Josh Kilmer-Purcell's Blog, page 103
March 31, 2012
Farm 4 Sale
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The farm of your dreams.
That's what the real estate agent told us when showing Beekman Farm for the first time, but by then we had already been seduced.
A house atop a hill, a statuesque barn and sweeping views unmarred in the 200 years since the cornerstone was placed…
But we were not the first to answer the siren's call once she slipped out of the Beekman family's grasp.
We were thrilled when someone recently mailed us a newspaper clipping from the late 1800′s and at the very bottom a real estate ad stating:
Judge Beekman Farm: It's proximity to the springs, the conditions of the buildings and the grounds, renders it all that anyone can desire.
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
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March 30, 2012
Choose Josh & Brent's Easter Dinner Menu
We've come up with a ton of new recipes for your Easter or Springtime dinner menus. The only problem is that now we're arguing amongst ourselves about which we should serve to our own guests. So, to keep things sane…you decide:
Click here to take our poll
Looking for the recipes themselves? Here you go:
Main Course:
Cinnamon Honey & Roasted Chicory Leg of Lamb
Pork Rib Roast with Caramel Orange Glaze
12-Hour Fresh Ham with Gremolata
Side/Salad:
Forsythia & Pea Shoot Spring Salad
Updated Spinach Salad with Honey-Lime and Roasted Eggs
Chilled Sweet Corn & Sorrel Soup
Grapefruit, Asparagus & Radicchio Salad
Starch:
Spring Onion & Dried Mushroom Risotto
Buttermilk Chive Biscuits
Crispy Potatoes Newman
Risi i Bisi
Cocktail:
Springtime Comfort
Sugarbush Margarita
Champagne Mojito
Dessert:
Goat Milk Cheesecake
Goat Milk Yogurt Panna Cotta
Rhubarb Black Pepper Sauce
Buttermilk Chive Biscuits
Brent's southern, so no biscuits are quite as good as his Mom's or Memaw's are. But we try our best. These biscuits, made with fresh local butter and young spring chives are delicate and light. Perfect for soaking up gravy from lamb or pork main dishes. Like our pie crusts, we make ours in our stand mixer using a beater attachment. We find it makes them flakier than using a food processor.
Ingredients
4 cups flour
1.5 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, very cold, cut into pats
2 cups buttermilk, very cold
1/3 cup chopped chives
Preheat oven to 400 F.
Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt into mixer bowl of stand mixer. Add chopped butter. Using beater attachment, beat on low speed until butter is incorporated into flour. Don't over-beat. Mixture should look like flour-coated flakes of butter. While beater is still running, slowly pour in butter milk. Mix to incorporate, again being careful not to over-beat. Dough should be sticky and shaggy. Add chopped chives and beat minimally until chives are mixed throughout.
Refrigerate dough for 1 half hour to chill.
Turn dough out onto floured work surface. Roll out mass to 1/2 inch thickness. Fold over on itself four or five times, and roll out again until dough is about 3/4 inch thick. Use round biscuit cutter, or empty tuna fish can to cut out biscuits. Cut closely together to not waste dough. Dough scraps should not be reworked.
Place cut biscuits on ungreased, unlined cookie sheet. We prefer to have ours nearly touching. It helps them rise higher. But if you like crispier sides, keep them about 2 inches apart. Brush the tops with more buttermilk, and place in oven. Immediately turn oven down to 325F. Bake approximately 20 minutes, but begin checking them for done-ness at about 15 minutes.
Serve with:
Walk the Vine
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Spend a Weekend in Wine Country–no matter where you live!
Sipping wine at a vineyard, chatting with winemakers, and sampling the newest blends can be the perfect way to destress after a busy week — whether you've been slaving at work or locked away in the library sifting through old textbooks. What few people think about when they're drinking that wine, though, is that a lot of thought and science goes into the medley that eventually reaches your glass.
Enology is actually a centuries-old practice that has contributed to such de-stressing since various cultures discovered the power and diversity of fermentation, and today winemaking has evolved into a highly respected academic discipline. Several universities in the United States and around the world now offer accredited online PhD programs in viticulture and enology, like Oregon State University's Viticulture and Enology Graduate Education Program, which focuses intensely on the winemaking process and how taste contributes to the experience.
If you head to the right winery, a wine weekend can actually bring you back to nature, especially if you visit one of the nation's many eco-friendly vineyards. More and more vintners across the country are joining the eco-friendly wine movement by adopting environmentally friendly and sustainable practices. Spending a weekend at an eco-friendly vineyard is a great way to enjoy the complexity and delicacy of wine while ensuring that your dollars support green practices and philosophies.
California's Napa Valley has long been the haven of wine lovers from around the world, and it is no surprise that this region boasts the largest number of organic, biodynamic, and sustainable vineyards. Benziger Family Winery, in Glen Ellen, embraces all three hallmarks of eco-consciousness across its numerous estates. It is not uncommon to see sheep grazing in the vineyards providing an all-natural means of both weed control and fertilization, or owls and hawks circling ahead, catching rodents without traps or poisons.
Further up the valley in St. Helena is another biodynamic winery of note, Grgich Hills. Wine growers at this estate winery adopt a "homeopathic approach" to winemaking that is both organic and biodiverse. "We work to have the vine heal itself rather than treat the symptoms," the winery says on its site. "We do that using our natural preparations and by developing biodiversity in the vineyard by growing cover crops, planting trees and bushes that attract beneficial insects and raising chickens to eat pests and provide natural nitrogen to the soil."
You needn't travel all the way to California in order to experience eco-friendly wine making, however. In Oregon, the Willamette Valley Vineyard espouses both organic growing and energy-efficient production, and is also certified as "salmon safe." The wine cellar is carved into the side of volcanic rock, which provides natural temperature control, and the entire estate operates under a carbon-neutral philosophy. Up in Washington's Walla Walla wine region, Cayuse Vineyards has long been operating under organic principles, and earned full biodynamic certification in 2005. Two of the winery's eight estates are plowed exclusively with horse power.
Ideas about vineyard sustainability are in no way limited to the west coast. In Nebraska, the South Fork Vineyard won certification in 2011 from the Greener Byways of Nebraska coalition, recognizing the winery's energy and water conservation initiatives as well as its commitment to using recycled materials in bottling and labeling. In Northport, Michigan, the Good Neighbor Organic Vineyard and Winery is also making inroads in producing organic wine and hard cider. All of Good Neighbor's beverages are certified organic, and the vineyard is slowly implementing aspects of biodynamic growth models, as well.
"Sustainable growing" and "low-intervention winemaking" are two of the key ideologies at play in North Carolina's McRitchie Winery and Ciderworks. Wine growers implement sustainable growing methods in the fields, using predominantly organic fertilizers and growth aids. The wine production facility is also designed to be energy-efficient, and is intentionally set on a hill to make use of electricity-free gravity flow techniques. Extreme energy efficiency is on display at Virginia's DuCard Vineyards, situated about an hour southeast of Washington, D.C. DuCard is powered exclusively through solar energy. The majority of the wood used in both the production and tasting rooms is reclaimed, and at least 90 percent of the food and merchandise sold in the winery is locally sourced.
New York's Finger Lakes wine region is fast proving itself a mecca for eco-friendly wine production. Red Tail Ridge Winery, situated on the shores of Lake Seneca, is exemplary. Red Tail won the U.S. Green Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design "gold" award in 2011 for its energy efficient production and bottling processes. The production plant, which is only steps from the vines, depends on geothermic heating and cooling for temperature control, and makes use of floor-to-ceiling windows to maximize natural light and reduce reliance on electricity.
Shelburne Vineyard in central Vermont sits on one of the state's oldest farm tracts, and its owners strive to live up to its heritage. "We founded Shelburne Vineyard with a commitment to sustainability, not only in terms of our farming practices and environmental ethic, but also as active responsible members of our community," winemaker Ken Albert said on the winery's website. Vintners strive to maintain organic standards in the fields, including weeding by hand to avoid herbicides and using locally-produced fertilizers. The winery itself also makes use of various energy-saving and material conservation tactics.
Eco-friendly wineries come in all shapes and sizes, and espouse a variety of different beliefs about sustainability and farming. All strive to create wine that is as good for the earth as it is to drink, and the best part is, there is bound to be one—if not several—somewhere in your area. Now that's something to raise a glass to!
If your region of the country wasn't mentioned, click here to find a vineyard closest to you.
Guest blogger Jessica Meyer is a freelance writer and graduate student in journalism based in Seattle. Her primary interests are education, technology, and travel. When she's not reading and writing, she can be found hiking and cycling throughout the Pacific Northwest with her husband.
March 29, 2012
Spring Onion and Dried Mushoom Risotto
We plant onion seed in August and are usually lucky enough to pull the first spring onions in mid-April, or sometimes even earlier. The rest we let mature into full-bulbed onions that we harvest in the fall. You can probably find spring onions at your local farmer's market, or you can just as easily substitute scallions in this wonderfully creamy side dish.
Ingredients
1.5 cups dried mushrooms. Any variety.
4 cups hot water
6 cups chicken or vegetable stock
5 tablespoons butter
1.5 cups Arborio rice
1.5 cups chopped spring onions, include about an inch of green stem.
1/2 cup parmasean cheese, grated.
Place dried mushrooms in medium bowl and pour hot water over them. Allow them to completely soften (about 1/2 hour.) Drain them, but reserve liquid. Strain liquid through paper towel-lined wire sieve. Pour liquid in large stockpot, combine with stock, and bring to boil. Rinse softened mushrooms to remove any sand or dirt particles, and chop roughly.
Melt 3 tablespoons of butter over medium-high flame in large, heavy saucepan. Stir in white portion of spring onions (reserve green stem bits,) saute for approximately 4 minutes until soft. Add rice and chopped mushrooms. Stir rice until coated with butter and edges appear slightly transparent (about 2 minutes.) Transfer 1 ladle-full of boiling stock/mushroom liquid into rice saucepan. Stir until liquid is completely absorbed. Add two more ladle-fulls of stock mixture to rice. Stir again until liquid is absorbed. Continue adding boiling liquid to rice, and letting it absorb before adding more. When the absorption slows, taste. Rice should be creamy and al dente, not mushy. You may not need all of the stock liquid.
Once risotto has reached the proper texture, remove from heat and stir in cheese, remaining butter, and green slivers of spring onion stems. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with:
Updated Spinach Salad with Honey-Lime and Roasted Eggs
Grapefruit, Asparagus & Radicchio Salad
We could just stare at this salad for hours. Okay, maybe not for hours, but for a good long time. Okay, maybe not that long, because it's too damn delicious. All the bright colors are matched by an equal amount of bright flavors. Oh, did we mention there's mint, too? Yeah. That's almost too much. But it's not.
Ingredients
1 round head of radicchio, chopped.
1/2 pound dandelion leaves, torn. (gather from yard before flower heads appear.)
1 grapefruit, peeled, pith removed, and sectioned. (For best sectioning instructions, click here.)
1 bunch of asparagus
2 tablespoons finely chopped mint
Dressing
1 tablespoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons good quality olive oil
2 tablespoons Beekman 1802 Lemon Creamed Honey (if substituting with regular honey, add zest of one lemon.)
Salt & Pepper to taste.
Make Dressing. Combine all ingredients in clean jar with tight-fitting lid. Shake until well-combined. Add more salt and pepper if necessary.
Steam asparagus spears until tender. Rinse under cold water and chill in refrigerator till cool. Toss radicchio, dandelion leaves, mint, and vinegrette in bowl. Portion out onto individual plates. Arrange asparagus spears and grapefruit sections around and on top of greens. Finish with cracked pepper.
Serve with:
Linguine with Mushrooms and Thyme
Chilled Sweet Corn & Sorrel Soup
No to be too un-Beekmanly boastful, but we grow some of the best sweetcorn in the area. We just do. What's our secret? Well, Farmer John and his Dad start several manure piles in the pasture when they clean out the barn every week. Then after these piles have been spread over the fields to fertilize them, we go plant corn in the place where the pile just stood. It's practically magic. You know the old saying: "corn should be knee-high by the 4th of July"? Well by the 4th of July around here, the tassles on our corn stalks practically scrape the bottom of the village firework display. (OK, farmers like to exaggerate a little.)
We usually have far more than we can eat fresh. And boy, do we eat a lot of it fresh. Luckily, it's one of the easiest vegetables to prep and freeze. Which means we can make this refreshing chilled corn soup all spring, summer and fall. We brighten the sweet earthiness of the corn with orange zest and lemony sorrel. It's a wonderful starter to an outdoor meal.
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 qt fresh corn scraped from cob, or frozen kernels.
2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup heavy cream
3 cups sorrel, cut in a chiffonade
Finely grated zest from one orange
Pinch of cayenne or other hot pepper
Salt & pepper (preferably white pepper) to taste
In a large saucepan, saute onions in olive oil over medium-low flame until translucent (about 7 minutes). Do not allow onions to brown. Add corn kernels and gently simmer for an additional 15 minutes. Add 2 cups broth, most of the grated orange zest (reserve a pinch for later garnish), and hot pepper. Bring to a boil
Once boiling, turn off heat and immediately use immersion blender to puree soup mixture. If pureed soup has cooled too much, bring back to a simmer and immediately take off heat again. Stir in sorrel and cream. (Soup can't be boiling when cream is added.) Add salt and pepper (preferably white pepper) to taste.
Place soup mixture in refrigerator to chill. When serving, garnish with some fresh chopped sorrel leaves and orange zest.
Serve with:
Updated Spinach Salad with Honey-Lime and Roasted Eggs
We'll be the first to admit that there's really not much one could do to improve upon a classic Spinach Salad. But there's no harm in experimenting, now, is there? In this version, we tried to mimic the sweetness of the traditional dressing by using honey instead of sugar, and changing the mustard-y tang to a citrus-y one by using fresh lime juice. (And our own Lemon Creamed Honey.) And we also wanted to have a little fun with the classic hard boiled eggs.
Instead of hard boiling our eggs, we roasted them by the dying embers of our kitchen fireplace. Before retiring for bed, we simply poked a tiny hole in both ends of several eggs, and buried them in the still warm ashes of the day's fire. They shouldn't directly touch any coals, mind you. Just warm ashes. They stayed tucked in their slightly warm blankets overnight, and by morning they were nicely "hard-roasted."
Well, maybe they weren't that nicely roasted. A few had exploded, and a few more had burnt. But that's okay. It was a fun experiment in a historical method of cooking eggs, and it did give them a brown color and smoky flavor that regular hard-boiled eggs can't claim. If you'd like to replicate, with less variables, try roasting whole eggs in your oven. Poke tiny holes in either end, and place eggs in a muffin tin. Roast in a 325 F oven for half an hour, then rinse under cool water and peel.
Ingredients
Fresh spinach (mature leaf, not baby.)
4 hard-roasted eggs, peeled, sliced in 1/2 inch slices (see above)
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
4 Tablespoons best quality olive oil
2 Tablespoons Lemon Creamed Honey (if using regular honey, increase lime juice to 1/3 cup.)
1.5 Tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/4 cup finely chopped flat parsley
salt and pepper to taste
Wash, rinse and dry spinach leaves thoroughly. Remove any very thick stems and chop them into a coarse ribbons. (Slightly thicker than a chiffonade.) Divide spinach onto individual salad plates. Garnish with egg slices.
Combine rest of ingredients into mason jar with tight-fitting lid. Shake vigorously, salt to taste, and pour over spinach and eggs. Add additional ground pepper to taste.
Serve with:
12 Hour Fresh Ham with Gremolata
Pork Rib Roast with Caramel Orange Glaze
March 28, 2012
5 Beautiful Things
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This new feature is designed to inspire you to look at the world around you, to take note of the season at hand and to capture it – in memory or on film – for posterity. I will be choosing five photos each week for Beekman1802.com with this aim in mind. We're calling the feature, The Five Most Beautiful Things In The World This Week
Chromophobia
One of my goals this spring is to incorporate more color into my life. I have always been a staunch supporter of neutrals, believing them to be calming, grounding and simple to use. When it comes to the palette of my rooms, neutrals have always been my safe and predictable refuge. And I know I'm not alone. (Are you a chromophobe?)
What I didn't realize until quite recently is that many of the world's most cherished colors can be used as neutrals, or at least used as supportive accents to neutrals – green, for instance.
Green is often called "nature's neutral" because of its proliferation this time of year. Green is summer's beige, acting as a cohesive backdrop to the landscape, grounding its otherwise vibrant colors in a context that is pleasing to the eye.
So, green is where I will begin, transferring its summery effect indoors in little installments: a cushion here, a vase there. I've gathered some inspiration photos below that I will use as a guide. Here, green is used as a pop colour in otherwise neutral spaces. In each example, the green element is vibrant enough to be noticed but cool enough to be calming: a brilliant compromise for a trepidatious beginner!
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Photos:
3. Dwell.com
Andrew Ritchie is the creator of Martha Moments, a blog devoted Martha-Stewart related content and her community of supporters. He lives and works in Toronto, Canada, and has been a longtime friend of Brent & Josh, Beekman 1802 and Sharon Springs. Each week he'll scour the world (wide web) to find the 5 most beautiful things to inspire you. Follow Andrew on Pinterest.
12-Hour Fresh Ham with Gremolata
If a ham hasn't been cured, what is it? It's the most tender, moist pork roast of your dreams, that's what. You may not be able to find an uncured ham in your grocery store, but ask your butcher, or a pig farmer at your local farmer's market to put one aside for you. (Also called a "fresh ham," or "country ham.") Smoking, or curing a ham completely changes the flavor of the meat, and also gives it that pink color we associate with hams. But a fresh ham looks like any other pork roast you've cooked. It's just larger, moister, and more flavorful.
Be prepared to invite a lot of guests though. These babies can weigh anywhere from 12 – 25 pounds with the bone in. And be prepared to start cooking well ahead of time. We roast our fresh hams for 10 hours, overnight usually, at a very low temperature. The fat melts into the meat, and by the time we pull it from the oven it's barely holding together. Which makes it even more delicious. You can use this same method as a starter for your favorite barbecue pulled pork recipe.
But we love the clean flavor of a fresh ham so much that we usually simply pair it with a traditional french parsley/garlic/lemon/anchovy sauce called Gremolata. (You can leave out the anchovies if you prefer.) Truly mouthwateringly delicious.
Ingredients:
For Ham:
17-20 lb fresh ham, bone in.
20 fresh sage leaves
20 cloves peeled, whole garlic
Salt/Pepper
For Gremolata:
1 cup flat parsley leaves, chopped very fine
3 tablespoons fresh lemon zest, chopped very fine
2 tablespoons finely chopped garlic
1/2 t anchovy paste (more to taste)
1 cup best quality olive oil
Heat oven to 225 F.
Place ham, fat side up, in very large roasting pan with rack. With sharp knife, score fat diagonally and crosswise in one inch intervals, without piercing flesh below the fat. At the intersection of each diagonal score, cut a deeper 1/2 inch-wide slit. (It may pierce flesh. This is ok.) Fill each slit with either garlic clove, or rolled up sage leaf, alternating between the two. Sprinkle entire ham with salt and pepper.
Place ham in oven. Cook at that low temperature for approximately 12 hours. Begin checking at around 10 hours, but be prepared to roast up to 14. Roast until meat is very loose and internal temperature is about 130-140F. Carefully transfer to large platter. (Meat may begin to fall away from bone and be difficult to transfer.)
Prepare gremolata the last few hours before roast is finished. Chop zest, parsley and garlic together, mincing into almost a paste. Put anchovy paste in small bowl and add a little of the olive oil. Stir until combined. Slowly add more olive oil, continually stirring so that paste remains incorporated. Stir in parsley, lemon, garlic.
To serve, slice ham (or simply pull off pieces if too tender to slice) and spoon gremolata over.
