Kitchen Recess: 72 Hours at the Stone Barns Center
When our chefs and bakers aren’t dreaming up a new dish or delivering freshly baked bread to restaurants around Chicago, you can find them exploring some pretty incredible places and things.
Last month, two of our own – Ryan Pfeiffer (Chef de Cuisine, Blackbird) and Greg Wade (Head Baker, Publican Quality Bread) – spent three days in Tarrytown, NY for Stone Barns Center’s annual Young Farmers’ Conference, which brings together farmers and chefs from across the world to trade knowledge about new farming practices, connect over a shared desire to better our world, and last but not least, experience a knock-your-socks-off, life-altering meal. Here’s what Ryan and Greg learned:
There’s no place like a farming conference to abandon your comfort zone
In just three short days, Ryan and Greg experienced a more diverse set of seminars, trainings and tours than many people do in a lifetime. The highlights? Farm-scale mushroom growing, small-engines repair, and of course, beekeeping.
Heaven exists, and it comes with 33 courses
Stone Barns Center is basically Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, but for farmers and chefs. Every bit of land is dedicated to growing produce and nurturing livestock in the most innovative ways imaginable. This creativity is most apparent in the center’s acclaimed restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Ryan and Greg were able to experience a unanimously life-changing dinner at Blue Hill, which lasted five hours and 33 courses. They ditched the silverware after course 17.
The meal, which was composed largely of vegetables, included a few choice highlights: a habanero pepper bred without a trace of heat, a mini “honeynut” squash derived from a butternut squash and packed with flavor, and fennel grown in walnut flour from walnut trees to minimize waste.
We get by (with a little help from our farmers)
After meeting with food-industry visionaries like Dan Barber (Chef/Owner, Blue Hill) and Amy Halloran (Author, The New Bread Basket), Ryan and Greg left the conference feeling certifiably enlightened, and moreover, ready to share what they learned with everyone back in Chicago.
The most important takeaway? To always have a childlike sense of wonder, not just about the food we use and eat, but about the why, how, where and when of that food.
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