LOCAL BITES

Cruising Along
Set sail on a luxurious evening of dinner, wine, dancing and champagne aboard the Spirit of Boston for “VinoVoyage 2011: Rock the Boat” tomorrow, Sept. 23, 6:30-10pm. Gordon’s Fine Wine and Culinary Center has everything you need to know to hop onboard and enjoy this vino-vacation — even if it’s only for a night.

Eat Boutique’s Local Market
Spend this Saturday, Sept. 24, wining and dining on locally-produced, hand-made treats at Eat Boutique’s Local Market, 1-5pm, at Fort Point’s Twelve Chairs. Guests will meet local food purveyors and cookbook authors (Joanne Chang! Amy Traverso! Amy McCoy, aka Poor Girl Gourmet!), taste delicious sweet and savory treats, and shop for edible gifts. The event is free, but reservations recommended.

Brunch on Board
Enjoy brunch while gliding past Boston’s city skyline on Sunday, Sept. 25, 11am-1pm, with Liberty Fleet of Tall Ships. It’s a feast for the eyes, and stomach. Get tickets and more information from the Liberty Fleet site.

From City to (Powisset) Farm
Escape from the hustle and bustle of city streets to Powissett Farm’s Fall Festival this Sunday, Sept. 25, 10am-3pm. Welcome in fall with cider pressing, farm tours, live music, activities for kids and more. Visit The Trustees of the Reservation for info, or contact Meryl LaTronica, Powisset’s Farm Manager, for more information mlatronica@ttor.org.

It’s Back: Boston Local Food Festival
The Boston Local Food Festival will be celebrating regional and organic foods next Saturday, October 1, 11am-5pm, at Port Channel on the Boston Waterfront. The festival, themed “Healthy Food for All,” will offer freshly harvested produce and seafood, delicious dishes made with local ingredients, as well as take-away from Made-in-Massachusetts producers and tastings of local craft beer, mead and wine. Demonstrations and meet-and-greets with local farmers and producers will also be a part of the day. Boston Chefs’ site has all the info here.

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Chef Charlie Redd of Redd’s in Rozzie doesn’t take himself too seriously — at least as far as his image goes. His character goes by the name of Chef Delicious and has been known to wear a Mexican wrestler’s mask when he greets diners after their meals. It’s his dig at the notion of chef as celebrity  – and, he says, when kids are at the restaurant, they just love it.

His food has as much character as he does. Make no mistake, however, he takes his cooking quite seriously, even though the task at hand is one that he clearly relishes. Currently, one of his favorite dishes is his version of that classic Greek baked dish, eggplant moussaka.

Moussaka is a dish Redd says is fun to make, but you need to focus on getting the details right (like toasting your spices, keeping your oil hot when frying the eggplant, etc.), so that all the various flavors come through. It’s a dish that is perfect for early fall, since it makes use of an ingredient — eggplant — that’s in abundance at New England farmstands and markets right now.

Here’s the recipe… Continue reading →

Take a minute to think about your lunch today. Was it well balanced, nutritious and seasonal? Was it portioned correctly, so that you ate it all without inadvertently overeating? Was it beautifully constructed, with bright colors and funky designs? And, most importantly, did your lunch produce no food, plastic or paper waste?

Before attending the recent book launch for Debra Samuels’ latest cookbook, My Japanese Table: A Lifetime of Cooking with Friends and Family, sponsored by the Japan Society of Boston, I would have assumed that a lunch following so many guidelines would be too time-consuming to make, too expensive to buy day after day, and too unattainably ideal to be both beautiful and delicious. But after Samuels’ palate-engaging introduction to the Japanese Bento box this past Wednesday at the Children’s Museum, Boston, I will never look at a brown paper bag lunch the same way again.

To begin the evening, Samuels voiced a common myth circulating among American kitchens: “For many people, Japanese food is unapproachable, with small, beautiful, expensive portions.” But as I learned throughout the evening, Japanese Obento features principles of eating that Americans are valuing more and more and promoting to others.

“Japanese Obento is about small portions, a lot of variety, seasonality, balance, presentation and quality,” she explained. What’s more, according to Samuels, the Bento box, and all of the healthy and yummy goodness it contains, is extremely accessible to American families.

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For many Americans, fish in a can starts and ends with tuna. Big mistake, I think. Not only is canned tuna often not sustainable (think of the dolphins!) or healthy (think of the mercury! the BPA!) or, frankly, appetizing (think of… well, many a tuna fish sandwich you may have eaten!), there are so many other, delicious choices worth delving into for around the same cost.

I’m a big fan of sardines and smoked oysters, but recently I’ve also fallen for anchovies in a big way. Something about them seems so Old World, so Mediterranean-essential, that they’re instantly more romantic than anything in a can has any right to be (you can even find them coiled up around little capers – these are great for a cheese plate or for when you make pasta puttanesca).

This white bean salad with anchovies and Muscat grapes from My French Kitchen seems so perfect for here and now – but it is also strange, and intriguing, and ambiguously foreign. I want to make it for a light dinner in lieu of spending too much money on tapas.

One of the simultaneous draws and drawbacks of island living is isolation from the mainland bustle of the ordinary everyday. With erratic ferry delays dictated by weather (Hurricane Irene, yikes!), sometimes the seclusion from modern conveniences— such as a predictably decent sandwich from Panera or a favorite brand of iced coffee— can be frustrating.

However, for chefs on the forefront of the Nantucket restaurant scene, the island’s separation from the commercial food route presents a unique opportunity to commit fully to local sustainability.

Leading by example is Straight Wharf Restaurant and Ventuno Restaurant, the two biggest buyers from the Bartlett’s Farm Association, Nantucket’s oldest and biggest family owned farm.

The restaurants, headed by partners Gabriel Frasca, Amanda Lydon and Scott Fraley, are in the midst of celebrating a bountiful end of summer harvest with menus almost exclusively featuring island-grown and raised goods. “The farming community informs our decisions and helps design our menu,” Chef Frasca said, amidst prepping for a busy weekend night. “It is not because of philosophical or political reasons, though those certainly may factor in, but because that is what is best and what makes the most sense.”

And following “what makes the most sense” has certainly yielded dishes pleasurable to the sensory system as well. Continue reading →

LOCAL BITES

Virtue/Vice
Tonight! Sept. 15th, 5-7:30pm, Taza Chocolate will be welcoming to their Somerville digs four members of the DR-based La Red Guaconejo cacao cooperative, Taza’s primary source of cacao. The evening will be celebrated with La Red cacao and chocolates, as well as Direct Trade Certified coffee courtesy of Counter Culture Coffee. The event is free and open to the public; read more about it here.

Grazing Out
Join “theGraze,” a backyard barbecue celebration this Saturday, Sept. 17th, 5-8pm (4pm cocktail hour) at 38 Cherry St. in Somerville to benefit theMove. The event will feature all-local-grass-fed meat, plus local beer, wine, veggies and snacks. Check out all the info here.

Farm Feast
The Boston Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier will be sponsoring “Feast on a Farm,” a Green Tables event, on Saturday, Sept. 17th, 6-10pm at Verrill Farm. The night will be filled with delicious hors d’oeuvres, a brimming buffet, live music and dancing, and a silent auction benefitting the Future Chef’s Program. Les Dames Boston has everything you need to know to reserve your spot.

An Apple a Day…
Everyone loves chomping into their first Fall apple, right? Usher in autumn at Smolack Farms’ Apple Festival this Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 17-18th, 10am-4pm. Pick to your heart’s content, then head down to the Children’s Farm Festival, complete with hayrides, a play area and other kid-friendly activities.

Swap Away
Jazz up your pantry and make new friends at the Boston Food Swap this Sunday, Sept. 18th, 2-4pm at Space With a Soul. Your home-grown and homemade creations are the currency at this open-market-style event. The swap is free, but you gotta’ reserve a spot. Tips and tricks-of-the-trade can be found on Boston Food Swap’s site. New to swapping? Check out PRK’s recent coverage.

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Wow. It’s hard to know where to even BEGIN with this one!!

Instead of taking you out to a hip JP tapas bar, or out for authentic Mexican in East Boston, Sarah Kleinman of Boston Eats puts her stomach on the line and experiments (appropriate word) with the kosher food from a vending machine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her rabbi friend joins her.

What’s hot? What’s nosh, and what’s not? Listen in.

Previous reviews from Boston Eats:
The Oak Room, Boston
Cutty’s, Brookline
Tasty Burger, Fenway
All Star Sandwich Bar, Inman Square

 

After last month’s scare from the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission, craft brewers in Massachusetts have gotten some good news from the state.

You might recall from Anna Pinkert’s earlier  report through PRK that the state alcohol commission announced a rule last month that Massachussetts’ craft beer brewers, who operate under a farmer-brewer license, must grow at least half of their beer’s hops and grain themselves, or get them from a local farm. After considerable protest from brewers, the rule was later reversed.

Now a different state agency — the Department of Agriculture — has proposed an approach to the same problem that is more of a carrot, not the alcohol commission’s original stick.

The ‘carrot’ comes in the form of a two-year project called “From Grain to Glass,” the goal of which is to find ways to facilitate connections between craft brewers and farmers in Massachusetts, plus increase the overall use of local ingredients by craft beer brewers in the state.  Find out more about the initiative from the Patriot Ledger’s Mass. Market blog.

Chickens may be easy to grow (and love) but slaughtering them locally–that’s another issue altogether.

Today on Radio Boston, Adam Ragusea visits a Mobile Poultry Processing Unit (MPPU), a grant-funded joint project between Tufts University’s New Entry Sustainable Farming Project and the New England Small Farm Institute. Listen here to learn more.