51 TINKER STREET
WOODSTOCK, NY 12498
(845) 679-5533
CHEF/OWNER: STEFANIE SCHACTER
The funny thing about Woodstock and its perennial hippie associations is that the 1969 festival didn’t even occur in town. Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm, the site of the concert, was actually located forty-three miles from the Ulster County town of Woodstock, in the Sullivan County hamlet of White Lake.
Still, any walk through the shopping district of Woodstock will involve the sight of store windows filled with acid-hued tie dyes and hempen garments. The town is punctuated by organic and vegan-friendly restaurants—but most of these are newcomers and actually debuted long after Woodstock’s hippie heyday.
Except one. Joshua’s Cafe opened in 1972 and has been a landmark in the town ever since—Ruth Reichl famously raved about it in the pages of Gourmet. CIA-trained Chef Stefanie Schacter took over for Joshua (her father) in 1992 and continues to make a visit to Joshua’s Cafe the de rigueur stop in Woodstock. While Joshua’s is both vegan and vegetarian friendly—not to mention welcoming to diners with gluten intolerances—Schacter does spin Hudson Valley–raised meats into stunning Mediterranean and Middle Eastern dishes like this moussaka.
(SERVES 8–10)
For the sauce:
2 pounds ground lamb
1 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup sliced mushrooms
¾ cup red wine
¾ cup tomato puree
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons dried oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
For the “mustard custard”:
1 cup ricotta cheese
2 eggs
¼ cup prepared mustard
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
Pinch of cayenne
Pinch of salt
Pinch of black pepper
For assembly of the moussaka:
2 medium eggplants, peeled and sliced ¼-inch thick
Olive oil
8 ounces shredded Swiss cheese
To make the sauce: Preheat oven to 350°F. In a large sauté pan, brown the lamb and remove. Sauté the onion and garlic in the same pan until they are translucent, then add mushrooms and sauté until soft. Return lamb to the pan and add wine, tomato puree, bay leaves, and oregano. Bring to a simmer and cook until the lamb is cooked through, about 10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.
To make the custard: Whisk together the ricotta, eggs, mustard, and spices until well combined. Reserve.
To assemble the moussaka: Lightly grill or sauté the eggplant slices in olive oil. In a 9 × 13-inch casserole pan, layer ingredients as follows: eggplant slices, lamb sauce, shredded Swiss cheese, “mustard custard.” Bake at 350°F until well browned and bubbly, approximately 45 minutes. Serve.
NEW YORK WHISKEY REVOLUTIONARY
Ralph Erenzo of Tuthilltown Spirits
What we’re talking about when we talk about Tuthilltown whiskey is a sweet little bottle that has been variously described as chubby, cute, and the perfect stocking stuffer. But, simultaneously, we’re talking about a revolution that brought the culture and craft of distilling back to its historic home in the Hudson Valley.
At the turn of the century, the Hudson River Valley—with its easy access to shipping arteries and (via the Erie Canal) the markets of the West—had been an established site for distilleries. Most notably, the vast Fleischmann Distilling Company was built on Peekskill’s waterfront in 1901; this is the company that produced the first gin in the United States. Sadly, Prohibition ended American spirit production, and when it resumed in the 1930’s, the industry was concentrated by the powerful distilleries in the South. Even the Fleischmann Distilling Company was eventually subsumed by Louisiana’s many-armed Sazerac Company. And so things remained until the founder of Tuthilltown Spirits, Ralph Erenzio, decided to put the land that he owned in Gardiner to profitable use.
Here’s what happened, in Erenzo’s words:
“Oh, well—when we started there was no New York distilling scene. Tuthilltown was the first distillery to open in New York State since Prohibition. So, four generations ago, New York State had distilleries, but, when we started [in 2007], we were the first to operate in nearly 40 years.
“The fee for a permit in New York State had been $65,000. And then, in 2002, a law was passed establishing the A-1 license,” Erenzo explains. “The A-1 license was sort of a mini-distillery license, like a micro-license; it capped production at 35,000 gallons per year, but it also lowered the permit fee to $1,500 dollars for three years. I was looking into distillery law, and I discovered that there was this new license that nobody seemed to know about.
“Of course, New York City is only 75 miles away, and, here in Gardiner, we’re located in a large visitor area. Five hundred thousand tourists per year come through our neighborhood. And so it occurred to me: We could do what the wineries and breweries of the Hudson Valley had done, which was to create a small destination for people to go and visit—say, like the small distilleries that I’d seen while travelling through Europe. Because, although for many years people had been able to go and visit wineries and breweries and take tours, it had been eighty years since anybody had gone inside a distillery to see how it ran.
“But, really, there was no scene until 2007. Before then, we were still unable to sell our goods to visitors or offer them tastings or samples. This made tours a very high cost thing to offer because visitors would be in the way of operations and we couldn’t sell them anything.” Erenzo adds, pointing out the obvious: “Plus, telling them the whole story of how we made whiskey meant almost nothing if they couldn’t actually taste the product at the end.
“And so I became engaged in the four-year lobbying effort to get that law changed. We got the Farm Distillery Act passed in 2007 and that allowed for the same volume of production—35,000 gallons. It also lowered the fee a little, plus it came with the ability to have a shop at the distillery and offer samples. This changed everything. In 2007, we were the only New York distillery. Since then, 38 liquor distilleries have opened in New York State and all of them are farm distilleries.
“What the Farm Distillery Act does is that it allows you to make anything you want as long as you make it with at least 75 percent New York State–grown agricultural raw materials. In exchange for using raw New York materials, you can have a shop and do tastings and sell directly to customers.”
In 2007, when Tuthilltown debuted its first batch of Hudson Baby Bourbon (made from 100 percent New York State corn), it was the first New York whiskey to be produced since the fall of the Northeastern spirit industry. This liquor was big news, but bourbon is not particularly a historic Northeastern whiskey. For that, you need to look at rye, which had traditionally been distilled in the Mid-Atlantic states. “For many years, rye had been out of favor,” explains Erenzo. “When whiskey production moved south, rye production fell off. It was historically a Northeastern thing: I mean, rye was a real New York spirit.
“Most of it was made with grain grown in Pennsylvania and New York; rye was a cover crop, plus, they were using it for bread. Now, rye is still a crop, but it’s almost always plowed under—basically, it’s planted to hold the ground together in bad seasons.” While using the rye for spirits has the bottom line appeal of economy, Erenzo’s inspiration to make rye had more to do with culture. “We wanted to have something that had a historic link to New York, and rye was it.
“For many years—well, since Prohibition—if Americans were drinking rye, it was Canadian rye, which is not made with 100 percent rye grain. It contains only a small amount of rye grain mixed with grain neutral spirit made in a big industrial plant. We thought we would start making rye in the traditional way with 100 percent rye grain. And we just happened to time it right; articles were starting to come out in the New York Times that discussed rye as the disappeared spirit. We could see that rye was starting to get some notice and that it was going to come back.”
Erenzo’s choice to use local grains and fruit in his spirits was not based in ethics; this was simply the smarter way for him to source. “It would be easier to source from outside the state, but it wouldn’t necessarily be cheaper,” he explains. “We pay a little more to our growers because, the way we do it, it’s our crop—it’s not the farmer’s crop. This means that we’re somewhat immune to real difficulties in the marketplace, like failed crops on a mass scale. If there is a difficult season on the commodities market, these local farmers are growing these crops for us with our seed. They’re not going to sell that crop off to someone else if, by circumstance, they could get a higher price elsewhere. Also, we’re willing to accept a little extra cost up front because, if we were buying corn from Iowa, we’d have to ship it here. It would cost us more to ship than for the grain itself. So it’s not only for environmental and local/agricultural reasons that we use local suppliers; it’s also good business sense. It saves us money.”
Tuthilltown Spirits, PO Box 320, 14 Grist Mill Lane, Gardiner, NY 12525
Tours Saturdays & Sundays at 12 p.m., 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. by reservation only. Book online at tuthilltown.com or call (845) 633-8734.