The Fennel Edition
Happy Saturday, friends.
We’ve got fennel fever over here in Black Cat Organic Farm World HQ. It’s one of our favorite vegetables, and it’s coming on strong in the fields. The plant stars in our next Harvest Celebration “Dirt Dinner,” on Monday, July 24. It’s also now available at the Farm Store, and will be for sale at our booths at the Boulder County Farmers Markets in Boulder and Longmont.
Enjoy what looks like a winning weekend, with sun and not too much heat. And play a little Tony Bennett, maybe his classic album Tony Bennett at Carnegie Hall, recorded live in 1962. Thanks for the lifelong commitment to art, Tony.
July 24 Harvest Celebration Dirt Dinner: Fennel
Fennel brings exquisite delicacy to the culinary party. The flowering plant, a species within the broad carrot family (Apiaceae), offers subtle anise notes to dishes, along with heady perfume. Its versatility is a treasure: silky in pasta sauces and soups, caramelized and crisp when fried, for example. Fresh fennel bulb broadcasts a snap and crunch, while sautéed fennel turns glossy and limber. Fennel leaves often get folded into a lovely omelet. And fennel seeds transform everything from Italian sausage to Indian curries and Chinese dishes, like Cantonese roasted duck, that use five spice powder. Classic five-spice powder, incidentally, combines star anise, cloves, Chinese cinnamon, Sichuan pepper and fennel seeds to represent the five traditional Chinese elements: sweet, bitter, sour, salty and savory.
Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) is native to coastal areas of the Mediterranean, but now is widely distributed around the world. If you’ve driven along parts of Highway 1 in California, you have encountered fields of it. Ancient Greeks and Romans used it widely: cooking it, incorporating it into medicine and even leveraging it as an insect repellent.
It figures prominently in traditional foods, from France to India. Fennel, for example, is used in the preparation of French absinthe and Scandinavian akvavit. We harvest fennel seeds every year, and turn them into our own version of absinthe for the restaurant. We also use the seeds in cooking, and save some, too, for planting the next season’s crop of fennel.
The culinary team has been savoring the week of fennel experiments, in preparation for Monday night’s feast. Every dish captivated them. But they picked their favorites, and will feature them during the celebration.
Meanwhile, the hospitality team is eager to once again invite guests to order simply “white” or “red” wines, all of which have been curated by our outstanding sommelier Logan to complement our evening’s dinner, which arrive wrapped in burlap. Diners who participate in the engaging challenge then receive the sort of taste, aroma, color and texture scorecards that sommeliers use to understand wine, and to take part in blind tastings. From there, guests have fun exploring the wines and guessing at their varietals, countries of origin and more.
At each of our dinners, the sommelier game has captured the imaginations of guests who signed up; we love watching them having fun tasting and talking about the wine, and then researching the wines once they learned their identity.
Not interested in using the sommelier’s grid during dinner? No problem. You can order the bottles of wine that Logan selected to pair with the meal, or you can work with a server to discover something you love on the wine list, or turn to cocktails and other beverages. Either way, we cannot wait to welcome you into our dining room in downtown Boulder and share four courses of culinary excellence with you.
The celebration, on Monday, July 24 in our convivial dining room, costs $87, plus tax, gratuity and adult beverages. When making a reservation, it is important to include dietary restrictions, so we can best accommodate; we rely mostly on the fruits of our fields for our dishes, and while accommodating dietary restrictions is something we do with pleasure, it is especially helpful in our case to have a little bit of advance notice.
Farmers Markets in Boulder and Longmont
Hard to believe that the Boulder County Farmers Market season now is more than half done for 2023. While we’ve got fewer weeks ahead of us, however, the months ahead serve as the season’s extended and grand finale. For now, we still dwell within the “rising action” part of the narrative, with the occasional new addition to the tale.
We will serve this week’s new player, fennel, at our Boulder County Farmers Market booths in downtown Boulder on Saturday (8 a.m. to 2 p.m.) and at the Boulder County Fairgrounds in Longmont on Saturday (8 a.m. to 1 p.m.). So pick up some fennel. It’s spectacular in a gratin, and wonderful simply roasted with Parmigiano cheese. Thin-sliced fennel on pizza—don’t hesitate. In a salad, strewn beneath a chicken as it roasts, braised with sausage. We’re not sure you can go wrong.
At our booths this week, look for:
- Tomatoes (New!)
- Basil (New!)
- Sunflower bouquets
- Fava beans
- Fava tops
- Leeks
- Onions
- Tat soi
- Snap peas
- Carrots
- Chocolate mint
- Cardoons
- Mizuna, green and purple
- Romaine lettuce
- Spring Onions
- Salad mix
- Kale
- Sourdough bread
- Roving wool from our sheep
Farm Store
Look for fennel and tomatoes at our Farm Store, too, which is located at 4975 Jay Road and open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Please visit us at the Farm Store this week for:
- Tomatoes (New!)
- Fennel (New!)
- Basil (New!)
- Sunflower bouquets
- Fava beans
- Snap peas
- Onions
- Carrots
- Mint
- Kale
- Tat soi
- Lettuces
- Green mustard
- Cardoons
- Fava tops
- Leeks
- Salad mix
- Mizuna
- Mushrooms
- Chicken eggs
- Duck eggs
- Guinea eggs
Black Cat Grains and flours and legumes
- Sourdough bread
- Popcorn
- Flours from Black Cat Organic Farm grains
- Dried beans
- Ancient grains
Meats
- Sausages
- Grama Grass & Livestock Beef
- Cuts of Black Cat heritage lamb
- Cuts of Black Cat Organic Farm pork
- Dog food
Black Cat Farm Provisions
- Flourless chocolate cake with mousse
- Carrot cake
- Onion soup
- Roasted tomato sauce with basil and garlic
- Basque piperade
- Yellow Tomato Sauce with French thyme
- Tomato shallot fonduto
- Salsa amarilla con rajas
- Spicy harissa
- Ketchup
Local Provisions
- Big B’s Organic Apple Cider Vinegar
- Bibamba chocolates
- Taos Bakes Cosmo Nuts
- Frog Hollow Farmstead Apple Butter
- Full Stop Bakery Sourdough Crackers
- Humble Suds cleaning products
- Growing Organic probiotic soaps
- Annie Bee’s Hand-Poured Beeswax Candles
- Havenly Baked Gluten-Free Bread
- Boulder Broth
- Bjorn’s Colorado Honey and doggie treats
- Boulder Valley Honey
- Bolder Chip salsa, corn chips and tortillas, and uncooked flour tortillas
- Pueblo Seed Grains Co. cookies, cereals, grits and more
- Heartbeets Veggie Burgers and doggie treats
- Spark + Honey Granola
- Mountain Girl Pickles
- Project Umami Tempeh
- Silver Canyon Coffee
- Gorgeous Italian balsamic vinegar
- Ambrosial Italian apple cider vinegar
- Vegan charcuterie from Greece
- Italian risotto rice
Bramble & Hare
Miss tomatoes? Of course you do. While our friends on the East Coast have been enjoying them for a month, we’ve been waiting. But now we finally have our first tomatoes of the season, harvested from our hoop houses. And our culinary team at Bramble immediately began creating dishes.
On this recent Bramble menu, we craft them into our farm tomato soup, with crème fraîche and croutons. It’s an outstanding way to begin a meal at the nation’s most true farm-to-table restaurant. We also offer fried green tomatoes with pistachio tarator, green tomato relish and pickled onions. As fried green tomato fanatics, we could not wait to add this winner to the menu.
The menu also includes a new treatment for braised rabbit leg, which now incorporates fava stew, red pepper crème, curry spices, broccoli and turnips. It is simply glorious.
Join us soon at Bramble! The bounty from our organic fields always figures largely on the menu, everything from the flours made from organic grains we grew and milled to the herbs, vegetables, some of the meats and more. No other ambitious restaurant in the United States is yoked so tightly to its own organic farm. When you dine at Bramble, most of what you enjoy comes from fields just miles from the restaurant.
We look forward to taking care of you!
