The
menu was designed by chef Michael Reidt and and the idea behind it is
to reduce overall energy consumption in the food supply.
For an appetizer, there will be a salad of salt roasted beets and
heirloom tomatoes with green goddess Paradise Farms flower vinaigrette
dressing ($12), and an appetizer of cobia crudo (raw kingfish) with lime
gelee, mango, radish with pickled ramp vinaigrette ($13).
Entrees
consist of hog snapper with red cabbage sauerkraut, honey-glazed turnips
and charred cippolini onions ($27); and slow-roasted pork shoulder with
romesco, pickled mustard seed, shaved celery and piave ($26).
Dessert will be a sage funnel cake with mulberry jam and jalapeno sherbet.
The ingredients were harvested from two local farms. The honey was harvested from Bee Heaven Farms - Pikarco in Homestead and the vegetables and spices here harvested from Paradise Farms organic farm, also in Homestead.
Local
fruits, vegetables and animal products are a nice touch, but what about
flowers as an ingredient? Those used to flavor the vinaigrette
dressing were harvested from Paradise Farms. There are several varieties
of flowers grown by Gabriele Marewski on her Paradise Farm acres.
There are too many to list but they can be eaten by themselves or be used to flavor food.
For
example there is the abundantly grown nasturtium flower. When you put
this bright orange flower in the mouth, you experience a pleasant and
mild peppery flavor. The leaves and flowers are edible. Mix them with
salt and you get salt and pepper, or make a pesto or hors d'oeuvres.
flower that is grown on the farm is the double clitoria. The deep
purple-colored flower is edible, but has many other known uses., such as
using the root extract to cure whooping cough, and extracts from some
varieties to cure goiter.
fact most, if not all, edibles grown on Paradise Farms have dual
functions: to feed us and to heal us. This is the essence of food.
menu from Area 31 is for one week only. You have a whole
week to decide to check it out. But as you sit down to eat your Earth Day
meal, think to yourself this question: "Does what I eat heal me?"
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