Ayni Herb Farm Garlic Fest: An Ode to Garlic
Garlic roasted by Amara Ullauri craddled in aluminum foil. Photo by Alexx Caceres.
So thrilled to have spent the day up in Hillsdale, NY at Ayni Herb Farm for their 3rd Annual Garlic Festival!
It was a beautiful day of loving community and celebrating garlic with cooking, medicine making, music, eating (with food from Lil Deb’s Oasis), and resting before a collective garlic planting on the farm. Deep Routes’ lead collaborator Maya led a cooking session for making Rainy Day Tomato Soup and Garlicky, Cheesy Flatbread. Following some background on the recipes and ingredients alongside a cooking demonstration, participants got to breaking down tomatoes, veggies, and whipping up a cheesy filling of ricotta, feta, and mozzarella to go in the breads. We had a gluten-free, dairy-free version and a gluten-full, dairy-full version so everyone could enjoy dipping some bread into their soup.
We didn’t get a chance to photograph the finished meal together, but with feedback from attendees it was super delicious!
There were also printed versions of the recipes booklets available at the festival, beautifully translated by the founder and lead land steward of Ayni, Amara Ullauri. If you’re interested in trying out the recipes in the booklet you can find them here, and for a visual recipe of the tomato soup check out Seeds & Receipts.
All photos by Alexx Caceres.
Ingredients set up for folks to cook with.
Lots of tomatoes for the soup.
Maya getting into demonstrations for the Gluten-Free/Dairy Free flatbread doughs and soup knife cuts.
Bilingual directions for our soup and bread-making teams thanks to Amara’s translations!
Folks getting into chopping up this massive pile of tomatoes.
More soup vegetable preparations thanks to attendees.
Chopping up scallions for the filling. These are scallions from Deep Routes’ East New York Farms beds at the UCC Youth Farm Site.
Close up of roasted garlic smooshed into the ricotta, mozzarella, and feta filling.
All our tomatoes and onions prepped for the soup.
Roasted garlic that will get smooshed into the soup soon.
A festival attendee taking care of the sauteed vegetables.
Maya breaking the Gluten-Full flatbread dough into rounds.
A slideshow above of Maya demonstrating how to flatten the dough, add in the filling, seal it closed, and flatten it for skillet frying.
Participants getting the gluten-full dough filled and flattened for skillet frying.
A cheesy, garlicky flat bread in the skillet with some olive oil.
Some finished fried cheesy, garlicky breads.
Maya squeezing the roasted garlic into the tomato soup as it cooks down before blending it.
