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EAT with R, Lydia, Nicholas, Hugh and brand new friends. EAT’s owner, Jordan, has changed the restaurant’s structure quite a bit in the past couple of years. Currently, they have a NO-CHOICE menu- you come in, sit down, and they bring you food, usually 3-4 courses of seasonal vegetarian fare. Almost everything comes from NY farmers except some salt from Maine or rice from the Carolinas. It’s fun. Kind of like going to a friend’s house for dinner.

R and I just finished some epic Spring cleaning and a Spring juice cleanse.

(Markets have been a little sparse after the winter, but we were able to use a lot of local sprouts, carrots and apples. Sprouts from Windfall Farms, carrots from Garden of Eve.)  

Last night we cooked local winter bounty with chef Peter Berley at Brooklyn Kitchen. Robert and I made the carrot and celeriac slaw with a spicy mustard and toasted fennel seed dressing. Also to be had were heaping helpings of braised purple cabbage with apples, spicy cayenne mashed rutabaga, pickled herring potato salad, local pork sausages and honey poached pears with shortbread cookies.

Peter is opening a place out in Long Island in April that will have a big kitchen for classes and a wood-fire oven for making bread. He’s also starting a 4-season garden. We’ll definitely be spending a weekend or 2 out there this summer. Love this man!

Whole maitake mushrooms (aka hen of the woods) from Mycomedicinals Madura Farms in Goshen, NY.  These must be of the speckled hen variety.

A tasting of local fermented vegetables: juniper green cauliflower, garlic dill pickles, caraway green beans, purple carrot gingered spicy sauerkraut, curried golden cauliflower, pickled jalapenos, spicy radishes, traditional caraway sauerkraut.

a soup for a saturday afternoon, spicy red cabbage broth with kabocha squash stuffed (quinoa pasta) dumplings, shredded green cabbage, romanesco, cilantro, chives.