The French Broad
  • Mountain Alchemy

  • August10th

    1 Comment

    Polyester Spin Cycle

    Posted in: Food, Mountain Alchemy, People

    Full Sun Farm – Polyester Knit Spin Cycle

    Without question, I believe farmers have always been inventive, creative individuals, perhaps taking on one of the hardest jobs of all – working with the ever-changing conditions of Nature.  It requires a lot of ingenuity.


    I have been kicking around farms and gardens since my early restaurant days in Highlands, NC and continue to do so, partially in hopes of some sort of magic “gardening dust” rubbing off on me, maybe helping me to grow my own garden successfully.

    Over the past few years, Venessa Campbell and Alex Brown of Full Sun Farms in Big Sandy Mush have humored me and let me visit.  I have always been impressed with the quality of the vegetables they grow.  I was out there this week, enticed by Vanessa’s description of the lunch she fixed. It sounded delicious.  I offered to work for food.

    Tuesday and Friday are harvest days, preparing for the Wednesday and Saturday tailgate markets – and those are the days that Vanessa cooks, so I headed out North Turkey Creek through some of the most beautiful mountain valley land in western North Carolina.  I arrived mid-way through the morning’s work, as I had an early business meeting downtown.  Most of the day’s harvest was complete and now it was time to wash and pack the produce. Read More | Comments

  • June12th

    1 Comment

    FOOD-LIGHT

    Posted in: Food, How To Cook, Life, Mountain Alchemy

    FOOD-LIGHT

    There is light in food.  This is a Truth – figuratively, literally, metaphorically.

    The connection of light to food is simple to trace.  Even post modern molecular gastronomist must concede petro-chemical food at one time was light – sunlight to plant-life to rotten mass buried, subsumed and compressed into crude, then refined back to digestible molecules reassembled.  (A form of alchemy.)

    One intention of the alchemist of old was to transform food-light (molecular gastronomy is an example of this).  The intent of a twenty-first century alchemist should be to preserve food-light and to keep that light in the fore of one’s work.  (“Cook” and “chef ” are ranks of Alchemy, as is the Zen “tenzo”.  As the alchemist grows in their practice, cooking remains essential to that practice and hence food-light remains essential).

    A rhetorical question: “what does food-light taste like?”

    A second rhetorical question: “why preserve food-light, and keep it in the fore?”

    One answer to both is illustrated in a small dinner I prepared the other evening.  The occasion was a get together to send the Young Master of the House (a novice in training) off to France for the summer, friends were chaperoning him on his flights, which coincided with theirs.  It was also the occasion to share a special bottle of wine they had given me.

    I start with a “recipe” and then some thoughts about it all. Read More | Comments

  • May4th

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    COOKING CLASSES & TOURS – SPRING & SUMMER 2010

    Posted in: How To Cook, Mountain Alchemy, Travel

    CLASSES:   Saturday’s Kitchen

    & Entertaining Weekends

    TOURS:  Best of Burgundy, France

    The French Broad announces  the summer cooking classes and culinary tours beginning this month.  Saturday’s Kitchen is a 3 hour class based on using the local and seasonal products of Asheville’s farms.  Entertaining Weekends is a 3-day class focusing on menus for entertaining and special meals with an emphasis on food and wine pairings, organizing a menu and using foods of the season.  See a detailed description and pricing for CLASSES here.  The Summer & Fall Calendar is posted here.  Register here for classes.

    Calling upon 15 years of living and working in the Burgundy region of France, Alisa and Mark have put together a summer holiday trip to Burgundy July 10 – July 16, 2010.  In  addition to an authentic cultural and gastronomic immersion we also take advantage of being in Burgundy at the same time as “Bastille Day” ( think fabulous fireworks) and the ” 4-14 Festival” a Food & Music festival  in Dijon, Burgundy’s stunning  historic capital. We know this is  very “last minute” – but we couldn’t pass up the sudden availability of a  fabulous gite (French “bed & breakfast”) that an associate of ours just opened in a historic stone -mill house. The trip is small and intimate.  See Alisa’s description of the TOUR here.

    Feel free to contact us with any inquiries or questions.

    -Mark Rosenstein

  • April22nd

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    Ramp Season & Wild Things

    Posted in: How To Cook, Mountain Alchemy

    The earth has come alive.

    A month ago, I went out in the woods with Dustin Raxter, scouting places he collects ramps.  This week, I was in the woods again with Dustin and his father, Ted.  This time, the earth had come alive – ramps, trillium, lily-of-the-valley, branch lettuce, and dozens of other wood-land plants.

    Today we were collecting ramps for the last day of ramp “production” at the Smoky Mountain Native Plants Association – where the ramps would be dried and added to their cornmeal product, or powdered and sold as seasonings.  Ramps (“Allium tricoccum”), also called wild leeks, are found growing on rich, wooded slopes in the heart of the Blue Ridge mountains at altitudes greater than 3000′.  Mid-April is prime season.  Our goal today was twenty pounds of ramps.  Yesterday, Dustin and Ted collected 51 pounds, which took eight hours to collect. Read More | Comments

  • April16th

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    A Baker’s Dozen – Tips for Wellness and Health

    Posted in: Food, Life, Mountain Alchemy

    Add a decade of healthy, richer living to your life.

    Scientists wait  for  the day when their hypotheses are confirmed by research. I felt a similar joy when reading the book,  The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner - given to me by a friend.  The book is subtitled “Lessons for living longer from the people who’ve lived the longest.” Apparently “how” we eat has great significance. Three of the nine “lessons” for optimizing your life involve food.

    When I opened the book, the first thing to catch my eye was a photograph – it shows Giovanni Scannai, 103, seated at the head of a communal table, surrounded by his extended family.  This image struck me immediately, touching a core value of mine and according to his study – a key to longevity – that of a shared family meal. Read More | Comments

  • March30th

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    A CROP MOB AT HICKORY NUT GAP

    Posted in: Food, Life, Mountain Alchemy, People

    -Alisa Hixson

    The email this morning read “ The Crop Mob must go on. ” Noting the weather forecast of rain and possible thunder, we set out to take part in Asheville’s first “Crop Mob.”  The notion and community effort of a “Crop Mob” are not new — just the catchy moniker. For the uninitiated, a “Crop Mob” is an amorphous group of volunteers with varying   skill levels who share a common goal of keeping local farms alive. They work hard, learn or share their knowledge, enjoy the community of others and have some fun.

    Mobbers descend on a chosen farm and, side by side, crank out some key tasks that need doing. A meal is shared after the work has stopped and perhaps some live music. Collaboration, camaraderie, and completion of tasks that many farmers will admit they’d be unable to accomplish even over a few months time. Think barn raising fast forwarded  by the internet. A continuation of a long tradition of  “Do unto others….” Read More | Comments

  • March30th

    2 Comments

    SEVEN YEAR BLUEBERRY COBBLER

    Posted in: Food, How To Cook, Mountain Alchemy

    RECIPE: Host a Crop Mob & Plant A Blueberry Patch

    No, it is not blueberry season, but it is time to plant blueberries.  To make this cobbler, it will take seven years to prepare.  In the first year, test the soil and scratch your head what to plant in a very acid soil.  Second year, clear the brambles and cut down the scrub trees.  Third year, pull the stumps and the roots out of the ground, amend the soil.  Fourth year, add six inches of organic matter (last year’s old straw and manure from the barn and stalls).  Hold a Crop Mob to plant 500 bushes on a rainy, muddy Sunday.  Sixth year, prune back the bushes, no fruit.  Seventh year, get first, very small crop of berries. Make the cobbler.  (Save this recipe until blueberry season). Read More | Comments

  • March26th

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    WILD RAMPS – A WALK IN THE WOODS

    Posted in: Food, Mountain Alchemy, People

    WAITING ALL WINTER & LONGER.

    Now that it is behind us, I can say it without fear of retribution – I hate Winter, the short days, the gloom of fading light at five o’clock.  I miss fresh food and savoring the flavor of sun on dirt transformed into tasty goodness.  I am weary of cooking beans and kale and cabbages.

    The return of longer days isn’t the only thing I have been waiting for.  I have been waiting for the emergence of all those wonderful wild things that grow in the surrounding hills and mountains.  (Not to mention the intoxicating fragrance of daphne – which is blooming now, as I write this).   Since moving to western North Carolina in 1972 I have foraged – mainly mushrooms, but also poke salad, branch lettuce and most wonderful of all – ramps.

    Allium tricoccum – wild leeks, “are one of the first plants to emerge in the spring, traditionally consumed as the season’s first greens.  They are considered a tonic because they provide necessary vitamins and minerals following long winter months without fresh vegetables.” I love them because they taste like garlic, have a fresh crunch and seem to get the juices moving again in my winter weary body. This is most likely true, as research now shows that the sulfur compounds in onions, garlic and leeks has definite, positive medicinal properties. Read More | Comments

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