the idle idealogue's idyll, or, when something comes of nothing

We have all been there, to varying degrees.  We have visited that gray and plasmatic quagmire of the human mind where confusion and chaos swirl into recognizable patterns and then disperse back into the turbid muck.  We have gawked at these fleeting formations, consciously or not, and withdrawn with conclusions befitting either a college stoner session or a great philosophical treatise.  My observations may belong more on the stoner end of the spectrum, but I confess to feeling (in my rare moments of lucubration) on the cusp of a greater realization.  Naturally, just when I think I have the bird of truth in my grasp, a herd of rabid purple pachyderms stampedes their way into my brain, as though choreographed by Jim Henson to a Wagnerian soundtrack played by Jimi  Hendrix.  Of course, in the event that I ever have that bird in hand, I promise to share it with whatever patient blogreaders remain out there in the world of Comparitive Twitterature.  Which, by the way, will be a valid college major when my children are ready to declare.

So, my not-so-sane point is that this blog post is at once a Seinfeldian glimpse into the obvious, a Thelonius-esque tribute to nothingness, and an unapologetic abstract post expressionist ode to white space.  All of this without the talent, and I might add, without our friend brevity--therefore, simultaneously soulless and witless.  Still reading?  Shame on you.

Forsooth, it has been too many months, busy months at home and in the restaurant, since I sat down to write.  There have been birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, vacations, funerals, many of these happening simultaneously, the whirlwind of activity in our lives mirroring the aforementioned quagmire of ideation. [Valkyrie rides through Purple Haze.] Yet, as stressful and difficult to manage as these events have been, they have served as mile markers on the route to progress, and it feels good to be moving in that direction.  I don't believe many of us will look back wistfully on the turn of this decade, but we will doubtlessly have taken a few hard life lessons from it.

The Gulf of Mexico--now a man-made, rust-hued toxic salad dressing waiting to be shaken up by the hurricane season--reminds us that tampering with dinosaur remnants to power our modern conveniences is a dangerous and primitive idea in itself.  Somewhere deep inside, we all know that human sacrifice is the answer:  not the Mayan kind, as in humans being sacrificed, although that might help too; but the impossible kind, as in humans making sacrifices.  Such a radical concept, I don't think most people are even ready to discuss it, much less engage in it.

Which brings us to Facebook.  Recently, something good came of Facebook.  Really.  On our restaurant's page, a bold reader commented that our bluefin tuna special one night in early July was decidedly irresponsible (I'm paraphrasing).  According to the post, "taking a bluefin is not 'preventing it from going to waste,'...it is demonstrating a continued market." (I'm no longer paraphrasing.)  The opinion, a valid and hotly disputed point, was quickly snubbed by the Black Trumpet Defense Department, which consists of regular guests, friends and even employees who wanted to weigh in on the topic.  Anyone who cares about the future of wild fisheries, or the future of the earth in general, should read this amusing but thought-provoking stream of commentary.  It points to the disparate set of ideas and opinions that form a collective consumer subconscious.  [Insert Hendrix riff here.]  From the dark depths of our oceanic conundrum, economy and ecology once again engage in battle.  As a chef in a fishing community, I want to support local fisherpeople; but if a local boat going for another species brings in a bluefin, whose population is under scrutiny in the Western Atlantic, and I buy some of that fish, am I guilty of culinary malfeasance?

I recently attended an event in Cambridge, wherein a sustainable fisheries advocate from the New England Aquarium referred to chefs as "stewards of the sustainable food movement."  I agree that we can help bring about change.  In fact a group of us chef types from Portsmouth are currently working on the Michele Obama initiative called Chefs in Schools, with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of lunches in public schools around the country.  But if the onus rests on the shoulders of a few chefs who run small kitchens, what do we do about the chef from the TD Garden, who pleaded his cause at the meeting in Cambridge?  He goes through 14,000 pounds of frozen shrimp per annum, and there are thousands of places like his in our country, never mind the world.  This idea of feeding the world is already very tricky before any conservation conversation comes up.  As soon as you look at the grand scheme, what difference can we really make?  I don't think the earth's condition is terminal, as many people seem to think, and I'm no scientist, but I do think everyone needs to make an effort to understand, and act on, our most egregious excesses.  If we don't limit those excesses and eliminate some fringe luxuries, at the very least, I'll be hopping up on the soap box with the doomsayers.  Until then, I'll continue to be the best steward of sustainability I can be while doing my part to maintain a healthy fishing economy in our area.

Back to the narrative quagmire, these are a few notes without a blog heading of their own:

In May, two great friends of Black Trumpet got married in Exeter and had their reception in our restaurant.  Their ceremony was worthy of a long, dedicated and heartfelt blog, but I missed the window to pay them a dual homage.  Indeed, the happy couple is comprised of two men, and in retrospect, I couldn't be more thrilled for them that they live in two states (New Hampshire and marital bliss) that will recognize and celebrate the bonds of their love.

Flash to the next wedding, in June, on a little tugboat a few steps from Black Trumpet.  Two other good friends of the restaurant, this time a he and a she, locking their destinies together after years of obstacles.  Love conquers all, you two!  Denise and I were honored and thrilled to be a part it.

Lastly, but not leastly, we just recently hosted the wedding of one of our own, bartender/server/manager/goddess Jody, and her mate Bjorn.  The ceremony in the park, the dinner at Black Trumpet, and the Red Door after-party were beautiful and intimate, leaving nary a dry eye in the house.  The images in our heads, fortunately, will outlast the multi-day hangover.  Whole-hearted congratulations to you good friends!

In conclusion, we at Black Trumpet try really hard to make people happy.  It consumes our every-day existence in ways that are disputably unhealthy.  When someone has a beef with our beef, or our service, or--as in one recent instance--table placement, we do what we can to make it better.  One exhortation to guests: constructive criticism at the time of the dining experience (when we can actually do something about it) is far better than a posthumous raking over the Interweb coals.

In summation of my conclusion, after the flood zones are permanently flooded, the great gulves are all gummed with gloppity-glopp, and all the yummiest fish have been fished, and after our land has been pocked by bombs and scraped free of animal, vegetable and mineral for the greater consumption of  megalomonocrops, and after castles made of sand have slipped into the sea, we the people will still have love.  And we at Black Trumpet love love. 

Love,
Evan

Providence Indeed

Providence, the city name, is said to have been dubbed by none other than north-of-the-border carpetbagger Roger Williams himself.  Even if he was the first arrogant Masshole and an opportunist of the highest order, Governor Williams was onto something with that name.  Providence.  We use it today to mean good fortune on the horizon, or divine guidance, but it should adhere more to its true Latin roots, which it shares with the verb "provide" and its nominal cognate, "provision".  "To prepare for the future" might be the best definition;  e.g., "Investors' providence will be rewarded."  Not only is it a cool name for a city, but it's also apropos in today's amped-up, televised gastronomic world.  Providence the city--based on my recent thirty-six hour junket with Denise, sous chef Mike and his sweetheart Rebecca--appears to be paving the way for the future of how Americans will eat, and it appears we will eat well.  Yes, that is a confusing and loaded statement, but relax, because I'm telling a story here.  This means, if history be the judge, that I need a tangent right about now...

Easter Sunday of 2010, Denise and I closed the restaurant, thrilled to give our staff a rest after a wonderfully busy Restaurant Week.  We were supposed to rest, too, but that wish changed when the sacrificial spring lamb of our Christian holiday (perhaps angry for being superimposed on the pagan rite of vernal equinox) went up in literal flames just a few inches from our noses.  Totally unexaggerated truth here.  Stay with me.  More on that in a New England minute.

Easter is a good holiday.  I still believe that.  I believe that because (A) Easter is the Christian word for Spring, and (B) I like to eat lamb.  For many years, wherever I was living in the universe, I traveled to Sherborn, MA (my hometown, if I have one) on Easter Eve, spent the night at my Mom's, and woke up an hour before dawn to watch the sun come up on Easter as part of an annual ritual affiliated with the church of my youth.  I did this more than a few times in my teens, twenties, even into my thirties.  This is such an obscenely unthinkable feat to me now, I marvel at whatever impetus (neither Judeo nor Catholic) drove me to perform this strange pilgrimage all those years.

While living in Mexico, we would often have to stop on a desert highway in our station wagon to let several hundred people--many of them barefoot--cross the road to get to their religious destination, which was often several hundred miles away.  Peregrinacion, it was called, and occasionally the ladies who worked in the kitchen would ask me for three or four days off to participate in such a thoroughly exhausting devotion.  Awed by their strength and commitment, I always said yes for fear that the bloodied, horrific Mexican version of Jesus would bring a little wrath my way.

Like most Easters, this one started out fine enough, our two children joined by cousins visiting from the Carolinas, the lot of them canvasing our tick-strewn woods for strategically placed neon plastic eggs filled with little capsules of corn syrup, artificial color and chocolate.  (The Easter Bunny, I thought, has never been clued in to the childhood obesity epidemic in this country).  By noon, the air temperature clocked in at a preposterous seventy degrees in the shade.  Undiscovered chocolate eggs all over New England were now muddy puddles of their former selves.  By two o'clock, my assiduously rubbed leg of American lamb, impaled on a new rotisserie my dad picked up for the grill, took on a little too much heat, dropped a little too much fat, and burst into Hollywood-caliber flames.  I noticed this while looking lazily out the bathroom window during a moment of micturative meditation.  I think my fly was still down while I tried desperately to remove the carbon-crusted lamb from the wall of flame that had engulfed it.  The new rotisserie was sticking and a quick release of the skewer proved impossible, so I wrestled with the black sheep and the flames as Denise arrived on the scene to point out that the deck railing behind the grill was now also on fire.  I finally freed the crisp meat from its bonds and Denise doused the flaming deck.  Our family devoured that leg of lamb, a few hours later, after some strategic carbon removal and a conciliatory oven treatment.  Safe to say it tasted better knowing it almost burned our house down in the process.  We were almost, in effect, the lamb's own sacrificial lambs.

OK, so Providence is the theme, and you, the reader, are still trapped in Maine.  What gives? you ask.  Just rambling, as usual.  So, as radioman Paul Harvey used to say, here's the rest of the story...

A few months ago, Michael Honig--acclaimed Napa winemaker and sustainability spokesman whose vinous juice is synonymous with greatness--was asked to present his wines at Gracie's, an equally acclaimed restaurant in Providence, RI.  He suggested to the Gracie's organizers, among them Anter (the charming and lovably persuasive GM), that I come down for a guest chef dinner, pairing five courses with Honig's five wonderful wines.  I have done this before, over a year ago, at my own restaurant, so my answer was easy.  Of course, I would love to come down to Providence to cook a few dishes for a wine dinner featuring Honig wines at someone else's restaurant.

Gracie's is the kind of restaurant diners travel for.  It is truly a destination around which one should craft a vacation.  A growing minority of us in the US do this kind of thing nowadays; the food comes first, and the rest will follow.   That's our mindset for travel  planning.  If you put Providence on your map, Gracie's has to be part of the experience.  Here's why:

Gracie's is owned by a woman whose own grace makes us mortals feel clumsy.  She holds herself in such a way, with such finesse and elan (only French words can describe this kind of person), that you might wonder if her surname is a pseudonym.  Ellen Gracyalny has managed to raise a family while also running a star-studded restaurant in a city whose culinary identity has soared in recent years, in large part due to the presence of one of the country's foremost culinary schools, Johnson & Wales.  Ellen, who answers to "Miss Ellen" among her staff, is the consummate host, the kind of person who pampers you and makes you feel special.

Matt Varga, the recently named Executive Chef of Gracie's, has been in the kitchen of the Providence institution for a few years now, having inherited the esteemed role from Joe Hafner only in recent months, and he has the heart and passion--coupled with the respect of his seemingly endless culinary crew--to keep the Gracie's formula going for many years to come.

Matt and I decided to collaborate on a menu (rather than alternating courses), which I enjoyed because it  put my ideas in the brain of another chef with another perspective, and vice versa.  It takes an ego-free chemistry to make this process work, and Matt and I managed to pull off the menu-writing phase of the project in a two-hour phone call, each of us bearing our incoherently scribbled plate map as a guide.

Mike and Rebecca went to Providence on Sunday, when Mike joined Chef Matt and the Gracie's team for an evening of prep, followed by dinner and cocktails.  Denise and I caught the tail end of the cocktails, perfect concoctions at Cafe Noir.  The next day was dedicated to cooking, although most of my attempts to perform any actual culinary tasks were taken from me by the incredibly eager support staff at Gracie's.  At one point, we had a team of nine cooks and a dishwasher plating food for the event.


The timing of the event could have been better, the Monday after Easter not being a night most folks think about going out for a multi-course meal, but other than that, it was unforgettably flawless--a learning experience that didn't come with any hard life lessons.

Rather than walk through each course, I can sum up the evening by saying that technology (something I try to keep out of my kitchen) does have its place.  So many things I have only dreamed of are possible, and are easily executed in a kitchen like that of Gracie's, that I have to envy the regular clientele that gets to play guinea pig to such coolness.




Through Chefs Collaborative and the RAFT Grow Out program last year, I heard a lot of comparisons between the Providence restaurant scene and that of Portsmouth, in the sense that each community boasted a high number of chefs working directly with farmers.  Indeed, even a nightclub we passed in Providence had proudly displayed the names of farmers they bought from on the window by the door, but I have to admit that my most blissful gustatory experience came on the heels of cooking for a lot of people, when Chef Matt and some of his crew met Denise, Mike and me at an Irish Pub with a late night menu that included one of the most incredible grilled reubens I have ever tasted.

The morning we left Providence, Denise and I swung by a small storefront on Federal Hill where we picked out a live chicken from an assortment of caged fowl and took home the dressed bird fifteen minutes later, feet and all.  Our children proclaimed it the best chicken they had ever tasted.

From Gracie's to Murphy's (home of the perfect reuben) to the anonymous chicken store, Providence left me with a sense of hope for the future of American cuisine.  I am proud of what we have been able to achieve in Portsmouth, too, and I look forward to the day when such communities are not so unusual.

Thank you, Gracie's, Honig and Providence.  We had a glorious time.

Revelation 2:25

At 1:30 last Friday morning, as I lay down on the hard, wooden bench at the back of Black Trumpet’s dining room, head propped at an unnatural angle against a pile of kitchen towels, and attempted to sleep, my thoughts bounced almost audibly from Nostradamus to the Mayan calendar to the Book of Revelation.  One reason for this was the upside-down waterfall that had been surging through the front door of my restaurant, mirrored by the torrent of water cascading over the ancient eaves above the front window.  Behind the wall of water, I could barely discern occasional windborne UFO’s, some as large as chubby schnauzers, flying past like cows in “Twister.” At one point, I half-expected to witness Revelation 13 unfold before my eyes on the Piscataqua: “I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads,” etc. It was that dramatic, believe me.  And I’m not a Bible-quoting kind of guy.

To calm my nerves, I had popped a short shot of Herradura tequila at around midnight, perhaps explaining the ten-horned, seven-headed beast of Revelation.  Gilligan’s Island also came to mind when I peered out the window at the harbor boat across the street.  The hull of said harbor boat, labeled “PILOT,” is only visible when a perfect storm—Biblical winds, Great Bay snowmelt and swollen tides--converge on the scene.  We have only seen weather of such magnitude once before in this lifetime: Mother’s Day, 2008.  You may recall the cats-and-dogs onslaught.

Earlier that night, around the time attendees of our highly successful Spanish wine dinner had begun to file out the door into the deluge, I had laughed aloud at the storm’s severity: the almost comically contorted poses people with umbrellas assumed as they braced against the 70 MPH winds and walked to their cars.  Perhaps my laughter elicited an immediate karmic coda, because soon I was racing down the street to recover our planter and trash can, which were racing away in some clumsy dance, like a drunk Laurel and Hardy skit.

To grasp the true nature of portent that seized me in my postpartum wine dinner depression, we must also consider the two earthquakes that shook and shocked the world this February, bringing unthinkable tragedy to us at a vulnerable moment in world history.  And, of course, there’s the general state of the economy, the environment and the world at large.  Blecchhh.  Yet, as we sandbag ourselves from the horror, we must also embrace the gift that is beauty, and find happiness in the little things we so often take for granted.  I look at my kids when I need that boost.  Or I think about the heaps of praise I hear from people dining in my restaurant for the first time.  Or I think about the fact that Denise and I have just allowed our third anniversary as restaurant owners to pass quietly by.  The morning sun reflects off the puddles left in the wake of the storm.  That’s kind of where it feels like we are with our restaurant.  Whether or not the worst of the storm is behind us, there is between Denise and me a new zen understanding of the ebbs and flows of the business.  To find peace in chaos is a milestone, I think.  If not, then it’s a sign that we have both finally plummeted over the edge of our own waterfall, into the blissful abyss of insanity.  I prefer to go with the former, though.

Later Friday morning, when I awoke from a surprisingly sound sleep with two numb legs and a linen hemline on my cheek, I stumbled through the dining room, past the mirror reflecting a monstrous specter, to the front window, where Revelation 22 came to life: “Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb through the middle of the street of the city.”

Indeed, water had breached the banks and receded while I slept, and at 6:00, dawn’s bright sun reflected off every surface of the city.  The detritus-strewn aftermath, illuminated for all to see and marvel at, was kind of beautiful in its own way.  The dirty linen bags and flattened cardboard boxes I had used to mop the floor had absorbed most of the flood, and the steady window waterfall had been reduced to a drip.

Four of my seven kitchen employees, including sous chef/linchpin Mike, were away on vacation or on medical leave, and last-minute changes in childcare had caused a scramble that Thursday.  Fortunately, kitchen workhorses Carrie, Gabe and Sam—along with talented guest chef Gregg Sessler from Cava—pulled together a difficult menu for Thursday’s wine dinner.   The event was spectacular.  The restaurant remained intact, despite natural forces way beyond reckoning.  And I was not a Herald headline, “Restaurant Captain Goes Down with Ship,” or “Restaurant Owner Found in Yummy Rubble.”  All in all, just another day in the restaurant business, I suppose.

2010: A Spice Odyssey

Editor's Note: Think of this brief blog as one of those tall, fancy Lucite peppermills stuffed with multicolored grains of piper nigrum, and think of your brain as the dish that will receive a muted distillation of all these different individual piques.  But don't think of the following thoughts as anything spice related.  So, my apologies for the misleading title. I just wanted to be the first to come up with the obvious culinary headline we'll be seeing in newsprint for the rest of the year....

Indeed, a new year is upon us, and optimism is on the rise.  You can see it in the faces of our nightly guests at Black Trumpet, and--in turn--on the faces of our staff.  You can sense it in the tone of dialogue, the gestures of strangers.  And, of course, you can see it on our nightly wine sales reports.  Granted, this last may be one of the least appreciated of our country's economic indicators.  So, if Ben Bernanke is browsing the web and comes across this blog, I hope he'll rethink the metrics and formulae used to gauge the depth of the nation's debt-induced doo-doo by looking at what people are drinking.  Denise and I have performed a rudimentary autopsy of high-end wine consumption in the last year, and the results are fascinating.

The cause of death of the pricey wine bottle is obvious, and admittedly there have been sporadic signs of life amid the mourning, but for the most part, value has been the key to wine sales in 2009.  What is most interesting to note is that the void in wine sales has been filled by stronger medicine.  It seems that, in the second half of 2009, our 80-proof offerings provided significantly more comfort to guests than in previous second halves, although wine still accounts for double the sales of beer and liquor combined.  So, while liquor has increased, and wine has ebbed slightly, recent months have shown a noteworthy reversal, leading us to believe that household discretionary income tides are turning. 

Perhaps the best indicator of all is a new slot on our by-the-glass list.  Since early December, we have featured a truly spectacular wine, available for $24 a glass.  First, it was Freemark Abbey, a renowned Napa cabernet from the winemaker's favorite vintage.  Now it is Wellington Vineyard's Victory, a stellar Bordeaux blend.  This latter is fairly small production, so we'll be moving on in February to another big boy.  We introduced higher end glass wines that folks might balk at by the bottle to give everyone of every means a chance to experience some great wines.  With that, let me raise an imaginary glass and issue a hearty "welcome back," to high-end wines and the people who (are able to) enjoy them.


If BT liquor has surged over the holidays, it might have something to do with our crack team of mixologists.  I feel strongly that our current list of specialty cocktails--which our mixmistress Jody concocted (I can only be credited, or scorned, for naming them)--is without a doubt the best line-up we've had at Black Trumpet.  The Lava Lamp is a virtually interactive champagne cocktail that is so mesmerizing to watch one might forget to drink it.  The Anti-Occident is my personal favorite, with green tea ginger ale and citrus muddled with gin.  And there's the Quincy Alexander, Denise's fave, with quince-infused brandy and cream.  Yum!

Two weeks ago, we closed the restaurant for two days so our staff could convene for our annual Holiday Getaway.  Dexter's Inn in Sunapee played host for one long, wild night flanked by two days of winter recreation at Mt. Sunapee.  Meals were prepared, memories were constructed (and, in some cases, erased), and a good time was had by all.  Thank you to the cherished regular customer who sent us on our way to Sunapee with a colossal jug of Patron Silver! 

Our restaurant, our staff and our family appear to have weathered what we're now calling the Great Recession, and the world's economic bleeding may well have been staunched by the ligatures of time more than any reactionary policy measures.  These things are cyclical--however gratuitous, unnecessary and greed-induced this last deep valley may appear in retrospect--and we are all prone to the natural binging and purging of elements we do not fully understand.  One thing, though, that pervades our community organelle in the greater organism of human experience, is the need we have for each other.  I hope that, with the evolution of palm-held technology and social media and voice-activated everything, we will retain the obsolescent social medium called conversation.  Our wine bar is the kind of venue where conversation still reigns, where ideas exchange, revolutions begin, and friends and lovers forge their bonds.

Stay tuned....more meandering musings to come...

WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE

I realize this sounds pretty pie-in-the-sky, Pollyanna and Jiminy Cricket of me, but it is a rewarding feeling to get what you wish for.  Moreso even when what you get gives birth to something greater than the sum of its parts. And that’s precisely what the recent Heirloom Harvest Barn Dinner did for me; a small-scale recurring dream came to life in a very big way, with real people and delicious food and everything, all for a great cause. 

For those readers out of our email loop, here’s a brief synopsis of what went down at Berry Hill Farm in Stratham on October 11th:

Having always wanted to host a formal dinner in a barn where local farmers were celebrated for their hard work, I have been frustrated in years past by my lack of time for planning.  This last year proved different, as two nationwide organizations with talented planners and experienced administrators came to the fore, converging on our Seacoast area to raise money for a good farm-related cause. 

It was late last winter when Leigh from Chefs Collaborative and I started talking about the RAFT Grow Out project, which—at the time—lacked a name and an event.  Leigh was looking to make our area one of three New England regions selected to unite farmers and chefs behind the cause of reintroducing native heirloom crops whose future looked anything but bright.  Drawing on Gary Nabham's agricultural treatise, Renewing America's Food Traditions, Melissa, Leigh and the others at CC wanted to stimulate growth (and consumer awareness) of regional crops. 

In March, Black Trumpet hosted a meeting of farmers and chefs interested in the Grow Out, and Chefs Collaborative distributed seeds to the farmers to grow.  Chefs committed to buying the fruits of these plants, and for a moment in time, we had a roomful of committed growers and chefs talking about how to improve the existing farm-to-table system in our area.  We could have talked through the night, and many of our frustrations remain, but the cohesion and camaraderie established that day has endured for many of us, and several chefs absent that day have already approached me about being involved next year.

As the spring rolled wet and cold into what should have been summer, Jenny and Michelle at Slow Food USA--a wonderful organization that had done harvest dinners in our area in the past--joined the team and, by June, we had an action plan, a name and a cause to rally behind.  The Heirloom Harvest Barn Dinner was then assigned to a new hire at Chefs Collaborative, a woman with whom I would soon be speaking on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis.  Anne Obelnicki: she of the inner city Detroit upbringing and high-profile culinary 'dishternship' at Inn at Little Washington, she who lived in a tent on an organic farm for a season, bearer of numerous degrees and tireless traveler.  Anne would become the linchpin of the Barn Dinner planning process.

So it was that Chefs Collaborative and Slow Food took my somewhat ethereal notion of a barn dinner and turned it into a tangible, fun-filled fundraiser that will likely become—yessiree!—an annual event.

On Sunday, October 11th, 2009, the event volunteers (over forty of them!) seemed to descend from the antique rafters of Caroline Robinson's five-story barn.  They arrived as early as 9 AM, and they cleaned, decorated, prepped, greeted, poured, cooked, served, cleaned again, washed dishes, and saw to every detail that a formal dinner requires.  It seemed like there was little guidance, and that every volunteer knew exactly what to do.  Six chefs and their teams prepared incredible food, and all eighty-four guests in attendance (especially the farmers) seemed to appreciate that the imperiled ingredients for each course were locally grown and prepared with much love and forethought.

Even the weather cooperated.  Just before guests arrived, I watched my two children, swaying in the amber afternoon light, on rope swings that hung from an ancient tree in front of the barn.  They were not unaware of the idyll they represented, and when I asked Eleanor why they had been swinging for so long, she replied, "I would have gotten down sooner, but everybody wanted to take pictures  of us."
Self-awareness, I think, is a tremendous strength in a child.  Humility will come later.

Taking a tip from my daughter, I can acknowledge that the event was a huge success, dreamlike in its perfect cadence and enhanced by the periodic power outages that cast temporary darkness on the scene.  Humility for me came the next day, when I went back to the barn in a state of post-partem depression, to recover some leave-behinds, and I thanked and congratulated resident farmers Josh and Jean, who toiled above and beyond anyone's expectations to prepare and maintain the venue,  and then I drove away, solemn and wistful, the first annual Heirloom Barn Dinner filed away as a memory.

As I drove, the refrain in my head came from the famed quipster Theodore Roosevelt.  It was a quote I had used in my toast at the Barn Dinner, and its simplicity is still resonating with me today: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

View all the photos online: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blacktrumpet/sets/72157622590696146/

A Call to Farms: Chef's Day Off

It seems only right that the “Summer of 2009” arrived a month or so behind schedule. This year has been a heap of crap for the most part, what with the relentless, torrential one-two punch of weather and fiscal woes. For us Malletts, it has been a great year for evaluation, Small Business Management 101, and family-oriented stuff that no one really wants to read about. Despite the six-week-long biblical deluge that spanned most of June and July, we have seen periodic suggestions that things might be improving nanofilamentally (not a word, blog cops); we have seen emerging evidence that there is a flickering candle somewhere at the far end of the half-collapsed mine shaft we call 2009. I argue that, for all of the wounded and downtrodden, for all the huddled masses seeking jobs and hope, no one has felt the crush quite like farmers.



My friends in the restaurant industry--few in number but widespread in geography, experience and business-type—are all in the same lifeboat, a vessel which is taking on a lot of water but miraculously not sinking. We chefs are a resilient bunch, accustomed to cuts, burns, violence, anxiety, palpitations, muscle pain and—worst of all—ego-stomping criticism. So it is no surprise that, in this epoch of econoclimatic stress disorder we continue to endure, my friends have sought out supplementary income and contingency plans, some of them consulting, others taking on prep work or catering or—let’s face it—whatever it takes to pay the bills. Still, their grievances can’t measure up to the farmers who have faced months of nonstop rain, wildly fluctuating temperatures, blight, and—in some cases—total crop loss.

I am not writing this blog to whine on my own or anyone else’s behalf, as reflexive and therapeutic as that is for me, but rather to describe my one day off, a relatively cloudless and hot Tuesday in August. I am no Joyce, alas, or even a Leo Bloom for that matter, but I thought this day-in-a-life was worth capturing for those readers who imagine a chef’s “day off” to be something more glamorous. Here goes…

THE PLAN

Although I admit that it was my idea, I can’t say that I remember any moment of epiphany, cognition or decision that led to The Plan. My daughter Eleanor has wanted to expand our humble country home into a full-fledged farm for some time now, and her parents have dissuaded the idea with a number of excuses that have not even begun to take purchase in her slick, obdurate and fast-moving train of thought. I applaud her tenacity, and I confess to running out of defenses against her argument. “Just two goats, Daddy, That’s all I ask” The Plan came about as a last ditch effort to put all the childish arguments to rest, to once and for all quell Eleanor’s desire to convert our placid woodlot to a full-on Waltons-type situation. Once she saw the tremendous work ethic required to maintain farm animals, I predicted, she would come to the shocking realization that farm life was too rugged for a child. She would return to a normal girl’s world of books, dolls and knitting, a safe and uneventful haven free of heavy machinery and poop.

Of course, The Plan—hereafter referred to as “Farm Day”--was doomed to backfire from the get-go. I proceeded anyway, in part because I too harbor visions of a small farm on our property (as long as someone other than I milks, slops, shovels, herds and otherwise cares for the menagerie). Seemingly ignorant to this eventuality, I doggedly forged ahead with Farm Day, the idea of which involved getting up with the sun and piling in the car to the nearest working dairy farm, where our groggy kids would witness the laborious process of milking and then be utterly disgusted by a stableful of pig plop.

FARM DAY: 5:30 AM

I have a cheap alarm clock that possesses its own agenda. If you set it, for example, to awaken at 5:30 AM, it will begin its immutable beeping crescendo at that hour and then, after being squelched with a smack to one of three unlabeled buttons on the top, will revisit the cacophony every ten minutes for a span of time I have yet to ascertain because my solution after three or four reminders is to unplug the mechanical demon and curse myself awake.

So it was on August 4th, a Tuesday, my day of rest. So it also was, incidentally, on Wednesday, August 5th, Thursday, August 6th, and so on ads infinitum and nauseam.
On this special day, however, I managed to rally with a forced smile, as my excited children responded to their “call to farms” efficiently and without complaint, much to my amazement and chagrin.

Even Denise, after working a long double the day before, miraculously rose to the occasion and donned farmwear before the clock struck 6:00. At 6, after hurried efforts at a road breakfast, we scrambled out into the sunrise with no clear agenda and an almost palpable excitement.

Brookford Farm in Rollinsford is a friendly place, the kind of farm where we felt comfortable popping in unannounced as the sun crested over the Salmon Falls River, the cool grey light turning blue and warm in visible gradients before our eyes. Luke was there, corralling the cows into the concrete-and-steel sixpen built for high-octane milking. Certain hefty and headstrong heifers required full-body tackles and smacks to the haunches, which we watched with delight, offering help with the full knowledge that we had no idea how or where to jump in. We were reduced to voyeurism, as Luke turned on the suction pump and hooked up the cows to plastic lactoreceptors, which piped the fresh, raw, warm milk to a vast cistern in the adjacent room.

For those unfamiliar with Luke and Caterina Mahoneys’ arrangement, the youthful and happy farming couple lease the farm from an exceptionally benevolent and hard-working woman named Mrs. Aikens. Mrs. Aikens has owned the land and the structures on it for time immemorial, but Luke and Caterina have been farming there for the last few years. The operation has burgeoned in that time to thirty or so head of cattle, countless chickens, and a phalanx of hogs.

Luke seemed pleasantly surprised, but ultimately unfazed, by our arrival. We parted ways after the second load of bessies filled the pens. He apologized for his tacit nature, yet he volunteered plenty of farm hospitality and wisdom, and demonstrated the kind of efficiency only an expert can.

6:30 AM
We moseyed over to the pig poke for slop time, and we were treated to a glorious feast of grains and groans. The pigsty looked and smelled just like a pigsty, which I was certain the kids would find repugnant beyond words. Naturally, The Plan--like all well-laid plans--had been destined to backfire, so I was not totally shocked to see my children walking right up to the sty and patting putrid (albeit incredibly cute) pig noses without holding their own noses even once. In fact, I moved on from the stench trench well before it even crossed the kids’ minds. Eventually, we all toured the grounds of Brookford Farm, including the free-range mobile poultry unit on the hill across the street, where all kinds of oviparous fowl played around a vehicle that was half wagon, half funhouse. Happy chickens, as we know, lay the most delicious eggs. (Since our fisher friend came and raided our henhouse at home, leaving a horror scene behind, we have only Trumpet left, a coppery black sexlink that only occasionally drops an egg.)

7:00 AM
One of the best examples of how hard work and good soil are all you need to produce giant, delicious vegetables is Peter Allen’s plot in Mrs. Aiken’s field adjacent to Brookford Farm. This adjunct operation, sublet by the Mahoneys, has allowed Peter Allen, from whom I have sourced chickens for the Black Trumpet menu for a couple of years, to raise crops for a CSA that has helped finance some of his poultry costs. There is a lot of mutual backscratching that happens between farmers, just as we chefs share resources, including local pigs, purveyors and even staff. It ‘s the Hillarian village model working as it was intended.

A walk through Peter Allen’s crops, which span the length of two football fields laid out end-to-end, is like a walk through a dwarf rain forest. Rows of dinosaur kale seemed aptly named as my children disappeared among the enormous leaves. Collard greens and kohlrabi towered over plump cabbages and all manner of brassicas. Cows have grazed in these fields, Peter later explained, for decades, leaving their fecund deposits to fertilize the long-fallow meadow, thereby making it the perfect substrate for cultivating vegetables. We snagged a few fava beans for sampling (they were incredible!), and then went to meet Peter’s birds.

7:45 AM
After a jaunt back to the fields behind Brookford Farm, we met up with Peter himself to tour the undulating fields by the banks of the river where his chickens
enjoy one of the best views around. The cages designed by Peter are, like his philosophy, inspired by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm in Virginia. Mr. Salatin has become an outspoken spokesman for the revolution. (I use the term revolution in its most literal sense here, meaning a return to the beginning, the way things were intended to be). Having authored many passionate treatises and mentored hundreds of poultry farmers around the country, Salatin has created a movement toward pasture-raised birds devoid of chemicals, artificial feed or cruel confinement.

Following the Salatin model, Allen’s birds graze on meadow grasses in wheeled, open-bottomed cages that allow ample room to move. When they have depleted the grass supply beneath the cages, they are moved a few feet along to a fresh patch. When the pesky mink and foxes leave them alone, the birds lead normal chicken lives. Following the aforementioned model, happy chickens make yummier poultry.

9:00 AM
I have had the distinct luxury of working with Gabe Balkus, an ambitious young man so like the 21-year-old me that he has been referred to as my Mini-me, for the entire lifespan of Black Trumpet. He has joined me on a few foraging outings, exhibiting the same geekish curiosity and eagerness that got him the job as garde manger and dishwasher, a post he has since served with total dedication and a mighty sunny countenance to boot. His role has evolved, but not as fast as either of us might wish. As assistant baker and pastry chef, he has shown great promise. When I invited him to join me for a speed-forage in the woods near my house, he accepted with the full knowledge that neither he nor I are what you would call “morning people.”

So, there he was, groggy but bighearted, at my house at 9:00 in the morning, trash bag in hand. We sprayed ourselves heavily with deet and ventured out with Moxie, our hyperactive Bernese mountain dog, into the bug-infested woods, where we found a few handfuls of chanterelles and various boletes over the span of an hour and a half. We were too early for black trumpets, but we split our winnings and parted ways.

10:30 AM, still Tuesday
So now the clock said mid-morning, but it felt like evening. If all days started at six, I could surely conquer the world while still having time for my job, family, house and gardens. A quick reality check reminds me that days can only start at six if they don’t end at one-thirty in the morning. Ambition is so dependent on insomnia.

12:30 PM
After Denise built a delicious lunch comprised of mostly locally farmed produce, the kids and I hopped in the car and raced to Center Strafford, where we had a date to tour Nelson Farm with Anne Obelnicki of Chef’s Collaborative. I cannot say enough in this blog about Chef’s Collaborative, whose Boston office has built inestimable credibility and assembled an enormous cadre of supporters over the years. This year, Anne has come on board to give our area (the New Hampshire Seacoast and vicinity) support as we take our successful but underfinanced model of local, sustainable, quality farming to a higher, more visible level.

Like Anne, I was sad to find that she and the Malletts were the extent of the preorganized tour group. Sean and Sarah, the couple who work the Nelson Farm fields and produce a remarkable array of organic and sustainable produce in a smallish space, have also managed to raise an infant (often seen napping at Portsmouth Farmers’ Market), not an easy feat in the best of times, but in this economy, I salute them. When they are not raising a family and farming the land, they also manage to cater large functions out of a truck that Sean picked up a year ago, Thoughts of them take me back to cheffing with newborns, an exercise that should be reserved for the young or foolish or both.

The tour began with Cormac clambering on an antique tractor, which proved to be a great photo op, followed by a walking tour of the greenhouse and fields. Although the variety of crops succeeding in the suddenly torrid August heat would have impressed me enough, the fact that Sean powers the sizable greenhouse with used fry oil is truly heroic.

As we were leaving Nelson Farm, Sean pulled some fresh veggies from various plants and handed them to the kids. Eleanor and Cormac ate the greenhouse tomatoes like apples, right there on the spot, juices dribbling down their chins. I thanked Sean and Anne and headed home with the kids for a locally farmed dinner followed by a farmer’s early bedtime for all. When I asked Eleanor if she still wanted to have farm animals, she replied, “Ooooh, yeah, baby! More than ever.” Backfire accomplished.

EPILOGUE

Shortly after Farm Day, Eleanor plucked a few leaves of wood-sorrel from the periphery of our backyard and popped them in her mouth as a treat. “Eleanor,” I exclaimed, “we humans can’t eat clover like cows!” To wit, she replied, “Daddy, it’s not clover; it’s wood sorrel.” I stand corrected, my heart bursting with pride. Of course, sorrel and clover--both in abundance in our yard (not your plastic emerald Scott’s Lawngard kind of yard, obviously)—do make excellent fodder for domesticated ungulates, too. Maybe Eleanor will get her wish one day, maybe even in the not-too-distant future. If we ever do upgrade to dairy farming and animal husbandry, I now believe we (or at least the kids) have what it takes to maintain the herd.

Stay tuned for upcoming blogs:

Dining Criticism 101: A Former Critic’s Review of His Own Restaurant

The Autumn Harvest Barn Dinner

AD AGRICOLA PER ASPERA

Thank gods (and Ceres, specifically) for spring, eh? As the icy white fist of winter finally loosens its grip on our blue-lipped world, we turn to Nature’s most welcome promise—that days will now warm and expand, granting our shivering skin a hint of the sun’s hot breath to come, and reintroducing the color green to March’s neutral palette. No matter your regard for New England winter, this spring is sure to bring to your face a mile-wide smile like no year in recent memory. If we can’t count on fiscal recovery right away, we at least have spring to look forward to, right? Right? So go stick your fingers in some cold loam and polish off your rusty trowels. In New England, one earns spring.

For my part, I have been busily dreaming of seeds, soil and sun since the opening days of ’09. I met with local farmers Garen and Josh in late January to discuss seed purchases for this coming summer, particularly as they pertain to our Black Trumpet menu. Every January, in exchange for feeding the farmers, I get their attention in one finite space for a finite moment to exchange ideas about what can be grown, harvested, cooked and eaten. It’s a necessary break for all three of us from shoveling snow and staring out into the frozen void.

So, as we sat down in the wine bar in the midst of Sunday Snowstorm number Seventeen of the winter, we three lads discussed potential crops, possible failures and shortcomings, strengths and weaknesses, and many other not-so-manly concessions and confessions. The two farmers learned about my quirky fondness for kohlrabi, scented geranium, agastache foeniculum, red-fleshed potatoes and purslane, among other oddities. And I learned from them about the difficulties of growing spring brassicas in a pesticide-free environment.

The cast of this tete-a-tete, excluding the narrator: Garen Heller, a local institution in his own right, has been working the land at Back River Farm in Dover since I have been in the business in Portsmouth (eleven years!). Josh Jennings, a clever and well-spoken organic cultivator, along with his adorable and equally articulate partner, Jean, are very hard-working farmers who have made a huge name for themselves and Meadow’s Mirth Farm on both the farmer’s market and direct-to-restaurant wholesale circuits. We agreed on a few things that each of the farmers already excel at, and Garen and Josh agreed to take on some new crops as well, if only to test the waters (using Black Trumpet patrons and farmer’s marketgoers as guinea pigs).

The next day, my own seed catalogs arrived in the mail. As anachronistic as it is to be looking at pictures of midsummer fruits in the bowels of January, I derive a very pleasurable dose of hope from those little mags. I remember getting pretty excited about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue when I was a teen. Now, perhaps sadly, pictures of heirloom Thelma Sanders squash have replaced those of Paulina Porizkova in a monokini as my harbingers of spring.

After browsing four or five catalogs over the course of a few days, I finally placed my annual order, this year using only High Mowing Seeds in Vermont. I like the grass-roots operation and the seed-saving imperative that separates High Mowing Seeds from the competition, and we all appreciate the importance of spending a few more cents for a packet of seeds that has been saved from the previous year’s crop and cared for without ever coming into contact with fertilizers, pesticides or any other artificial hazard, n’est-ce pas?

My Dad—and countless other observers—will look at my gardens again this year and say things like, “Why don’t you just kill the bugs that are choking your garden?” Or, “If you use this powder, your plants will produce twice as much fruit.” No, I won’t do it, I tell them, and I’ll happily have the most threadbare and sullen little raised beds in the county if that’s the price I have to pay for using organic practices. To look at me, you might not see hippie (thinning hair won’t allow it), but on the inside, I am constantly hugging the earth and all that it gives us, even at the cost of violating my softcore suburban punk-rock past.

I recently met with Jenny Isler, a local organic gardening guru and supervisor of our Strawbery Banke Community Garden. Black Trumpet has always had a bed at Strawbery Banke, and members of my kitchen crew have always volunteered to plant, weed, and maintain that bed. This year, Sous Chef Mike—a really great guy—and Rounds Cook Carrie—a really great gal, are taking control of the garden, in part because I wasn’t obsessive-compulsive enough last year to map the placement of every seed in the raised bed. So far, I’m taking the hostile takeover of the garden pretty well, but I do hope Mike and Carrie will let me weed periodically as a gesture of goodwill. Something Jenny said to me has been resonating since we sat down: economic sustainability is the linchpin of ecologic sustainability. In other words, if the goal is to construct a locally sustainable farm-to-chef connection, the price has got to be right, especially when the purse strings are tight.

As an endnote (I hate to say “appendix,” because a pinkie-sized vestigial organ uselessly occupying valuable human gut space does nothing to promote further inquiry), we recently hosted a really cool event at our restaurant. On Sunday, March 8, Chef’s Collaborative and Slow Food conducted a seed-saving symposium of seacoast chefs and growers (alliteration, meet sibilance). The idea of the event was to get farmers and chefs together to brainstorm a “grow out” of heirloom seeds native to the Northeast, many of which are in danger of being hybridized or eliminated altogether from the agricultural family tree. At the end of the meeting, each farmer received a grocery bag full of seeds for the grow out. What this means to the consumer is that, soon, the farmer’s markets and restaurants will be featuring Thelma Sanders squash, Boothby Blond cucumber and cranberry shelling beans.

My plea for this year (besides the one that cries for everyone to remember that eating out at small, independent restaurants supports communities and keeps restaurants around) is to ask everyone I know to put a New England heirloom seed or two in their garden, even if they don’t have a garden. What you grow is part of who we are. It’s kind of like “You are what you eat,” but it’s more like “You eat what you are.”

Oh, and by the way, Happy 2nd Birthday, Black Trumpet! Thank you to all who have helped us outlive the average American restaurant.