Every week, we at The Greenporter Hotel welcome hundreds of guests to the North Fork, where they come to get closer to nature–and more specifically, to their food sources. This is an easy feat in Greenport, where you are a bike ride away from dozens of vineyards, organic farms, and the bountiful Peconic Bay.
As a North Fork chef running a sustainable kitchen and Green-Certified hotel, I experiment with a wide range of products, from produce to seafood to poultry. I had tried many types of birds for my chicken tagine, only to find that the most flavorful rendition was with a locally raised Browder’s Bird chicken. While they have both red and white broilers, their red broilers–a breed stemming from prized French free-range birds–are bred for darker meat and more robust flavor, and so perfect for the recipe. So perfect, in fact, that I had to visit the farm and see for myself what goes in to the making of these delicious birds.
Holly and Chris Browder of Browder’s Birds were among those of us wanting to get closer to our food sources. The former New York City inhabitants were both already entrenched in their local food scene when they met out on the East End in 2006. After an apprenticeship at Garden of Eve organic farm in Riverhead, Chris Browder–a former investment banker–and Holly Browder–an administrator at the renowned management consulting firm, McKinsey & Co.–began to share their passion for organic, sustainable farming with the creation of Browder’s Birds. Launched in 2010 in Southold, the couple now raise poultry on a 16-acre farm in Mattituck, utilizing state-of-the-art organic farming techniques–movable coops make the most of the lush North Fork farmland and ensure the highest quality poultry and eggs, both of which have been snapped up by such reputable, locavore-centric restaurants as Topping Rose House and The North Fork Table. Both Holly and Chris are active in the local food and small farm communities out on the North Fork, with Chris on the Board of Directors of NOFA-NY, the organic farming association, and Holly with the Long Island Farm Bureau.
So please click through to the recipe link below and mention SeasonedFork when you pick up your bird for Chicken Tagine–a dish that sells out constantly at Cuvee–the perfect thing for a special Sunday dinner. The spice in this dish is perfectly complimented by the floral yet dry nose of Paumanok Riesling.
