Farm News

In an effort to minimize the farm’s consumption of fossil fuels and the impact of heavy machinery on the soil Trent uses horses for tillage. Here he is striking a pose for sustainable agriculture while spreading compost. From the look of this picture it seems to me that his motivation for eschewing internal combustion engine powered machines in favor of horse-drawn apparatuses (like this manure/compost spreader in the photo above) has, at least in part, something to do with the more abundant opportunities afforded by the older technology to look cool while he works.

BTW, in the background to the left is the cow barn and to the right is the dairy barn containing the milking and cheese-making rooms, kitchen, aging room and retail-sales outlet.

Pig News

By Saturday 10 piglets out of the litter of 11 that was delivered by the gray sow were alive and doing well. The same could not be said for the offspring of the black sow, who’s numbers by Saturday AM had dwindled to three from an initial farrowing of 13.

I know we are raising these pigs to slaughter and turn into salami, but it is still sad and very frustrating to see them dying off so soon after birth. I’d like to think that it’s the sow’s fault for not being able to settle down and feed nurse them. But that’s not the way it works. We are the stewards of these animals and their loss are partially our failures. We owed those pigs a good if brief life, and what they got was a brief period of hunger and an early death. It stinks.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Farm News

In an effort to minimize the farm’s consumption of fossil fuels and the impact of heavy machinery on the soil Trent uses horses for tillage. Here he is striking a pose for sustainable agriculture while spreading compost. From the look of this picture it seems to me that his motivation for eschewing internal combustion engine powered machines in favor of horse-drawn apparatuses (like this manure/compost spreader in the photo above) has, at least in part, something to do with the more abundant opportunities afforded by the older technology to look cool while he works.

BTW, in the background to the left is the cow barn and to the right is the dairy barn containing the milking and cheese-making rooms, kitchen, aging room and retail-sales outlet.

Pig News

By Saturday 10 piglets out of the litter of 11 that was delivered by the gray sow were alive and doing well. The same could not be said for the offspring of the black sow, who’s numbers by Saturday AM had dwindled to three from an initial farrowing of 13.

I know we are raising these pigs to slaughter and turn into salami, but it is still sad and very frustrating to see them dying off so soon after birth. I’d like to think that it’s the sow’s fault for not being able to settle down and feed nurse them. But that’s not the way it works. We are the stewards of these animals and their loss are partially our failures. We owed those pigs a good if brief life, and what they got was a brief period of hunger and an early death. It stinks.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

De Architectura

I made two more torta rustica on Friday and shot a bunch of photos during the construction of one. Still missing are the dough mixing and rolling, baking and “pressing under weight” steps. If I get around to shooting those steps, I will add them. But as anyone who has ever worked in a production kitchen knows, it is not so easy to take the time to do one more thing when you are already doing four things.

So here is a slide show of how I put together a potato and leek torta rustica. It’s pretty thrilling so you may want to swallow and aspirin or whatever before you look 🙂

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Pig News

I’m too tired right now to spend a lot of words putting these photos into context. So, it’ll have to suffice to say let the slides and the captions tell the story. Sorry, but I’m spent. I will say this though, pigs can be total pigs. I mean, how uncool is it for a new mother to refuse to feed her “babies” then try to eat the babies of the mother in the next pen? I suppose that pigs are not the only ones to behave this way (actually, I’m sure of it) but still, it’s hard to watch.

Sigh.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Chef Gets Shot, Keeps Cooking

Chef Paul Prudhomme Grazed by Bullet

(I didn’t know this guy was still alive, did you?)

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Chef Gets Shot, Keeps Cooking

Chef Paul Prudhomme Grazed by Bullet

(I didn’t know this guy was still alive, did you?)

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Model Torta Rustica

Torta: cake or pie
Rustica: from rustico meaning folksy, rustic

When you spend as much time in the kitchen as I have, the stuff that billows up from the memory well often has something to do with food. Such was the case last week as I was trying to figure out what to do with a surplus of pie dough. I could have frozen the dough, but doing that would have required that I remove all of the stuff that was piled on top of the chest freezer which, on Friday, included 5 gallons of stock, my tool box, 50 pounds of turkey, ten pounds of chicken, my camera bag and well, you get the idea. So anyway, I’m staring at the pie dough and then I look over at the big bag of potatoes in the corner of the room and I start thinking about Richard Avedon and then something along the lines of “Damn, I have not made Dorian’s torta rustica in over twenty years.”

My father’s family has been cooking and eating torta rustica, a very simple double crust pie made from lard dough filled with rice or potato or spinach for generations. But the rusitca that I was thinking of was a much fancier version that I was taught to make by Dorian Leigh , (who had posed for Richard Avedon, hence the connection) at her home in Ridgefield, Ct in the early 1980’s.

Dorian’s torta rusitca was a magnificently complicated and delicious construction made from brioche dough and layers of spinach, Gruyere cheese and black forest ham, all baked in a spring form, allowed to cool and then pressed overnight. On the basis of the combination of ingredients alone I would have loved this dish, but what killed me was how it combined techniques from the sophisticated charcuterie I was trying to learn (layering of internal ingredients, pressing under weights to compress air pockets) and by how much the final product reminded me of a geologic stratigraphic section when it was cut. It also did not escape my attention that she had done something that well-heeled chefs have been doing forever: turned a peasant dish into haute cuisine and rendered it’s name oxymoronic.

(What can I say? I’m easily amused.)

So with all this stuff scudding around in my head, I decided to make two torta rustica based on Dorian’s model. Both were filled mostly with potatoes, leeks and Trent’s (Hendricks Farms and Dairy) Gruyere cheese, but one I added a ring of Chicken sausage that I developed for the farm only two weeks ago (It’s seasoned with lemon, thyme and a suspicion of garlic).

Er, ah, I did not write a recipe for this, but if anyone would like a walk-through, just email me and I’ll throw something together.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Model Torta Rustica

Torta: cake or pie
Rustica: from rustico meaning folksy, rustic

When you spend as much time in the kitchen as I have, the stuff that billows up from the memory well often has something to do with food. Such was the case last week as I was trying to figure out what to do with a surplus of pie dough. I could have frozen the dough, but doing that would have required that I remove all of the stuff that was piled on top of the chest freezer which, on Friday, included 5 gallons of stock, my tool box, 50 pounds of turkey, ten pounds of chicken, my camera bag and well, you get the idea. So anyway, I’m staring at the pie dough and then I look over at the big bag of potatoes in the corner of the room and I start thinking about Richard Avedon and then something along the lines of “Damn, I have not made Dorian’s torta rustica in over twenty years.”

My father’s family has been cooking and eating torta rustica, a very simple double crust pie made from lard dough filled with rice or potato or spinach for generations. But the rusitca that I was thinking of was a much fancier version that I was taught to make by Dorian Leigh , (who had posed for Richard Avedon, hence the connection) at her home in Ridgefield, Ct in the early 1980’s.

Dorian’s torta rusitca was a magnificently complicated and delicious construction made from brioche dough and layers of spinach, Gruyere cheese and black forest ham, all baked in a spring form, allowed to cool and then pressed overnight. On the basis of the combination of ingredients alone I would have loved this dish, but what killed me was how it combined techniques from the sophisticated charcuterie I was trying to learn (layering of internal ingredients, pressing under weights to compress air pockets) and by how much the final product reminded me of a geologic stratigraphic section when it was cut. It also did not escape my attention that she had done something that well-heeled chefs have been doing forever: turned a peasant dish into haute cuisine and rendered it’s name oxymoronic.

(What can I say? I’m easily amused.)

So with all this stuff scudding around in my head, I decided to make two torta rustica based on Dorian’s model. Both were filled mostly with potatoes, leeks and Trent’s (Hendricks Farms and Dairy) Gruyere cheese, but one I added a ring of Chicken sausage that I developed for the farm only two weeks ago (It’s seasoned with lemon, thyme and a suspicion of garlic).

Er, ah, I did not write a recipe for this, but if anyone would like a walk-through, just email me and I’ll throw something together.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Lest U 4 Get

When you consider the roots of contemporary American junk food culture, be afraid, very afraid because those roots are pretty (by American standards) deep.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Lest U 4 Get

When you consider the roots of contemporary American junk food culture, be afraid, very afraid because those roots are pretty (by American standards) deep.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.