The Squash Blossom Edition
Happy Friday, friends.
We trust you will enjoy this last weekend of July. We are here all weekend for all of your picnic, grilling, entertaining and “what should we make for dinner Wednesday night?” needs.
On Tuesday we enter August, and on the month’s first day a full moon rises, the “Sturgeon Moon,” which will be a supermoon, meaning our planet’s partner in orbit will appear particularly large. If clouds don’t capture the night sky, it will be beautiful.
This month’s lunar thrill extends beyond Tuesday’s supermoon, however. The next full moon rises on August 30, and when two full moons happen in one month the second one is called a “Blue Moon.” And this second August moon will also be a supermoon. Having two full moons in one month is novel enough—every two to three years. A pair of supermoons in one month is quite unusual.
Sprawling out between these celestial bookends will come a super-intense balance of growth in the fields, and epic harvesting of many vegetable stars for us to share, and for you to take home and transform into culinary pleasure. These same harvests also send enormous volumes of our organic vegetables to Bramble & Hare, where the kitchen team turns to its brand of wizardry and alchemy to craft beautiful things.
Enjoy the weekend! It’s going to be toasty, but a welcome cool down arrives next week.
July 31 Harvest Celebration Dirt Dinner: Squash Blossoms
Until the rise of farmers markets, encountering squash blossoms was unusual for everybody who didn’t grow the vegetables in their gardens. The blossoms are highly perishable, and fragile. They also unfurl on varieties of Cucurbita pepo, the species that includes everything from zucchini to spaghetti squash.
While their popularity on American plates is still emerging, other countries, particularly in parts of the Middle East and Europe, have long harvested and prepared the bold-colored blossoms into gorgeous dishes. People stuff them, batter and fry them, incorporate them into soups. When eaten raw, they convey subtle notes of young zucchini, and the texture is edible silk.
In Turkey, cooks pursue two traditional stuffed preparations. In one of them, the blossoms get filled with rice and minced meat, and are served hot after frying in olive oil. The other preparation skips the meat, but the rice-and-herb-stuffed parcels do get fried. In Southern Italy and in Catalunya, they get turned into fritters. And in Mexican kitchens people use squash blossoms in soups and as filling for quesadillas, among other things.
Squash blossoms are about as seasonal as it gets, and we are eager to welcome you into Bramble & Hare’s charming dining room and showcase for you the aforementioned wizardry and alchemy that our culinary team performs upon these bright orange gems.
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 31 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
One of the foundations of many kitchens, celery, is here! You have crunched through them on hundreds of crudités platters, slurped thousands of celery-studded soups and stews, encountered batons of the vegetable in countless stir fries. And the celery experience has revolved around texture much more than taste.
Now it’s time to truly taste celery. These organic beauties began life in our greenhouse, and have been positively thriving under this year’s mish-mash of rain, early cool temperatures, and bold sun. Take some home and eat them raw, first. Finally, you’ll understand what celery is supposed to taste like. And then start dreaming of recipes. Creamy celery soup wows. A summery chicken soup spiked with this celery sings. Salads, including things like tuna salad, get transformed with celery this packed with flavor. Celery braised in olive oil and white wine and punched up with thyme, butter, garlic and shallot? Oui, oui.
Our Saturday stands at the Boulder County Farmers Markets in downtown Boulder (8 a.m. to 2 p.m.) and Longmont (8 a.m. to 1 p.m.) will feature this outstanding celery, among many other treasures.
At our booths this week, which are open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Boulder and 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Longmont, look for:
- Celery (New!)
- Tomatillos (New!)
- Tomatoes
- Sunflower bouquets
- Fava beans
- Leeks
- Onions
- Tat soi
- Snap peas
- Carrots
- Mizuna, green and purple
- Romaine lettuce
- Spring Onions
- Salad mix
- Kale
- Sourdough bread
- Roving wool from our sheep
Farm Store
Look for celery 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.
- Celery (New!)
- Tomatillos (New!)
- Tomatoes
- Fennel
- Sunflower bouquets
- Fava beans
- Onions
- Carrots
- Kale
- Tat soi
- Lettuces
- Green mustard
- 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
Menus at the nation’s most true farm-to-table restaurant revolve largely around the things we grow on our 425-acre organic Boulder farm. We raise livestock on organic pasture, and cultivate more than 250 varieties of organic and heirloom vegetables, grains, legumes, herbs and flowers.
But we can’t trace the provenance of every ingredient to the farm. If we limited the menu to Black Cat Organic Farm, we’d have to say goodbye to cooking oils, dairy products (butter!), citrus fruits, nuts, olives and more. That includes fish.
Our approach lets us offer dishes like the brandade that recently arrived on the menu. If you ever visited Provence or Catalunya (among other places) you may have encountered this ambrosial emulsion of salt cod, olive oil and (usually) potatoes. At Bramble, our brandade dish includes a carrot and fennel puree, with a shaved fennel salad; both of these are from the farm. The whole dish is wonderful.
The Bramble menu changes nearly every day, especially for the next few months, as so many new vegetables finally ripen and get harvested.
Pay us a visit soon. We look forward to decorating your evening and week with exquisite food, most of which came directly from our fields.
