Cooking with Carafoli Fall Treats: Mushrooms, Chestnuts & Figs

FALL TREATS MENU:
Savory Mushroom & Pecan Paté
Hearty Italian Lentil Stew with Chestnuts & Arugula
Tagliatelle Pasta with Porcini Mushrooms
Pappardelle Pasta with Fresh Figs, Chile, Lemon & Cream
Cardamon-Scented Panna Cotta with Caramelized Figs

As a long-time food writer, I often have deadlines months ahead of the short growing season on Cape Cod. For that reason, the products for recipes I want to write about are often not yet in season. My solution to is to think a season ahead. In this collection of recipes, I purchased fresh mushrooms from Allen Farms Certified Organic Herbs & Greens at the Osterville Farmers’ Market for the Savory Mushroom & Pecan Paté. I used dried Italian porcini mushrooms for the Tagliatelle Pasta with Porcini Mushrooms. As hard as I searched, I could not locate fresh figs anywhere for the Pappardelle Pasta with Fresh Figs, Chile, Lemon & Cream, and the Panna Cotta with Caramelized Figs. When the fall 2023 issue of edible CAPE COD is in your hands, all ingredients should be easily available locally for your cooking.

John F. Carafoli is an international food stylist, consultant, and author. He wrote the seminal book Food Photography and Styling, Cape Cod Chef’s Table, Recipes from Buzzards Bay to Provincetown, and Great Italian American Food in New England: History, Traditions & Memories. He has been published in Gastronomica, The Journal of Food and Culture, The New York Times, L’italoAmericano Italian Newspaper, and Edible Cape Cod, where he won an EDDY for best use of recipes in a feature. He was profiled in the Italian publication ER (Emilia Romagna) and presented papers at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery in England. carafoli.com

A tribute to Cape Cod farmer Jeff Deck and his wife, Beth. They were the real deal and will be missed as they move to another part of the state.

Jeff Deck, owner of Not Enough Acres Farm for 45 years on Sesuit Road in East Dennis, has left the Cape for good. I found this out while writing about figs for this fall issue.

I remembered Jeff sold figs at the Orleans Farmers’ Market and later at the farm stand at his house.

When he and his wife Beth started the farm, they didn’t have enough property to get a tax break, so they leased the property across the street to get the necessary 5.25 acres. That is how the farm got its name. I visited the farm once before when I mentioned him in an article. There I saw beautiful Shetland Icelandic sheep roaming the land; Beth made hats, gloves, and bags from the wool.

I called him to talk about figs because I knew he had a large fig tree that weathered the cold winters on the Cape. When I arrived, he told me it was his last day at the farm and he was leaving directly after our talk with his dog Sadie to their new home in Bernardston, MA, which is almost on the Vermont border.

He showed me the Brown Turkey fig tree, which had died during this last winter’s terrible two-day freeze. At the base of the trunk were large 6- to 8-inch green shoots. It was coming back to life! “The tree grew several stories up the side of the house. I could harvest half a bushel of figs from the tree during late August and into September.” Jeff said. The Dennis Conservation Land Trust bought the farm for Dennis-Yarmouth High School to use it for ecological education.