Happy Easter and Rituals of Spring at Restoration Farm

The joys of Easter are upon us, and after a particularly hard winter, the community at Restoration Farm seems to embrace the tasks of spring with renewed vigor. Donna’s hens have been busy producing baskets full of pastel eggs perfect for the holiday.  

Signs of activity and new life are abundant. Caroline, George and Kobi are shelling last year’s pole bean pods, and extracting the seeds in anticipation of this season’s planting. Ever the engineer, George is devising new ways to get the shelling done more quickly.  

Zsofi, Natalia and a group of volunteers are preparing the flowerbeds for a summer of brilliant color. 

Hal has constructed a top bar beehive to attract those stalwarts of pollination.  The bees will enter through the bottom, and build honeycombs draped from each narrow bar that lies across the top.   

At Apple Trace, buds on the two-year old heritage apple trees are beginning to open.  

In the field, tender leaves of kale reach towards the sun.  We will soon be worth our weight in greens. 

Freedom Ranger meat birds have settled into their daily routine of foraging in the fields.  

The Garlic Field is covered with bright green shoots that will soon give way to the first garlic scapes of summer.  

At the Hewlett Apple Orchard, Glenn had pruned and mulched the sweeping hill and planted additional rootstock.

He shows me the progress of the Asian pear, Apricot and Sour Cherry trees he planted several years ago along the dirt road that enters the farm.  Glenn has a knack for cultivating new life and has truly earned the nickname of “Orchard Guy.”   

And, scattered throughout the farm and the historic village are new abodes each anticipating their first flurry of tenants. 

Happy Easter!  Happy Spring!   

©2014 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved  

Daffodil Cake for Easter Sunday

Happy Easter and Happy Passover to all who celebrate!  The daffodils came early this year bringing a splash of sunny yellow to our sleepy, barren landscape.  What better way to celebrate the season of new life at our Easter dinner than with a bright, golden Daffodil Cake?

Louise Volper – my favorite curator of food history over at Months of Edible Celebrations – first introduced me to the Daffodil Cake when she recently featured this classic recipe:

The recipe is a variation on Angel Food Cake and uses 12 egg whites and six egg yolks.   White and yellow batter is layered in a tube pan created the effect of daffodil petals.  It will be a sweet finish to our meal, and delicious way to welcome to the new season!

Daffodowndilly

by A.A. Milne 

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,

She wore her greenest gown;

She turned to the south wind

And curtsied up and down.

She turned to the sunlight

And shook her yellow head,

And whispered to her neighbor:

“Winter is dead.”

Happy Spring!

©2012 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

Carrot Cake sans Carrots

Happy Easter and Happy Spring! If, by chance, you’ve just been visited by the most famous rabbit of all (and I don’t mean Bugs) you might want to take a moment to reflect on the Big Bunny’s favorite food – The Carrot. Here’s a little carrot trivia to crunch on:

• The carrot originated in Afghanistan, but the varieties grown there were purple and yellow. The ubiquitous orange root didn’t come until later.



• Both the ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated carrots.



• In 1607 the settlers at Jamestown in Virginia introduced carrots to North America.



• Thomas Jefferson – who loved vegetables – harvested 18 bushels of carrots at his Monticello home in 1814.



• The state of California is the top producer of fresh carrots in the United States.



• The carrot consists of 87 percent water.



• Beta carotene gives the carrot its orange color, and the carrot delivers 30 percent of the Vitamin A in the U.S. diet.



• One cup of raw carrots contains about 50 calories, 4 grams of dietary fiber, 6 grams of sugars and over 400 percent of a single daily serving of Vitamin A.

None of these nutritional benefits are present in this whimsical Carrot Cake inspired by a recipe in the April issue of Food Network Magazine. It contains absolutely no carrot, and while the original recipe recommends purchased frozen pound cake and tub frosting, I decided to make a vanilla pound cake recipe and a batch of cream cheese frosting from scratch as the base ingredients for the recipe. Once that’s done, the rest is basically a kitchen craft project of trimming and frosting the cake and precise alignment of dozens of orange jelly beans.

I suspect there’s enough sugar here to assure I’ll be hopping down the bunny trail by late afternoon.

©2011 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

One a Penny, Two a Penny, Hot Cross Buns

The catchy phrase above is actually an early form of a marketing jingle that English street merchants used to sell hot cross buns on Good Friday centuries ago.

Today, the jingle is less prevalent, but mass-produced hot cross buns certainly flood the supermarket during the duration of Lent, costing a bit more than a penny or two. There’s a certain charm to the verse, but it would give me pause if the bakery manager at Stop & Shop broke into song.

This is my second attempt at making hot cross buns, and my first success. The sweet yeast dough is enriched with egg, butter, citron and raisins and scented with nutmeg and cinnamon. As the fragrant aroma fills the kitchen, I look into the history of this traditional Good Friday baked item that many believed held extraordinary powers – perhaps an eighteenth century super food.

The earliest recorded mention of hot cross buns is from Poor Robin’s Almanack in 1733, although stories of buns stamped with a cross to mark the crucifixion of Christ date back as early as the Middle Ages. Some believed hot cross buns could cure disease and others thought the loaves would never mold or decay (one would suspect the commercially-produced buns contain enough preservatives to deliver on that promise).

Other historians believe that associations with the bread of the Eucharistic meal – also stamped with a cross – and the imagery of Christ as the bread of life contribute to the supernatural lore associated with hot cross buns.

One custom involved people hanging hot cross buns in their homes all year long to protect against sickness, fire and other calamities. It would be an interesting experiment to try, but I don’t think my hot cross buns will last that long.

(Don't forget you've got just a few more days to participate in the giveaway of "The Encyclopedia of Sandwiches." Leave a comment on the previous post and mention your favorite sandwich by 11:59 PM EDT on Saturday, April 23, and you'll be eligible to win a copy of Susan Russo's new book.)

©2011 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

Easter Chic

Sometimes, when you’re hopping down that Bunny Trail, you just need to take a shortcut.

My sister-in-law Pam always asks me to bring dessert to family gatherings, and I am usually happy to comply. But, about a week ago, I was speaking to my older brother Jim in Tennessee, and said, “I hope Pam doesn’t ask me to bring dessert for Easter. I’m on the road this week, and I don’t think I’ll have much time to make something.”

“Why don’t you contact her now, and offer to bring the wine?” he suggested. Jim has a good handle on pre-emptive strategies.

Of course, I promptly forgot and by Tuesday night when I checked into my hotel in Chicago, I received the anticipated email from Pam requesting that I bring dessert.

What to do? Ice cream? Store-bought crumb cake? I was perplexed. None of those options seemed quite in the spirit of the occasion.

Then, I happened upon this recipe for Easter Chicks Cupcakes. It’s perhaps less a recipe, and more a craft project. The recipe calls for artful arrangement of colored coconut and candy bits and the preparation is faster than a jack rabbit. There’s nothing too deep here. No profound food history or mysterious French pastry techniques. And, no apologies, either. (I used a boxed cake mix - GASP!!)

For someone who grew up on Peter Cottontail, paper mache Easter eggs, neon-colored hard boiled eggs dunked in PAAS dye and Marshmallow Peeps (and still craves M&M’s “Bunny Mix”) Easter Chicks Cupcakes seems a most festive holiday treat. And, they’re a lot easier to tend to than the barnyard variety.

For those of you hoping for a somewhat more nature expression of the season of renewal, feast your eyes on these shots of Manhattan all decked out in Spring finery on the day before Easter.

Now, what are you waiting for? Put on that Easter bonnet and head out to the parade!

Happy Easter~Happy Spring!

©2010 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

What I Didn’t Bake for Easter and Spaghetti with Shaved Asparagus

I had great plans for Easter. I was going to bake one of those ridiculously sweet, fluffy coconut layer cakes to herald the arrival of spring. But, I’ve been felled by a wicked sinus infection. You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice, men and bakers. At this point, my only responsibility for Easter dinner is to show up, which is not the worst thing in the world, given how I’ve felt the past few days.

Clearly, I am in need of the restorative powers of the season. While it’s not exactly a coconut cake, Spaghetti with Shaved Asparagus, found in the April issue of Everyday Food, is a bright and invigorating harbinger of spring. “The Field Guide to Produce” says asparagus is a perennial plant in the lily family (there’s an Easter connection already!) and wild asparagus was prized by the ancient Greeks and Egyptians as a seasonal delicacy.

I used thin, wholegrain spaghetti to give the dish a nuttier flavor. The asparagus is shaved into strips with a vegetable peeler, so it takes almost no time to cook and is simply added to the pasta pot just before draining the hot water. The asparagus shavings retain a crisp and vigorous, just-picked flavor. The spaghetti and asparagus shavings are tossed with lemon zest and salty-tart shavings of parmesan cheese.

Asparagus spears grow underground. The tender green and violet shoots peak out of the ground in early spring, and are harvested by hand for about 6 to 8 weeks.

With any luck, I may just be about ready to peak out from under the covers today, myself.

Happy Easter and Happy Spring!

©2009 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

Enchanted Egg Cake

The Easter season always inspires my memories of the Enchanted Egg. While I can barely remember the story, the image is fixed in my mind, an icon of the spring celebration. It was an exquisitely-decorated egg with a mysterious hole at one end. Peer into the hole, and inside you’d discover an enchanted world of eternal springtime.

The legend of the Enchanted Egg appears to spring from a children’s book of the same name, written by Peggy Burrows in 1956. The cover looks very familiar to me, but the tale has faded into my distant memories.

Richly decorated eggs have been a part of the Easter celebration for centuries. Ukrainian Easter Eggs, called "pysanka" were given as gifts as a symbol of spiritual rebirth. For many years, jewel-encrusted Faberge Eggs were presented by Russian Tsar Alexander III to Empress Maria as an annual Easter gift. Each egg contained a surprise hidden inside.

In the holiday television special, It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown, Snoopy picks up an Enchanted Egg in a department store and gazes in. He even leaps into the egg and dances a minuet in a meadow filled with cuddly white bunnies.

When I was a just a youngster, my grandmother Hilda even found us an Enchanted Egg, probably in the local candy and stationary store. It was made of white granulated sugar with squiggly pastel yellow trim. When you looked into the spy-hole you were treated to a bucolic spring scene. We kept it for several years and displayed it every Easter. In elementary school, I even crafted an Enchanted Egg the color of a robin’s egg out of paper Mache in Mrs. Shaw's art class. My mother still displays it each Easter in her home.

I decided to recreate the Enchanted Egg as a cake for our family’s Easter Dinner, decorated with butter cream and fondant. Before you leave, click below to take a peek inside the Enchanted Egg and revel in a sweet and magical melody of spring.

©2008 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

Egg-stacy

Spring is reluctant in the Northeast. Daffodils and crocus shiver and symbols of new life struggle to be seen and heard, yet eggs are abundant in my kitchen as preparations for Easter commence.

The egg is legendary and full of wonder, a miracle in a translucent oval shell. Egyptians thought their deity created the egg from the sun and the moon, and Phoenicians told a story that an egg split in two at the beginning of time to form heaven and earth. The egg is a symbol of renewal and rebirth in the Christian faith, consumed devotedly during the Easter season and used to decorate traditional Easter breads and confections throughout Europe.

Made of 14 percent protein with abundant vitamins and minerals, the egg is often described as “incredible,” and frequently referred to as the perfect food. Eggs are friends to bakers and chefs, and are ubiquitous within the kitchen lending viscosity to sauces, golden hue to pasta and custards, richness and luster to breads and extraordinary rise to cakes and soufflés.

On a cold and almost wintry Sunday, my Easter Brunch celebrates pastoral flavors and aromas and the renewal we long all for. Throughout, the egg offers its miraculous nourishment to our gathering and our spirits.




A Sparkling Pear n’ Cranberry Cocktail tickles the nose with the luscious nectar of pears and sparkling wine and a sweet, woodsy whiff of Rosemary.





Mom brings Carrot Salad, vivid with raisins and crunchy sunflower seeds, in honor of that floppy rabbit associated with this day.




French Toast “Eiderdown” with Herbs & Bacon from “Michael Roux Eggs” is a vibrant rite of spring, a kitchen garden of fresh eggs, tarragon, and chives, bursting with soft golden layers of bread, nutty cheeses and herbaceous vitality. The eight eggs give the “eiderdown” a vivacious lift from the center of the baking dish.





With four eggs, The Ricotta Cake is creamy but still light, perfumed with just a hint of fruity olive oil and tangy lemon zest.

Hope springs eternal and what chef lacks hope when he has a basket of fresh eggs close at hand?

Happy Easter, Happy Spring!

Sources:
Michael Roux Eggs
Food Lover’s Companion, Third Edition, Sharon Tyler Herbst
Larousse Gastronomic

© 2007 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved