SpiceLines

"Forgotten" 17th century breads, made with grains from Anson Mills and baked in
a wood-burning oven, were on the menu at the first annual Farm to Fork Picnic.

It’s 6:27 PM and the pasture at Chapel Hill Creamery is thronged, not with Jerseys, but hordes of ravenous gourmands. Kids are petting whey-fed pigs and a blue grass fiddler is tuning up. Le tout Chapel Hill—and much of Durham—has paid $35 a head to feast on ravishing fare from local farms cooked by the area’s culinary mavens. It’s the first Farm to Fork picnic, honoring Slow Food International founder Carlo Petrini, who’s urging us to support the hard-working small farmers who produce North Carolina’s stellar heritage pigs, strawberries, farmhouse cheese and lots more.

Not that anyone in this food-obsessed crowd needs encouragement.

Here’s what my friend Ced and I are eating now:

6:31: Poached turnips with cast-seared onions and rainbow chard. Blonde, willowy Ashley Christiansen from Enoteca Vin is spooning the sweetest baby turnips out of a stainless bowl, while chatting with Sandwhich co-owner Janet Elbetri. I’m salivating over the black tea-cured bacon with poached egg, ramps and wild mushroom-Banyuls vinaigrette on her restaurant menu.

6:37: “Hell, I’m not gonna tell you you can’t eat it,” says a bearded gent out of the side of his mouth. He steps away to reveal two splendid heritage hogs reposing side by side on a pair barbecue wagons. Ced digs in and I follow, both of us spurning forks for fingers—here in North Carolina this is know as pig-pickin’, The meat is rich and full of delicious fat, rare in these days of lean pork sold as “the other white meat.” We gravitate a few feet to where the farmer, Eliza McLean of Cane Creek Farm, is dishing out chopped pork barbecue from the same hogs, but with vinegar sauce. “What’s that?” she says suspiciously, eyeing the shreds of meat on our guilty plates. Champion barbecuer Jonathan Childres from The Barbecue Joint just grins.

6:44: I’m in heaven. Eating cabrito, slow roasted in a pit on hot rocks, Monterrey-style, and it is fabulous, especially wrapped up in what look and taste like earthy, handmade corn tortillas and spiked with fiery roasted jalapeno and lime salsa. That, and the equally superb lamb, come from Fickle Creek Farm, our go-to-guys for the freshest local eggs. I tell Ben about Gerard Vives' amazing egg recipe on SpiceLines.

6:50: Around the corner Andrea and Brendan Reusing of the Lantern have laid on a head-and-tail heritage pig feast. (Andrea heads the local Slow Food chapter and the restaurant is sponsor of the evening.) I love the slivered pigs ears, done Vietnamese style with cilantro, lime and fish sauce—they are crunchy, a little gelatinous, and the seasonings are summery and delicious. Ced, who’s English, is making a beeline for the roasted pig tails, big curly hunks of meat which he says are great, speaking between ecstatic mouthfuls. Something from his childhood, I suspect.

6:56: A platter of roasted asparagus comes into view. It is the essence of May. Glorious, just-picked flavor.

6:59: A gorgeous display of “forgotten” 16th and 17th century hearth cooked breads, made with grains from Anson Mills in South Carolina. They include a crusty Pain Bourgeois spiked with barm yeast from beer-making, a beautiful round cornmeal bread wrapped and baked in fig leaves, and the Opulent Farmer, a 17th century loaf of rye, wheat and barley, so named because it was considered decadent to bake a loaf with so many grains. All were baked in a wood-burning oven somewhere in Durham and they taste utterly different from any bread I’ve ever had. Earthy, dense, authentic. A single slice would make a nourishing meal.

7:12: “Lets take a break,” says Ced. Kids are tossing eggs and gluing freshly shelled peas onto construction paper. What? Isn’t that a waste of great peas? I believe Ced is beginning to wonder at my appetite.

7:26: Back in action with a rich cauliflower fritter topped with swiss chard. It’s great. Wish I knew where it came from.

7:29: The soup to end all soups: Cold white sweet potato soup with champagne vinegar and a spoonful of bright green leek oil. “Unfortunately it’s almost the end of the season for white sweet potatoes,” says Jeremy Blankenship, the Carolina Inn chef who created this refreshing concoction. I beg him for the recipe anyway.

7:34: We’ve discovered the table with Chapel Hill Creamery farmhouse cheeses. New Moon is fresh and camembert-like. Hickory Grove, an aged raw milk, monastery-style cheese, is rich, almost buttery-tasting. The candied nuts—were they pecans?—on each slice of Hickory Grove are divine.

7:39: Karen Barker of Magnolia Grill has a dessert worth sinning for: cornmeal poundcake, served with luscious green tomato conserve and a tart-but-rich buttermilk sabayon sauce. It is perfect haute Southern cuisine. If only I could eat two pieces…

7:47: But here’s a really adorable strawberry shortcake, about the size of a silver dollar, made by Amy Tornquist of Sage & Swift caterers. It tastes like summer: a few delectable sweet strawberries, a tender biscuit and a dollop of whipped cream. Ced’s eyes get a little misty. “An English cream tea…”

7:50: The sun is setting. A sliver of chocolate chess pie has found its way onto my plate….

Editor’s note: Proceeds of the Farm to Fork Picnic will be used to plant heritage Southern apple trees at Lakewood and Burton Elementary Schools in Durham.