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Archive for the ‘chef’ Category

Good eats in the Garden

Posted in chef, events, farmer/grower, food, photo, recipe, tagged , , , , , , on May 4, 2010| 1 Comment »

It was a great weekend for the Fairchild Farm & Garden Festival, sunny and warm but not yet excruciatingly hot. A lot was going on, and I was running from presentations in the Garden Room to various tents and back trying to keep up with interesting events.

Margie Pikarsky

On Saturday morning, I dropped in at the start of Farmer Margie Pikarsky’s presentation on preserving the harvest. As usual, she gave a well-researched lecture on different kinds of food preservation — freezing, fermentation, dehydration, brining, pickling, and canning. The handout was chock full of info, and if you didn’t make it to the lecture, you can download it here.

As for following recipes and instructions that one finds published in books and elsewhere, Margie cautioned that “all publications are geared for the temperate zone. You can’t listen to them. We have to modify. It’s warmer here and chemical reactions happen faster. You have to be aware of that. Sauerkraut can take two weeks instead of two months. There’s potential for vegetables to go bad in the heat when fermenting. Start with organic produce which has less mold and contaminants.” Margie recommended the book Wild Fermentation if you want more detailed instructions for pickling and fermenting.

Stopped by the Cooking Demo tent to say hi to Laura Lafata aka La Diva Cucina. She was getting ready to give a presentation on preparing radishes with vermouth. The radishes looked happy to be in her hands, and vermouth is an ingredient I hadn’t thought of using. (The recipe is at the bottom of this post.)

Laura Lafata aka La Diva Cucina

Talk about food makes me hungry, so I prowled around looking for something good to eat. Found Margie standing in line at the bright green Native Conch stand, and we got the last of the conch salad. Thanks to Jason for taking care of us!

Claire Tomlin with potted herbs for sale.

Came across Claire Tomlin of The Market Company showing off her latest venture. She has ready-to-grow raised garden beds made of cedar that you can use in your yard. The beds come in a package that includes a cedar frame, soil blend, vegetable and herb starter plants, organic fertilizer and mulch. All you need to add is water and sunlight. It’s too late to plant almost all vegetables now (remember, we’re in the sub-tropical growing zone), but there’s more than enough time to get ready for fall planting. If you’re interested, contact Dylan Terry at dylanjterry(at)gmail.com or call 786-436-7703 for more information.

Pure beeswax candles available from Miguel Bode the beekeeper.

Said hi to Miguel Bode the beekeeper on the way out, and he revealed that he has the largest display of pure beeswax candles anywhere (well, at least at the festival). He uses 35 different molds to shape wax extracted from his hives.

My name was on the schedule for the food bloggers panel Saturday afternoon, but I couldn’t stay due to a schedule conflict. Thanks to Melissa Contreras and Annie Stamps of Fairchild for inviting me to participate in the Festival. You ladies rock!

Sauteed Radishes and Tops over Bow Tie Pasta with Apple Chicken Sausage

Serves four main dinners or six starter plates


Ingredients:

1 lb. box of bow tie pasta
1 bunch of radishes with tops attached
1 pkg. organic apple chicken sausage
dash white vermouth
good quality extra virgin olive oil
kosher salt and pepper

Method:

Put on pasta water to boil and once boiling, add a dash of salt. Cook pasta al dente in salted water for a minute or two less than suggested When pasta is cooked, drain into colander, saving 1/2 cup of pasta water. Set aside.

While pasta is cooking, fill sink with cool water. Chop radish tops and wash thoroughly in water, let green tops drain and then blot dry with paper towels. Wash radishes and thinly slice, set aside.

Heat large fry pan on stove and slice sausages into quarter inch slices. Add olive oil to pan and when heated, add sausages, lower heat to medium high and saute until brown on both sides, being careful not to burn. Put cooked sausage on plate, set aside.

Heat fry pan again and add more olive oil if needd. Once hot, add radishes, lightly salt and cook over medium heat until light brown on both sides. Turn up heat and add a dash of vermouth to deglaze pan, continue cooking radishes for another 30 seconds or until soft. Add to the plate of cooked sausage.

Heat fry pan and use more oil if necessary. Lightly saute greens until just wilted, add pasta to pan along with sausages and radishes and thoroughly combine all ingredients. Cook over medium high heat for another minute, adding a bit of pasta water to make a light sauce. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and serve immediately. Drizzle extra virgin olive oil over each serving.

Copyright (c) La Diva Cucina Inc.

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Learning Luncheon at Paradise

Posted in agritourism, chef, events, farm, locavore, tagged , , on April 13, 2010|

Paradise Farms introduces the first interactive “Learning Luncheon” featuring Private Chef Mary Siragusa.

Saturday, April 17th
11:00 am Arrival with sparkling organic juices, followed by farm tour
11:30 am – 12:30 pm Interactive food prep
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm Luncheon

3 courses with dessert @ $45 per person. Sign up at www.paradisefarms.net

Learn how to prepare delicious and healthy meals effortlessly while having a great time. Guests will have the opportunity to partake in the preparation of the meal. Chef Mary will explain the benefits of organic foods and show you how easy it is to incorporate organic juices and food into your lifestyle. You will be inspired by her fresh, wholesome approach!

Gabriele Marewski, owner of Paradise Farms, will lead a farm tour to collect the herbs and edible flowers for lunch with a discussion on how you can grow your own food.

Featured will be Carico International, a manufacturer of healthy lifestyle products including cookware which uses low heat and no oil.

MENU:

First course: Creamy cucumber soup
Second course: Baby Brassica greens with fennel, carrot and orange
Third course: Grilled shrimp on top of orrecciette primavera
Dessert: vanilla coconut cake with a hint of lime accompanied with lime sorbet
Coffee and tea service.

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Locavores on bikes

Posted in agritourism, chef, events, farm, food, locavore, photo, tagged , , , , , on March 20, 2010| 3 Comments »

Bikes resting after a tour of farm country.

On a sunny, breezy Saturday morning last week, over 80 cyclists converged on Bee Heaven Farm for the Slow Locavore Farm Lunch, organized by Slow Food Miami (SFM). The Farm Lunch combined a 7.5 mile bike ride along Redland back roads, with stops along the way at several farms, and ended with a gourmet lunch prepared by Chef Kris Wessel and Chef Kira Volz served at Bee Heaven.

Donna Reno

Donna Reno, the leader of the Miami convivium (as the SF chapters are called) said she came up with the idea after going on a similar farm tour bike ride in Italy about 20 years ago. Farmer Margie (who has served on the SFM Advisory Board for the past year or two) was an active collaborator and gave that memory legs. She picked the farms, plotted the route, made suggestions for sourcing local food, and provided her ample front yard for the event.

The cyclists visited four farms, beginning and ending at Bee Heaven, with stops and tours at Fancy Koi 2 fish farm, Going Bananas! nursery/grove, and Teena’s Pride farm, which is known for its large and lovely heirloom tomatoes. “It’s important to know your grower and visit the farm,” grower Teena Borek told me. These weren’t just pointless, picturesque visits but an opportunity for locavore cyclists to put their eats into a bigger context. The connection would have been stronger and easier to make had more local local foods from those farms been on the menu. But maybe I’m asking for too much? More on that later…

Chef Kira Volz, Creek 28

This bike ride/farm lunch was daring and unusual for SFM because it was held outdoors and was reasonably priced. Most of their activities are meals in upscale restaurants for hefty prices. It was good to see Slow Foodies get out from behind white linen tablecloths and ride around in fresh air and sunshine for a change. But wait! Most of the attendees were participants of spinning classes at Equinox gym, not just the usual Foodies. (Donna Reno explained that they got permission to hold an olive oil tasting at Equinox, using it “to reach out to the biking and fitness biking communities.”)

A few CSA members were also in the mix. Janet  and Larry Peterson said the ride was an great opportunity to visit farms that were “pretty impressive” that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to see. Janet explained she was inspired to seek out local food and joined the CSA after a group at her church, Riviera Presbyterian, read Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. As she looked around Bee Heaven, she said, “If this kind of farming could take hold, it would be a good local food source and would stop urban sprawl.”

Lining up for seconds (and thirds) at Chef Kira Volz’s tent.

The printed menu had a clear, comprehensive definition of locavore.

It is part of the concept of local purchasing and local economies, a preference to buy locally produced goods and services. Those who prefer to eat locally grown/produced food sometimes call themselves locavores or localvores.

So, let’s look at the food:

Key West Shrimp Fattoush (Kira Volz), Hand Rubbed BBQ Ribs & Herb Tossed Home Fries (Kris Wessel), Who Do You Do Voodoo Chicken (Kris Wessel), Andean Restorative Salad (Kira Volz), Aunt Rita’s Key Lime Pie (Kris Wessel’s aunt), Strawberry Shortcake Bar (The French Pastry Chef), Going Bananas Bread Pudding (Kira Volz) washed down with limeade (Robert is Here), water, beer and wine.

Yet not all the food on the menu was local. (Expected to see tilapia, since Fancy Koi 2 raises those fish.) When I asked Donna Reno about it, she did admit that “the freeze affected availability and we didn’t meet our goals 100 per cent in terms of local.” She pointed out that the tomatoes were from Teena’s, the shrimp was from Key West, and bananas in the bread pudding and strawberries were local. She even pointed out that the organic beer, Monk in the Trunk, was from Jupiter FL. (A closer reading of the fine print on its label revealed that it was actually brewed in South Carolina.)

Three of the four growers featured in the tour. L to R: Margie – Bee Heaven, Don – Going Bananas!, Sharon – Fancy Koi 2. Photo by Nick Pikarsky.

Wait a minute! Call it Locavore Lunch but only a smattering of ingredients is actually locally sourced? My head is spinning! A completely local meal is not that hard to do. It’s been done before. Last year’s End of Summer Brunch over at Robert Barnum’s Possum Trot was all local food and drink. And Farmer Margie held a Mothers Day Brunch last year that was completely locally sourced except for maybe salt and pepper.

Donna was pleased with the event. “We’ll do it again, maybe next spring,” she told me. Good idea! That’s plenty of time for SFM leadership to scope out farms and groves and farmers markets to see what’s growing — locally and in season — and create a menu from local food, rather than build a menu and then look for some local food to fit. I’m certain that Chef Kris Wessel and Chef Kira Volz could have come up with delicious, creative dishes based on an all-local, post-freeze list of ingredients, had they been given that challenge. It would be fantastic if the group held more events that celebrated local, regional and artisanal food, as per their own principles and mission statements.

Chef Tim Rowan of Deering Bay stopped by to help out Chef Kris Wessel of Red Light. Filling in as his prep chef is his second cousin Mark Parkerson.

Locavore shouldn’t be just a foodie fad — it’s not about worshipping trendy ingredients or rock star chefs. The point is to connect the food on your plate with this place and these growers. They work very hard to feed us city folk, and have a tough time paying their bills. “The only way a small grower can survive is to sell directly to the public,” Teena Borek told me. Hopefully that connection or epiphany happened with participants on the bike ride. Our grandparents knew what food was about. It was so obvious to them but we’ve forgotten how. No farms, no food, no chefs, no locavores. It’s just that simple.

(For another take on the bike ride and lunch, check out this recent post on Mango & Lime.)

Strawberry shortcakes for dessert!

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One last bite of potato

Posted in agritourism, chef, events, food, locavore, photo, tagged , on February 28, 2010| 2 Comments »

Even the Welcome sign is a bit quirky!

The big day finally arrived. Farmer Margie and her intern Andrew went over early to Possum Trot to help Robert Barnum with the last minute preps for the Potato Pandemonium dinner. His sous chefs Bob and Lindsay were slicing, dicing, frying and stirring.

Robert calls his dinners the Possum Trot Experience, and they are rightfully so, as there is a bit of adventure involved just to find the place. Six thirty rolled around and the guests trickled in, flustered that their GPS or Google map gave them cryptic directions. It would appear that Possum Trot is not on the map. It’s Terra Incognita. If you missed the front gate and sign and solely relied on your GPS, it stubbornly led you down a deeply potholed back road to a different entrance, and then a muddy driveway leading you through a jungle of trees and vines back to the farmhouse. Ah, the mysteries of navigation!

Kitchen prep Lindsay Tidwell brings out the potato salad.

As the guests arrived, they were treated to a sampling of various homemade wines that Robert had made from fruit growing on his property. Two that I sampled were a sweet, full bodied lychee wine (no comparison to Schnebly’s), and a dry red wine that tasted a bit like merlot, which was made from bignay (or antidesma) berries, which quickly became a favorite at my end of the table. The wine bottles were recycled and still with their original labels, so it was a bit of an adventure as to what you were going to get.

Wood smoker (foreground) and wood fired grill.

The next part of the Experience was a brief tour of the property in the waning twilight. (Usually the tour starts earlier, and Robert will take you on a 30 minute stroll through a section of his 40 acre grove. You get to see a variety of trees including macadamia and carambola, and a natural swimming hole surrounded by ferns, among other things.)

Farmer Margie Pikarsky wears two kinds of bay laurel.

Despite the light sprinkling rain, we ambled around the house, looking at and smelling various things that Robert handed us — bay laurel, lemon bay, and bay rum (lemon form). Nearby was a rippling lake of citronella grass studded with diamond-like raindrops. Robert picked and passed around a perfumey cas guava, the size of a yellow ping ping ball, for us to smell. The wood fired smoker was puffing merrily as we approached. Robert opened a door on its side and revealed cut up potatoes smoking in a pan, and handed out chunks to taste.

Bill Dickhaus, Randall Rakestraw and Cindy Dwyer seated at the guanacaste table.

The dining room had high open beam ceiling and was lit softly with pendant lamps and a Waterford crystal chandelier. Guests had the choice of sitting at three tables, one which had its tabletop made from a single solid plank of guanacaste wood from Brazil. (It takes several very strong people to lift and move that table.) Around the room, china cabinets sparkled with glassware and plates. As we dined, a light rain pattered on the roof, adding to the cosy feeling. The house is authentic Old Florida, built in the 40s and 50s, and features a fireplace, two kitchens, a book-lined study, and a small winery in the back.

Hector Ugalde and daughter Aileen Ugalde

(I’m going to mention just a few of the dishes that night, having discussed others in an earlier post about the preview dinner. For a clear-eyed critique and photos of most of the dishes, click over to Bill Jacobs’ Tinkering with Dinner blog.)

Leisha John and Greg Hamra crunch chips while Andrew Clinard snips scallions, and Frank DuMond looks on.

Once guests were seated, Robert’s hard-working crew had food flying out of the kitchen. First came the lavender vichyssoise, which was garnished with snipped scallions. It was as good as I remembered, smooth and creamy with a delicate potato flavor. The colorful, crispy potato chips added crunch and a much-needed bit of salt. The chips quickly disappeared and became everyone’s favorite.

The souffle has risen!

The drab-looking souffle that had fallen last week was transformed. It had a golden brown top, and a light and fluffy texture that tasted a bit more of egg and a bit less of potato. One guest remarked, as she scraped the last morsels out of her ramekin, that the souffle would be good for breakfast with a sweet fruit sauce.

Dessert pancakes topped with the insanely delicious cas guava-passion fruit sauce.

The dessert pancakes with cas guava and passion fruit sauce were more potato-y and heavier than at the testing dinner. Maybe if the edges had been a bit crispy, one guest murmured. The sauce, though, is exceptional, and I can see it on the souffle, or perhaps with breakfast crepes as another guest suggested. The pancakes were accompanied by araza wine, light in color, dry, with a bit of the tartness and flavor of the fruit coming through. (Araza is a tropical fruit that Robert brought back from Amazonian Ecuador. The fruit first appeared for sale this summer, although Robert has been growing it for 30 years. Hani Khouri had used it to whip up a fine batch of araza ice cream.)

Mike Rimland

The dinner was a locavore’s dream come true. Many of the ingredients were grown right at Possum Trot – cas guava, carambola, betel leaf, Rangpur lime, passion fruit, eggs from free range chickens, and wood burning in the smoker. All the fruits for the wines — lychee, bignay and araza — came from the grove. Farmer Margie contributed red kale, carrots, scallions, garlic chives, rosemary, parsley and thyme from her Bee Heaven Farm. Purple, blue, red, yellow, white, small, fingerling and round potatoes were gleaned from a field nearby. And the USDA certified grassfed beef came from 4 Arrows Ranch in Citra, Florida. (If you want to buy some, contact Farmer Margie. She has a few cuts left from the last order.)

Sandra Torres and Marlen Caudron

If you are what you eat, them I’m looking quite like a potato these days, having happily devoured what seems to be my weight in spuds between the two dinners. It was tasty and unusual, and worth the extra miles on the treadmill (or so I’m telling my creaky knees).

But if you missed out on the dinner, or potatoes aren’t quite your thing, Robert is planning different meals soon — the Possum Trot Experience, he calls them. He’s also available for private dinners. You can contact him at 305-235-1768 for more information.

Sous chef Bob Fisher and the Cantankerous Chef Robert Barnum in the klitchen.

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Pandemonium preview dinner

Posted in agritourism, chef, events, food, locavore, photo, tagged , on February 20, 2010|

Reminder: today, Saturday, is the LAST DAY TO REGISTER for the Potato Pandemonium dinner at the Possum Trot Tropical Fruit Nursery. Seats are selling out fast! Don’t dawdle and miss out! This is a unique offering that may not happen again. In addition to the dinner, Robert will give you a tour of his rustic 40 acre property and give a cooking lesson using tropical ingredients — all part of the Possum Experience. Click here to rsvp and pay in advance.

Peruvian purple potatoes, some of the stars of the show.

A group of folks from Bee Heaven Farm gathered a few nights ago at Possum Trot Tropical Fruit Nursery for a test tasting of several dishes on the Pandemonium menu this coming Wednesday night. Robert Barnum was working on fine-tuning flavors, timing and presentation. He and his two sous chefs, who usually cook at the hostel in Florida City, had food coming fast and furious from two kitchens.

Chips made from red, white and blue potatoes.

The vichyssoise was made with Peruvian purple potatoes, which gave it a delicate lavender hue.

Topping the vichyssoise with fresh garlic chives and multicolor chips.

First up was lavender vichyssoise, light and creamy, topped with fresh snipped garlic chives and crispy multicolor chips hot from the fryer. The crispy saltiness of the chips was balanced nicely by the mild smoothness of the soup. The consensus was the chips were the best we’d eaten. All of them disappeared before the end of the night. Crunch! The soup wasn’t too bad either.

Potato salad with smoked eggs and carambola relish.

The potato salad with carambola relish included wood fire smoked eggs which gave the salad a certain depth (the same smoked eggs available at farmers market), and was dressed with homemade mayonnaise made with olive oil.

The souffles fell after they came out of the oven, but we gobbled them up just the same. A bit of onion and garlic gave the them a flavor reminiscent of potato pancakes. No worries, Robert is working on lighter, less-likely-to-fall souffles for the big night. (No picture of this. You do not need to see a fallen souffle.)

Some of the guests in postprandial contentment. Left to right: Robert, Emily, Jamie, Dan, Glen, Nick, Bernardo and Christian.

An assortment of home-brewed tropical fruit wines, including lychee (nothing at all like Schnebly’s, my apologies to Peter) and bignay (or antidesma, a tropical berry) made by Robert himself will be available at the dinner. We settled for jug of mead that Dan brought, given to him by his beekeeper.

Emily was mesmerized by watching the special candle burn on her potato cake.

It was also farm apprentice Emily’s last night in Miami, and we feasted in honor of her hard work and good humor. She and her rabbit Homer are going back to Martha’s Vineyard, where she will start her own farm growing vegetables especially for a restaurant there. Good luck Emily!

Your table awaits!

The pesky possum pounced on pudgy potatoes with playful peelers, and promised a profusion of pleasures for the palate prepared from plenteous pots.

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