Ann Gentry is the creator and founder of Real Food Daily (RFD), a mecca for organic, vegan cuisine in Los Angeles, where she and her staff serve up delicious, plant-based food to celeb devotees including Alicia Silverstone, Ellen DeGeneres, and Conan O’Brien. The executive chef to Vegetarian Times magazine, and star of her own cooking show, Naturally Delicious, Gentry is also the author of The Real Food Daily Cook Book. Her new cookbook, Vegan Family Meals: Real Food For Everyone, just out this week, offers more than 100 tasty recipes. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Gentry about cooking for families, raising children vegetarian, and why she believes in feeding people whole, natural food.  

What’s a Southern girl like you doing in a vegan joint in Hollywood?

I’m from Tennessee, and like most people, grew up eating the Standard American Diet, only Southern style. People ate a lot of meat, everything was fried, and no one questioned frozen or packaged food. When I moved to New York City in the 1980s to pursue an acting career, I worked in a natural foods restaurant and that experience had a big impact on me. I became interested in the cause and effect relationship between my body and the food I ate. But mostly, I just felt really good eating whole food. When I moved to Los Angeles in the late 1980s, I worked as a personal chef to actor/director Danny DeVito, and later had a home delivery service before I opened the first RFD restaurant in 1993. I base my cooking on macrobiotics (a diet based on whole grains and vegetables), which taught me the connection between diet and health. I’ve been vegetarian and vegan on and off for three decades; these days I eat a small amount of dairy and fish.

What about cooking for families appeals to you?

I thought the RFD cookbook would be my one and only. But, I realized I had another book in me after I had two children (a daughter, Halle, twelve, and a son, Walker, eight) and began feeding my family out of my own home kitchen. I wanted to create a book with very simple and tasty recipes. The central theme of this book is family and who is around your table and it doesn’t have to be kids. Your family is your friends, neighbors, colleagues, and even just yourself. I want people to sit down and eat together in a healthy and delicious way. The focus is on texture, color, cooking methods, simplicity of ingredients, accessibility—you can find most of the ingredients in your own pantry. I grew up sitting down to a meal of protein centered in the plate with several side dishes. People are busy and don’t have time to make all of that food now. In this book, you can learn to make a whole meal out of salad, which is my favorite way to eat, and you can be completely nourished and satisfied.

Your family helped you with this book. What is like raising kids vegetarian and/or vegan?

I’m lucky because my husband is as committed, if not more, than I am to eating well. We keep a vegan household, though sometimes we have goat ice cream or yogurt, and the kids eat what we eat. My daughter breastfed and was vegan for first two years of her life and then she became vegetarian, and now she’s exploring food. She is sort of a radical vegan, who understands what it means to kill an animal. Children do. It will be interesting to see if my kids will rebel against it and if they do, I’m not going to stand in their way. I made a conscious decision that I don’t want to be the mother who follows her kids around with “special” food, though I do appreciate families whose children have allergies.

Why is eating less meat important?

I try to never preach and knock people over the head with a vegan message. Veganism is a noble cause, but most people aren’t going to become vegan or vegetarian. That doesn’t mean they don’t seek out and want more grain-based food in their lives. I’m hopeful that the more grains and vegetables people eat, the more they will want to eat this way. And times have changed. People are eating less meat due to the horrible practices involved with industrial animal agriculture and also for their health and the environment. And there are a lot of vegetarians who are living on processed tofu meat-like products. While I do include recipes in the book with tofu, tempeh, and nondairy cheese, I’m not trying to replicate flavors or textures of meat. I’m much more interested in getting people to eat whole, unprocessed food.

You were one of the first restauranteurs to commit to organics. Why is organic important to you?

Choosing fruits and vegetables that are grown organically in pesticide-free soil is the best thing you can do for yourself and your family. My dollars go toward supporting small family farms and keeping chemicals off my plate, out of my body, and out of the environment. Nearly everything we have at RFD is almost 100 percent organic. We bite the bullet and pay the extra cost for organic ingredients because we believe it is better for our customers and the planet. When we first opened, I went to the Santa Monica farmers’ market twice a week, and I have longterm relationships with some incredibly committed organic farmers, including Bill McGrath, Coastal Organics, Burkhart, Maggie’s farm, and Del Cabo—Larry Jacobs is my brother-in-law, and we love using his cherry tomatoes in our guacamole.

What’s your take on MyPlate?

From my perspective, USDA’s MyPlate represents a shift in the right direction from prior recommendations, but that’s not saying much. Let’s face it, the agency has a stated purpose to promote the sale of agribusiness products. Leaving my cynicism behind, I do like that fruits, vegetables, and grains comprise three-fourths of MyPlate. But why did they stop at half? Mostly likely because the cereal manufactures won the day at that negotiation. Madison Avenue has convinced America that whole grains come from a cereal box. The inclusion of “protein” as a “food group” is an obvious win for the meat industry’s lobbyists.   These guys have spent big bucks for generations convincing Americans that protein is the flesh of a dead animal. For the most part, they have succeeded. So now we have  ”official” guidelines with their “code word” taking up one-fourth of the plate.  On the positive side, beans, peas, nuts and seeds make the list of “protein foods.” The fact is, all plants contain plenty of protein for a healthy diet and American’s over consume protein, which many experts say contributes to depletion of calcium.  Eating more calcium will never overcome the problem of bone loss and I’d like to see that cup of dairy on the side of MyPlate fed back to the calves as the mama cow had intended. Obviously, the dairy industry’s lobbyists earned their pay here.

One of Gentry’s favorite recipes from her new book follows. On Tuesday, June 21, she will be cooking up some vegan fare and discussing her new book at 18 Reasons in San Francisco.

Lasagna Rolls with Tofu Ricotta and Everyday Tomato Sauce

This is a fun way to serve lasagna: Instead of the traditional layering, you top the individual noodles with a vegan ricotta cheese and vegetable mixture and roll it up. My tofu ricotta cheese is a blend of tofu, miso, and tahini, which creates a creamy consistency that easily spreads. The tomato sauce takes no more than 10 minutes to make; if there is any left over, use it the next day over rice or noodles. Serves 6 (makes 12 rolls)

2½ tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, thinly sliced
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 medium carrots, peeled and cut into ¼-inch pieces
2 zucchini, cut into ¼-inch pieces
1 head broccoli, stems removed and florets finely chopped
2 cups Tofu Ricotta Cheese (recipe follows)
12 eggless lasagna noodles
3 cups Everyday Tomato Sauce (recipe follows)

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large, heavy frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the onions, garlic, basil, salt, and pepper. Sauté until the onions are tender, about 10 minutes. Add the carrots, zucchini, and broccoli and sauté until the carrots are crisp-tender, about 12 minutes. Let cool completely. Mix the vegetable mixture into the tofu ricotta cheese.

Cook the noodles in a large pot of boiling salted water, stirring often, until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain and rinse the noodles, then toss them with 1 tablespoon of the remaining oil to prevent the noodles from sticking together.

Coat a 13 by 9 by 2-inch baking dish with the remaining 1½ teaspoons oil. Spread 1 cup of the tomato sauce on the bottom of the dish. Using a spatula, spread about ½ cup of the vegetable mixture over each lasagna sheet, leaving about ½ inch of each end uncovered. Roll up each sheet tightly and place it seam-side-down in the baking dish. Pour the remaining 2 cups tomato sauce over the lasagna rolls.

Cover the dish with aluminum foil. Bake until the sauce bubbles, about 55 minutes. Remove the foil and continue baking for 15 minutes.

***

Tofu Ricotta Cheese

When blended, the tofu gives this vegan cheese a creamy consistency that resembles ricotta. This recipe is borrowed from my first book, The Real Food Daily Cookbook—when you have a good recipe, why change it?  Makes about 3 cups

(14-ounce) container waterpacked firm tofu, drained and  cut into quarters
²⁄3 cup yellow miso
²⁄3 cup water
½ cup tahini
¼ cup olive oil
5 large garlic cloves
1½ teaspoons dried basil
1½ teaspoons dried oregano
¾ teaspoon sea salt

Blend all the ingredients in a food processor until smooth. The cheese will keep for 2 days, covered and refrigerated.

***

Everyday Tomato Sauce

This is a perfect, simple tomato sauce. The key is to use canned crushed tomatoes, easily found in a grocery or natural foods store. Eden and Glen Muir are my favorite brands because they are organic.
Makes about 4 cups

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 shallots, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
1 cup water
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano

Heat the olive oil in a heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the shallots, garlic, and salt and sauté until fragrant, about 20 seconds. Stir in the tomatoes and the 1 cup water. Bring to a gentle simmer, then decrease the heat to low and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes, to allow the flavors to blend. Stir in the basil and oregano. Remove from the heat.

—From Vegan Family Meals by Ann Gentry/Andrews McMeel Publishing

Seventeen years ago, I left a great job teaching at a prestigious northeast culinary school to move back to Iowa and be an executive chef at a Holiday Inn. It was difficult to find people, in Vermont or Iowa, who did not think I was certifiably insane. Those who thought they knew Iowa claimed, “There’s no there, there!” And those who did not asked, “Iowa? Isn’t that where they grow potatoes?”

Because I had spent my undergraduate years in Iowa, I was accustomed to the rest of the country, especially folks from the coasts, referring to it as one of the “flyover states.” Iowans, a group among whom I now proudly count myself, are fine with that — as long as such critics do just fly over. We’ll wave. We’re Iowans. East Coast has Broadway, West Coast has Hollywood, and Iowa has people — damn fine people.

The other thing Iowa has is Agriculture — and I use that capital “A” deliberately. We produce more pork, more corn, and more eggs than any other state in the union, and come in second or third in virtually every other commodity crop save oranges. And who knows? Global climate change may change that too.

What the people who wanted to put me in a rubber room a decade and a half ago didn’t see, which I did, was the massive potential for local, sustainable, community-based food systems in Iowa. After all, it is home to 3 million people who still have spiritual and familial ties to the finest soil on the planet.

One of the lessons I’ve learned from almost 30 years in food service is that fresh tastes best. Sounds obvious until you look beneath the surface a bit and realize that what passes for fresh in many places is really not so fresh, and many “foods” currently available on store shelves can be measured in half-life rather than shelf life. Ninety-five percent of Iowa’s food is imported, and it travels an average of 1,500 miles to get to our plates. This in a state that can grow anything that can grow outside the tropics. Doesn’t matter how fast your planes, trains, and trucks are; if it traveled 1,500 miles, it’s not fresh.

My thought was, the closer it is to my kitchen door, the fresher it’s going to be. Seemed simple enough. At the time, the farmers’ market was right outside the hotel’s back door, but disagreements with management kept me from buying much from the market then. So 12 years ago I opened  Devotay, a tiny, quirky little restaurant serving Spanish-style food made from local ingredients (wherever feasible) smack in the belly of the agribusiness beast. There were ADM and IBP (now Tyson) and Quaker plants less than 30 minutes away. There was one other business I could find that endeavored to buy locally (the renowned New Pioneer food co-op), and when I walked through the farmers’ market in my white chef’s coat, people looked at me funny. “What’s a chef doing in the farmers’ market?” I could almost hear them thinking.

I only knew two farmers personally, but I knew people who knew people, and gradually Devotay built a network of local growers we now lovingly refer to as the Devotay Local Farm Partners, who are recognized in name and image at the restaurant’s entrance (“The Hall of Farm”). What success and accolades Devotay has received I owe primarily to them (and to the best dang staff in town). In addition, we built a one-acre garden of our own under the loving care of my wife and business partner, Kim McWane Friese. Guests never cease to be pleased and impressed with the greens, tomatoes, peppers, ground cherries, and more that come from the Devotay Gardens.

But getting from there to here was not a straight line. Opening a small restaurant serving Spanish food — which most guests thought would be like Mexican — with no TVs, no fry-o-lators, no smoking, and no light beer in a college town, seemed to many to be further evidence of my deteriorating mental and emotional condition. But it is said that nothing persists like persistence, and we were convinced that if we focused on the food, everything else would fall into place.

The food I bought locally was simply better. It looked, smelled, and tasted better, and there is mounting evidence (more here) that much of it is more healthful as well. And it has economic and marketing benefits too. There is a strong multiplier effect to keeping my dollar in my community, and my clientele appreciate our dedication to the health and well-being of the area.

Connections to those first two farmers, Simone Delaty of Wellman and James Nisly of Kalona, led to friendships with many others, such as Susan Jutz, who runs the organic CSA Local Harvest with Simone, and Nick Wallace, who raises grass-finished beef.

Onward the connections went. Along the way I learned that buying all my ingredients off the back of a truck from U.S. Foodservice is definitely easier, and often cheaper. But that food is never of a higher quality, and it takes its toll. Any business can take great strides when it stops looking at price and starts looking at cost. Same holds true for individuals and families. For just a moment set aside the price on the tag, and take a good hard look at the hidden costs of cheap food.

Chefs, you may think it cheaper to buy that commodity beef from Sysco. Moms and dads, it may seem more convenient to get the cheap grocery-store apples from New Zealand than to visit the nearby orchard, or to get the frozen entrée rather than making a simple pasta dish at home. But imagine the impact on our environment and health-care system of all that processed food. Think of the fuel used to ship an apple halfway around the planet. Then consider the benefits of taking a walk through an orchard with your children, of having them learn at your apron strings, of shaking the hand that raised that steer.

We are all co-producers, Wendell Berry tells us, all a part of the interconnected web of food production, and are therefore just as culpable for its ills as the agribusiness corporate executives are.

I am a gastronome. It’s a fancy word for someone who makes a study of food, has a passion, even a reverence for it.  Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini pointed out recently that, “A gastronome who is not also an environmentalist is an idiot. An environmentalist who is not also a gastronome is, well, sad.”

In the past seventeen years I have seen an awakening here in Iowa, and I have undergone one myself. Where once no restaurants were buying locally, now there are at least 15 in Iowa City alone (a town of just 60,000). Plenty more are cropping up in even smaller surrounding towns:  Lincoln Café in Mt. Vernon, Redhead in Solon,  Phoenix Café in Grinnell,  Augusta in Oxford and Café Dodici in Washington, to name just a few. The University of Iowa Food Service is sourcing some foods locally, and the Iowa City Farmers’ Market, where people used to look confused when they saw my chef’s coat, has more than doubled in size and hosts plenty of chefs every day.

There’s plenty more to be gleaned from my magazine, Edible Iowa River Valley, and you can sign up for our email newsletter here.  The restaurant has a newsletter too – sign up here.

If such progress can be made here, one plant, one plate, one palate at a time, it can be made everywhere, and I hope it will. Because the best times of our lives often happen gathered around a table with great food in front of us and the people we love all around. Who wouldn’t want more of that?

Two Devotay Recipes
By Chef Kurt Michael Friese

This bisque is the perfect winter belly-warmer, always well received at Devotay and now even more so with the addition of Iowa’s own whiskey, Templeton Rye. The pork shoulder is the recipe I used when preparing the Mulefoot hog for consideration by the Slow Food USA Ark and Presidia Committee. The Mulefoot was boarded onto the ark at Seed Savers Exchange in September 2005.

Squash Bisque with Maple and Templeton Rye

I grow most of the ingredients (except the bay and the syrup) for this soup myself, but they should be readily available this time of year in most farmers’ markets. The rye, though, will be a challenge, as it is only available here in Iowa. A good bourbon can substitute.

2 1/2 pounds butternut (or other) squash, peeled, seeded, and diced
2 carrots, diced
1 onion, peeled and diced
1/2 pound red potatoes, washed
5 cloves garlic, peeled
1 stalk celery, sliced
1 bay leaf
1 cup Templeton Rye Whiskey
1/2 cup real maple syrup
water, to cover
salt and cracked black pepper, to taste
Simmer all ingredients except the whiskey and maple syrup until very tender. Remove bay leaf. Puree and pass through a fine strainer. Return to heat, bring to simmer, and add the rye and maple syrup. Season to taste with salt and fresh cracked black pepper. Serve immediately, or cool and store up to 3 days. Freezes well. Serves about 8.

Smoked and Braised Mulefoot Hog Shoulder
With Sweet Peppers, la Quercia Prosciutto Americano, and Lacinato Kale

This is a time-consuming recipe, but worth every minute. It’s a great way to really wow your guests at the next barbecue. Remember to use the Mulefoot, or one of the other breeds listed on the Slow Food Ark of Taste & Tradition — we have to eat them to save them!

2 pound pork shoulder roast, boned and netted (your butcher will do this for you)
1/4 cup each salt and brown sugar, mixed with
2 tablespoons cracked black pepper

8 paper-thin slices of prosciutto
8 large leaves of lacinato kale
3 cups julienned sweet bell peppers, preferably of many colors
1/4 cup very thin sliced garlic cloves
1 large yellow onion, julienned
2 carrots, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 bay leaves
2 quarts fresh chicken or veal stock (or to cover), well seasoned

2 days in advance:

Rub the shoulder with the seasonings and refrigerate in a sealed plastic bag overnight.

Slow smoke the shoulder over hickory or cherry wood, at a temperature of 225 degrees F for 5 to 7 hours, or until the crust is very dark and the internal temperature is about 160 F.

Remove, cool to room temperature, then refrigerate overnight.

Day of service:

Mix the peppers, garlic, onions, carrots, celery, and bay leaves, and place them in the bottom of a large, deep casserole or other ovenproof pan that is at least 5 inches deep.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Cut the pork into preferred portion size (roughly 6 to 9 ounces, depending on how hungry your family is). Wrap each piece with a slice of prosciutto and a leaf of kale. Place each piece seam-side down on the bed of vegetables in the casserole.

Add the chicken or veal stock, enough to just cover the pork. Add a little water or white wine if you’re a little short of liquid.

Cover tightly with a lid or with parchment and foil.

Braise for 3 hours, then remove and allow to rest for 30 minutes. Serve over risotto or polenta. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Chef Tory Miller of Madison, Wisconsin’s L’Etoile Restaurant told me “people [should] understand how important food systems are to our communities. Many restaurants in Madison are using the local farmers market. The more we champion it, the bigger and stronger it gets which is especially important in this economy. We’re keeping each other in business.”

I first heard of him when he spoke at the U.S. Delegates meeting at Terre Madre this past October. He shared the story of his restaurant and the power of community. I was moved by his charm and passion. Miller smiles readily and is just one of those people that seems genuinely deeply happy and beautiful. I am drawn to this kind of person and find that a lot of the folks in the “food movement” embody this spirit as they work to create a simple, beautiful and healthy world.

Chef Miller moved to Madison from New York City in 2003. He just wanted a change of pace and a new environment and sent resumes to a lot of different restaurants, not knowing anyone really. A few chef friends knew Odessa Piper, the former owner of L’Etoile, which has been a Madison favorite since she opened it in 1976; so he sent his resume there as well. She called him back and they hung out when he arrived in town. They connected thanks to similar ideas and beliefs about sourcing locally and while she didn’t have a job for him, she let him do some prep – washing spinach and butchering fish. That was in October of 2003 and by December he was the Chef de Cuisine.

Piper transferred her commitment to the local farmers to Miller. These farmers sell at the market on Capital Square which just so happens to be right out the front door of L’Etoile. Piper took Miller to the market and introduced him to every farmer she’d worked with since the beginning. She invited him into her relationships, into the community, that had been integral to her success. “These relationships are key. We may not buy from the root vegetable farmer in the summer, but I always stop by and say ‘hi’ and see what’s going on. Walking around the market feels like family. And, its just about being real with people,” says Miller. “Another great thing about the market is the flow. It’s the coolest thing. You only walk counterclockwise. Everyone’s doing it, so that all the vendors are on your right at all times. Everyone knows the rule – that you go this way.”

Today Miller has extended those relationships to increase seasonal availabilities at the restaurant. And, they do they loads of preserving and freezing. They dry mushrooms, blueberries and tomatoes. And, of course, they make tomato sauces. “This makes the winter menus more interesting and fun. When you only have eight winter vegetables available, you have to get creative.”

For Miller running a successful business includes the making sure the people he works with are successful as well. “Some chefs will take the attitude that they’ll only use what’s best. But we all work together here. The difference is if the farmer has only 20 pounds of something left, they’ll call me first to see if I want to buy it. And, there’s a lot of mutual respect. They’ll never put one over on me. I always pay on time and always get great produce. As opposed to working with a big company. If you’re buying produce over the phone with some guy who’s just sitting at his computer, there’s no contact. If you don’t like the produce or meat they send you, they may say ‘Just FedEx it back’ – my friends, the farmers, they’ll apologize and its not as impersonal.”

“As a chef, you need to understand seasonality – a huge help to us in the winter.  A lot of people think good food and local food is expensive.  But commodity foods are just cheap and cheaply made. It’s important to me to see the face of the person who’s raised my food. If it’s okay with you to buy fish from a guy that sits at his computer, that’s okay for you, but its even better to stop by the market and meet these people. It’s the first step to getting in touch with your food. The stronger the food system is locally the stronger the local economy. It’s all tied together. When I visit their farms and I see they’ve added a new hoop house, or a new truck, I see their success and I like to think I play a role in that. We’re all happy and it’s such a cool thing.”

For more information about L’Etoile’s farmers, their website has a comprehensive directory – just one more way to share the love.

Normally I don’t like soft-boiled eggs.  But there I was, sitting at Blue Hill restaurant at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Tarrytown, New York, with a plate of delicately cooked spinach in a savory sauce crowned with a battered, soft-boiled egg and enjoying every last bite.  That is because chef Dan Barber is out to refocus our attention on the spoils of the farm right outside: an 80 acre four-season and pastured livestock farm that grows and raises most of the food served on the premises.  Watching chickens scratch around on pasture, and then enjoying their eggs elegantly prepared is transparency you can taste.

I have to admit that when I arrived here, I figured that a restaurant with a James Beard Award-winning chef on a Rockefeller estate could only be exclusive.  But I found the exact opposite was true: In choosing to build a community through public programs and farm to table relationships, this restaurant is leading us to new ideas about the future food system in the making.

Barber described a visit to Stone Barns like a Disneyland experience for food, and talked about how it can serve as a model for individual change.  “It depends on where you live and what your passion is,” he said, “but essentially you [can] take the experience here, and try to replicate it in your everyday life.  And that could just be eating healthier, or engaging in some kind of agriculture, [or knowing] where your food is coming from.”

At Blue Hill, chefs literally wander out into the fields, pick their own vegetables and herbs, and then toss them into the pan.  The only option on the menu, the “Farmer’s Feast,” is served in courses, so that vegetables can take on the starring role without regular meat eaters leaving feeling hungry. “I feel like I’m doing what we’ve always done,” Barber said, “which is to try to have the work of these farmers be as exemplified as possible.”

The farm grows 35 types of lettuce alone, and provides two-thirds of the produce used in the restaurant.  At the peak of the season (now), they serve 80% of their food from right outside.

I took a tour of Stone Barns’ grounds before my dinner reservation at the restaurant.  The landscape could only be described as idealistic because its pastoral imagery evokes our common vision of farms (sheep, turkeys and geese at pasture, pigs nosing around for acorns in the woods, inter-cropped vegetables in vibrant rows), even though only a small percentage of farms still operate in this way.

While the farm inspires thoughts of the past, the focus is on artisan approaches mixed with useful technology, like movable electric fencing and a 22,000 square foot greenhouse that maintains its temperature in all seasons.  But new-fangled devices shouldn’t replace good farming practices, according to Jack Algiere, the four-season farm manager, who added a less expensive wood and plastic greenhouse to prove that pricey technology isn’t necessary to produce quality, pesticide-free food.

Compost is the magic ingredient in growing flavorful produce.  Made from leaves, grass clippings, livestock manure and hay, and the restaurant’s kitchen scraps, it is also sold locally at Whole Foods as a source of revenue for the farm.  This dense fertilizer is a natural byproduct of a healthy growing system, and is essential for supporting soil health and by extension, nutrient-rich food.

In the dining room, I’d traded my muddy converse for heels.  I sat as plates of pickled kabocha squash, pea blossoms, beet and root vegetable chips, as well as crisp, lightly seasoned beans arrived while we sipped a local sparkling wine from Long Island.  The perfectly petite courses kept arriving – like the tomato soup with almond, a taste of quinoa and fennel in a Greek style vinegar sauce with capers and tomatoes, and a small serving of blue fish with seckel pear and soybeans.

Tasting the bounty of the season as a diner was thrilling, but the staff seemed just as engaged in the food as I was.  Visual aids were presented just before they were served: the three types of beets they grow before a mache salad with beets and a frothy yogurt dressing, and three giant mushrooms foraged on the farm or nearby before the squash gnocchi with matsutake and maitake mushrooms.  What better way to end a meal than with a tisane from the last of the garden outside the kitchen door, which our waiter had saved from frost and placed in pots, and wheeled out to us on a tray.  He then clipped various sages for our teapots, which we poured into cups along with Stone Barns’ local honey.

When David Rockefeller and his daughter Peggy Dulany were looking to find a way to preserve these stone buildings that used to house the family’s dairy, and allow them to serve the public, it was Barber along with his brother David and his brother’s wife Laureen who contributed to the vision of Stone Barns as it stands today.  The idea was to begin to rebuild the local food system we’ve lost in the last three decades.  “The most provocative changes are going to come from the economics of the way our food is grown,” said Dan Barber.  “Smaller, regional food systems are going to end up being price competitive with the big food chain, because the big food chain can actually not survive at $100 a barrel for oil and up… When you get to the economics of cheap food literally not being cheap anymore, I think that’s going to be the most powerful force for change.”

Where the foodies go, so hopefully, eventually, goes the country too.

Read my full interview with Dan Barber here.

Photo: Chickens at Stone Barns, and Greenhouse, by Yann Mabille