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| Hungarian Cherry Tea Cake |
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Conference & Retreat Center
Articles from The Democrat and Chronicle, July 24, 2007 and the recipe for the Hungarian cherry tea cake.
For your convenience, you can click on the title of the article and be taken to the article as it appears on the website of the Democrat and Chronicle.
Cake recipe inspires the baker's imagination
Karen Miltner
Staff writer
(August 7, 2007) — Since we reported on the good eats at the Rochester Folk Art Guild in Middlesex, Yates County, a couple weeks ago, many readers have asked about the lemon and black raspberry cake mentioned in the July 24 article. So we called kitchen manager Victoria Hunter, who tells us the original recipe came from Sheila Lukins' All Around the World Cookbook (Workman, $27.95). Like many good cooks, Hunter used Lukins' formula for Hungarian Cherry Tea Cake as a springboard for her own creation. In this case, she doubled the recipe, used a 12-inch springform pan, added an extra egg yolk and swapped black raspberries for the cherries.
We found the original recipe and present it here as an invitation to add your own touches. If you insist on local fruit, the bad news is that cherry season is over and blackberries and black raspberries are winding down. But the good news is that blueberries are going strong, and the second picking of red raspberries should start in a week or two.
Hungarian Cherry Tea Cake
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
3 large eggs, separated
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ cup all purpose flour
Pinch of salt
1½ cups pitted sweet dark cherries, fresh or well-drained jarred
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter an 8½-inch springform cake pan. Line the bottom with a round of waxed or parchment paper and butter the paper.
Cream the butter and ½ cup sugar in a mixing bowl with an electric mixer. Add the egg yolks, lemon zest, lemon juice and vanilla. Mix well. Add flour and mix well.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until firm but not stiff. Stir one-third of the egg whites into the batter until well combined. Fold the remaining egg whites into the batter with a rubber spatula until just combined.
Scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Top evenly with the cherries, leaving about ½-inch border around the sides of the pan. Sprinkle the top evenly with the remaining 1 tablespoon sugar. Bake the cake until golden brown and the top springs back when lightly touched, about 35 minutes. Cool the cake on a wire rack 10 minutes. Run a small knife around the cake to loosen it from the side of the pan. Remove the ring and let the cake cool completely. When it is completely cool, invert the cake onto a large plate. Remove the springform bottom and the waxed paper, then invert the cake on to a serving plate.
Makes 8 servings.
Artists sink roots in farming that's good for the land
Karen Miltner
Staff writer
(July 24, 2007) — The public mostly knows the Rochester Folk Art Guild by its handsome yet functional ceramic pieces, clothing, furniture, boats and other handmade arts and crafts that are sold at art shows and its East Hill Gallery in Middlesex, Yates County. But food and farming have always loomed large for the 45-member nonprofit arts and crafts education organization, more than a dozen of whose members live year-round at the 360-acre farm on Middlesex's East Hill, where the gallery and other Guild workshops are located.
This year, as this unique community marks its 50th anniversary, its home-grown organic produce is making its mark in the community at large as well. A "revisioning process" that began a few years ago has upgraded the agricultural mission from an organically run farm that nourishes Guild members and visitors to a certified organic operation that feeds the public at large and serves as an educational resource for alternative, sustainable farming methods and philosophies.
"Our goal is to bring the farm back as a (means) to produce food for the community and to network with the (agricultural) community," says Mark House, farm manager at the Guild's East Hill Organic Farm.
"This is a huge expansion, to go beyond our own needs," adds longtime Guild member and woodworker David Barnet, who also oversees the farm's established orchards.
East Hill Organic Farm now sells a multitude of produce — including many heirloom fruits and vegetables — at the Victor, Canandaigua and South Wedge farmers markets, and supplies fruit to two area community-supported agriculture programs. Vegetables of intense color — rainbow Swiss chard, purple carrots and golden beets— are best-sellers, adds House.
The farm's educational arm provides workshops and seminars on a range of sustainable farming topics and offers on-site internships and apprenticeships. Many of these programs are in partnership with the Center for Sustainable Living (which established its home base at East Hill Farm in 2003) and the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute, a project of the Cayuga Nature Center in Ulysses, Tompkins County.
The farm expansion joins other long-range initiatives to help improve the public's access to the Guild's resources. Last year the Guild revamped its Web site, opened a bed-and-breakfast/conference center at the farm and began networking with regional tourist and community groups to help raise the gallery's profile.
Built like a guy who could win the tractor pull by pulling the tractor himself, House, 42, is a relative newcomer to the Guild, compared to his peers who have been taking part for decades. His interest in sustainable farming and environmental issues stretches back to his former involvement with Politics of Food (now Rochester Roots). He also has been part of the local farmers market scene for years. He founded the Canandaigua market and currently serves as market manager at the Victor market.
As House talks about the Guild's new farming initiative, he overlaps fairly familiar agricultural terms with newer eco-farmer jargon. A quick glossary and how they relate to the Guild's farm:
Organic: The farm's grape, berry and vegetable fields have been officially certified since 2006, though the orchards are not. However, Barnet and House insist, East Hill residents have always farmed using natural and organic methods.
Season extension: The farm uses a moveable, solar-heated hoop house and greenhouse to extend the growing season at both ends, an impressive feat given East Hill's windy location and 1,300-foot elevation. Since installing these structures, Guild members have been enjoying home-grown salads throughout the winter. Next year House hopes to have tomatoes ready to eat by June. He also plans to market this produce to local restaurants.
Permaculture: In terms of farming, it's a system or philosophy of integrating crops for human consumption into the natural landscape in a way that not only sustains but improves the overall ecosystem. Permaculture design can also apply to other land use needs such as architecture.
East Hill may be the only commercial farm in the region that has embraced permaculture methods and is promoting itself that way, notes Steve Gabriel, program director at the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute.
Zone system: A permaculture concept of landscape design that places the most often used crops closest to one's home (zone 0) and the less frequently needed crops farther away, with the final zone 5 typically left natural.
Carbon sequestering: Reforesting once-farmed acreage in order to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and fix it into the soil — a natural way to reverse or mitigate global warming.
To illustrate the last three concepts at work, you have to squint southward from East Hill's main market garden field (just a short jaunt from the communal dining hall and kitchen) to a hill where earlier this year House and some young volunteers and interns planted about 1,000 black locust and several hundred black walnut saplings in a transitional strip that buffers the wild zone 5.
Both trees capture carbon to be held in suspension in the soil. The leguminous locusts also fix nitrogen for soil replenishment, and when they mature in a couple of decades, will make rot-resistant posts for East Hill's vineyard trellises. The locusts provide good-burning firewood as well. Meanwhile the walnut trees will provide raw material for the Guild's woodworkers.
East Hill Organic Farm is not just ahead of the curve, it's "on a whole different curve," says Jim Ochterski, agriculture economic development specialist at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ontario County, who plans to co-sponsor workshops this winter with House. "I'm seeing a facility that is doing a good job of advocating for alternative forms of agriculture in a very real way. They are looking at their land resources differently than other people do and they are bringing different land elements together in harmony."
Besides the market farm that House oversees, the Guild has other gardens and free-roaming chickens on site that provide fruits, vegetables and eggs for communal meals. At one point livestock used to graze in East Hill's fields, and House hopes to bring animals back into the farm picture in the future.
"We overwhelm people with negative publicity about the bad things we do to the environment," notes House. He prefers to sell the Guild's revitalized farming vision with the real article of the East Hill Organic Farm's forward-thinking land stewardship.
"What could be more appealing than going to a farmers market and seeing tables full of locally grown organic product? That's a powerful statement."
The Guild: A brief history
Karen Miltner
STAFF WRITER
(July 24, 2007) — The Rochester Folk Art Guild was founded in 1957 by Louise March, a Swiss-born art historian who was a close associate and translator for the Greek-Armenian mystic George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (1860s-1949) during the 1920s and 1930s.
March's vision for the Guild combined her interest in traditional folk art disciplines (including ceramics, woodworking, weaving, boat building, woodworking, textiles and music) with Gurdjieff's spiritual teachings. His philosophy, as veteran Guild member Paul Schliffer describes it in an e-mail, "aims to awaken people to a much deeper and fuller experience of their everyday lives."
The Guild spent its first decade in Rochester and then bought East Hill Farm in Middlesex, Yates County, in 1967.
Only a handful of people lived at the farm originally, but by the late 1970s the number of residents swelled to 40, says Schliffer. Today, about 15 people (single adults, couples and families) live on East Hill, with other Guild members coming to work and participate in farm life regularly each week. The population fluctuates throughout the year as family members, interns, apprentices and visitors come and go.
Members say they admire the way Mrs. March (as she was affectionately known) brought a practical, functional application to Gurdjieff's philosophy, particularly through the regular practice of crafts and farming.
"We strive for a blending of a meaningful inner life and outer life," says member David Barnet.
Mrs. March lived on East Hill Farm until her death in 1987 and is buried there.
Many people have no prior background in a particular craft when they come to the Guild. They learn through an apprenticeship system.
All work is done collaboratively, and instead of a personal signature of an individual artist, finished pieces are identified as the work of Rochester Folk Art Guild. Guild members also pitch in on whatever needs to get done on the farm, from washing dishes and pruning vines to building a new roof for the meeting hall.
"It's a miracle that so many people want to keep the experiment going. When you see the results and hear the positive feedback, you understand why," says Barnet, musing on the Guild's half-century milestone.
Today, the Guild operates on a $250,000 annual budget, supporting itself with sales of its arts and crafts as well as contributions from members and supporters. Members receive a salary for their work, and residents pay rent to live on the farm.
"It's difficult sometimes to manage," concedes Barnet. "But we look out for each other."
Closeness to earth nurtures guild's top cook
Karen Miltner
Staff writer
(July 24, 2007) — In her pre-Rochester Folk Art Guild life, Victoria Hunter ran a restaurant and banquet hall and later a catering business in Buffalo. They were successful ventures, but they did not feed her soul the way working the Guild's communal kitchen at East Hill Farm in Middlesex, Yates County does.
The eureka moment came for Hunter early on when she was digging potatoes with her fellow Guild member and future husband, Michael.
"I picked up a potato and felt a vibration. This thing is alive, I thought. I had never had such a direct experience with really fresh food," says the 54-year-old kitchen manager who has been living and cooking at East Hill for 18 years.
Forget the Sysco delivery truck spilling out boxes of frozen, pre-breaded cutlets processed thousands of miles away. Here, most ingredients are carried in from the fields or from nearby farms.
The kitchen is a 21st-century homesteader's dream come true, with a handmade maple prep table and a teak drainboard that slopes to the sink, a 100-year-old coal-burning Aga range from Sweden and a canning stove. Naturally, there is no microwave in this make-it-from-scratch domain, but four years ago Guild members caved to one item of culinary convenience and voted in a toaster.
My visit to East Hill Farm earlier this month included a lunch prepared by Hunter and other Guild members. It made me understand why, without fail, anyone who talks about Guild life mentions the food in one way or another.
Here is the entire menu: heirloom salad greens with a tarragon and red currant jelly vinaigrette and sauteed broccoli raab, all just picked from the farm; braided brioche and fresh pasta made with the farm's free-range eggs; grilled beef tenderloin from Sweet Grass Meats, a grass-fed farm in Naples, Ontario County; just-picked Duke cherries, described by orchard manager David Barnet as a cross between sweet and sour; two chèvres, or fresh goat cheese, one plain, one wrapped in fresh herbs, from a nearby farm that Hunter declined to name; and for dessert, a light lemon and black raspberry cake with whipped cream.
Organic, from scratch, beautifully presented (on handsome rejects from the pottery studio) and utterly delicious go without saying.
"When you see the process from start to finish, you really are deeply grateful for everything that went into it," says Hunter.
Grateful, indeed.
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