Dish of the Week........ In the Gallery Garden

Wednesday at the Barn

Dish of the Week

Crispy Sonoma Duck Leg with Pickled Cherries and Purslane

Cherry season usually begins for us in mid May when we harvest the first of the Rainiers from 60+ year old trees the Cassanellis planted during the Depression. Too tall to throw nets over, we have a fight to the death with the Jays every year to see who will get more fruit. No contest this year as the last hard frost took out the entire crop.   Whether you have an excess some years or not, with their thin permeable skin cherries take to macerating and pickling extremely well,  and its a great way to extend their season.  Even when the fruit is not stellar, depending on what you infuse them with, all sorts of unusual flavor convergences take place.

While duck and cherries have a classic affinity, too often traditional recipes that feature both go a ‘too sweet' route. While Chef's duck leg and thigh were quintessential French bistro ~ confit then pan seared to produce a perfect, crispy skin ~ he took the pairing in an unexpected direction this week when he used a surprising line-up of early summer produce to create a colorful conga line of flavors that incongruously, yet joyfully, played against form. The cherries, pickled in champagne vinegar with a bit of sugar, were a standout,  with bright acidity and a nice pop, but each veg seemed to dance across the palate in a way that made the next in line a momentary headliner: sous vide Nantes carrots added sweetness and color;  perfect fiddleheads  spicy green notes; favas brought a fat melting texture; pickled baby red onions tasted oddly sweet compared to the sour punch packed by the cherries.  Yukon Gold gnocchi, plump and savory, held the base note on all the other  flavors.

 One of the lesser known stars of early summer ~ fresh purslane ~  graced the dish completely unadorned.  An edible succulent, purslane has the soft mouth feel of aloe and the snap on the teeth of a mature pea shoot. Its delicate flavor trails a wonderful green aroma.

Not long after I shot these pictures I trundled off to a far corner of the garden to find a patch of sun and taste through the dish, my usual MO.   At first I picked up each vegetable and studied it in the light like a snooty diamond buyer, but it wasn't long before I found myself tearing the skin off the duck with my fingers, mixing and matching flavor combinations, devouring every morsel. I saved the cherry for last.

In the Gallery this Week…

If you have ever wondered what we mean by 'eat the view,' our salutation since we opened Barndiva seven years ago and the name of this blog, come find out on Thursday when Barndiva will  host the second annual Early Summer Farm Forum between 5-7.   The estimable energies of Clark Wolf and Marcy Smothers have put together a truly dynamic panel of guests (below) who will talk and field questions about a range of food and farming subjects that touch our lives,  whether or not you derive an income from the food shed.  Think the upcoming farm bill is beyond us to have an effect upon? Think again.  If you yearn to make a bit more sense out of the complex food related issues coming at us from all sides  ..... or  just want to come spend a beautiful afternoon of food, drink and thought provoking conversation with a very special group of friends, join us on Thursday. In every sense of the word, you won't go away hungry.

For more information, click here.

The $15 entry will help fund more Luther Burbank Orchards and support Santa Rosa Jr College culinary projects.

*Proceeding and following the forum folks from Luther Burbank House and Garden, the Guerneville School Garden,  Goldrich Farm (LB's Experimental Garden) and the Seed Preservation Project will be here to share their summer plans and projects with us....

**For dinner reservations after the forum call 431-0100.

All text Jil Hales. All photos, Jil Hales  (unless otherwise noted).

Speed Dating with Fork & Shovel in Healdsburg

(originally posted March 3, 2010)

Writing about gardens last week all my reference points seemed to be pulling from old friends and dead writers? A bit maudlin, no? Luckily, on Tuesday night Barndiva hosted Fork & Shovel’s annual get-together ~ a speed dating evening between the county’s best sustainable farmers and the chefs who rely on them. It was (excuse me for tempting fate) a hopeful evening in the extreme. Screw maudlin.

Fork & Shovel is primarily an Internet grange, but once a year we face off, flirting shamelessly about our varieties, heirlooms and breeds. A barn dance, without the music. A chance to build a definition of sustainable that can’t be co-opted. This is a crowd that doesn’t just know its food, it grows its food. Then cooks it.

But we really do live in different time zones. Think the Early Bird & the Owl on bio-dynamic crack.

The evening started a bit awkwardly ~ with everyone soaked from the rain and fumbling with name tags with either a fork or a shovel stamped on them. There were loads of new (young) faces. Luckily, Spencer had filled a huge punchbowl with one of his vodka and blood orange concoctions (this one held about 80 portions) and before long the drink wasn’t the only thing flowing. The evening officially began with a hilarious improv between Deborah Walton (Canvas Ranch) and Sondra Bernstein (Girl an the Fig) ~ issues of pricing, and delivery and how much mud a commercial kitchen can handle were deftly raised, then put to one side as farmers took to the podium, one by one. They had 30 seconds to charm chefs, tiny pencils hovering above Fork & Shovel pads.

John had brought the wood burning Rosso oven and before long crispy-edged pizzas laden with examples of the produce we’d just heard farmers singing the praises of started arriving on the bar. Even Mr. Hales, who is not known to enjoy anything he can’t eat with a knife and fork, seemed to be tasting one of each. (One of the nicer moments of the evening for me was sharing the Rosso energy under the makeshift tent during a sudden deluge ~ the smell of warm crust, wild mushrooms, arugula, chorizo, fontina was transporting).

We drank many bottles of wine ~ this is a great BYOB crowd ~ they bring it and they drink it. Bellwether contributed three gorgeous mounds of their new ricotta to taste, there was Big Dream Ranch Honey, Apple Farm Cider and Syrup and toward the end of the evening Doug Lipton opened bottles of his exquisite Home Ranch ’07 Muscat Blanc. If all that weren’t enough, everyone brought an old fashioned dessert ~ double stacked platters of cookies and fruit bars, spice cakes, cheese cakes, Hungarian “these are the walnuts I grow” layer cakes. Somewhere in heaven, Fanny Farmer was smiling down.

We are a Gossipy crowd: doll sheep, who already has tomato starts in the ground (lots of dubious eyebrow raising), how long before Sofia’s plow horses would be fully trained, and whoa, what to make of the sudden interest in classes on how to butcher whole animals? By the end of the evening Barndiva’s contract planting list had doubled, we had finally made it onto Liam Gallagher’s baby lamb allocation list, Karen agreed (though I doubt she will remember) to sell us a pig and do a cooking class with it in the new studio space, and I had collected the names of several goat farmers that swore they would serial call Chef Ryan. (My repeated efforts to bring this lean, light on the land source of protein to Barndiva’s menus have not, up to now, been successful.)

Fork & Shovel is about farmers and chefs working together to create an honorable business model that brings our enthusiasm to the public through increased sales. But we also share a landscape, a view. We are all trying to survive, to thrive even, in this difficult recession, growing beautiful food and cooking it with commitment and passion. We ended the evening with a promise to launch a series of First Sunday Fork & Shovel Dinners across the county.

I suppose maudlin serves a purpose, but what keeps me going in this business does not reside in looking backward. It is knowing that everything these farmers plant tomorrow, any animal they raise, might eventually land on a plate somewhere in my kitchen, eye to eye with Chef Ryan, to be blessed by his talent before being sent out for you to devour in the dining room. “Eat the view” is the most heartening three words in my vocabulary.

Here is the list of Barndiva’s fellow speed daters on Feb. 23, 2010.

Reminder: even if you were born to it and have your parent's experience to pull on, farming is crazy hard work with very few pots of gold at the end of the day. (Pots of poop is more like it. Which is gold to them). Support these sustainable farmers by frequenting the talented chefs who feature their food.

(The list below represents about half our membership. For a full list, visit www.forkandshovel.com and become a supporting member!)

Fork & Shovel Farmers who speed dated Tuesday Feb. 23 @ Barndiva

Bellwether Farms, Big Dream Ranch, Blankety Blank Farms, Canvas Ranch, Cultivating Impact, De Vero, Dragonfly, Early Girl Farms, Eastside Farm, Foggy River Farm, Gleason Ranch, Gretchen Giles (editor of The Bohemian), Healdsburg Eggs, Home Farm, Jim Leonardis Organics, Linda Peterson (representing Farm-Link), Mendocino Organics, Mix, Nana Mae Organics, Owen Family Farm, Oliver’s Market, Paula Downing (F&S Steering Committee, SR and Sebastapol Farmers Market Director), Quetzal, Sky Saddle, Sonoma Meat Buying Club, The Philo Apple Farm,Weed Farm

List of Restaurants Chefs they flirted unabashedly with:

Barndiva, Boon Eat & Drink, Cyrus, Dry Creek Kitchen, Inn at the Tides, Jimtown, Mateo Granados Catering, Mayacamas, Nick’s Cove, Park Ave Catering, Ralph’s Bistro, Relish Culinary School, Rosso Pizzeria and Wine Bar, Santi, The Girl & the Fig/ ESTATE/ The Girl & The Fig Cafe, Vintage Valley Catering, Zazu, Zin

All text and photography, Jil Hales (unless otherwise noted)