food & drink | Jenn Hall

Edible Jersey: The Jersey Girl Who Transformed American Cuisine

November 22, 2017 by jennhallwrites

One tends to think France-by-way-of-California when considering Alice Waters and her prix-fixe Berkeley temple, Chez Panisse. Yet the mother of American farm-to-table cooking spent her grade school years in Chatham. In her memoir; Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook [Clarkson Potter; 2017, with Cristina Mueller and Bob Carrau], Waters traces the unconventional path to her now-legendary restaurant’s 1971 opening. Spoiler alert: It begins in the Garden State. This may surprise those unfamiliar with our bounty. To […]

Categories: food & drink

Edible Jersey: Proud to be Pinelands Brewing Company

October 5, 2017 by jennhallwrites

On an August evening, as night fell, I found myself seeking moths in a clearing near a stand of pitch pines. Flittering insects descended, some the size of one’s fingernail, others the size of one’s palm. They tickled my shoulders and neck as they careened past, undaunted in a journey towards light. Moths, it turns out, use the moon for navigation and get confused by artificial sources, which were set up intentionally to lure them. It’s kind of like us, with […]

Categories: food & drink, travel • Tags: pinelands

Edible Jersey: Drinking slow with Danny Childs

October 5, 2017 by jennhallwrites

The story of a cocktail, and of the ingredients that create its internal harmony, is one of nature and agriculture. Distillation and fermentation stop ingredients in time, the elements of season and place suspended. The spirit captures what the earth provides so that it might be used to heal, to entertain or to console. Those who respect that history tap into a power that enables them to tell new stories about their own time and region. It’s no surprise, then, that […]

Categories: food & drink • Tags: interviews, recipes

Edible Jersey: Not a Drop to Spare

October 5, 2017 by jennhallwrites

In a state that boasts 1,792 miles of coastline when you count bays, offshore islands, sounds, rivers and creeks, it’s strange to think of water as a scarce commodity. This is ever more so the case after a summer marked by frequent rain. Yet water here has always required careful management. It’s why the New Jersey Water Supply Management Act was passed in 1981. That’s an issue that resonates in the Pine Barrens, where there is fear that the Comprehensive Management […]

Categories: food & drink • Tags: pinelands

Edible Jersey: Special Report – Oysters – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

July 21, 2017 by jennhallwrites

Perhaps no food conveys a sense of place like the oyster. To tip back a Cape May Salt or Forty North Rose Cove and sip its brine is to kiss its native waterway on the lips, in a paraphrase of French poet Léon-Paul Fargue. It is to commune with season and location, a humble creature transformed by salt and time into something far more grand. It is to taste the point where river gives way to sea, the best of […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water • Tags: farming, oysters

Edible Philly: In a Grays Ferry Garden, Opportunity Grows

July 5, 2017 by jennhallwrites

As the sun rises over West Philly, a quiet hum of work is under way at the Growing Together Garden at 25th and Reed Streets. Tomorrow is market day at the Nationalities Service Center (NSC), Philly’s largest refugee-resettlement agency, and there’s much to be done. Beets are picked and arranged, bright like gems. Orange, yellow and bright-purple carrots are gathered into bunches. Outside the locked gates of the 2.8-acre expanse, freight trains rumble by and the city awakens. Folks gather […]

Categories: food & drink • Tags: farming, refugee experience

Paste Food: The Casserole Stands Eternal

June 12, 2017 by jennhallwrites

This has been a challenging, no good, difficult 2017. Sure, sure, there has been positivity along the way. (Its persistence is shocking, isn’t it?) Yet there have been plenty of just-plain-tough days, too. And when things are low, when they come just shy of bottoming out, there is a dish I return to for solace: The Casserole. Spoken aloud, the words are an incantation. They bring my best friends into the kitchen when I’m pushing against the empty, a lifeboat […]

Categories: essay, food & drink • Tags: essays, recipes

Edible Jersey: Growing the Next Generation of Jersey Farmers

June 12, 2017 by jennhallwrites

Rose Robson always follows this rule: If a crop crosses her path more than once, she investigates. This is how the fourth-generation farmer discovered pawpaws, a greenish tree fruit that has tropical notes of banana, mango and citrus. First, they came up in a Rutgers organic agriculture class she was visiting. Then she read about them in Modern Farmer. Within a year, Robson had a grove of 90 trees in Wrightstown, which she tends along with flowers, field crops and peaches. […]

Categories: food & drink • Tags: farming

Edible Philly: Road Trip – LBI Like a Local

June 12, 2017 by jennhallwrites

The story of Long Beach Island, better known among NJ local as LBI, is a story of the water. As you cross the Route 72 Causeway, the view opens up in stages. There are the salt-marsh homes of Beach Haven West, some still bearing Sandy’s scars. There is the strange absence of the bayman’s shack that used to hold court in the reeds. Finally, the vista opens onto a union of water, land and sky. Even for locals, the landscape strikes […]

Categories: food & drink, travel • Tags: road trips

Edible Jersey: In the Kitchen – Local Eating with Blue Moon Acres

June 12, 2017 by jennhallwrites

Growing up, Ashley Lyons Putman’s lunchbox wasn’t quite like the other kids. When you’re the daughter of organic farmers Jim and Kathy Lyons of Blue Moon Acres, Lunchables don’t make the cut. “So I’d take out this big, black orb,” Ashley says with a laugh. Brown rice balls filled with pickled plum paste were common. While she fared poorly in lunchroom trades, Putman learned about healthy food early on. That made her and her brothers adventurous and mindful eaters. Read more… […]

Categories: food & drink • Tags: farming, interviews

Jenn Hall

Best American Food Writing Series Notable.

Category Archives: food & drink

Edible Jersey: The Jersey Girl Who Transformed American Cuisine

Edible Jersey: Proud to be Pinelands Brewing Company

Edible Jersey: Drinking slow with Danny Childs

Edible Jersey: Not a Drop to Spare

Edible Jersey: Special Report – Oysters – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

Edible Philly: In a Grays Ferry Garden, Opportunity Grows

Paste Food: The Casserole Stands Eternal

Edible Jersey: Growing the Next Generation of Jersey Farmers

Edible Philly: Road Trip – LBI Like a Local

Edible Jersey: In the Kitchen – Local Eating with Blue Moon Acres