First-ever Slow Food East End Carlo Petrini Award to North Fork Table & Inn; Plus Fundraising Event for Chef Gerry Hayden

North Fork Table & Inn partners accept Slow Food East End Carlo Petrini Award, L-R: Chef Claudia Fleming, Mary Mraz, Mike Mraz, Chef Gerry Hayden

No need to wait or hold out for the Academy Awards and Oscar®

The votes are in.

And the winner is the acclaimed East End restaurant, The North Fork Table & Inn and its James Beard award-winning chefs and co-owners, husband and wife culinary team: Gerry Hayden and Claudia Fleming, along with their managing partners, Mike Mraz and his wife, Mary. 

The Inn was presented with the first-ever Slow Food East End Carlo Petrini Award for its exceptional embodiment of the Slow Food principles of universal access to good, clean and fair food.

At the same time, the sold-out event was a “double feature.”

East End foodies gathered to raise funds to help combat the devastating ALS disease, while saluting and celebrating Chef Gerry Hayden and his fight against ALS.

Chef Gerry is also James Beard nominee this year for Best Chef, Northeast.

All the really big stars -- in the culinary constellation, that is -- were in attendance at Sunday’s very big night at The North Fork Table & Inn.

In fact, there were 50 chefs, staff and volunteers and nearly 20 chefs who participated in the evening’s star-studded night.  

The event was a sell-out with more than 220 tickets purchased and even more donations were tallied online, garnering a total of approximately $40,000. 

Chef Gerry was diagnosed with ALS in 2011. The money raised helps provide for his quality of care.  

Donations can still be made at:http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Your-Invitation-to-a-Special-Event.html?soid=1102409732378&aid=JzL3I54d_bg

The evening’s menu was extraordinary – with local, homegrown ingredients dazzling the Out East plates and palates. (Check out Rosa Ross' Vegetable Rolls!)

The best ingredient of the night?  Love.

Hat’s in the air to all the effort and community that helped make the night a success, especially, event planner Maria McBride of Peconic Productions, Kontokosta Winery and Anne Howard, Slow Food East End.

 

Slow Food East End Membership Chair & event hero, Anne Howard, Center

Chefs Gerry Hayden and Claudia Fleming are featured chefs in this Examiner’s book, The Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook, as are many of the chefs who turned out to support the fundraising event.

Of course they did. That’s what Homegrown Chefs do…

Special mention goes to Chef Kevin Penner, Bryan Futerman, Robby Beaver, Frisky Oyster, Rosa Ross, Scrimshaw, Gretchen Menser, Fresno, James Carpenter, Citta Nuova, and Jason Weiner, Almond, NYC/L&W Oyster Co.   

Chef Bryan Futerman, Left

Exuberant & beautiful: Chef Claudia

I wrote about Chef Gerry and Claudia’s vision and culinary leadership for the North Fork Table & Inn’s profile in the Homegrown Cookbook,

“The couple is dedicated to fulfilling the North Fork’s potential as a food lover’s paradise. They opened the restaurant here because they believe it offers the best of the culinary world’s future, with the highest-quality ingredients steps away from their door.  And because of their philosophy, The North Fork Table & Inn has become a food-lover’s destination.”

And inspiration, it should be added.

Photos Courtesy of Slow Food East End, photographer: Brittany Calderale

Greenmarket's Nevia No, Bodhitree Farm, Returns From Terra Madre Slow Food Conference

Bodhitree Farm’s Nevia No is back from the Slow Food international organization’s bi annual Terra Madre conference, held in Turin Italy, October 21 through 25^th.

As previously reported here, Nevia is one of two Greenmarket farmers from New York City nominated to represent the Union Square Greenmarket.  The other nominee is a Vermont maple syrup farmer.

I adore Nevia’s farm fresh vegetables.  They are exquisitely pristine.

She takes extraordinary care with the growing – and the presentation. 

The produce is clean, clean, clean.  It is arranged with the care of a Saks Fifth Avenue fashion window, beckoning to the keen passerby and seasoned restaurant staff alike.

Every greenmarket and food book signing or culinary benefit I attend where the top chefs provide food tastings invariably note Bodhitree Farm as the preferred farmer.

The chefs’ reverence for her produce is not a surprise. 

The care and love she invests in farming, growing the tastiest, most flavorful veggies results in the best produce.  www.bodhitreefarm.com

Did you know the word Bodhi-Tree is a wisdom or world tree and is a symbol of enlightenment?  How perfect.

She – and her associate, Debbie – are unfailingly helpful and nice. Always smiling.

There is usually a cooking demo going on too. 

This way, once you’ve been seduced by the day’s neat-as-a-pin, colorful display, you can test drive the sweet potato curiosity you’ve never heard of. 

Or the purple cauliflower you didn’t think was real.

The variety of vegetables and herb is the tatsoi, red mizuna, Tuscan kale,

Delicious, tempting treats are made by Nevia or most often, Alissa Dicker Schrieber from The Kitchenista (www.thekitchenista.com). 

It’s always a food adventure at the Bodhitree farm stand at the Greenmarket.

I asked Nevia how the trip to Turin, Italy for the Terra Madre international network of food was for her. 

She described an extraordinary experience. 

I could see it in her eyes.  She looked like she’d been to the “other side.”  Transformed.

Just being in a place where everyone has the same passionate devotion to food must be a religious experience of sorts.

Nevia attended the lectures and panel discussions to learn more about the next generation of sustainable food producers of which she is one.

She also learned that while most small farm laborers are women; very, very few women actually own the land they work…

She said she was most impressed by a group of Asian women who risked prison and death over many years in order to claim their farm land.

Coincidentally and timely, I was just introduced to the “Women Wearing the Pants” (WWTP) organization that is dedicated to supporting the work of the Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women and the commitment to Free Trade Zones and Fair Trade. The Asian women who fought for the farm could have used this support.

I was particularly intrigued with Experimental Gardens.  According to their website. http://tiny.cc/ibpf “In December 2010, WWTP will help research and finance 15 experimental subsistence gardens for impoverished women headed households in Nicaragua through affiliations with ww.IDEORG.org.  The International Development Enterprise.

Following a discussion about fair trade, gender issues in food production and indigenous food, I asked Nevia what was the most interesting food she experienced at the conference. 

She said she was so busy attending all the scheduled events that the food item that really captivated her was the bread she discovered the local Italians use.

Nevia brought out a shrink-wrapped bread from her truck cab to show me.

Soon, others were marveling at the unique, stylish bread design.  Leave it to those fashionable Italians! 

Slow Food International was founded 30 years ago as a non-profit organization that promotes the preservation and growth of environmentally sustainable and socially responsible food worldwide.  www.slowfood.com

It’s crazy that we have to even have such an organization as a watchdog and promoter – or reminder – of what “real” food is. Sigh. But we must.

And I for one, am most sincerely grateful for their amazing work, given the topsy-turvy world of industrialized, corporate food production that purports to provide “food” while delivering no less than laboratory-created “nutrients” rather than safe, pure, food. 

Don’t get me started.

As noted in the Introduction to my book, “Long Island Homegrown” to be published next year (working hard to complete the last details now J)

Much of the effort was launched as a reaction, nay – a rebellion against the industrialization of food production and food offerings as presented by restaurant chains and supermarkets.  The Slow Food movement was started in Italy – not surprisingly – by Carlo Petrini --to combat fast food. In 1986, Petrini was resisting a McDonald’s planned near the Spanish Steps in Rome.  His Slow Food movement claims to preserve the cultural cuisine and the associated food plants and seeds, domestic animals, and farming within an eco region. It was the first established part of the broader Slow movement. The movement has since expanded globally to hundreds of thousands of members all over the world, and the biannual food conference is a coveted invitation

Coveted indeed is an invitation to the Slow Food conference.

So raise your glass and let’s toast Nevia No, Bodhitree Farm, for representing Greenmarket. For making us so proud. 

For all the crazy hard work that she does with such integrity – and making it all look so elegant.

To continue to provide us outstanding leadership, sustainable “veggies with spirit” as she notes on her business card. – And unmatched, flavorful food.

We love you, Nevia.  The USPS needs to start issuing a series of stamps that celebrate Farmers as heroes and leaders. 

And I vote for you to be the first cover girl stamp!


You can learn more here about Slow Food Movement:

GrowNYC Greenmarket Nominated Local Farmers to Attend Slow Food Conference in Terra Madre

From the city that never sleeps and where things get done in a “New York Minute,” the Greenmarket delegates will be immersed in the Slowww way of life…

For the next few days, at least.

Applause, Applause! 

What greater honor could there be for a dedicated, local farmer and artisanal food producer than to be acknowledged as a representative for the Greenmarket at the biannual Slow Food Conference? 

It makes all those early mornings setting up in Union Square, endless hours of washing the baby lettuces, tapping the maple trees and boiling the sap, fretting over the storms and heat and water count for something. 
It’s not just the trip to Torino, Italy, nor the opportunity to mix and network with food artists from around the globe, or even all the great food tastings and samplings.

I think it’s also the recognition that all the hard work, dedication and standards of excellence in honor of fresh, local food matters.

This is important, noble work and just like the Oscar or the Emmy or the Tony, foody peers will forever have respect that you were selected.

I was admiring the pristine lettuces and sassy greens at one of my favorite Greenmarket “boutiques” yesterday when I learned from Bodhitree Farms (www.bodhitreefarm.com)

owner, Nevia No, aka the Greenmarket Goddess, that she was leaving for Terra Madre later that day.  Wowsy!

I was so excited for Nevia.  Questions spilled out of me along with the kudos.

Nevia explained that she is one of two farmers selected to attend the Slow Food conference by GrowNYC Greenmarket Farmers Market (www.grownyc.org/greenmarket.org

The other delegate is Howie and Stephen Cantor of Deep Mountain Maple, Vermont – because “the Italians don’t have maple syrup.”  No said. 

The exotic, sexy elixir is sure to cause a scene in Italy…

The Greenmarket Goddess didn’t have to explain to me why her Bodhitree Farms was chosen.   

No is usually eager to explain that Bodhi means enlightenment in Sanskrit.  A visit to her Greenmarket display with its pure, clean, variety of colorful and delicious vegetables will elevate anyone to a higher consciousness.

Greenmarket Goddess Nevia No’s Bodhitree Farms is located in the Garden State, naturally. She grows hundreds of varieties on 70 acres in Burlington County.  The Farm is a darling of all the New York City Master Chefs and Bodhitree was noted on most of the menu cards at the recent GrowNYC Greenmarket benefits.

The Farm is famous for green and hard to find Asian vegetables including baby lettuces pea shoots, mustard greens, tatsoi, mizuna and some of my favorites too are love her Hawaiian sweet potatoes grown from seed here, and shisito peppers.

  

I went back to take Nevia’s picture and Debbie said I just missed her L  She was on her way to JFK. 

So here is Debbie!  She is there every day of the market along with Nevia.

The theme of this conference is indigenous food and what we can learn from them.

Both Bodhitree and Deep Mountain Maple will have the other delegates swooning. 

I feel like I’m rooting for the home team!

Deep Mountain Maple was hailed as home town heroes in their local news:

www.bartonchronicle.com/index.php/food-ventures

The biannual Slow Food conference is called Terra Madre held in Torino, Italy from October 21^st – October 25^th.

This is the Fourth conference.

Delegates attend events, sample indigenous food, cheese, bread, vegetables, they also attend workshops,  -- brings together small food producers, farmers chefs,

Carlo Petrini started the Slow Food movement as a resistance to a McDonalds going up in Rome and as a backlash to fast food and bad food and the erosion of convivial dining. He has celebrated the importance of real, wholesome food, saying that to regain sovereignty we must rebuild it through an alliance of fisherman, farmers, livestock breeders, chefs, and academics from around the world.

Petrini recently visited the Union Square Greenmarket – and American universities as president of the Slow Food Organization and to promote his new book that highlights the future of food and biodiversity.

The new book is a follow up to Slow Food Nation (2005).  “Terra Madre – Foraging a New Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities” is available now.

 No usually offers cooking demos for Greenmarket buyers to sample the delicious and sometimes new and curious vegetables.  She often does the cooking herself.  Sometime she features a guest cook.

I can’t wait to see what gastronomic surprises she will bring home with her, along with the great stories and learning.