If I ever end up on death row and get to choose my last meal, I will choose a meal a lot like one I had last month in a barn in McCordsville, IN. The soup, in particular, is hard to forget: chilled, neon-red late season Indiana tomatoes, swimming with a drop of pale fromage blanc, distilled into a shot glass, and served with a cracker, thin as a Catholic communion wafer. And that was just the second course.
The goats had stepped aside and the rain blustered outside. Eighty diners piled into the hay-filled dining hall for a five-course extravaganza presented by Slow Food Indy. Slow Food in an international movement working to reconnect people with the pleasures of real food, sustainably produced. Money raised from the dinner was used to send several local chefs and cooking students to Terra Madre, the global gastronomic gathering in Turin, Italy.
Participating chefs stood on hay bales to present their courses. Regina Mehallick of R Bistro bestowed the heirloom tomato soup. Former Elements chef Greg Hardesty presented his Tortilla Espagnole—a quiche-like dish made from the sweet eggs of alfalfa-fed chickens and topped with Indiana sweet corn salsa. Goose the Market owner Chris Eley served lamb-stuffed-with-ground-lamb raised on the farm where we ate, along with a sweet potato mash flavored with chestnut honey, parsley, and crunchy duck cracklings—amazing.
For dessert? A rustic cake of apples, ginger and crystallized ginger with crème anglaise and pecans, prepared by Amanda Taylor of Ivy Tech Community College culinary arts program. Just when I thought the blissfest was over, here came a plate of butter cookie twists embellished with pine nuts, made by a local church lady.
It was an auspicious meal, cooked and eaten with full consciousness of the aesthetics, politics, and poetry of food.
If you’re into food at this level, don’t miss nationally-known chef and food educator Alice Waters’ visit to the IMA’s Tobias Theater Tuesday, December 2. Waters is the founder of the Chez Panisse restaurant and foundation in Berkeley, CA. She also created the Edible Schoolyard project to integrate food (and gardening) into every aspect of school curriculum. Alice is also the subject of a juicy new biography (juicy in more ways than one). Alice Waters tickets go on sale today. Watch the IMA blog for Noelle Pulliam’s interview with Alice.
If you knew your next meal were your last, what would you have? Bon appétit.
Filed under: Education, Public Programs