Recreating an Irish Feast

I spent my summer in Ireland in 2005, studying creative writing at National University Ireland-Galway. Traveling the country and visiting pubs stretched my student budget to its limit, so I had little money to spend on fine dining. In fact, I ate so cheap that even store-bought jars of pasta sauce were fair game.

Nevertheless, I have nothing but fond memories of Irish food. I ate shepherd's pie in Dublin, a terrific stew in Cork, fish and chips in Galway's city center, and a chocolate caramel biscotti topped with ice cream and a signature sauce (still the best dessert I've ever eaten) on the remote island of Inishbofin. When I did decide to dine out, it was usually for lunch at a pub. One rainy afternoon early in my stay I tried a bowl of seafood chowder, and from that moment forward I was hooked.

Pubs in every coastal town I visited featured their own variation of this hearty soup. It was rich, creamy, chock full of seafood, served with hearty soda bread and great with a pint of stout.

I ate it everywhere, but two particular bowls stand out in my memory. The first found me in Cobh, a tiny coastal town east of Cork famous for being one of the Titanic's final stops. The morning after New Zealand killed the British and Irish Lions in the second match of the rugby team's world tour, my friends and I were out shopping and stepped into a pub for an early lunch. This particular pub had a large display case of exotic desserts near the door, but I was more impressed with the soup's red color and fresh salmon, scallops and clams.

My second came from an ocean side pub in Roundstone. It was a cold, wet afternoon and my classmates and I were returning from our retreat at Inishbofin. We stepped off the ferry and ran for the nearest rooftop and dry seats. The chowder that day included bacon, cod and plenty of parsley, but the bread was even more memorable. Each piece was a dark brown color, dense and a little dry. The slices came to life with a slab of Irish butter (Irish cows are grass-fed).

Upon returning home, I spent months looking for an Irish pub that effectively recreates my Irish experience. To date, nothing compares. I crave the meal most around St. Patrick's day, and because there are only so many pubs one can try, I now take a different approach. Every March 17, I recreate my Irish feast at home.




The Soup

It was difficult to find a recipe at first, as chowder isn't authentic to Ireland and none of the Irish cookbooks I own has a recipe that resembles it. A few hours on the Internet provided some options - first on the blogs of travel writers and amateur cooks, then later on the web pages of the country's most famous chefs like Kevin Dundon, Darina Allen and Donal Skehan.

In 2009, I followed the directions of Judith Kadden. I turned to Armida Amador in 2010. Earlier this month I stumbled upon the cooking blog of Michael O'Meara, head chef at Oscar's Bistro in Galway City. He writes about how chowder recipes vary greatly by nature and experimentation is a must:

As with a great many traditional foods it is likely that chowder takes its name from the iron cooking pot in which it is traditionally cooked a Chaudière. Although the actual name chowder was first used in North America, specifically Canada in the 1730’s.The term Chowder would not be specific to a single soup but rather a number of interpretations of chowder exist ranging from rich creamy recipes through to light broth like soups often thickened with water biscuits, although all interpretations would indicate a hearty and very satisfying soup. The use of salt pork in seafood chowder is essential according to many traditionalists and will add a superb extra layer of flavour as will the use of potato. Clam chowder is possibly the most well known form of the soup and although very simple to make is one of the world’s great soups. Indeed the line between when chowder becomes a stew is often very thin indeed which makes chowder a great choice for a mid day meal on a sunny summers day. Experimentation is the order of the day when it comes to making chowder with the use of different fish and shellfish making the soup both fun to make and better to eat, although the recipe I have included may not be a chowder in the most traditional sense it will yield a hearty soup and will work a treat as a light meal or as a first course to a more substantial dinner.

His comments helped me draw some conclusions about the similarities in all the variations I'd eaten. I've concluded that a good chowder has a few universal ingredients:
- butter
- flour
- milk or cream
- veggies (onions, leeks, potatoes, carrots, celery,etc.)
- water or stock
- shellfish
- fish

It can also include some or all of the following:
- smoked fish
- tomatoes
- bacon
- white wine
- herbs and seasoning

Remembering my best meals, keeping in mind my recent attempts, taking advantage of local ingredients and borrowing much from Michael O'Meara, I created the following recipe for St. Patrick's Day 2011:

Irish Seafood Chowder

1 tbs olive oil
2 onions
2 leeks
1/2 stick butter
1/2 cup flour
1/2 pound potatoes, cubed
6 ounces bacon, cut into 1/4 inch pieces
1/2 cup cream
3 cups fish stock
1-2 pounds mixed fish (I used 1 pound clams from Walking Fish, 1/2 pound cod and 4 ounces smoked salmon)
parsley, to taste

1. Cook the bacon in 1 tbs olive oil.
2. Add the butter
3. When the butter has melted, add the onions and leeks. simmer until soft but not brown.
4. add the flour and stir vigorously for two minutes to make a roux.
5. add the fish stock and bring to a simmer.
6. add the potatoes and simmer for 10 minutes.
7. add and cream and return to a simmer.
8. add the fish and simmer until cooked.
8. add parsley, salt and pepper, to taste, and serve.

The Bread

Finding a bread recipe to complement my chowder was a much simpler task. Bread in Ireland is not a recent trend, and Coleman Andrews scoured the country, speaking to famous and family chefs in search of the best brown bread. He found several worthy of the title, and he included them in The Country Cooking of Ireland. I use Myrtle Allen's, found on page 272:

Brown Soda Bread

Butter for greasing
4 cups wheat flour
1 cup white flour
1/2 cup Irish steel-cut oatmeal or oat bran
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 to 4 cups buttermilk

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees
2. grease a baking sheet and set aside
3. mix the wheat flour, white flour, oatmeal, baking soda and salt together in a large bowl.
4. Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and gradually pour in the buttermilk, stirring with a wooden spoon in a spiral motion from the center to the edge of the bowl. The dough should be soft but not too wet, with no raw flour left (this will probably take about 2 1/2 cups of buttermilk, but use more or less if necessary).
5. Turn the dough out onto a floured board. Flour your hands lightly, then shape the dough into a flat round about 3 inches thick. Cut a deep cross in the top of the loaf with a wet or floured knife.
6. Transfer the loaf to a baking sheet and bake for 45 to 60 minutes, or until nicely browned and the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped. (Alternately, gently push the dough into a nonstick loaf pan and bake until done. The bread should slide out of the pan easily if done.)

The Beer

This is by far the easiest part of the meal to prepare. Pour a pint of Guinnes (or two). Murphy's works as well, especially in Cork.
Bread, chowder and a Guinness. It gets better every year.

Home Food Gets Hip

Some lucky people eat their mother's cooking well into their adult lives. My wife, Shefali, said good-bye to that utopia ten years ago when she packed her bags and headed to college in America. She's lived in the U.S. ever since, but still craves her mother's chicken curry, tikka masala, koftas and biryani. We've found some decent Indian restaurants in Durham and Chapel Hill, but none of them recreate the "home food" that she remembers and craves.

While no one can match her mother's cooking, we got pretty close this weekend when we visited Vimala's Curry Blossom Cafe in Chapel Hill.

The small restaurant features outdoor seating in a courtyard just out of sight from Franklin Street, Chapel Hill's main drag. We followed our noses behind a Malaysian joint, then past a pizza parlor and crepe shoppe. Dodging huge trays of thalis on our way in, we gawked at a simple but exciting menu written on a chalkboard overhead.
Vimala's is a farm-to-fork establishment, so the meats, produce and dairy products come from local farms. Shefali ordered the beef curry, which came with rice, daal, cauliflower, pappad and yoghurt.

I got the Bombay-style fish and chips - a king mackerel steak, lightly seasoned and fried, resting on a bed of rice. The fries were coated in garam masala and featured green chutney as a condiment instead of ketchup. There was also a small seasonal salad.

Because our eyes are notoriously bigger than our stomachs, we couldn't resist trying a side tandoori chicken as well.

Everything was excellent, especially the chicken and fish. Vimala herself circulated the dining area while we ate, carrying patrons' children, getting feedback on the night's special menu items and offering recommendations for customers who had just walked in. She spoke to us for several minutes about Bombay and the inspiration she gets from the street food when she visits. While it wasn't quite home food, Vimala made sure we'd eat it in our Durham home later that weekend, as she packed Shef's leftovers in a to-go box and added extra servings of fresh beef, rice and daal.

Home food is as much a state of mind as it is a meal. In Bombay, we can smell the aromas in the kitchen before, during and after the meal. We're comfortable eating familiar food around family and friends. The atmosphere's casual and conversation easy. Vimala's recreates this state of mind in its own progressive way. We placed our order with her daughter, Manju, and watched people from all walks of life - groups of college students, working professionals, retired couples and everything in between - smile at the children running underneath the tabletops and peek at the food on neighboring tables. The food was simple but thoughtful, and the quality of the ingredients shined.

Every couple of years, we take the 20-hour flight home to Bombay for a meal. When we're not traveling, we'll gladly settle for a 20-minute drive to Vimala's in Chapel Hill.

Walking Fish Delivery 4

The winds calmed down along the coast this week, so I received another flounder this Thursday from Walking Fish. I also picked up a small bag of arugula from the farmer's market Saturday morning. This evening's task was to figure out a way to combine the two. It rained all day in Durham, so I didn't want to stand over a grill. Recipes for flounder are hard to come by in my Italian cookbooks, so I called an old friend who grew up fishing in the ocean. He recommended I fillet it, then season it with bread crumbs and pan fry it.

In order to take his advice, I had to first learn how to fillet a flounder, so I turned to YouTube and viewed two how-to videos - one crude but informative clip and another that was more thorough but less entertaining.





The two narrators give essentially the same directions, so I tried it myself. A few minutes later I proved I'm not quite ready to try it on while bobbing up and down on a boat, fighting the wind and holding the still-flapping fish steady, but I did manage to get rid of the bones and skin and still keep most of the meat.

After sprinkling salt and pepper on each side of the fillets, Shefali dusted them with flour and pan fried them in butter and oregano while I boiled a pound of pasta and tossed it with a simple sauce of garlic, olive oil, crushed red pepper, white wine, lemon juice and the arugula.

In all, the fish turned out great, but pairing it with spaghetti wasn't the best decision. The pasta stretched the arugula pretty effectively, and would work well on its own or with a grilled meat, but if I were to do this one again I'd likely use the greens in a salad.

Comfort Food

The weather has been unseasonably warm here for the past two weeks. Warm temperatures throughout much of the state, however, contributed to strong winds on the coast - so strong that this week's Walking Fish delivery had to be postponed. It was the first time in the community supported fishery's history that the weather did not allow fishermen to gather the week's fresh catch.

We planned to cook the seafood on Friday, so when it did not make it we turned to an old reliable. Originating near my great grandfather's hometown of Lanciano, bucatini (or spaghetti) amatriciana takes everything good about pasta and adds to it extra bacon and cheese. The result is something unhealthy yet empowering. This is one of Shefali's favorites, so I make more often than our doctor would recommend.

Pasta Amatriciana

olive oil
1 pound pasta (usually a long, thin noodle like bucatini or spaghetti)
1 onion
crushed red pepper, to taste
8-12 oz bacon (I usually use an entire packet)
3.5 cups Christopher Sauce
1/2 cup or more of grated pecorino Romano cheese

put a pot of water on to boil, then chop the bacon into 1/2 inch squares. Heat the olive oil, then saute the bacon in a saucepan. When the bacon is crisp, move it with a slotted spoon to a plate lined with paper towel. In the now-empty pan, saute the onion until brown, then add the crushed red pepper. Let the pepper's flavors release for about 30 seconds, then add the Christopher Sauce. Stir the sauce vigorously at first to deglaze the pan, then simmer for 10-15 minutes. When the pasta is ready, return the bacon to the sauce, then add the cheese and pasta. Toss well and serve.

Walking Fish Delivery 3

A day or two before my Walking Fish delivery arrives, I receive an email update that announces the week's fresh catch. That evening, I break out the cookbooks and begin brainstorming the next epic meal.

Last week, I received three fillets of triggerfish, steamer clams and pasta clams. Triggerfish is a flaky white fish with a mild flavor. It has large rib and pin bones, so Shef and I decided it would be best baked.

We laid each fillet on a sheet of aluminum foil, placed a tablespoon of butter and pinches of salt, pepper and parsley on top of each fillet, then wrapped the foil and broiled them for about 20 minutes.

As for the clams, we opted for a pasta with a red sauce, since we ate our last batch of clams in a simple white sauce. Growing up, my dad and brother loved spicy food, but my mom couldn't stand it. She wasn't out of the house during dinnertime very often, but when she was, Dad would make a diavolo sauce. He's also prepared it as part of the feast of the seven fishes.

Having married a woman who loves spicy food, we eat shrimp fra diavolo often. This time, we decided to use clams instead.

Clams fra diavolo

olive oil
6 cloves garlic, diced
3.5 cups Christopher Sauce
1-2 pounds of clams, washed and scrubbed
1/2 cup dry red wine (we use chianti)*
crushed red pepper, to taste ("fra diavolo" means "the devil's brother in Italian, so use lots)
1 tsp dried parsley or 1 tbs fresh, chopped

*Note: during the summer, we sometimes substitute white wine (sauvignon blanc).

Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan. When hot, add the clams. As the clams heat, they will release a liquid. Shake the pan frequently so the shells do not stick. Remove the clams as soon as they open (our steamer clams opened earlier than the pasta clams). After about 15 minutes, remove the clams that did not open (if they are fresh and of good quality, like the ones we receive from Walking Fish, there should not be many that do not open) and set the open clams aside. In the same pan, add more olive oil and saute the diced garlic until fragrant but not brown. Add the crushed red pepper and let the flavors release for about 30 seconds. Add the Christopher Sauce and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the red wine, stir and simmer for an additional 5-10 minutes, until the alcohol has cooked off. Once the flavors of the garlic, red pepper and wine have incorporated into the sauce (taste it), return the clams to the sauce, add the parsley and simmer for another 5-10 minutes.

This sauce works well with linguine or fettuccine, and the clams were a nice change of pace.

Two Discoveries

I got to the farmer's market late on Saturday and found it pretty picked over, but I did walk away with butternut squash, a bag of turnips and a sweet potato. Shefali was out of town for the weekend and I had a couple hours free that afternoon, so I went exploring, hoping to uncover another hidden gem in the foodiest small town in America.

I'd heard about a fresh fish market in Carborro, just west of Chapel Hill. After driving up and down Main Street three times I finally saw the sign for Tom Robinson's Carolina Seafood Market. It's a tiny place, stuck between two restaurants, but an array of local music concerts and interest group fliers taped on both sides of a squeaky screen door keeps the shop's decor consistent with the rest of the town.

Each Wednesday, the store owner drives to the coast every, picks up the fresh catch and then sells it to customers in Carrboro Thursday through Saturday. What they don't sell on Saturday they offer to local restaurants.

When I got there Saturday afternoon the store's display case was about half full. I bought two Spanish mackerel, and the owner gutted them for me on the spot.

On my way home I also picked up The Silver Spoon Cookbook. According to the publisher, it's "Italy's best-selling cookbook for over 50 years." Filled with over 2,000 recipes, the self-proclaimed "bible of authentic Italian cooking" is different in many ways from the other self-proclaimed "number-one cookbook in America since 1930" sitting on my bookshelf. The Silver Spoon organizes its recipes by ingredient instead of courses. Its first 24 pages offer no recipes, only cooking terms, definitions and diagrams. The recipe instructions, regardless of length, are all one paragraph. It's an Italian cookbook but more specifically a cookbook for Italians, because not all recipes (like "Carrots in French Sauce," "Creole Rice" and "American Chicken Salad") come from Italy. The final 75 pages feature recipes from prominent Italian chefs from all over the world, such as Mario Batali (US), Giorgio Locatelli (London), and Gianluigi Morini (Italy).

The Silver Spoon is a textbook - something I'll reference when cooking with specific ingredients, but not a book I'll sit down and read. It's a great resource when I buy veggies at the farmer's market that I've never cooked or eaten before, and it has recipes for virtually anything Walking Fish can offer. For example, it has six different recipes for turnips bulbs and five for mackerel.

That night, I ended up boiling the turnips, seasoning them with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar, and dusting the whole mackerel with flour, pan-searing it in butter and topping it with lemon juice.

A Family Meal

My in-laws and I descended upon Cleveland last weekend to watch Shefali's brother, Manek, play in the Tavern Club Invitational. My parents saw the weekend as a special occasion and a reason to have everyone over for family meals.

Manek won the Pro-Am championship, and Saturday was also his birthday, so we had reason to celebrate. Nine of us sat at the table and enjoyed salad, spaghetti and meatballs with Christopher Sauce, stuffed hot peppers and great wine. For dessert, my mom presented Manek a massive tub of banana pudding, complete with candles.

In all, there were nine of us, and we made short work of the meal. The weather in Cleveland this time of year makes it all the more satisfying to eat well among family. We hope to make the Tavern Club Invitational an annual event.

My dad gets full credit for the meal, as he cooked everything himself.

Meatballs:

1 pound ground beef
1-3 eggs**
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
2 tbs parsley or oregano
1 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 onion, chopped or 1-2 tbs of onion powder

**My dad remembers watching his grandmother and Aunt Lucy make meatballs by mixing as many as three eggs into each pound of beef. He prefers one egg per pound of meat. Looking back, he believes it was their way of stretching the pound of meat (and the budget) so that it could feed more people.

Mix the eggs into the meat, then add the dry ingredients, adjusting the quantities until the meat has the right consistency (similar to burgers). Roll the meat into balls slightly larger than golf balls and arrange on a baking sheet. Brown the meatballs in the oven, then remove before they are fully cooked. Simmer them in Christopher Sauce to finish.

Stuffed Peppers:

12 hot banana peppers

3/4 pound hot italian sausage

3/4 pound mild italian sausage

1 egg

grated parmesan cheese

bread crumbs

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 tsp salt

Pecorino Romano Cheese

About 1 quart of Christopher Sauce

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Cut the top off the peppers and put the tops aside for later. Clean out the inside of the peppers.

Bring a pot of water to a boil and put the peppers in the boiling water for about 5 minutes (they should stay firm). Remove and let them cool.

In a sauce pan, add 1-2 cups of Christopher Sauce. Chop the top of the peppers you had set aside and add it to the sauce. You should make the sauce spicy to your taste. Hot peppers' heat can vary significantly. Let the sauce simmer for a while stuffing peppers.

In a bowl, combine the sausage (hot and mild), egg, salt and pepper, and 1/2 cup of the spiced-up Christopher sauce. Add parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs in equal parts until you like the consistency. It should be somewhat firm but not too much, as it will have to flow in a piping bag to fill the peppers. If you don't want to try to fill them whole you can cut the peppers in half lengthwise and fill them laying flat in a baking dish.

Put the sausage mixture in a piping bag and fill the peppers (or fill them laying flat in a baking dish). Put the peppers in a baking dish and cover with the spiced-up sauce. Cover the peppers and sauce in grated Pecorino Romano cheese. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the peppers.

You should alter the recipe based on how hot you want the dish. I found the dish is highly dependent on the hotness of the peppers. If they're pretty hot, then you don't need to spice up the stuffing and sauce too much. If they are milder and you want some more spice you can add some heat to the sausage filling (crushed red pepper , etc.) or the sauce.

Walking Fish Delivery 2

The weather was not cooperative for fishermen during the last week in January, but that didn't stop Walking Fish from handing me a bag of clams and oysters last Thursday.

Shef's not a fan of raw oysters, so I steamed them in white wine. With the pound of clams, I tried a recipe for linguine alla vongole from Toni Lydecker's Seafood alla Siciliana.

After heating olive oil in a pan large enough to hold the clams and pasta, we dropped the clams in over medium high heat and shook them occasionally. I added a bit of white wine to the pan after to help them open. As soon as they started to open, I removed them from the pan and discarded a few that remained closed. With the pan off the heat, I added a couple anchovies, lemon juice and zest, and black and crushed red pepper. Once the anchovy fillets dissolved, I returned the clams to the pan and added parsley leaves and the pasta.

When I boiled the pasta, I removed it from the water a few minutes early, while it was still very al dente. After joining the clams and sauce in the pan it softened over low heat and soaked up the flavor of the lemon, pepper and seafood.

In all, the pasta was more dry than what I'm used to in a linguine alla vongole, but the flavor was excellent. The oysters were terrific.

Walking Fish Delivery 1

Two years ago, graduate students at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment partnered with fishermen on the North Carolina coast to develop a way to bring fresh seafood to Durham residents. The result: Walking Fish, a community-supported fishery and quite possibly the coolest thing to hit Durham since Crash Davis.

Every other Thursday, leaders of the cooperative drive to the coast and pick up shares of the fresh catch from local fishermen and fisheries, then drive back to Durham to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens parking lot and deliver the seafood to shareholders from all over town.

Shefali heard about the program last fall. She also learned that it has become so popular that the shares sell out within a few hours. Tired of listening to me complain about living two hours from the beach but having to buy seafood flown in from Ecuador and Indonesia in our local grocery stores, she signed us up to receive two pounds per delivery the moment winter shares became available.

I picked up our first share last Thursday. A graduate student sitting behind a collapsible table in the parking lot looked up my name, then turned to another student wearing rubber gloves and standing in the bed of a pickup truck. He opened a huge cooler and pulled out one Southern Flounder in a clear plastic bag.

While I was waiting in line to pick up my catch, I listened to other members complain about flounder's bland taste and lack of versatility. I'd cooked flounder fillets in a simple tomato broth once before, but this fish was only headed and gutted. I did a lot of fishing growing up, but never learned how to fillet. This summer in Minnesota my dad gave me a crash course on a walleye, but I wasn't about to try it on such a thin, bony fish.

I decided to cook it whole, the same way I prepare Red Snapper on the beach. I scaled the fish with a butter knife, then scored both sides by making quarter-inch incisions about six inches apart on each side, dusted both sides with salt and pepper and let it rest for a few hours. That night, I lit my grill, wiped the grates with a paper towel soaked in vegetable oil (to prevent sticking), and rubbed olive oil all over the fish. I grilled each side on medium heat for about eight minutes each, carefully using two spatulas to flip it.

After I took it off the grill I let it rest for a few minutes, then cut an incision across the top and bottom of each side. These incisions, coupled with the scores I cut before grilling, made it possible to scoop out fillets with a spatula. It's a very delicate procedure - one I messed up a couple times and ended up picking pieces of flesh with my hands and transferring to a plate - but it removed the bones far better than I could have with a fillet knife. (For more info about grilling whole fish, check out Cooks Illustrated.)

We topped the fish with a simple salmoriglio sauce (lemon, garlic, parsley or basil, salt, pepper and olive oil) or a tomato and parsley relish, and ate it with sauteed zucchini and roasted potatoes.

Legislation and The Foodiest Small Town in America

Shefali and I live in Durham, North Carolina, a small town with an surprisingly great food scene. The scene garnered national attention two years ago, when Bon Appetit named it "The Foodiest Small Town in America."

One of the reasons why food flourishes here is the extensive network of local farms that drive the year-round farmer's markets and farm-to-fork restaurants. Much like the national media has kept an eye on Durham foodies of late, Durham foodies have recently paid special attention to the national media.

Earlier this month, President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act into law. The legislation should provide much needed, albeit controversial, renovations to how the Food and Drug Administration controls and inspects food safety.

Food and Drugs commissioner Margaret Hamburg, in a piece cross-posted on foodsafety.gov and whitehouse.gov, writes that the legislation is a major step in the right direction because recognizes that supervising food safety requires an inspection of the entire food system:

The idea of prevention is not new. FDA has established prevention-oriented standards and rules for seafood, juice, and eggs, as has the U.S. Department of Agriculture for meat and poultry, and many in the food industry have pioneered “best practices” for prevention. What’s new is the recognition that, for all the strengths of the American food system, a breakdown at any point on the farm-to-table spectrum can cause catastrophic harm to the health of consumers and great disruption and economic loss to the food industry.

So, we need to look at the food system as a whole, be clear about the food safety responsibility of all of its participants, and strengthen accountability for prevention throughout the entire food system – domestically and internationally. The new law meets these needs in numerous ways.

Lisa Sorg, editor of Durham's Independent Weekly, covered the story from a local angle. Her story opens with a conversation with Richard Holcomb on his farm (15 miles from our house). The new legislation would cripple small family farmers were it not for the Tester-Hagan Amendment, a "hard-fought addition to the bill," Sorg writes, "that exempts small farms from some of the law's most expensive regulations."

She goes on to explain the law's significant improvements to antiquated policies that date back as early as the 1930s (for example, the new law requires large farms to be inspected every 5 years and eventually every three; previously the farms needed an inspection once every ten). She also, with the help of Roland McReynolds, brings attention to the legislation's limited scope.

"It's important to remember that the bill does not address everything you and I might consider food safety issues: pesticides, allergens, hormones, genetically modified organisms," says Roland McReynolds, executive director of the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, which advocates on behalf of farmers and consumers to promote local and organic agriculture.

"We have to go back to the beginning," Holcomb told Sorg, "to the way we grew food for thousands of years."

Because family farmers grow, transport and sell their foods themselves, they control quality of their product. For example, Holcomb harvested close to 5,000 heads of cabbage this weekend. He sold them at local farmer's markets and distributed them to area restaurants. The people who eat them shook his hand after purchasing, listened to his invitation to visit the farm, and will likely visit his stand next weekend.

To a consumer like me, it's all a matter of trust, and I feel Holcomb's model builds consumer trust more effectively than any federal regulation, and costs taxpayers nothing. Ultimately, small farms earned exemption from the new laws because they hold themselves to higher standards than the government's. They are part of the solution, not the problem. In a perfect world, such a model would be the norm.