Friday, April 26, 2013

At Our Winery Café, Chef Tony Gullace Creates Garlic-Infused Tapas Menu for August




Every August, we celebrate the local artisan garlic harvest in a serious way – hosting our 2-day festival of all things garlic, by bringing together garlic growers and experts, farmers, specialty food producers, artists musicians, and thousands of visitors. All of this fantastic garlic action takes place in a village square atmosphere we create for the occasion, on the spacious lawns behind our winery.

This winter, brainstorming with my good friend, Chef Tony Gullace, we can up with the idea to extend the celebration with a garlic-infused tapas menu, and feature it throughout the month of August at our winery café. Tony Gullace is one of Rochester’s iconic chefs – and he and I have been friends for over 20 years. His acclaimed restaurants in downtown Rochester are hugely popular, sought-out culinary destination points and include: Max of Eastman Place, Max Chophouse, Max Sushi Noodles and Max at the Gallery. His passion for cooking is equally fueled by the utilization of topnotch local ingredients.  He has prepared the menus for several Fox Run Garlic Festivals and for the numerous garlic dinners we used to have on the Saturday night of the festival. We don’t do the Saturday dinners any more – getting too old for those late, late nights - as many of you famously remember. But Tony has returned for recent festivals to create great garlic-infused dishes for the Glorious Garlic weekend. We are so fortunate to have Tony’s culinary stamp on the festival.
With local garlic as the star ingredient, Tony created a short but varied tapas menu for the Fox Run café - featuring a chilled tomato-garlic soup - middle eastern sampler of hummus, tabbouleh and babaganoush - Lively Run goat cheese (one of his absolute favorites) with roasted garlic and roasted red peppers and finally, an assortment of olives and mushrooms in a garlic-parsley sauce. All of these small dishes have been meticulously paired with our estate wines. Tony is writing up all the recipes for the home chef and has added a litany of tips for preparing and working with cool-climate garlic.
Our August visitors will also be able to purchase local hardneck garlic in our market everyday. Detailed descriptions for each type will point out the rather incredible differences in flavor these varieties offer and the interplay between wine and bulb.
Scott Osborn, Proprietor