• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 141 0

on the coast of Maine. It is really a sensation of earthy aroma: the warming sun combined with thawing soil, as if the light is melting away winter. Like no other place, Maine embraces each season with abandon and teaches its inhabitants not to hold on for too long, but to savor it while it lasts. When I first began my journey as a chef, I lacked many of the tools that some of my colleagues had: a tradition of a family with a deeply rooted culinary background, lifelong access to specialty markets and restaurants, growing up as a gourmand. In fact, Searsport, Maine, is far better known for its quaint coastal charm than for any of its culinary aptitude. Still, I was fortunate to have a childhood that taught me more about seasonality than all of my future years of cooking combined.

In the summer, I could walk across the street from my home to the edge of the field in front of Penobscot Bay and pick tiny, sweet wild strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries directly from their vines. My grandfather’s cherry tree provided sweet fruit for eating, with pits to launch at my cousins. My dad would navigate our way across a fast-flowing river onto his “mountain,” where we would forage fiddlehead ferns in the wild. We always had a garden, and the memories are secure in my mind . . . taste of earth, aroma of sun, crisp, watery, and colorful—husking corn, shelling peas, even the rattling cover of my mom’s cookware as the water heated to cook the summer vegetables.

As time has passed, my appreciation for seasonal produce has only expanded. As a chef, I learned to become excited about autumn mushrooms, the first early asparagus and green garlic, even the cool of winter when citrus fruits and root vegetables provide a new culinary challenge . . . beets and orange zest, with a little pistachio oil and sea salt . . . it all makes sense and is the way we should be eating.

With raw food, the emphasis on seasonality is even more important. There is no smoky grill to mask the essence of the ingredients, no deep-frying that really strips rather than adds flavor. This is naked cuisine—presented in its purest form, creatively combined, but with its character always retained. A cook has nothing greater to celebrate than the seasons.

In time, a seasoned chef will expend the same effort—perhaps more—in sourcing ingredients as in preparing them. If I were to make a Moroccan tagine for dinner on a fall evening in New York, it could mean biking to the Greenmarket for autumn squash and pumpkin, visiting Sahadi’s (my favorite Middle Eastern market) for pomegranates and almonds, crossing the bridge to Kalustyan’s for spices, and on it goes. No amount of diligence will ever be too much.

As with food, entertaining is always most appropriate when it follows the arc of the seasons. Cherry and apple blossoms on their branches, baskets of brown pears, sugar pumpkins, crab apples, and fresh wildflowers are only a fraction of what is available for us when setting a table or creating a room that evokes seasonality. The same influences that guide our menu choices provide elegant nuances to luscious cocktails and cool beverages. I am so enamored with seasonality, embracing each one with such passion, that the onset of longer days and brighter sun, the cool crisp breeze of an approaching winter, or the quiet lazy days of summer are each worthy of throwing a long lunch, a dinner, or a cocktail party. We may as well enjoy them before they pass. And just as you become enamored with those beautiful heirloom tomatoes, they will disappear.

Sweet Pea Flan with Macadamia Foam, Lime Powder, and Black Sesame Tuile

When my team and I first plated it, I experienced the rush that accompanies an intense creative effort that ends in success. The colors are remarkable, and it is every bit as silky and smooth as a flan should be. It is one of my most highly recommended dishes for a dinner party that includes many guests who are new to raw.

Flan

3 cups cashews, soaked 1–2 hours

1/2 cup coconut meat

1/4 cup prepared Irish moss

1/4 cup juice of sugar snap peas

1/2 teaspoon