Happy Anniversary!

East Hampton Point is marking its 25th anniversary this season, and is offering weekly specials to celebrate, as well as a happy hour Thursdays through Sundays with half-price sangria, $5 draft beer, and special prices on bar snacks.

Specials at Bay Bar

Bay Kitchen Bar on Three Mile Harbor has a $34 four-course chef’s tasting menu Mondays through Thursdays, from 4 to 6 p.m. There are specials on oysters and rosé wine, daily from 4 to 6 and again after 9 p.m. till closing, and “happy hour sours,” cocktails made with the restaurant’s handcrafted sour mix.

Bridgehampton Inn

The Bridgehampton Inn offers a prix fixe Wednesdays and Thursdays until 7. Dinner is served at the inn, including outdoors, Wednesdays through Sundays. There is no corkage fee on Sunday.

Bostwick’s Every Day

Bostwick’s, the seafood spot on Pantigo Road in East Hampton, is now open seven days for lunch and dinner, beginning at 11:30 a.m. 

For Seafood Lovers

Seafood lovers might want to put the Bell and Anchor in Noyac in their sights. It is now featuring raw bar specials on Montauk Pearl oysters and littleneck clams, for $2.50 each, all night Sundays through Thursdays, and on Fridays and Saturdays from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. On Sundays, the oysters are an even better deal, at $1 each. Wednesday is lobster night, and Thursday is bouillabaisse night.

Sam Gelin was enjoying a nice piece of fish that had come from Montauk one day not long ago in New York when he thought it would be really interesting to use salt that derived from the same waters. He had recently traveled on the West Coast, where he had seen a sea salt company, and it “kind of lodged in my mind,” he said in a recent interview. And so the Montauk Salt Company was born.

Mr. Gelin’s company is one of many food companies started by millennials, who are said to be obsessed with food. Though the definition of millennial varies based on whom you ask, many publications, including The New York Times, have defined the generation as those born between 1978 and 1998. 

Mr. Gelin is among other millennial entrepreneurs, including Matthew Corrin, who started Freshii, a healthy fast-food chain, when he was 23, and three college students who launched Sweetgreen, a salad chain. And his company isn’t the only one owned by millennials in Montauk: Sea Bean Natural Foods, a catering company and food truck, is operated by Shawn Christman who is 34 years old.

Mr. Gelin, who had frequently visited Montauk, began researching and collecting ocean water from Ditch Plain last October. He said it took a couple of months of experimenting to get to a point where he produced a viable sea salt. In January, he drew curious looks while collecting water barefoot at Ditch Plain for what would become his first commercial batch.

“It was freezing. Nothing about it felt good. But I wanted to do that,” he said, explaining that “the benefit of collecting cold water is it speeds up the filtration process.” 

Since then, Mr. Gelin has made the trek from his East Village apartment to Montauk about every two weeks to wade waist deep into the water and harvest bucket after bucket of water, regardless of the season, but only after he checks water quality reports from the eastern Long Island chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. Twenty buckets at a time, holding five gallons each, get loaded into his Jeep.

Then, working in a rented commercial kitchen, Mr. Gelin boils the water to kill any bacteria and to begin the evaporation process, which eventually yields what he describes as a crisp, fresh product best used as a finishing salt. 

“We boil it down into a brine, and then through regulating the temperature at which the salt cools, we can create these really nice, resilient flakes,” Mr. Gelin said. “As we’re harvesting the salt from a really briny water, the salt will come dance along the top and we’ll scoop it out and put it on the side and let it cool off. Once it’s cooled off, we put it in the dehydrator, where it will dry out. There’s a bit of an art to it.”

From start to finish, the Montauk Salt Company process takes about three days. His method differs in technique and the salt differs from that made by the Amagansett Sea Salt Company, which was founded in 2009. It uses solar evaporation and flavors its salt with lemon zest, herbs, and merlot, or other savories.

“Because there are so many variables on how you produce it and finish it, there are so many different ways it can turn out,” Mr. Gelin said.

He recommends his company’s salt with eggs, steak, or kale salad. “The salt that we produce doesn’t dissipate as quickly as table salt. It tends to last longer, so you do get a little bit of texture when you go to enjoy your dish.”

Mr. Gelin has a background in the food and hospitality industries. He is the founder of Craft Hospitality, which produces the New York City Craft Distillers Festival and Craft Coffee Festival. He calls sea salt “a fun marriage of my culture growing up, with a mother who was a chemical engineer, and my appreciation for source-of-origin foods.”

With the Montauk Salt Company, he has help from his girlfriend, Jess Smoak, and from Danielle Gingerich, a Sag Harbor resident and partner in the business. Provisions in Sag Harbor and Left Hand Coffee in Montauk sell the salt and Duryea’s and Swallow East,  Montauk restaurants, are making it available for diners.

“I’m excited about it and want to share it with as many people as possible. I think our generation wants to know where their food is coming from. I think that’s why the Montauk Salt Company story is compelling.”

Twenty years ago, on the fourth of July, Breadzilla opened its doors. Well, it was about to open its doors, but the owners realized 20 minutes before that they forgot to get screen door handles. So Brad Thompson, co-owner, co-chef, and friendly ex-husband of Nancy Hollister, co-owner, co-chef, and friendly ex-wife, grabbed a drill and some nails and some forks and spoons he found in the basement and .created some bent utensil door handles. They remain in place today as just another quirky and charming element to this bakery and takeout shop.

Twenty years is an impressively long time for a food business to survive out here, and if it weren’t for the kindness of the previous owners of the building, Ms. Hollister doubts they would be here today. Henry and DorothyWalker of Walker’s Upholstery had faith in Nancy and Brad and waited patiently for them to secure financing to buy the building in Wainscott, tucked a few hundred feet off Route 27.

A first-time visitor to Breadzilla may be taken aback by the bustle, the clutter, the oft-crabby signage, but a closer look reveals a true knowledge of food, a curated selection of drinks, cheeses, sausage, obscure potato chips. The most impressive items are, naturally, the baked goods, the breads, sandwiches, pies, bagels, cakes, salads, soups, muffins, cookies, and more. The volume that comes out of the somewhat large but extremely cramped kitchen is remarkable. There is a smoker in one corner where Brad tends to fresh hams and turkey breasts. On a recent day, an industrial Hobart mixer was whipping up a raspberry mousse to fill a late-order graduation cake. Nancy was perched on a tiny stool by a “desk,” painstakingly filling out the handwritten menu that changes daily and must be finished and up online by 11:30 a.m.

In the time I spent with them in the kitchen on a busy weekend morning, I was given samples of the crispy chicken with “awesome sauce,” a pineapple, jalapeño, shallot, orange juice, garlic, and cilantro smooth salsa that is about to go on pineapple-marinated roast luau pork, some cake scraps with chocolate ganache, that aforementioned raspberry mousse, and some mulligatawny soup. All of it was insanely good.

When Breadzilla first opened it started with breads, muffins, scones, doughnuts, and coffee cake, later expanding to soups and stews and clam pies and sandwiches. Both Nancy and Brad have worked as fishermen and are marine biologists. Nancy had been at the long-defunct Plain and Fancy bakery in East Hampton before opening Breadzilla, and this is where she invented Breadzilla’s iconic Gruyere bread.

It is impossible to get a firm answer from either of them when you ask what their own favorite sandwiches are. “That’s the best thing about what we do,” said Brad. “We don’t have a set menu. If I had to do the exact same thing every day, I’d shoot myself!” He credits their mutual science background for their interest in experimentation. A great deal of research went into the formulas for the spice mixtures for chai, curries, bread batters, and blackening fish. All of the spices and rubs are made in house and fiddled with constantly.

They do concede that the Hippy Dippy sandwich is a favorite. This one is toasted honey wheat bread with cheddar, avocado, tomato, carrots, and sprouts with mustard-mayo sauce. (It was created and named on the day George Carlin died, after his Hippy Dippy Weatherman comedy routine.) The Spicy Tuna Jack (eight-grain bread with tuna salad, melted Monterey Jack cheese, and pickled jalapeños) is another favorite.

Like everyone in the restaurant and baking business, they work long, long days on their feet. For 13 years they would go into work at 2 a.m. together; now they swap the early shift on a weekly basis. Nancy credits their ability to get along with Brad’s daily yoga and her midmorning miles-long runs with her dingo dogs.

As much of the produce as possible is sourced locally: apples from the Milk Pail, tomatoes from Pike’s for their midsummer, spectacularly simple tomato with mayo, salt, and pepper on toasted white bread sandwich. The fish comes from Braun Seafood and the kielbasa from Cromer’s Market. Most of their breads are sourdough-based, coming from a “mother” named Penelope who has been kept alive since their opening. And where does the name “squishy bread” come from? Nancy mischievously replied that she just likes to hear the occasional, somewhat stuffy client say the word “squishy” when placing an order.

Breadzilla is definitely a family affair. There are beautiful, rustic wooden cutting boards with leather handles made by Nancy’s sister out on one front counter, and a glass case with silver and stone jewelry made by Brad’s brother. The wooden Breadzilla monster outside the entrance was carved by a friend, and the staff working for Brad and Nancy have been there almost as long as they have. 

Their clientele are loyal, both local and from afar, and they have their celebrity fans as well. Jimmy Fallon and his wife, Nancy, are frequent visitors, as is Julie Kavner of “The Simpsons.” And this being the Hamptons, of course they have baked the keys to a brand-new Porsche into a cake for some lucky guy or gal.

It would be nice to imagine that Nancy Hollister and Brad Thompson will be toasting their success this coming Fourth of July with a bottle of champagne and perhaps a slice of that glorious Gruyere bread. But they will instead be sitting in a lawyer’s office, working on a defense against a Japanese company called Toho Co. Ltd., creators of Godzilla. Apparently, the litigious lawyers of Toho do not like anyone using the letters “zilla,” and they seem to have just discovered recently that a charming little bakery in a small town is doing just that. The Breadzilla name is trademarked, but the situation is a time and money-consuming headache they could do without. After all, there are black-and-white cookies to be frosted, crazy sandwiches to be invented, and fresh cod to be blackened. 

Here’s hoping we get to enjoy Breadzilla’s amazing and quirky, fresh and original creations for another 20 years!

Click for recipes

When he talks about the various dishes from around the world that can be made over an open cooking fire and the different effects flame has on food itself, Adam Kelinson exudes enthusiasm and expertise.

From salt-roasted fish to lobsters or vegetables laid out on a wood rack to succotash and chowders and even pizza, he has made it all, and he has made it in a manner that honors the way food was cooked ages ago. He describes what he does as culinary ethnobotany, which he says is a study of the connection between food, plants, and people “as a platform for sustainable health and wellness.”

“It’s about philosophy and psychology of food,” said Mr. Kelinson, a private chef from East Hampton. “It’s about people, time, place, and food. The fire is the element that ties it all together.”

He aims for a combination of the rustic and the elegant, and said his menus are informed by what is in season. “We use what’s locally available — not just food, but historically,” he said. “We might use birch to smoke, or we might use pine needles to infuse a bit of a pine flavor.”

Mr. Kelinson’s love of cooking began as a child while helping his mother in the kitchen. His passion grew as he began traveling, learning more about various cultures, and spending time, he said, as “a wanderer in the wilderness studying plants” in different parts of the world. He earned a degree in sustainable agriculture and ecosystem management from the University of Vermont before taking up ethnobotany. While many in the field have advanced degrees, Mr. Kelinson said “culinary ethnobotany” is a practical term he coined to describe what he does with the added element of food.

His career has taken him down many roads. He has cooked for celebrities including Prince, Hilary Swank, and Mariska Hargitay. He is the author of the book “The Athlete’s Plate: Real Food for High Performance” and the founder of the company Organic Performance, in which he develops nutrition plans, cooks, and runs workshops based on the science of sport and the relationship between food, athletic ability, wellness, and recovery.

Few clients “really knew how to cook, how it could fit into someone’s busy lifestyle, and also how to make it taste good,” Mr. Kelinson said.

His latest effort, an open-fire catering service called Around the Fire, is more than just a way to make a living. It’s a comeback of sorts.

About five years ago, in May 2011, Mr. Kelinson found himself lying face-down in the Montauk surf, having been smacked in the head with his own standup paddleboard during a routine excursion at Ditch Plain. He couldn’t move. In a 2011 interview in The Star, he described feeling “a dull, tingly sensation, a shock wave,” that left him temporarily paralyzed but still conscious. Talk about people, time, and place — several surfers came to his rescue. It was a testament, he said, to the closeness and camaraderie of the Montauk surfing community.

“That story is directly connected to Around the Fire,” Mr. Kelinson said. “It was a pretty major accident. I’m still not fully recovered. Five years ago, I took a really big hit and I’ve been sort of having to rebuild my life. The anniversary was a few days ago and now I’m launching this new project. It’s symbolic for me of a resurrection and a comeback from being pretty laid out.”

He still hasn’t achieved the same level of athleticism he had back then, when he would do triathlons, ski, surf, run mountain trails, and travel back-country regions. The accident “kind of put me in the spotlight for a while, and I receded as I recuperated,” he said. But it’s a little harder to remain inconspicuous these days. Around the Fire features a wood-fired pizza oven on wheels, complete with a chimney that puts it at about nine-and-a-half feet tall and draws curious looks wherever he goes.

Mr. Kelinson’s menus are inspired by his studies at the University of Vermont, by his travels around the world, and by partnerships with local farmers and merchants. He called upon Villa Italian Specialties in East Hampton Village to make a custom mozzarella cheese for his pizzas using curd imported from Italy, and he regularly uses mushrooms from David Falkowski’s OpenMinded Organics, produce from Ian Calder-Piedmonte of Balsam Farms, and others. He also grows some of his own ingredients in a home garden, making pizza toppings such as pickled onions and fermented hot peppers himself.

And the cooking fire is the center of it all.

“Fire is that elemental tie that we can commune around, whether it’s the camp fire or the beach fire,” Mr. Kelinson said. “It’s a community, and when you bring food into that and share that, you have a different level of experience than if you were just served at a place like a restaurant.”

As he continues to recover from his accident in Montauk five years ago, the moment he knew he was heading in the right direction was the time he fired up that mobile oven for the first time in mid-May.

“As soon as I lit the fire and the smoke started to come up out of the chimney, I knew it was just right,” he said. “It was all there.” 

Click for recipe

Some call it preppy food. I call it WASP soul food. For those not familiar with this acronym, it stands for white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. As an Irish Catholic with a good dose of Norwegian from my grandmother’s side, I am clearly not a member of this tribe. But many of my schoolmates and lifelong friends certainly are. As a result of this, I have become extremely familiar with WASP “cuisine.”

How can you identify this WASP soul food? It tends to be white. We’re talking white bread, probably Arnold or Pepperidge Farm, certainly not a fresh French baguette! Mayonnaise plays a huge role in WASP “cooking,” or more accurately, the preparing or assembling of meals. 

This must be clarified, as there are a lot of canned, frozen, bottled, and boxed foods that go into these meals. Crabmeat, shrimp, lobster, and any mild white fish such as sole or flounder are preferred over the more exotic, like skate or scungilli. The lettuce is iceberg, potatoes are a vegetable, and chicken in a cream sauce is a go-to dish for more formal occasions. Onions and garlic are only acceptable in powdered form, if at all. Sorbets are still sherbet, dressings are bottled, and pasta is noodles. Campbell’s cream-of-anything soup is considered a mother sauce. A proper WASP hostess will never be caught without Triscuits, Wheat Thins, or Milano cookies in her pantry.

At cocktail parties you will find a whole wheel of unripe Brie with Carr’s Table Water Crackers, pigs in blankets, and so-and-so’s famous dip, inevitably laden with cream cheese, sour cream, aaaand mayo. The bar will be fully stocked with hard liquor and mediocre wine, for while WASPs do like to drink, they are frugal. A sugary pink punch may also make an appearance.

This tribe does not care for exotic, spicy, or foreign food. In my research I have come to the conclusion that this food is the kind that a toddler would approve of: soft and pale with no color or crunch. Kale is a four letter word.

When my mother and father were on the back nine of life, they spent their winters near Palm Beach, WASP central! They had a friend named Hutch who wore pink and pinky rings and loved show tunes. His wife didn’t seem to mind; she doted on her corgis and her rose garden. When I went to visit, Hutch treated us to dinner at a country club that was having a New Orleans theme night. Visions of Cajun and Creole specialties like barbecued shrimp dripping with buttery Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco, sherry-loaded she-crab soup, and sucking the heads off of boiled crawfish danced through my head. Do I even have to tell you it was a bland affair, more suited to a rest home, with creamed and canned shrimp, nary a roux with the Holy Trinity of peppers, onions, and celery in sight. They probably had beignets though, because that is a nice, soft, white fried dough blob. I was crestfallen.

There are, however, many delicious WASP-y foods that I love. As a matter of fact, if I may brag, I believe I have mastered the tea sandwich. And there is always a somewhat large jar of Hellman’s mayo in my fridge. Cake mixes have their rightful place, especially when dolled up with lemon Jello and apricot nectar for the yellow cake, chocolate chips and sour cream for the devil’s food cake mix. I have also adopted the safe and delicious cheat dessert (from the excellent food writer Julia Reed) of lemon sorbet and Bordeaux cookies.

Do you have friends who you suspect are WASPs or wannabes? Here are some helpful hints to identify them. The gents have nicknames from prep school or go by a shortened version of their last name, which will inevitably have a Roman numeral II or III after it. (See the aforementioned Hutch.) The wives have pretty names like Clarissa, Georgina, and Miranda, but these are shortened to Bitsy or Bunny. Their children and dogs (purebred Labradors and retrievers only, please!) are named after presidents, activities, and herbs, like Jefferson, Tyler, Quincy, Hunter, and Basil.

Through my entire four years of college I had a preppy boyfriend; he looked like Troy Donahue, I kid you not. On our first visit to meet his family at their farm outside Princeton, N.J., he kept telling me what a wonderful cook his mother was. She “made” lamb chops, baked potatoes, and frozen spinach mixed with Philadelphia cream cheese with chives. To my mind this wasn’t so much cooking as it was spending money on expensive meat and putting salt and pepper on it. The creamed spinach, however, was a splendid shortcut that I have been using ever since.

I came from a home where my mother cooked inexpensive but absolutely wonderful stews and casseroles, and she always made her own vinaigrette. Meals were revered in our household, and while we did eat the occasional fish stick or cheap cut of eye round, there were plenty of fresh vegetables, real orange juice at breakfast, and no junk food whatsoever. Thank you, Mother!

If you are yearning to make something along the lines of typical WASP food (which I wouldn’t recommend as part of a balanced diet), look no further than your nearest Junior League cookbook. These are filled with cream of mushroom soup casseroles, noodles with more creamy stuff, and more crab and artichoke dips than you will ever need. There will be no exotica like a Thai green papaya salad (horrors!) or a spicy curry from Myanmar. Shortcuts, canned goods, and powders rule, fish sauce and kimchi are anathema.

Now put on your Jack Rogers sandals and sensibly modest Indian-cotton caftan, and let’s get cooking, er, I mean, assembling.

Click for recipes

Farm-to-Table Series

Amber Waves Farm in Amagansett will kick off a series of brunches and dinners with an Argentine-inspired asado barbecue meal in the field on Saturday. It will be cooked by Paula Segura Mallmann, whose uncle, Francis Mallmann, is an Argentine chef, along with her partner, Emiliano Cordeiro. 

Guests will have an opportunity to walk the fields with one of the farmers to discuss sustainable farming practices. The meals are served family-style, outdoors, on rustic handmade tables, and feature produce from the farm along with other seasonal East End ingredients. 

Proceeds from the series support the farm’s educational programming. Tickets are $200 and include unlimited wine and beer from Channing Daughters Winery and the Montauk Brewing Company. Reservations are required.

Other chefs who will be cooking at the farm’s so-called Copper Oven Farm-to-Table series this season include Christopher Miller, Hillary Sterling, and the caterers from Hamptons Aristocrat.

Coming Soon

The folks at Almond — Eric Lemonides, Jason Weiner, the chef, and his wife, Almond Zigmund — are reportedly planning to add open another eatery in Bridgehampton, in the space on the Bridgehampton Turnpike recently vacated by Fresh. Word has it that it will be named Zigmund’s. The restaurateurs also have three Manhattan spots, Almond Tribeca, Almond Flatiron, and the L&W Oyster Co. 

Another Wolffer Rosé

July 1 will bring the release of the new Finca Wolffer Rosé, the second vintage of a rosé made with grapes grown in Mendoza, Argentina, by the Wolffer Estate winery in Sagaponack. Roman Roth, the Wolffer winemaker, worked with Susana Balbo, a renowned Argentine winemaker, to create the rosé. 

At Babette’s

Babette’s restaurant on Newtown Lane in East Hampton is now open daily for breakfast and lunch, and serves dinner on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Nightly dinner service will begin in July. New items on the menu at the restaurant, which serves organic, healthy fare, include, as dinner entrees, vegetable pad thai, local vegetable tagine, and wild truffled mousse. At breakfast and lunchtime, new additions are a Tuscan quinoa bowl, with kale, vegetables, roasted tomato, and two sunny-side up eggs, and a farmhouse breakfast sandwich featuring an egg, broccoli rabe, smoked mozzarella, tomato, greens, and sun-dried tomato aioli on eight-grain bread. 

Stonecrop Wine Tasting

Andy Harris and Sally Richardson of Montauk, the owners of Stonecrop vineyard in Martinborough, New Zealand, will be pouring the three wines from their vineyard at a tasting from 4 to 7 p.m. on Saturday at the Domaine Franey wine shop in East Hampton. Visitors will have an opportunity to savor sauvignon blanc, rosé, and pinot noir.

Service Station Opens

Service Station, a new restaurant now open in East Hampton where Nichol’s used to be, is Michael Gluckman’s latest establishment. His earlier restaurants here have included the Lodge, Boathouse, Beachhouse, and Bamboo.

Service Station is open daily, serving lunch and dinner with, according to the restaurateur, “friendly service where the answer is never no.” Its hallmarks are moderate prices and fresh local ingredients. Appetizers start at $10, and entrees top out at $28. Wines by the glass begin at $8, beer at $5. The bar has been redesigned and the dining room reconfigured to become more open. 

Brunch specials are available on Saturdays and Sundays.

Time for Rosé

There will be more than 20 rosé wines to taste during a “pink party” at Domaine Franey Wines and Spirits in East Hampton on Saturday from 3 to 7 p.m. Snacks will be served and a 20-percent discount offered on rosé purchases. The shop is at 459 Pantigo Road, between East Hampton and Amagansett. 

Five rosé wines from the Channing Daughters winery in Bridgehampton will be paired with each course of a dinner at Almond next Thursday at 7 p.m. The evening will begin with hors d’oeuvres, accompanied by a special pink cocktail and followed by salad, gazpacho, pickled Montauk Pearl oysters, pork, a lamb dish with “lambchetta” (prepared like porcetta), and panna cotta for dessert, all from local farms and producers. Reservations are a must. The cost is $85 plus tax and gratuity.

More Rosé

Arbor restaurant in Montauk will also feature summer’s pink wine at its prix fixe weekend brunch. The all-inclusive brunch, served from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. for $28.95 plus tax and gratuity, includes a cocktail (besides rosé, choices include a mimosa, Bellini, or Bloody Mary), a starter, and main course. An a la carte children’s menu will also be offered.

At Momi Ramen

Momi Ramen will celebrate its one-year anniversary in East Hampton tomorrow night from 5 to 10, with a tasting of artisanal sakes. Flights with three different sakes representing unique styles will be offered for $12. 

Pre-Theater Deal

Ticketholders heading to Guild Hall for performances of “The Underpants” can avail themselves of a $40 pre-theater, two-course prix fixe at the 1770 House, with choices from the seasonal a la carte menu that change nightly. The special will be offered on Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays until June 26. Orders must be placed by 6:30 p.m. for the 8 p.m. curtain time; reservations are required. 

Diners may be seated on the outdoor patio, in the main dining room, or in the inn’s downstairs tavern. Sample menu items include wild arugula and asparagus salad, chilled sweet pea soup, beets with blue cheese, fish entrees, and hand-cut fettucine with house-made local rabbit sausage.

Artistic Menu

The chef at the Living Room restaurant at c/o the Maidstone Inn in East Hampton has crafted a dinner menu of dishes reflecting his interpretation of artwork by Jacob Fellander, an artist from Stockholm who is serving a stint as the inn’s artist-in-residence, which ends on Monday. His work is in a number of collections, including those of Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Swedish royal family.

The menu will include a seared sea scallop starter, a main course of barbecued duck leg with slow-roasted cabbage and yellow-eye beans, and a cherry-vanilla float with cotton candy garnish for dessert. 

Cooking in Bordeaux

Abigail Hitchcock, the chef and owner of Camaje in New York City, who hails from the East End, will lead a cooking adventure in Bordeaux from Sept. 4 to 10. Participants will stay in a 17th-century manor and create French feasts together from ingredients scouted at local markets. 

Bookings can be made at lush-getaways.com­

At the ripe young age of 23, Jay Astafa is an accomplished vegan chef, owner of his own catering and event company, a consultant for Surf Lodge’s vegan menu, and will be providing the food for the Wellness Foundation’s summer benefit on June 18 at the Mulford Farm in East Hampton.

“I never thought I’d be a vegan chef. I was an aspiring actor. I’ve been a vegetarian, like my mother, for a long time. When I saw the PETA movie about how meat is processed, I became vegan,” he said.

Mr. Astafa had been working at his father’s pizzeria, Three Brothers Pizza, originally in Rockville Centre, now in Farmingdale, since he was 16. But looking at all the meat and cheese-laden pizza pies became frustrating, and he went about educating himself and experimenting with methods of making dairy-free mozzarella, ricotta, even bacon. He convinced his dad to add vegan options at the restaurant. It now has an additional, completely vegan menu, and there is now a Three Brothers Vegan Cafe.

Using chamber vacuum sealers and sous vide cooking (long slow cooking at low temperatures, the food sealed in plastic bags and immersed in water), he creates sashimi out of watermelon, “tuna” out of tomatoes, and bacon out of eggplant. His cashew milk mozzarella is a magical, mystical combination of soaked cashews, water, coconut oil, tapioca starch, kappa carrageenan, and salt, blended and cooked, though it’s actually much more complicated than that.

Another popular item that he swears customers can’t distinguish from meat is barbecued jackfruit tacos. Apparently after cooking, the jackfruit achieves a stringy texture similar to pulled pork. From there he adds the traditional spices, and nobody’s the wiser.

Now I’m pretty sure my editor assigned this story to me because I struggle with vegan recipes and vegan substitutions. I kind of feel like one should just give up on bacon and cheese (if you are so inclined, I am not) rather than eat a sad soy imitation. I have attempted cauliflower pizza crust and coconut oil piecrust, cursing the responsible websites and sweating through the recipes to achieve no more than mediocre results. Recently I made some what could have been excellent vegetarian enchiladas with homemade sauce from Hatch chilis I had grilled myself. I decided to try a soy Monterey Jack cheese substitute, thinking, “How bad can it be? I don’t need very much, just something that adds some gooey unctuousness to these enchiladas.” I kid you not, the cheese tasted like rubberized Gerber baby food vanilla pudding, it was that disgusting.

It is clear that Mr. Astafa has the experience, expertise, and equipment to create Parmesan cheese and faux piggy products and sushi from vegetables, and he told me that learning to cook vegan-style is not a matter of restriction and substitution, it is experimenting and exploring.

When I spoke with Douglas Mercer, founder and chairman of the Wellness Foundation, he told me that two things inspired him to encourage others to embrace a healthier lifestyle and eat a plant-based diet. One was personal: the long and slow death of his father at a young age after a series of strokes. The second was a cover photograph from The East Hampton Star in February  2005 of middle school students boycotting the unhealthy foods offered at the school. He said, “If these children can stand up to poor food choices, then so can I.” In the last 11 years, over 8,000 students in our community have participated in the Wellness Foundation’s Healthy Foods for Life program.

“The key focus is educating people so they can make informed decisions. They’ll know what works; then they can decide to make lifestyle changes. The kids are our main focus. The foods we eat have to be satisfying, tasty, economical, and good for us.”

Mr. Mercer is pleased with what the foundation has accomplished locally, but wishes our national health care system were more proactive in teaching prevention of chronic disease through a healthier lifestyle. “Doctors aren’t trained in lifestyle and wellness, but when they see their patients who have participated in our Wellness Challenge” — a six-week course of exercise, diet, and mindfulness — “they are amazed at the results: weight loss, lowered blood pressure and cholesterol, and less need for prescription drugs.”

Looking at Mr. Astafa’s menu for the Wellness Foundation’s benefit and the pictures on his website makes me eager to try his food. It looks whimsical, original, and colorful. At the entrance there will be a vegetable garden with pumpernickel breadcrumb and porcini dust soil. The watering cans will be filled with Green Goddess and ranch dressings. There will be strawberry rhubarb pie pops, beet burgers, melon gazpacho shooters with eggplant bacon, and those crazy sounding barbecued jackfruit tacos with lime crema.

Inspired by the kindness and caring of Mr. Mercer and the playfulness of Mr. Astafa’s cooking, I am tempted to go back to the vegan drawing board. Perhaps if I adopt the Wellness Challenge’s philosophy, “Progress, not perfection,” I’ll have more luck.

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Reservations are being taken for a wine dinner at Almond in Bridgehampton on June 23 that will pair five courses with different rosé wines from the Channing Daughters Winery, also in Bridgehampton. The menu will feature products from local farms. The cost is $85 plus tax and gratuity. Service will begin at 7 p.m. 

Poetry of Cooking

John Ross, a professional chef, will discuss his cookbook, “The Poetry of Cooking,” at a program at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton at noon on Wednesday. The book features recipes from Mr. Ross’s column in The Suffolk Times and Riverhead News Review papers, along with poems. He will also have a sample of one of his dishes to share. Registration is with the library, by phone, or at myrml.org.

Farmers in Montauk

The Montauk farmers market has its 2016 debut on the Montauk green today from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sponsored by the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, the market helps to raise money for the hamlet’s food pantry; $7,388 was donated last year.  Thirty-five vendors will participate this year. New companies include Clarkson Ave. Crumb Cakes, the Hampton Chocolate Factory, Lady J. Seafood, Pete’s Endless Summer, and the Glowing Tent. 

Food Pantry Farm Gala

The Food Pantry Farm, which raises crops for local food banks on land in East Hampton, will be the beneficiary of a Farm to Fork gala at the Topping Rose House restaurant in Bridgehampton on July 9. Tickets, which are $350 for general admission and $225 for those aged 21 to 30, are on sale and can be reserved at foodpantryfarm.org. 

Chef Jacobs to Redbar

Todd Jacobs is the new executive chef at Redbar Brasserie in Southampton. His Bridgehampton restaurant, Fresh, recently closed, but Mr. Jacobs will add his stamp to the Redbar menu, including vegan dishes and more, featuring local and natural ingredients.

Italian Cooking

Rose Dunphy, a former teacher and the author of five books, will discuss the cuisine of Italy, where she was born, at the Montauk Library on Saturday from 2 to 5 p.m. and give a cooking demonstration.

The farmers markets have opened for the season, and while many visitors associate them with the bountiful berries, corn, and tomatoes of mid to late-summer, right now is a glorious time. There are tender stalks of freshly picked asparagus, bright peonies, crisp spinach and lettuce, plants to help you to get started on your own garden, mushrooms, honey, cheese, chickens, and so much more.  

There are 14 farmers markets open between Thursdays and Sundays all over the East End and in Westhampton Beach. The market at Nick and Toni’s in East Hampton on Fridays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. has 23 vendors. You can find everything from Greg Hollmann of Sharp Hamptons ready to sharpen your Wusthofs to Abra Morawiec of Feisty Acres Farms selling game birds and quail eggs. Ms. Morawiec has trained her quail to lay eggs in buckets, which makes her the envy of many other poultry and egg producers. She is also raising bobwhites to be released back into the wild to help lessen our insanely huge deer tick population.

Everyone who patronizes farmers markets has his or her favorite. My friends Steven and Stephanie are partial to the Hayground School’s, open from 3 to 6:30 p.m., because, they say, “it’s a happening.” I like Saturdays in Sag Harbor because I can walk there, but the Friday market at Nick and Toni’s is another favorite because it has Sang Lee and Balsam Farms participating. Sang Lee has the best ginger scallion dip; I believe it’s what got my son to eat his crudités from a very young age.

One of my favorite pastimes is throwing “Lightning Round” questions (a la Jim Cramer of “Mad Money” on CNBC) at the farmers and vendors. “What should I do with these leeks? What would you do with this hot chili oil?” They are never at a loss for ideas and most often they include one another’s ingredients.

David Falkowski of Open Minded Organics is a true gourmet and always has brilliant ideas. “Cook the leeks with small shiitake caps in a hot pan, wrap them in a corn tortilla with melted mozzarella cheese.” Yes, he is now making mozzarella! One of my favorite recommendations from David are his oyster mushrooms cooked on the grill with Worcestershire sauce, olive oil, and garlic. Your meat-eater friends will not miss their porterhouse steak when they taste this crisp-on-the-outside, chewy-in-the-middle treat.

Mario Pecoraro of Arlotta olive oils gave me one of the best ideas I have tried in years. He recommended a Browder’s bird, washed, dried, salted, and then rubbed with his hot pepper oil, sprinkled with herbes de Provence, and baked for an hour and 20 minutes. I combined this with spinach from Open Minded Organics, Sungold cherry tomatoes from Wickham’s Farm, and croutons made from Blue Duck Bakery bread. The hot pepper oil lost some of its heat but remained piquant, with the herbs and salt adding just enough flavor to enhance the very chicken-y chicken.

Sean O’Brien of Josephine’s Feast (Josephine is his daughter; his wife, Laura, is the chef who makes wild beach plum preserves, purple carrot relish, chocolate habanero ketchup, and more) told me the ketchup can be eaten on its own or mixed with avocado for a dip. It is sweetened with apples from Falkowski farms.

When I stopped by Maggie Mc­Donough’s Talk Treats to Me, I learned a lot. She makes dehydrated doggie treats (chicken, liver, etc.) and also dehydrates watermelon, bananas, apples, and pineapples. These are meant for dogs, but people can eat them, too. After witnessing someone at the Hampton Classic Horse Show feeding a horse Cap’n Crunch cereal on top of a cannoli (horrors!), she developed horse treats with yams and beets. Apparently, a lot of horses have become diabetic due to all the sugar cubes and peppermint Lifesavers they’ve been fed. So Ms. McDonough felt compelled to come up with a healthier alternative.

Sometimes I come up with a recipe made with one of the farmer’s or vendor’s bounty and I bring him or her a sample, like a salad dressing for Mr. Pecoraro made with his blood orange oil mixed with shallots and herbs. This occasionally gets me a discount. . . . One time I spent 20 minutes with Steven Judson of Amagansett Sea Salt trying to come up with new formulas and names for his salts. “I’m a writer! I’m clever! I cook!” I told him, “You should make a pink salt and call it ‘Sunset Beach!’ ” He gently informed me that all of his salts are inspired by personal experiences. For instance, one of the salt flavors he invented came about after a disappointing day of no surf in Montauk. The solution? Spend the day drinking mojitos!

There are plenty of new vendors at the markets, such as the Clarkson Avenue Crumb Cake Co., selling the best crumb cake I’ve ever tasted; Hillock Distillery, selling high end bourbon, rye, and single malt whiskey made in the Hudson Valley, and, best of all, Peter Ambrose, chef, caterer, restaurateur, selling very reasonably priced and delicious wasabi aioli, white clam sauce, chimichurri, grilled tomato salsa, and more from his new restaurant in Shelter Island Heights, Endless Summer Grille.

I could go on and on and I remain loyal to my favorites: Harissa, Bee’s Needs honey, Mecox Bay Dairy cheeses, Dale and Bette’s arugula, the Seafood Shop, and I am eagerly awaiting Regina Whitney’s tomato pie.

Besides getting the freshest, cleanest food imaginable and supporting farmers, the most fun is seeing what is available and brainstorming over what to make with what you find. Two weeks ago I got puffers from Alex and rolled them in Dale and Bette’s cornmeal seasoned with Old Bay. Last week was the brilliant Browder’s chicken with Arlotta hot pepper oil. Next week, who knows?

Here are some recipes to inspire you after your trip to the farmers markets.

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