needless to say, they got hardly a single day.

Still, we've eaten a few. We've brought home a quart here and there from Tim, or from Andy Pollock in Provincetown, and we've doled them out on tip-toe. Mostly, we've been stretching them out on salads.

That one right up there is one of my favorites: butter lettuce, basil, and balsamic with just a sprinkling of strawberries. They go on a long way on salad, strawberries do—you only need two or maybe three to make the whole thing jump. The basil doesn't hurt, of course—it's been thick with strawberries since ages and ages ago—and the balsamic makes an excellent third wheel. But the strawberries are the ones that round up the troops, bringing together crisp and peppery and floral into one big, ecstatic bunch. 

It may not feel like a big, ecstatic bunch sort of season in general, I know. But for this last week—before the berries disappear until next year—I plan to revel in the possibility all I can. 

STRAWBERRY BASIL SALAD

There might not be enough strawberries for jam, but there are certainly plenty to top a salad. Basil and strawberries are a well known pair, and the balsamic in this recipe compliments both. Look for a mild lettuce without too much of its own personality—that way the basil and berries won't have anything too strong to compete with.

1 pound sweet, mild lettuce, washed and dried

1 bunch basil, leaves picked, washed, and dried

3 tablespoons sweet balsamic vinegar

3 tablespoons olive oil

salt and pepper 

1 pint strawberries, washed and sliced

Toss lettuce and basil together in a large serving bowl. Dress with oil and vinegar, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the strawberries last, sprinkling them on top, so that they don't disappear to the bottom too fast. 

P.S. This year, I planted my own strawberry patch. Luckily, I wasn't counting on any berries just yet, but the plants sent out runners all over the place, and from just six plants they've nearly filled in a 10 foot space. Spring and August are the two best times to plant, so if you have any interest in getting a patch going, I recommend doing some research over here first. There are all sorts of tid-bits about choosing varieties and how to mulch and what not. Good luck!

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.

Under construction

Please excuse us. We're going to be under renovation for a few days. We're not going to do anything crazy—it's nothing like that. We're simply trying to do a bit of a makeover, of sorts. Mostly, the idea is to make it easier to bring you pictures. Like this:

We've been having a bit of trouble with formatting recently, and the hope is that the renovation will fix all that. So if things seem kind of wonky for a bit, don't worry: they'll soon be fixed. (To that end, if you have any special requests, now's the time to holler 'em out. Because once we're done, I'm going to be pretty sick of changes, I bet.)

Incidentally, we couldn't have decided to renovate at a better time, because as it is, my kitchen is also under construction. It's getting trim, and a baseboard, and new shelves, and all the things it never got when we ripped out the cupboards last fall. It's been kind of a work in progress for a while, and I'm going to be pretty ecstatic when it's just over and done with already.

The only downside is, it's a little tricky to get in there and cook. Hence the bowl of Kashi Heart to Heart I ate from a water glass this morning.

But I did eat it with my creamy, whole milk from Paskamansett Farms and a heap of strawberries I'd thawed from the freezer, which I though made up for the whole situation pretty nicely. And, the milk turned pink and a little bit sweet, which is one of my favorite things. So if you can find something like that to get you through the weekend and hang tight for a bit, we'll be back just as soon as we can.