A Special Holiday Party for My Bedford Staff at La Bastide and Cenadou Bistrot
I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. Here's to a prosperous and healthy New Year ahead.
Just before Christmas, I hosted a very special gathering for my entire staff at my Bedford, New York farm. My employees work so hard during the year - caring for the property and my many pets and gardens, and helping me prepare for all the meetings, shoots, and other events. I took everyone to La Bastide by Andrea Calstier and Cenadou Bistrot, a quaint new establishment featuring two French restaurants owned by Chef Andrea Calstier and his wife Elena Oliver. We all enjoyed a buffet of delicious hors d'ouevres including tuna tartare with avocado and yuzu, Compté filled gougères, chickpea panisses with smoked espelette pepper coulis, truffle croque-monsieur, and garden salads. For sweets, we had Madeleine cookies, choux, chocolates, and other treats. It was a most enjoyable party.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
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- These two French restaurants are housed in the same building. Cenadou serves traditional French dishes while La Bastide offers a more formal tasting menu for fine dining. Cenadou, the 50-seat French bistro is upstairs and La Bastide, which seats 12 is downstairs – both with beautiful views of the property’s landscape.
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- Both restaurants feature open kitchens and local, seasonal cuisine.
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- To start, we had a buffet of hors d’oeuvres including tuna tartare with avocado and yuzu. Tuna tartare is a dish made with raw tuna cut into small pieces or cubes that are usually served in a bowl. The Asian flavors such as ginger, soy, chile, and lime juice are added to highlight the taste of the tuna. Each was topped with a slice of yuzu – a citrus fruit that is tart and fragrant, closely resembling grapefruit, with overtones of mandarin orange.
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- This is chickpea panisse with smoked espelette peppers coulis. Panisses, or chickpea flour fries, are a popular street snack from the south of France.
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- I took many snapshots. Here I am with my crew foreman, Chhiring Sherpa. He has been working with me at the farm for more than 22-years.
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- This is the garden salad – so fresh and light. It was a big favorite.
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- Gougères are baked savory choux pastries made with cheese. The cheese in these is Compté. Comté is a French cheese made from unpasteurized cow’s milk in the Franche-Comté region of eastern France bordering Switzerland. It is classified as an Alpine cheese.
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- And these are mini truffle croque-monsieurs. A croque-monsieur is a hot sandwich made with ham and cheese.
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- This photo is of me, Pete Sherpa and Fernando Ferrari.
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- I also gave away grab-bag gifts. Every one selected a number out of a container and then chose their own present.
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- Here is Elvira – she got one of the early numbers. I think she is very happy with her choice.
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- In this photo – Fernando, my longtime driver Andres Velastegui, and Phurba Sherpa.
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- We had several cocktails – Sancha with tequila, lemon verbena, cucumber, lime, spicy homemade tincture; Nougat with vodka, beet juice, elderflower, lemon, cremant de bourgogne; Voyeur with bourbon, dark maple syrup, orange and lemon juice, and angostura bitters.
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- We also enjoyed white wine and other cocktails.
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- From my security detail – Tommy Spasiano and Patrick Tierney.
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- Here are Jimmy Oliveros, Juan Londoño, and Helen Peparo – my stable team.
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- Here I am with my longtime driver, Carlos “Uno” Villamil.
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- The dessert table was filled with cookies and other sweets.
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- We had pâte à choux filled with sweet pastry cream and decorated with a tiny piece of edible gold leaf.
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- Is a Madeleine a cake or a cookie? Technically, they are small butter cakes; however, because of their shape and size they’re often referred to as cookies – very small sponge cake cookies with a distinctive shell-like shape.
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- My operations manager, Matt Krack, loves to cook and bake. He brought in these delectable cookies to share – spiced chocolate ganache sandwich cookies and his Aunt Stella’s cuccidati.
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- We also had chocolate…
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- … and peanut brittle. Everyone took treats home.
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- Here are Patrick and my head gardener, Ryan McCallister.
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- Here, my gardener Brian O’Kelly, Claudia Lieto-McKenna my special projects manager, and Ryan take a “selfie.”
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- This is Cesar Felix. He takes care of all my birds – the chickens, Guinea hens, turkeys, peafowl, geese, and now pheasants.
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- Another quick photo – Brenda Pinto, Carlos “dos” Restrepo, and Elvira, from my housekeeping and housecleaning crew.
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- And here I am with the owners, chef Andrea Calstier and his wife Elena Oliver. Thank you so much for a lovely evening. If you’re in the Westchester, New York area, I encourage you to try to La Bastide by Andrea Calstier and Cenadou Bistrot – you will love them both.
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