A locavore experience for Gabby and Greg!

When guests are visiting from out of town, the question on my mind is always ‘what are they going to eat?’  Every meal offers the opportunity to show visitors who we are, by offering to share the best of what we eat.

Last weekend, we were honored to have had our dear friend Gabby and her boyfriend, Greg, visit us from New York City.  They are both chefs who, due to the current economic situation, have found themselves unemployed and so the opportunity for them to come down and see Vineland (as well as us old friends) was too great to pass up.

I picked them up on Saturday in Philadelphia, where they had taken the bus from New York.  We drove into Vineland in the afternoon, and got to the bakery right before the beginning of Thunder on the Avenue.  Jill was very excited to see Gabby, and no one had eaten lunch so we needed something fast and delicious.  I thought that Jamaican would be perfect, so we sent Gabby and Greg down a few blocks to A Taste of the Islands with our friend Elizabeth to pick up some take out.  They soon returned with platters of jerk chicken, jerk pork, and curried goat.  Each came with rice and beans (Jamaican-style with red beans and spices), as well as greens.  We tore into the platters, and as usual, the chicken was my favorite.  I enjoy eating Monica’s jerk chicken not only because the flavor is spot on, but because she always gives it a few whacks with her large cleaver before placing it into my platter on top of the rice and beans.  This roughly cut, bone-in roast chicken is very participatory, a primal way to eat your food, and so everyone got deeply into their lunch licking fingers and having a good time.

Later that night, after cleaning up the bakery, we packed some goodies to take to a bonfire at a friend’s house.  We sat around the fire talking and drinking cold Yeungling from the cooler.  At one point, our friend Kristen who was home for a few weeks from college remembered about a bottle of homemade cherry brandy that her father gave her earlier in the day.  She went into the house and declared that is was a 2007 vintage, the very year that Jill and I made brandy with Kristen and her father Sam (you may remember this brandy from an article I wrote last summer).  I was so happy that Gabby and Greg had the opportunity to taste this bitter flavorful south Jersey liquor that Jill and I had a hand in creating.

The next day, before a canoeing jaunt down the Maurice River, the four of us went to the bakery for espresso and breakfast.  I started cutting tender green spears of asparagus, and I cracked brown speckled eggs that we get from a local farmer.  In with the eggs went some organic 2% milk, and into my cast iron pan went diced onion, salt and pepper, and the asparagus.  The eggs then went into the pan with a sizzle, and in a few minutes we had some awesome scrambled eggs.  With some sliced avocado and a fine grating of Grana Padano cheese, the asparagus flecked eggs went onto rye bread that Grandmom supplied.  It was the perfect fuel for a canoeing trip and we gobbled it all up.

After a few hours floating peacefully down the Maurice and building up quite an appetite, we headed for our house, where a backyard BBQ was planned.  One of the best facets of owning the bakery is the ready access to a professionally stocked kitchen, and I took advantage of this by preparing some items ahead of time.  I boiled beets I got from my local farm stand; I washed ruffled green leaves of lettuce that I picked from my garden; I made salad dressing with EVOO and the homemade raspberry vinegar that John Cassadia gave me a few months ago…

When we got back to the house, Grandmom had made potato salad and my mother-in-law had created a batch of her amazing deviled eggs (also from the local brown eggs).  Greg and Gabby wanted to help, so Greg butchered a free-range chicken that I picked up at Bagliani’s in Hammonton while Gabby made a bangin’ marinade with lime juice, garlic, brown sugar, EVOO, and salt and pepper.  Greg then grilled the chicken outside with John, along with local asparagus, thick slices of onions and whole jalapeño peppers.  Gabby peeled, diced, and dressed the beets that I cooked the previous day while I made a quick salsa with a can of organic black beans, fresh garlic greens, oregano, tart crisp rhubarb (all the from the garden), a plum tomato, and EVOO.  I then threw together some guacamole from ripe avocados I had picked up at La Plaza on Landis Ave.

Everything came together nicely, and after heating some fresh corn tortillas on the grill, dinner was ready.  Everyone was starving, so we laid everything out on the dining room table and dug in.  We made little tacos with the tortilla and various fillings, and everything was quite tasty. Fresh Jersey strawberry shortcake and Jill’s homemade lemoncello finished off the dinner wonderfully.

We were very proud to have served such a locavore meal.  So much was locally grown or raised and seasonal and fresh, it really would have been hard to mess it up.  We wanted to share the bounty of a south Jersey spring with our friends, and I know that they were impressed not only with the food, but with Vineland and our whole region.  I think they’re already planning their next trip back.