This past weekend I was in charge of the food for a fundraiser dinner for the Flatlander Fund.  You can read more about the Flatlander Fund on its site, or in recent entries about community kitchens or planning for the dinner on this blog.  After a very short planning period, only advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and a few email lists, we had sold almost all the tickets.

In the days leading up to the event, I was testing or re-testing recipes in any spare moments I could gather.  I had to come up with produce orders, shopping lists, and coordinate with some of the other people who would be cooking with me.  I just prayed that I remembered everything.

Many of the components of the meal were things that I’ve cooked a number of times and was confident about their success.  Some were items that I’d only cooked small portions of, and would have to make adjustments for the scale or the cooking equipment available for the event.  Let me tell you, I lost a lot of sleep over empanadas and flan last week.

Saturday came, and I picked up boxes and boxes of fresh produce from our local vendors.  Much of the quality of the food we ended up serving was a direct result of the ingredients that went into it.  Blue Moon Farm, Moore Family Farm, Nature’s Finest, Kilgus Dairy, Tiny Greens, Prairie Fruits Farm, and that guy I bought the watermelon from (SE corner of the market… anyone know?), all had top-notch products that we used for this meal.  Much of this and the rest of the ingredients (purchased at Common Ground Food Coop) was organic.

Once we started cooking (in the generously donated kitchen space at Prairie Fruits Farm), we in some small way, got a little closer to the leagues of many talented, qualified, professional chefs that have cooked there before us in their Dinners on the Farm series.  None of us really had restaurant cooking experience, but our passion and talents kept us on the right path.  I think we all learned a lot from that experience.

I learned that Crocs really are pretty comfortable to stand in for hours in a kitchen.  I learned that kitchens get damn hot, you can’t hear anything under the exhaust hood, and you can never have enough prep space.  I learned that restaurant stoves can be quite finicky, and sometimes you find that their knobs are missing, or upside-down, or that sometimes you need to find a lighter to evoke a flame.  I learned you can never have enough storage containers for prepped food, and having a prep list goes a long way in keeping you organized.  I learned, not surprisingly, that it can take a long time to prepare that food for 40-60 people.

After the hours of cooking on Saturday, then waking up and cooking more on Sunday, we were just about done.  When the cooking was over, and everything was packed up to go to the Corkscrew, I think we were all excited to get on with the evening.  We unloaded and it seemed like we had almost too much time.  As is my (bad) habit, I neglected to take the time to eat much of anything, but I wasn’t feeling it over the excitement of the event.  I finally got to spend time at a cutting board, slicing open tomatoes for the tomato caviar and cubing watermelon.

I wore a chef’s coat that I got on Amazon.  I almost felt like an impostor, like I was just trying on Dad’s suit coat or something.  But in other ways it felt real, like it would help other people see what I’m trying to show them.  As I was standing behind the Buvons wine bar, slicing tomatoes and cubing watermelon, multiple people came up and remarked at how I looked like I belonged there, like I was so relaxed–and I was.

Then the volunteers came, so many volunteers!  This wonderful group of people who smiled and looked around as though they were just so happy to be helping work at this event.  After running around and trying to make sure we had everything, Alisa (chef at Prairie Fruits Farm) helped me pull them over to have a front-of-house meeting.  I thanked everyone and started going over the menu.  I shared my spark of interest in the food, and they reacted.  At this point, I’m in love with this menu.  In my mind, I couldn’t help but think of the flaws in some of the dishes, but I couldn’t help but express love for this food.  That’s a feeling that I hope I was able to share with the volunteers.

As we were talking, guests started coming in, and we soon needed to start plating the first course.  Once we got into service, the next hours were all a fun ride.  Everybody did such a great job, I couldn’t stop thanking people and marvelling at how my food (and the dishes of my colleagues) was going out, on plates, into a dining room.

It’s been a dream, really, to serve food to people in this kind of environment.  I talked with Dan many times about how I wanted to do a dinner party with plated dishes, but we never got the chance to do it together.  Dan inspired me to believe that I could do something like this, that I just need to go for it.  I’m so glad that I finally did.

As the desserts were eaten and I went to see my brother in the dining room, I saw smiles on people’s faces, and heard the chatter of a few dozen conversations.  I couldn’t help but feel like I had accomplished something.

I didn’t accomplish it alone, though.  So many people were necessary, from Laura, who helped organize the event, to all the people that helped cook (Jason, Kristin, Laurence, Mel, Patrick, Shameem), the volunteers, too many to name them all but they all were so wonderful, and of course all the guests–without whom there would be no event at all.  I thanked them all many times that night, and I mean it.

There will be future events… maybe bigger, maybe smaller.  I’ll probably cook, but someone else will probably take the reins.  There are a lot of talented people who are passionate about food in this town.  I love that I’m able to be a part of it.

All the pictures in this post are from Justine Bursoni, one of the guests.  She has a whole collection of photos from the evening, and I highly recommend you go browse through them.  Click through to see an even bigger collection on her Zenfolio.

Image from Flatlander Fund

I’m really excited about this event, in part because I’m in charge of the food!  In collaboration with the Dine in My Back Yard group (which Dan helped to start), we’ll be preparing a number of delicious Spanish & Latina dishes from fresh, local ingredients.  I hope this is a gateway to more tasty events held not only to raise money for a good cause (in this case, the Flatlander Fund), but to offer great food from the best ingredients.

Here are all the details on the upcoming event.

On Sunday, August 29 from 6-9PM the Corkscrew Wine Emporium will host a fundraising dinner in their new Buvons Wine Bar to support Dan Schreiber’s dream of a community kitchen for Champaign-Urbana. The event will feature a 3-course gourmet dinner with wine pairing. Tickets are $100/person and seating is limited. For reservations, contact Laura at 217-778-1687 or donate@flatlanderfund.org. Dinner payments can be made online here (put “dinner” in the memo line, please) or by mailing a check to Prairie Table/Flatlander Fund, 201 W. Green, Urbana, IL 61801. Click here for more details, the menu, and to read more about the Flatlander Fund.

This is a reprint of an article that I wrote for Smile Politely back in December, 2009.  You can find the original posting, titled “C-U’s need for a kitchen incubator.”

The reason I’m reposting this is to reiterate the idea behind the Flatlander Fund.  The mission of the Flatlander Fund is to create a community kitchen, which encompasses a lot of things–one role being as a “kitchen incubator”.  I had heard about this idea from a great NPR-distributed podcast called Good Food (from Santa Monica radio station KCRW).  I talked about it with Dan on many occasions and he was really excited about actually moving forward with it.

I could talk, but Dan was really making it happen.  When he was signing the lease for his factory space, he was constantly considering how it could be a shared-use facility with a community kitchen/kitchen incubator.  His plan was selfless, only wanting the community kitchen to cover the absolute minimum of rent and utilities for its share (i.e. not a strictly for-profit kitchen rental).  As we walked the space, he asked me what kinds of things I could imagine doing there, and my head spun with ideas.  He just listened and smiled and took it all in.

If you think that Champaign-Urbana needs a community kitchen, focused on sharing knowledge, or a kitchen incubator, giving food entrepreneurs like Dan an easier start, then donate to the Flatlander Fund.  Get involved in the effort to create a place where the love of food can spread to an entire community.  As the Flatlander Fund progresses, I hope that we get closer to having this much-needed resource in our community.

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If you’ve been going to the Urbana Market at the Square (a/k/a the farmers’ market), you’ve probably noticed a number of stalls offering baked goods of various types.  Just this summer, the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District (CUPHD) decided to being enforcing a (10-year old) rule that requires all baked goods sold at farmers’ markets to be prepared in certified kitchens.  This was covered by many local outlets, including Smile Politely.  Numerous market fans were outraged by the CUPHD’s decision, especially given its short notice to the affected vendors.  I could go on and on about how silly it is that they’re regulating small-time bakers in this way, but there is precedent in many jurisdictions to disallow sales of home-baked goods.

Luckily for us, all the vendors found accommodations at various certified kitchens in the area.  That means all potential vendors, from teenagers to retirees, must now spend odd hours in commercial kitchens to bring their goods to market.  While this market season was bursting with now-certified baked goods, next year may not be as fulfilling.  Some vendors have been put off by the burden of spending time and money to work at another facility.  Many baked goods take time–time to mix, time to rise, time to bake.  With the new arrangement, this part-time activity has turned into a full-time endeavor for some vendors who now have to make time to attend to their products at their commercial kitchen.  This has forced at least one vendor to consider alternative arrangements.

You may have heard of various “underground” food vendors in the area.  If you haven’t, I urge you to look around.  You might find a dinner deliverer or charcuterie slinger.  They are making some of the best products you can find out of great ingredients.  I love that the C-U food scene is vibrant enough to demand great local products, no matter the circumstances.  Problems arise, however, when the underground food producer wants to open up and sell their goods to the public.

There’s no easy route for people to take here.  The CUPHD doesn’t want numerous dens of underground food filth, they want inspect-able businesses.  On the other hand, small time food producers don’t want to immediately put in the investment to scale production and rent out a commercial kitchen every week.  While there are kitchens available in town, a new “wanna-be” vendor is going to have to fit into their schedule.  Despite still being in development stages, they are forced to immediately start paying for kitchen time (ETA: and certification/licensure).  They may end up failing before they even get a chance to start.

What I think C-U needs is a kitchen incubator.  Never heard of that?  The idea is to offer up kitchen space that offers something to its users–a chance to start a food business.  First, it would need to be accessible enough that food entrepreneurs can find a time that matches their schedule.  The fees to use it must be low enough that a small start-up can actually get started.  It should have a wealth of resources, at least links to people in the community who can help entrepreneurs with marketing, packaging, and product development.  If it offered some small amount of space (e.g. for serving meals, retail sales, cooking classes), that would help get people started faster.

Now, a kitchen incubator isn’t going to answer all the issues faced by the displaced farmers’ market vendors, but there is a sizable group that it could help.  There are plenty of very talented people who could be making money with food.  For many, the barrier is time and start-up costs.  For some, they just don’t know how they would get their product to the people.  A kitchen incubator could be helping these people become small business owners.

In the new year I plan on exploring local underground food further and working with others to make it easier for food entrepreneurs to bring their products to market.  Maybe that’s with a kitchen incubator, maybe there’s another solution.  If you think C-U would benefit from something like a kitchen incubator, supporting and encouraging the creation of new businesses, leave a comment or get in touch.  If you want to have a food business or if you’ve already got one running underground, write me.  I’d love to create a community where entrepreneurs can work together and learn from each other to bring the most delicious, locally made food to the people of C-U.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you’ve no doubt seen my many posts referencing Daniel Schreiber and his chocolate.  Sadly (an incredible understatement), he has passed away.  You can find stories about what happened, when, how, but I want to share some of the experiences I haven’t mentioned on the blog.  I want to honor him, a 24-year-old man who greatly inspired me.

If you were inspired by Dan or someone else, or feel inspired after reading this post, read about the Flatlander Fund.  The Flatlander Fund was set up in memory of Dan to perpetuate his dream, a shared wish, that Champaign-Urbana can have a community kitchen where food skills and love can be shared, and young entrepreneurs can have a chance to start their own journey.

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I first came into contact with Dan when he emailed me out of the blue, on July 2nd, 2009, asking if I’d be interested in writing about his Kickstarter project that he started to fund his chocolate making startup.  He wrote, “one of my passions is to make things by hand in traditional ways (for instance I ferment sauerkraut, and knit my own winter gear).”  I wrote back with a few questions that ended up helping me flesh out my first post mentioning Dan, titled Theobroma Cacao.

Needless to say, his project was fully funded and he quickly began work on his first batches.  I think he let me try a little of pretty much every one of his first batches.  Some were ugly, just dry chocolate bits that fell apart.  He tried roasting hotter, cooler, longer, shorter.  He tried different cacao origins and he made me love chocolate.  That was his talent, he would suck you in and educate you about it before you knew what was happening.  Dan taught me how to truly appreciate chocolate.

Once he had his process down a little better, I asked to come by and photograph and take video of him making chocolate.  He seemed excited to have me come to his tiny kitchen on the upper floor of the apartment he was living in.  He told me about how he transforms the raw cacao into cracked and winnowed nibs, ready to be ground.  I watched the chocolate spinning around in the grinding machine he purchased with part of the Kickstarter funds.

He tempered his chocolate on a reclaimed slab of marble while I shot video.  It was beautiful watching the chocolate flowing off the paddles he used to mix and fold the chocolate onto itself.  All the while we talked and he would explain how cocoa butter’s ability to form so many different crystalline structures is so remarkable and so vital to the chocolate-making process.

I met with Dan so many times in the courtyard between the computer science building (Siebel) and my own workplace.  He’d always ask what I’ve been up to, and I never felt like I had a good-enough answer for him.  His passion was infectious and he greatly inspired me to follow my own dreams.  As he gained notoriety, the local newspaper published an article about him and the reporter asked me a few questions.  The first, which I don’t think I got quoted in the article for, was “Why is what Dan’s doing with chocolate important?”  I spent a long time answering that question for the reporter, and I posted my response in a post titled “Why Dan Matters“.

Dan still matters, to me and many others, as an example of what a great artisan can be.  There are so many random wonderful things I could say about him–like his sauerkraut is the only kraut I’ve ever enjoyed, especially the one he added beets to for the inaugural 1000 year old food club event.  It’s hard to pare it down to make this a sensible and meaningful post for anyone else.  One last story, about one of those clandestine courtyard conversations we had…

We met and, as usual, Dan let me sample a bite or two of his latest batches.  He was already into the groove of making chocolate and had sold plenty of bars to friends and friends-of-friends.  I was already planning on buying a bar but he said he really wanted to make sure that he gave a personalized bar to everyone that had donated so long ago to his Kickstarter project.  He pulled out a bar with a mostly blank yellow construction paper wrapper and started writing, and drawing, and more writing, then declaring in all caps “for JASON BRECHIN!” with his signature underneath.  I’ve kept each and every one of my blank/DHS/Daniel Harry Schreiber/Flatlander wrappers, but this one is only mine. And now it’s on the web, to live forever.  Click the image to get the full size scan.

I like our local University meat salesroom.  You may have read about them on ChambanaMoms, where I was quoted lamenting letting the reader in on the UI meat salesroom because “you’ll all grab the good stuff before I get there.”  It’s true, this place has gotten very popular–for good reason!

The boss, Chuck, usually sends out the “meat mail” every Tuesday and Thursday to let everyone know what they have and what’s new.  Today he mentioned that they made some fresh chorizo.  If you know me, you know I love Mexican food, so I had to run down and try it.  Good thing I did, because there wasn’t much left (I forgot to ask if they had more in the back).

As you can see, it’s not the typical red chorizo that you’ll find vacuum-packed in the grocery store, nor is it the bland, over-salted store-brand crap.  This is a slightly different style, using fresh jalapeños and cilantro.  I took a link, removed the casing, and browned it up in a pan.  Once it was pretty much cooked, I tasted it.  It had a great fresh taste, and the cilantro really came through.  It’s not spicy-hot, but it’s miles ahead of any grocery store chorizo you could buy.  For chorizo, it’s quite lean, but it’s tender and not too finely ground.  Chuck knows how to make some good sausages.

It was good, but I realized what I really wanted a more paprika-laden chorizo, so after I tossed in a quarter of an onion, diced, I added some hot smoked paprika and some regular sweet paprika.  After the onions were cooked and the chorizo well-browned, I added two beaten eggs.  Heat up a few tortillas, sprinkle with a little cheese, and that was dinner.  I spooned it straight from the pan onto warm tortillas with a little salsa on top to add a bright kick to my tastebuds.