SUNDAY, AUGUST 21 – SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 – All classes 3 PM – 7 PM

Sunday, August 21 – END OF SUMMER, NO WAY ?! – Cook once, eat twice – Cook the “Grand Meal” using the wood-fired oven, all things from the end of Summer’s Garden Riot – tomatoes, corn, squashes and green things paired with the beauty of local pork, slow simmered and juicy, all mopped up with hearth baked bread.  Then eat it again for leftovers, planning for leftovers.  Learn to drink wine and cook at the same time.

Sunday, September 18 – “PRESSING MATTERS” – Time for apples!  Press apples in Wake Robin Farm’s 1878 vintage fruit mill, cook with cider, cook chicken with apples and cider, cook cider & apple dishes in the wood-fired oven and outdoor grill.  Learn to drink sparkling cider with two-hands.

The complete charge for each class, dinner and drinks is $75 per person.  Or, $200 for all three.  Space is strictly limited, so please reserve early.  Payment is required for registration/two weeks prior to the class.  Please register early, as all previous classes have sold out early.  For additional information send email to contact@thefrenchbroad.com or call Gail Lunsford/Steven Bardwell 828.683.2902

REGISTRATION: Use the form below to register.  You may register multiple people at one time, provided you list all the names in your group.  Registration subject to availability.

Please log in to PayPal to pay for the classes.  Thank you.

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WAKE ROBIN CLASSES

ONE $75.00 TWO – Same Date $150.00 ALL THREE $200.00 ALL THREE x2 $400.00 TWO – Different Dates $150.00 TWO x2 Different Dates $300.00

Saturday, April 23 I will be cooking the first of a series of dinners that will pair local foragers with local chefs.  Alan and I have been sharing wild foods for years, as he was my  principle forager at The Market Place for many years.  This dinner is a very exciting one for me as over the past year or so, I have come to recognize that “local” really begins with what is just outside my backdoor and often is completely ignored.  As I have been working on this menu with Alan and preparing the basic foodstuffs for the dinner, my appreciation deepens.  Am really looking for to this weekend.  Hope some of you can make it to the dinner.

Please visit the No Taste Like Home web site to reserve for the dinner and to get more information.

-Mark Rosenstein

a tasting

dandelion, chickweed, and violet karpas

Cumberland Island seaweed-salted water

fresh-ground toothwort root

mock chopped liver
with honey mushrooms and black walnuts

huevos haminados
Turkish blackberry-batiked eggs

wild local carp gefilte fish

Jerusalem artichoke kugel

the dinner

chickweed salad
with persimmon vinaigrette

sochane matzagna
with stinging nettle pesto

morel and ramp ragout
with chestnut corn-pone and sweet cicely

wild turkey galantine
with milkweed, daylily, and bamboo shoots

Sephardic charosetz
with angelica-quince cream and candied violets

chaga and persimmon seed coffee

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread-and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness-
O, Wilderness were Paradise enow!…Omar Khayyam

I have been a chef for 38 years.  Nothing I have done is more difficult than making a great loaf of bread!

Such a simple food – bread.  Four ingredients, flour, water, salt and yeast.  Yet, the variations of these simple, ancient and essential ingredients produces endless results.  When handled with a masterly hand nothing is more satisfying.  Even though I made bread everyday for 38 years, I confess, it was never great.  Now, without other concerns, I can focus attention to perfecting that craft, it might take, perhaps, another 38 years to master.  Hopefully not.

My kitchen is a snow storm of flour dust, the birds in my yard waddle, as I have stuffed them full of stale failures and my neighbors are cringing when they see me walking up the street with a little brown paper bag.  I have wild yeast cultures clinging to cabinets, my drains are clogged with soggy dough.  Bread is becoming my steady diet – toast for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, parmesan crusted croutons floating in dinner’s soup.  I am determined to make great bread.

Bread making is a humbling craft.

The wisdom of bread making resides in the hands.  Learning the feel of bread, knowing how to shape, and understanding the proper “spring” of a fermented loaf can only be learned by touching.  Nothing is more satisfying than good bread, and nothing is better than good bread you have made yourself.

To that end, I continue my education of wheat – and I will share some of my discoveries for your own experiments.  Making bread is one of those transformational experiences – it connects you with all of history, to agriculture, to the craft guilds of old Europe, and the mysteries of yeast and fermentation.  Making bread by hand, above all, satisfies.

Today, having baked more loaves, it is time to relax – with some liquid bread…cheers

-Mark Rosenstein