Upper Valley sisters create new farm-to-table cookbook

WEATHERSFIELD — Growing up on a farm, and with an interest in food, sisters Jenna and Nora Rice were no strangers to the farm-to-table movement.

They were raised at Cobb Hill, the intentional agrarian community in Hartland, and were both mostly homeschooled. Jenna, 28, went on to forge a career in creative services for small companies and lives on a small homestead in Weathersfield with her husband. Nora, 25, went to culinary school and has traveled widely as a chef.

From their conversations about food after the coronavirus pandemic has emerged an unusual book. While farm-to-table cooking emphasizes using local ingredients, “The Vermont Farm to Table Cookbook” aims to use only Vermont-grown ingredients, from meat and vegetables to sweeteners, with a few small exceptions (salt and pepper, for example).

“That idea of what can we make that’s healthy and also healthy in the sense that it’s locally produced was the inspiration,” Jenna Rice said in an interview at her home in Weathersfield.

The book comes out next Tuesday and there’s a launch party planned for 2 to 4 p.m. on Aug. 2 at Hartland Public Library, with food from the book and live music.

Neither sister could recall a eureka moment for the book, but Jenna said they once talked about so-called superfoods. Almonds and avocado are particularly trendy, but require a great deal of resources and labor to grow and must travel thousands of miles to reach northern kitchens.

“I think (the book) evolved as we went along,” Nora Rice, who currently lives in Windsor, said in the interview. When they settled on sticking only to Vermont-raised food, “I thought it was going to be a nightmare,” she added. A wide variety of foods grow in Vermont, but how can a cook not use lemons?

But once she began writing recipes, she found the limitations helpful. Nora wrote all the recipes, and Jenna and friends tested them; Jenna did all the photography, while Nora served as her studio assistant. The book took 18 months or so to put together.

The result, published by Hobart, N.Y.-based Hatherleigh Press and distributed by Penguin Random House, is spare by modern cookbook standards. Most new cookbooks are replete with biographical asides and notes on technique. “The Vermont Farm to Table Cookbook” is straightforward by comparison, with recipes and photographs set off by a brief note about each dish. There’s no nonsense, which mirrors the Rice sisters’ character.

There’s also no moralizing. The farm-to-table ethic generally talks about food-miles and the virtues of buying local. The Rices skip the buzzwords in favor of offering such practical suggestions as looking for farms that have their own stores and might therefore sell meat and produce at more reasonable prices.

The book also starts with a section about growing pantry staples, something Jenna Rice does on her 5½-acre place near Weathersfield Center. She and husband Greg Goedewaagen store their potatoes, onions, carrots, beets and garlic through the winter.

“Usually they take us into the spring,” Jenna Rice said.

The book goes a step further by substituting cornmeal for flour. A recipe for crispy buttermilk chicken with maple bourbon BBQ sauce calls for coating chicken drumsticks in polenta, rather than wheat flour.

Sweeteners are limited to maple sugar and honey, which led Nora Rice to develop new twists on old favorites, including a maple bourbon crème brûlée.

“It forces more creativity,” she said. “If I have all the options in the world, it breaks my brain a little bit.”

Nora, who earned a culinary certification at a school in Devon, England in 2019, has cooked in Seattle, Montana, Italy, Ireland and New Zealand. She’s been working in catering and has a food truck standing by. The book is opening doors, she said.

“Before it’s even out, I feel like it’s been getting my foot back into the Vermont food and farm scene,” she said. “It’s been great, to be honest.”

The prospect of the book finding readers and cooks has its own appeal. “I don’t think it dawned on me that people might actually make things that I made,” she said.

Jenna, on the other hand, has stayed home. She didn’t see the point in shelling out money for a higher education that didn’t interest her, so she created her marketing business and homestead, and has been following her other interests, including making music. She put out a new recording of original Americana songs, “Salt and Strawberries,” which features a wide range of Upper Valley contributors, earlier this year.

The cookbook and the sisters’ outlook seem a part of an old Vermont tradition of work and independence.

“For me at least, it’s been kind of an evolving journey to figure out how to make my own way,” Jenna Rice said.

“It’s always some windy road to get there,” Nora added.

Now, they’re interested to see where their book will take them.

“The Vermont Farm to Table Cookbook,” by Nora and Jenna Rice, is available for pre-order ($25), through their website, vermontfarmtotable.net. It will be available in bookstores on July 29.

Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.