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Berkshire Tidbits: Passover Orders
By Judith Lerner, Special to iBerkshires
04:54PM / Thursday, April 21, 2016
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This new calf at Hancock Shaker Village was lowing at Judith Lerner over a barn rail.

Baby animals abound! They brighten our days as spring blows in and away and back!

 

Great Barrington Bagel Company & Deli, 777 South Main St. in Great Barrington, 413-528-9055, gbbagel.com., now under the ownership of Bob and Karen Climo who bought the Jewish-style deli last year from its founders Judy and Marvin Lieberman, offers to cater your Passover seder and your entire eight-day Passover week.

The Climos and their able and enthusiastic staff will make charoset, chicken matzoh ball soup, chopped chicken liver, gefilte fish, beef brisket, tzmmes, potato kugel and macaroons.

Bob worked alongside Judy and Marvin for eight years before buying the deli so he knows and maintains its ways.

"The recipes are the same," Karen assured me.

 

The menu for the Haven Supper Club will be:

  • Spanish honey-cumin roast chicken with apricots and olives served with saffron rice and broccolini
  • Pan seared tilapia with butternut squash, spinach, quinoa pilaf and almond brown butter sauce
  • Roast leg of lamb with roasted red onions, peas and garlic mashed potatoes

Entrées come with soup or salad and cost $22 for one to three dinners ordered, $75 for four dinners ordered, $110 for six dinners, $200 for 12 dinners. They can be any of the dinners.

Order by Wednesday, pick up at the bakery in Lenox on Friday. The staff suggests people can order for different meals and can choose among that week's options. Contact: 413-637-8948 or havencafebakery@gmail.com to order and get on their list to received upcoming menus.

 

Chef Julie Gale, owner of At the Table Cooking School in Hillsdale, N.Y., will be teaching, On the Healthy Track another in her Cooking at The Chef's Shop series, on Thursday evening, April 21, from 6 to 8, etc.

She and her hands on students will be making, then eating, bulgar/cracked wheat and red cabbage salad (which I have helped make and tasted in the past and it is delicious), kale and white bean soup (and with these on-again, off-again blustery days and nights we still need), and miso-glazed salmon.

The cost is $60 per person for a single class, $150 for a series of three. Payment is required in advance with a 48-hour cancellation policy. The Chef's Shop, 31 Railroad St. in Great Barrington, 413-528-0135. offers students a 10-percent discount on purchases made on a class day. Call or email@TheChefsShop.com, to reserve a place.

 
The Meat Market, 389 Stockbridge Road/Route 7 in Great Barrington, 413 528-2022, has local meat for Passover. Brisket and similar, fancier as well as more "casual" cuts.
 
"We're a whole animal butcher shop," said Meat Market café chef Jason Knopp. "Right now, we have a whole brisket. If someone comes in and buys all of it then we're out of brisket but we still have other cuts — chuck roasts, saddle roasts. We also have a lot of lamb."
 
And they have chickens. That's what my grandmother served the family at her seders. But, this week, TMM has only frozen poultry/chickens, they said.
 
Chef Knopp said everything is for preorder so call in your order and have grass-fed brisket on your seder table.
 
 
Don't forget, Friday evenings are "Fry-Days" at Eat on North, 297 North St. in Pittsfield, 413 358-4741. Local bass player Andy Wrba brings his musician friends and their young contemporary jazz takes and the menu has yet to be decided. It would be dishes like last week's ramp hushpuppies with Eat's buttermilk ranch dressing and cornmeal-fried pork with goat cheese mashed potatoes and tomatillo chutney.

It sounds worth it if you like crunchy stuff.  

It ain't KFC. Although, they did start out the week before with French fries — maybe they were real frites like you might get in Belgium, France or Spain — fried pickles and a fried oyster Po' Boy.
 
 
This weekend Wheatleigh, 11 Hawthorne Road in Lenox, 413-637-0610, will be hosting two back-to-back dinners pairing wines from California presented individually by each of the two Nejaime brothers, Joe and Jim, with the subtle yet exciting menus of Wheatleigh executive chef Jeffrey Thompson.

The first, a 4-course 7 wine dinner, has been put together by Joe Nejaime of Nejaime's Wine Cellars, in Lenox and Stockbridge on Friday. April 22, to showcase the organic and sustainable whites of the Napa Valley's Michael Mondavi Family Estate/Folio Fine Wine Partners at 6 p.m. Shane Lessard, Sommelier and New England Area Sales Manager for Folio Fine Wine Partners will guide diners through the wine selections.

Then, Saturday, April 23, Jim Nejaime of Spirited Wines in Lenox, will happily bring the reds of the boutique Sonoma winery, Donelan Family Wines, to pair in a 5-course 6-wine dinner. Founder/owner Joe Donelan speak about his wines at the dinner and will also be at a free tasting of a number of his wines — including at least two that will be featured at the dinner — at Spirited, 444 Pittsfield Road/Routes 7 and 20 at the corner of Holmes Road, 413 448-2274, spirited-wines.com, from noon to 4 that afternoon.

"This is good exposure for us. People can see what we are doing," Wheatleigh assistant general manager Sybrandt Windell said of the two wine dinners, enthusiastically.

Both evenings start with cocktails at 6, dinner at 6:30. The cost of each is $145 including tax and gratuity. Call Wheatleigh for reservations.
 
Vegetarian dinner options are available if you request them when you make your reservation. Additionally, Wheatleigh is offering discounted room rates for dinner guests for both Friday and Saturday evening.
 
Chef Jeffrey Thompson has outdone himself with his two menus.
 
Friday evening, April 22, menu and wine pairings for Michael Mondavi dinner
selection of canapes
Charles Heidsieck Rose Brut Reserve
dayboat scallops with white asparagus, parsnip and spinach
Oberon Sauvignon Blanc 2014
roasted duck and foie gras with sunchokes, rapini and figs
Emblem Napa Valley 2013
Emblem Oso Vineyard Cabernet 2011
bison ribeye with Puy lentils, morels and baby turnip
Animo Cabernet 2011
Taleggio tartine with dried fruit mostarda, spiced pistachio and frisée
"M" by Michael Mondavi 2012
"M" by Michael Mondavi 2010
 
Saturday evening, April 23, menu and wine pairings for Joe Donelan dinner
selection of canapes
Donelan Dry Sonoma Rosé 2014
cool local lobster with hearts of palm, peas and radish
Donelan Venus Roussanne/Viognier 2013
duck confit press with spring onion, figs and Swiss chard
Donelan Cuvée Christine Syrah 2012
wild king salmon sunchoke, morels and green asparagus
Donelan Two Brothers Pinot Noir 2012
duo of lamb with gnocchi, fava beans and white asparagus
Donelan Obsidian Vineyard Syrah 2013
chocolate: gianduja cremeux/jelled chocolate custard and cassis/black currant sorbet
Donelan Cuvée Moriah Proprietary Blend 2012
 
 
There will be an enthusiastic Earth Day celebration at the Great Barrington Fairgrounds, http://gbfg.org/event/community-garden-earth-day-celebration/, from 10 to 3 this Saturday, April 23, the day after Earth Day which is, technically, Friday, April 22. But more people can participate on Saturday so that's the best day to introduce the Great Barrington Fairgrounds Community Garden Project to the greater Barrington community.
 
Fairground owners Bart, landscape painter, and Janet Elsbach, writer/teacher, with the tireless energy of tree house architect Allen Timmons who owns Backyard Heirlooms on GB's South Main St., came up with and have carried out a plan to revitalize the fair ground by turning a part of it into 4-foot by 10-foot raised-bed garden plots for community members of all levels of gardening expertise, ages, incomes and so forth to grow their own food. Everyone is wanted as part of this project.
 
Multi-talented Crispina Ffrench will lead attendees in knitting their community together, symbolically, by weaving a giant potholder rug out of their discarded old — clean — clothes. Expert gardeners, including Greenagers, will be on hand to offer gardening advice. Meryl Joseph, director/producer of the documentary film City Farmer will speak at the celebration.
 
"We wanted to find a way to bring vibrancy back to the Fair Ground," Allen Timmons said to explain the genesis of the community garden project. He said the project just seemed to take form on its own — with a lot of work on everyone's part.
 
Local businesses Berkshire Co-op Market and Guido's Fresh Marketplace have underwritten scholarships for garden participation so that the $100 seasonal fee for leasing a raised bed can be reduced for those who cannot pay that amount. Ward's Nursery and Garden Center is giving $20 gift certificates to plot renters. Our Berkshire Magazine is getting the word out. The project will maintain an on-site tool library for gardeners' use.
 
Come spend Saturday learning about and working on the gardens, being educated and entertained.
 
 
This Saturday evening, April 23, about 7, The Meat Market, 389 Stockbridge Road/Route 7 in Great Barrington, 413 528-2022, again hosts guest chef Erhard Wendt, formerly of the Williamsville Inn in West Stockbridge.
 
Erhard just came up with this week's seasonal, local menu. He has been doing this every Saturday this month and will continue through the rest of the month.
 
This week, his salad will be a variety of foraged local greens in a red wine vinaigrette. He's making local TMM pork loin schnitzel that he's serving with green asparagus (at this point, no one at TMM knows whether Erhard is able to get local asparagus or not but they are hoping ... ) and hand-shaved spaetzle/German pasta bits. The dessert sounds particularly yummy: chocolate mousse on a bed of mixed berry purée.
 
These dinners cost $50 plus tax and gratuity. There will be a cash bar. Call for reservations.
 
 
This event does not involve food but it just sounds so interesting.
 
On Tuesday evening, April 26, at 7, the Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield's library at 1 Wendell Ave., 413-499-9480, will premier a film by filmmaker Eric Shepherd of Dalton.
 
The film, "Poetry with Music and Film," is a mixed media effort combining past U.S. poet laureate William Jay Smith reading five of his poems to music Berkshire composer and musician Alice Spatz of Lanesborough has written for those poems with creative visions of nature by Eric Shepherd.
 
Actually, adult program coordinator Marilyn Manning who plans and brings forth these events at the Athenaeum, never misses a chance to feed her audiences. This event, being a film, might feature paper bags of fresh popcorn with topping choices and a variety of drinks, at the very least. Marilyn wants library goers to enjoy their evenings and go home happy. And come back, again, for more programs.
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