Spring is finally here at the Fearrington House! I know what you’re thinking - spring has been here a while, but for the chefs in the kitchen we've wanted to get the new menu just right as we flood it with the new bounty of the season’s vegetables and fruit.

Spring for any chef is exciting, a time for us to stop using the starchy heavy winter produce and to move over to Chef Bedford’s favorites, including peas, a vegetable he would fight for! Especially when Fish and Chips are concerned. A dish that goes hand in hand with the pea (this is how we do it in England, however in America, coleslaw is the usual accompaniment).

We’ve had the menu written for almost 2 months now, but when on paper we never quite know how its going to work out, so its taken time, testing each dish and improving upon it. The new dishes include: Seared Tuna, Avocado Beignets, Spring Garlic, Fennel Relish and Cumin Pickled Cucumber (pictured) as well as Monkfish and Iberico Chorizo, Acquerello Risotto, Fava Beans, Basil and Pepper Puree.

Hopefully we've tempted your taste buds and you want to come try these dishes out before we switch to the summer menu in July! We look forward to seeing you at The House in the not so distant future.

Sunday, February 20th was The Fearrington House’s first Beer Dinner and who better to have it with then North Carolina’s - and Durham's - very own Fullsteam Brewery. This great local company takes its inspiration from the local land and passionate farmers of the Triangle to make the South’s own distinct style of beer. They even have their own tavern at 726 Rigsbee Avenue in downtown Durham, where you can sample many of their great beers and sample some experiments as well, with local musicians setting the mood in the background!

For the Fearrington chefs it all started the week before. Sitting in the office at the end of a busy service, Chef Bedford cracks open the first beer. It’s time to taste. We have to try several beers to pick our favorite five for the Fullsteam Beer Dinner (It’s a hard job, but somebody has to do it). More...

To many diners, including myself, the menu of a restaurant is its most important selling tool. The menu – both its writing style and the dishes being described – dictates whether or not I will enter an establishment, even if the restaurant’s reputation is sound.

The way it is written is huge. It needs to offer some familiarity as well as the unusual for the more curious diner.  It should offer a balance between a description of ingredients, and how the dishes are prepared.  An imbalance denies the diner information necessary to make a selection.

One thing I’m not a huge fan of is the overly excessive menu description, with its “nestled on a bed of” or “served with a symphony of” and “lathered with a sauce of” etc. That kind of writing reminds me of my early days in the trade, of a place we all thought was trendy back in the nineties, a place where I wish it had stayed.

Of course what really drives a menu is not the actual writing itself but the addition of new dishes, or an entirely new seasonal menu. At The Fearrington House, when we write a new seasonal menu, or a unique menu for say a Wine Maker Dinner or a tasting menu for our cooking school guests, creating a menu is an art and can sometimes take us days to finish. It’s an enormous collaboration involving the Chef, myself and others. More...

“Tom! Come here - and bring your camera!” bellowed Chef Bedford from inside the walk-in cooler. Quickly grabbing the equipment, I rush to the prep kitchen just in time to see our first halibut of the season (looking rather sizable up against our giant chef) being carried towards its last destination as a whole fish - the chopping board! All of the chefs in the kitchen come to see the commotion, trying to take a peak at the new product as Colin works on it, smoothly and quickly filleting the fish, then removing the skin and expertly portioning the meat into equal sizes, ready for a much anticipated menu change.

Fish is one of our favorite proteins to cook with; they achieve that golden brown sear that flavors the fish so well, and it is satisfying finishing it with a hint of lemon juice and sprig of thyme. They’re incredibly healthy to eat. Their meat produces delicate and rich flavors.  And it’s a product we work with from scratch, preparing it from whole, investing time into making it perfect, as if developing a relationship with it, and trying to improve upon the previous one. More...

Strawberries, one of the first edible fruits to mature in the spring, have been available at the Fearrington Farmers Market and other local markets for about two weeks now. With the days getting longer and hotter, fruits – each bushel better than the last – are now flooding out of area fields. Not only is this a prime time for eating fresh fruits, this is prime time for making jams and jellies. With this in mind, I wanted to share an option for both buying and making your own.

Recently, I’ve have a personal interest in the art of fruit preserves. I’ve been out at 6am picking elderberries along some of the main roads here in North Carolina. There’s such a fulfilling sense of self sufficiency returning home like the hunter/gatherer with an overflowing basket of berries, ready to transform into jams and jellies.

Now when doing this for myself, I can make a batch last a few months, however when it comes to preserves for the Fearrington House, it would probably only last a week. Due to the volume of preserves we go through, a company must supply us with these items.  In an earlier blog - Every Chef needs an “Anne” – Colin writes about our organic gardener, Anne Stomp, who works side by side with us throughout the year. More...

Techniques and technology are continuously moving forward in the kitchen and we’re always looking to see what might result in culinary improvements here. Our latest ‘toy’ is called a polyscience circulator and it allows us to control the temperature that we cook food at to 0.1 of a degree – a level of precision that had previously been impossible.

So what is a polyscience circulator? It is an electrical element that heats a bath of water to the desired temperature. Food products are placed in the water and cooked at a much lower, even and consistent temperature than in a conventional oven, resulting in a much better end product. This type of cooking technique is called ‘sous-vide’ which translates into ‘under vacuum’. The reason for it being called this is because the items of food are placed in vacuum sealed bags before being poached in the water.

Tough meats such as beef short rib, pork belly and brisket benefit immensely from sous-vide cooking. These types of cut need to be cooked at lower temperatures so that the tough connective tissues break down. The circulator allows us to do this at such a lower temperature than braising or roasting and the result is a much more tender piece of meat. We are currently cooking beef short rib this way and instead of braising it for 6 hours we now sous-vide it for 36 hours! The result is a piece of meat that is as tender as filet mignon.

The other advantage to this type of cooking is that we can get a more consistent product and it eliminates “chef error”! People have higher standards than ever when dining out so it is important that every plate of food that leaves the kitchen is perfect, and we hope that this clever piece of kit will help us achieve this!

Interestingly, sous-vide cooking was introduced in the mid-1970’s by a man called Georges Pralus. He developed the technique for the famous Troisgros brothers of France but it is only in the last 8-10 years that it has become increasingly popular.