- Today on "George Hirsch Lifestyle" I meet up with my friends Pete and Eric at Sep's Farm as they share how farming is changing from generation to generation, one year at a time.

Then, it's hot diggity dog with Chef Alex as we prepare one of America's greatest outdoor cooking pastimes, double cooked hotdogs.

Then I'm off to the outdoor farm kitchen cooking wood oven roasted corn chowder.

And roasting farm fresh vegetables and wood oven pizza.

Finally, a sweet wood oven smoked honey pear with creamy cheese.

(Laid back guitar music) - Long Island Farm Bureau is a proud presenter of "George Hirsch Lifestyle".

Long Island Long farmers continue their commitment to providing abundant, fresh commodities.

Supporting farmers and the local agriculture community for over 100 years.

- This farm, how old is it Pete?

- I'm 59 this month and I've been working on the farm since I was probably three or four when we just bought it, close to 60 years.

- 60 years.

- Yep.

- So you've been farming your entire life.

Has farming changed at all since you were a kid?

- Wow.

We're farming on a $100,000 an acre land, to grow (laughs) radishes and corn and tomatoes.

- I've had your corn.

And a lot of people that I've cooked for have had your corn.

And maybe it is that $100,000 an acre corn (Pete laughing) that makes it taste so good.

- Well that's right, sure.

- But, what is it that's so special about your corn besides your knowledge of farming?

- It's knowing how to make the corn grow sweet (laughs) - Mm-hmm.

- There's a trick to it.

Anybody can buy the varieties I buy and people do, and they don't taste nothin' except lost taste, like.

You put it in the ground, it grows up and then it's done is 70 days and you forget about it, but it needs a lot of TLC to that point (laughs).

- Well here we have our tassel-- - Mm-hmm.

- Up here.

We call it break and tassel when the corn is small and it finally shoots up, it starts to push out this tassel.

And this is the pollinator and it's a gravity and wind pollinated, and the pollen shakes down and lands on some of this silk in the early stages of its growth.

- Mm-hmm.

- And each one of these silks is a transport tube for the pollen to travel down into-- - Each kernel.

- Create the kernel.

So every one of those-- - Oh my God, that corn is beautiful.

- Silks is accounted for.

And this is young corn.

- It's young, yeah.

- This has a while to go yet.

Now, Eric, you have a few years of experience next to you with your dad.

How many years now have you been puttin' your hands in the dirt?

- Every summer since I was a little kid.

- Mm-hmm.

- And, of ocurse I've gone away, got an education and, like many of my generation, come back to be on the farm as much as possible.

And there is not a day that goes by that there's not a lesson learned and knowledge passed on, and I think that's one of the most important things is that these generations, it doesn't have to be within a family, but as long as the generations are communicating their knowledge to the next ones, then this farm thing can keep going.

And we can keep our local community supplied with fresh food, grown locally.

- Well, there's another aspect, and I'm tryin' not to be choked up right now, that your family has been really good with.

And that's feeding and nourishing people.

Because you do it quietly.

You know, we've done a lot of events.

- Yep.

- And the Sep's family doesn't come through with one bushel of corn, they come through with (Pete laughing) a truck load tonnage of corn.

- We like to stress chefs out.

When it gears enough-- - When it, yes and you have!

And you have!

Because we've done these massive benefits, you know and hunger, and supporting women, and, you know, a better spiritual nature, but your family has been right there, and helping to feed mind and body and soul is something that we've been very, very passionate.

- Mm-hmm.

- Where do you see farming going?

And farming going, more specifically, in our region?

- I think it's going where it was, it's going back in time in the sense that it's getting smaller, it's getting more geolocated in terms of we know we have Orient, East Marion, Southold.

- Mm-hmm.

- And we have a lot of people here that, if they knew how good stuff was and if they came and supported us at our farm stands and in our restaurants that we partner with, then we can make a decent living at it.

- There is wealth, there's wealth in what you do, it's just so good and touching so many lives.

And how do you put a price on that?

- It's just a great life.

(upbeat guitar music) - Did you know that there is over 800 kernels on one ear of corn?

And more powerful than that, is do you know 1% of the corn grown in the U.S. is sweet, edible corn?

I'm very fortunate that 100% of our corn is that 1% here in Long Island.

It is some of the sweetest, edible corn that you could ever, ever find.

But that sweet corn, sometimes you have to wait for it.

It's not available until July.

But good things, good things, sometimes are really made to wait.

And, you know what?

That's good to know.

From my kitchen to yours.

(upbeat guitar music) I wanna get started right away with a corn chowder.

I'm taking ingredients that was just picked literally minutes ago, right before we got started here.

And in a small soup pot I'm going to add a few drops of olive oil, and add in some chopped rainbow carrots.

While they are slowly simmering, we wanna bring up the hero of this dish, because the corn chowder, when that corn comes out of the field you really should be able to just eat the corn right off the cob.

But we wanna change the flavor of this chowder, because we are outdoors, we want the outdoor flavor, we're going to put them in the wood-burning oven to gain a little bit extra smoke.

Just take the corn and peel it all the way off.

I just took the husk back a little bit, removed the silk.

Drizzle a little bit of olive oil on there, put a couple cloves of garlic.

Place it inside the oven, and I'm using just a little hardwood, some nice oak here.

That's what's in the oven.

I'd need maybe, if you were doing it in your oven at home, about 350, 400 degrees, and that would be perfect.

Only about five minutes, that's all you're going to need.

And then your corn is gonna be ready.

OK, once the corn is out of the oven let it cool down slightly just so you can handle it.

Now while the corn is cooling off, I have here some clean leeks, some beautiful white leeks, which is going to give the soup (chef chopping) a wonderful onion flavor.

Add the leeks into the carrots, and now we're going to add a seasoning blend.

Some nice mixture of herbs.

I have some thyme, fresh ground black pepper, a little sea salt.

So what I have here is a little bit of corn broth.

I took some of the cobs that I've used on other dishes and I made a nice little stock, a nice little broth.

I'm going to add in about 1 quart of the vegetable broth.

We're going to let that come up to a full boil, and, while that's coming up to temperature, we'll take some potatoes, you can use almost any type of earthy potatoes for this dish.

And we add in two large potatoes, and then the hero of the dish, the corn.

Now for the corn, I want to take it off the husk and basically just hold it as a natural handle, just hold it, hold it, and then shave it.

(metal clinking) Shave it down.

OK, now add the corn, and let everything come up to a full boil.

(metal clanking) Cover the pot and let it simmer gently for about 20-25 minutes, that's all you have to do.

OK, let's check the chowder, the aroma is absolutely (laughs) incredible with all those wonderful farm vegetables.

You know, those vegetables, the corn, it was seconds old.

Not days, hours, minutes.

It was seconds old before it went into the soup pot.

I'm using here a little bit of half-and-half to finish it off, to round it up.

You can, of course, use a coconut milk if you wanted to keep it vegan.

I'll put in just a little drop of hot sauce, just to give it a slight little punch.

And then, the soup is ready and finished.

You could puree part of it, but when you're on the farm and you're outdoors, I don't mind it at all being a little chunky.

I'll top it with a little bit more roasted corn on top to give it that crunch and that smoke flavor.

I'll tear off maybe two Thai basil leaves.

Put that in there.

That'll just bring it to a nice, sharp basil, little Thai flavor.

So there you have it, a wonderful corn chowder.

Right from the farm, to the oven, to the plate.

(upbeat guitar music) Now I'm gonna start right away with some beautiful mixture of beets.

I wanna take these beets and roast them in the wood oven.

There's really nothing that's actually better than just having fresh beets that have been harvested, rinsed a little bit, and I'm going to take our beets and just cut the end of the stem and the root off, split them in half, just a mixture of some golden beets, and some red beets, and to the beets we're going to just quarter down a little fresh onion.

Maybe one red onion to mix up the color, and the flavor.

'Cause the sugar content, actually in each onion, will be a little bit different.

Now we'll go and add in some of the soft vegetables.

I have some Turkish eggplants.

I'll show you these Turkish eggplants, they're really nice just to roast whole.

But I'll split one open inside and these are just perfect, perfect for roasting.

They just lend itself, they're nice and meaty, great natural flavor, and lends itself so well to any type of Mediterranean type seasoning and flavoring.

(chef's knife slicing) So we'll just split some of those.

We want to add in a little flavoring, some aromatic, some nice rosemary.

A pinch of sage leaf.

And just let them fall on there.

And, (chef's knife slicing) just for color, and texture and flavor, split one baby Italian eggplant, and just using a little creativity, a small amount of flavoring and aromatics, the onions, some garlic, not chopped I'm just putting the whole cloves in there because the oven right now is about 700 (laughs) degrees behind me, it's nice and hot.

So it is going to kind of roast very, very quickly.

A little fresh ground black pepper, a mixture of a little thyme and fresh basil for the Mediterranean flavor, but there's nothing that's going to really overpower this dish.

Salt and pepper.

Another little sprinkle of oil.

OK, it'll probably take about five to seven, eight minutes tops in that 700 oven.

If you're doing this at home in your regular oven preheat it to about 350-375 degrees, and it would take about 20-25 minutes.

(food sizzling) Look (laughs) at that!

Oh my gosh, these vegetables are absolutely amazing.

You can see the Turkish eggplant, the Italian eggplant, and our beautiful beets, the golden beets, the red beets, and all the sweet onions.

Now this would be fine to be able to serve just as it is here, warm.

Or you could serve at room temperature, maybe with a little bit more of a drizzle of olive oil on top, and a little fresh black pepper, and a little salt.

But we're going to let these roasted vegetables just cool down slightly, because I wanna serve it with a pizza.

We have a beautiful roaring fire behind me in the wood-burning oven.

Very hot temperature.

The fire has actually been banked with additional wood to bring up the temperature, because I really want it somewhere in the neighborhood of about 750-800 degrees.

I want the pizza to actually cook very, very, very quickly.

So what I have here is my pizza dough.

And, I'm not showboatin' here, but what I'm actually doing is, as you can see with the dough, the gluten pulls it, and then it shrinks back.

It pulls it, and it shrinks back.

And the key, again, to making a good pizza and making the dough is make it at least in the morning, or maybe even the night before.

This way all the gluten that pulls and stretches back has a chance to relax.

So, here we go again!

Let's do a couple spins, I like to call ball bearings, but really what it is, is just a little semolina, or corn meal, that you can use on the pizza peel.

(rough scraping) We'll let the pizza shrink back in, perfect size to the peel.

And now, as far as pizza goes, you have actually a blank canvas.

What I like to do is even put a little bank of fresh arugula on the bottom.

What I like about the arugula is, it has a nice little peppery taste.

I have a mixture of some nice tomatoes, red and yellow, some golden ones, just for the color.

They're both really, really sweet.

And I'm going to put them skin side down, I wanna put them skin side down.

And if you wanted to, of course, if you wanted to use the roasted vegetables you could even chop up these roasted vegetables once they're cool, and then put 'em on top and make a grilled vegetable pizza.

But we're keeping it kind of simple today.

Little bit of the Mediterranean seasoning on top.

A little bit more salt, and a little more pepper.

Some little bit of red pepper flakes.

And a nice drizzle of olive oil on top.

If you're doing this at home, you wanna have your oven as hot as possible, and use a heavy gauge pan, such as a cast iron skillet that I have here.

That's gonna allow for it to cook that much faster, and once the pizza is going to hit it, it won't cool it down.

But at least about 400-450.

So let's take our pizza to the oven and give it a little push.

(hands clapping) So there (metal scraping) is our wood-burning oven, very, very fresh pizza with just the fresh mozzarella, some nice golden tomatoes, a little sprinkling of pepper.

If you wanted to add a little broken basil on it.

Perfect pizza, right on the farm.

Served along with our roasted vegetables.

Try it, I know you're gonna love it.

(upbeat guitar music) Well I think what I would describe this as is, complicated simplicity.

Because you keep it simple-- - OK. - You keep your toppings simple-- - Right.

- But, give me tons of toppings.

Give me lots of options.

- Right!

- Well, let's talk about the good stuff, - Yeah.

- and the good wrap, right now.

Now, I got the grill, you got the-- - I got the dirty water dogs.

- You got the dirty water dogs-- - Yeah.

- Which is, kinda synonymous with a New York street cart dog.

- This time, I like to do a combo, and I know you do too, because when you cook it in the dirty water first, you keep the hot dog flavor in there.

We've got a nice little bath going here with all sorts of aromatics.

- Yeah, tell me what's in here!

- We've got some onion in here, a little bit of vinegar, bay leaves, some pickling spice, some green onions, some garlic cloves, and a little bit of stock.

So what we got is best of both worlds, 'cause when they come out of my dirty water, they hit your hot grill.

- They get to go on the hot grill.

- Yeah.

- And it's that two part cooking method.

- Yeah.

- But both of 'em is still low and slow.

Now, you wanna kind of be turning and flipping them a lot to ratchet over the heat.

- If you use the right hot dog and the right toppings, they can really be an elevated dish, and they're much better.

A lot of people might say, "What are these guys "doin' hot dogs for?"

The reason why is because if you pick high quality ingredients, just like anything else, you're gonna take it to the next level.

- Well I have some beautiful buns here for the dogs.

- Yeah.

- If we were in Frankfort-- - You would be a slice of bread.

- Yeah.

And you know what?

That also depends on the type of hot dog that you have, so a lot of the American-sell hot dogs, really cater well to a potato bun with chili, or a red onion sauce, or a chili cheese dog, that's one of my favorite, like, carnival style hot dogs.

- Right?

- But then, you could go to a German butcher and get a German style dog-- - Yeah, yeah.

- And that goes really, really good with a snappy skin on a really hard crusty bread, with just a mustard.

- Exactly.

- Yeah.

- Exactly.

Well, load me up with a couple dogs on here.

So we can keep them rotated.

Because whenever we seem to be throwing things on the grill and cooking we will have a crowd come around.

- Yeah.

- So, for right now-- - And this is what's nice too, is you can plump them up in the water, then you drop 'em on the grill and you get it nice and crispy.

- Cheers.

- Cheers (laughs).

(laid back acoustic music) - The best desserts are all about simplicity.

And with just a couple ingredients, we'll definitely have a hero winner of a dessert.

I have here kind of a very firm pear.

And I want to use a firm pear, I don't want it to be overly ripe, or overly soft, because then it would just disintegrate when it goes into the wood-burning oven.

That's right, we're going to be baking these pears.

I'm going to bake these pears at a medium to high temperature.

Maybe, for the wood-burning oven, it's cool, you know, it's about maybe 425-450.

If you're doing it in your oven at home it would be about 375-400 degrees.

So, this is more about the presentation.

So what I want to do is just put a pear to stand up right in the middle, so I have a whole pear, there.

Standing up right in the middle.

And I'll use a couple more pears.

But these I'm going to change up.

I'm going to wedge 'em into nice wedges, it depends upon the size of your pear, this I'll cut into sixes.

And you could take the core out, I'm going to leave the core right now because I want it to remain in tact, I don't want it to disintegrate when it goes into the wood-burning oven.

(knife scraping) So we'll just cut these pears down, as far as the amount, it all depends upon how many people.

Generally, you could figure about a pear per person, I think that's a good average amount.

I'm adding in a small amount of olive oil, and I'm doing that just so the pears kind of naturally roast on the bottom.

And, because it's going into an extremely hot oven, I'm using a cast iron pan.

I want a pan with good heat conduction that can stand up to high temperatures.

So, the same rule would kinda pertain if you were making it at home.

And to the pears right now I'm going to put in a little sprinkling of brown sugar.

You don't really need too much, you wanna let the natural sugars in these pears just actually caramelize themselves.

And that's going to bubble up real nice.

So, I'm just going to use a small drizzle of honey right now, just to give it a little caramelization.

Little pinch of salt, because even a little salt with the sugar, you know, it's like that caramel salt that you hear about that's all the big rage.

And that's all we really have to do to get it ready for the oven.

We'll take it out maybe about three quarters through, and we'll add a little bit of butter.

We don't want to add too much of the butter right now because the butter would burn.

So, again, it's gonna go into about a 425-450 degree wood-burning oven, to get that nice, smokey flavor.

If you're doing it at home, about 375-400 degrees.

(George laughing) So, this is what you have when you have a little butter, a little sugar, some nice fruit juice from the pears.

(metal clanking) But, a very, very simple dessert.

And, maybe when served along with a nice salty finishing cheese, I have here a blue ash goat cheese that you could serve right along the side.

Some fresh berries, some nice crunchy cookies, either crumble 'em, or put them right on the side.

The beautiful pears caramelized in that butter, sugar, and the crunch from the nuts and the cookies.

Doesn't get any better than that.

So, there you have it, wood oven roasted corn chowder, and wood oven roasted vegetables and tomato arugula pizza.

Hot dogs cooked chef style.

And, for dessert, wood oven smoked honey pear.

Remember, if I can do it, you can do it.

We'll see you real soon.

(upbeat music) For more on recipes, entertaining lifestyle tips, TV series blog, and selected video clips from today's show, join me at www.chefgeorgehirsch.com (laid back music) - To download and own episodes of "George Hirsch Lifestyle" containing inspiring lifestyle segments, original recipes, and complete how-to, visit www.amazon.com, or www.chefgeorgehirsch.com.

(laid back music) (upbeat acoustic music) - Long Island Farm Bureau is a proud presenter of "George Hirsch Lifestyle".

Long Island farmers continue their commitment to providing abundant, fresh commodities.

Supporting farmers and the local agriculture community for over 100 years.