I conducted in-depth film interviews with one senior, 77 year old Rose Visconte, where i interviewed and documented her life at home and at the Rego Park Senior Center.

As Baby Boomers age, senior advocates and the city administration are bracing themselves for an influx of retirees that is expected to increase New York City’s aging population by a third between now and 2030. Today’s seniors live longer, and they have less money and greater chronic health problems than the generation before. They are also more ethnically and culturally diverse, creating new challenges for senior services.
But even as some senior centers close during hard economic times, others have thrived when they unburdened themselves of a “one size fits all” approach. By tailoring programs to specific populations and individual tastes, some of the city’s 250-plus senior centers are finding new ways to create welcoming environments for seniors of all cultures, help seniors to stay in their longtime communities, and encourage seniors themselves to help fill the gaps caused by tight budgets and inadequate staffing

Rego Park Senior Center: One For All from Voices of NY on Vimeo.

Read at Voices of New York:
http://voicesofny.org/2012/09/graying-in-color-aging-actively-among-your-own/

Container store front of Nile Valley Eco-Juice and Salad Bar. Photos by Cheryl Chan

Made out of 22 recycled shipping containers, DeKalb Market opened July 23 and is Brooklyn’s newest outdoor market. Found downtown at Fulton Mall (that’s 332 Flatbush Avenue Extension; click here for directions) it encompasses the Brooklyn zeitgeist not just with its cool use of upcycling, but its mix of local eateries, retail shops, an incubator farm and even an Internet radio station, BBox Radio.

At the center of the stores is a huge shaded tent, complete with picnic tables where patrons can wile the hours away and take refuge from the heat with refreshments from Joe the Art of Coffee, Robicelli’s cupcakes–the best in town, in our opinion–Sour Puss Pickles, doughnuts from Cuzin’s Duzin, Cheeky Sandwiches, soul food from Mazie’s Bites (famous for their fish tacos and macaroni and cheese) and Pasticcio, an Italian trattoria. Molicia Crichton, founder of Nile Valley, also serves fresh smoothie and Caribbean inspired organic grub. Meanwhile feel good Frankie Beverly-type jazz and old-school hip-hop pulsate from the turntables of Brooklyn Beats, the record store run by Brooklyn Bodega and Fat Beats. They have the only liquor license on premise, and serve Brooklyn beers and sangria.

DeKalb Market is open year-round, seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. While weekends bustle, during the week things are still quiet. However, shop owners are optimistic that once school reopens there will be increased foot traffic from students and office workers around the area who will form their lunch and dinner crowd. And after all, it’s still early days for the DeKalb Market businesses, many of whom are still settling in; painting their logos on the outside of the containers, and testing their food offerings. Pasticcio NYC are awaiting more kitchen equipment, and aim to serve fresh pasta, sauces and mozzarella made on site in a full kitchen in a few weeks, says Nina Maurello, who together with her husband Nicola used to run Pasticcio restaurants in Murray Hill and Queens. Their trial menu comprises of salads, paninis and bruschetta made on a special oven from Italy. They also have a professional grill up and running behind their container where they grill seasonal vegetables, and will morph the area behind their container into a little “courtyard” with picnic tables.

The market is meant to be a launching pad for many fledging vendors who share an entrepreneurial streak. The 60-square-foot salvaged containers serve as their storefronts and also house their dreams of opening a brick and mortar location elsewhere. Permanent vendors include Maharlika, which makes Filipino food, Nile Valley Eco-Juice and Salad Bar (for vegans) and hand-brewed teas from Tea by Tiffany. At one end of the market stand a line of retail shops that include 3rd Ward, apparel by B66, Harriet’s by Hekima and Honeysuckle & Hearts, Daga Antiques, children’s accessories and clothes by Little Poco and Hank & JoJo, Yak Blak Sunnies & Specs, and a Pratt Institute Design incubator.

On the weekends, a roster of indie craft stalls and food purveyors set up alongside the permanent shops from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Making their debut last week were Happy Bubbles NYC, organic hand-made soaps by Mina Choe and Dreamer Pillow, which makes hand-crafted pillows and T-shirts by Akin Babagil and Ekin Turesay. There’s also For The Love of Pie, which is Dutch apple pie and Austrian cheesecakes by Holland native Marcel Wijma. Sample his signature “Eve’s Pie;” a traditional homemade treat that is not too sweet, “more creamy than average American apple pie,” says Wijma, who also notes his “doughy crust with crunchy edges.”

This innovative concept for a community space is a partnership between Youngwoo & Associates and Urban Space Management, a UK-based developer of specialty retail markets that’s responsible for the Union Square Holiday Market and Camden Lock, London’s famed craft market. The ethos of DeKalb is to function as sustainably as possible, hence the re-purposed containers, and be a resource for the neighborhood as a venue for events, performances and educational activities. The Brooklyn Grange, New York City College of Technology, 3rd Ward, Newton Farm Collective and Malcom X Grassroots are some of the community groups that manage planter boxes that line the periphery of the market. In addition to vendors serving seasonal vegetables grown right in the market, the place will regularly host cooking demos. Also look out for the weekly demos by Teen Battle Chefs, hosted by FamilyCook Productions, a non-profit focused on culinary education.

Published in Edible Brooklyn:
http://www.ediblebrooklyn.com/uncategorized/scenes-from-downtowns-new-dekalb-market-made-from-old-shipping-containers-and-open-daily/

Store front of the Greene Hill Food Co-op. Photo by Kelsy Chauvin

The photos on the storefront of the new member-owned Greene Hill Food Co-op are comprised of people from its surrounding communities, signifying the co-op’s desire to be a resource for a neighborhood, which doesn’t have much access to cheap and fresh locally grown food. Located at 18 Putnam Avenue, on Grand Street in Clinton Hill, the food coop is meant to serve Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy, where the food options consist of chain grocery stores or a small number of boutique shops that might stock local food for a premium price.

Since January, Greene Hill has operated as a members-only buying club, with twice-weekly pick-ups. Shoppers must become members by agreeing to show up for work shifts and by paying $175, and then order online and pick up local produce, grains and other products the following Wednesday. The store plans to open its 2,700-square foot storefront this fall at first just for eight hours a week. The current membership base hovers around 385 members, and their target goal is to reach over 700 by the fall. To that end, the co-op has been conducting active recruitment drives–there’s one tonight from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at 138 South Oxford Street,
Studio G–with hopes that the whole community will get involved.

Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative in Leola, Pennsylvania is Greene Hill’s primary provider of fruits and vegetables, pasture-raised meats, dairy products, gluten-free baked goods and baking supplies. There’s also a hyper-locally sourced list of products from Oslo Coffee Roasters, Brooklyn Cured, and Amy’s Bread in Manhattan, grains and beans from Cayuga Pure Organics in Brooktondale Upstate, as well as chocolate, tea, and coffee from Equal Exchange in Massachusetts.

Greene Hill was started in 2008 by a few members of the famous Park Slope Food Coop who shlepped to the market on Union but lived in the area of the new store. “The impetus was lousy access to good food,” says co-founder DK Holland, a Fort Greene/Clinton Hill resident since 1983, adding that in her community there are “tons of people” who are overweight, have diabetes and other health issues and qualify as low-income. “They need good food more than anyone,” Holland says.

Noting an expectation that a member of a food coop is a food connoisseur of sorts, Holland insists that she is not a foodie, she’s just against processed food. She hopes Greene Hill will bring to the neighborhood “the sheer joy of being able to eat the best quality food which maybe not available anywhere here, or maybe hard to find.”

The co-op hopes they will be “fulfilling the niche” of making seasonal local produce and pastured meats available at an affordable price for an underserved neighborhood, explains Anna Muessig, the outreach co-chair of the co-op. As a Bed-Stuy resident, she says she agrees with eastern Classon Avenue’s classification as a food desert.

At last Saturday’s Greene Hill Food Coop Community Day–amid face painting, silk-screening of Greene Hill t-shirts and a potluck–co-op members were enthusiastically extolling the merits of the shop to curious passersbys and residents.

“We know local and organic food sometimes has a stigma, and is cost-prohibitive,” says Muessig, who insists “that is not what a cooperative is about.” Greene Hill has four separate payment options to make membership affordable to all income levels. The $175 payment includes a $25 administrative fee and a $150 membership investment, which is refundable if you leave the co-op. Two weeks ago, an Electronic Benefit Transfer machine was installed, so that the Coop can now accept food stamps. On the Apple plan, the administrative fee is dropped to $5 for persons on public assistance and the payments are spread out over five years. On the Carrot plan, you pay the $25 administrative fee upfront, but pay the remainder in installments over the next six months.

“The more members we get, the cheaper it will get,” adds Muessig. She explains that because co-ops “work directly with suppliers to buy things at bulk rates,” food cooperatives are more affordable than traditional grocers as they cut out the middlemen. Muessig cites the 200 percent grocery stores mark up as a function of operating expenses and maintaining a huge storefront and employees.

As member-owners, not volunteers, we own Greene Hill,” says Holland. “We get to be Alice Waters,” enthuses Holland, who clarifies that members get to choose what items to stock, to know where it comes from, and “get it at such a price that everyone can afford it.”

As a buying club transitioning into a retail store, the exact length for member work shifts are still to be determined, but Greene Hill estimates that it will be about three hours every four weeks. Jobs range from attending general meetings, being part of a committee, stocking shelves, fundraising, website maintenance, record-keeping and running the cash register. Work done now will count toward your member labor requirements for the future, or toward Park Slope Food Coop labor requirements.

The members-only work model is the same that’s worked for the co-op for decades, and since Greene Hill’s inception the Park Slope shop has been supportive. Its members can work shifts at Greene Hill and apply the work credits to their Park Slope requirements. However, if Park Slope members want to shop at Greene Hill, they would have to become co-owners of Greene Hill as well, and pay a $25 administration fee and make a one time $150 membership investment.

Holland emphatically states that Greene Hill wants to be diverse and is continuously “striving” through their outreach campaigns. “The problem is if people have the mindset that they can’t walk through the door, that they don’t belong,” she says, “everyone belongs.” Which is one of the reasons why they have pictures of community members on their storefront, to show that the coop is now a part of their community.

“I don’t think it’s people with money taking over,” agrees Kelsy Chauvin, the photographer of those portraits, and a member of Greene Hill for over a year and a half: “It’s people who don’t want to waste money on crappy groceries that hopefully will take over.” A year ago, Greene Hill had only 50 members. Chauvin feels encouraged by the burgeoning membership base and plans to stop her Park Slope Coop membership when Greene Hill picks up. “To not have to cross Atlantic will be the best thing that happens to me, shopping-wise,” she says.

Addicted to the delicious organic eggs she gets at Greene Hill, Chauvin jokes that to lure new members her new co-op should conduct “reverse logic outreach to Park Slope. If you don’t want to put up with insanity of large coop,” she says, “there’s room for them here.”

Published in Edible Brooklyn:
http://www.ediblebrooklyn.com/uncategorized/greene-hill-food-coop-meet-the-new-kid-on-the-block-tonight/

Forget those inferior candy coins, this is the gelt that's going on our Hanukah table. Photo by Chozen.

You likely don’t have to be Jewish to get the “certain inside jokes and elements” that go into the flavor profiles of Chozen ice cream, says co-founder Meredith Fisher, but an appreciation for Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm probably helps.

Chozen is a small, family-run, certified Kosher ice-cream brand conceived by Fisher, her mother Ronne and her sister Isabelle Krishana one night as they sat around the dining table and paired vanilla ice cream with Ronne’s homemade rugalach eaten right from the freezer. That became their first flavor–cinnamon ice cream swirled with pieces of apricot, walnut, raisin and almond pastry–which launched in June 2010 along with Matzoh Crunch and Coconut Macaroon. The family, who all live in Manhattan, distributed their products themselves to stores like Union Market, Zabars, Garden of Eden, Wholefoods and Dean and Deluca.

Coffee Talk, their latest flavor, is “a pure rich espresso ice-cream,” says Meredith, and inspired by Jewish ladies sitting together and enjoying a get-together over coffee. It’s the time honored “coffee klatch,” a Yiddish word that means “a casual social gathering of coffee and conversation” she says, referencing the Saturday Night Live skits that brought the concept of “kibitzing” to the mainstream, she adds.

Beyond their Jewish j0kes, Chozen also pays attention to provenance, sourcing from an Oneida County dairy that works with local farms, and “every ingredient is not only kosher” but “all-natural,” says Meredith, who left her marketing job with fashion label Diane von Furstenberg this January to concentrate on Chozen full time. The family also avoids corn syrup, gums and stabilizers in their finished products and ingredients.

For the Matzoh Crunch, a Brooklyn baker even makes the matzoh that is covered in caramel and a layer of chocolate–”our version of Ben and Jerry’s Heath Bar Crunch.” The Coconut Macaroon is also “inspired by Passover” says Meredith, while the Apple and Honey that came later makes “a very traditional pairing for Rosh Hashanah.” This Hanukkah, of course, offer friends and family a pint of Chocolate Gelt.

Published in Edible Manhattan:
http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/topics/food-dining/products-we-love/chozen-ice-creams-newest-flavor-its-coffee-talk-joining-ronne%E2%80%99s-rugelach-matzoh-crunch-and-coconut-macaroon/

Karen Dunlap, the tea consultant, at Union Square Cafe. Photo by Cheryl Chan

“When I first started in the food industry, I used to think pairings were a bunch of crap,” laughs Karen Dunlap, who manages the tea service and its associated pairings at Union Square Café on E. 16th Street, “but it’s not.”

Dunlap should know: She’s a 15-year veteran of the tea industry who joined Union Square as both a server and a tea consultant last spring. She co-founded Matcha Source, a Japanese tea importing business that she sold in 2006; has worked as a representative for In Pursuit of Tea, and worked as a tea consultant for Craft, Café Boulud and Gramercy Tavern, the latter also a member of Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group.

“The power of a pairing,” says Dunlap, ” is that you remember that moment forever, and you look for ways to recreate it for yourself.”

To that end, she recommends Union Square Cafe diners combine Anji Baicha Green with Petit Billy French goat cheese from Union Square’s farmstead cheese assortment. “I love the fact that I’m pairing cheese from the Loire Valley with tea from Fujian, China,” says Dunlap. Her ultimate goal is that the pairing enhance the taste of the tea and that “both flavors stand out.”

“How many times when you pair tea with food or desserts does the tea ends up tasting like water” she asks: “The goal is to have a harmony, the symphony of different notes.” Here the “sweet grassy notes” in the Chinese green tea are “amazing” with the cheese, enthuses Dunlap, which she characterizes as “tangy” and “light.”

Another example is a pairing of Jasmine Pearls Green tea, also from Fujian, with a lemon cake served with Moscato d’Asti zabaglione and raspberry sherbet. “This lemon cake is delicate, with high acidity from the lemon” she says, “which matches with the smooth florals of the jasmine green tea.”

Union Square’s loose leaf tea menu is mainly single-lot, artisanal products sourced from The Ippodo Tea Company, which is based in Kyoto, and from In Pursuit of Tea, a New York outfit. The craftsmanship in which tea is grown and dried is important to Dunlap, who did a five-week spring sabbatical with Ippodo Tea in 2009 learning about calligraphy, the Japanese tea ceremony and the growing process. In return, Dunlap taught Ippodo Tea’s sales staff how to explain their products to the growing number of foreigners who wanted to buy it, but didn’t understand or use tea the way Japanese buyers would. The “tea language” of a Japanese consumer is different than American or French buyer’s, says Dunlap.

The beneficial cultural exchange continues at Union Square, which is one of two Manhattan restaurants that sells Ippudo teas. Their 2010 harvest hojicha tea (a green summer crop tea that is roasted until it browns) Dunlap reverently describes as one of the best hojichas she’s tasted. With In Pursuit of Tea, she also appreciates that they deal with “small farmers and artisan producers, ” and “often buy only enough tea to fit in their suitcases.” She changes the menu as she finds new teas she likes and with the seasons. “I believe we crave subtle, delicate, florals in the summer, and darker notes in the winter, things that heat us up and give us comfort.”

Dunlap’s fastidiousness extends to the diner’s table: When tea arrives, it’s in a 14-ounce For Life teapot, and it’s been prepared at the “optimum temperature,” which is 185 degrees for the Jasmine Pearls, and it’s seeped for the right amount of time for different teas and with the right amount of tea leaves. “It’s not true that you get more out of your tea if you stuff more leaves” into the cup, she says. “The truth is, if the whole leaf can’t open and be exposed to the oxygen in the water, you are not going to get the best tasting cup.”

“My passion is to bring good tea into cuisine level dining” says Dunlap, who conducts tea appreciation classes that train staff on the proper brewing methods and educate them on the tasting profiles or which teas work best with a particular dessert or entrée. Don’t be surprised if the next time you go the waitress recommends another of Dunlap’s suggestions: “that Darjeeling goes great with seafood.”

Published in Edible Manhattan:
http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/topics/food-dining/restaurants/goat-cheese-and-green-tea-delicious-says-karen-dunlap-the-expert-behind-union-square-cafes-new-tea-service/

Cheese table laden with goodies. Photo by Rebecca Hoagland

As part of the New York City Food and Wine Festival earlier this month, Murray’s Cheese held a tasting event at the Norwood Club, a historic townhouse on 241 West 14th Street. The goal was to introduce customers to their new line of cave-aged cheeses, which (as you might’ve guessed from their name) have been a long time coming. Murray’s Cheese on Bleecker Street is home to five subterranean cheese caves–rare in this town–where over 100 varieties of cheese are aged by on-staff experts. For the event, the Norwood Club’s four floors were turned into “caves,” each designed to showcase a specific type of cheese, including natural rind cheeses and cheddars on the second floor, washed rind and alpine cheeses on the third floor, and bloomy rinds up top.

On hand in “cave” three–those washed rinds and alpines, which, according to a Murray’s expert, are “made in the mountains and good for melting”–was Brian Ralph, a cave manager at Murray’s. He stood attentively at the table overflowing with blocks of dairy goodies like Twin Maple Hudson Red, Spring Brook Farms Tarentaise, Reading Raclette and Pawlet, to name a few. Ralph advised us to start with the Uplands Pleasant Ridge Reserve–“as you don’t want to blow out your palate”–and then move on to nibble on the Vieux cru des Cremiers.

Pleasant Ridge was “consistently one of the best cheeses in America,” says Ralph, and the “only cheese that’s won best in show three times” at the American Cheese Society’s annual competition in 2001, 2005 and 2010. It hails from Dodgeville, Wisconsin, and is made by cheesemaker Andy Hatch, with whom Murray’s has had a relationship with for years, just as with many of the cheese artisans the Bleecker Street-based company sources from. Young Pleasant Ridge is cave-aged at Murray’s, Ralph proudly told us, and the makers trust the Manhattan shop to develop the cheese to acquire a favorable finish.

That scenario repeated itself at every floor: At “cave” two (tables of natural rind cheeses and Cheddars) I was taught over tasting 5 Spoke Creamery Tumbleweed and Montgomery’s Cheddar that the natural rinds cheese occure where “molds grow and matures on the cheeses.”

On the fourth floor I found bloomy rinds like Selles-sur-Cher, a pasteurized goat cheese from France with a texture like buttercream icing, and a Murray’s Cave Aged Valencay from the Loire Valley in France. Meanwhile a video played that showed cave aging process over 14 days at Murray’s. The video offered a glimpse into what goes on in the underground aging process of affinage, the French-style craft of cheese ripening and aging, which is what happens below the street (you can peek in from the sidewalk) in the caves of Murrays, where a cheese manager like Ralph pats and flips cheeses.

Overall, the tasting was an effective and fun way for the public with an interest in eating and serving excellent cheese to learn more about how great cheese gets made. It was an afternoon of sensory delight, where guest intermittently nibbled on cheeses–sometimes served with bread from Tom Cat Bakery, Z Crackers or Harvest Song Preserves when the Murray’s expert felt that a particular pairing would enhance the cheeses.

An oft-heard refrain: from the participants was “I’ve been eating cheese all afternoon but, alright, I’ll try another piece.” And if you missed out, don’t worry, Murray’s offers plenty of classes where you can learn by tasting, including the three day Boot Camp we highlighted earlier this year on our weekly NY1 show. Rest assured you’ll end up saying just what others did at the Norwood Club: “We are high on cheese.”

Published in Edible Manhattan:
http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/topics/food-dining/products-we-love/the-weather-underground-murrayscheese-sets-out-four-floors-of-its-new-cave-aged-line/

Larry Reutens, the Singaporean-born chef and owner of Masak in the East Village, blends his own heritage (and Singaporean street hawker food) with Manhattan culinary experience. Photo by Cheryl Chan

Masak, an East Village restaurant that opened in August, is Singaporean-born chef/owner Larry Reutens fine dining spin on traditional hawker fare from his Southeast Asian country. That, like the rest of the country’s cuisine, is derived from a mélange of Malay, Indian, Chinese and Nonya flavors, and at Masak, Reutens adds both an American sensibility and French techniques.

Reutens does not want Masak, which means “to cook” in Malay, to be pigeon-holed as an authentic Singaporean eatery. The casual 40-seat eatery is meant to serve as both an neighborhood bistro and a laboratory where the chef, who used to work for Visa in business development, can let his imagination run wild, melding his Singaporean heritage with his Manhattan restaurant kitchen experience. He moved to New York eight years ago and did his formal culinary training at The Institute of Culinary Education on 23rd Street, honing his skills at Aquavit, The Tasting Room, and as the executive chef at Alias. He defines Masak as “very much an expression of myself.”

For example, Reuten infuses his creations with both French methods of preparation and the spices of his homeland, braising a Beef Shin Rendang, a thick curry with Malay spices, with house-made cornbread and kale and turnips, instead of simmering it as it’s traditionally prepared by the Malays. He says he hesitates to cook “straight Singaporean food” such as hainanese chicken rice and the like, “unless it’s so awesome it can stand on it’s own.”

“I try very hard to make pairings that work,” he adds, “and that make sense when you eat them.” One creative result is the popular Quih Pie Tee, a bite-size traditional delicacy re-imagined as a crisp, dainty pastry shell filled with ingredients such as foie gras with strawberries and corn or crudo of arctic char with ginger crème fraiche. Reuten likens the delicate Quih Pie Tee shell to a “taco or burritos, which you can stuff with anything you want.”

By the same token the cocktails by mixologist Jeremy Hawn use kaffir lime leaves and ginger syrup, ubiquitous Singaporean flavors for beverages. Patrons can also sit by the eight-seat bar and sample snacks like “Emping Crackers and Belacan sauce” (shrimp crackers and a fermented chili shrimp paste) or sweet and spicy Chili Crab Dip with mantou, or fried buns, to accompany the drinks. (The bar decor is influenced by Reutens’ heritage too: The black and white shutter blinds that are hung above it were flown in from Singapore; they’re a nod to the colonial 19th century homes built when the island city was a British colony.)

And Briar Winters, the pastry chef, does Malay and Chinese desserts with French influences, such as the Tang Yuen dumplings paired with roasted peanuts and chocolate ginger ice cream with cocoa nib crumble. Traditional the Cantonese serve tang yuen, a glutinous rice dumpling simply in a sweet ginger soup. Reutens collaborates with both Hawn and Winters to “take [Singaporean flavors] to a whole new place.”

Reutens and his kitchen are also very conscious of the seasons, and the chef peruses the Greenmarket three times a week. Currently, beets, turnips and radishes take center stage on the menu, as seen in the subtle, aromatic, herb-flavored fish sausage called Otak Otak, which is served with a radish and apple salad. A few weeks back, The Condensed Milk Cake was dotted with tiny strawberries. Now it’s raspberries with roasted coconut. As one of their most popular desserts, he and Winters have been experimenting with alternatives of apples and pears once the berry season ends.

He hopes the balance doesn’t just please his American clientele who don’t know Singaporean cuisine, but also to satisfy his clients who do. “My approach to cooking is refined,” explains Reutens, although “the intention wasn’t to make Masak refined” but rather, he says, to cook Singaporean food with top-quality ingredients and his own approach.

Published in Edible Manhattan:
http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/topics/food-dining/restaurants/meet-masak-the-new-east-village-restaurant-that-serves-singaporean-street-food-with-a-city-twist/

“It’s been like a birth, an incredible long labor” reflects Lennard of opening Alimetari. She now offers her customers a chance to “create a beautiful feast” with products she uses at Il Buco or taste them in finished form at the place’s 125-seat restaurant, which has its soft opening on October 7. Indeed Il Buco Alimentari is an extension of the Il Buco lifestyle, with its array of imported homemade and dried pasta brought in from Sicily, rotisserie chicken, olives, selection of cured meats, olive oils, vinegars from Modena and Mediterranean spices.

The first floor of the 7,000 square-foot place is split in half with three steps divvying up the two spaces; the café is up front, where the salamis and cheese take center stage, along with a few high tables to lounge around and sip your coffee. Then at the back is the open kitchen and restaurant dining area. On the second floor will be a private party room; downstairs, there is a salumi room. Making her own cured meats has been a pet project, says Lennard: In the distant past, Il Buco made some and was shut down by the health department. Now the market has a legitimate license and Lennard is on a quest to eventually stock only her own in-house salt-cured salumi. “The salumi is a dream project,” says Lennard, “something we’ve been working on for many years with friends from Umbria” who cure meat and have come and taught her staff, along with Christopher Lee, Alimetari’s salumi consultant.

The restaurant will consist of small plates of cheese and salumi, which Lennard recommends guest share. “The idea is a little fast and friendly place” with a pizza and rotating seasonally inspired menu. It’s “much more casual,” she says, and “about tasting the oils, the products” and appetizers made from products sold in the market.

Check out the slideshow published at Edible Manhattan here:
http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/topics/food-dining/chefs-cooks/audio-slideshow-il-bucos-specialty-foods-shop-and-cafe-opens-complete-with-a-porchetta-sandwich-and-a-salumi-consultant/

Donna Lennard. Photo by Cheryl Chan

L-R: Brenna Kavakos, Deborah Kavakos, Pete Kavakos Sr., Peter Kavakos Jr., Arliss Keyser

Deborah Kavakos has farming in her soul. Whether the harvest is peas, radishes or squash, she toils happily at Stoneledge Farm, her organic certified 200-acre farm located in Catskills, Greene County, New York, which she runs with her husband. When disasters hit, as hurricane Irene did on August 28, and rendered her 2011 harvest unfit for sale, Kavakos plows on and hopes that 2012 might be Stoneledge’s “best harvest ever.”

Just Food connects farmers and NYC residents through CSAs that deliver produce to cities. Kavakos, has worked with Just Food’s CSA program since its inception 16 years ago. Stoneledge “has been going strong ever since,” she says of the 18 CSAs her farm supplies, nine of which are in New York City. Together those CSA’s support 1400 shareholders.

Stoneledge’s fields, next to Catskill Creek, got inundated with up to 14 inches of rain during the hurricane. The farm was taken by surprise, and Kavakos has spent the weeks following the storm cleaning up the debris. The worst was when she was informed of the FDA and Cornell Cooperative Extension’s recommendation that Stoneledge should refrain from continuing to sell their produce.

“This is the peak of harvest season” Kavakos says “and to not be able to harvest all that produce is heartbreaking.” Usually harvest season last for 24 weeks. Stoneledge was 12 weeks into their distribution when the hurricane derailed their plans to provide their CSA members with their bounty of leeks and peppers. Until Irene, Kavakos has “never had a loss before” and ruefully informs Edible this is probably one of the most difficulty situation she and Stoneledge has faced.

Read below to find out more about how the CSA model helped launch Stoneledge to what is today:

Q. Stoneledge Farm been involved with Just Food’s CSA program since 1996. Tell me more about that partnership, and how being part of a CSA program helps your business:

We were a family that did not did not inherit a farm or farmland. We started from scratch and the CSA model really gave us the footing each year to slowly but surely purchase farmland and equipment to get to where we are now–a beautiful 200 acres farm and 1400 share member CSA as of this season.

… Some of our members having been with us this entire time. It’s this huge network of people working together; the members support the farm and the farm supports the community.

Tell me about your unique partnership with the Chelsea CSA and P.S. 11:

That occurred through the Chelsea CSA, one of the CSA groups that we deliver to. Debbie Osborne runs the PS 11 Farm Market through the school. The school purchase shares, and Chelsea and Stoneledge both donate a share. Each week the kids work with the different vegetables received, and figure out how it’s used. They have a guest chef who helps them with recipes, and the next day the kids have a farmers market to sell the produce. They do business and math. It’s a huge all-encompassing project

Even after Irene’s destruction, you managed to make deliveries to PS 11:

We did. But now that’s the end, which we didn’t know at that time. It was tough. We always feel that it’s our responsibility to do the very best for our shareholders. Monday was the hardest as that was the day after. We were scrambling. However, we made all our deliveries for last week. Now we have really been shut down.

Why do you farm for a living?

I’ve always loved being outdoors and marveled at things growing. I love growing stuff. If my fingernails aren’t dirty, I feel I haven’t had a good day. I loved farm work even as a child, at my uncle’s farm. It’s all I could ever think I wanted to do.

After teaching and having a slew of kids, at some point in the 80s during another recession time, my husband and I just said, ‘we know we can farm, so lets do this.’ It wasn’t clear at that time to us that this would be the rest of our lives… We started and threw all caution to the winds. Now thinking about it and being older, what a chance we took! But that’s where the CSA came in. People were always there for us, and we’ve made it this far. Hopefully Irene is not our undoing, but I don’t think it will be.

I know you’re worried about the aftermath of Irene, but you aren’t a Just Food honoree for nothing! After 16 years of doing CSAs, what do you see for Stoneledge’s future?

I think Irene is going to take its toll a little; it’s going to be a little difficult for a while. But whenever there’s a challenge, you can learn from it and make things better. That’s truly what we are trying to do. I can see things just growing and growing. We are at our maximum; we can’t do anymore than what we can now. We partner with other farms already, at our CSA group, who brings in other products that we don’t grow. That’s kind of links have already started to be made, and I think that makes CSAs stronger, to have a base of farms and not just one farm.

For many farms, the farmers are getting older, and then who’s going to be the farmers for the next generation? We are so proud that our family will be able to continue with that.

Published in Edible Manhattan:
http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/uncategorized/meet-just-foods-2011-farmer-honoree-deborah-kavakos-of-stoneledge-farm/

Pascaline Lepeltier, a French sommelier with deep knowledge of our state's micro-terroir

This year Let Us Eat Local will feature its first VIP Experience wine tasting session that aims to introduce attendees to the different sub-regions of wines in New York State. The guide is Pascaline Lepeltier, a French-born sommelier working at Rouge Tomate, a seasonally focused restaurant.

With a Star Chefs Rising Star NYC Award under her belt, Lepeltier will curate a unique tasting and food pairing session with vintage wines from Long Island and upstate vineyards. Year round, the Rouge Tomate wine list showcases 14 varieties of local wines, from sparklings from New York State, to whites, reds and desert wines. And the selection, says Lepeltier, who is also an expert in organic wines, “keeps growing.”

Q. Why hold a wine tasting at Let Us Eat Local?

The idea is to work with wineries and show the huge possibility of New York wines. I wanted to show four major areas; Long Island, the Finger Lakes, Hudson Valley and Brooklyn … because I think great wines are produced in all these sub-regions. All of them deserve recognition for their dynamism.

As a sommelier and a wine buyer in New York, I want to show that New York wines come not only from one place. I work in a restaurant that does local food, and I have certain inspirations from all these areas. I think variety is what’s great about New York wines, and I don’t think everybody knows that many styles of wines exist.

There will also be a library of wines, to show that New York wines can age. Thus, that New York state is a serious wine region with a huge potential. The idea is to work with wineries that have been around for years, and to ask them to show some wines with a bit of developments, for consumers to realize that there is also potential for aging, and not just wine to sip on the beach or something like that. You can have local wines that are 6 years old to 10 years old that are very beautiful.

This will showcase wineries with a different history. For example, the pioneer of the rebirth of Finger Lakes wines like Lenz and Bedell in Long Island; and younger wineries with people who came to the wines with passion and enthusiasm like Shinn, Channing Daughters (Long Island) or Ravines (Lakes) or Red Hook winery and Abe Schoener (Brooklyn), people that brought a new vision to the wines.

A lot of people believe that it’s not possible here, but it is possible. The best and oldest wineries like Lenz and Bedell in Long Island have been making wine since 40 years ago. When you visit the vineyards, everything is covered crops and dry farmed. There is a real work to create this type of environment, for growing in this manner. Shinn Estate Winery, the first organic winery, is also going to be at this tasting.

I think it’s wonderful to see all these people so committed to making such high quality wine. The most green conscious people are what I want to showcase too.

Why work with Just Food?

Many [of the wines I work with] tend to be produced from organic farming and natural vinification, with respect of the soil, work of the soil, and a lower use of any type of outside additives.

I want to showcase some wineries that try to work their vineyard and make their wines with the utmost respect for their soil, their terroir and their vintage–thus wines with minimal intervention.

Do you think organic wines taste different?

For me, there is the idea behind that by being organic, or moving towards organic, you work your soil. In the end you have the ability to choose not to use any chemical fertilizers or pesticide because your vineyard is going to be much more balanced. The grapes will be much more earthy. You don’t need to add additives. Doing a wine with just grapes in the end, you are going to be able to have a wine with a lot of minerality, and a true expression of the place and the wine maker. In the end what I see is a wine.

On the other hand, you have more conventional wines that tend to be more of a type of product, where you try to get the same taste every year and to produce a good quality every year. I think that is great too, but as soon as you want to stop, and think about a region, a climate, and a style, you’ll realize that you can’t go on like this. That you are trying to do the same thing all the time, and that it not represent where the wine is from. This is what I believe makes organic wines extremely interesting, because you have another approach of what you are going to do.

What do you think defines the taste of wines produced in New York?

What’s amazing with New York is that it’s very tough to grow grapes organically here, because of the climate and the pressure of the rain. It’s much more difficult to grown organic here than in California, for example. But there is a consciousness in New York about the quality of the farm even though it will maybe take a longer time to grow, or that it’s nonsense for wine makers not to spray a product to save their crops. Of course you are going to need to do it to make a living.

However, I think that there is a movement in food and wine that is starting in New York. When you see where New York is coming from in terms of wine making, from what was made 80 years ago with indigenous grapes and was a huge massive industry with no quality focus and a mass product, to where New York is now, the improvement is insane. It’s like wow, a new generation, in such a short amount of time.

Look for Pascaline Lepeltier’s VIP New York wine experience at Just Food’s Let Us Eat Local on Sept. 21.

Published in Edible Manhattan:
http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/topics/wine-drinks/wine/meet-pascaline-lepeltier-just-foods-1st-local-wine-guru-host-of-a-ny-terroir-tasting-at-their-sept-21-fundraiser/