People ask me all the time where I get ideas for new menu items. The sources of inspiration are many. I may eat out at another restaurant and get an idea, see something in one of the many cooking magazines I read or notice a restaurant review that mentions a dish that sounds interesting. But perhaps the most frequent source for new ideas about food comes from the many local farmers and food purveyors who flourish in the Berkshires, and who take great pride in their products. The following is the story of the evolution of one such dish.

At a recent gathering of Berkshire Grown chefs and farmers, I was introduced to Amy from Cricket Creek Farm in Williamstown, who makes several varieties of cheese and raises grass fed beef. Amy had brought a sample of her aged cow’s milk cheese, which she calls “Maggie’s Round.” It’s a delicious, firm and buttery cheese, which could have many different uses. Although the Berkshires has had local goat cheese from Rawson Brook Farm and Michael Miller’s Berkshire Blue Cheese for some time, I have always wondered why someone didn’t make a more mainstream cow’s milk cheese, like a Swiss or Cheddar. “Maggie’s Round” fits the bill perfectly.

During the winter, we offered a breast of chicken stuffed with Berkshire Blue, wrapped with Prosciutto, and served with a roasted fig sauce, which, while delicious, was too rich for the spring and summer. I like to serve some type of stuffed chicken breast on the menu, because chicken is popular, and it’s the kind of slightly more complicated dish that many home cooks may not bother to make.

When I became aware of the Cricket Creek Farm cheese, it was exactly the kind of local ingredient I wanted to support and feature on my menu.

So we began stuffing a thinly pounded breast of chicken with some caramelized onions, shredded Maggie’s Round cheese and roasted tomatoes. For a week or two, we topped the chicken with sautéed ramps, which are like wild scallions, from Bar None Ranch across the border in New York State. But, ramps are only available for a few short weeks of spring, and we soon needed a sauce to finish the dish. I wanted to make a fresh tomato and basil salsa to spoon lightly on top, but it’s still too early to get a real tomato, and the kind that are available this time of year are not worth using. For the moment, we’re serving it with a sauce made from sherry wine vinegar, fresh thyme, and veal stock. The vinegar helps balance the richness of the cheese, but I still think the idea of the fresh tomato salsa would go well. I’ll just have to wait a few more months when local tomatoes are available.

The original idea was to make the dish without any meat other than the chicken. One of the reasons many people choose to eat chicken is because they don’t want to eat beef or pork, and I didn’t want to alienate those diners. Then Kevin Bacon entered the picture. Kevin was the featured star of this year’s Berkshire International Film Festival, and Castle Street Café was hosting a dinner in his honor. We just had to sneak a little bacon into the menu somewhere. We decided to wrap the chicken in a strip of bacon, which not only imparts that great smoky, bacony flavor, but also adds some crispness to the outer layer. Perhaps even more importantly, it helps keep the chicken wrapped up tightly, and helps prevent it from unrolling. So, it’s not just a silly sop to Hollywood. It actually improves the dish, although it could be omitted if anyone didn’t want to eat the bacon.

We’ve only been serving this for a week now, and I wouldn’t presume to say yet that the dish is in its final form. Like many other dishes, they evolve over time.

Michael Ballon is the Chef-Proprietor of the Castle Street Café. He may be contacted at mballon@bcn.net.