Rite of Spring: A Chef’s Guide to Spring Entertaining

Photographs by Pat Piasecki
Prop styling by Taylor Greeley/Team
Flowers by Les Fleurs

The party’s host joins guests for a festive springtime meal. / Photograph by Pat Piasecki

Kristin Canty’s Concord home is like a microcosm of her thoughtful farm-to-table restaurant, Woods Hill Table, located less than 5 miles away. Clucking, free-range Rhode Island Red and Black Star chickens roost in a backyard coop. Honeybees buzz near a wooden hive. A 19th-century root cellar, perfect for storing spring vegetables, clocks in at a chilly 40 degrees.

Once the site of so many family holidays and fundraisers—like her efforts for the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund—Canty’s sprawling 8,000-square-foot, shingle-style house is much quieter these days. Her four children are all in college, and Canty spends a majority of her time—“probably almost 100 hours a week,” she says—working at Woods Hill, which has been bustling since its debut last spring. But when she does open up her home (and grants herself a breather), Canty invites over her new family: the culinary and agrarian community integral to Woods Hill’s sustainable, ancestral vision.

In preparation for the festivities, chefs Charlie Foster and Douglas Phillips crank up the Stones and slice some wild black bass for a quick ceviche. Bar manager/sommelier Andrew Rich whips up some cocktails using Privateer gin and Canty’s stash of harvested honey. And farmer friends such as Sparrow Arc Farm’s Matt Linehan alternate between petting Canty’s Bernese mountain dog, Guinness, and shucking a platter of Belon oysters.

Ahead, Canty shows us how to throw a successful spring get-together with recipes you can make at home—even if your wine isn’t hand-selected by a somm and the chervil in the sauce gribiche wasn’t plucked at sunrise. (Although that certainly wouldn’t hurt.)

‘Bee’s Knees’ Cocktail

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Black Bass Ceviche with Green-Garlic Leche de Tigre

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Sautéed Peas and English Carrots

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Roast Farm Chicken with Lemon-Thyme Butter

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Asparagus with Sauce Gribiche

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Potato Mille-Feuille

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Lemon-Poppy Angel Food Cake with Poached Rhubarb and Chèvre Whipped Cream

Amber Reed, farm manager at the Farm at Woods Hill, soaks up the sun on the back deck. / Photograph by Pat Piasecki

A peek into Canty’s elegant dining room. / Photograph by Pat Piasecki