The farm-to-table movement is practically synonymous with North Fork living. Small food producers making the most of local bounty have made a big splash in recent years, becoming the focus of New York Times articles and most recently an episode of TasteMAKERS on PBS.
TasteMAKERS, hosted by Emmy-winning presenter Catherine Neville, highlights movers and shakers in the “maker movement,” showcasing artisan bread bakers, cheese makers, distillers and brewers, and others small food producers.
Episode three in series entitled “Not So Fast” shines the spotlight on local purveyor Peconic Escargot. Owner Taylor Knapp explained the nuances of Heliculture on the Cutchogue farm where he raises tens of thousands of snails on foraged greens. The local chef, who also owns the pop-up restaurant PawPaw, gave insight on how he got into the business of snail farming.
“I thought it would be fun to do an escargot dish and I looked to find fresh, local raised snails and we couldn’t find them anywhere — we looked all over the East Coast and thought someone might be doing it, but there was nothing,” Knapp says in the episode. “I couldn’t even bring them in fresh from another country… the gears started turning… and a couple months later I decided to give it a shot.”
The Stony Brook Incubator at Calverton, which gives fledgling local businesses a starting point, also makes an appearance in the episode along with The Peconic Land Trust and chef Greg Ling who was working at Industry Standard in Greenport when the show was filmed. He is currently helming the kitchen at Greenport Harbor Brewing Co. in Peconic.
Check out the full 26-minute episode below and visit the TasteMAKERS website for more great episodes:
