“GASTRONOMY & THE GARDEN”
This month I wanted to spotlight the owners of ‘Mom & Pop’ businesses and the executive chefs in the small towns planting weeds and harvests for menu ideas. This NYT article published on August 07, 2009 features a first person perspective of Corey Heyer and Stanley Novak, executive chefs at Bernards Inn in Ringoes, New Jersey. These chefs believe New Jersey is on the leading edge of the grow-your-own trend as the ‘Garden State’ (go figure!). Not only is this trend incredibly cost efficient , but it allows the consumer to ‘obtain peak flavors’ - if that isn’t worth a 5-star review, then I don’t know what is!
Of Course It’s Fresh: The Chef Grew It
Corey Heyer, executive chef at Bernards Inn, with a variety of produce in the owners’ garden, seven miles away in Far Hills. As he plants, weeds and harvests, he gets ideas for the menu, he said.Credit...Tom White for The New York Times
RINGOES, N.J. It is near midday, and the parking lot of the Harvest Moon Inn is empty. Stanley Novak’s shift as chef is hours away, but he has been working already, cutting the grass on the restaurant’s five-acre property, taking particular care around the rows of some 300 heirloom tomato plants, the cucumbers, the raspberries, the eggplants and other crops. He has been weeding, too, in the raised beds stuffed with salad greens and herbs.
Mr. Novak and his wife, Theresa, opened their upscale New American restaurant in Hunterdon County in 1995, and Mr. Novak has grown a portion of the food for its kitchen ever since.
Some New Jersey chefs have been growing their own specialty crops since long before the locavore trend took hold. Alice Waters, the owner of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., recalls a visit in the 1990s to the kitchen garden of Craig Shelton, chef of the Ryland Inn in Whitehouse, now closed. Ms. Waters said, “Here was someone who understood both” gastronomy and the garden.
If New Jersey has been on the leading edge of the grow-your-own trend, “thinking of New Jersey as the Garden State has a lot to do with it,” said Ms. Waters, who grew up in Chatham. “It’s a mindset.” The immigrant populations, too, with their food-growing traditions, have “a lot to do with it,” she said.
At the Harvest Moon Inn, Mr. Novak, a 1985 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, picks arugula just minutes before dressing it with a lemon-garlic vinaigrette and pairing it with duck confit. In the spring, he tossed just-picked sugar snap peas with house-made fettuccine. He gardens, he said, to obtain peak flavors, to know how produce was grown, for the convenience of picking, say, a single cucumber rather than ordering in bulk, and to save money.
“With heirloom tomatoes, you’re paying $6 a pound,” he said. “Produce costs more than putting the protein on the plate.”
Cost-cutting is also an incentive for Robert Minniti, chef and co-owner of Bàcio Italian Cuisine in Cinnaminson, with his wife, Pam. He uses three gardens the couple’s own, at home, started in 2007 a few doors from the restaurant, and those of his grandmother and of his aunt and uncle, both in Moorestown. He says he saves $2,000 in fresh herbs alone during the summer; at the same time he guarantees himself a steady supply of basil, sage, rosemary, tomatoes, zucchini and other crops that are as local as possible, free of chemicals and synthetic fertilizers and harvested at peak quality.
Robert Minniti, chef and co-owner of Bàcio Italian Cuisine, with his grandmother, Anna Doganiero, in her garden.Credit...Ryan Collerd for The New York Times
Mr. Minniti, a 1997 graduate of the Culinary Institute and a founder of the South Jersey Independent Restaurant Association, has used homegrown produce since he and his wife opened Bàcio in 2004. His interest in growing things is a re-creation of a “Jersey experience” from childhood that included vast gardens, Sunday dinners and his father’s ethereal tomato-basil-red onion salads.
“There’s nothing better than picking something fresh, cooking it, throwing it on the plate and eating it,” Mr. Minniti said.
He picks garden basil for pesto in his dish of fettuccine with seafood, sautés early-ripening Roma tomatoes with baby spinach and roasted garlic, and layers fontina cheese with roasted zucchini on flatbread.
For Corey Heyer, executive chef of the Bernards Inn in Bernardsville, 20 raised beds provide food he would otherwise have shipped in for use in the restaurant’s New American cuisine. Building on his own gardening experience, which began in childhood, Mr. Heyer is now in his second growing season for the restaurant at the 102-year-old inn.
The garden, seven miles away and down a dirt road on property belonging to the restaurant’s owners, is yielding nasturtiums (served with an appetizer of seared ahi tuna); johnny jump-ups and other edible flowers; shiso (a leafy herb often used in Asian cuisine); dill and seven varieties of mint. Other crops include berries, arugula (served alongside grilled Wagyu beef with cilantro pesto from the garden), salad greens, potatoes, squash (mainly for the blossoms), eggplants, cucumbers, six types of thyme, Hungarian peppers, habanero peppers and Thai chili peppers, among other crops.
Mr. Heyer, a 1996 graduate of the Culinary Institute, says an employee gardens about 12 hours a week. He and two other cooks are there for about eight hours total a week; as they plant, weed and harvest, they get ideas for the menu, he said.
Mr. Novak, who says he does almost all the gardening himself, finds that his menu is always evolving, depending on what needs to be used. In mid-August, when he is “hit with all the tomatoes the Pineapple, the German, the Green Zebras,” he will use them “all over the place,” he said. He picks greens at the last minute, and makes bruschetta with fresh tomatoes and basil from out back, he says, “at the last second.”
It’s worth the effort, Mr. Heyer said. “When you’re in the garden and getting your hands and feet dirty, you think about what you can do with the items,” he said. “But in the kitchen tasting them, cutting them and cooking them it’s a happy marriage. It’s not really extra work. It’s just an extension of the culinary world.”
Just Picked Restaurants whose chefs grow some of the ingredients: BÀCIO ITALIAN CUISINE 2806 Route 130 North, Cinnaminson. (856) 303-9100. baciorestaurant.com. Entrees, $22 to $45. BERNARDS INN 27 Mine Brook Road, Bernardsville. (908)766- 0002. bernardsinn.com. Entrees, $28 to $45. HARVEST MOON INN 1039 Old York Road, Ringoes. (908) 806-6020. harvestmooninn.com. Entrees, $20 to $35.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/nyregion/09dinenj.html