An Ode to Fresh Chestnuts

Our chestnut delivery finally arrived, and I am in heaven. (Because the chestnuts you find at the grocery store aren't refrigerated, as they should be, more often than not they're stale and moldy by the time you get them home. I order mine from Empire Chestnut Company in Ohio, which sends beautiful, crunchy, sweet chestnuts.) I've started roasting them for the pork and chestnut stew we'll be serving on Saturday, but I also love to eat them raw. The flavor is something like a dense, crunchy, sweet carrot, and quickly becomes addictive.

After scoring each chestnut and roasting them, the meat inside turns starchy and soft. A different flavor, but equally good. It adds its own flavor to the stew, and thickens it as well.

The part of dinner I'm most excited about, though, is serving fresh, hot biscuits with our homemade butter! This is truly a unique experience. How often do you get really good biscuits at a restaurant, served hot out of the oven?

Something ghoulish is going on . . .

. . . it's the Ghoulish Goodies dinner, this Saturday (that's Halloween, in case you'd forgotten). We will be serving unblinking eye meatloaf (only because we couldn't figure out how to keep the eye blinking in the oven), ghostly mashed potatoes, ladies fingers, monster eyeballs, and more. Come check it out!

Fall and winter menus

Bon appetit, as Julia would say:

October 10th: Pork-o-rama

Stuffed pork roast served with homemade spaetzle noodles and chunky applesauce ~ French onion soup fresh coleslaw ~ Alsatian pear tart

October 17th: Festival of Squash

Curried buttercup squash soup, served with homemade crème fraiche ~ mixed squash pickle ~ baked delicata, stuffed with quinoa, pecans, cranberries, and cheddar ~ roasted green beans ~ cardamom pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting

October 31: Ghoulish Goodies

Bandaged glazed carrot fingers ~ unblinking-eye meatloaf ~ ghostly mashed potatoes ~ chocolate spiders ~ ladies’ fingers ~ monster eyeballs

November 7th: All Things Latin

Salvadoran pickled cabbage ~ Cuban black bean soup ~ fresh corn tortillas ~ Rio verde chicken enchiladas, baked in a salsa cream sauce ~ flan

November 14th: Good Ol’ Stew and Biscuits

Pickled beets and carrots ~ hot, flaky biscuits served with homemade butter ~ pork and chestnut stew ~ house salad ~ homemade apple pie

December 5th: Beef Stroganoff

Arugula salad with dried tart cherries, blue cheese, and walnuts ~ beef stroganoff with handmade egg noodles, served with homemade crème fraiche ~ lemon-glazed gingerbread

December 12th: Lasagna Night

Antipasto sampler ~ Caesar salad with homemade dressing and croutons ~ lasagna Bolognese or spinach lasagna with toasted, slivered almonds ~
a platter of Italian cookies and lemon ice

January 9th: A Healthy New Year

Sesame cabbage salad ~ vegetarian dumplings ~ baked fish with ginger and shitake mushrooms, served with jasmine rice and roasted kale ~ walnut cookies and ginger ice cream

It helps to have professional photographers in the house . . .

Here are some great shots by Mars Vilaubi, who came to dinner on Saturday (aka Ravioli Night around the Lodge) with his wife, Alethea, and their son, Xavier:





And check out these swank photos on Flickr, taken by Fran Duncan (www.platetoplate.com), on Ravioli Night: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frangrit/sets/72157622267004929/

She and her husband, Dan Williams (the fastest pasta roller in the Berkshires), helped out in the kitchen on Saturday. Thanks, guys!

Local chicken!

This morning we received our delivery of local, organic chickens for this weekend's dinner! They're from Lauren and Eric Abend at Earthfire Farm in Ashfield, Ma. It's SO nice to finally have a local source for chickens. Can't wait to cook 'em up into tasty potpies. Yum.

And, if I had thought to have my camera handy (bad blogger, bad blogger!), this is where I would have posted a photo of Lauren coming through the door with a bushel basket full of chickens. You'll have to just use your powers of visualization, I suppose.

Our first dinner

Thank you all for
making our first dinner at the Lodge such a success! We hosted 66 people for dinner on Saturday night, and we're so humbled by the positive responses we received about the food, the warm atmosphere, and simply having a place for people to linger and chat with friends. It was lovely.

Our next dinner, this coming Saturday, will feature homemade ravioli. Because they are so labor-intensive to produce, however, we have decided to limit the seating for this dinner and have stopped taking reservations at this time.

If you were hoping to attend, we definitely recommend our chicken pot pie night on September 19th! Our pies will feature local chicken and vegetables baked in a savory gravy under a flaky layer of pastry. We will also be serving our curried zucchini pickles, fresh bread with homemade butter, mesclun salad with Cathy's secret-recipe dressing, and hot apple crisp (from local apples, of course!)

And (as if that weren't enough!) we will end the evening with a hootenanny! We'll pass out the lyrics to some classic folk songs (such as these: http://www.folkalley.com/lists/) and sing along with Deb Burns and her trio, Singing School. If you love to sing, please come! If you've got an instrument, please bring it!

Sold Out!

Hello, fellow chowhounds!
We are officially sold out for our first dinner on September 5th. There are lots of tasty meals to come, however, including deelicious handmade ravioli on September 12th (that's next Saturday, so get your reservation in soon).

Thanks!