Got bread?, pt. 1

fig. a: bread, bread

Good. Me too.

Of course, with bread this good, you barely need to do anything to it. But, then again, there's no need to be a puritanical about it. If you don't have access to "elemental bread" from a real, artisanal bakery (like Tartine, Red Hen, or Bohemian) you can bake your own, any time you like, no matter where you live.* So, go ahead, dress it up a little.

There are obviously plenty of different ways you could put those beautiful loaves to work, but Chad Robertson's Tartine Bread really is a great cookbook on top of being an exceptional baking book. It's chock full of all kinds of tempting recipes involving fresh and staled bread, including soups (white gazpacho, sopa de ajo, North African breakfast soup, etc.), salads (panzanellas, kale caesar, escalivada, etc.), sandwiches (pan bagnat, meatball sandwiches, bruschetta of all sorts, etc.), and a number of other mains and sides (tomates provençales, porchetta, savory bread pudding, etc.).

One that's become an instant favorite here at AEB, and that happens to be particularly seasonal at the moment, is Robertson's fresh chickpea hummus, which he serves as an open-faced sandwich on fried bread with olive oil-packed sardines, hard-boiled egg, and cilantro (!). Sounds inviting, right? It is. And his fresh chickpea hummus is unlike any hummus we've ever had before--lighter and more herbal (vernal, even), with a real chlorophyll punch.

Where to begin? Well, first you're going to need two pounds of fresh chickpeas. Dried and canned chickpeas are pretty much ubiquitous at this point in time, but fresh chickpeas aren't. So you'll probably have to hit up one of your better Mediterranean/Middle Eastern greengrocers. We got ours at Chez Nino, at Jean-Talon Market, and they looked something like this.

fig. b: fresh chickpeas by the bag

Then you're going to have to shell them. This takes a while, because there's no way to cheat and do them en masse--you've got to do them one by one, with your fingers. They're not nearly as finicky as fava beans, though, so don't worry. Just put on a record, pour yourself a drink, relax, and start peeling. Get a friend to help you, and it'll go twice as fast.

Once you get into it, it's actually kind of fun. There's something of the pleasure of popping bubble wrap to them, but this is endlessly more rewarding. Trust me. Instead of being left with plastic and air, you're left with something that's pretty and edible. The best are those nice full ones. They tend to be easier to shell, but they're also ripe and obviously full of flavor (try a raw one, if you don't believe me), and they also do a better job of filling your bowl. The very best are the twins, which are as cute as... well... two peas in a pod.**

fig. c: little twin peas

When you're done, you'll have a pile of freshly shelled fresh chickpeas that looks something like this.

fig. d: fresh chickpeas, shelled

And once you have those, and you've assembled all the other ingredients, you can really get started.

Open-Faced Sandwiches with Fresh Chickpea Hummus and Sardines, a.k.a. The Hummus Sardwich

For the hummus:

2 pounds fresh chickpeas (a.k.a. garbanzo beans), shelled
3 cloves garlic
3 tbsp sesame tahini
12 fresh mint leaves
juice of 1 lemon
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil

For the sandwiches:

olive oil
2 slices fresh or day-old bread (Robertson recommends his Whole-Wheat Bread, but we've found that his Country Bread is our favorite)
1 hard-boiled egg
one 3.75-oz can olive oil-packed sardines
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

To make the hummus, bring a pot of water to a boil. Fill a bowl with ice water and place it nearby. Add the chickpeas and garlic to the boiling water and cook for 2 minutes. Drain and transfer to the ice water to cool them, then drain again.

Put the chickpeas, garlic, tahini, mint, lemon juice, and salt in a food processor. Process until smooth. With the motor on, add the olive oil in a steady stream until the hummus has the consistency you like. Adjust the seasoning.

Pour 1/4 inch of olive oil into a skillet and heat over medium-high heat. Add the bread and fry until deep golden brown and very crisp, about 3 minutes. Turn and fry until deep golden brown and crisp on the second side too.

Press the hard-boiled egg through a sieve like this.

fig. e: boiled egg, sieve

Spread the hummus on the fried bread and top with sardines. Garnish with the sieved egg and chopped cilantro and serve.

fig. f: hummus sardwich

Enjoy. Heartily.

Serves two, with plenty of leftover hummus to be used as you see fit.

[based very closely on a recipe entitled "Sardines and Fresh Garbanzo Hummus" in Chad Robertson's Tartine Bread]

If you're not big on the idea of sardines, just leave them out and make the fresh chickpea hummus. It really is something else. Serve it on its own, as you would a traditional hummus. Or make a sandwich with grilled vegetables, like artichoke hearts, red peppers, or asparagus.

Just make sure to make it sometime soon. Spring is slipping away, and so is the season for fresh chickpeas.

aj

* Well, maybe not exactly "any time you like" and "no matter where you live," but nearly.

** Not unlike these guys:

fig. g: two peas in a pod

Green Mountain Getaway 2

If Day 1 had been all about variety, Day 2 was much more focused: bread, bread, and more bread. All of it exceptional.

Return to Red Hen Baking Co.

The day before we'd mostly just taken a look around, found out the baking schedule, and made arrangements to come back. This time around, though, Michelle was all business. She ordered about four loaves, including their four-grain, three-seed Mad River loaf and their wonderfully sour pain au levain, because she wanted to conduct a small survey of Red Hen's line of breads.

fig. a: Red Hen comes home to roost

As promising as our crusty, long-fermented Red Hen Baking Co. loaves looked,* our more immediate concern was coffee and breakfast, and the folks at Red Hen were happy to indulge us. And their selection of morning breads was so downright tantalizing that we didn't hold back: one croissant, one ham & cheese croissant, one lemon currant scone, and, it being just days before Easter, one hot cross bun. The croissant was quite simply a superior croissant, the kind of croissant that sets a bakery apart from 98% of the competition, the kind of croissant that secures a bakery's reputation. The ham & cheese croissant could have been just some kind of Americanized gimmick, but with that superior croissant pastry stuffed full of North Country Smokehouse ham and Boggy Meadow Baby Swiss, it was a work of art and a true Vermont original.

fig. b: Red Hen scone

Not to be outdone was the utterly classic lemon currant scone. Michelle found it just a touch heavy on the lemon zest, and consequently a bit over-perfumed, but I was mightily impressed, and was all too happy to have more to myself.

fig. c: Red Hen hot cross bun

The pièce de résistance, however, was Red Hen's hot cross bun. It seems a little perverse talking up a bakery's hot cross buns in June, when Lent is another nine months off, but at least this'll give you plenty of time to plan a visit. The bottom line: I'd spent years looking for the perfect hot cross bun. Little did I know that it had been waiting for me in Middlesex, VT all along. Crusty and perfectly baked, subtly spiced, sourdough-based, not too sweet, but also unafraid of adding a little bit of cruciform icing to the mix. One was simply not enough.

Another brief stroll

Loaded up on carbs, we headed down into the Mad River Valley to Waitsfield and its friendly tourist information center. When we asked about walks/hikes in the vicinity, the woman at the desk recommended the Mad River Greenway. The Waitsfield area is absolutely riddled with trails, of course, but it being the height of Mud Season at the time, she felt the Greenway was our best option. Who were we to argue? Especially when the fields looked like this,

fig. d: shadows and tall trees

and the river looked like this.

fig. e: Mad River blue

The Greenway was friendly, too. One jogger passed us at one point, and as she did, she turned to us and said, "Hi. Or should I say, bon soir?" [sic], evidently because she'd seen the Quebec license plates on our car.

We just smiled and said, "Auf wiedersehen."

Hunger Mountain Coop

fig. f: facing Hunger Mountain

After grabbing another coffee in Waitsfield, we made our way to Montpelier and its Hunger Mountain Coop. We were already big fans of a couple of other Vermont coops--Burlington's Onion River Coop and Middlebury's Natural Foods Coop--but we'd never been to the Hunger Mountain Coop, even though we'd visited Montpelier before. Turns out it's not that surprising that we'd missed it on previous visits--it's a little tucked away, and you kind of have to be looking for it. Which we were. You see, we'd gotten a hot bread tip from a trusted source--namely, that Hunger Mountain carried Bohemian Bread.

fig. g: on the shelves @ Hunger Mt.

If you care about great bread and you're not familiar with Bohemian Bread, you should be. Robert Hunt and Annie Bakst's decision to say goodbye to the big city and start up an artisanal wood-fired brick oven bread operation in rural East Calais, VT is a story worthy of Helen & Scott Nearing or Mick & Alida Anderson. The fact that they make some of the finest loaves in Vermont makes the story all the better. Bohemian Bread is a small-batch operation so you have to know where to look. In addition to the Hunger Mountain Coop, you can also find them at Buffalo Mountain Coop in Hardwick, VT, Plainfield Coop in Plainfield, VT, and the East Calais Store on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, "usually after 1:00 PM." We highly recommend the effort. Bohemian's rosemary/lemon loaf was the single best bread we've tasted all year, and that's saying something, because Red Hen Baking Co. was no slouch.

Not that we limited ourselves to just getting Bohemian Bread at Hunger Mountain Coop. Vermont's coops always leave us feeling like kids in a candy store. They're so well-stocked with so many of our favorite things: cheese, beer, apples, bacon, cider, bread, flour, honey, raw milk...

Parker Pie Co.

From Montpelier, we drove deep into Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. Rumor had it that there was great pizza to be found in the Village of West Glover and we were hell-bent on finding it. I mean, we'd been eating bread all day--why stop now?

fig. h: exterior, Parker Pie Co.

The Parker Pie Co. is yet another totally emblematic Vermont small-business enterprise. Vermonters love their general stores. They love their pizza. And they also love their micro-brewery beers. This we know. The genius of the Parker Pie Co. is that it's a pizza parlor/micro-brewery beer specialist situated ever so informally in the back of a general store. The atmosphere is just as fantastic as you would imagine, the selection of beers is limited but top-notch, and the pizzas are honestly very, very good. They don't have a wood-fired oven, but they're making awfully good pizza pies in their commercial pizza oven. We seriously couldn't have been happier with our Vermont Smoke and Cure Sausage/mushroom/red onion number and our twin pints. And we took our sweet time to relax and soak in the ambiance before the drive home.

fig. i: interior, Parker Pie Co.

The hospitality was friendly too. Made us feel right at home.

fig. j: hospitality, Parker Pie-style

Talk about the perfect end to the perfect Green Mountain Getaway.

Red Hen Baking Co., 961B US Route 2, Middlesex, VT, (802) 223-5200, www.redhenbaking.com

Hunger Mountain Coop, 623 Stone Cutters Way, Montpelier, VT, (802) 223-8000, www.hungermountain.com

Bohemian Bread, East Calais, VT, www.bohemianbread.com

Parker Pie Company, 161 County Rd, West Glover, VT, (802) 525-3366, www.parkerpie.com

Many thanks to EB.

aj

* Later that day we were able to confirm just how excellent they actually were. The verdict: very excellent!

Green Mountain Getaway 1

fig. a: Mad River Valley

We saw a lot of mountains (including some that still had snow on 'em), and we drove over and around quite a few more, but we didn't get around to climbing any, because our spring getaway to Vermont took place several weeks ago, right in the thick of what they call Mud Season in the Green Mountain region. So our only hike of the trip was actually just a six-mile walk along the greenway that cuts through the Mad River Valley, and most of our discoveries were made indoors.

Cold Hollow Cider Mill

fig. b: SH CIDER HOT CIDER BAK

One could hardly call Cold Hollow Cider Mill a "discovery." A sign out in the parking lot indicated where tour buses should stop to unload their busloads of passengers. They also have a 1-800 number. But we'd never been, so it was new to us.

Cold Hollow Cider Mill is exactly that--a big, ole cider mill that allows you to waltz through the works and check out where they press their famous apple cider. They're also famous for cider-based products like their apple cider jelly. But the main reason we were there was for the doughnuts--the apple cider doughnuts Michelle and I are such big fans of, and that Cold Hollow Cider Mill is legendary for. They were good, damn good, but what really caught my eye was that beautiful Lady apple on the wall next to the coffee machine. I asked the guy behind the counter if I could take a picture of it and he just said, "Uh, yeah. Whatever." So I did.

Red Hen Baking Co. + Nutty Steph's

fig. c: CHOCOLATE BUNNIES HOT CROSS BUNS HERE

Red Hen Baking Co. sits in Middlesex, just a few miles away, and Michelle had heard that they were making some of Vermont's finest loaves of bread. We went twice. The first time was just to take a peek, check out the baking schedule, a have a nibble (a fantastic potato bread roll). The sign out front read "HOT CROSS BUNS," but it was late afternoon by that point and they were out, so we made plans to return early the next morning for pastries and a coffee.

fig. d: Chocolate giraffe

This being Vermont, Red Hen shares a space with a knitting shop and an artisanal chocolate-maker/granola-maker. We didn't get to meet her to verify, but the chocolate-maker/granola-maker goes by the name of Nutty Steph ("It doesn't get any nuttier than this!"). Frankly, we were a little scared of a concoction that consisted of a chocolate-covered banana coupled ever so suggestively with a chocolate-covered pineapple ring and that came complete with a suitably saucy name--"Tropical Intercourse," or "Jungle Love," or something--but we can vouch for Nutty Steph's exceptional chocolate bark, which kept me revved up and rarin' to go for the better part of the next 36 hours. The Nutty Steph's story started with real, honest-to-goodness, maple-sweetened Vermont-style granola, however, and granola remains the bread and butter of the operation. Like I said, this is Vermont, after all, and the fact that artisanal granola is a viable option here is one of the reasons we find ourselves so fascinated by the place.

Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co.

fig. e: COFFEE LAB

On our way out to Red Hen/Nutty Steph's we passed a mysterious place that was situated down off US Route 2, in a warehouse-like building, but that had an intriguing sign out front: Coffee Lab. I turned to Michelle and said, "I bet you there are some seriously entrenched hippies in there roasting some far-out beans." I had a good feeling about the place, so we made a pledge to take a closer look on our way back.

Thank god we did.

45 minutes later we pulled into the parking lot in front of Coffee Lab. I was good and ready for some kind of transcendental coffee experience, but as we walked up towards the door I suddenly got the strange feeling that we had misread Coffee Lab. Maybe it wasn't the hippie roasting outfit we were both hoping for. Maybe it was just some oh-so hip design firm with a suitably caffeinated name, because all we could see on the inside was an office set-up, some computers, and a small group of people standing near the door having a discussion. It was almost 5:00 pm. Was it closing time at the design firm, or something? I was just about ready to head back to the car, but Michelle, who was apparently experiencing a rare instance of chutzpah, forged right ahead, through the door, into their circle, and, mustering her best Rita Hayworth, announced, "I'm afraid I interrupted something."*

Turns out the group consisted of a handful of Aussies who'd flown halfway around the world to seek the wisdom of one Mané Alves, founder of Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co. and of the Coffee Lab that adjoins it. And why had these Aussies flown halfway around the world to seek Mr. Alves' wisdom? Well, it just so happens that Mr. Alves is a world-renowned expert on coffee, a man who not only travels the world sourcing his coffee, who not only runs a sophisticated roasting operation, but whose opinions on coffees, roasts, and blends is prized by firms large and small from around the world.

So, no, this wasn't a coffee shop, but it was a small-scale but major-league roasting operation, and Mr. Alves was a true gentleman. Though neither the Coffee Lab nor Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co. is a retail operation, their doors are open to the public and locals do swing by to pick up their top-notch coffee. We ended up having a nice, long conversation with Mr. Alves about Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co., its history, its sourcing, and its latest ventures, about Montreal (as a young man in the early 1970s, he'd been urged by relatives to relocate to Montreal and become a lawyer, where he was told the recent influx of Portuguese immigrants would mean unlimited business; he opted for Vermont instead) and its surprising lack of artisanal coffee operations (which he attributes to powerful regional coffee cartels operating just north of the border), we got a tour of the premises and got to check out their current line of beans firsthand, and, when we were done, we got Mr. Alves' advice on which of his coffees we should take home with us. After years of abiding by the corsé culte, in recent months we've becoming big fans of such medium roasts as Philz "Canopy of Heaven" and Kicking Horse's "Kootenay Crossing." Mr. Alves highly recommended his Ethiopian Yirgacheffe,

fig. f: yirgacheffe

and he was right on the money.

Hands down, our Coffee of the Year.

The Alchemist

fig. f: tapheads

It seems hard to believe now, but the fun had just begun. Literally minutes after leaving Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co., we were sitting at The Alchemist's, big, handsome bar, quaffing some of their handcrafted extreme beers. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name and they're always glad you came. Other times you want to go where everybody knows your name, they're always glad you came, and they've got an exceptionally talented brewmaster who uses only the best imported malts and the hoppiest domestic hops and who knows his way around his seven barrels. That's when you go to a place like The Alchemist. And, let me tell you, this place is serious. Not only do you overhear guys having serious discussions about serious beers, but you also hear them having serious discussions about each other's limited-edition serious beer t-shirts. Seriously. Hell, even their Lightweight, a pilsener-style beer "made with the light beer drinker in mind" was a serious trip.

fig. g: samplers sampled

Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to try their hand-pulled, cask-conditioned ale, because they only do one batch per week, and we'd shown up on Day 7 of the ale cycle, but we loved their assortment of British-inspired, Belgian-inspired, German-inspired, Hoppy, and "American Wild" beers, and their $4 pints and $1 samplers made enjoying them awfully easy.

Good-looking food, too. We didn't partake, however, because we had a dinner date.

A Brief Stroll

We still had a little time after quaffing and before dinner, so we took a stroll around Downtown Waterbury,

fig. h: W is for...

and imagined what it would be like to live in such an enlightened place.

Hen of the Wood

fig. i: mud season @ the grist mill

It was almost dark by the time we finally made it to Hen of the Wood, but the old grist mill which houses the restaurant had a promising glow to it.

Hen of the Wood was our star attraction, the single most important reason we'd come down to Vermont in the first place.

Michelle had been talking about Hen of the Wood even before Mark "The Minimalist" Bittman began gushing about how he's "sort of in love with the joint" last year, but afterwards the phrase "Hen of the Wood" became something of a mantra for her. It sounded like a little slice of heaven: a top-notch restaurant that places a pronounced emphasis on all things local, environmentally sound, and sustainable, that features a carefully chosen All-American wine list and an equally carefully chosen All-Vermont cheese list, and that is situated in an old stone mill, next to gushing rapids, in a sleepy Northern Vermont town. And with a menu that included such highlights as

Hen of the Woods Mushrooms, Grilled Vermont Bacon, Poached Egg, & Grilled Red Hen Bread

Smoked Cavendish Quail, Mustard Spaetzle, & Braised Greens

&

Winding Brook Farm Pork Loin, Local Fingerlings, Turnips, Valentine Radishes & Parsnips with House-made Red Wine Mustard

plus some truly wonderful service, Hen of the Wood lived up to all expectations. Put simply, we had such a good time at Hen of the Wood that we didn't really want to leave. When we finally managed to tear ourselves away, we spent the whole drive back to our motel through that crisp, starry Vermont night trying to figure out a way we could relocate to Waterbury.

Cold Hollow Cider Mill, 3600 Waterbury-Stowe Road, Waterbury Center, VT, 1-800-3-APPLES, www.coldhollow.com

Red Hen Baking Co., 961-B US Route 2, Middlesex, VT, (802) 223-5200, www.redhenbaking.com

Nutty Steph's, 961-C US Route 2, Middlesex, VT, (802) 229-2090, www.nuttystephs.com

Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co., 80 Commercial Drive, Waterbury, VT, (802) 244-8338, toll-free 1 (866) 882-7876, www.vtartisan.com

The Alchemist, 23 South Main Street, Waterbury, VT, (802) 244-4120, www.AlchemistBeer.com

Hen of the Wood, 92 Stowe Street, Waterbury, VT, (802) 244-7300, www.henofthewood.com

* The line appears in Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings (1939).