What do chefs and farmers like to do when they're not working? They like to hang out together and prepare food, which is what happened on Monday night at Laura Meister's Farm Girl Farm in Egremont, MA. It was supposed to be an improvised and impromptu evening, but as chefs Daire Rooney of Brix and Brian Alberg of the Red Lion Inn and their Railroad Street Youth Project students started planning the menu, the simple September supper turned into a fabulous feast. The meal under the shade tent featured roasted saddle of Lila Berle lamb with pancetta and kale; cherry marinated grilled leg of lamb; yogurt-rubbed roasted Punsit Valley chickens with eggplant & mint; five-spice grilled Punsit Valley strip loin of beef. You didn't have to be a carnivore to be happy: There were Ted Dobson's greens from Equinox Farm, mushrooms from Blue Moon Shrooms; and Farm Girl Farm's leek were braised in Reisling and FGF's turnips were poached in white truffle butter. After so many culinary fireworks, the chefs bowed to tradition and dessert was old-fashioned apple pie.
Friends helped string little white lights in the shade tent by the fields where Laura Meister grows vegetables for Farm Girl Farm.
Nudel restaurant chef/owner Bjorn Somlo with The Meat Market's Emily Newman Stanton; Daire Rooney of Brix and Brian Alberg of the Red Lion Inn, who cooked dinner over an open fire in the field.
Farm Girl Farm's Laura Meister and Roberto Flores of Good Dogs Farm.
Several children turned the back of a pick-up truck into a make-believe castle while the adults gorged themselves on local meat and vegetables.
Dinner was served family style with overflowing platters of vegetables and meats that had been cooked over an open fire.
Brian McElheiny and Elizabeth Keen of Indian Line Farm.
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Matteline deVries-Dilling, founder of Lite Brite Neon, one of the evening's honoree of this year's Upstate Benefit adresses the gala from the Caboose's caboose.
- Karen Pearson. Courtesy Art Omi.
Olana senior vice president and landscape curatorMark Prezorski, president Sean Sawyer, The evenings honoree Kristin Gamble and New York State Assemblymember Didi Barrett.
- Oxygen House Photo
