Earlier this year, the Accidental Locavore was introduced to Tessa Edick, who for the past two years has put on a great event for the local farming community: Friend of the Farmer Dinner at Copake Country Club. We went to the dinner the other night and it was a fun way to celebrate the last day of sweltering heat!
The centerpiece of the event, was a dinner, catered by Zak Pelaccio. You New Yorkers know him for his restaurants, Fatty Crab and Fatty Cue, and we’re getting to know him for his new restaurant in Hudson, Fish and Game. For this event, Zak and his crew spent the afternoon roasting lambs on a giant wood-fired rotisserie. Not what I’d want to be doing in 100 degree heat, but the lamb looked and smelled delicious! Frank decided that we should definitely have one of these monsters for our back yard and went off to see if it could be included in the auction.
While the lamb was cooking, there were a surprising amount of local wines, spirits, beer and non-alcoholic beverages to taste. And to go with them, several local cheesemakers had quite an array of cheeses, ranging from my favorite, an ash-dusted beauty, Moonlight Chaource, looking like a log of chèvre, but made from cow’s milk.
Once we’d decided we’d better stop filling up on cheese (and Frank was unsuccessful in his quest for the rotisserie), it was time for dinner. For the first course there was a trio of grilled foods: chicken with a great garlic “condiment,” corn on the cob with cheese and butter and a nice mélange of zucchini with basil
The main course was Zak’s lamb. I have no idea what he used on the lamb, but it tasted as good as it looked! Not only did he manage to perfectly cook, outside on a spit, lamb for 100, but it tasted so good I just kept picking on the platter that someone stupidly left right in front of me. Bravo Zak! A couple of salads, one a wheatberry with tomatoes and cucumbers and the other with mixed greens, were there if you needed to be healthy. Again, all the food was locally raised, which gives you a good idea about the depth of the local food scene.
Dessert was a pound cake with fresh berries, which I’m sure was good, but we needed to get back, so we missed that and the Ice Cream Sundae Bar, which would have been much more tempting for me. All in all it was a fun event for a great cause and I’m looking forward to next year!
