Obtenez 3 mois à 0,99 $/mois

OFFRE D'UNE DURÉE LIMITÉE
Page de couverture de Plenty #15: Eating the Landscape with Chef Brian Alberg

Plenty #15: Eating the Landscape with Chef Brian Alberg

Plenty #15: Eating the Landscape with Chef Brian Alberg

Écouter gratuitement

Voir les détails du balado

À propos de cet audio

 Hey food enthusiasts! In this episode of Plenty, number 15 to be precise, we hear once again from Chef Brian Alberg, a nearly ubiquitous culinary presence in the Berkshires and beyond. Since it’s been quite a while since catching up with him last, we had a lot of ground to cover. The new Seeds Market Cafe at Hancock Shaker Village operates under his direction, and is fast-becoming a favorite eatery in its own right. The Tap House at Shaker Mill is well under way, after it’s former incarnation, the Shaker Mill Tavern, was brought under the umbrella of Main Street Hospitality, where Alberg is Vice President of Culinary Development. And early August of 2019 finds Berkshire’s best-known chef and local food advocate teaching an intimate workshop that ends with a dining experience that couldn’t get any fresher. Let’s go to that conversation now, here on Plenty. GG — I guess we should start with your work at the Hancock shaker village. You’ve got a couple of different things going on there. First, you’ve got the the bistro, Seeds, up and running, correct? Chef Brian — It’s a great little museum cafe. It’s open primarily during the days, but we do a lot of culinary programming around the village and around food related topics. It’s a place where we try to use as much from the actual onsite farm as possible in our menus, as well as other neighborhood farms, keeping in context with with the shakers were about and also what we are about, as chefs. GG — Tell us a little bit about the history of your history. Anyway, going back a couple of decades. With the local food movement here in the Berkshires? Chef Brian — I grew up in Columbia County, just over the border in New York State, and I worked for a classical French chef named Jean Morel, who had gardens out back and — this is like the mid to late ‘80s, and, you know, farm to table wasn’t really a thing back then. Although, growing up in the kitchen, as I did, farm to table was, like, you know, get what you can from your backyard, what you can from the guy down the street, and that just kind of played in my mind throughout my career. Chef Brian Alberg; photo by Bill Wright Photography. Chef Brian — Once I relocated back to the Berkshires — I started back in ’04, for at the Red Lion Inn — for the biggest part of my life here, but I just got involved with Ted Thompson and a whole bunch of other people that were growing and trying to keep our landscape green and build a better life for themselves, and give us better products in the kitchen. So it’s just always been something that I’ve been drawn to. GG — Do you think that the agriculture we have locally in when I say local, you know, within 100 miles is being utilized? Well, or do you think that there’s some more room to bring farm to table to restaurants in the area? Chef Brian — I think it’s being utilized. I think that there’s always room for growth. I think that farmers themselves could do a better job of finding the gaps in our seasons and in our growing products, so that not every farmers growing tomatoes or kale or, you know, whatever produce there is, because it kind of super-saturates the market. So I think that they would be doing themselves a favor by diversifying their crops. GG — What what sorts of items are you using in Seeds? What kind of dishes you are you offering that that utilize these foods? Chef Brian — Actually, we just started with tomatoes, tomato season. Strawberries are kind of over, but we’ve got tons of greens. Garlic scapes just ended, but there’s all sorts of things coming in — beans, peas… Peas are kind of winding down, but everything was late this year. So, typically we’d have peas being done in late June. Now they’re pushing through July, which is kind of interesting, but it made for kind of a poor spring season for us, but now now the crops are beautiful. Rows of squash plant and other vegetables, with the Shaker Round Barn in the background. Despite a long, cool, rainy Spring, the vegetable and herb and herb are now yielding a bumper crop, according to Alberg; submitted photo. Chef Brian — I cook on these big cauldrons, and I set up kind of food truck style out in the field right out in front of barn, and we did some really fun food out there: brats, meatballs cooked over the fire, lobster salad. That was fun—it was good night. GG — Of course, you’ve got other things going on at Hancock Shaker Village, like this “Eating the Landscape,” It’s a class that you’re offering next month? Chef Brian — It’s basically just a class where people come — I think we have up to 20 people — and they tour the farm with me and one of the farmers. We pick produce out of the gardens, we talk about the meats that they raise, and then I’ll actually cook a dinner out at the table, from the stuff that we’ve picked. So it’s like a four hour class. It’s not really a class as much as it is a dialogue...
Pas encore de commentaire