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Pandemonium preview dinner

February 20, 2010 by marian33031

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.

Posted in agritourism, chef, events, food, locavore, photo | Tagged , |

Help Yourself!

February 20, 2010 by marian33031

While I was in the barn on Friday setting up to photograph this week’s share, in strolled Annie Gascoyne, co-owner of Help Yourself!, an organic restaurant located in Key West. Annie made the three-and-a-half hour drive up with her boyfriend to pick up boxes of veggies for her restaurant, and for the farmer’s market that she and her business partner run on Sundays from 9 am to 1 pm.

The market is “getting quite a little following,” Annie told me as she took a minute from packing produce into the car. In addition to herbs, fruits and vegetables from Redland Organics, “there’s a fellow who cuts fresh coconuts, and live music from a local band that comes without fail.” Co-owner and chef Charlie Wilson gives cooking demos. The market is in its second season, paralleling the CSA season, and it’s starting to take off. A loyal group of locals comes by every week to shop, and this season Annie has noticed an increasing number of tourists dropping by.

Annie explained that she started the market because not everybody may want to, or afford to, eat at her restaurant every day. “There was such a lack,” she said. “I wanted to bring that [market] experience to support local farmers. It’s so nice knowing what you’re supporting.” And her customers are delighted for the opportunity to get fresh, healthy local food. “All say thank you so much for being here,” Annie said.

Help Yourself! is a rare bird as far as restaurants go in this area. Annie and Charlie source local food as much as possible, and all ingredients are natural and organic. “We’re all about food as it should be,” Annie explained. She had visited restaurants with similar concepts in London and New York, and Charlie had been a chef at a top-notch vegan restaurant in New York — so why not Key West? “Knowing that this exists in other places, and feeling a real lack, combined with a desire to support local business doing great things” inspired the two women to launch their restaurant.

Today and tomorrow Help Yourself! is participating in the Gardenfest, a weekend festival to benefit the Key West Tropical Forest and Botanical Garden, located on Stock Island. The festival will feature a plant sale, and various speakers on gardening, plus a green market, various artisan crafts and live music.

Help Yourself! organic restaurant
829 Fleming Street
Key West, Fl 33040
305-296-776
www.helpyourselffoods.com

Posted in events, food, locavore, market, restaurant | Tagged , , , , |

CSA share: week 12

February 19, 2010 by marian33031

CSA share: week 12

Posted in csa, photo | Tagged |

Talking potatoes on BlogTalkRadio

February 18, 2010 by marian33031

Robert Barnum, the Cantankerous Chef, will be interviewed “live on the air” by Nancy Ancrum and Robbie Bell about his upcoming Potato Pandemonium dinner held at Possum Trot Tropical Fruit Nursery.

Click over to Join Us At The Table, their show on BlogTalkRadio, this Saturday morning at 9:30 am to hear the interview live. It should be a lively conversation, as Robert is quite passionate about the creative spin he gives potato dishes featured in the Pandemonium dinner. [Note: you can play and/or download the show. Robert’s interview is about 11 minutes in from the start.]

Reminder: Saturday Feb. 20th is also the last day to register for the dinner, so don’t dawdle or you’ll miss out on something amazing!

Posted in agritourism, events, food, media | Tagged , , |

Hope springs forth

February 13, 2010 by marian33031

The heirloom tomatoes available at market are winding down. They will be very scarce for weeks, assuming there won’t be patchy frost tonight, which still has potential to damage weakened plants.

Weeks later, you can still see signs of freeze damage at Bee Heaven Farm — and signs of recovery.

Tomatoes blooming after the freeze

The heirloom tomatoes vary in damage. Some varieties are all but destroyed by the freeze. The ones with blackened, shriveled leaves are not coming back. A few varieties are re-growing leaves and still have fruit ripening on the vines. And some look positively fluffy with their green leaves and are blooming again. The quantity and quality of the second bloom tomatoes remains to be seen. If they’re just as nice as the ones we’ve had so far, expect more heirloom tomatoes at market, just not right away, perhaps in a couple months. “Hope springs forth!” Margie said.

Purple Pod heirloom beans blooming after the freeze.

The heirloom beans have been all but decimated. One variety with purplish stems, known as Purple Pod, re-grew leaves and looks a lot better than a week or two after the freeze. It’s even putting out a few, shy blooms. The question is, will those blooms set and grow beans. And if they grow, how big and what shape are they going to be in? All of that is doubtful because they have a big problem with mildew. “The leaves are all frozen out and the plants are more vulnerable to everything,” Margie explained to me.

This is the lasting, almost hidden freeze damage that takes weeks to emerge. The Gold of Bacau beans aren’t coming back very well at all, and the few pods that have grown since the freeze are small and misshapen, nothing you would want to buy at the market or find in your CSA box.

Freeze damaged Gold of Bacau beans.

Posted in farm, fruits, photo, vegetables | Tagged |

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