Milky Way Tastes Like Raspberries

In my garden we have a golden raspberry bush. These are a high anticipated item with big time sensuality. If I had to pick a favorite food...one stand-out edible thing above all else....it would be berries. Memories of climbing Mulberry trees and stuffing myself while hanging, sneaking into a neighbors raspberry patch and sampling, and going to orchards for blueberries and gorging certainly influence my opinion and enhance my love of them.

So raspberries have a signature flavor that comes from ethyl formate. As it turns out or Galaxy has a large surrounding cloud of this same chemical. It is therefore safe to say that our galaxy, the Milky Way, tastes like Raspberries.

Goose Egg Frittata

Goose eggs became available recently at FFFS. They have more richness than chicken eggs, mainly from the fact that the yolk is larger both in size and in proportion to the whites. They make a great scramble and the yolk is amazing if cooked just barely, as in the lacquered yolk technique. These are from Geese at Pecan Meadow Farm in Newburg, PA.

This is a frittata I made with morels, Gold Ball turnips, and Landisdale organic kale. It was for a clients brunch party and seemed to be a real crowd pleaser. Green Meadow baby mesclun, roasted beets, crispy shitakes and good olive oil are also in this dish.

Garden Teacher

Garden season is here. Having a garden, no matter how small, is an excellent way to encourage a practical sustainable mindset. It's easy enough to talk up being "green" and how high your standards are in buying local and organic, but living in this world is more than talking. Our effect on this world as a consumer is always a compromise. A compromise to ideals and the fantasy of perfect balance.

This fennel which grows with determination in my small backyard garden is a great choice of food ingredient. The reasons why are not because I was psyched by a fennel dish in an issue of Art Culinaire, or because some Celebrity Chef on TV used fennel, it's because this fennel is what grew in the harsh yet organic paradigm of my garden. In the words of Matthew Rodin "it works!". Sustainability is about being in tune with our environment and with what's working moment to moment, season to season.

Seeking the "high end" of dining experience means setting high standards and striving to maintain them. The result can be deeply satisfying and it's why we chefs do what we do. Maintaining high standards in cooking to me has become more and more about quality of ingredient. It is for this reason that choosing local foods (for obvious reasons), sustainable fish (and everything thing else for that matter), and minimizing waste (less plastic bags!) are just as important to the food as the cooking technique.

Our ability to enjoy food is at risk when the environment is at risk.