The Magazine: Fall 2010
Aftertaste:
AFTERTASTE: Chowder Contest
Greenport’s annual Maritime Festival attracts more than 20,000 people each year. At this year’s event at the end of September, it seemed that most of them were all on line at once to get into the tent to taste and cast their votes in the chowder contest. The Chowder Contest. Who wouldn’t want bragging rights [...]
Heritage Fruit:
HERITAGE FRUIT: Peach King
Davis Peach Farm’s Wading River legacy. For 100 years Davis Peach Farm, now located in Wading River, has been supplying the luscious stone fruit to residents of the East End and beyond. Husband and wife co-owners Christine and David Davis produce mainly peaches on the farm’s 64 acres: 80 varieties of the peachy king in [...]
Home Cook:
HOME COOK: John Ross
A veteran of local food and wine is still at it. “Taste this,” John Ross says, holding out a spoonful of thick tomato paste. “It’s intense. It easily counts as one of my all-time best culinary experiences.” The paste is made from 10 pounds of very ripe tomatoes plus two red peppers, cooked all day, [...]
Native Aquaculture:
NATIVE AQUACULTURE: Shinnecock Oyster Farms
An age-old venture to multiply mollusks realizes big, new potential. For as long as anyone can remember, the Shinnecock, an Algonquin people, have populated the shores of eastern Long Island. Their creation story states that they were born here and have always relied on the sea. Years ago, says Jonathan Smith, the brightly focused purveyor [...]
Back of the House:
BACK OF THE HOUSE: Nick & Toni’s
The East Hampton landmark that championed local cuisine before the rest of the region. On a seductively lazy Saturday afternoon as only the South Fork can be in August, who was behind the counter at the Townline BBQ in Sagaponack, filling take-out orders for ribs, potato salad and spicy fresh pickles, but Joe Realmuto, executive [...]
Back to the Ground:
BACK TO THE GROUND: Golden Earthworm Organic Farm
A young couple and a friend make it work. Jamesport —Home sites on the desirable North Fork of Long Island can sell for a million dollars, making it hard to justify growing potatoes there. Most farmers have cashed in, selling family land that had been in agriculture for generations. But a handful of holdouts remain, [...]
Bagel Generation:
BAGEL GENERATION: Goldberg’s Famous
A family recipe continues to sustain a bagel empire. Marc Goldberg is a tall man with a large frame. His large eyes are a color somewhere between his acid-washed blue jeans, spiky gray hair and cornflower-blue polo shirt. He seems to be in his late 50s and is a man of few words. When he [...]
Agricultural Ambiguity:
AGRICULTURAL AMBIGUITY: Lieb Family Cellars
How pinot blanc ended up in your glass Over the years I’ve heard different stories about a certain field of grapevines in Cutchogue. Some of the stories are beguiling: that the vines were planted by mistake and were slated to be destroyed and replaced, but somehow evaded the trash bin of agriculture for a white [...]
Behind the Bottle:
BEHIND THE BOTTLE: Sette, NV, Macari Vineyards
A rustic-style red that’s for more than just workaday meals. Nobody really puts that much thought into table wine. And when you see those two letters—”NV” (non-vintage)—on a bottle (one that’s not sparkling, anyway), you may well pass it over for something with a four-digit date. In European winemaking countries, bottles classified as “table wine”—which, [...]
Melting Pot:
MELTING POT: East Meets East End
Founded on chutneys, this shop introduced many New Yorkers to the dosa. There’s no doubt that the East End sits squarely in the middle of the material world, strewn with designer shops and upscale restaurants.But pull open the screen door of the Hampton Chutney Company, in the low white building tucked away at the rear [...]
Farmgirl Angst:
FARMGIRL ANGST: Drinking Problem
One of the reasons I prefer local wine to anything else is that I like drinking a year I also lived. This might not be a significant fact for the average drinker, but for a farmer who may have suffered that dry spell with twice the workload of making it rain, drinking the ’95 merlot [...]
Notable Edibles:
NOTABLE EDIBLES: Grape-side Table
There’s something about eating outside. The fresh air, the breeze, sights and sounds. You feel hungrier and somehow more relaxed. The food tastes better. And if it tastes better outside, just think how it will taste in a vineyard. Don’t think too long, because at Lenz they’re at it with their Dinner in the Vines [...]
Notable Edibles:
NOTABLE EDIBLES: Water Mill Cupcake Company
Consider Water Mill the latest outpost of the cupcake craze. Opened on July 10, the bakery has been specializing in the diminutive baked good, and, according to co-owner Ruth Balletta, doing very well. Balletta’s another East End transplant who has decided to make a second career in the food business. After leaving finance, she partnered [...]
Notable Edibles:
NOTABLE EDIBLES: Hamptons Hambassador
When he first moved to New York City in 1972, the Montreal born Monte Mathews went to a dinner party where the host advised: If you want to impress, “buy an expensive watch and serve a cheap ham.” But Mathews, a retired Madison Avenue creative director, who handled campaigns for Sara Lee, Jimmy Dean, and [...]
Recipes:
NOTABLE EDIBLES: Wineberry
Summer may be over for some, but not for the conscientious forager with a freezer full of this year’s abundance of wineberries and wild blackberries. Wineberries are an invasive species to which I surrendered a long time ago, in fact pretty much the minute I tasted that justsweet-enough and slightly sticky raspberry look-a-like. And this [...]
GRIST FOR THE MILL: Letter from the Editor
Looking back over this issue, it seems that food has a strong pull as a second career. A woman leaves finance to bake cupcakes; an ad man succumbs whole hog to his passion for ham and a member of the Shinnecock Nation decides to grow his own oysters after working in retail. Matthew Kurek and [...]