Fresh From The Farm, Really

Last week, chef Sarah Dibben served up a salad of roast beets with fried celeriac and bacon; roast pork with a corn flan, little black fingerling potatoes, spinach with roasted garlic; sorbet made from Concord grapes with lavender cookies; and most wonderful of all, an adorable nursery plate of cheese with toast and a little pool of honey.

Now that’s my idea of dessert. That’s Dibben’s idea

of dessert, too — something delectable; also something

local.

That’s why it’s on the Stagecoach Tavern’s community farm table menu. Everything on

the plate was raised, grown and produced at a farm within 15 miles of the restaurant, which is on Route 41 in Sheffield, MA.

Well, almost everything. Salt, pepper and vinegar come from other places. And the cheese and the flour come from Vermont. But that’s close enough.

Dibben is 27, a little prickly at first encounter, and bent on getting people to link food and community. That’s why diners are encouraged to sit together at a large table in a side dining room as they order from the fairly extensive farm table menu. People who’d rather chat with their sweetie in a dark corner than save agriculture from itself can eat from the farm table menu but in the regular restaurant, which is intimate and alight with candles and a brisk wood fire. And they can jump the traces and add something from the regular menu like the lobster ravioli with garlic and butter — a heavenly, if unlocal, dish.

But Dibben is devoted to what is called slow food — a movement championing "good, clean and fair food . . . food that tastes good, protects the environment and the welfare of animals," as one of the slow food Web sites explains.

All well and good, but when you are forking over $120 for dinner (it’s $36 a head, plus wine, plus anything else you pick off the regular menu, plus tip) delicious comes first. And Dibben, an accomplished chef who learned, as she explains, by doing, delivers. She is inventive. The food is fresh. And she knows what to do with it. Her menu depends on garlic, radishes and potatoes from Indian Line Farm in South Egremont; spinach from Farm Girl Farm in Egremont (she buys it fresh and freezes it for these midwinter dinners); lavender for the cookies from a friend’s garden nearby; and the pork, moist and just the palest pink, comes from Maiden Flower Farm in Housatonic, MA. Pink is OK because "trichinosis comes from unsanitary conditions," she says. "When the farm is close you can see how the animals are raised."

Dibben, unlike many chefs, shares recipes. She gave me hers for beet and celeriac salad, a fabulous dish. You can find it at tcextra.com/salty plums. As for cheese and toast and honey, just pile it on a thick white plate and you’re in business. The Stagecoach Tavern’s community farm table is available on Thursdays. For reservations, call 413-229-8585.