September 18, 2024
Bramble & Hare did one of their “Dirt Dinners” :
A few years after our first restaurant, Black Cat Bistro, opened in 2006 we started holding “Dirt Dinners,” where we celebrated individual ingredients across several courses. The events were hits, but we ended up turning our attention to other projects, as we expanded the farm, opened another restaurant and then focused on our farm dinners; we had not held one in years. But in 2023, we brought them back!
The 2024 Dirt Dinner series will be held as special events and dates throughout the growing season at Bramble & Hare. Look for these evening “Experiences” on our Open Table reservations and announced via our newsletter.
Each menu will focus on a vegetable at it’s peak of flavor and freshness. For example, in July we’ll celebrate the arrival of squash blossoms and beautiful summer squash. Later in August we’ll likely savor a menu of perfect tomatoes when it is their time to shine. Late in fall, expect rich pumpkins and in winter, sweet parsnips.
For each Dirt Dinner, you will enjoy four courses, each of which treats the star vegetable as the night’s diva. While the evening is always an ensemble performance, the diva vegetable gets to swan into the spotlight and enchant us. We plan on offering guests a welcome apéritif, too, which also champions the diva. A carrot cocktail? You bet. (I put this quote in because this page https://brambleandhare.com/harvest-dinner/ is obviously ephemeral).
This time the dinner featured peppers!
Bill and the Sommelier talked about a wine for this rather difficult to pair menu and they decided on this. It is a Chenin Blanc from the Loire in France.
This was nicely acidic. Martin found a bit of peach and apple on the nose. Surprisingly, for a white, it opened up a bit during the meal, always very nice and it did pair well.
From the négociant’s web site https://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine+de+bellivière :
Fun facts:
This wine is sourced from 17 different parcels!
Les Rosiers is from Bellivière's young vines, which by their definition effectively means anything under 50 years old, some of them as young as 10 years old.
Appellation:
Jasnières
Winemaking:
The fruit is destemmed, pressed and barrel-fermented with native yeasts; it ages for eight to ten months in 350l old barrels. One to three grams of S02 per hectoliter are added at press as well four to five grams in three seperate doses prior to bottling.
Some years the wines ferment completely dry but often have discernable yet balanced residual sugar. It is the house rule to "let nature decide" how far the native yeasts will push fermentation.
Bramble and Hare is a pretty casual affair! Here’s part of the front side open kitchen. Martin wishes he’d thought about a cowboy hat when he was working in the restaurants!
The bread course is never on the menu. This time, we have a pepper jelly, quite sweet, very nice, cinnamon roll and sourdough. The breads are made from grain grown and ground on the farm!
Wow! The cinnamon roll was a CINNAMON!!!! roll, they really went to town on the cinnamon and it really worked. The sourdough is just perfect, really unique flavor, they use their own sourdough starter, of course, and let it rise for a long time to really let the flavor develop.
We did not think this was going to work! It is a Poblano Southside - Rum, Poblano, Aloe, Lime Acid. What a surprise, the poblano was nicely in the background and went well with the lime.
An Amuse-Bouche, Shishisto Peppers on top of what we heard as a sambal aïoli. Sambal is made from some type of red chili pepper, vinegar and salt. It really went well with the spicy, not too hot, grilled shishistos.
It paired well with the southside cocktail.
The first course is a Stuffed Bell Pepper. That certainly sounds . . . prosaic. Not here! That is a green bell, but it is stuffed with cauliflower couscous. Since neither of us like cauliflower, we were skeptical, but it really worked. The cauliflower had been sauteed and was really crispy, then the mushrooms and espelette pepper puree lifted the dish up to a new level!
The second course is Spiced Chorizo. This was another surprise! This is Spanish Chorizo, completely different than the Mexican Chorizo we’re familiar with, firm (not hard) texture, fairly mild, and just a really, really good sausage. the Creamy Rajas and Cilantro blended just right with the Chorizo. The pickling mellowed out the Jalapeños so that they fit in well, too.
The third course is the Duo of Lamb. There’s a lamb pork chop at the top and two roulettes of lamb at the bottom. The au jus is truly magical, bringing the lamb flavor forward without getting in the way.
The pepper soubise isn’t the usual creamy one; it's a much lighter, oil-based one that keeps the dish fresh and the lamb as the star.
The fourth course is an Apple Mousse. This was apples concentrated! There was a “cookie” of pâte sucrée underneath it and the pepper jelly and pepper “Cavier” brightened the apple up without adding a distracting amount of heat.