Miami Herald food writer Nancy Ancrum has fallen in love with Robert Barnum’s lavender vichyssoise. (Those of you who attended the Potato Pandemonium last year may remember its pale purple color and delicate taste.) She has written about it — and gives an advance preview of the Earth Dinner on Saturday night.
Spuds star
By Nancy Ancrum
Potatoes aren’t the first crop that comes to mind when you think of the Redland. They probably don’t even come in second or third — or ninth or tenth.But Robert Barnum, a South Miami-Dade farmer and entrepreneur, gathers a bumper crop of spuds each season from a plot of ground up the road from his 40-acre property. And they will play a delicious role on Saturday when he opens his home to 45 diners who have made reservations for his multi-course — and belated — Earth Day dinner.“The state of Maine, every year, grows about 200 different varieties of potatoes that they have available for seed,” Barnum says.“They have to grow them to determine there’s no virus in the seed – they call it ‘virus indexing.’ And when they finish growing the crop out back of me in the glade, about a quarter mile away, they plow them under.”
Barnum has permission to pick them back out. “I get a terrific variety of colors, shapes, sizes, flavors, textures, chemistry.”
Saturday’s locally focused menu will include boar from the Lake Okeechobee area, grass-fed beef from Destin and sea salt from the Keys.
Barnum will use purple and blue potatoes, among others, to make lavender vichyssoise, which he will serve with multicolored potato chips.
Redland Rambles 