Garlic fest brings dollars and scents

Sylvia Carter, FOOD — A LA CARTER; Newsday – 7/28/04

One of the newest organic farms on Long Island got started almost by accident.

“We had too many vegetables,” said Eve Kaplan of Garden of Eve organic farm in Riverhead, “so we decided to take them to a farmer's market.” Though she and her fiance, Chris Walbrecht, made only about $40 that day three years ago, they were hooked.

This year, the farm, at 4558 Sound Ave., just east of Briermere Farms in Riverhead, can claim a number of firsts: a sign by the road in a sky-blue color the proprietors call “Garden of Eve Blue,” a stand to sell vegetables and flowers at the farm (self-serve during the week, 9a.m. to 5p.m. weekends) and an upcoming garlic festival.

The garlic harvest will be celebrated Aug. 8, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (rain date Aug. 15). Admission is $1 a person, children younger than 6 free.

“We wanted to do something a little different,” Kaplan said.

Festivalgoers will be able to braid garlic and buy garlic-inspired foods and crafts. There will also be a puppet theater, a petting zoo and other activities. And, of course, there will be plenty of garlic to buy.

Walbrecht and Kaplan harvested about 1,000 garlic plants. They like to use the pungent bulbs to make bruschetta, bread rubbed with garlic and olive oil and toasted. Other favorites are roasted garlic with goat cheese and crackers, and potato-garlic soup, a variation on potato- leek soup.

Although Garden of Eve’s festival is not the first on Long Island, it is the first to be held in about seven years. For nine years, up until the late ’90s, Cris Spindler at Peconic River Herb Farm in Calverton held a garlic festival, and farm-grown garlic is still sold at her farm on River Road as well.

About an acre of garlic was planted at Garden of Eve this year, Walbrecht said one evening as we sat at an old picnic table near a flock of egg-laying chickens.

Kaplan’s parents, Myron Kaplan and Annette Hollander, bought the farm property when Kaplan was about 8, she said. Like Walbrecht’s family, they were from northern New Jersey.

Walbrecht’s family, too, moved to a farm when he was about the same age, but theirs was a dairy farm in upstate Norwich.

“In the 1950s, it had been cattle” on the farm, Kaplan said, “and we still have some old barbed-wire fences in the trees.” Johnny Berezny ran a farm stand on the property back then.

Kaplan and Walbrecht, both environmental activists, planted about an acre of vegetables three years ago. Last year it was six acres, and this year, seven.

Walbrecht works on the farm full time, but Kaplan, who has a degree in environmental conservation from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has a day job as a senior planner for the Town of Southampton.

Garden of Eve produce is sold through Just Food in New York City and also at the farm through a CSA, a community- supported agriculture venture in which shareholders pay to receive a basket of food each week during the growing season. (Unlike many farms, Garden of Eve sells shares by the year or by the month, $65.)

Kaplan and Walbrecht try to involve some of the city CSA shareholders in farm life. About 15 came to pick strawberries earlier in the season.

In addition to the CSA shares on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, organic produce is sold by Garden of Eve at the Riverhead Growers Market on Thursday, Port Washington on Saturday, TriBeCa on Wednesday and Greenpoint in Brooklyn on Saturday.

The evening I visited with Kaplan and Walbrecht, I took home pattypan squash, fresh eggs I helped gather, cabbage for coleslaw, red and green leaf lettuce and tomatoes. Maybe the cabbage and tomatoes were smaller than some, but the lettuces were huge and the eggs had bright yellow yolks, a sign that the chickens had pecked around outdoors instead of being cooped up. Most of all, I was glad to know that none of the vegetables had been sprayed or treated with chemicals.

RECIPE

Goat Cheese and Roasted Garlic Fondue

Didi Emmons, author of “Entertaining for a Veggie Planet” (Houghton Mifflin), writes that you don’t need a fondue pot to make this, but “if you want one, spend a Saturday afternoon cruising local thrift shops - I bet you'll find a few specimens in eye-catching flame-orange enamel and even a copper one now and again.” Lacking such a find, Emmons suggests using a small, heavy casserole dish or a cast-iron skillet; the fondue, which will be thick, will stay warm for 30 minutes or so even without being set over a flame. Thin with a little milk if desired.

2 large heads of garlic, plus 1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt to taste
1 cup heavy cream
11 ounces fresh, creamy goat cheese (seenote)
1 rounded teaspoon minced fresh herbs, such as rosemary, sage and thyme
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 French baguette, cut into cubes

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Peel outer skin from upper halves of garlic heads. Arrange heads, root ends down, in a small baking dish, just large enough to hold them in a single layer. Add water to reach about 1/4 up the sides of the garlic heads and drizzle them with the olive oil. Sprinkle with salt, cover tightly with foil and roast until garlic is soft, 35 to 40 minutes. Remove foil. If all water has evaporated, add 1 to 2 tablespoons more and continue to roast, uncovered, for 5 to 10 minutes. Let stand until cool enough to handle.

2. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, heat cream and minced raw garlic. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Squeeze roasted garlic cloves out of their skins and into the cream mixture. It will be somewhat lumpy. Whisk in the goat cheese a little at a time, stirring with a fork until smooth. Add herbs and season with salt and pepper. (This can be made up to 3 days ahead, stored in an airtight container, and reheated, stirring frequently, in a small flameproof casserole dish.) Serve with the cubed baguette and skewers for dipping. Use a trivet to protect the table from the fondue pot. Makes 6 to 10 servings.

Note: If you are spending a day on the North Fork and you stop at Garden of Eve in Riverhead, you could continue on eastward to Mattituck to visit Catapano Dairy, where cheese is made from the milk of the goats that live there