The bounty of the garden has been taken from the ground and put onto plates. A whole lot of plates. Our third annual harvest dinner was served up last Tuesday to 120 hungry guests at the Roadhouse. Tomatoes had the largest presence, but our heirloom peppers and potatoes represented themselves pretty well. We oven roasted San Marzano romas at a low temperature for a long time to make the perfect sweet and colorful roasted tomato, and made it even better by stuffing it with blackfin tuna from Tobago. We hollowed out squash and made room for house made lamb sausage, and sliced cucumbers thin for a creamy fresh salad. We actually took three different types of our potatoes (german butter balls, kennebecs, and pontiac reds) and hand cut them for french fries. We then challenged our guests to decide which one was the favorite, and that one will be grown in massive quantities for the restaurant next year. We also steamed the taters for an amazing potato salad… The pepper were all over in different dishes, but I was most excited by the heirloom pimento cheese. Pimento cheese is a southern specialty already on our menu (cheddar, mayo, roasted red peppers, cayenne), but we took it a step further by making it with our hot hungarian wax peppers, red and yellow hinkelhotz, and an appropriately named amish cheese pepper. The flavors blew me away! The heat was definitely at the front, but continued to linger on the tongue. We did not even need to use cayenne to add spice! At the end of the huge buffet was our raw bar of heirloom tomatoes (and me). We had ten different varieties that I sliced to order so that you could sample varietals side by side to compare flavor profiles. We also had house made fresh mozzarella, basil from the garden, a vast selection of American olive oils, and plenty of Portugese sea salad to make fantastic caprese salads, just the way you like them. There were, of course, much more- a gigantic sundae bar, peach cobbler, blueberry grunt, bean salads, sweet carrots…… I will post the menu as incentive to make your reservation now for next year!!

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The easy slow heat of the end of the summer is paying off for the garden. We are now in full on harvest mode, picking hundreds of pounds of gorgeous vegetables each day. Tomatoes are being used in every way- sauced, raw on salads, stewed, and even as an artistic display in the dining room. We have almost thirty different types of heirlooms, and are working hard at tasting each one to develop a flavor profile. This tasting will lead…

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