Dan Barber

Red pepper eggs in the snow

Photos by James Lynch

Larder lineup. Winter tastes better with ferments.

The team is deep in taste testing to determine what will go where...

Rosalba radicchio crepinette, stuffed with chioggia radicchio marmalade

Photos by James Lynch

We’re studying the impact of breed, working on a replicable waste feeding diet. What’s the recipe? Stay tuned.

A pig raised on nearly 100% food scraps means no food miles from imported grain, healthier pigs, more nutritious pork and endless ways to virtue signal. But this bravura pork is also demonstrably more delicious.

As extreme rains becomes more common, some Iowa farmers turn to 'relay intercropping' Extreme rainfall and flooding are becoming more common across much of the U.S. In Iowa, some farmers are experimenting with something called relay intercropping to keep more rainfall in the fields.

Intercropping with rye is a brilliant strategy to retain nutrients and improve water holding capacity, but it won’t happen if we don’t eat more rye.

www.npr.org/2025/07/17/n...

Not olives.

They're Cornelian cherries. But I dare you to taste them and not be reminded of Provence or Greece’s best.  

Grown in the Hudson Valley, harvested before the October freeze, and then ash cured, lacto-fermented, partially dried and marinated in oil.  

#mediterraneandiet

And with dishes like his version of the potato and cheese dish Aligot, he rejuvenated the old soul of his region.

To be seated at his farmhouse table 30 years later with his wife Ginette for lunch, the master at the stove showing me his famous Aligot, was to be pulled into a dream. (3/3)

His style was improvisational, whimsical and elegantly unconventional. Vegetables and herbs and the landscape were his inspiration—the tools he's used to push the boundaries of French cooking and, in the process, craft a new cuisine entirely. (2/3)

Thirty ago I was starting out as a young commis in Paris. After brutal days in the kitchen, I would lie on the floor of my flat reading about Michel Bras, a brilliant chef who was defying the Michelin guide and the norms of French fine dining by putting vegetables center stage... (1/3)

Lard palette

purple asparagus / green strawberry. white asparagus / red strawberry.

New study compares growing corn for energy to solar production. It’s no contest. In fact, it would require about 31 hectares of corn ethanol to produce the same amount of energy generated by one hectare of land covered in solar panels.

Finally there's research backing up what we’ve known for decades.
www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2025/04/new-...

USDA cancels $1B in local food purchasing for schools, food banks States have been notified that they will not receive 2025 funding for schools to buy food from nearby farms.

Devastating news today.
www.politico.com/news/2025/03...

This week we peeled away the Acquerello’s decayed outer layers to see—and taste—how the burgundy-flecked inner heads have fared.

It’s going to take genetic selection, and a lot of farming know-how to make it work. We could do no better than starting with varieties like Acquerello radicchio to push the limits of the late winter harvest.

...Too late for all the real cold snaps that make vegetables tastier and sweeter; too early for what the southern states and California do with their early jump into spring. Solving for March in the Northeast means a harvest (and revenue) for farmers year-round.

I once learned that Hemingway lamented his mid 20’s, that he felt caught between youth and age like someone who just missed his train: too late for the last, too early for the next.  

March is like that...

U.S. gene banks, key to new crops, hobbled by Trump job cuts Newly appointed head of USDA’s genetic repositories axed along with key staff

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the USDA’s seed library—a 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 library of germplasm that must be maintained and cultivated. Breeders across the US rely on this germplasm to develop new, disease-resistant varieties of plants.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Riding the rebellious streak, Blue Hill chefs have been working on a new kind of frito using rebellion corn—nixtamalized, ridged and spiced.

Dr. Frank Kutka fought back with breeding. His solution is brilliant and elegant. He crossed landrace varieties of dent corn (grain corn) with popcorn varieties to create incompatibility—popcorn contains traits that make it hard for GMO pollen to enter non-GMO corn silks. Rebellion corn was born.

So organic farmers’ qualms with GMOs are deeper than the technology itself— it’s really more about the unchecked power of big agribusiness and how they play willy nilly with nature and our food supply without penalty.

Wind and insects carry GMO pollen into adjacent fields of non-GMO corn, compromising their organic genetics and creating a nightmare for the farmer in the form of rejections from grain buyers and lawsuits from big seed companies.

Rebellion Fritos

Corn goes a long way to explain why organic farmers get pissed about GMOs.

GMO corn is a pernicious beast. 86 of the 94 million acres of corn grown in the US are GMO. And those GMO acres are constantly encroaching on the organic ones through cross pollination...