As every year, I brought along a helper; this year, daughter number one Lillian, who, as you can plainly see in the photo, is in full-on teenager ("I am so bored; I would rather die than stand here.") mode. Imagine her reaction when she reads this! She is a loyal One Blog West reader. If you know the grounds at Blandy at all, you can see that we are in the courtyard of the Quarters, the only place that I can get a good windbreak against the prevailing westerlies.
This year, we were blessed with four snaggle-toothed devils and color commentators right in the front row! I think these four young gentlemen kept us all entertained for about an hour. I know that I couldn't get a word in edgewise. I'm pretty certain that they ate the vast majority of the samples!
In years past, I've done demonstrations with various themes. This year, I decided to highlight some of the October dishes from our menu this past weekend. I wanted to show that October is a month of real contrasts: while we have abundant winter squash and apples, we are also still blessed with great tomatoes, squashes, peppers, and eggplants.
The first dish I demonstrated was one that I devised for our Saturday menu from items that I scavenged at the local farmers market, a dish that I called, for lack of imagination, Fall Salad. It consists of roasted diced butternut squash, diced Asian pear, and Cajun-spiced pecans, all tossed in a dressing of highly reduced apple cider, honey, maple syrup, membrillo, roasted shallots, Port, rice vinegar, and canola oil. Pardon the photography: the sunlight was brutal.
I also demonstrated a salad that the food editor at Northern Virginia magazine really likes, so much so that it was featured in their September edition. The salad consists of bias-sliced Surry sausages, walnuts, bias-sliced celery, micro-celery, dried cranberries, roasted local apples, and balsamic vinaigrette.
Back to the more summery aspects of October, I demonstrated a dish that I call Swordfish Sauce Vierge, after the sauce popularized in the 1980s by Michel Guérard. Vierge means virgin, in this case referring to a raw uncooked sauce. Doing my own thing with it, I have converted the sauce to almost a chopped salad to serve as a base for my swordfish.
After tasting the mixture of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, olives, capers, basil, garlic, parsley, olive oil and lemon juice, one of the attendees commented "It's like a raw puttanesca." and in a sense, it is. And it was certainly a perfect vehicle to showcase the beautiful heirloom German Howard tomatoes and Corno di Toro peppers that I brought.
To quote Amishland Heirloom Seeds about these tomatoes:
The locals here in Amish country also call them "Pepper Tomatoes". I have never seen these exact same tomatoes grown anywhere else. Prolific harvests of 5-1/2 inch long, weirdly pointed paste tomatoes that weigh about 5-8 ounces (although this year they were huge and averaged more like 10-14 ounces). These are very meaty with a good, rich flavor. They have virtually no seeds, maybe 6 or so per fruit. An old scarce variety great for canning, paste, or sauces. Also delicious right off the vine in salads. Just the best all purpose tomato I have ever grown. Very resistant to disease and bugs, as well. Still seen here in Amish country, but elsewhere it is a really rare tomato.
Sorry for that digression on tomatoes, but they are so good that they merit digression. The final dish that I demonstrated was what I call Prosciutto-Wrapped Medallions of Rabbit. I boned out a rabbit loin (to remove the backbone and ribcage), sprinkled the loin with thyme, salt, and pepper, then wrapped it in prosciutto. After searing it on all sides, I roast it at the restaurant, but for the demo without an oven, I sliced it into medallions and cooked them in a pan. I served the medallions of rabbit over a bed of chiffonaded Swiss chard and topped with a Surry sausage jus.
Photos that I didn't take courtesy of Sharon Mesa. Thank you, Sharon.
That Surry Sausage recipe is online at
ReplyDeletehttp://www.northernvirginiamag.com/food-and-wine/2008/11/25/bread_pudding/
Thanks! I forgot that they sent a photographer out and all that. This is actually the recipe for my Surry Sausage Bread Pudding that I made for my wife on Mother's Day. I've hyperlinked the URL here http://www.northernvirginiamag.com/food-and-wine/2008/11/25/bread_pudding/
ReplyDelete