Much as grilling’s evolved lately, the Fourth remains a sacred occasion. So we turned to chef Max Hansen to ensure that our epic cookout pleases even the strictest of traditionalists: Dad.
Grilling’s shed a lot of its wonky etiquette over the last few years, mostly because Dad’s no longer the only one manning the Weber. Those codes of conduct, it’s clear now, were implemented to protect his place on the throne, as though he was performing black magic out on the deck, and only when he named his successor would he cough up his secrets. But now, even eight-year-olds are doing it. And we’re grilling foods that are definitely charring Dad on the inside—watermelon! snapper! He’ll come around, though. Just give him some space.
Dad, however, wasn’t all wrong. The guy treated the Fourth like it was his Super Bowl, prepping his charcoal and tools as dawn broke, standing in clouds of smoke all afternoon long, handing over platter after platter of burgers he hand-formed the night before, wieners in toasted buns (some with cheese, which he despised, but he aimed to please), perfectly pink T-bones, fatty ribs, and on and on. A coup was the furthest thought from anyone’s minds then.
So Monday, we’re going to stage an epic cookout in honor of dear-old Dad, because the Fourth, after all, is about remembering where we came from. To ensure that we do right by him, we turned to Max Hansen to show us the way. Hansen’s cooked for and alongside countless big-name celebs and dignitaries over his career, but grilling is second nature to him. He does it year-round. What’s more, as the chef/owner of Max Hansen Carversville Grocery, he’s a walking, talking field guide to Bucks County’s markets and artisan vendors. Yup, Dad, turns out we were paying attention all along. And, thanks.
All meat is not created equal This, you’re likely well aware of by now. A free-range chicken tastes a lot gamier than the factory-farmed drumsticks we grew up eating. The difference is obvious in grass-fed beef, too, and even nitrate-free hot dogs. The time to bank on that difference not being so obvious is when you’re serving a carnivore’s delight. Quality, not quantity. No amount of rub is going to salvage a Deal-of-the-Day skirt steak.
Hansen favors the Fredericksburg, PA-based FreeBird for his chickens. Once you’ve got that bird in hand, brine it and, when the time comes, grill it over a medium heat.
For his beef, Hansen heads to Haring Brothers Country Butcher Shop, in Ottsville, and None Such Farm Market, in Buckingham. At the latter, butcher Bob Jones cuts two-and-a-half- to three-inch boneless rib-eyes, at Hansen’s request—thick-cut steaks cook more evenly, he says—from the farm’s own Hereford Angus. He prefers Haring Brothers’ burgers for their slightly higher-than-typical fat content, which helps keep them moist regardless of their doneness.
Cleaning is non-negotiable If you don’t start the day wiping down your grates, there’s only one possible outcome: Leftover fat’s going to flare up and lay ruin to all that expensive meat. Five, 10 minutes of basic house cleaning will make life easier for you throughout the afternoon—because meat doesn’t stick to a clean grate—and allow your food to taste as you intended, not like the remnants of a stamped-out campfire.
Thick-cut veggies are your friend This may seem obvious, too, but it’s a mistake that’s often repeated: Keep your vegetable cuts on the larger side. That way, they won’t slip through the grate, and you’ll have an easier time cooking them. Thinly-sliced or -cut veggies tend to char faster than they cook. And, just like your meats, start with the best quality you can get your hands on. If you don’t pluck it from your own garden, get it from a farmstand. And then keep the dressing simple: olive oil (extra-virgin’s overkill here), lemon juice, salt, pepper and some herbs. That’s it.
All that remains now is keeping an eye on Dad. A smile’s coming, but he’s not going to be obvious about it.
Feeling good has a lot to do with what we eat. But it begins with forging the right mindset.
By Rose Nyad Orrell
Eating right all the time and working out five days a week is supposed to position you for a long, healthy life. Yet, there you are: stressed and stuck in a rut.
From my perspective as a certified holistic health practitioner, the concept of wellness has been rewritten to suit our goal-oriented nature. Eat this many calories, exert this much energy and none of the rest really matters. But it does. And so does our approach. Balance is key. There’s no one-size-fits-all regimen when it comes to achieving a sound mind and body. But there is a blueprint.
Back to basics
Over recent years, our diets have grown increasingly acidic. The most common culprits: fried and processed foods, sugar, dairy, white flour, coffee and alcohol. What they do is trigger inflammation. When that happens often enough, it’s no longer your body’s healing response but its natural state. And when you’re inflamed all the time, you open yourself up to a host of ailments. Tip the balance back in favor of alkaline foodstuffs—veg; most fruit, including blueberries, dates and apples; and certain whole grains, like quinoa and amaranth—in the neighborhood of 80 percent and your body will regain its sensitivity.
In defense of bacteria
Probiotics are getting a lot of play these days, but they’re being sold as a cure-all because it accommodates our pared-down version of wellness. In a healthy body, think of the intestines (a.k.a. the gut) as the engine and the probiotics, the fuel. They facilitate the growth of good bacteria, which primes the intestines to more easily breakdown and absorb food. And the more efficient the operation, the stronger the body’s immune system becomes. However, indulge too often in pizza, fried chicken and gelato and the intestines become gunked up with bad bacteria (yes, there are two kinds), which hampers digestion and weakens our immunity. Simply countering that with the occasional Greek yogurt is like trying to cool off by standing in a puddle. Start by eating more alkaline foods, then begin incorporating live-cultured things, like sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir and fermented coconut water. With the foundation already in place, the good bacteria will be free to flourish.
Peek under the hood
Our bodies have the incredible ability to adapt—as long as we get out of our own way. The point of the first two steps is lost if they feel like a chore. After all, true wellness, as it’s described by the World Health Organization, is “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Read: This is always going to feel like a work in progress, but a sound mind will keep it feeling like this is the way it should be, rather than this is the way it has to be.
We tend to suppress our emotions so we can deal with them at a later time, when we’re better equipped. Which, of course, never happens. When it goes on long enough, this inner turmoil starts to manifest in physical symptoms. If you’ve been bothered by a persistent ache, or worse, consider what you’re harboring and start to work it out.
And sometimes the sources of our stress are obvious—a dead-end career, a neglected marriage—but no easier to deal with. Change can feel incredibly daunting, but for the same reason we dread it—it’ll change the landscape of our lives—it’s also the single-most empowering act we’re capable of. And in order for this to have any permanence, bold moves are required.
Rose Nyad Orrellis a New Hope-based certified holistic health practitioner.
To impress upon our intern that making a magazine isn’t all meticulous makeovers and exceptional eating, we tasked him with covering one of the unhealthiest footraces around from the inside, partly for the learning experience, but mostly for the spectacle. What follows is an excerpt from his training log.
Felt shockingly good for the first time out. Planned to run a mile along the canal and ended up doing closer to two. I think I could have gone even further, but I figured it was better to play it safe.
May 8
Woke in the middle of the night with a cramp in my left calf, and when I reached for it, I realized that pretty much my entire body, from the neck down, was revolting against me. I stayed there, still as I could, for, oh, the next 29, 30 hours or so.
May 11
Feeling close to normal—finally. Since this race is about slugging back a lot of ice cream as much as it is running, figured I’d ease myself back into training by walking to oWowCow for a cone. Form felt fluid and efficient.
May 13
Oh, God! Jogged to oWowCow this time—after a good, long warm-up. Rewarded myself with a cup of Honey Lavender, because it sounded light. A block into my run back, it sat up in my stomach like a baby. And then I hit the bridge. And then the ice cream hit the bridge. The silver lining: Made it back to the office in personal best-time after fleeing the scene of the crime.
May 14
This binging-and-running thing is harder than I anticipated. So, one thing at a time. Headed over to Shady Brook and picked up some pints to practice on—Salty Caramel, Tiramisu, Wilbur’s Cake Batter, Dulce de Leche.
May 15
Was not aware that ice cream hangovers existed. Still managed to get a run in on the canal, albeit a short one. Felt—and looked, I’m sure of it—like a cow walking quickly on its hind legs, udders bobbing around.
May 19
Couple of good runs in a row. And by good, I mean, I didn’t vomit before, during or after. Also: I managed to maintain a pace and poise that couldn’t be confused with a fat kid protecting his hoagie from an angry wasp.
May 23
Today was not the day to start incorporating ice cream back into my runs. After three months of rain, it was sunny and 90. Positively, the ice cream was pretty damn refreshing. I couldn’t eat it fast enough. Negatively, a gang of bees, attracted by my sticky face and hands, forced my pace on the run back. Karma for the fat-kid metaphor.
May 28
Three weeks into my training and I’ve put on six pounds. I’d like to say it’s muscle. So, let’s say it’s muscle.
May 30
Seven pounds. I’m nursing a sore hamstring.
June 1
Scrolled through the galleries of last year’s Jog ‘n Hog. Half the runners look like they’re having the time of their lives. The others look like they want to be anywhere else doing anything else.
June 5
Legs are feeling sound again, or, at least, less like I just stepped out of some Ramsay Bolton torture device. Attempted my first, full-on Jog ‘n Hog practice run—5K, with a break for a pint at the midway turnaround. Would have been more realistic if I hadn’t carried the pint with me, it hadn’t melted and a gaggle of ducks hadn’t intimidated me into handing over all but the first gulp. They, however, fled afterward without any trouble. New mantra: Be the duck.
It was the middle of August. A friend had come to stay with us, and we were showing her some of our favorite spots. That’s how we arrived at oWowCow Creamery. I’ve been a fan since it first opened in Ottsville seven years ago. I know all the flavors by heart. But on this day, an unfamiliar one caught my eye through the glass: Sweet Buttered Corn. A lick and I was stunned. It tasted exactly like fresh Bucks County corn, all, well, sweet and buttery.
When I was asked to write this piece, I circled back and asked John Fezzuoglio, oWowCow’s owner and ice cream maker, how the flavor originated.
“We’re always looking for something seasonal, and to try to invent a flavor around that particular item,” he said.In this case, None Such Farms, in Buckingham, sought him out and asked if he could work with its sweet white corn. He started with a cream base, swirled in the butter flavor, then in went the sugar. From there, he swirled in cooked corn and added coarse pink or gray salt.
“The salt,” he said, “adds a bright sparkle. And the butter melds the flavor of the corn and the creaminess of the base.” The gradual incorporation helps keep the flavors distinct.
The Sweet Buttered Corn will be back this summer, mercifully, but only for a couple of weeks. I’m already bracing for the withdrawal.
First there was a small farm, which became a bigger farm. And then came a market. And now, a restaurant. It’s taken 10 long years, but Double Brook Farm and Brick Farm Market and Tavern finally appear poised to change the way we eat. For real this time. By Scott Edwards · Photography by Josh DeHonney
Brick Farm Tavern chef Greg Vassos, right, with Robin and Jon McConaughy—and some of Double Brook’s newest residents. Top: The fashionable Brick Farm Market.
When fine dining meets farm-fresh at Vassos’ inspired hands.
This all started with a modest enough ambition. Robin and Jon McConaughy wanted to close the gap some between their young family and its food sources. The Omnivore’s Dilemma was just about to be published, and they’d read an excerpt in The New York Times Magazine, which drew the same disgusted reaction from both of them. Soon after, they started looking for a little more property on which they could spread out.
“The original idea,” Robin says, “was to find a piece of land where we could have a couple of animals and show our kids where their food is coming from, and they could have some chickens that they would presumably feed. Which has never happened. Ever.”
Beyond a backyard garden, neither Robin nor Jon had any experience with farming—Jon worked in finance on Wall Street and Robin owned a sports media company—but what they were imagining was less a farm than it was an elaborate hobby. They landed on 60 acres in Hopewell Township, New Jersey, and built their home—a turn-of-the-century farmhouse on the outside, a model of modern energy efficiency on the inside. Then they were connected with an Angus calf that had been rejected by its mother. They named her Elsie and nurtured her to a robust 1,400 pounds. When the time came to slaughter Elsie, everyone they asked wanted a share. More cows followed. Robin and Jon started staging farm stand-style sales in their barn. The hobby was hurtling toward something much bigger.
“It just mushroomed out of control,” Robin says.
“But I think that somewhere along the way, we looked at, if we truly are going to be farmers, what makes the most sense,” Jon says. “So, it was in those early years that we decided, well, if we’re going to do all this, we probably should connect all the pieces, and we should have the restaurant and the market and the farm.”
Jon refers to it now, 10 years later, as a “vertical model” or a “closed-loop, sustainable food system.” In theory, it’s pretty basic. There’s a market and a restaurant. Both are stocked almost entirely by the farm, from the microgreens to the merguez. That cuts way down on the marketing and distribution concerns that plague the modern farmer. In practice, however, it’s rife with challenges—challenges that plague the other farmers, too. In other words, it’s an improvement, but it’s far from ideal. More on that in a bit, though.
Once Robin and Jon began acquiring more land, they turned their sights toward the market and the restaurant. They bought both properties, which sit about a mile apart from each other, around the same time, six years ago.
“The plan was—and for various reasons, it’s good that it didn’t work out this way—,” Jon says.
“—our sanity,” Robin interjects and laughs.
“—the market and the restaurant would open together.”
Brick Farm Market opened three years ago in a fashionably retrofitted 1930s Chevy dealership located in the heart of Hopewell Borough. The restaurant, Brick Farm Tavern, opened in a meticulously renovated 1822 farmhouse just outside of the borough in November. Sustaining both at the same a few years ago, when there was still so much to figure out with the farm, likely would have sunk them. They see that now. Opening the market alone enabled them to get a better foothold, which included establishing an audience for the restaurant. Two weeks before it opened, Friday and Saturday nights were booked solid a month out, and that remains the case.
During those three years between openings, another critical piece fell into place. After months of detours, the McConaughys constructed the second USDA-inspected, on-farm slaughtering facility in the entire country. It’s significantly streamlined their operation. It’s also satisfied a concern that has roots in the farm’s impetus. They could humanely raise their animals, but, with so few options available to them, they could not ensure that they’d be slaughtered that way.
The Double Brook Farm slaughterhouse is designed according to the recommendations of Temple Grandin, the famed animal science scholar, every aspect of which is aimed at calming the animal right up to the end.
“To us, it is the most important thing about our farming operation, being able to humanely take these animals to the final destination, basically,” Robin says. “Even if you’re squeamish, which I am—I made myself watch the slaughter one day—I just couldn’t have been prouder of our guys and the way they do it. It’s totally quiet. It’s totally calm.”
The microgreens are grown hydroponically, then transplanted to a greenhouse behind the restaurant so they can be picked fresh.
What sustaining looks like
Double Brook Farm, today, encompasses roughly 850 acres, 500 of which the McConaughys own (they lease the rest), spread across several parcels, all but one of them in Mercer County. Their staff measures about a hundred strong, the great majority of it divided between the market and the restaurant. The mission statement, though, remains relatively unfazed by the staggering growth: Provide tasty, nutritious food in the most sustainable and humane ways available.
With each year, they inch a little closer to that ideal of a completely closed-loop operation. It’s an admirable aspiration, but it’s not that realistic.
“People want salt, as it turns out,” Robin says. “And vanilla. And pepper.
To remain true to their cause, they’ve learned to prioritize their decisions once they move beyond their immediate reach. Sourcing locally is second-best. If they need to look further, they’ll evaluate based upon the practices. The flowchart establishes an order, but the decisions it produces rarely come so easily.
A more glaring opening in their loop than the salt is the beef. Raising cattle, they realized a couple years back, was not sustainable, not for them. They had over 300 head of cattle then divided among seven herds that were rotated daily. The farmers who tended to them were logging about 150 miles a day because the herds grazed between three to 10 miles apart from each other, and the farmers were visiting each one at least twice a day.
“You’re basically doing it all day,” Robin says. “And then, whenever a farmer would get hurt or something would happen, it would be because we were moving cattle in a trailer from this 30-acre lot to that 150-acre lot. It just consumed us.”
So even though they got their start with Elsie, the McConaughys were learning, gradually, not to marry themselves to any preconceived perceptions. They moved all of their calves and cows down to Lakota Ranch, in Virginia, which adheres to the same all-natural and humane treatment. The only difference is that its several hundred acres are continuous. The beef that’s sold at the butcher counter at Brick Farm Market and featured on the tavern’s menu comes from Thistle Creek Farms, in Central Pennsylvania, which has been cultivating pasture-raised steers, including those from Lakota, for more than 25 years.
“Now we drive about 150 miles a week, instead of seven days a week, to meet halfway at the slaughterhouse,” Robin says. “That is the one piece that we don’t slaughter ourselves, is the cows. That does give us pause, but it is really the best-possible and way more-sustainable solution for us.”
A decade in, there is one amendment to the mission statement: and do so in an economically viable manner.
“We made the realization probably two or three years ago that that needed to be part of the equation,” Jon says. “As we listed our pillars of sustainability, economic sustainability wasn’t initially on there. Everything was a fun experiment, but not necessarily thought out in the way of, OK, how is it eventually going to make money? A model isn’t a model if it can’t be an economic model as well.”
For the better part of the last hour, we’ve been sitting around a table set for four in the dining room furthest from the tavern’s kitchen. The walls are adorned with paintings by the Pennsylvania Impressionist John Fulton Folinsbee, who is Robin’s great-grandfather. The next room over is decorated with a series of prints that she brags she picked up for 50 bucks at the Golden Nugget.
Later, as Jon and I pull up to the slaughterhouse, we’re discussing how realistic the concept of a profitable, sustainable-minded farm is. Before the tavern opened, they were supplying a number of New York restaurants.
“If we weren’t within an hour’s drive of 20 million people [between New York and Philadelphia], would it work? I’m skeptical that it would,” he says. “I think proximity makes a big difference.”
As do resources, of course. Jon and Robin, thanks in large part to their lucrative, former careers, were uniquely positioned to venture down this path and weather the onslaught of obstacles they’ve encountered along the way. Still, it’s been 10 hard years just developing the infrastructure so that they could arrive here, the farm, the market and the tavern driving each other. Without one, none of it really works. But it’s still too early to tell if it works all that well with all three.
Robin, Jon and I leave the restaurant and head for the market, Robin climbing into her Tesla, Jon and I into his Audi SUV. Just along the horizon, Jon motions toward a large barn that contains towering walls of hydroponic heads of lettuce and tables loaded with bok choy. In the surrounding 25-acre field is where the vegetables are grown. On the other side of the restaurant, there’s a fenced-in plot that’s been handed over to Tama Matsuoka Wong, the co-author of Foraged Flavor. “She’s cultivating some weeds,” as Jon puts it, that’ll be used at the tavern. With so much so close, what could go wrong?
Logistics first, cooking later
Our notions of farm-to-table eating, and even farming itself, are deeply romanticized. Once we started catching on to how bad the conventional set-up was (and still very much is)—the sugar-laden processed foods, the factory farming—it was a natural reaction to get as far away from all of that as we could, to get back to the land, to start eating pure again (or, really, for the first time). But we’re not that much better informed now about how our food is created or where it comes from. For someone so recently burned, we were quick to throw our trust behind a bunch of marketing terms—organic! grass-fed! free-range!—and picturesque magazine spreads. (Thank you.)
The reality: “Farming is relentless,” Robin says.
“Even for these two outlets, the market and the restaurant, we go through a lot of animals. And vegetables,” Jon says. “Yeah, it’s rotational grazing, but there’s 2,000 chickens that have to supply the 300 a week we need to keep this operation going.”
More numbers: two Berkshire pigs, two whole lambs and 35 chickens. That’s what the tavern went through in a week in May, according to its executive chef and partner, Greg Vassos, who describes the synchronicity that’s needed to pull off farm-to-table dining night in and night out as “very chaotic.”
On any given day, the tavern’s susceptible to a freak storm, a broken-down truck, an ill farmer. And then consider this: Brick Farm Tavern is the only restaurant in the country with its own slaughterhouse.
“It’s a juggling act because we’re getting whole pigs, whole lambs, whole chickens,” Greg says. “There are a lot of different parts to the animal, so it’s a lot to figure out.”
And that constant planning, between Greg and his chefs, between Greg and the farmers, between Greg and Double Brook’s butcher, encompasses that night, the upcoming weekend, the following week, the following month even. Killing an animal will never be taken lightly when all involved feel a personal and professional responsibility to see that every viable part is utilized.
“The farm-to-table movement, I think the hardest part is having the chef fully understand what that means, using the full animal,” Jon says.
The slaughterhouse is located at the end of a long, potholed, dirt driveway behind a sprawling field where chickens strut in all directions, near and far, under the close watch of a big, white sheepdog that sits atop a prominent outcropping toward the front of the field. Near the entrance, there’s a muddy pigpen. Most of the lambs, once they’re weaned, are raised nearby too. The idea is to foster a sense of familiarity right up until the end.
From the outside, the building looks like any other generic farm structure. Just as we’re about to go in, Jon acknowledges a bucket at the foot of the door that I overlooked. Inside, there are two lambs’ heads. “The USDA comes and collects the heads,” he says. That would be the most dramatic thing I’d see. Inside, it’s empty. And spare.
Before this was built, they were spending about $100,000 a year to slaughter their animals. That’s down to about $20,000. The building’s solar-powered, so almost all of that cost is labor. What that means, basically, is that they can match and usually even improve upon the price of conventionally farmed chicken, turkey, lamb and pork.
If Greg’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he owned a short-lived restaurant in Pottstown called Racine, which was a critical darling. Racine was farm-to-table—Greg himself sourced the ingredients from the neighboring farms. But, he says, there’s a big difference between that and this. His learning curve, even with that experience, was steep. “Very, very steep” is actually what he said. On one hand, you’re cherry-picking all the best veg and parts of the pig and cow. And with the other, you’re being told there won’t be enough tomatoes to go around an hour or two before dinner service, and you’re figuring out what to do with short ribs. And ground beef. So much ground beef.
“I feel my duty as a chef is using what’s available, and making something special out of it, rather than me telling them, ‘I need this. I need that,’ ” Greg says. “This job, I think, is the ultimate dream. If you’re going to do farm-to-table, this is the way to do it.”
Shifting the paradigm
After we leave the market, sitting at a stoplight, I ask Jon what he’d be doing if he wasn’t driving me around.
“The average day is still sort of connecting the pieces, probably more from an infrastructure side,” he says. “I’ve been the general contractor for the entire project, and it’s been a lot of construction over the last four or five years. But the real reason I got into this is farming. So my days are slowly starting to shift from manager conversations and construction to being out on the farm.”
In piecing together his own operation, he’s visited countless other farms. In the beginning, it was just the likeminded ones, but then he grew curious and needed to see how the other half, the conventional farms, lived.
“I wanted to see why they’re doing it. And, just how bad is the situation,” Jon says. “I think it’s easy to blame people and point fingers. But I think you really have to see it first before you make those assumptions.”
We drive past one of their fields where ewes are paired up with their lambs, all of them nestled in the grass around a pair of giant, brown donkeys. Are those donkeys? I ask. “Yeah,” he says. “They protect them.” Really? “I think, actually, the donkeys are just protecting themselves.”
I know you said that you were moved to undertake all of this, or maybe a smaller version of it, but to make even that kind of commitment, it seems as though the seed was planted long before. Was there a part of you always kind of pining for this lifestyle?
“I think if you were to ask Robin, she would say no. I’ve always sort of had the desire to get into farming,” Jon says. “When I got into finance, I always sort of perceived it to be a means to an end.
“Now, a different question would be, after being in farming for 10 years, is it what I anticipated? Not yet, so far. We asked ourselves, especially a year or two ago, could we have done anything differently? I don’t think we could have. If you don’t connect [the farm, market and restaurant], it’s not profitable enough. And there’s no easy way to connect them without trying to get them up and running at the same time.”
For all their effort, their kids, now 13 and 16, only seem interested in the farm when they’re friends are over. But even though Robin and Jon may have started out wanting this for them, it’s their eventual grandkids they’re doing the heavy lifting for now. Jon was right when he said that a conscientious farm alone was never going to shift the paradigm. But a self-sustaining market and restaurant could show us the way.
We’re nominating the deviled egg as the quintessential picnic food. It defies logic, really. Eggs. Mayo. Suspect refrigeration. Yet they’re the first thing most of us reach for, whether it’s an intimate, blanket-top lunch or a crowded backyard barbeque. Even before the cocktail. Credit nostalgia. Every family has its time-honored recipes, but the deviled egg is the rare foodstuff that transcends personal history. We all seemed to grow up eating them by the handful. That creamy texture, the hint of heat—feels like home.
Recipes and photography by Yelena Strokin
The Deviled Egg Makes 12.
6 free-range eggs, hard-boiled and peeled Juice from a jar of pickled beets ¼ cup mayo 2 tsps. Dijon mustard Cilantro, minced (reserve some) Paprika to taste Salt and pepper to taste
Soak the eggs in the beet juice anywhere from a half-hour to overnight. If you like pickled foods, longer is better. After their bath, remove the eggs and cut them in half lengthwise, then gently remove the yolks and set them off to the side. In a small bowl, combine the yolks, mayo, mustard and cilantro. Season with salt and pepper. Stir until the mixture achieves a smooth consistency, then transfer it to a Ziploc bag. Cut off a bottom corner and pipe a bit of the yolk mixture into the hollow of each egg half. Sprinkle with paprika and garnish with cilantro or a small beet slice.
There’s good reason why the Brits continue to cling so fiercely to their high tea, and it’s not the tea. A socially acceptable excuse to break in the middle of the afternoon and scarf down pastries? Yeah, that’s worth protecting. Spare us the formality—we drink our coffee and tea in paper cups with plastic lids, thank you—but not the sugar rush. We may be new money, but we’re not animals.
The Victoria Sandwich Serves six to eight.
8 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature 4 free-range eggs, room temperature 1¼ cup sugar 1¾ cup self-rising flour 2 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. vanilla extract Raspberry or strawberry jam 1 cup whipped cream Powdered sugar
Take the eggs out of the fridge about an hour before you plan to start. If they’re colder than room temperature, it’ll be harder for air to be whisked in, which will make the mixture more likely to curdle or separate. Likewise, the butter should sit out for a few minutes beforehand, too.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. And grease two cake pans, then line the base of each with parchment paper. In a large bowl, whisk together the butter, eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder and vanilla extract until they’re thoroughly blended. Then divide the mixture evenly between the two cake pans and level them off.
Bake until the cakes rise and the tops spring back when pressed lightly with a finger, about 25 minutes. Then, let them cool for a few minutes. Remove them from the pans, peel off the parchment and move them to a wire rack to finish cooling.
Once the cakes have cooled completely, cut them in half, slather on some whipped cream and jam and put them back together. Sprinkle on a dusting of powdered sugar.
With the reemergence of a warm sun, my rosé fetish is back in full swing. There are a lot of preconceptions out there about rosé—it doesn’t pair well, it’s not especially masculine—but if you approach it with an open mind, you won’t be disappointed. I’d even venture to say it’s the most versatile wine out there, light enough for afternoon drinking on the patio but still a formidable companion for braised pork and grilled spring veggies. For the latter, try this Tavel. It’s darker and bolder than you’re thinking without forsaking that signature rosé crispness.
ADAM JUNKINS Partner/Sommelier Sovana Bistro
(Kennett Square)
Peddler’s Village’s signature restaurant returns with a looser vibe and an appetizing, weeknight-friendly menu.
By Scott Edwards
Like a cat, the signature restaurant at Peddler’s Village, in Lahaska, is landing on its feet—again—after an ugly-looking fall. Earl’s New American opens Tuesday. This will be its third iteration, if you’re counting at home, following Earl’s Bucks County, which closed after a catastrophic kitchen fire in January 2015, and Earl’s Bucks County, the original.
And like the first rebirth, don’t expect much carryover. Both the interior design and the menu have been dramatically over-hauled. Gone is the stiff, special-occasion restaurant. In is its more personable, trendier, hungrier niece.
Rebekah Brown, of Bethany Design Co. in Valley Forge, is responsible for the contemporary farmhouse look.
“We’ve taken the opportunity to really brighten the entire space,” says Richard Slutter, the director of hospitality operations for Peddler’s Village.
Think Edison-bulb lighting, distressed-wood flooring, copper ceiling tiles and a fireplace set into a stone wall. Much of the wood that was used to craft the dining tables was pulled from barns throughout Peddler’s Village, Slutter says. And you’ll be able to appreciate every inch of them because they won’t be shrouded in white tablecloths, a staple of the restaurant’s predecessors.
Approachable is a term that executive chef Bill Murphy, a holdover from Earl’s Bucks County, references a lot when describing his new menu. “We’re doing more food that’s along the lines of something you can eat a couple times a week,” he says.
He goes to shrimp and grits, the traditional southern comfort dish, as his first example. The grits are stone-ground at Castle Valley Mill, in Doylestown. He goes next to the pasta because he’s making his own. The fusilli will be served with wild mushrooms from Haycock Township, in Upper Bucks, spring asparagus, roasted garlic and tomato sauce; the pappardelle, with duck confit, fiddlehead ferns and mascarpone.
Panko-crusted Griggstown Farm fried chicken’s also among the 11 standing entrees. The menu’s spotted with the names of local outfits, like Griggstown and Castle Valley, but none are closer by than Murphy’s own 1,800-square foot garden behind the restaurant. “I planted asparagus three years ago and this’ll be the first year I’ll actually have asparagus in a yielding quantity and size that I can use in a restaurant,” he says, with about as much enthusiasm as anyone’s ever mustered for asparagus.
Murphy was born in Chicago, spent his teens in Newtown and Holland, then left the area for the next couple of decades. He cooked in France, moved back to Chicago. “That’s where I originally worked for the Four Seasons hotel chain before I transferred to Philadelphia,” he says.
Murphy describes his stint at The Fountain at the Four Seasons as the most formative stretch of his career. “Jean-Marie Lacroix, Tony Clark, Martin Hamann were all very influential in teaching me how to cook, and not only cook, but how to be a gentleman and respect your employees,” he says.
“But I never pictured myself back in Bucks County for some odd reason.” It was a woman he knew in high school that drew him back here. They’re married now, just had a baby. “And for the first time in decades,” he says, “I feel at home.”
[divider]Ordering Off-menu[/divider]
Don’t be fooled by the steak frites, Murphy’s got some serious cooking chops. A pair of upcoming wine dinners will be prime opportunities to see him flex his muscle. The first, on April 22, will pair J. Lohr wines with a four-course dinner that’ll feature herb-crusted carpaccio and roasted lamb loin. The second, May 12, pairs Pio Cesare with the likes of goat cheese cannelloni and prosciutto-wrapped quail. Reserve a spot here.
While we’ve been Googling the exotic headliners, these four foods have been hiding in plain sight, over-delivering.
By Todd Soura
A new, so-called superfood emerges every day. And each time, the air seeps out a little more from the over-hyped term. That’s not to say that such foods don’t exist. They do. It’s just that a lot of them are either exaggerated or too obscure or expensive or both to realistically incorporate them into our diets on any kind of regular basis.
A true superfood not only punches above its weight, it’s also within easy reach. While we’ve been Googling spirulina and maca, these have been hiding in plain sight all along.
Kimchi You’ll find it in the refrigerated produce section at most grocery stores. It’s a traditional Korean side comprised of fermented cabbage and some variety of shredded veggies, ginger, garlic and red pepper flakes—it can have a kick. Fermented foods, and this one in particular, are loaded with good bacteria, which feed the existing flora in your gut, a critical component of our immune system. It’s even been shown to have a hand in balancing our moods. And new studies are indicating that those of us with the most diverse and greatest amounts of gut flora are also the leanest.
Broccoli sprouts(Pictured, top) They’re three- and four-day-old broccoli plants that taste a lot like radish. There are a lot of reasons to love broccoli, but glucoraphanin may be foremost among them. It’s used to make sulforaphane, which, studies are showing, helps shield cells from potential carcinogens. Promising as that sounds, it gets even better: Broccoli sprouts contain 30 times the concentration of glucoraphanin found in broccoli. The sprouts are gaining in popularity, but they can still be a little difficult to find. If your grocery store carries them, you’ll find them in a plastic container in the refrigerated produce section. They go bad pretty quickly—three to five days if you refrigerate them. I freeze mine and add a handful to my smoothies.
Parsley It’s packed with cancer-fighting oils and antioxidants. And all this time you thought it was just a garnish. Those oils activate an enzyme that attaches to and neutralizes potential carcinogens. One of them in particular, myristicin, has been found to inhibit tumor formation. Grow it in your garden and toss it in your smoothies and salads by the handful.
Rosemary(Pictured, above) Yes, that rosemary. It’s chockfull of anti-inflammatory compounds and antioxidants. It also facilitates digestion. Recent studies are indicating that it even boosts blood-flow to the brain, which aids concentration. Opt for the fresh variety found in the refrigerated produce section over the dried kind—the flavor’s more pronounced—then keep it in the refrigerator and pull it out often. Rosemary goes just as well with an omelet as it does with a roasted chicken.
Even now, especially now, when everything’s fresh and within easy reach, less is more.
We hear it all the time these days from chefs of every walk: Keep it simple. Have faith in the ingredients. But that’s easy to say when you’ve been formally schooled and challenged by an elite mentor. For the rest of us, keeping it simple looks like a lot of disparate (and under-seasoned) ingredients spread across a plate. The trick isn’t just keeping the complicated techniques to a minimum, it’s also keeping the ingredients to a minimum. With almost everything in season right now, the tendency is to pick the garden clean and make it all somehow work together. But it won’t, and it never will, no matter how fresh everything is. Think smaller and lighter. It’s how you really want to eat when you’re not doing it with your eyes. Three to five ingredients tops, and they should all complement each other, as they do here in this bright salad and hearty sandwich. This time of year, if it takes longer to make than it does to eat, you’re overthinking it.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Add the olive oil to a skillet and warm it over a medium heat. Cut the mushrooms into thin slices, then stir them in. Reduce the heat to low and cook them until they’re soft and blackened.
In a small bowl, mix together the mayo and the garlic. Spread it across one side of each bread slice. Then add a piece of Swiss to one of those slices. On top of that, layer the cucumber, avocado and mushroom. Top it with a handful of microgreens and the other slices of cheese and bread.
Place the sandwich in the oven just long enough for the cheese to begin melting, about three to five minutes. Then move it to a cutting board and cut it diagonally—because sandwiches always taste better when they’re cut diagonally.
Cabbage and Beet Salad Serves one.
For the salad
½ medium head of green cabbage, thinly sliced
1 medium carrot, peeled and grated
3-4 small beets, peeled and grated
¼ bunch scallions, finely chopped
For the dressing
2 tbsps. lemon juice
2 tbsps. avocado oil
1 tsp. dry-roasted tomatoes
1 tsp. dry dill
Salt and white pepper to taste
Sugar to taste
To make the dressing, in a small bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, dry-roasted tomatoes, dill, sugar, salt and pepper. Once it’s thoroughly mixed, whisk in the avocado oil. Set the dressing aside at that point to allow the flavors to marry. After about 10 minutes, taste it and season accordingly with salt and pepper.
In a large bowl, toss together the cabbage, carrot, beets and scallions. Add the dressing, then toss once more.
Yelena Strokin is a Newtown-based food stylist and photographer and the founder of the blog melangery.com.
[divider]What I’m Drinking Right Now[/divider]
Sangria Makes about 15 portions.
1 pint fresh blueberries
1 pint fresh strawberries
2 medium apples, diced small*
2 oranges, peeled, seeded and diced small*
1 large cucumber, peeled and diced into quarter-inch chunks
12 medium to large basil leaves, chiffonade
12 medium to large mint leaves, chiffonade
1 bottle Art in the Age Rhubarb Tea Liqueur
3 bottles crisp white wine (pinot grigio or sauvignon blanc)
1 bottle moscato d’asti (or another semisweet sparkling wine)
* These ingredients can be swapped out for just about any other seasonal fruit you prefer. Peaches, nectarines and cherries all work especially well, too.
Combine all of the ingredients, save for the wine, cover/seal and let it sit overnight. The next day, add the wine and stir well.
Ladle the sangria, along with a healthy helping of the fruit, into a wine glass or goblet filled with ice. Top with two to three ounces of the moscato d’asti.
Barbeque Pairings
Stocking the bar for a barbeque is a little more complicated than it first seems. Cold beer and white wine—no brainer. Until an old-school southerner (or wannabe) slips in and you’re caught without brown spirits. Load up on these and you’ll be loved by all comers. —AJ
Wine Vinho verde
It’s a dry, super-acidic wine from Portugal. Big on citrus flavor, low on alcohol (about nine percent). And at 10 bucks a bottle, it encourages a generous pour.
SpiritsJ.M. Rhum Agricole Vieux 10-year-old
Imagine nursing this smoky, leathery, bourbon barrel-aged rum while you man those ribs, and tell me your mouth doesn’t water at the thought.
If you’re a fan of SNAP Custom Pizza, good thing. They’re about to be everywhere.
By Mike Madaio
Rob Wasserman was among the first in what’s become a legion of prominent restaurateurs and chefs nationwide hurrying to open a gourmet-grade, fast-casual restaurant. Or, in Wasserman’s case, a bunch of them.
The owner of the Rittenhouse Square mainstay, Rouge, teamed up in 2014 with Pete Howey and Aaron Nocks, the owners of Peace A Pizza and New Hope Premium Fountain, to launch SNAP Custom Pizza in Ardmore. A second location opened in Exton late last year. And a third followed a couple months back, where Wasserman’s Center City burger joint, 500 Degrees, was formerly located.
And they’re just the beginning of what’s become a very ambitious expansion plan that encompasses 15 openings over the next 18 to 24 months.
“Each store is a limited build-out, unlike the multimillion-dollar budget you need to remodel a fine dining restaurant,” Wasserman explained over a couple of pies at the Exton SNAP. “Here, the turnaround time is 60 days, and we don’t need a big cash infusion.”
SNAP bakes its pies—600 degrees for about two minutes—in a conveyor convection oven—think Quizno’s—which doesn’t require an exhaust system. The so-called artisanal pizza places that have been cropping up like mushrooms in April need one, along with a wood-fire oven that’s usually custom-built. Both equal a lot of time and money.
Spurred by the popularity of Chipotle and Shake Shack, chefs once relegated to high-minded concept dining—David Chang, José Andrés—are reimagining the fast-food staples and presenting them among customizable menus and modern spaces.
“I can’t take any credit. It was all Pete and Aaron,” Wasserman says of SNAP’s inception. “They’ve been doing Peace A Pizza forever and started to see the writing on the wall. The era’s over where you walk into a restaurant and see slices sitting under the glass waiting to be reheated. With what you can now do with the ovens and the fresh, local ingredients, it’s a game-changer.”
Feel free to go bananas. Or maybe you prefer sausage. Either way, you’re the bawse at SNAP.
The SNAP experience mirrors that of Chipotle. Customers build their own pizzas from a buffet of ingredients as they proceed through the line. Several pre-selected combinations are also available if you don’t feel like thinking about it. The appeal, Wasserman says, is the freshness as much as the freedom of choice.
“We’re not pulling a frozen pie out of the oven,” he says. “Everything is made from scratch, using high-quality ingredients.”
That said, SNAP pizza isn’t necessarily an upgrade. The expense and effort invested in all those wood-fire ovens isn’t for nothing. The intense heat they generate creates that fresh-baked flavor and the crispy-on-the-outside, doughy-on-the-inside texture. SNAP’s conveyor convection ovens fall about 200 degrees short, and the crusts, in turn, come out as crisp and as flavorful as a saltine.
But there’s strength in numbers. If there are two or three SNAPs within a 10-minute drive, chances are you’re landing there for a fair amount of your cravings, whether you like the crust or not. It’s convenient, which can never be overstated in our have-it-now culture, and the ability to customize is a powerful lure.
The stiff crust seems to be a nonfactor thus far anyway. We grew up, after all, with soggy crust as the norm. As we talked, our conversation was twice interrupted by satisfied customers. “I paid them,” Wasserman quipped. There’s also the 4.5-star Yelp rating, out of more than 100 reviews, which is no easy feat.
“People love the fact that they’re not looking at a reheat,” he says. Which may speak more to our blind love for pizza than our standards.
