A Year in Menus
January. January menus typically feature a lot of game and meat, while emphasis on fish is lighter simply because customers stop ordering fish from the holidays through the start of Lent. Wild mushrooms, particularly hedgehogs and black trumpets from our forager in Oregon, are plentiful. What we find at the farmers market is limited to apples, potatoes, leeks, greens, Brussels sprouts, parsnips, sweet potatoes, and winter squashes. We get a bit of mâche, arugula, gai lan (Chinese broccoli), and radishes from the greenhouse. We tend to feature more comfort dishes such as soups and braised dishes.
February. February's a tough month. It sees not only the worst weather of the year, but generally a gap in both wild mushrooms and lambs. Our lamb supplier works very hard to keep us in lambs year round, but the dead of winter is tough. Storage apple quality is declining by this point too. We always seem to get great flatfish—flounder, fluke, and sole—in February, however. And, February brings both Mardi Gras which injects a Cajun/Creole flavor into the menu and Lent which sees our customers return to ordering seafood again after a couple month hiatus.
March. March is a month of transition—the weather at the beginning of the month is pretty ugly still while at the end, we definitely know that spring is on the way. This is reflected in our menus in that we react instinctively to the weather—heavier dishes at the beginning of the month, lighter at the end. Lambs are still iffy in March, but greens in the greenhouse are starting to come on. Shad roe is just starting up mid-month. Wild mushrooms are much more plentiful than in February and we start to see a wider variety of fish on the market. But on balance, March is a month of using the remaining storage vegetables and fruits from last fall, while dreaming about the new ingredients coming in April.
April. April is such a tease. We can see the daffodils and crocuses in bloom. We can feel the warmth in the air. Where then are the baby lettuces and asparagus? They're coming around the corner in May. April sees a much wider variety of seafood on the menu and a subconscious lightening of presentations in response to the weather. Our chives and mint are up and running at the restaurant, but we can't plant our tender, annual herbs until mid-May. Mâche and mesclun are still coming out of local greenhouses, but that's all about to change in May. But, April has one great thing going for it: abundant shad roe! You often won't see it on our menus because we presell almost all that we get to regular customers. April sees our very brief ramp season and also, in years with good weather, mid-April brings the start of the local morels.
May. Our frost date is May 15 and that is when all our local products get cranked up again. We look forward all year to baby lettuces, local spinach, arugula, mâche, and asparagus. The beginning of the month sees the tail end of the local morel crop. And toward the end of the month, strawberries make their fleeting appearance just as the early cherries come in.
June. Early June is a fun time to be at the farmers market. Strawberries, raspberries, cherries, and asparagus abound early in the month. We also see some early broccoli, Shanghai bok choy, Chinese cabbage, and other green vegetables. Seafood-wise, the water in the Bay has warmed up enough that we get soft shell crabs on the full moon. And, the salmon are running in Alaska. We only serve salmon in the summer as they are migrating. If we're lucky, the first currants of the year are in just at the end of the month.
July. We may be starting to hate the hot, sticky weather in July, but this weather signals the start of the summer produce season. Asparagus is but a distant memory, but the market is full of those fruits and vegetables that we dream about all winter: cucumbers, squash, peppers of all shapes and colors, eggplants, green beans, melons, peaches, plums, apricots, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. Sadly, the weather's getting too hot and salad green quality suffers. Summer fish such as Wahoo and Cobia appear regularly on the menu, along with local crab (both hardshell and softshell) and the red Salmon (Sockeye and Coho). And for about ten days, we get the glorious doughnut-shaped Saturn peaches. But the best news of all is that by the end of the month, fresh heirloom tomatoes and heirloom Corno di Toro peppers have started to trickle in.
August. August means two things: tomatoes, glorious tomatoes, and sweet, sweet corn. These two things along with mounds of fresh basil are our reward for suffering through the ridiculous heat and worse humidity of August. You'll see lots of tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, corn, cucumbers, green beans, wax beans, shell beans, butter beans, and the dessert menu takes advantage of the bounty of local fruits. To combat the heat, we focus a lot more on salads and seafood. It's not unusual in August to have 5 or 6 different seafood entrées.
September. September is just like August, only cooler. We still have fantastic tomatoes, corn, beans, peppers, and eggplants coming out of our ears. We make caponata (sweet and sour eggplant) out of self defense lest the eggplants take over the kitchen. And, we love to showcase the exquisite Corno di Toro peppers that we have in abundance. Plus, September is prime fig season: some lunches see us serve almost nothing but our prosciutto, grilled fig, goat cheese, and arugula salad. We get one final run of softshell crabs as long as the water stays warm.
October. October's a great month and one of the busiest with all the tourists coming to see the beautiful Shenandoah Valley in all its fall glory. The crisp nights get us thinking about all those braised dishes we’ll be rolling out soon, but the warm days remind us that we still have fresh tomatoes, at least for a couple of weeks. Until the first frost, we’re still able to eek out a few tomatoes, a few summer squash, and a few cucumbers, while the cool weather crops such as broccoli and beets are thriving. The imminent threat of frost means glorious green tomatoes and we sell bushels of them in October. We see a few winter squash trickle onto the market and the early apples are in and although better ones are coming next month, who can resist? We’ve waited all year for apples! Local Asian pears are stunning this time of year. Tuna is at the fattest it is going to be after feeding all summer and we see a flush of Red Drum off the Carolina coast. And, late October means pork and apple butter to us. It’s traditional hog butchering season and after feeding light all summer, we're ready for some great pork. And it’s time to bring on those carbs we’ve been denying ourselves all summer: polenta, grits, hominy, mash, and risotto.
November. By the first of November we have generally had about four weeks of frost. Frost is key for good greens, parsnips, and apples. All the interesting apples are picked late and we have the widest variety of the year during November. If the weather hasn't been too harsh, we can still get baby beets in early November. Winter squash and apple cider make their appearance. And the sweet potatoes have just finished curing and are ready to eat. November sees our weekly ossobuco (veal, pork, lamb, wild boar, venison) and braised dishes return to the menu for their run through March. While we have wild mushrooms on the menu almost every day, we really start pushing them in November as the prices moderate. New crop blood oranges start to trickle in after Thanksgiving.
December. December sees a full swing towards game and red meat on the menu, for the simple reason that customers stop ordering seafood from Thanksgiving through Lent. Our local weather plays a big impact on the menu. If the snow holds off and the ground doesn't freeze too hard, we see local cabbages, leeks, and greens for most of the month. December sees the blood orange and South American asparagus crops coming in full cycle; white asparagus starts to appear on our menus. I tend to start making pâtés and terrines again in December. Naturally we use lots of local apples, sweet potatoes, fingerling potatoes, winter squash and so forth.
