In early June, at eveSUPPERCLUB (please note: we still think that name is totally ridiculous), eve’s organizers posed a question that we hadn’t encountered at previous supper club outings: Would we be interested in cooking at an upcoming charity event?
The reasons we even went to eve were because the food had very interesting promise (Tailor’s Fran Derby, Sam Mason, and Amador Acosta were cooking the night we attended), and because all of the proceeds from each dinner do, in fact, go to a charity of the chef’s choosing. The organizers popped their question only after we’d had quite a bit of wine, but even when we were sober, eve’s “eat good, feel good” mentality had appealed to us. So the answer was, duh, we’d be happy to.
In fact, we already had a charity picked out: Just Food, a New York-based group that helps educate people about organic and sustainable food by teaching the virtues of produce from CSAs and local farms, and helping low-income families start small garden plots here in the city.
The super-secret location of eve is always the same, and the club’s organizers take care of setting up the space for each dinner, so our only real task was figuring out the menu. With a charity that’s so committed to responsible agriculture, and given the fact that almost every food in the world is in season in early September, coming up with a theme was as easy as finding a good pig knuckle at Oktoberfest: We’d prepare a farm fresh feast. We recruited two veterans of the catering scene to join us, Greg Lofts and Ian’s wife Michelli, and got to work.
Up first: a raw corn salad amuse paired with a home-brew michelada shooter. We used honey from the Knauer family farm to brew the honey ale that was the base of the michelada, and put that same honey to work in the salad’s vinaigrette.
But we were just getting warmed up. For the next course, Ian took the leftover yeast from the beer brewing and used it to make a sourdough starter. After his bread was baked, he turned it into croutons by sautéing it in duck fat, because, he said, “why wouldn’t you?” Those little morsels of oleaginous goodness got topped with a gorgeous buffalo mozzarella, a fat slice of heirloom tomato, purple basil, some extra virgin, balsamic, and a handful of heirloom cherry tomatoes. To say that this course rocked the shit out of other Caprese salads would be an understatement.
A third course of individual rabbit terrines would probably have been better received if Ian hadn’t, when describing the dish to the diners, compared it (favorably) to eating roadkill. But he’s just a country boy from Pennsylvania, and he don’t know no better.
Our beet carpaccio with a hidden schmear of caramelized onion purée proved to be a colossal pain to plate, but it was well received—and braised lamb with “deconstructed” ratatouille was a major-league hit. (“Deconstructed ratatouille” is Ian’s recipe, and he did come up with the name, but he promises he thinks the word “deconstructed” is as stupid as you do.)
Dessert proved to be the most popular course of the evening. Berry pie paired with a bourbon vanilla ice cream brought smiles to everyone’s faces.
Clearly, with all the leftover cash going to help spread the word about eating and growing good food, the event was a success. But did the diners think the diner itself was successful? Did the 2 guys hold their own with some of New York’s most talked about chefs?
We’d like to think so, but don’t take our word for it.
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