It’s been a month since our third annual statewide Eat Drink Local Week came to a close, and we’ve finally sorted through our Challenge entries to pick a few winners. The main focus of Eat Drink Local is our partnering restaurant and markets, who created special locally sourced meals centered around our seven seasonal ingredients of the week. And in fact, we want to give yet another giant shout-out to our restaurant, winery, market and brewery partners, as well as to our fantastic sponsors, many of them some of the best food-based organizations in the area: GrowNYC, the Shawangunk Wine Trail, NOFA-NY, ILOVENY, Long Island Wine Council, New York Wine and Grape Foundation, Bing, Organic Valley and American Express. But eating and drinking locally are also about more than merely eating out. They’re about cooking with friends and family, putting by some jam or pickles, growing an herb garden, visiting a farm, composting your table scraps and so many other activities. That’s why we created the challenge, to encourage you to do just those types of things. So, our three winners–picked from those who let us know what they were up to during Eat Drink Local Week–are below. Each has won a case of Long Island wine and a year’s subscription to Edible East End, Edible Brooklyn and Edible Manhattan.
Rick Field, of Rick’s Picks: For the second year in a row, Field created a recipe using one of his farm-sourced, Greenmarket-sold pickles and one of our ingredients of the week, and encouraged all of his employees around the city to do the same. You can find recipes like Kool Gherk Mignonette for local oysters and lamb burgers with Hotties pickle chips along with countless more seasonally inspired pickle recipes on his blog.
Alexa Van de Walle, of lightheartedlocavore.blogspot.com: Van de Walle, an East Ender, posted two of her favorite rhubarb recipes (a citrus kicked compote and a spiced cider vinegar chutney) in honor of one of our ingredients of the week, and asked other readers to do the same. You can find them both on her blog.
Lysa Chen: Brooklynite Lysa Chen told us she was whipping up a garlic scape pesto and planning some berry picking, and hoped that Eat Drink Local would finally get her to eat at Park Slope’s al di la. We hope so too!
