It’s summer harvest season up on NYC’s newest and biggest rooftop farm!

If you haven’t been, and I know most of you haven’t, you need to see The Brooklyn Grange. I visited a few days ago to see what Farmer Ben Flanner was growing for the summer, and I was quite impressed with the progress he’s made in such a short amount of time. His 40,000 square foot farm (just under an acre) was lush with greens, cabbage, tomato plants, corn crops, carrots, swiss chard, various herbs and root vegetables. I seriously didn’t think the farm would look as finished or as polished as it did when I set foot, especially since they only began planting in late May. But, it did. The plants looked happy and tasted great, further proving the case for more NYC rooftop farms. Watch the video and see for yourself. Plants like rooftops…or it seems that way to me!

Restaurant Accounts & CSAs & Farmer’s Markets

The Brooklyn Grange estimates that they’ll grow close to 16,000 pounds of produce this growing season. Right now, they have enough produce for 3-4 more restaurant accounts in Queens or North Brooklyn (trying to stay as local as possible), so if you know of anyone who may be interested in meeting their $100 minimum give them a call. In addition, Ben will begin offering 20 CSA shares to a few lucky individuals who want a piece of The Grange produce for the entire season. The cost is a little under $20/week and will last for the next 16 weeks until the end of October or early November. So sign up now if you’re interested!

Local cooks can get their hands on the rooftop produce at the many farmers markets they hold throughout the week:

• The Brooklyn Grange Farmer’s Market: Tuesdays & Thursdays: 3718 Northern Boulevard, Queens, 3-7pm
• (NEW) Vesta Trattoria Farmer’s Market: Saturdays, 2102 30th Avenue, Astoria, (time TBD)
• Roberta’s Farmer’s Market: Sundays: 261 Moore Street, Brooklyn, 11-5pm

And if you hate to cook, but want to try the bounty of what’s being produced up on the farm, you can visit Frankies Sputino, Juliette, Roberta’s or Northeast Kingdom and check out their menus for Brooklyn Grange inspired dishes.

Volunteers and interested visitors are also more than welcome on the farm, so to get your hands dirty and help out a farmer just contact brooklyngrangefarm[at]gmail.com.

Happy Eating! And thanks for watching food. curated.

CNN’s Eatocracy food site found out all about my love of food this week. Read the post here!

“It’s the prime rib of clam…”

Geoduck (pronounced gooey-duck). Why aren’t more Americans eating geoduck? They are native shellfish to the Pacific Northwest and grown by the millions of pounds in the same waters as oysters. So, why are they so difficult to find in most seafood markets? And why haven’t most of my friends tried it? Is it because they look strange and prehistoric? Or just intimidatingly over-sized? Maybe Asians know something we don’t. And maybe that’s why Taylor Shellfish‘s sustainably farmed and harvested geoduck crop goes 50% to overseas Asian markets and 50% to domestic Asian markets… Hmmm?

Well, after trying it for the first time, I can honestly say as a seafood lover I felt like I had been missing out my whole life. I tried geoduck sashimi, geoduck fritters, geoduck in chowder and geoduck ceviche in many different styles during my recent seafood adventures in Washington State. And with the image of the beast in mind, yes, my first bite was met with hesitation. But the mild flavors and exciting seafood textures they delivered made the geoduck’s ugliness a lot less intimidating. So, if you ever get the chance to taste it, please don’t pass up the opportunity. I think you’ll be surprised how much you’ll enjoy it.

Now before you buy, keep in mind there’s a pretty price to pay for a geoduck. I’ve seen them retail anywhere from $20-$25 per pound (which could be part of the Asian allure). But once you see the back-breaking work involved in the harvest, the price makes a lot more sense. So enjoy this short piece I put together about Taylor Shellfish‘s geoduck farm on Stretch Island in Puget Sound. They are the largest growers in the Northwest, farming the native clams from Southeast Alaska to Washington State.

In NYC, you can buy live geoduck from Taylor Shellfish Farms at W&T Seafood or wander the many wet markets in NYC’s Chinatown or Flushing, Queens for a better chance at finding them.

Happy eating! Thanks again for watching food. curated.

**And many thanks to the Taylor Shellfish family for helping make this trip possible**

Yes, it’s a little bit “hippy-dippy”.

Come meet the passionate crew of artisan food vendors hand picked for NYC’s popular year-round antiques & food market: The Brooklyn Flea. Truth be told, it’s way more than just a cool place to grab food, it’s a place where great food ideas are tried and tested. Find out from Eric Demby, the co-founder, what makes The Flea’s selection so unique, family-oriented and special.

If you love food, this is an absolute must eat in your travels to Brooklyn. There’s no place quite like it in New York. Everything is made to order, very sustainable and served to you by the food artisans themselves.

Featuring seafood, sandwiches, meats, sweets, baked goods, pizza and desserts from: The Milk Truck, Crop to Cup Coffee, Liddabit Sweets, Nunu Chocolates, Whismy & Spice, Kumquat Cupcakery, SCRATCHbread, Asia Dog, The Red Hook Lobster Pound, People’s Pops, Pizza Moto, Soler Dominican Pupusas, The Country Boys, Blue Marble Ice Cream, Early Bird Granola, McClure’s Pickles, Rick’s Picks, Salvatore Bklyn Ricotta, Choncho’s Tacos, Porchetta, The Good Fork, Kors d’Oeuvres.

Thanks for watching food. curated. This video was produced in association with Seth Unger & George Motz of Food Films America. Happy Eating!

“It’s all about the water quality…”

Meet Nellie Wu, the oyster specialist and General Manager of W&T Seafood, a family-owned and operated seafood distribution company based in Brooklyn, New York. Nellie’s company has been the link to connecting great NYC chefs and restaurants to West Coast shellfish farms, namely Taylor Shellfish Farms, for the past 25 years – supplying premiere oyster hubs like The Grand Central Oyster Bar with famed West Coast oysters like Totten Inlet Virginicas, Pacifics, Kumamotos, Fanny Bay Oysters, Kusshis, Olympias and European Flats.

Nellie’s passionate about West Coast oysters not only from a sustainability standpoint, but also from a taste standpoint. She firmly believes they are some of the best tasting oysters you can get in North America. And with the local food movement inspiring more NYers to eat locally, she just wants people to understand the need for supporting regionally grown food as well, especially ones with a good mission behind it.

So, I hope you enjoy this piece on West Coast oysters with Nellie Wu, the first of many pieces on seafood and shellfish farming I’ll be sharing this summer.  We traveled together to Hood Canal and Southern Puget Sound and boarded ferries all the way up to Vancouver Island in British Columbia to make sure you saw for yourself where good shellfish comes from.

And to join Nellie in her quest to teach others about oysters, check out the New York Oyster Lovers MeetUp and get started on your own Oyster Life List. Sign up here: New York Oyster Lovers Meetup.

Thanks for watching food. curated. Happy Eating!

**And many thanks to the Taylor Shellfish family who helped make this trip possible.**

If you had a rotted shark and live baby eel in front of you, would you eat it?

Well, there’s a club of 400 people in New York who would take a bite without even blinking… Meet The Gastronauts, New York City’s adventurous eating club founded by Curtiss Calleo and Ben Pauker, two very good friends with an appetite for the weird and bizarre cultural foods of the five boroughs.

They started their eating club four years ago simply because their girlfriends didn’t want to join them anymore on their food adventures. So, for fun, they decided to open up their dinners to other like-minded eaters, friends, strangers, anyone who was “game” for eating what most Americans won’t. And what they discovered was that there were more people out there like them than they thought. Now, with over 50 club “meetings” under their belt from Staten Island to the far corners of the Bronx, they can only say that they still have so much more bizarre food to go.

So enjoy this little story about The Gastronauts. I hope you find, like I did, that their mission goes so much further than finding weird stuff for you to eat, it’s about enjoying the flavor of cultures, meeting new friends, and honoring animals from nose to tail.

For more information on joining or to see past menus and photos, you can visit Ben & Curtiss online at: http://www.gastronauts.net/

Happy eating! Thanks for watching food. curated.

Hello there! Wanted to share a few photos taken at The James Beard House party for the 2010 NYC Food Film Festival’s big preview night a few days ago. I met a number of directors and featured characters from the selected films. I attended as a special guest of the festival and was asked to speak a little about my films that will be showing in this year’s line-up (4 in total!). The best part of the night, though, was the menu that evening. I don’t think, I know I definitely ate 3 disgustingly good hamburger sliders prepared by festival founder, Executive Chef Harry Hawk, and a ton more nibbles and special plates from my friends at Fatty ‘Cue, The Meat Hook, Rub BBQ and Aquavit. I even ended the night on a goat cheese and date ice cream!

So…mark your calendars June 23-27. There are still plenty of tickets available on discount on the festival website. I wouldn’t miss The Great NYC Shuck & Suck where over 9,000 oysters from the East Coast will be slurped down by the night’s end, or Chef Brad Farmerie’s Southeast Asian Street Food Market film night at The Astor Center where the event space will literally be transformed into a Taiwanese street market.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Hello food. curated. fans!

Just wanted to let you know that I’ll be doing fewer food stories this month in order to finish 3 short films I’ll be premiering at this year’s NYC Food Film Festival, June 23-27, 2010. Hope you make it out to support great food filmmakers! In addition to the new films, my Widow’s Hole Oyster short was selected to show at The Great NYC Shuck & Suck event on the 23rd. Mike Osinski, the oyster farmer from Greenport, will be at the event showcasing his local oysters for all to slurp down.

Thanks for understanding, and stay tuned for fun blog posts and more information on where to go and what to eat this summer!

More than just “Jewish Penicillin”…

Last week, I was lucky enough to team up with food writer extraordinaire Joe DiStefano of Edible Queens to bring you this intimate story about the beauty of tradition in food…classic Jewish delicatessen food. He hand-picked this deli for me because it has quite a reputation – and not just in Queens. Some say, they produce the best pastrami sandwich around…better than Katz (my fave)! So, I agreed to dig a little deeper with my video camera and see for myself what greatness not only looks like, but tastes like.

Meet Jay Parker, owner of Ben’s Best Delicatessen, a 3rd generation deli owner in Rego Park, Queens – and one of the last remaining Kosher delis in New York City. Jay took over the family business from his father, Ben, over 30 years ago knowing that the key to success and longevity was leaving his 100+ year old family recipes unchanged.

Enjoy this feel-good peek into the life of a passionate deli operator. The food looks so good, you can almost taste the hot pastrami and corned beef being shaved off the meat slicer… And for a taste of Jay’s family recipes, you can visit: http://www.bensbest.com. He airships across the country, but believe me, his cured “overstuffed” sandwich meats and homemade dishes are best eaten right in the deli.

Take Jay’s advice and don’t leave without trying some traditional, non-sandwich faves too: The Chicken Soup with Matzo Balls, Chopped Liver, Kosher Hot Dog w/Sauerkraut, Chicken Fricassee, Beef Borscht and Stuffed Cabbage.

Thanks for watching food. curated. Happy eating!

***

Break up the chocolate in a glass bowl, set aside. In a small saucepan slowly heat the heavy cream to just boiling around the edges, stir frequently. Immediately pour the cream, gradually, into the chocolate, add the tablespoon of butter, the sugar and Absinthe. Mix with a wooden spoon until smooth and glossy. Cool in a plastic-wrap covered baking dish. That’s it!