A Seed of an Idea: A Cook and Two Farmers Cross-Pollinate in Plainfield

It’s just about that time, the season when a green tide overwhelms farmers and amateur gardeners alike: zucchini, the prolific summer squash that’s sometimes left on curbs, foisted on neighbors, grilled and shaved and fried and so overabundant as to drive people to swear it off by summer’s end, their creativity exhausted.

This year, at least at Edgewater Farm in Plainfield and in some Upper Valley gardens, that bounty may look and taste a little different: Ribbed, striped, and mottled, with a creamier texture than the smooth green fruit that dominates the zucchini-verse.

This is Romanesco zucchini, and you can trace its uptick around here in part to a friendship between Edgewater Farm owners Jenny and Ray Sprague and a recent-ish Plainfield transplant.

“One of the most exciting phone calls of my life happened just a few weeks ago,” said Mitchell Davis, the transplant in question, over a late-spring breakfast of chilaquiles (cooked by him). “[The Spragues] called and asked, ‘What do you want us to plant for you?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, my God! They’ll grow some varieties of things I really like.’”

Davis was a somewhat out-of-the-ordinary new neighbor, at least by culinary standards. For three decades, he’s worked at the center of the food world, most recently as the chief strategy officer of the James Beard Foundation—an organization he helped guide for 27 years and left in 2020—and as an author, podcaster, professor, and consultant. Davis, who holds a PhD in Food Studies from New York University, has also led or consulted on innovative dining experiences across the world, such as the USA Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015. For over a decade he was also the Eastern North America academy chair for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants committee.

He did that work for decades from his longtime home in New York City. In 2024, when Davis’ husband, Dr. Nate Goldstein, accepted a position at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, the couple moved north to Plainfield. Davis first encountered Edgewater while house hunting and followed the farm on Instagram; later, at a book launch back in NYC, a food world colleague mentioned that her “dear friends” Jenny and Ray ran the farm. Davis had just joined their CSA. “I was flabbergasted. I told her, ‘That’s the farm on the end of my street!’”

Edgewater was about to become more than a solid local farmstand for Davis, who devotes much of his time to his Substack newsletter Kitchen Sense, a weekly trove of culinary insights and recipes that riffs on what’s in season or on dishes Davis encounters during his travels.

When Davis first messaged Jenny Sprague on Instagram, she sent back an exploding head emoji, given his presence in the food world. After they met, she and Ray invited their new neighbors to a Passover Seder. When Davis returned to Edgewater’s River Road greenhouses in the spring and saw them in their element, he was astonished. “I was quite literally overwhelmed with emotion. They were so beautiful, magical, I couldn’t believe it, and especially couldn’t believe this wonderland was just at the foot of our street.”

Then, this spring came the phone call: The Spragues were ordering seeds, and did Davis have any requests?

He did.

“I wanted a different variety of zucchini. Romanesco zucchini,” said Davis, who prefers it for its lower moisture content and more nuanced flavor. He also suggested they plant celtuce (pronounced sell-toos), a stem lettuce easily found in New York’s Chinatown but scarce in the Upper Valley.

When Davis first shared celtuce with the Spragues, they were intrigued. “Ray was like, ‘What is this vegetable? I’ve never had this before, and I’m pretty up on vegetables,’” recalled Jenny Sprague. ”He said, ‘We can grow that.’”

Except the couple couldn’t get celtuce seeds from their usual purveyor, so it was put on the back burner. Romanesco was another story, even if they had qualms. “I thought, ‘This sounds amazing,’ but from a grower’s perspective, it’s very spiny. It’s hard to pick,” said Jenny Sprague. “I didn’t want to subject our field crew to picking stuff that’s going to be really itchy and hard to pick—versus a classic New England zucchini that we all know and love.”

Still, into the field went the Romanesco. When the Edgewater team potted some seedlings to sell in the greenhouses, they moved quickly. “It was more popular than I imagined,” said Jenny Sprague. “People snapped them up.”

As the zucchini grew, so did the alliance. Each week, the Spragues send a short list of what will appear in the week’s Wednesday CSA pickup, and in turn Davis emails back a few recipes for the printed newsletter handed over to CSA members, whether for broccoli, Thai basil, or cucumbers—which Jenny and her son were washing by the armload on a recent Tuesday.

Davis seems amused that she doesn’t consider herself a foodie. “She’s like, ‘All we ever do is pick vegetables, steam them, and serve them with olive oil and salt,” he said. “I would kill for a restaurant that did that here.”

Because he’s so often immersed in recipe development, Davis hasn’t yet explored the northern New England restaurant scene as much as he’d like. (He still travels often to places such as London and New York City, where he spent much of the spring planning The Great Nosh, a Jewish food festival on Governors Island; he currently holds the title of Chief Picnic Officer for the Jewish Food Society). “I love to cook, and I write a weekly newsletter, and I’m cooking all of the time. I’m not usually looking to eat out.”

Still, he’s nosed out some local favorites: Cocktails at Wolf Tree in White River Junction (a 2025 finalist for a James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar); sandwiches from Marsh Brothers Deli in Lebanon (Davis marvels at the casual inclusion of Guernsey-milk ricotta cheese from Meriden’s Mill Bridge Farm for Marsh Brothers’ homemade donuts and zeppoles); Palengke, the Filipino market in West Lebanon and Sterns Produce in White River Junction, where Davis can usually find curry leaves; provisions from King Arthur Flour in Norwich; and maple creemees everywhere.

As befits someone who eats, writes about, and strategizes around food for a living, Davis offers myriad ways to cook zucchini, including slow-cooking (see the recipe below). He has a pretty good celtuce recipe, too, which he hopes to deploy next summer. “We’ll order the [celtuce] seeds and have it for next year,” said Jenny Sprague. “We’re just out here growing this stuff and taking chances.”

Recipe: Slow-Cooked Zucchini

From Mitchell Davis’s Kitchen Sense. Makes 4 servings.

4 or 5 medium green zucchini, yellow squash, or a combination (about 2 pounds)

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Handful tarragon, basil, chervil, mint, or parsley, leaves only, chopped

Directions

Trim the ends of the squash and slice crosswise into thin disks, less than ¼ inch thick. (If using larger squash, cut the disks in half or quarters.)

In a wide Dutch oven or casserole with a tight-fitting lid, heat the olive oil and butter over a low burner. Add the sliced squash along with a generous pinch of salt. Cover and cook very slowly for about an hour or more, stirring frequently, until the squash has broken down into mush. Keep adjusting the burner so there’s a gentle but steady simmer. You don’t want the zucchini to stick to the bottom of the pan or to brown at all.

When the slices have virtually disintegrated, remove the lid. The zucchini will have given off a lot of water. Increase the heat a little to encourage some more evaporation to firm up the mixture. Simmer another 5 to 10 minutes or so. Stir in the chosen herb and add a grind or two of black pepper. This dish is delicious served hot, room temperature, and cold.

Corin Hirsch has been a staff food critic and drinks writer at Newsday and Seven Days, and contributes to The Guardian, Yankee, Wine Enthusiast and other publications. She can be found on Instagram @latesupper.