Results tagged: Dan Barber

Meet Leo Mondragon, mushroom farmer. Leo supplies Blue Hill and other top restaurants in New York City and Boston with shitake, oyster and 20 other types of mushrooms. If you've ever wondered how mushrooms are cultivated you should find this video interesting.

[Watch this video on YouTube]

Learn more about Forest Harvest on their website.

This video is a part of a series produced for Blue Hill by Savory Cities. View our previous Meet Your Purveyors posts:

• Mountain Sweet Berry Farm
• Cherry Lane Farms
• Herondale Farm

Or view the entire serious on the Blue Hill website.

If you've ever visited the Union Square Greenmarket in search of ramps, chances are you've ended up at Rick Bishop's Mountain Sweet Berry Farm stand at one time or another. Rick's the guy with the sign board featuring assorted ramp recipes and the names of his more well known restaurant customers.

In small letters off to one side is the name Blue Hill, home to chef and co-owner Dan Barber, who is not only one of Rick's best customers, he's also one of his biggest supporters. Barber, who took home this year's James Beard Foundation Outstanding Chef award, wrote about Bishop and his science-oriented farming practices in the July 2007 issue of Food&Wine magazine. In the article Barber made note of Bishop's use of a refractometer, a tool used to measure the sugar content of fruits and vegetables, to gauge the optimal time to harvest his crop for the best possible taste. 

Just west of Taconic State Park where the New York border meets Connecticut and Massachusetts Jerry and Iva Peele raise cattle, pigs and chickens on Herondale Farm. Their British White and Murray Grey cattle, Berkshire and Berkshire cross pigs, and Cornish cross rock chickens are all certified organic and "spend as much time as they want in the pastures."

Unfortunately, Jerry and Iva don't sell at the NYC Greenmarket, but they do supply Blue Hill and also make their beef, pigs and chickens available via mail order. Your can purchase steaks, roasts, sausages, birds and more at their online store or if you're want to bone up on your butchering skills, call or email to ask about picking up Herondale Titan, son of Progress.

Watch last week's profile of Cherry Lane Farms.

It's long been in fashion to name farmers and other purveyors on menus, but we've usually found this to be more of a conceit rather than any sort of effort to educate diners or help suppliers in a meaningful way.

One of the few chefs we've encountered who does take the time to educate the public and and directly help farmers is Dan Barber of Blue Hill in NYC and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico, NY. For the past several years Dan and his brother and business partner, David, have been outspoken champions of locally-sourced and sustainably-raised animals and produce.

So when Blue Hill approached us last year about producing a series of short videos to showcase the farmers that supply the restaurant, we leapt at the chance. Not only did we love the idea, but it also gave us an opportunity to learn about some of the people we'd been buying tomatoes, potatoes and chickens from at the Union Square Greenmarket.

The complete set of videos are on the new Blue Hill web site, but we thought you might enjoy seeing them here so each week we'll be posting a new video to showcase a local farmer. The first video is of Cherry Lane Farms, a second generation family farm in New Jersey. If you're headed to the Union Square Greenmarket anytime soon, stop by and say hi to Susie and her crew.

New videos:

Hearth with Marco Canora, Craftsteak with Tom Colicchio, Il Laboratorio del Gelato with Jon Snyder and Blue Hill at Stone Barns with Dan Barber.

This week we are introducing a new feature on Savory New York. It's called "Worth the Trip" and it is a way for us to feature great restaurants that aren't found in one of the city's five boroughs. We were inspired to create Worth The Trip while on a recent weekend vacation to Portland, Maine. It took great restraint to leave the camera at home, especially because I knew we were going to be dining at Hugo's, one of Portland's finest and most unique restaurants. Hugo's is owned and operated by husband and wife team Rob Evans and Nancy Pugh and their focus is on providing thoughtful, seasonally driven cuisine. Evans spent time in the kitchens of The Inn at Little Washington in Washington, Virginia and The French Laundry in Yountville, California where he honed his skills in the preparation of creative New American cuisine. Video will be forthcoming but we thought it was worth a mention, regardless of the lack of imagery. Some standouts from our eight course tasting menu included Belgian style sweetbread "nuggets" and a foie gras ice cream float with rhubarb soda.  When you're ready to move on from Portland's non-stop parade of lobster rolls and fried clams, Hugo's is a welcomed change which takes a different approach to the ingredients Maine has to offer.

Shortly after returning to New York City I jumped on the Metro-North Railway with our summer interns, Jane and Jill for a 35-minute train ride up to Tarrytown. After a quick $9.00 taxi ride we arrived at Blue Hill at Stone Barns to find ourselves amidst a bucolic scene. We all looked at each other astonished that less than an hour ago we were in the sweltering city, and now we were standing on a beautiful farm.

At the Stone Barns, you'll find Dan Barber and his staff harvesting produce hours prior to cooking and serving it in a refined country setting. Barber is the prince of local produce these days, and after a trip to the stone barns, you might wonder why everyone isn't cooking like this. Go up for the day, take a walk around the farm, meet the pigs and chickens or just make a reservation and eat some of the freshest food around.