Farm to Fork Dinner, Wilson Farm

Almost from the moment that last year's Farm to Fork Dinner at Wilson Farm was over, I've been anticipating this summer and another dinner out in the middle of this suburban farm. The minute I heard about this year's dinner, I jumped at the chance to get tickets. For those who don't know, Wilson Farm consists of 33 acres of farm land just outside Boston in Lexington, plus another 500 acres in Litchfield NH, and it has been run by the Wilson family for almost 130 years. The farm stand in Lexington is huge, and includes produce, a bakery, take-out meals, plus indoor and outdoor plants. It's also home to what I think of as the best arugula in the world (I'm not kidding, it's the best I've ever had).

When I told my parents about how wonderful last summer's dinner was, they of course wanted to join me this year. A whole bunch of my friends were supposed to join us to, but they all canceled at the last minute for various reasons (boo! hiss!). That means, though, that I'll be pestering them about the August dinner that the farm has planned.

The crowd - 75 in total - gathered next to the farm stand, and we were led down a set of stairs and out into the field. The location of the dinner this year was a plot that had been filled with beets only a few hours before (and would, of course, be sown with something else the very next day). The tables were decked out with gorgeous centerpieces filled not only with flowers, but also vegetables and herbs. Wine, water, and a fabulously floral soda were passed around, and we all dug into fresh bread.

The first of many salads came out, eliciting excited ooh's from everyone. This plated salad, a mix of arugula, radishes, Thai basil, anise hyssop, microgreens, and roasted peaches, would be at home in any fancy restaurant in Boston. With all of those ingredients, plus garnishes of flowers from the anise, marcona almonds, shaved pecorino, and syrup-thick balsamic vinegar, you'd think there would be too much going on, but everything was very well balanced. I probably could have eaten a whole bowl of this and gone home happy, but there was so much more to come.

Next came a trio of appetizers. The plate was piled up with all kinds of good things, like a pulled pork sandwich (on an arugula pesto biscuit), grilled hanger steak crostini with a spinach gorgonzola pesto, and empanadas de cabra. Chef Todd Heberlein told everyone to take a bite of the empanada before informing us that "cabra" means goat. (I had already spoiled this to my whole table, having watched the conversation between Todd and local meat purveyor Concord Prime on Twitter all week.) The big winner on this plate (not surprisingly) was the beet chips in the center. People kept saying "I didn't know you could make chips out of beets," but come on, they're root vegetables. I've never met a fried root vegetable I didn't like (and I'm still not a fan of beets - sorry, Todd!).

The next salad course came out (and only a meal on a farm could pull off multiple salad courses and have everyone wanting more), and it featured a basic green salad, tossed with a wonderfully light vinaigrette, and a huge plate of pickled vegetables. I, of course, enjoyed the beans and the cucumber (still not the beets!), but I absolutely loved the radishes, fennel, and ginger. I was surprised about how mild the radishes became after pickling. I'm ready to go out and buy tons of radishes and bulb after bulb of fennel so I can eat these all the time.

By main course time, we were all getting full, and there seemed to be a little vegetable fatigue going on around me (while I was anxiously awaiting the next big bowl of vegetables to come my way). The main dish of the course was local sea bass with nasturtium butter. Not being a huge fan of bass, I didn't love this dish, although the compound butter was lovely (hell, you could put flowers in anything and I'd like it, but butter? What's not to love?!). The vegetarian main dish was fresh cajun-spiced pasta with kale, chard, and Jacob's cattle beans (garnished with rosemary frico). I always think of kale and beans (a perfect combo, by the way) to be more of a winter dish, so it seemed out of place while sitting out on a beautiful summer's night. (That's not to say it wasn't delicious...) The two veggie dishes - green and wax beans with fennel, arugula, and parsley, and zucchini and summer squash with caramelized onions, olives, and zucchini blossoms - were very tasty, and they got me excited about eating boatloads of zucchini in the next few months (my first zucchini, coincidentally, came in this weekend).

Just as the sun went down, it was time for our final course - dessert! Because the bakery is a different department than the kitchen, I'm sure they feel that they have to show off what they can do as well, so we were treated to not one, not two, but three desserts. First off, there were blueberries and strawberries in balsamic vinegar atop ginger ice cream (with a strawberry jam pastry straw to boot). A little sliver of zucchini bread (more like a super-moist cake) sat nearby, topped with butter cream frosting and purple basil. Last but not least was the "floral surprise," a lily filled with marscapone and blueberries (and topped with a chocolate dragonfly). Doesn't it look gorgeous?

We rolled our way back out of the farm (I had warned my mother that it would be dark, so she led the way with her little pocketbook-sized flashlight). I was full but not overly so, probably because the meal wasn't terribly rich but plenty satisfying.

If you're interested in attending a Farm to Fork dinner at Wilson Farm, they are planning on hosting another in August. The exact date will be announced in early August - if it's anything like this time, they'll announce it on Twitter and it'll sell out quickly. Don't hesitate to put your name on the wait list if it fills up, though, since there were quite a few people who had taken spots from people who had canceled.

Farm to Fork Dinner at Wilson Farm

Growing up in Lexington meant frequent trips to Wilson Farm for fresh veggies (and somehow, I'd always manage to get a honey stick too). No autumn was complete without a trip through their haunted house and a big, fat caramel apple with peanuts. Wilson Farm has been operating in Lexington since 1884 as a family-run farm, and they work 33 acres in Lexington (probably some of the most expensive farm land around, considering the price of houses in town) and 500 more acres in Litchfield, New Hampshire. So when I heard through Twitter that the farm would be hosting a farm-to-fork dinner in the fields, complete with over 50 items grown on the farm, I jumped at the chance to attend.

My friend Melody came with me, and we arrived to quite a crowd gathered next to the store. Turns out this was only about half the night's crowd - there were 100 people at the dinner! Farmer Jim Wilson walked us through the field, explaining their state-of-the-art greenhouse and their Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques in abbreviated form (every two weeks in the summer, Jim leads a much longer tour that is worth attending). Right smack in the middle of the field, three looooong tables were set up along the rows, and we headed for seats at the end of the table nestled in amongst the tomato plants. While the attendees were a good mix of ages, our table was skewed a little older - we just happened to take the seats across from a sweet and funny couple our age, though, so I didn't have to spend too much time talking about why I was taking pictures or what the purpose of my blog was. The tables were decorated with beautiful arrangements of not just flowers, but also radishes, beans, kale, basil, and dill.

Fresh bread was passed around (the farmstand has a pretty fantastic bakery), as were herb olive oil and a tremendous roasted eggplant dip (recipe here). There was also red and white wines, and carafes of water with sprigs of salad burnet, an unusual herb that tastes a bit like cucumber, a bit like melon. Chef Todd Heberlein introduced each course as it came out, but since we were at the end of our table, it was a bit hard to hear.

The first course, "Prosciutto and Melon," was brought out in shot glasses - always an interesting way to start a meal. The amuse bouche turned the typical salty-and-sweet combination of melon and proscuitto on its head - it was served as a chilled honeydew melon soup with crispy proscuitto bits on top. I'm not usually a chilled soup fan, but the saltiness of the bacon (as well as the crispy texture) added a lot to the dish.

As the second course was passed out, the chef joked that a lot of people thought it was risky of him to serve not one, but three types of beets to the crowd. He insisted that he would convert some people into beet fans with this dish, and he won over quite a few with his mixture of Chioggia beets tossed in creme fraiche on a bed of beet greens, served with purees of red and golden beets. Walking around the table to say hello, though, he did jokingly scold me for not finishing my plate - what can I say, I can only eat so many beets at one time, which is about a million times more beets than I would have eaten even a few years ago.

Course three featured a little patty of corn and chorizo pudding, as well as an heirloom tomato gazpacho salad and a grilled Athena melon salad. The pudding (recipe here), featuring sweet corn and spicy chorizo, was a great match for the lighter salads alongside it. The tomato salad was amazing, filled with more kinds of tomatoes than I could count, cucumbers, and peppers - it's easy to forget what a tomato really tastes like over the long winter, which is why late summer should be filled with big bowls of tomatoes just like this. Heavenly. The grilled Athena melon (similar to a cantaloupe) was served on a bed of salad greens tossed with a roasted tomatillo vinaigrette. I loved this dressing - light and tangy - and it paired beautifully with the supersweet melon. I'd love to make a dressing like this with all the tomatillos that are coming in in my own garden.

By the time the main course came out, everyone was pretty full, but of course we had to try it all. The protein was striped bass from Martha's Vineyard, served over an amazing crunchy vegetable slaw with Thai basil pesto. I wanted to eat more of that slaw, I just couldn't fit it in! There was ricotta and swiss chard stuffed pasta, topped with a ratatouille sauce, that was hearty without being heavy, and the ratatouille, which can often turn out mushy or even slimy, still had a bit of firm texture to it, and the flavors of each of the vegetables was pronounced. The sides were Beans, Beans, and More Beans (a crispy green and yellow bean salad, tossed with roasted tomatoes, feta, and olives) and Cranberry Bean and Corn Stew (sweet corn, creamy and perfectly cooked cranberry beans, a little tomato, and some kale and collard greens). Both of these sides would be perfect as a light lunch.

Of course, we were all really stuffed by then, but dessert was yet to come. It was the only course that Chef Heberlein didn't have a hand in, as the bakery department had made it. When the menu said "Stone Fruit Tart with Our Own Berries," I figured we each get a little slice of tart with a handful of berries - more than enough dessert after such a big meal. But no, the plate we were served could have been a meal on its own, with a delicate puff pastry topped with a variety of stone fruits (peaches, nectarines, plums), ginger whipped cream, deliciously ripe berries, sesame tuile cookies in big fat curls, and underneath it all, a whole almond macaroon. Four of us could have shared one plate and been happy - instead, I put the dessert shelf in my stomach* to good use, eating more than my fair share.

It was dark by the end of the meal, and we walked back through the fields, lit by small candles, full and happy after such a wonderful meal. This is the second time Wilson Farm has hosted a Farm to Fork dinner, and hopefully they will continue this tradition next summer. Keep an eye on their Happenings page for other great events, like their upcoming tomato festival.

*Melody and I had a teacher in elementary school that taught us about the dessert shelf. Think about it - even when you're full, you still have room for something sweet. It can only be because there is a shelf in your stomach that ONLY dessert can fit onto.

Cake, Lexington

Apparently the cupcake trend won't go away. This summer, the Back Bay's Sweet expanded into Harvard Square, and Todd English is about to open a cupcake bakery on Beacon Hill sometime soon. Quietly entering the cupcake market, on the other hand, is Cake in Lexington center.

Cake opened a few weeks ago on the first floor of a Victorian on Mass Ave, and their focus is meant to be on actual cakes, "made from scratch... using only the purest, finest, freshest ingredients available." But they seem to be doing a brisk business with their cupcakes. At $2 a pop, the cupcakes are a reasonable treat - a good size at a good price with delicious flavors.

For the sake of "research" (ah, the lengths I'll go to...), I picked up one of each cupcake when I was on my way to my brother's house for a full day of Beatles' Rock Band (we ended up playing for 8 hours, because the game is THAT awesome). We cut the cupcakes up into little bites so everyone could get a taste, but I still think I OD'd on sugar a little bit.

My favorites were the Midnight Delight (dense fudge cake filled with sweet chocolate pastry cream topped with Ghiradelli cocoa icing), the Berries & Gold (rich gold cake filled with fresh raspberry preserves and a whipped Chambord buttercream), and the Minuteman (moist gold cake layered with strawberries, fresh from Wilson's Farm, light whipped cream and topped with vanilla buttercream). The Midnight Delight was a powerhouse of chocolate - sweet, with just enough bitterness to highlight the cocoa flavor. The cake really was dense and super chocolatey. The Chambord buttercream on the Berries & Gold may have been my favorite aspect of any of the cupcakes. And the Minuteman was just a beautifully composed strawberry shortcake - yum!

I was not so fond of the Karat Topped (pineapple cream cheese icing set on a moist, full-bodied carrot cake), which I thought had way, way too many nuts (but really, I prefer my carrot cake with no nuts at all), and the Red Carpet (smooth, deep red velvet cake laid out with a decadent cream cheese icing), because I always find red velvet cakes to taste fake, no matter where I get it.

In the picture above, clockwise from the top, are the Karat Topped, Red Carpet, The Minuteman, Mocha Express (bittersweet chocolate cake iced in a cappuccino buttercream and garnished with a mocha espresso bean), Berries & Gold, Midnight Delight, Black Tie Affair (sweet vanilla bean cake filled with pastry cream and dressed in ganache), and in the center, chocolate with vanilla buttercream.

The full-sized cakes at Cake seem a little pricy (I think the sign said that they start at $20 for a 4-inch round), but the cupcakes are a fantastic deal at $2. Cake is located at 1628 Mass Ave in Lexington and is open Tuesday-Thursday, 10am-6pm, Friday 10am-8pm, Saturday 10am-5pm, Sunday noon-5pm, and closed Monday.

Denian's, Lexington

I have officially left the semi-urban landscape of Brookline (where the T stopped right in front of my building) for the more suburban town of Lexington. I'd gotten so used to have amazing food within walking distance, and now... well, at least I have a car.

That being said, I was very happy to notice a new restaurant that had opened in Lexington. Denian's is a small take out shop that focuses on Chinese buns, located right next to the Royal Pastry Shop on Marrett Road. It's strictly for take-out - the only seats are a few along a small bar on the wall (although there is room for a couple of tables, which would definitely help the place out).

Denian's offers seven different types of buns - pork, beef, chicken, green veggie, carrot, sweet bean paste, and taro paste - and you can buy them in quantities of 1, 3, 4, 6, or 12. I opted for three, trying one each of the pork, chicken, and carrot.

The dough itself was light and a little fluffy. Each bun holds a decent amount of filling, which matches up with the amount of dough very well. As for the fillings, the ones I tried ranged from fine to very very tasty. The pork was pretty standard, much like you'd find in any potsticker - it definitely didn't wow me. The chicken (above), on the other hand, was delicious. There was lots of ginger and scallions in there, making each bite flavorful. My favorite of the three, however, was the carrot (top) - both sweet and savory, and wonderfully spiced with five-spice powder and a touch of sesame oil. The chicken and the carrot were both a little unusual, and the flavors were very well balanced.

My three buns made for a decent-sized lunch, but when I saw the scallion pancakes on the menu, I had no choice but to order them. They are one of my favorite foods, and although I make them at home, I prefer to order them out. Sadly, this version wasn't fantastic. They were a little on the chewy side, but that may have been because a miscommunication left them steaming in their take-out box a little too long. That being said, the flavor was good and I would definitely give them a try again.

Denian's also offers noodle soups and bubble tea. Since it's right down the street from Lexington High, I'm sure it will get a good deal of business from students once school starts back up in the fall. The bubble tea flavors are all powder, though, so if that's not your thing (I think the powders are gross), you've been warned.

Cantaloupe and Prosciutto: A Perfect Pair

We've all had it before: pieces of melon wrapped in paper-thin slices of proscuitto. The salty-sweet combo is almost perfect. Almost.

Throw in a little bitter, in the form of arugula, and top with olive oil and balsamic vinegar for a well-rounded - and filling - salad.

And I don't know how they do it, but Wilson's Farm has the BEST arugula in the state. So much tastier than anything you can get at the market. Too bad I only get out that way once in a while now...