By: Katherine Gustafson
- Harvest Restaurant’s Executive Chef Chris Knouse builds each night’s five-course tasting menu around the day’s ripest and most flavorful produce from Castle Hot Springs’ three-acre farm, a hallmark of farm to table restaurants.
- Crops that thrive together in the ground, such as parsley and green garlic, inspire flavor combinations that carry Southwest abundance directly from the garden to the plate.
- Preservation techniques like canning, drying, and freezing bring the peak produce to plates all year so Harvest’s seasonal menus can always reflect the full range of Arizona’s flavors.
Discovering ingredients for Harvest Restaurant is mere footsteps outdoors to the Castle Hot Spring’s three-acre farm. Executive Chef Chris Knouse meanders through the tidy garden rows and greenhouses seeking out the freshest seasonal offerings for each night’s five-course tasting menu.
Each tasting menu needs a small bite, a soup, a salad, and a main course, followed by a dessert from the pastry chef and a wine pairing from Harvest’s award-winning cellar.
But the exact profile of each course in that menu is shaped daily by what is ripest and most flavorful, an approach that makes Harvest one of the Southwest’s most distinctive farm to table restaurants. It stands out among resorts with seasonal menus for how closely its farm and kitchen work together to bring their diners the freshest, most creative fare.
An Eye for Ripe, Colorful, and Fresh
Knouse doesn’t follow recipes or predetermined menus. He works with Farm Director Ian Beger to create unique seasonal menus and then perfects the dishes he will create each day as he takes his daily walk among the farm’s peppers, peas, and pumpkins. His goal is to find the ripest, most colorful, flavorful produce to make the restaurant’s offerings an optimal reflection of nature’s abundance.
Farmers works alongside the culinary team to build a crop plan to make sure Harvest’s offerings reflect what thrives in the Sonoran Desert. This partnership between those who grow the food and those who transform it is a unique feature of how Castle Hot Springs showcases the richness of the local environment to delight the resort’s guests.
Farmers love that seasonal eating taps into natural cycles and provides a sense of newness and novelty as the farm’s production shifts over time. Even in winter, Castle Hot Springs’ food team produces abundance that enchants dormant palates: Root vegetables and brassicas such as kale, broccoli, and cauliflower sweeten in cooler temperatures, while greenhouses allow for flavorful accents from such tender offerings as tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and basil.
The farm’s greenhouses make fresh flavors available long past their usual season. Knouse recalls finding asparagus thriving there during a summer heat wave, long after it should have finished for the year. Thanks to the greenhouse, guests at Harvest can enjoy the supple lettuce that serves as a base for the restaurant’s Winter Wedge Salad, which tops the greenery with diced winter squash and apple, pomegranate seeds, roasted pecans, blue cheese, and maple dressing.
Flavor Combinations from Planting to Plate
Knouse takes his cues for these dishes not only from what’s growing at any given moment, but also by what’s growing where. He knows that ingredients that thrive well together tend to complement each other on the palate. Springtime crops that are happy as next-door neighbors, such as ramps, fiddlehead ferns, and mushrooms, combine to create delightful dishes. In summer, he might join high-season crops that like to grow side by side, like squash, tomatoes, and chiles.
This companion-planting concept is part of what makes the toppings on the Mushroom Banh Mi sandwich stand out. Its fungus base is complemented by a springy mix of carrots, peppers, onions, and cilantro, which grow and pair particularly well together. Similarly, the parsley and green garlic in the mint gremolata that graces the Pistachio-crusted Colorado lamb rack are good friends in the ground and a power couple on the plate.
Menu creation is also influenced by the subtleties of the flavors in the farm’s herbs, which can be employed creatively in unexpected places to elevate drinks and dishes. One example is blue spice basil, which boasts a sweet, creamy flavor reminiscent of vanilla, citrus, licorice, and cloves. This intriguing herb is used in the resort’s welcome tea served at check-in, as well as in making ice cream, cocktails, and various dishes on the Harvest menu. Knouse’s favorite herb, Mexican oregano, is a tad spicy and his secret for mellowing out tomato sauce.
Celebrating Seasonal Tastes Year-round
Celebrating the flavors of nature at Castle Hot Springs also means capturing the freshness of its produce through preservation all year long. Guest’s plates feature not just a single harvest moment, but a season’s worth of flavor locked in by freezing, drying, and canning to bottle the bounty for future meals.
Gourds and tubers held in cold storage, pickled and oil-packed vegetables, canned and freeze-dried fruits, and dried chilis and herb blends add the flavors of previous weeks and months to each day’s freshly plucked produce and grass-fed meats.
The spice wall in Harvest’s kitchen are filled with jars of dried herbs and chilies ready to create house-made rubs for meats, basil in oil to brush on pizza crusts, and freeze-dried blackberries blended with Maldon salt and rose petals. Knouse’s special blend of dried herbs from the farm, dubbed Herbes de Castlé, combines rosemary, thyme, basil, fennel, lavender, Mexican oregano, and other spices to create a signature flavor that guests can purchase to continue tasting the farm’s freshness at home.
This dedication to capturing fleeting flavors on seasonal menus makes Castle Hot Springs one of the country’s few true farm to table resorts.
An Evolving Menu Built Around Every Guest
Along with showcasing seasonal flavors, Knouse takes diners’ individual preferences and dietary restrictions into account when creating each night’s menu. Guests share their dietary needs before they come to the restaurant so the chef can design a menu that is sure to delight and satisfy everyone.
The result is a culinary experience that is ever-changing but also familiar, with the ethos, quality, and flavors remaining consistent over the seasons and years, defining each stay at the resort. At Castle Hot Springs, the five-course tasting menu is an ongoing conversation that defines what it means to be one of the region’s leading farm to table restaurants. It’s not only the restaurant’s savory dishes, but also the details of the menu itself that are crafted afresh at every seating in the dining room at Harvest.