Wednesday at the Barn Menu.....Bernier Garlic!

Dish of the Week

Bernier Farms Garlic Chips with Frog Hollow Peaches, Crispy Polenta & Prosciutto Wrapped Asparagus Tips

While I am sure there are chefs who manage it, I can’t envision a food life that didn’t rely heavily on the genus allium ~ onions, shallots, leeks, chives, scallions, ramps ~ and somewhere at the top of the heap, the mighty garlic. Garlic is beautiful, its aroma dead sexy when it hits the pan, but with flavor both intriguing and willful, it can quickly overwhelm a dish if you don’t learn how to dance with it.

The usual fall back for home cooks if not using it raw in a pesto is to sauté it, which lends a nice bitterness that is especially compatible to dishes that also boast bright acidity (think Mediterranean). But sautéing doesn’t let you explore the surprising nuances you can get from Allium sativum, which can range from sweet to floral should you poach, dehydrate, pickle or confit it. The secret to extending its flavor bandwidth is to use a preparation that circumvents the breakdown of sulphur which sleeps in the plant's cells, waking with a vengeance when you lift your knife to crush or chop it. It’s the sulphur that gives you garlic breath (and sometimes heartburn) but it’s there for a good reason ~ as a highly effective defense against birds and animals eating the bulbs as they grow.

Our garlic chips don’t shout garlic, they are so light and delicate they melt in the mouth before most diners even register what they are.  Takes a bit of work to make them, but boy, are they wonderful.

Good sized cloves like the ones you can find at the Bernier stand at the Healdsburg Farmer's Market (see below) are peeled and sliced on the mandolin until they are semi- transparent. Then we poach them slowly in milk ~ three times. Each successive poaching leaches out more of the sulphur. The final step is to deep fry them in a skillet with enough room so they don’t stick together. A furious bubbling cauldron will ensue when they first hit the heat (250°-300°) as the last bit of  moisture is expelled from the softened milky slices, but it quickly subsides as the chips turn a burnished chanterelle gold. Drained on paper, finished with Maldon salt, they have a sweet nutty crunch that sends them to the pantheon of condiments. Stored in an airtight container, they will even keep for days. Happily, ours don't last that long.

For the next few weeks you can savor Ryan's garlic chips discreetly paired with Frog Hollow peaches on crispy polenta alongside a few tips of prosciutto wrapped asparagus ~ part of a gratifying pork entrée ~ but you may also order them off the menu as a starter, as shown here on a swath of basil coulis. Take note however: this incandescent pairing with peaches won’t be around much longer as the menu moves from the stone fruits of early summer into the heart of August.

Yael Bernier's 15 shades of garlic...

The undisputed queen of garlic in Healdsburg is Yael Bernier ~  an opinion I'm confident is shared by the thousands of fans that flock to her stand at the Healdsburg Farmer's Market each summer.

Last week I was lucky to be invited out to the barn where she dries her covetable bulbs, spending a delirious two hours in a fine de siècle light that put me in mind of Robert Altman's under appreciated masterpiece, McCabe & Mrs. Miller. I forgot my tripod so these images don't do justice to what I saw ~ except for a few shards of sunlight that managed to break through the cracks in the barn wall, it was pretty dark in there. As the temperature broke 100° outside a fine dry dust permeated the air, redolent of soil and warm wood, a hint of eau de diesel. Barns have a certain magical energy when they've been used for root storage over the years.

Yael, who farms with her son Zureal and husband Paul in several locations in the Dry Creek and Alexander Valleys, grows 15 varieties (she also sells as seed), five of which were drying on that day: Northern Italian Red, Italian Red Rocambole, Spanish Roja, China Stripe and Siberian. They don't come cheap ~ from $1.50 - $2 a head ~ but they are worth every cent, a perfect example of getting what you pay for when you know the who, what, where of what you eat. Towards that end, if you live in Sonoma County, check out Michele Anna Jordan's wonderful weekly Farmer's Market blog ~  Eat This Now ~ in the Press Democrat.

Bernier has a website ~ www.bernierfarms.com ~ but FYI for all you chefs who may be reading this ~ she sells her entire range of excellent produce to restaurants.

Eat the View.

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

Wednesday at the Barn Prix Fixe Menu........ Dish of the Week........ At the Farm

Wednesday at the Barn

Dish of the Week

Early Summer Vegetable Plate

When Chef Ryan went to pick strawberries and a load of other beautiful vegetables at Quivira early Thursday morning, he took Justin along, younger brother of his entremetier Andrew Wycoff. “Jr”   is the youngest and newest member of the kitchen brigade, currently working the garde manger station. The trip made such an impression he couldn’t stop talking about it. He was especially blown away by "how much food" could be grown in such a (relatively) small area.  You have to know what you are doing, of course, but when you do ~ as Andrew Breedy, Quivira’s lead gardener certainly does ~ it’s hard not to be impressed with the variety and abundance of what we can grow here in Sonoma County. For a young chef it’s particularly important to understand at the beginning of a career how essential it is to get to know a few great farmers and endear yourself to them, the better to get up close and personal with what they grow.  Back in the kitchen, Ryan decided to create a vegan vegetable starter for guests dining with us that night, which is not as easy as it sounds. Put a few delicious veg on a plate and call it a day, right? Not around here.

Look up the definition of Haiku in the dictionary and you will find it is a classic Japanese poetic form which traditionally has 17 distinct phonetic units, concluding with a lingering message. Historically, it adheres to a strict format that relies on the juxtaposition of  key words to describe images, separating them by what the Japanese call "Kireji"or ‘cutting words’.  I was reminded of Haiku as I watched Ryan ~ with Jr. eagerly assisting ~ begin to plate an edited version of the bounty they’d collected at Quivira. One of the hallmarks of a good Haiku is that it leaves you with a single resonating thought. With his Early Summer Vegetable Plate from Quivira Gardens, the message of this visually arresting Vegetable Haiku was clear: when it comes to great produce, less really is more.

While Ryan's creation was only comprised of 13 "elements" for me it captured  the spirit of the Haiku form, and what I love most about Japanese culture in general.

Theirs is a pared down sensibility that goes hand in hand with a reverence for spare lineal form, with a profound, if understated, message that often takes a reverence for the natural world into account. While Chef seemed to place the ingredients on the plates swiftly, he did so in a way that allowed each to “speak” to one another ~ in color, shape, and most certainly in taste. As you ate across the plate each element played against the next, yet each, in its own way, remained completely distinct.

The rhubarb was peeled before being steeped in boiled water with a bit of grenadine, the ‘secret’ prep I mentioned last week that Octavio, our talented pastry chef, also employs for the rhubarb batons we serve with the Layered Rhubarb Financier we currently have on the dessert menu. To get the most out of its unusual flavor profile, rhubarb needs to be peeled (the skin is stringy, and can be bitter) then treated with care. Never boil it. Don’t let it get too friendly with sugar. Slipping it into water that has boiled and been infused with grenadine allows this faux fruit to cook just enough as the water cools. The grenadine helps hold and even enhance its extraordinary color. The strawberries were cored and slivered; the fennel was shaved, thinly, then lightly dressed in a few drops of Preston OO and champagne vinegar.

Ryan’s generosity as a chef is always present in the way he encourages those on the brigade that show an interest (and a propensity) for visual artistry to try their hand. It’s NOT as easy as it looks. I have seen him change one thing on a plate that shifts the entire visual balance of the dish. I can’t say how much this ultimately affects the diner but if you believe, as we do, that you eat with your eyes first,  his talent provides an vital conduit to our guests that truly expresses what we feel about the primacy of our exquisite ingredients.

No matter how complex or how many steps Chef takes to complete a dish  ~ initially it's the integrity of those ingredients which inspire each plate of food.

At the Farm: Quivira

The interest our young chef showed for his experience at Quivira is a good lead-in to a subject I’ve wanted to talk about for a while now, as the dialogue over whether or not it’s a good thing for wineries to grow food heats up.  Not simply because I have strong feelings about the subject  ~ whatever your viewpoint, I hope you’ll agree it’s an important discussion that should not be dominated by fear.

When Quivira was denied a space at the Healdsburg Farmer’s Market last year we understood why ~ growing food is not the main thing they do and we could see the argument that coveted space at Farmer's Markets should be allotted to farmers whose main source of income is food. The revenue generated from market sales is often crucial to their thriving, if not surviving. But. It’s a far step from that thought to not supporting wineries with a genuine interest in expanding their business model from the mono-culture of grapes into a diverse ecology that includes vegetables, fruits, and even animals. Quivira has done an exemplary job in this regard. Their single acre garden is open to the public, laid out and 'explained' in such a way as to make a trip to the winery, whether or not you are imbibing, worthwhile.  In addition to the educational piece of having the veggie beds, the chickens, the bees, and the fruit trees all up front and accessible to the crowds that visit the winery all year, they sell fairly priced produce to a select number of farm to table restaurants, as well as hosting events throughout the year that make a direct connection between their wine and food grown sustainably right alongside their grapes.

And that’s not all.  A few years ago when Quivira first started their food growing program in earnest, they invited restaurants that shared a commitment to superior local sourcing to each subsidize a raised bed that could be grown exclusively for that restaurant. The worthy sub-text to this plan was that in addition to the publicity it afforded both ends of the collaboration, all the money raised from the restaurants was donated to the Northern Sonoma Healthcare Foundation.

That Quivira could afford such largess because the owners are not struggling farmers doesn’t take away from the merit of this ongoing program, nor does the grape component dilute an authentic ‘how food is grown’ experience their garden offers to thousands of visitors who thought they were only heading out to West Dry Creek to sniff and sip.

To our mind, it’s always a good thing to see more land turned over to growing food  ~ especially when it’s done properly, which Andrew and his crew are certainly doing at Quivira. We fail to see a down side to it.  Can every winery go the distance to the extent Lou and Susan Preston have as they literally 'grew' what was once Preston Vineyards into the bio-dynamic farm+vineyards that is now Preston of Dry Creek?   Of course not. But does that mean we shouldn’t encourage more wineries to have a go?

On the one side you have farmers who do not have the benefit of a potentially lucrative cash crop like grapes feeling threatened that they are up against deep pocket dilettantes who are using produce gardens and a few farm animals to romanticize their core business to the public.

On the other you have the oft-criticized mono-cultural business model of the vineyard/winery diversifying into food ~ allowing the wine obsessed public to be exposed and educated a bit about how food is grown, as well as making more sustainably farmed crops available to restaurants who want to source locally. Least we forget ~ restaurants, especially those committed to buy from the food shed, also struggle with small profit margins.

Barndiva welcomes relationships with wineries that grow food, especially when they also extend ethical farming practices to their vineyards. At the end of the day, we will always try and support those who have a vested interest in seeing local farm to local table sourcing thrive.

But dinner on the house to anyone out there who feels a Haiku coming on that might further clarify this complicated and often vexing issue .

All text Jil Hales. All photos Jil Hales and Dawid Jaworski (unless otherwise noted).