Entries tagged with 'Vermont'
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Note: It's time for another edition of Street Food Profiles. This week we scoot to Burlington, Vermont, where one woman has been selling dumplings for ten years. [Photographs: Hong's Chinese Dumplings] Name: Hong's Chinese Dumplings Vendor: Hong Yu Location and hours? Church Street in front of the Borders bookstore in Burlington, Vermont. Hours depend on the sunshine. What do you sell? Chicken and pork dumplings, veggie dumplings in pot sticker style, crab ragoons, shrimp egg rolls, veggie egg rolls, chicken cheese egg rolls, sesame cold noodles, and veggie fried rice along with homemade ginger garlic soy sauce, hot chili oil, and sweet cranberry sauce. How long have you been street-fooding? 10 years....
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I'm not sure most people can recall the state bird of Georgia but if you ask them what fruit is commonly associated with the state, "peach" should come out pretty fast. All states have strong ties with specific foods. Maine has lobsters, Idaho claims spuds, Wisconsin is known for cheese. Some states are more blessed than others when it comes to sheer depth of local bounty. Vermont is one of those lucky states. Wonderful maple syrup is just a tiny fraction of what Vermont has to offer. Vermont has been a pioneer in the local eating movement, especially with the formation of the Vermont Fresh Network back in the early 1990s. The goal of VFN was to bring farmers and...
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"I've never tasted so many American cheeses in such a concentrated amount of time." Murray's Cheese successfully packed a group of 55 die-hard cheese fanatics from New York on a bus to Shelburne Farms outside of Burlington, Vermont, to the first-ever Vermont Cheesemaker's Festival this past Sunday. As one of the lucky passengers of this 24-hour fiesta, I have nothing but praise for the organizers of the trip, my fellow bus-riders, our bus driver John, and over fifty cheesemakers and artisan food producers at the festival. Though I've never considered myself a cheesehead, I've been known to attend a cheese tasting and class or two and am usually the one at the table to pick our cheese plate selections. I've...
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Vermont's hills are alive with the sound of "Oma!" Brothers Sebastian and Dan Von Trapp (yes, they are related to those Von Trapps) have just released Oma, an amazing new cheese from the Mad River Valley in Vermont. A washed-rind raw cow's milk cheese, Oma's silky texture (soft and supple, but not runny) is perhaps its most unique feature. But its taste delivers too. The cheese is earthy, barnyardy, and buttery, and the raw milk makes for a complexity of flavor absent in most American cheeses of its ilk. "Oma" is German for "grandmother," and the cheese is named after Sebastian and Dan's Oma, Erica Von Trapp, who started the family farm 50 years ago. The farm has a...
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It's prime maple syrup season in Vermont right now. At Harlow's Sugar House in Putney, Vermont, that means ice chests full of saved snow (yes, actual snow instead of just crushed ice) are whipped out for the local springtime snack: Sugar on Snow. In the maple belt of New England the treat is sometimes called "leather aprons" or "leather britches" because of its leathery texture. At some sugar houses, though not Harlow's, Sugar on Snow is served with sour pickles to cut the sweetness, and saltines or plain doughnuts....
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While perusing Cook's Illustrated editor Christopher Kimball's Twitter feed, we found this video of him and his crew "sugaring" maple sap—boiling it down to syrup. (After the jump.) February through April (depending on local conditions) is the traditional season for maple syrup production in the U.S. and Canada. It's a little difficult to hear voices in the video because the sugar house's equipment is loud, but someone made sure to pump the soundtrack up—it's Kimball's band, Shady Grove. Yes, Christopher Kimball is in a bluegrass band. Who knew!...
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Here in the northeast, we are lucky enough to have access to some of the best artisan cheeses made in America. Sure Wisconsin and California have us beat on sheer volume, but cheesemakers in Vermont, New York, Connecticut, and elsewhere are definitely holding their own. One such relative newcomer is Consider Bardwell Farm, the West Pawlet-based brainchild of Russell Glover and Angela Miller. Along with cheesemaker Peter Dixon, they are making some of the best American artisan cheeses available. The farm makes several goat cheeses using milk from their herd of Oberhasli goats, a Swiss dairy breed. The goats are allowed to graze rotationally on pesticide-free grasses, a process in which the animals are only given access to grasses that...
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Photograph by Clay Gordon. In my last post I wrote about Hometown Favorites, the chocolate shop that has built strong emotional ties with chocolate fans for generations. As an outsider, it's sometimes hard to locate these gems while traveling but they're typically worth seeking out. A couple of years ago, my family members were in Buffalo, New York, and dropped off some sponge candy from Fowler's Chocolates (founded in 1901) for me. Sponge, also known as honeycomb, is one of my all-time childhood favorites, but very few people make it anymore. I have to buy it wherever I find it. For the past six or seven years I've been road-tripping every summer to Burlington, Vermont, and it's no surprise...
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Step aside Phish Food, Cherry Garcia, and Dave Matthews Band Magic Brownies. There's another music-inspired Ben & Jerry's flavor on the scene: Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road, made of chocolate ice cream, peanut butter cookie dough, butter "brickle," and white chocolate chunks. Brickle, you ask? Besides the punny allusion to Sir Elton's 1970s album and song, the made-up word refers to a toffee-like brittle. Sir Elton has visited all 49 states, and the missing 50th is Vermont—but not for long. In honor of his sold-out show on Monday, July 21, the local hippie ice cream heroes created this flavor, available at the Ben & Jerry's Vermont scoop shops between July 18 and July 25. All proceeds will benefit the...
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Cheddar from Grafton Village Cheese Company With the housing market tanking, financial companies imploding, and the dollar weaker than a gin and tonic on the rocks, some are finding it hard to cough up the small fortune required these days to buy even the most basic artisanal cheese plate. Add to that the stress of Uncle Sam breathing down your neck this time of year, and you'll end up deciding to avoid cheese altogether. After all, cheese can be quite expensive, and is one of those foods whose quality generally increases with the price. Small dairies cannot take advantage of the economies of scale afforded by a large herd, but, all else being equal, a small dairy will usually make...
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