The Inn
at Sweet Water Farm
One Prospect Lake Road
Great Barrington
(North Egremont), Massachusetts 01230
(413) 528-2882
Join Our Mailing List
|
|
|
About Us
|
 |
Our inn is an early 19th century post and
beam construction where the glow of the wood floors, comfort of the hearth and
tranquility of the surrounding country invites you to take a deep breath and
enjoy.
|
|
Welcome!
Being away from the inn last month definitely made my heart
grow fonder, for which I am grateful.
Read on, to see why love is all you need and to get your monthly recipe. This
one is inspired by the one and only Julia Child ...
Lynda Fisher
Innkeeper
The Inn at Sweet Water Farm
|
|
Oh My God, I've Fallen In Love!
The air
smells of freshly cut grass. The sunlight is so clear it sparkles. Are there
always so many birds singing? This can mean only one thing. I'm in love! ...
with where I live. Go ahead, indulge in a moment of jealousy.
While my
peer group read Dress for Success I read cookbooks like dime-store novels. I
started innocently enough with prim Julia Child and before I knew it ended up
in bed with Nigella Lawson and pasta carbonara.
In fact I'm
kind of an idiot savant when it comes to cookbooks. I have photographic recall
of recipes and narrative passages about food and know EXACTLY where each of 700
or so cookbooks lives (so don't be thinking I won't notice one gone missing ... because I will and
I have).
If you too
suffer from a cookbook fetish, hunt down Feast: A Tribal Cookbook, by the True Light
Beavers. (I paid 25 cents in 1978, it was stolen in 1985, and it took me until
2009 to replace it. Trust me, it's worth the hunt.)
I only had 5
cookbooks when 25 cents bought me Tribal Feast but given the lifetime
addiction that resulted it's the most expensive book I've ever bought!
I wanted MORE, not just cookbooks, but cupboards full of mismatched
cups, saucers and plates, all with a story to tell, copper pots on the wall,
freshly baked bread on the sideboard, pies cooling on the window sill ... you
get the picture.
So here I
am: a curator of the way things used to be. Laundry on Tuesday. Cleaning on
Wednesday. Baking on Thursday.
Fridays are
for your arrival. Then it's time to share the rhythm of the Berkshires, quiet,
calm and peaceful.
Today is
Monday, and in the solitude of a brilliant spring morning, I indulge in my
favorite breakfast. A cup of coffee.
Not Yuban,
for those of you still reeling from my coffee confessions. Today, it's from the
Castro Coffee Company in San Francisco, a vacation souvenir.
Coffee time
is when I record my dreams, something I've been doing for thirty-five years.
(Once a Jungian art therapist, always a Jungian art therapist). It's my reserve
fuel tank in times of extreme living.
A third
quick cup, a few minutes with my borrowed point and shoot unsuccessfully
snapping those elusive sheets blowing in the wind. Someday....I'll succeed.
No matter.
Today, there is absolutely nowhere in the world I would rather be. Love
is all you need.
|
Forest Delight
Warning:
ridiculous, romantic story ahead.
Once upon a time, my scones refused to rise. Sacrifices were
made, evil faeries were appeased, and all is now well in sconeland.
My croissants are another story. I am on a quest to get
my mojo back (you'll be the first to know when I succeed). No opportunity to
visit magical realms to plead my case can be squandered.
So let me
tell you where the fairies live.
A few springs ago, my friend Cecilia called and proposed a walk. Strolling the "Lower Loop"
at dusk is dumb, I thought. It's a shady walk through the forest, with
streams running crisscross, and at this time of year mosquitoes are voracious.
We were
moving fast - the mosquitoes faster. I knew it was a dumb idea.
And then
...
We saw it.
One single magenta flower.
Then a few
more: here salmon, there the softest pink and over yonder a maroon one.
There must
have been twenty or thirty floral candelabra dotting the muddy stream bank. The
scent of spring mud floated some half-forgotten memory of a musky teenage
night.
We stopped
in wonder, mosquitoes be damned.
The
brilliant colors coaxed us from the road down the stream bank and onto the
marshy forest floor.
"Look: More!
White, rose, carmine, and lavender too!"
So into the
shallow, cold, COLD water we followed a trail of flowers growing in the stream
as it flowed past the little ice house and sugar shack deep in the woods.
Suddenly,
to my right, as far as I could see, hundreds, maybe thousands of primroses,
from purest white to deepest maroon.
Not a single blue or yellow, however. Who
mixed this palette? No human gardener is capable of such restraint.
We stood
there in twilight, full of childhood wonder at our faerie hosts.
In the
presence of magic, we stood humbled, dizzy, and getting eaten alive by
mosquitoes.
When least
expected, I finally found the fabled primrose lane described in English
gardening books.
I wonder
how long this primrose river has been sowing itself? I hope Avalon awaits me
next spring. A girl needs to visit a magical realm at least once a year. It's where you go to get your mojo back.
|
Recipe from the Gentle Stove:
Hungarian Shortbread with Rhubarb and Angelica Jam
Before
vanilla hit the top of the charts, angelica and bay leaf were rock stars. I was picking rhubarb for Julia
Child's Hungarian Shortbread with Rhubarb Jam, when the angelica growing lush in
the shade caught my eye.
I have been obsessed with angelica ever since reading The Herb Farm Cookbook. I am
usually alone in my rapture over the haunting taste of honey, linden and
hawthorne.
Not
everybody likes the texture of woody strings in their pie or tart. Fair enough.
This stuff
has tender new shoots just like the cookery books say it should. I swapped out
the vanilla in Julia's recipe for the angelica stalks, and the resulting jam was
just like I knew it could be: smooth with a nostalgic dusty-rose color. The
shortbread is rich and crumbly.
Here is the
recipe. It's a keeper!
Hungarian
Shortbread with Rhubarb and Angelica Jam
From Baking with Julia
If you've
got the book, the page is 327. Just swap a few stalks of tender angelica shoots
growing in your backyard. (Yes, I am being facetious.) Maybe you can find it at
the farmers' market. Some nurseries carry the stuff in the herb section. It's a
biennial and self-sows. Easy enough.
If you
don't have the book, I've probably changed the recipe enough to make this
reprint okay, but you'll miss reading Julia's wise and wonderful narrative.
The Jam
1 pound
rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 1 inch pieces
½ cup sugar
¼ cup water
3 young
stalks angelica about 8 inches in length cut into 1 inch pieces
Bring to
simmer and cook until soft, about 10 to 15 minutes. And cool.
The Shortbread
3 cups
all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons
baking powder
¼ teaspoon
salt
3 sticks
unsalted butter at room temp (Julia uses 4 sticks)
4 large egg
yolks (somebody's getting an egg white omelet if they want one!)
1½
cups sugar (Julia uses 2 cups)
Whisk together all the dry ingredients.
In a stand mixer, beat the butter on high speed until fluffy
and add in the egg yolks and sugar. Beat until light-colored.
Reduce speed to low and mix in dry ingredients just until
blended.
Assembly
Here is where Julia and I differ. She freezes all the dough
and grates it into a 9 x 12-inch baking dish, once it is frozen. Sometimes I do that, but sometimes
I'm impatient. So I make two disks of dough and put them in the freezer for half an hour.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. I use a 9 x 9-inch baking dish
because I like the shortbreads to be taller.
Crumble one of the disks into the bottom of the pan, and bake
for 15 minutes until puffy and turning slightly golden.
Take it out of the oven, spoon jam over the bottom layer,
and then crumble the rest of the dough on top. It's okay if there are little
spaces. Pretty, pretty jam will show through.
Return the pan to the oven and bake for another 25 to 30
minutes until it turns dark brown on the edges and golden brown on top. Make
sure the middle isn't jiggly.
Cool on a rack.
Cut into 1-inch squares, and sprinkle the top with powdered
sugar.
This keeps for at least three days, if it lasts that long!
 |
|
© 2010 The Inn at Sweet Water Farm
|
|
|
