Issues > March/April 2005 (#107) > Cooking Locally in Season: An Interview with Peter Hoffman

Cooking Locally in Season: An Interview with Peter Hoffman

by Mindy Pennybacker

Celery Root and Cucumber Salad with Dill Dressing

1 large or 2 medium celery roots
1 cucumber
1/2 cup dill, roughly chopped
1 T shallot
1 T pommery (coarse-grained) mustard
1 T Dijon (smooth) mustard
3/4 cup Champagne or white wine vinegar
2 cups pure olive oil

Peel and halve the celery roots and bake in a covered baking dish with a splash of water and a sprinkling of salt. Bake in moderate oven 45 minutes or until a knife passes through easily. Meanwhile, make the dressing. Combine the shallot, mustard and vinegar in a food processor. Add the oil slowly, then add the dill. Season with salt and black pepper. Peel the cucumber and cut in half rounds. Allow the celery root to cool, then slice in rounds similar to the cukes. Mix together. Add some of the dressing. Taste. Vegetables should be well coated but not gloppy. Garnish with some dill sprigs over the salad. Drink a glass of pinot gris with it.

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Photo: Cooking Locally in Season: An Interview with Peter Hoffman

GG: Do your kids like vegetables?

PH: One, yes. The other, yes, but with some serious limits. One likes kale, the other does not. But we added Japanese turnips to the list recently.

GG: What are some quick real-food menu ideas?

PH: I always like to have some kind of cured meat product—it's a great thing to have kicking around in the fridge. Bacon, pancetta, chorizo. The other day, I was absolutely starving. In the fridge I found some cooked wheat berries, sautéed them with one thin slice of chorizo and added some egg.

GG: Do you still bicycle to a butcher in Chinatown with half a cow strapped on back?

PH: I took a whole pig there a couple of weeks ago. It was an heirloom pig from North Carolina.

GG: How do you stay so trim and fit? Is it the bicycling? Do you diet too?

PH: No. I eat everything, as much as I want, whenever I want. I stop when full. I ride a bike for transportation.

GG: When I asked for skim milk in my cappucino, I learned that Savoy doesn't serve skim.

PH: That's right. Fat's not bad.

GG: How would you choose, if you had to, between heirloom, organic and local food?

PH: Certainly to grow local is very important to our communities. But what and how you grow it is important as well. Local, in and of itself—or organic—isn't going to do it in terms of flavor. One thing that really bothers me is people doing Berkshire pigs—raising an heirloom animal—in a factory way. I also worry about a proliferation of ecolabels—it gets to be more about marketing than education. People shut down. Better that they read The Green Guide.

GG: So what do you do in April to conjure up a taste of spring?

PH: This recipe [sidebar] is a great one for early spring. It uses the root vegetables that are still ubiquitous, but enlivens it with some of the fresh herbs available from southern climes as the thaw approaches.

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Filed under: Home and Garden, Food and beverages

Green Guide 107 | March/April 2005 | For Cooks