I have been buying lettuce from Brian MacWhorter from close to 13 years.  Brian and his wife own  Butler Green Farms located on Bainbridge Island.

The way I know that the local growing season has started is when Brian calls me from Bainbridge and Merv Dykstra calls me from Yakima.

In addition to the greens we regularly receive from Brian, he also brings extraordinary strawberries, raspberries, fennel, fantastic basil and beautiful tomatoes.  We used Butler Green Farms strawberries this year as the dessert course for our annual Bastille Day prix fixe menu and the dish was sensational.

Here are a couple links with info about Brian’s farm as well as Brian himself.

Cheers,

Daisley

http://www.butlergreenfarms.com/

http://www.soundfood.org/sfcommunity/sflocalfood-/138-butler-green-farms.html

http://www.kitsapsun.com/photos/2010/may/31/111410/?enlarge=1

With May swinging in looking like summer will be fantastic, we’re turning our sights to Provence.

Chef Daisley Gordon has put together a great, three course menu that will run for the rest of the month.

First course:

Bagna Cauda, raw vegetables with a hot anchovy sauce

A classic, light first course.  The fresh vegetables will vary but in the picture are cucumber, tomatoes, carrots, fennel and celery.  The anchovy sauce is made from garlic warmed in olive oil, red wine vinegar and butter.  It adds a salty richness to the crisp vegetables that screams sunshine snack.

Second course:

Brandade de Morue, salt cod and potato purée, baked with garlic and olive oil and served with sautéed green beans and black olives.

Here we hollow out yellow potatoes and stuff them with the brandade, which actually has a little halibut in it as well! The green beans are sautéed with shallots, garlic and olive oil.  Although they’re missing from the picture, the olives add a wonderful contrast to the fluffy richness of the brandade.

Third course:

Navettes de la Chandeleur

Fruit sorbet and Marseilles cookies flavored with orange flower water.Pictured here is cantaloupe sorbet, although that will vary from week to week.  The Marseilles cookies are a little bit hard (since they are a yeasted cookie) and are not too sweet, off-setting the crispness of the fruit sorbet quite nicely.

This month the Café is focusing on the Loire region of western France. Following the longest river in France, the Loire, some of the area has shifted sovereignty throughout history between the French and the British, with even a bit of linguistic influence from the Celts in nearby Breton. Famous for its illustrious Châteaux, it also brings an incredibly diverse offering of wines and cuisine.

The first course is a Salade Tourangelle, which means a salade made in the style of the city of Tours, located the middle to middle-east part of the Loire region.  Common vegetables in the region are artichokes, asparagus, green beans, and mushrooms, most often the Champignon de Paris, so you’ll find the latter two marinated and then tossed in a creamy mustard vinaigrette for this salad.  We dress some celery with lemon and toss all this together to be finished on the plate with a couple rillons.  These are chunks of pork belly that are marinated with white wine and herbs for twenty four hours, braised and then crisped in fat to make a rich, textured addition to the salad.

The second course is Cuisse de Lapin aux Pruneaux.  Although often a dish made with pork, this rabbit variation is exquisite.  The leg is marinated in red wine, browned then braised in red wine and chicken stock.  The last half hour of the braising, port-soaked prunes are added.

The third course, the traditional Pain d’Épices, which literally translates as “Bread of Spices”, is a dense bread made with cinnamon, clove, cardamom, anise seed and honey.  The bread itself serves as a wonderful bed for a house-made honey ice cream.

We’ll have this available for dinner all month long.  We first started serving it last night and sold out of it by about 8:30! Needless to say, we’ll be happy to prepare more to meet the demand.   The whole meal is $35.00 per person.  Hope to see you soon!

Keep an eye out for another post later this weekend about the wines we’ll be featuring this month too!

Matt Longman